Mage Hunter: Episode 1: Blooded Snow Read online

  Chapter 6

  Before the three riders stretched a desert of cold white. The harsh music of the burning church soon dissipated upon the wind, its replacement the heavy breathing of the horses and the chuffing sounds of hooves stomping along through the snow.

  For some while the mountains lining the horizon seemed to grow no nearer, and Guthrie realized they were several miles from that particular range that separated Ursia and Dartague. Their prey was not so far, then, though still a ways off.

  As they grew nearer, it became apparent their target was a single person and he or she was not upon a riding beast but wading through the ankle-deep white powder. Each of the riders glanced down and ahead, but there was no evidence of someone having tracked through on foot.

  Guthrie received a slightly different view from the others, one he kept to himself. As he had drawn nearer the distant person, it had become apparent the figure was indeed glowing. More than that, there was a line of weak light stretching from the person back toward the church. This wizard or whomever it was might be able to hide his or her tracks from the sight of the average person, but Guthrie could pick up the trail with the special vision afforded him by the ice witch. Not for the first time, he wondered if what the blue-hued woman had forced upon him was a gift or a curse.

  He was soon to find out.

  When the riders were only a few dozen yards away, the figure in the black cloak spun about. His head was bald but for wisps of dark hair flying about above his ears. His face was haggard and worn like old leather. His hands stretched from his robes like claws, the arms pale and thin as the legs of a stork. Upon his features was a look of rage, but such a vision vanished, replaced by curiosity.

  As the riders pulled their steeds to a halt and fingered their crossbows, the dark mage thrust forward a hand, pointing to Guthrie in the middle of the three. “You!”

  The sergeant leaned forward in his saddle and stared across the head of his riding beast. The wizard was no one he knew, yet the person seemed to recognize him.

  Twang!

  From the right. Hammer had launched an arrow, the big man obviously taking no chances, giving the wizard no time to summon a spell. The black dart skated across the distance between the big warrior and the wizard, then snapped in mid-air and crumbled to the ground just before hitting its target.

  The wizard tossed back his head and cackled.

  Tomlin on Guthrie’s left raised his crossbow and loosed a bolt, the arrow diving true and straight for the dark-robed figure. Again the flying javelin burst apart before striking the mage, turning to splinters and falling to the snow.

  Guthrie did not waste his arrow. Instead, he snapped his reins and trotted his beast ahead.

  “Sergeant, stay back!” Tomlin yelled, but Guthrie paid him no attention.

  The horse fully obeyed its rider at first, but the closer it got to the wizard, the more the animal slowed as if it sensed something unnatural and disturbing. Guthrie could not blame the animal. That now familiar sheen of golden light was blossoming larger and larger as he neared the wizard.

  Eventually the horse would go no further, coming to a standstill and snorting a dozen yards from the dark mage. All the while, Guthrie had been expecting an attack, but it had not come. He glanced over his shoulders and found Tomlin and Hammer had not ridden forward but were busy loading arrows into their bows once again.

  “I did not expect us to meet again,” spoke a high, familiar voice.

  Guthrie’s head snapped around. The image of the wizard in black was now gone, replaced by a vision of the ice witch, her hair black, her flesh azure, her garb a thin garment one could almost see through. If not for her obvious nonhuman traits, the pointed ears and the skin, she might have been beautiful.

  “You!” Guthrie cried out. He tossed his crossbow to one side, the weapon landing in the snow, then lifted his right leg from its stirrup and over the saddle, dropping to the other side.

  The ice witch watched with a thin smile of amusement as he marched forward, the sergeant’s hands bunched into fists at his sides.

  “What did you do to me?” Guthrie asked as he approached, finally coming to a stop just out of her reach. His chest heaved and his eyes flashed. There was true anger in the Ursian. This woman had brought upon him a curse of magic, and somehow she was involved with the Dartague. It also seemed she had been the black wizard in disguise, a slayer of priests and a destroyer of a church.

  Before the witch could answer, pounding hooves sounded at the sergeant’s back. Guthrie turned to find Hammer and Tomlin galloping forward, their bows held high over the heads of their steeds.

  Guthrie waved them off. “Away! The witch is mine.”

  “Witch?” Tomlin called, but he yanked on his reins, as did Hammer. Their horses slowed.

  “She is mine!” Guthrie yelled.

  “She?” Tomlin asked. He and Hammer brought their steeds to a halt.

  Guthrie looked back to the witch, his face showing he was more confused than ever.

  “They see me as a man, as the wizard in black,” the ice witch whispered to him. “They see me as I wish, much the same as you yourself did but moments ago.”

  The sergeant spun around again, facing the two riders. Frantic, he threw up his arms and shouted. “Get out of here! He will kill us all.”

  Hammer wasted no time spinning his horse about, but Tomlin remained for the moment, staring with curiosity at the sergeant and what he took for a robed wizard.

  Guthrie lowered his voice to less than a shout. “Tomlin, go! Our weapons will do nothing here!”

  “Then get out of there, man,” Tomlin said back.

  Guthrie looked to the witch once more. She still grinned. Then he turned toward the militiamen again. “Leave. If I fall, then the rest of you must avenge me.”

  Slowly, Tomlin tugged around his reins, his horse turning to face the direction Hammer had already fled. It was obvious the man did not like this situation.

  Guthrie could think of no excuse that sounded plausible, yet he had to get Tomlin to ride off. The rider was in danger, the sergeant was sure, and Guthrie wished to speak with the woman without others overhearing.

  “Enough of this nonsense!” the witch woman shouted.

  Guthrie turned to her again, but there was a flash of light from her now outstretched hands. Bolts of lightning shot forth, bypassing the sergeant despite the nearness of the electric heat and the thunder knocking him to the ground. His face buried in snow for the moment, Guthrie saw nothing, but he heard a terrible cracking noise and Tomlin crying out.

  When Guthrie looked up, he found the rider and his horse were no more. All that remained of them was a smoking pile of ash melting into the snow and a splatter of red in a circle around where the rider and steed had once stood. Guthrie’s own horse had been spooked and galloped away. In the distance Hammer was still riding as if a devil were on his tail, and beyond him Guthrie could spy the men at the burnt church milling about, probably preparing for action.

  “Damn you!” the sergeant yelled out. Then he jumped to his feet and spun to the witch.

  She cackled at him within the golden aura Guthrie would always recognize, her head thrust back much as had been that of the image of the wizard.

  He placed a hand on the haft of his mace at his belt.

  Her head snapped down to glare at him. “None of that!”

  Guthrie growled, yet he allowed the hand to fall away from the iron club. “What do you expect of me? You have placed your curse upon me, slain my countrymen and my priests, destroyed one of our churches! Do you think this should please me? That I should approve of what you’ve done?”

  “I care not for your feelings on the matter,” the ice witch stated, “only that my desires are fulfilled. Do you not recognize my hand in all of this? I disguised myself as a skald, what you saw as a wizard in black, and secretly urged on the Dartague, giving your nation a war they truly desired. I handed you a present to allow you to hunt down the wyrd woman, and I de
stroyed your church to enrage your priests, to ensure there would be war.”

  “You did all of this to slay one woman?” Guthrie asked, his voice nearly a gasp.

  “I did!” the witch cried out. “I have lived thousands of years, and I will not fall prey to the babe of some mere mortal, no matter how skilled she might be in the arts of glamour.”

  The sergeant gritted his teeth. “You forget one thing. The powers you have given me, they also allow me to hunt you!”

  The woman snickered. “I am not an imbecile. Your powers only work on me when I allow such.”

  “If we do not cross one another today, I will find you,” Guthrie said. “I will hunt you to the ends of the world and slay you myself.”

  “That is not to be my fate,” the ice witch said. “I have seen my future. Besides, I believe you will be busy with your fellows in the coming war.”

  Guthrie grasped his mace again, this time drawing it up and ready for combat.

  “I think not,” the witch said, taking a single step away from the Ursian. “In fact, Sergeant Hackett, I believe we will not meet again after today.”

  “I told you I would hunt you.” His grip tightened on the mace’s handle.

  “And I will be in a place you can never find,” she said. “I will ... remove ... myself from the mortal world for some while, at least until I am sure the wyrd woman is no more.”

  She blinked. Then she vanished. Drifts of snow sprang up from where she had stood but a moment earlier.

  Guthrie swung out with his mace, but there was nothing to hit. He spun around, and again, and again, his eyes searching, seeking, but there was no sign of the ice witch, only his comrades in the distance now riding toward him as if their lives depended upon it. Perhaps they did.

  “One last thing,” the witch’s voice spoke to Guthrie’s ears though he could not see her, “I believe you should end your search for me rather soon. It would seem others have have been drawn by the smoke rising from your church.”

  He felt a pull upon one shoulder and twisted about with hopes of spotting his enemy. But the witch was not there. All that remained of her presence was a distant choking laughter that echoed through the winter winds.

  What he did see was the mountain range some miles ahead of him. There was a cloud of white along the bottom of the nearest hills. Snow. Snow flying into the air from the hooves of riders. Many riders.

  The Dartague.

  Guthrie reeled around, searching for his horse. Spotting the beast in the distance, he took of at a run as fast as his legs would carry him in the weighty snow.

  MORE ADVENTURES of Guthrie Hackett in Mage Hunter: Episode II: Sundered Shields

  The Ursian Chronicles

  (in order of publication)

  City of Rogues: Book I of The Kobalos Trilogy

  Road to Wrath: Book II of The Kobalos Trilogy

  Dark King of the North: Book III of The Kobalos Trilogy

  The Kobalos Trilogy OMNIBUS edition

  Blade and Flame: short story sequel to The Kobalos Trilogy

  Bayne’s Climb: Part I of The Sword of Bayne

  A Thousand Wounds: Part II of The Sword of Bayne

  Under the Mountain: Part III of The Sword of Bayne

  The Sword of Bayne OMNIBUS edition

  Ghosts of the Asylum

  Demon Chains

  The Castle of Endless Woe (novelette)

  Six Swords, One Skeleton and a Sewer (short story)

  Road of the Sword (short story)

  Five Tales from The Rusty Scabbard