A WEE SHOCK, Page 2
Copyright Mary Mannon Reeves
Tam made it back to the paddock a nose faster than I. I threw myself from Shadow's back and tried to pry her fingers away from the ironweed lock on the gate.
"It'll kill you!" I gritted out. She slammed her elbow into my chest.
"It won't,"she hissed. "It's a Guardian! We locked up their bloody Guardian for a handful of bandit's gold! There are people dead because we caught the bloody Shock!"
"Tam..."I pleaded," the ironweed's already fading. It'll be free by nightfall. We can be far away. Very far away."
She spun and fixed me with much the same look the Shock had given me the night before.
"If it's going to kill us for revenge, do you think a few leagues head start is going to save us? Besides...the bandit's mage is going to know when the gate fails as well. They're going to strike again, and soon, before the Shock can warn anybody else."
"Mage? They've got a mage?"
"The one who hired me. Think about it. The only thing I could remember well enough to describe was his cloak clasp. A hunting knife."
"Herne."
"Herne the Hunter, Herne the Sorcerer. Which is why his disciple had to hire us to catch the Shock. Any animal, real or Other, runs like hell if you even think about Herne, much less follow him."
I cut the gate free myself. I yanked it wide and, I confess, hid behind it, waiting for the loosened thunderstorm to break. Silence.
"Oh Epona help us now," I heard Tamyin whisper. I peeked around the gate . Instead of a magnificent explosion of eldritch horseflesh, there stood a mountain pony, meek and moth-eaten, with wisps of hay tangled in its scruffy mane.
I erupted in fury.
"They stole him! I can't believe they stole him and left that miserable, rotten little brush-sucking swayback excuse for a pony in his place!"
For a moment, I was all horse trader. I forgot that the magnificent animal they'd taken wasn't mine, or even real, for that matter. All I knew was that I'd been done by.
"No they didn't. That is the Shock."
"What? That...that..wee shaggy beastie?"
Tam went to the pony and put her arms around it. Her head sank to its matted forelock, weighed with weariness and sorrow.
"What do you get when you take a dragon's hoard away from it?" her voice was muffled.
"A very pissed off dragon. Get to the point."
"A dragonet. Something that is less than it was, because you've stolen its reason to exist. We took more than a day away from the Shock, we took its meaning."
"Wonderful. Now what?"
"We have to give it back."
It took a couple of hours of arguing and a couple of leagues of travel before I gave in. The only way to give the Shock itself back, was to get it to warn a village of impending disaster. I am patient with animals, I can see in the dark with a mild spell, and I can read tarot cards with a fair degree of accuracy born from luck, but I cannot see the future. Nor was I, or Tamyin, capable of causing a "safe" disaster for the villagers to be warned about. The only logical thing to do, was figure out which village was next on the bandit's list, and get there before they did.
Which was, actually, easier done than said. Because of the Herne Mage, the bandits could have no animals, including horses. Because they had to strike before the Shock was freed, it had to be soon and close. Because no one ever expects lightning to strike the same place twice, it was going to be the same village they attacked the night before.
"Unless, " Tamyin mused, "the mage knows what he's done to the Shock, in which case, they can take their time and hit wherever they want."
"Don't do that, " I snapped.
"Do what?"
"Take a perfectly good, logical plan and screw it up with 'unlesses' and 'maybe's' ."
She just smiled and shrugged.
We decided to wait until the last minute before turning the erstwhile Shock loose in the village streets. Still shaken by the absence of their Guardian, the villagers had posted a guard of their own and would not be surprised again. I'm sure Tam would have wondered out loud if the bandits would realize this and strike elsewhere, but one look at my glowering face kept her quiet.
Shadow's swiftly lifted head alerted me. Plains horses have long eyes and can pick out the shadow of a sandcat's sneeze from fifteen yards. I slipped the halter off of the Shock's stubby little head, then shoved him in the direction of the village.
"Go on, boy, " I hissed. 'Go warn the village!"
The pony dropped his head and nibbled at a patch of clover.
"Stupid.." I popped his hindquarters with the halter. He snorted once and his knees buckled. He was going to roll.
"Mud-brained, spavined, shin-splinted crossbred mountain goat!" I cursed the animal even as I threw myself on his back. The only way he was going into the village was under duress.
Call me Duress. I thumped my heels into his flanks, and when that didn't get him past a shambling trot, I aimed a little further back. Any self-respecting male of any species will tell you what the Shock's reaction was. With more energy than I would have previously granted him, he reared and began a series of bucks that would have lost a lesser rider.
I twisted my legs around his chunky frame and used every signal in my memory to urge him onward. I could hear the bandits crashing through the woods not ten yards behind me. With a final, panicked kick, I leaned low over his neck and whispered a single word.