Free King Kobold revived-Warlock-2.5 by Christopher Stasheff Page A

hour. He struggled upward, lifting his wife clear of the bush and laying her care-fully out just under the next shrub down the line. As far as he could tell, she was perfectly all right; no breaks or wounds. She’d have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, of course… And she was unconscious; but he was pretty sure that had happened before she fell.
    Rain suddenly drenched him. He remembered the last lightning-flash, and turned to look down the beach. Through the downpour he could just barely make out frozen forms toppling, and a dozen or so that fought back. Another lightning-flash showed them clearly laying furiously about them with their pikes; and they kept fighting, even as the lightning faded. A few, then, had heeded him and were watching their enemies’ hands and weapons instead of their eyes. Too late to do them much good, though—they were outnumbered three to one.
    Rod struggled back to his feet, ungallantly heaving Gwen up over his shoul-der in a fireman’s carry, and stumbled blindly back over the scrubline in a shaky trot. “Fess! Talk me in!”
    “Turn toward the sea, Rod,” the robot’s voice murmured through the ear-phone set in Rod’s mastoid process. “Approach fifty feet… turn right now… an-other twenty feet…Stop.”
    Rod dug his heels in, just barely managing to counter Gwen’s momentum. He put out a hand and felt the synthetic horsehair in front of him. “Good thing they built your eyes sensitive to infrared,” he growled. He threw Gwen over the saddlebow, then dropped to one knee, reaching un-der the robot horse to lift Toby’s head in the crook of his elbow. He slapped the boy’s cheeks lightly, quickly. “Come on, lad, wake up! You’ve done your bit, contrary to orders; now it’s time to get out of here.”
    “What… Where…” Toby’s eyelids fluttered. Then he looked up at Rod, squinting against a painful headache. “Lord Warlock! What…”
    “You tried to get into the battle by proxy, and got knocked out in person,” Rod explained. “Gwen tried the same thing and got the same result. Now we’ve got to get out of here, before our few remaining soldiers get wiped out. Come on, lad—up in the air. Let’s go!”
    Toby stared up at him painfully. Slowly, he nodded. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face screwing up in concentration; then, suddenly, he was gone. Air boomed in to fill the space where he’d been. Rod leaped up and swung into the saddle, bracing his wife’s still form with one hand as he bellowed,
    “Retreat! Retreat!”
    The dozen soldiers left standing leaped backward, then began to yield ground a step at a time. The Page 37
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    beastmen roared and followed, but the Gramarye pikes whirled harder than ever with the power of desperation, keeping the Ne-anderthals at a distance. There were too many beastmen ganging up on each sol-dier, though; given time, they’d wipe out the Gramarye force. Rod didn’t intend to give them that time. “All right, Iron Horse—now!”
    Fess reared back, pawing the air with a whinnying scream. The beastmen’s heads snapped up in alarm. Then the great black horse leaped into a gallop, charging down at them. At the last second, he wheeled aside, swerving to run all along their line. The beastmen leaped back in fright, and the soldiers turned and ran. Fess cleared the battle-line; the beastmen saw their fleeing foes, shouted, and lumbered after them. Fess whirled with another scream and raced back along the Neanderthal line. The beastmen shouted and leaped back—except for one who decided to play hero and turned to face the galloping horse, club raised.
    Rod hunkered down and muttered, “Just a little off-center—with English.”
    Fess slammed into the Neanderthal, and he caromed off the horse’s chest with a howl. He landed twenty feet away, and was silent. His companions stood poised, wavering. On the saddlebow, Gwen stirred, lifting her head with a