Full Circle Read Free Page B

just have to take care not to get in Horst’s line of fire.
    Ahead, the last of the ghosts disappeared as the road bent behind the hill. “Draw weapons. Horst, ready bow. Now!” Leof ordered.
    They spurred their horses, Arrow getting away first, but the others catching up fast as Leof held her back a little. Horst
     took the lead, arrow nocked and bow held down, reins between his teeth. His horse knew what was expected of her, and she gave
     it: a steady pace, like a regular drum beat, so that Horst could loose the arrow at precisely the right moment in her gait.
    As they rounded the hill, Horst was just in the lead.
    “Spread out!” Leof commanded, and he and Alston took point either side of Horst while Hodge brought up the rear, his own bow
     out and ready.
    The ghosts turned at the sound of their hoof beats, but they were too far from the horsemen to interfere. Horst was almost
     within bow shot. The enchanter turned.
    “Wait, wait, not too soon,” Leof called.
    Horst took aim and the enchanter put up a futile hand to ward him away. As the arrow left the bow the ghosts moved in front
     of the enchanter, but too late.
    Then, in the split second before the arrow reached him, the wraiths dived between, snatching the arrow from the air, screaming.
     They turned towards Horst, claws out, teeth bared, and lunged.
    “Fire again!” Leof commanded, but Horst screamed, too, and turned the terrified horse, kicking her away. The other horses
     were also panicking, and the ghosts had closed in around the enchanter. They had lost their chance. Bitterness in his mouth,
     Leof shouted, “Back! Back!” and they turned their horses and took off after Horst, who was well down the road, his bay galloping
     faster than ever before.
    The wraiths nipped and scratched at them as they went, scoring the horses’ rumps and scratching long furrows in their scalps.
     It was terrifying. The wraiths’ shrieking seemed to sap all the strength from Leof’s muscles, but he was bolstered by fury,
     and he rounded on them and shouted, “We are in settled lands and there has been no betrayal. Begone!”
    They were the words his father had taught him, to banish wind wraiths. The words had worked for a long, long time, part of
     the compact between the spirits and humans, which had been established so long ago that its beginning had passed out of memory.
     The spirits — water, wind, fire, forest, earth — were free to hunt in wilderness but forbidden to attack humans in settled
     lands. Unless a human betrayed one of their own to the wraiths, as humans sometimes did. But that did no harm to the compact
     itself. Without the compact, the wraiths could feast on body and soul right across the Domains, with nothing to stop them.
     They were even harder to fight than ghosts. Without the compact every stream would be full of water sprites, every wind a
     carrier of death, every step into a wood a step into peril…
    Leof wasn’t sure the compact still held, and the thought that it might have broken irrevocably was frightening. But the wraiths
     hovered behind him and screamed disappointment, their claws dripping blood. Arrow would not be held. She pulled her head around
     and made off after the other horses, the herd instinct taking over.
    Leof let them run half a mile or so before he called them in. The horses’ sides were lathered and their eyes still showed
     too much white. He had to let them rest and drink before following the enchanter again. For all the good that would do, he
     thought.
    The stream was close to the road here, and Hodge walked the horses for a few minutes to cool them down, then watered them.
     He was shaking, still.
    “Horst,” Leof said. “Come.”
    He took Horst aside. The man wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Like Hodge, he was still shaking, but Leof suspected it was with
     shame as much as with the aftermath of fear.
    “You did not follow my order, Horst.” Leof kept his voice deliberately calm.
    “I’m sorry, my