Mageborn The Line of Illeniel, Michael Manning [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

“You stay here and watch him. Make sure no one comes and cuts his fool head off before we come back,” I said, ignoring his question.

“Mordecai this is insane. Calm down, we can talk this out,” Penny tried to calm me.

I walked past her without caring, “I don’t recall asking for your opinion. Come with me. It’s time to take care of business.”

She looked at me blankly, unable to decide what the correct course of action would be. I kept walking. I paused for a moment, “What was it you said the other day? ‘My life is yours, to use as you wish’, I think that’s what you said wasn’t it? Time to start your job… unless you’ve decided that it’s time to end my life.” I started walking again, not bothering mount up. The horses might be a hindrance if it really was an ambush ahead.

She didn’t move to follow for several long minutes, till I was almost a hundred yards down the road. Finally she started running, and quickly caught up to me. “You’re an asshole,” she said when she was within a few feet of me.

“And you’re the asshole’s bodyguard and executioner,” I replied sarcastically.

We continued until we had reached the place in the road where I had sensed the men earlier. As we drew close to the spot I could feel them hidden near the sides of the road another hundred yards or so further on. A rough count told me there were nearly twenty of them. “Stop!” I barked at Penny.

She growled and turned to face me, gritting her teeth, “If you think...”

“Shut up. There’s a trap under the road ahead of us, a pit I think.” The road ahead was plain dirt, but I could sense a large cavity beneath it. I focused my mind for a second... I could feel the wood and canvas beneath the dirt at the surface. They had done a good job; even knowing it was there my eyes could detect little difference between where the road was solid and where the pit lay.

Feeling contrary, I created a flat shield across the area where the trap was hidden, and then I walked over it, confident it would hold my weight.

“You said there was a trap?” Penny asked uncertainly.

“There is, but we’ll see how they feel when they see we can walk across it without trouble. Come on, it’s safe,” I turned away and kept walking. Penny rushed to catch up.

“What are you going to do if we find them?”

“Talk to them, see if I can change their minds,” I replied. I hadn’t bothered to mention that they were only fifty yards away now. I used a quick phrase in Lycian to put a shield around Penny. Her mail would protect her from arrows but a lucky shot might still kill her if it struck an unprotected area.

“I think I hear them,” she whispered to me. Her ears must be better than mine now; I could hear nothing, though I knew they were less than twenty yards away now, on either side of the road.

“Yep... they’re...” I started to tell her they were on either side of us but the thieves didn’t wait for me to finish. Arrows struck us from several directions at once, bouncing harmlessly from our shields. Penny had her sword out before I could blink. She was so fast she almost cut one of the shafts from the air, but her timing was off.

“You’ll need to practice that later,” I remarked, pulling my small bag of stones out. I reached in and pulled out a rock the size of my thumb, rolling it between my fingers. “Who’s your leader? I’d like to offer you a deal!” I shouted at the trees on one side of the road. None of the bandits had shown themselves yet.

The only reply was another shower of arrows. “Very well,” I said, “Tielen striltos!” I blew upon the stone in my hand and it shot away as if it had been fired from a sling. The stone curved as it flew, following an invisible line I held in my mind, till it struck the head of one of the archers hidden in the trees. I heard a sickening wet thump and with my extra senses I saw the man’s body slump to the ground where he was hidden.

The arrows kept coming, so I repeated the process with three more stones. More bodies collapsed in the leafy darkness. “I really think we should talk! It doesn’t have to be like this!” I shouted again. Penny was watching me carefully, uncertain what was happening. She probably didn’t realize how effective the rocks were.

A few more arrows zipped out, I made note of their origins and tried to aim specifically for the men who had fired these. Three stones... four... five... I couldn’t be sure but I thought I had hit the ones firing. “I’m not going to make this offer again! Lay down your weapons and come out so we can talk!”

I could hear cursing as they began to realize how many of their comrades were already incapacitated. They began running away through the heavy brush. “Shit,” I said.

“What’s happening?” Penny asked, “Are they running, from stones?”

“It appears so. I didn’t want to injure all of them but I can’t let them get away. There may be more.” The fleeing men were still very close, as far as my magical senses were concerned. Even at a full run it would take them a minute or two to get beyond my range. I carefully sent stones after each of them, one by one, till at last they were all still.

“I think that’s all of them,” I said, putting the rest of my stones back in the pouch. “Let’s go see what they look like, maybe we can find out who hired them.”

“At once your grace!” she replied acerbically.

“That should be ‘your excellency.’ I’m a count not a duke,” I answered. There