“And he’s asleep?”
“Snoring like a cottager’s pig,” confirmed ’Gren. He unwrapped his blanket from ready-booted legs.
“Where’s Sorgrad?”
“Next to Zenela,” ’Gren smirked. “Ready to invite himself into her blankets if we need a distraction.”
“You’d better find something worthwhile,” I warned. “She’ll black his eye for him.”
“He said she shouldn’t show off the goods if she’s not selling,” ’Gren whispered.
A lesson better learned at Sorgrad’s hands than others’ I could think of. “Which way are you going around?”
“Yonder.” ’Gren passed his hand low over the ground between us. “You see any of them stirring, sit up and cough.”
I rolled over again and pillowed my head on my arm. The four we suspected were shapeless huddles of blankets in the darkness. Their ponies were picketed and dozing to one side, harness and the baggage sought stacked between the sleeping men. That wouldn’t deter ’Gren. Nothing would, not when a fancy took him.
Over by the carts, the merchants’ supposed guard rested motionless against a cartwheel, chin on his chest, still snoring. Faint rustles suggested no more than branches swaying on the night breeze or some foraging woodland animal.
Movement beside me had me nearly bite my lip through. Sorgrad sat bolt upright, face ashen in the moonlight. Usara opened perplexed eyes and sudden fear ran cold fingers down my backbone.
“The river—” Usara’s words were drowned by a roar shattering the stillness of the night. A brutal gust of bitter air surged through the camp, ominous with a stink of weed and water. Birds erupted from the trees, shrieking in alarm, and unseen shapes came crashing through the spring growth. Rabbits and weasels fled something more terrifying than any bigger beast. A spotted deer ignored the fires and unfamiliar scents of our campground and raced through, head back, tail high in alarm. As the hind vanished, the ground vibrated beneath us, as if something huge and untamed drummed frantically high on the hillside.
“Everyone, away from the river,” bellowed Usara but he took a pace toward the ruins of the bridge. Shouts and questions roused half the camp, scrambling free of their blankets, but others were scarcely registering the commotion as they raised sleepy heads. In a rumbling rush of sound and fury, a torrent crashed down on us, foaming up out of the riverbed. Water came surging through the trees, fallen timber slamming into beasts and people, tossing them helpless in the grip of the flood.
“Get behind me!” Usara yelled, turning to face the riot of water and debris racing toward us. I grabbed frantically for my bag with the precious book inside it. Sorgrad seized my arm with iron fingers, his other hand knotted in the donkey’s bridle. The animal’s rolling eyes were white-rimmed in terror so I flung a blanket over its head and held it close. I gritted my teeth and waited for the impact—but a shimmering wall of emerald light defied the flood.
It rose from the ground, seeming no more substantial than a curtain of shot silk the width of Usara’s outspread arms. It was strong enough to send the greedy torrent skittering sideways. Spray stung my face, needles of icy fire, but the killing rage of the water could not touch us. It could only fall away on either side, boiling with fury as we escaped its ravenous clutches, dirty froth blown on the wind like the spittle from a mad dog’s mouth.
Usara stood, feet braced and hands wide, effort twisting his face as a new ripple of amber fire ran from his fingers to the ground. The magic raced toward the river, a spreading tracery, shining through the muddy water racing ever higher crested with choking foam. Sorcery clawed at the banks on both sides, earth and grass cracking like ice trodden under a boot heel, great chunks carried away on the water. As the land fell away, the torrent was sucked inexorably back into the riverbed it had abandoned, leaving us gasping with the shock of such unexpected devastation.
For half a breath, maybe less, there was utter silence, then the frantic neighing of a horse broke the thrall and shouts came from all directions.
“Sorgren!” bellowed Sorgrad.
I couldn’t have heard an answer if one came. I was wrestling with the cursed donkey, shins and toes smarting with its kicks and stamping. I shook its halter furiously. “These are new boots, curse you!”
Soaking wet and hands trembling, Frue appeared from somewhere and helped me tie the recalcitrant beast to a sodden tree trunk.
“Zenela?” I demanded.
“I had her hand.” Unbidden tears welled in his eyes. “She was trying to run the wrong way, it all happened so fast, it all happened so fast—”
“Help us, for pity’s sake, help us!” a man roared, slipping in the mud ankle deep all around, vainly trying to brace himself to get a shoulder behind one wheel. The heavy wagons, dragged askew by the strength of the water, were shoved in a muddle like children’s toys. One was completely overturned, bogged down in muck and debris and defying all the efforts of the carters to move it. A man moved feebly in the mire beneath it, pinned across the thighs, hands pushing ineffectually at the weight as agony twisted his face.
Blue light coalesced around him and everyone froze, even the trapped man. “Get ready to drag him out!” All heads turned to see an azure nimbus surrounding the mage. “Get ready,” he repeated with a touch of anger. Everyone bent to add a hand instantly.
Usara set his jaw. “Now!”
Sapphire light flared and lifted the cart, no more than a handspan but that was enough. We pulled and the carter came free, biting his lip on a howl of pain, legs limp and broken. I shared a glance of pity with Sorgrad. That man would be lucky to walk again. “So the wizard is good for something,” he commented and without too keen an edge to his voice.
Usara was breathing heavily. “Start gathering wood, everyone who can!”
“It’s all wet,” protested someone weakly out of the gloom. “It’ll never burn, not—”
“That doesn’t matter.” Usara flung a scarlet gout of flame from one hand into a tangle of mud-covered brush. It burned as if he’d smashed a flagon of lamp oil on it. Awestruck, people gazed for a moment before throwing splintered branches and the wreckage of a carriage on top.
“He’s a good man for a bad day, your wizard,” ’Gren commented cheerily.
I rounded on him. “Saedrin’s stones, where did you get to? I thought you were drowned!”
“Not possible.” ’Gren winked at me. “Sheltya said I was born to be hanged.”
“Over here, over here!” Shouts of exultation and anguish came from the far margin of the forest. I ran with ’Gren, slipping on silty grass, stumbling on nameless debris. Soaked and filthy people were trying to pull apart a weed-wrapped mess of muddy cloth washed up against the broken body of some hapless horse. A child was pulled free, crying and bloodied, passed to its distraught mother. Two more coughing figures were being helped up by kindly hands, then led away vomiting and stumbling on shaking legs. Zenela was at the bottom of the heap, face pale and still, carried off by the flood like a drowned kitten.
“Get her to the fire.” Sorgrad pushed past me, digging Zenela’s limp body free of the clinging soil. The reluctant earth released her with a sucking noise of disappointment and muddy water oozed from her mouth and nose. We carried her to the fire and laid her gently down. I wondered if we should be laying her out.
“Usara!” yelled Frue, cradling Zenela’s unresponsive head in his arms.
“Where did you find her?” Usara knelt and put one ear to her mouth, light fingers on her neck to measure the beat of her blood. He grimaced and briskly ripped open her bodice, one impersonal hand on her breast above her heart. “Lay her flat.”
Using his other hand to tilt Zenela’s head back, Usara closed his eyes in concentration. Her skin was still stark white in the firelight. Usara lifted his hand and her chest rose slowly, following the wizard’s movement. Her bluish lips parted, a faint radiance showing air at the mage’s command forcing itself down her throat. The rest of us held our breath. Usara continued, moving the girl’s ribs for her, reminding her body how to breathe. A warm glow settled over her, coaxing the chill from her bones.