The Matter of Manred Continues...
I would not sell myself so cheap as to be nothing more than a pawn in such a fickle game. If peace and goodwill are to come of our marriage, then peace and goodwill must go into it first. And so I tell you true, a...
Tnúthgal saw his cousin push aside the Foreigner, find his spear, and let it fly. Everything seemed to move very slowly then. He watched as the spear passed the sorcerer's crock of frothing slime in mid-air. Saw the crock of slime burst against the shield of a Droma-man, late-come to defend his king.
Beside him, the cavorting sorcerer suddenly grunted and went to the ground. Tnúthgal looked back over his shoulder. Tnúthgal recognized it as well any spear he knew. He'd long coveted the spear of Findtan, once-king of Droma. There was no finer length of ash-wood, no better blade of steel, in all of Droma. And there it was, quivering in the night rain. The sorcerer was impaled to the ground through the chest.
Tnúthgal sneered at the sorcerer's twitching corpse. No great powers saved you. It had been a clean throw. Damned good throw for a man on a broken leg.
He thought for a moment of his servant. Where the hell had Caerrhythrs gone too in all this? He couldn't be sure. Dead or wounded, his servant was somewhere else behind Tnúthgal, on the trail of blood and ruin that Tnúthgal had traveled to that moment and that place.
He shrugged and looked back at Eowain. The sorcerer's crockery had shattered in a flash of yellow-green light, like the gleam in the sorcerer's eye at the gloaming of the day. Sizzling froth exploded from the fragments and drenched the scout's wooden shield, his head, his legs.
The lad screamed out, "On to Tirn Aill! For the Hedge King of Droma!" Then the caustic slime burned him to the ground.
Eowain staggered backward through the mud, into the arms of the foreign mercenary, splattered with burning globules that hissed in the rain.
He saw Eowain's ankle twist under him when he fell.
Tnúthgal shouted to his remaining men: "Kill the Foreigner!" He put his boot to the sorcerer's guts, wrenched the spear of Findtan loose. His hated cousin Eowain writhed on the ground not a spear's throw away. "I'm going to spit you on your father's own spear, you arrogant little whelp." Tnúthgal hefted the spear in his hand. Well-crafted of ash and steel by a master, a weapon to be admired. And he'd see his hated rival's son impaled on it. "As the Gods are righteous judges of my cause, I swear it!"
With all his strength, and the skill learned of long years in battle, he drew back Findtan's spear and let it fly.
—33—
Look for the next installment in this Continuing Tale of The Matter of Manred: The Romance of Eowain.
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