The Red Sea by Edward W. Robertson Page A

sweltering air.
    It took the soldier in the side of the neck. His head snapped to the side. He crumpled, half smothering the brand. The three survivors looked around in shock. One rolled the body aside and picked up the torch. Another reached into his pocket, and withdrew a round, apple-sized black object.
    Dante was now less than two hundred feet away; with little cover besides the unadorned trunks, the soldiers spotted him, pointing and jabbering. White smoke curled from the door. As the brand-bearer scampered from the flames, Dante loosed another spike of nether. It arced toward the man like the idea of a bird.
    An instant before it struck the foe in the chest, it burst into a shower of black sparks, winking away to nothing.
    Dante inhaled sharply. "Stay close. They've got a sorcerer."
    Blays grunted. "As if bows weren't bad enough. Is it too much to ask people to fight fair?"
    Dante shaped the nether and slung forward a third bolt. The soldiers were backing away from the burning building, hands held out before them. As the third bolt neared, one of them jerked a hand across his body. Darkness speared toward the bolt, deflecting it to the side. The three soldiers turned and ran.
    The door and roof of the house crackled and burned. A rain barrel rested at the side of the building. Dante veered toward it. "Give me a hand!"
    "No time!" Blays tromped up the steps, skipped to the side of the flames, and crashed his sword into the wall. Rather than hardwood, this was made of a thin, knobby-jointed plant like the bamboo that grew on the slopes of Gallador. The sword crashed through several sticks and lodged fast. Blays twisted it side to side, cracking a hole in the wall.
    He stepped aside for fresh air, waving at the smoke. As he did so, an arrow whisked through the air where he'd just stood.
    He ducked to the side, pressing his back to the building. "Knock it off! I'm trying to help!"
    The barrel was a quarter full of stagnant water. As Dante attempted to lift it, it sloshed forward, unbalancing itself. He danced away and water hissed into the patchy grass. Above him, a window covering rolled up with a clatter of sticks. The archer stared him down from behind a nocked arrow.
    "They're gone!" Dante gestured broadly, making a shooing motion. "You have to get out!"
    The man licked his lips, nostrils flaring at the smoke wafting past the window. His green eyes stood out from his heavily tanned face. He withdrew into the darkness.
    Dismayed shouts rang out from further up the beach. Dante couldn't understand a word of it, but panic sounded the same in every language. He dashed away from the house. His sword slapped against his hip, but with no desire to draw any more attention than necessary, he left it sheathed.
    Blays vaulted off the steps, stumbled, and caught up. His face was drenched in sweat and streaked gray with ash. Wood splintered behind them. The archer burst through the wall of the house, coughing into the collar of his simple shirt. He glanced at the dead soldier on the burning porch, then at Dante.
    Stilted houses flashed by on either side. The soil was a purplish clay that clung to Dante's boots. After passing through irregular rows of houses, a plaza stretched before them. Once upon a time, it had been cobbled, but now it showed more gaps than stones. At its north end, a man with a long, curved sword advanced on a line of spearmen. He wore a visored steel helmet, with greaves and vambraces around his shins and forearms. He was outnumbered six to one, but as he moved forward, the spearmen stepped back.
    Blays jerked his chin at the helmeted man. "Keep him off me?"
    Before Dante could respond, Blays bolted to the southeast side of the plaza, where a trio of swordsmen were shouting at a woman clutching a black box to her chest. With no desire to charge his target across open ground, Dante loped toward the houses at the edge of the plaza.
    The helmeted man gestured fluidly. Hammers of shadows struck the guts of the two