Stormrider (18 page)

Jaiqi
near her stepped back, staring, discomfited.

All the captives from Grey Wanderer’s camp stared. Their eyes were fixed on Stormrider, their awe a palpable thing which braced them against the chilling drumming of the earth.

The ground thrummed and vibrated, and dust rose in great boiling clouds from all sides of the
Jaiqi
encampment. Raptor and the Dinh Dinh still grappled in the dirt.

The
Jaiqi
finally gained the good sense to be nervous at the rising tumult and Stormrider was suddenly swamped in wolf contact. The pack-bond was intact. She exalted, reached out to embrace the bond and was swept into the wolves’ maelstrom.

We come. Stormrider! Prepare!
One Eye’s touch, swift and lacking detail.

Stormrider spun around and for an instant wondered if she was going to have to rescue Raptor again because what she saw bearing down on all of them was not a stoppable force.

Strongheart . . . ?
The sight of uncountable numbers of hoofed animals rushing toward them was extremely disconcerting. Stormrider tried again.
Strongheart—which way?

I press the point! We are on you.

The truth was never so clearly demonstrated as by the arrival in the
Jaiqi
camp of the thundering herds driven before the wolves.

Huge, shaggy Nashiran desert goats in shades of white to gray and weighing upwards toward four or five hundred pounds each, plunged into the edge of camp, trampling everything in their path, massive inwardly curved horns butting people and each other. Other spirited deer-like creatures from the higher country followed in their wake springing high into the air, tiny hoofs slashing downward in their passing. Still other animals equipped with pointed horns, sharp teeth and hard hooves, the like of which Stormrider had never seen, scattered in behind the first rush churning the ground beneath their feet.

Dust clogged breath and blurred vision. It rasped between eyeball and eyelid. The
Jaiqi
scattered in frightened confusion. Huts fell beneath the power of slashing hooves and plunging bodies. Men screamed, caught beneath pounding hooves. Others yelled hoarse commands and The People fell into full, resonating chants, drawing up the power of the earth trembling beneath their feet.

Stormrider spun back to the fight to find it over, Kiribati sprawled in the sand. Dead? It was impossible to say. But Raptor was on his feet. She leapt forward, but a hand wrapped around her arm from behind. The Maven’s man. Without an instant’s hesitation she slammed an elbow into a midriff hard as rock, dipped and used her shoulder to propel the fellow from behind her in a full roll to the sand at her feet. He grunted when he hit but Stormrider knew the soil to be too soft to inflict any real damage.

The
Jaiqi
erupted in a string of blue curses and digging fingers deeply into the soft leather grabbed at her booted ankle.

Stormrider forgot all about alter-ego Tanith’s proper training for battle with honor and presented him with a well placed kick to the tip of his chin.
Jaiqi
jaws snapped together with an audible click and all further protest from that quarter was stilled. She turned once more toward Raptor.
 

The bounty hunter didn’t bother with another glance at his opponent who lay spread-eagled in the sand, as the
Jaiqi
encampment careened into the maw of complete chaos. Flimsy camp huts were never designed to stand up to a stampede of any description and this one was like nothing he had ever seen. In a cacophony of smell, feeling, sight and sound, it swirled around them, a forest of heavy, sweating, fur-clad bodies, sharp hooves and piercing squeals of anger and distress.

The circle of
Jaiqi
observers dissolved into a belated attempt at an equally chaotic defense. Some dove for heavy weapons, others pulled smaller handguns from their belts and fired, but Raptor saw none of the animals fall. He threw his glance to all corners of the camp still visible through the thickening and rising dun-colored cloud. Through the melee and his own tearing eyes scratchy with airborne grit, he saw the familiar flash of silver. Strongheart.

The massive wolf was obviously orchestrating the assault. It would have been impossible to accept it if Raptor had not seen the big wolf in action before this. The large animals, some lumbering, others agile, moved in clutches before his herding and still more spilled in from other parts of camp herded before the other two wolves. Desert ponies breached the southernmost edge of the camp, squealing and kicking their fury at those who stood between them and the open desert beyond. With wolves on their heels they were unstoppable and heading directly for the leader of the slavers.
 

The Maven, as unflappable as ever, stood before the chair where he’d been seated earlier to watch the entertainment he had devised. His polished leathers were covered in dust. His long black hair was grayed with it. His narrow black eyes fell solidly on Stormrider and he lifted thin lips into a wicked smile, one hand dropping to the small box at his belt.

Stormrider clenched her teeth and leapt for him, bracing for what she knew was to come. He was a madman. He stood, eyes locked on her, grinning, and touched the box.

The effect was instantaneous. Tanith dropped to her knees, for it was Tanith who recognized the white hot pain shouting into her skull and screaming down her body. It was Tanith who nearly crumpled completely, her left side suddenly absolutely useless as her rending gasp of shock tore the air from her lungs.

It was Stormrider who refused to relinquish consciousness at its most primitive level. Lost child of The People who sweated, trembled and clawed against the ground in an attempt to rally, to block the blinding pain and go after him as booted feet streamed past her eyes.

Feet belonging to other
Jaiqi
racing past her without pause. She was a slave. She had been demobilized and was therefore no threat. She was expendable.

She was also Janissary and daughter of Nashira.

Stormrider sprawled helplessly in the sand, teeth clenched and grinding against a threatening scream constricting her throat while sweat burst out across her forehead and beneath her eyes, flowing in muddy rivulets across dusty cheeks. Pain brought a heated flush and convulsing muscles, twisting and cramping until her vision was veiled in red.

She thought she had been prepared for that pain, the agony delivered through the counter inserted by the
Jaiqi
in her neck and controlled by the box The Maven held. She had thought she remembered. She had believed she was ready.

But reality was the fact that no one could be ready for this.

She scratched at her own neck, aching to tear the thin counter from her flesh, to rip out her own throat if necessary to be free from this leveling pain.

Instead, Stormrider threw her pain and weakness into the pack-bond. Response was instantaneous.

Where are you? Stormrider? Touch me that I may find you!
Littlefoot. Compassion and strength.

A spate of desperation from Strongheart when Stormrider could respond with nothing more than another wave of pain. The force of command; a strength to draw from.
Focus yourself. Draw us to you. We must know if you are injured. Stormrider, we feel your pain, but we cannot find you if you touch us with no more than that.
He was steady in the heat of battle but there was an underlying layer of anxiety in his tone.

Vision blurred, shivering, helpless in the sand, Stormrider was unaware of the other instantaneous response to her plight. Raptor Simic.

For the barest instant he couldn’t believe it when he saw Stormrider go down in a tangle of useless limbs. Nothing had touched her. Then he remembered the control box in The Maven’s hand and despite the threatening chaos around them, he lunged for the
Jaiqi
. Never before in his life had he been so intent on murder.

Chapter 15

And murder it would have been if not for the wolves. Not that they purposely put themselves between Raptor and the murder he intended. In fact, Strongheart would have probably been the first to tear the man’s throat out. But, unfortunately, neither man nor beast could have everything he desired. At times, a heartbreaking truth.

But the intent was there, and the effort. Raptor, at the sight of the downed Stormrider, experiencing a rage in that instant rarely felt in his lifetime, jumped. Right leg extended he was launched for a blow which would have snapped The Maven’s neck like a Shaman’s staff.

Had it connected.

But it did not.

In that same instant the shimmering, smothering dust cloud spewed forth a shaggy desert pony sharing the same dun coloring. Shadow overlaying shadow. Raptor’s calculated death-blow caught the pony in a glancing blow behind the shoulder. Raptor cursed. The pony squealed, screamed, careened off balance, propelled by Raptor’s blow, into The Maven.

The slaver, reeling, slammed against the chair behind him, toppling and Raptor saw the small box torn from his belt by the kick of a well-placed hoof; one which would have been better placed had it caved in the side of The Maven’s head.

Bucking, hooves flying in all directions lethal as a whirlwind, the crazed desert pony sent Raptor diving for safety—Stormrider’s, not his own—since she lay writhing helplessly in the sand not five feet from the explosion of equine fury.

“By the three faces of the Goddess!” Raptor exploded, throwing himself on top of Stormrider.

He absorbed several glancing blows from the hooves, flesh cringing at the prospect of more, before he managed to roll her dead weight clear. She was no help, her twisting body fought whatever move he made.

There were so many screams now it was impossible to decipher those of the
Jaiqi,
wrenched from them in pain or fury, from those of the slaves whose counters had been activated.

The racket pounded his ears. Beneath him, Stormrider’s breath hissed. Raptor had only one driving compulsion; knew only one thing. He had to get his hands on that cursed box. Nothing else mattered, not at that instant. Then right after that he would break The Maven’s neck.

Raptor released Stormrider’s convulsing body, gained his feet, and pulled himself up short. The wild pony stood quivering a few feet away, but there was no sign of The Maven. The dust was thick around them so that the slaver might have been no further away than the pony, but which way? He glanced down.

Stormrider twisted and choked at his feet, hands clawing at the thing in her throat leaving bloodied scratches. His eyes flicked to the wild horse.

The pony trembled, staring at him from fathomless black eyes which appeared to understand everything. Small and compact, desert bred, the dun-colored pony danced in agitation, hooves striking the ground sharply time and again until Raptor heard the distinctive hollow clunk of horny hoof against mechanical device.

The box. The Maven had evaporated into the dust, but the box remained.

Raptor dove between dancing hooves, snatching the device from destruction, fearing booby traps The Maven might have rigged in the event of its destruction.

The
Jaiqi
liked to insure their catch. Guarantee their superiority in any eventuality. One wrong move and Stormrider would be dead in what would most assuredly be a most unpleasant manner.

Raptor cradled the badly damaged box close, touched the flat black central panel. For an instant his flesh crawled, prickling, as he stared down at the gasping, twisting Stormrider. She stiffened a moment then went limp as a rag.

The pony strangely sheltered them from the enveloping chaos, the animal’s compactly muscled body fending off scattered attacks and random unintentional assaults. The animal danced lightly around bounty hunter and Janissary.

Stormrider rolled slowly to her side, oblivious to the continuing storm of hoofed attacks on all sides, and heaved everything that remained of food still digesting in her belly. She moved with the speed of a mangled bug, sluggish and dazed, but she moved of her own accord. No longer was she held in thrall by the needle-like counter of the
Jaiqi
in her neck.

Struggling for control, Stormrider attempted to focus her blurred vision by pure force of will; fought to still the trembling, twitching of tortured limbs. Breath whipsawed in and out of her body with a dry, gritty wrench and her mouth was filled with the sour after-taste of sickness. She was aware again. Aware of much more than the blazing pain and crippling paralysis but the lingering effects of The Maven’s attack didn’t allow for swift thought or movement. But she knew through confused thoughts that the scales were balanced now and now she owed that damned bounty hunter her life.

Raptor dropped to his knees beside her, eating dust, his eyes blurring and running tear-like mud trails down his dark cheeks to his prominent jaw.

The
Jaiqi
were in total rout for the moment, taken completely by surprise, but there was not an instant to be wasted. It was only a matter of time before they counter attacked; before their attention returned full-blown to their slaves and their profit. Once the slavers were properly armed the camp would become a slaughter field.

“Get up!” Raptor bellowed ungraciously in Stormrider’s ear. “Move!”

She stirred. Spent. But rallying.

Raptor tossed a glance at the desert pony still so near, sand-dancing and tossing its head, eyes large and liquid, possessing an altogether too wise expression. Other animals herded in by the wolves still kicked, butted, bit and screamed, but the dun pony stood firm, figuratively speaking since the animal never stopped moving. Unbelievingly he saw the pony again fend off wild goats from himself and his companion.