Ricky TooHigh's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Duran led them to a bend in the road where pines pressed close on both sides. Hunter set Casius at the front with him. Duran and the hound took the ridge. Ricky stayed at the tree line behind, staff smoking in his hand. They waited through the middle of the day. Then the crimson mage came down the road on foot, cape dark against the dust, long sword drawn. The two dark elf archers walked at his flanks, silver armor bright, bows already strung. "He didn't wait for them to soften you," Ricky said. "He wants it done today." The mage stopped at forty paces and pointed his red wooden staff at Hunter. "Give me the staff and the boy lives," he called. Hunter answered by drawing his sword. The dark elf on the left loosed first. The arrow cracked off Hunter's green plate and spun into the dirt. Casius roared and charged. The other archer, the drow woman, pivoted on the ridge and put a shaft through Casius's thigh, then a second through his neck. Casius went down four steps from the mage and did not get up. Hunter shouted something without words. Duran's hammer came down from the ridge and caved in the first archer's helm before she could nock again. The hound leapt at the drow woman and closed its jaws on her bow arm. She drew a thin blade and drove it into the hound's ribs. The dog fell. Duran roared and swung the wrought iron hammer two-handed. Her silver breastplate folded. She dropped beside the dog she had killed. The crimson mage came for Hunter through the mess of it. Red fire ran along his long sword. Hunter met him with the smoking staff in his off hand and the sword in his right. The mage cut. Hunter took the blow on his shield-arm plate and drove the staff's head into the mage's chest. The staff flared white, not red. The mage's own staff cracked in his grip. He stumbled. Hunter's sword went in under the crimson cape and came out clean. The mage folded onto the road. The red fire died. The smoking staff in Hunter's hand went quiet, then warm and steady, the smoke thinning to nothing. Hunter turned. Ricky was sitting against a pine, one hand on his knee, the other loose in the pine needles. His eyes were open. His chest was still. Hunter knelt beside him. He put the staff across his grandfather's lap out of habit, then took it back. It stayed cool in his palm. Duran came down the slope with blood on his beard and the hound's collar in his fist. He looked at Casius. He looked at Ricky. He said nothing. Hunter closed his grandfather's eyes. The staff did not smoke. It was his now, fully, and the road was quiet.