Cursed

Most mages don’t use guns. Mages will tell you that gunpowder weapons are crude and inferior, and it’s kind of true: While mages have whole libraries of spells and tricks, all a gun can do is kill people. What mages tend to overlook, though, is that guns are really good at killing people. If someone lines up a gun on the right spot and twitches their finger, you’re dead, end of story. Oh, it may not look impressive compared to battle-magic—a fire mage could incinerate your body, a life mage could stop your heart with a touch, a water mage could disintegrate you into dust—but when you get right down to it, most of that is just overkill. Dead is dead.

In a face-to-face fight, spell generally beats gun. Spells are just so much more versatile; a mage can counter pretty much anything with a second’s warning. If the mage doesn’t get that second’s warning, though … well, a shot in the back has been the death of an awful lot of mages. Once a bullet’s gone through your heart, it doesn’t matter much how tough you are.

If I’d been an elemental mage I would have died on that hill. But I’m not; I’m a diviner, and while I have no power to affect the physical world, one thing I can do really well is spot an ambush. I shouted “Go!” to Luna and jumped to the left. An instant later a sniper bullet went through the space my head had been occupying.

A supersonic bullet makes a really distinctive noise and once you’ve heard it you never forget it. First there’s the high-pitched crack of the sound barrier breaking, then an instant later the pitch drops into an reverberating echo as the sound waves from the bullet’s flight path wash over you. The noise makes your heart jump, but hearing a sniper bullet is a good thing. The bullet outruns the sound wave; if it’s on target, it kills you before you ever hear the sound of the shot.

I broke into a sprint, racing down the slope at an angle. I couldn’t spare the time to look back at Luna; all I could do was hope she’d listened. The grass swished under my feet, and looking into the future I could see another shot coming. The hillside was open and bare, and I wouldn’t get to cover in time.

The sniper fired again and I went into a roll. Another crack lashed my ears as the bullet whipped over me, driving into the grass and earth. I came up without breaking stride and kept running. There was an old thick tree up ahead, on a low rise; if I could reach it I’d be safe. I could sense the sniper getting ready to fire again, and I’d had long enough to mark the delay on the shots. His bullets were taking about half a second to cross the space between us. Doesn’t sound like much but in combat that’s a long time. The next shot was aimed at my body, and just as he fired I braked, slowing enough that the shot cracked past a couple of feet in front of me. A final shot fell short as I dived behind the tree and hit the deck.

I lay flat, my heart hammering. The earth under the tree was covered with thin grass, twigs, and nut shells, and they pricked my hands as I held myself still. The sun was shining down and the echoes of the shots had faded into the sounds of the city. There was no way you could have told from looking that someone was trying to kill me.

I was about halfway down the slope of the meadow. The ponds and forests at the bottom of the hill were clearly visible but to reach them I’d have to cross more than a hundred yards of open grass. As I looked around, I saw to my amazement that there were still people walking. A couple were looking around to see what the noise was, and one woman with a dog was shading her eyes and watching me, but most of them didn’t seem to realise anything was wrong.

I pushed myself to my knees, being careful to keep the trunk of the tree between me and the sniper, and looked around for Luna. I couldn’t see her, which was good. Carefully I leant my head around the tree trunk. The sniper had to be firing from Highgate Hill. I could see the giant shape of the hill rising up half a mile away and I scanned it with my eyes, but it was useless. Trees, houses, buildings, a thousand places to hide, all of them with a straight line of sight across the valley to the open meadow I was stuck in the middle of—

My precognition warned me just in time and I jerked my head back. Half a second later there was a high harmonic crack as a bullet whipped through the space that had just a moment ago been occupied by my right eye. My would-be assassin was a very good shot.

That last bit of information was enough to make me sure that I did not want to make a run for it. The ground around the tree was rolling grassland for fifty yards in every direction and I had no intention of trying my luck. I hugged the tree and waited.