Page 137 of Tears of the Wolf
Snapper yelped in surprise, skittering back.
The three pursuing thanes caught up in time to see her mother’s bisected guard thud to the forest floor. One of the men cursed and made a strange gesture, Evred and the other just stared.
Brynn needed to find her husband. “Cenric?”
Snapper whined, looking toward the shieldwall. He seemed torn. Had Cenric ordered him to stay out of the way?
Brynn scrambled through the trees, branches catching at her hair and shift. She was cold, deathly cold, but she couldn’t think about that right now.
She reached the edge of the devastation where the broken and flattened trees began. The two forces came into view.
Olfirth’s thanes had drawn up into battle lines, their shields forming a single row, though there was not quite enough space for a full shield wall.
Where was her husband? She couldn’t spot him in the tight press of bodies.
A flare of power caught her attention.
Her mother stood facing down the thanes with a small force of her surviving warriors, four of them appeared to have magic of some kind. The seafaring sorceress crouched in the reeds not far away.
“Where is Brynn?” roared Cenric. “Where is my wife, you bitch?”
Despite everything, Brynn’s heart leapt. He had come for her. Cenric had come to rescue her. He was alive.
“You dare attack me?” That was Selene, indignant to the end. “You have murdered my servants! Innocent girls!”
“They were guilty the moment they helped you take my wife.” Cenric spat the words without the slightest trace of remorse. “Now where is she?”
Brynn didn’t dare speak. Her mother was too focused on the thanes, but even a word now would ruin the element of surprise. She was outnumbered. She needed to strike first.
“You will pay for this, upstart,” Selene sneered. Brynn’s mother sounded truly angry. Not even Brynn had heard her this angry before. “You attack innocent sorceresses, murder my warriors, accost—”
“Will you tell me what happened to Brynn, or shall we get back to the killing?”
This was a distraction. Brynn could sense the vague outline of several of the seafarer’s men beside her, lending their power to a spell. She realized with some surprise that at least two of them were also sorcerers, but she had missed it before. Brynn’s mother faced Cenric and his thanes from farther down the riverbank, but it was a distraction while the seafarer prepared to strike them from the left.
Power swirled around Selene, though it would be invisible to Cenric and his thanes. Same for the seafarer and her small group of surviving oarsmen.
If the amount of magic being gathered was any indication, they were trying to catch Cenric and the thanes in the middle of two attacks.
Brynn crouched in the shade of the broken pines, her first impulse was to draw in power, but she didn’t want to alert the other sorceresses to her presence.
Cenric was in a trap, and he didn’t know it. Fear tried to wrap its icy claws around her. Brynn forced herself to be calm, to think.
Brynn’s mother released her first spell. Selene was no battle sorceress, but her power was significant.
Fire roared straight for Cenric and the line of shields even as the seafaring sorceress sent invisible claws straight into the line of thanes.
Most blows glanced off the shields, greaves, and helmets, but the heat was too much. Fire was one of the most difficult things to create, but it could be effective.
The line buckled, the men curling in behind their shields as they drew back.
They were going to die.
Brynn didn’t have time to think.
She clawed like a madwoman out of the trees, hands sliding on rock, silt, wood splinters, and debris. She skidded down the side of the riverbank, half falling, half rolling between the two lines.
She doubted she was strong enough to take on eight other magic users, but it didn’t matter. The other sorcerers might kill her, but it didn’t matter.
