Phelan jerked awake as someone—Thom—heaved him up onto his horse’s back. He flailed for a moment, limbs feeling like jelly as he looked around blearily. “How long–?”
“Only a few minutes,” Marin said from near his horse’s head. “Sif and Matt headed back with Thordin as soon as she was sure that thing was dead. You killed it.”
“We killed it,” Phelan said, sliding back down from his horse’s back, leaning against its flank for a moment. The world spun slowly, then righted itself. “II just happened to hit it hard enough for the rest of you to finish the job.”
“More like we distracted it so you could make the kill shot,” Thom said, glancing back toward the cooling carcass stretched out on the ice. “What the hell did you do?”
“I’m more worried about what I might have awakened,” Phelan muttered. He grasped his saddle with both hands and hoisted himself up into it, wavering as he settled himself and Marin passed him the reins. “I reached deep, fear fiach. Maybe too deep. I’m not sure what sort of spirits lurk in the depths of that lake, but I’m afraid I woke every single one of them.”
Marin shivered. “I don’t think I like the sound of that, Phelan.”
“Trust me, I don’t like saying it.” He sighed, staring at the broken snow that marked their passage from their settlement to the shore. “Especially knowing that I’m the one that did it.”
“We’ll be fine,” Thom said, moving to give his wife a leg up into the saddle. “We’ve dealt with worse consequences, haven’t we? I’m sure whatever you woke won’t be terrifying.”
“The odds don’t tend to work in that direction, Thom,” Phelan said with a wry smile. He felt vaguely ill, though that could be the aftereffects of the magic he’d drawn, not necessarily because the words tasted like a lie. After all, maybe Thom was right this time. Maybe they wouldn’t reap a terrible harvest from what he’d done.
And maybe every day between that one and the previous August had been some sort of bizarre dream.
“We’d better hurry,” Marin said. “Jac may need help.”
“She probably will,” Phelan said. “If only to keep Sif out of her hair.”
Thom swung up into the saddle. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
They rode away from the setting sun, toward the gathering darkness in the east, leaving the corpse of their foe behind, silent and still on the shattered ice.
Yeah, one down, 500 to go. LOL
Good chapter. At least they all lived through that match.