AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Thankfully, that was my trailing leg it hit as I spun, and my left-hand side is underneath. Falling on my broken knee would risk me blacking out. Not something I suspect I’d survive. Instead, I make contact with my left knee, my shin down. I kick my right leg back from the hip to keep it from contacting, ignoring the scream the knee gives, the reds and purples that appear around my vision. As long as my sight stays spotted with pain, I can live. If it all goes grey, my odds are slim.
I keep my head up. Sure enough, the shadhavar hasn’t stopped to take stock. The speed it was travelling at forced it to the other end of the clearing, but it’s already wheeled, already closing in on me. I’m posed like a swan, elegant and stable, but in no place to fight. And now I need to make a choice.
Up until now, I’ve held off from using magic. There’s a very good reason for that. I am far from any territory I can claim as mine, meaning there is no connection to draw on, no power to have except what I carry inside myself without rest or meditation. And already I’ve depleted some, aiding my vision as I tracked the shadhavar’s path through the forest’s shadows. My resources are limited. And the chances are high in this particular combat that I will need to heal after.
Plus, many magical creatures are resistant to magic itself. Perhaps the shadhavar isn’t. Perhaps when I crept up behind it, I could have lit it up like a bonfire, covered its body in writhing flames that consumed it down to ashes.
Or perhaps it would have done nothing but made it a fire-covered murder horse and made the fight even more impossible than it already is. In situations like this, I have a preference for a more mortal approach. Stick a foot of steel in most thing’s hearts, magical or otherwise, and they tend to be at least incapacitated. A simple plan but effective. Or it would have been if Zakariya hadn’t been such a loud-mouthed idiot, of course.
So now I have a choice. The magic I have might let me heal completely. I could push it out into my shattered kneecap. Gather splintered shards back together and weave them like a rug repaired by a weaver’s skills.
Or I could do this.
The air under the shadhavar pulls inwards. The movement is enough to make the creature stumble slightly. What I’m making – a ball of the air itself that’s compressed together follows underneath it, snug between its forelegs as it races back towards me, its speed reduced but far from stopping.
We Berbers have an affinity with the elements. All magicians and magical beings I’ve encountered connected to our tribe do. Don’t ask me why. I can’t answer that question, but it remains the truth. And all have our preferences. Mine is fire. But I understand the air too.
I once met a djinn – a real one, not as I’ve been named by scurrilous, superstitious rumours. He was a master of the air, made of it, a swirling cyclone with storm-cloud eyes. We became friends of sorts. He showed me that there are different parts of the air. Parts that allow us to breathe. Parts that are poisonous if grouped together more tightly.
And parts that love the fire’s flames.
I worked the air as I compressed it, filtered it out, spun away the unwanted parts, gathered only that section that seeks to burn. And now, I grant it what it wishes.
I ignite the invisible explosive air underneath the shadhavar’s mid-section.
The look on its face – its expression as its forward momentum is changed by the ignition underneath it, carrying it upwards, away from the earth, its hooves flailing for contact in the cool night air, its hind end lifting faster, tilting the beast, so I can see its eyes clearly – the surprise there, utter bafflement and bemusement as to what could possibly be happening, is more comical than any capering by an actor I ever did see.
It definitely didn’t spot that coming.
Chapter Seven
Mount Lebanon, 3 May 1211
The shadhavar is not bestial, not stupid even when gifted with sudden flight. Our eyes are locked. It knows who did this. And I see the moment. The moment it decides to try to turn this to its advantage.
The moment when it lowers its head further. When it aims its horn.
Because it’s coming back down now. And fast. The momentum it was carrying before getting airborne has not dispersed.
It’s coming straight for me.
And I am almost done. One leg out of operation. In this ridiculous position, one leg kneeling, the other splayed back like some morning ritual to warm the body and ready for training. It gives me a good position to wield my blade to parry a horn-strike from ground level. It does not provide any defence against a hurled spear descending at incredible speed from the sky, with an elephant’s weight of furious muscle packed up behind it.
I may not have made the best decision here.
No time for regrets though. Just time to move. I hope.
It isn’t graceful. I’ve nothing in contact with the ground to allow me real leverage. No foot or hand to use as a spring, to launch myself away. If I go right, collapse on that knee, then the blackness might take me. All I can do is let my body weight carry me left. Pivot over the lower part of my left leg. Fall with intent. Carry myself away from the descending missile.
It’s almost enough. Almost.
The horn doesn’t spear me through the chest bone. That was the aim. I could read it in the creature’s eyes. It wanted to pin me straight through the middle, lock me – dead or dying onto the grass-anchored soil below.
It doesn’t manage that. It hits my right arm instead, sliding into the upper muscle as I roll away. Arrests my movement left. Spins me back towards it and brings me crashing to the ground. And the full weight of Zakariya collides with me as the horn penetrates through and buries deep into the earth behind.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. The combination of the collision, the crushing weight, and the fresh detonation of furious mind-overloading pain is too much. My right knee sings a harmony of deleterious screams with my now horn-pinned bicep too.
There’s grey round my vision’s edges. A darkening grey. The blackness is close, coming calling.
