Free The Dark Glory War by Michael A. Stackpole Page A

pointed toward the largest of the wagons on the road. “You three will be with my group. Let’s get you armed.”
    The large wagon proved to be a wheeled armory with multiple racks of weapons and tack. Bearing in mind the conversation Nay and I had had concerning how to fight frostclaws, I asked for a long dagger, which I sheathed at the small of my back. On my right hip I put a quiver of thirty arrows, each one featuring a razor-edge broadhead, black shaft, and red feathers. To shoot the arrows I took a horsebow. The compact recurve weapon had a short but stiff draw that would put an arrow through a man armored in mail at a hundred yards or so.
    Sandes looked at me curiously. “No sword?”
    I shook my head. “If I have to run, I don’t want it tripping me up. Besides, Nay pointed out that a sword against one of those things would be suicidal, so I’ll do without.”
    Leigh laughed at my comments, but did shift his sword belt up so it looped over a shoulder and across his chest. He fixed the scabbard to it so the blade’s hilt projected above his right shoulder. He drew the double-edged broadsword without trouble. To the sword he added a light crossbow that had a goat’s-paw—a levering device that would let him cock it quickly. A quiver of bolts went on his right hip and a dagger was sheathed on his left.
    Nay stayed away from bows and instead drew a boar spear from the stock of weapons. Eight feet long from butt to tip, the weapon featured a broad, dagger-bladed head and a wide crossguard that would prevent a creature from sliding down the spear to get at the man carrying it. The stout oak shaft promised the weapon wouldn’t break beneath the weight of a charge. And the point on the butt-cap would let Nay plant the weapon in the ground as he crouched to take a charge, letting the earth accept the brunt of the force. He augmented the spear with a hatchet and a dagger.
    Once armed, we moved to where Heslin and his associates worked. I wondered exactly what they were going to be able to do for us, since we all knew that human magickers rarely lived long enough to master spells that could directly affect living creatures. While stories of mages casting spells that exploded fireballs to kill various brigands or Aurolani creatures did abound, combat spells appeared to be an exception to this general rule. More complex and delicate magicks, such as those that could heal disease or cure a wound, required control that most humans never attained.
    But, as we discovered, the spells that would help us did not so much affect the temeryces as much as were affected by them.
    At the mage’s direction, Nay presented his spear first. An apprentice used flax thread to dangle one of the temeryx feathers from the crossguard. Heslin then raised his left hand and circled his thumb and forefinger around the feather. He began mumbling under his breath and slowly swept his hand down over the feather.
    A light golden glow seemed to spread from his palm and infuse the midnight feather with golden highlights. As his hand came past the end of the feather, the golden glow faded and the highlights sank into the feather as water sinks into sand. Then, all of a sudden, the feather twisted and bounced as if being buffeted by a light breeze, even though the air remained completely still.
    Heslin nodded, then pointed in the direction the feather wanted to drift. “The frostclaws will be off that way. Follow the feather. As you get closer, it will get more active. When it palsy-twitches, set yourselves.”
    He enchanted feathers for the rest of us as well, repeating his instructions. He fastened mine to the upper end of my bow and Leigh’s to the hilt of his sword. Sandes and two other of the half-dozen hunters accompanying us carried spears like Nay; the rest had bows like mine.
    The whole company had broken down into three groups. Two of them—one led by Norrington, the other led by one of his deputies—mounted up on horses and headed out in both directions on