She flicked the disc away and ran back along the line. “Form up! Don’t panic! They’ll fall to us if we don’t panic!”
Another earthquake rocked the ground beneath her feet, and now she saw the Ascendant, arms raised and tendrils of green light surrounding him. So, not the same as the first, who’d wielded fire. He was a darker blotch against the evergreens. As she prepared her wand again, the green lights dimmed. “Again!” she shouted, and aimed. The light went out. Almost immediately the ground shook harder than before. Willow cursed and ran back to the wagon—
—and the air was full of fire, surrounding her, burning the air from her lungs so she couldn’t even scream. She dropped to the ground, cradling her precious wand to her chest and rolling, someone had told her you rolled to put the fire out, but it wasn’t working. She was still on fire.
Someone smothered her with a blanket, turning her this way and that. She fought that person, clawing to get free of the blanket’s folds. “Stop fighting me,” Kerish said. She relaxed, went limp in his hands. “Get behind the wagon.”
She shook off the blanket and ran with him behind the wagon, where Felix crouched, tears streaking his face. “Where did Ernest go?” he sobbed.
“I don’t know. We’ll find him later.” She felt bad about her abruptness, but the dog’s fate seemed unimportant when you considered they might all die at the hands of these Ascendants. Another ball of fire struck the wagon, splashing like boiling water against its underside. Willow peeked out. She could see more Ascendants, four, five, eight, ten. Ten Ascendants. Could they even fight that many?”
A mass of soldiers in black and red came out from beneath the tree line, roaring defiance. Thunder crackled, from the sky this time, and a bolt of lightning shot out of a clear blue sky, striking somewhere down the line of march. A horrible scream followed it. Felix curled up next to the wagon, making himself a tiny target, not that anyone could see him. Willow hoped.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I’ll guard Felix,” Kerish said, and drew his sword.
She left the dubious safety of the upturned wagon and ran, following a mob of insurgents and soldiers all mingled together like coin in a purse. The insurgents all carried iron crosses, two nails bent around each other, and the soldiers’ curved swords shone like silver. More fire flew toward them, but diffuse, barely hotter than midday on the summer solstice, and Willow ducked it with no trouble.
The Ascendants were ranged along the edges of the forest, ducking in and out to take their shots and hiding from…did they understand what was happening to them? Did they guess their source was being stolen? Willow aimed, twisted the ivory cuff, flicked the imbued disc free and slapped another one on. How many of their people had died in the ambush? How had the Ascendants known where to find them?
Then the Valant soldiers were upon them, two waves of flesh and steel crashing into each other, and the screaming took on a higher, fiercer note. All around her, the Eskandelic soldiers fought like the wind, silent and terrible. She put her wand away and concentrated on running full-out, getting free of the melee. They needed to take one of the Ascendants alive to learn where they’d come from, what they knew… Beside her, one of Rafferty’s people screamed and stumbled, her chest a mass of blood where a stone the size of her head had caved it in. Willow dodged another missile and flung herself onward. Time to mourn her friends later.
She tore free of the crowd, easily dodging blades of silver light, and kept running for the forest. She could see one of the Ascendants clearly now, kneeling as if in prayer to ungoverned heaven. A dowser stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other cupped around some invisible globe. Golden light wreathed them both, flickering like the fire that now erupted from the Ascendant’s body and rushed toward Willow. She aimed her wand at the fire, then had to duck as the wand had no effect. Stupid. The wand could only absorb source, not the elements of fire or water produced by it.
The Ascendant raised his head and looked directly at Willow. She bared her teeth at him and swung the wand in a great slashing arc at his head. The golden light flickered and died. Willow dropped her wand and drew her knife. She leaped, not at the Ascendant, but at his dowser, a middle-aged man whose eyes were closed in fierce concentration. For Felix, Willow thought, and slashed the man’s throat. Blood sprayed over her and the Ascendant, and the dowser sagged to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
The Ascendant shouted a wordless, agonized cry and dropped to the dowser’s side. Breathing heavily from her run, Willow approached slowly, though neither man was armed. “Surrender, and I’ll let you live,” she said, wondering if it was a lie.
“Why didn’t you kill me? He’d done nothing to you.” The Ascendant cradled the dowser’s bloody head in his lap.
“As if a dowser is innocent of his master’s crimes. Did Terence Valant send you?”
The Ascendant looked up at her. “You might as well kill me. I’m not going to betray my King.”
“Is that what he told you he is? He killed his brother, and tried to kill his nephew, and that makes him King?”
“Terence understands how to make Tremontane great. Edmund was in the way.”
“And what about Felix? You were all right with letting Terence kill an eight-year-old boy?”
The Ascendant looked away. “He would have adopted Felix.”
“You don’t believe that.” Willow wiped blood off her face. “How did Terence know where to find us?”
“You’re leaving a not inconsiderable trail. It didn’t take an Ascendant to track you down. What were those weapons?”
Willow turned and bent to pick up her wand. “Something—”
The Ascendant launched himself at her back.
Chapter Six
The blow knocked her sprawling. She gasped, winded, and struggled to free herself. “You think I’m harmless because I have no source?” the man snarled.
Willow twisted onto her back and clutched the Ascendant’s hands where they pressed into her windpipe. Dazzling bronze specks filled her vision. She brought her knees up between their bodies, forcing him away, then thrust with her feet. One of his hands tore free of her throat. She dug her nails into his other hand, then began punching his face, thrashing like a wild animal. The Ascendant gasped as one of her punches smashed his nose, and Willow took advantage of his pain to rip his other hand off her throat.
Her knife, where was her knife? There, off to the right. Willow rolled away and fumbled for it. The Ascendant kicked her in the ribs, and she felt something give—not broken, please not be broken—that shot fire all down her side. The Ascendant grabbed her wrist and tried to make her drop the knife. She clawed his face, forcing him back. With a twist, she broke his grip on her wrist, something Kerish had taught her long ago. The Ascendant reached for her again, and she stepped into his embrace and rammed the knife solidly between his ribs.
The Ascendant gasped and reached for her, but she pulled out the knife and took a hasty step backward. He sagged much as the dowser had, his fingers clutching the broad, bloody wound. “You can’t win,” he whispered. “There are hundreds of us. We’ll just keep coming.”
Willow found the thin string of burning gold that was the core of her wand, lying in the sodden grass, and waved it in the man’s face. “We have these,” she said. “Keep coming. We’re ready for you.”
The light in the Ascendant’s eyes died, and he collapsed. Willow crouched, bent over with her hands on her knees, and breathed heavily. That had been close. She’d been careless in thinking he was helpless just because she’d stolen his source. She wiped her knife on his tunic—well-made but unadorned, for a wonder—and searched his body with her hands and her magic. He carried no metal, and had no papers on him that might, for example, be Terence Valant’s orders to this little army. Not that those mattered. It wasn’t as if she could use something like that to convince Alric Quinn to follow her.
The distant sound of fighting came to her ears. She’d outrun the me
lee by a good distance, but no, it was actually quieter. She looked around. No more green or gold lights of an Ascendant, and the mob of soldiers, pale gray for Eskandelic, black and red for Valant, was still. The battle was over, and it looked like she’d missed most of it.
She walked wearily back toward the masses of people. There were a lot of dead soldiers, mostly in black and red, and a handful of Rafferty’s people lay slain among them. Off to one side, away from the impromptu battlefield, several Valant soldiers knelt in the rain-sodden grass, guarded by soldiers in gray. Some of Rafferty’s men and women drifted among the soldiers, tending to their wounds. Willow saw Soltighan, who appeared unharmed, and strode toward him.
“See that it is done,” he was saying to one of his captains. “Willow. You are injured.”
“It’s not my blood,” Willow said, though her side still burned with pain. “Did we lose many?”
“A few. But I believe the Valant soldiers expected better support from their Ascendant allies.”
“Those earthquakes nearly took us out! That seems like pretty damn good support.”
Soltighan shrugged in typical Eskandelic fashion, a gesture that meant I am too polite to disagree with you directly. “I cannot say. They behaved like soldiers who expect reinforcements that do not appear. Once we eliminated the Ascendants…” His voice trailed off into uncertainty.
“What’s wrong?”
“One of them surrendered.”
“One of the Ascendants?”
Soltighan nodded. “She is being held for you to interrogate.”
Willow swore a blistering curse. “What am I supposed to do with an Ascendant?”
“That, unfortunately, is for you to decide.”
Willow swiped her sleeve across her forehead, removing more streaks of blood. “Take me to her.”
They walked along the line of march, filled with abandoned packs and wagons whose horses and donkeys stood patiently waiting for their drivers to return. It looked more like defeat than the battlefield had, though the men and women they passed were cheerful and saluted Willow and Soltighan with a relaxed good humor. It did seem, though Willow knew little of warfare, that they’d won a decisive victory. “You offered those soldiers the chance to swear to Felix?”
“Those you saw are the ones who accepted him as their King. I judged it best not to risk the possibility that they lied to gain their freedom. They will join in digging graves and will be watched as they do so, and then…we will see.”
“Keep them away from Felix and they should be all right.” She hesitated, then said, “How did the Huddersfield militia do?”
Soltighan shook his head. His lips were compressed in a tight line. “Captain Nolanger ordered them to fall back so they did not meet the frontal assault of the enemy. I blame not the soldiers, who fought well. But Captain Nolanger is a liability.”
Willow swore again. “I don’t know anything about the military. What am I supposed to do?”
“If it were a captain under my command, she would face zolantiri. I do not know the word in your language. A trial, to determine her fitness to command. If she were convicted of cowardice, the penalty is death.”
“A court-martial. I don’t know if I have the authority to order a military leader executed.”
Soltighan shrugged. “You are her commanding officer.”
“I am not!”
“Someone must take responsibility for all the military forces serving the young King. I cannot be that man because I am not Tremontanan. And Lady Heath did not put Captain Nolanger over you. I conclude it is your role to fill.”
Willow recalled the first meeting with Lady Heath and her councilors. She had put Willow in charge, hadn’t she? “But I don’t—”
“Do not again say you do not know,” Soltighan said with some heat. “It is your role, and you must know, else there is chaos. I will advise, but you must decide.”
“But what if I get it wrong?”
“Then you will learn and do differently the next time.”
Willow closed her eyes and let out a long, weary breath. “I’ll…think of something. After I deal with this Ascendant. Is it bad that I’m glad of the excuse?”
They came to a place near the end of the procession where the supply wagons were gathered in a circle. Two soldiers guarded the largest of these, a massive thing loaded with barrels of ale whose wheels tore through the muddy ground like fingers molding clay. In the back of the wagon sat a young woman bound hand and foot, her back against one of the barrels. She regarded Willow without fear. Her clothes were as plain as those of the other Ascendant, without even a small version of the sign and shield to mark her noble house. Blood spattered her left shoulder, dried dark.
Willow looked at her and suddenly felt the exhaustion of the fight sweep over her, leaving her with nothing to say. “What’s your name?” she eventually came up with.
“Kendra Godfrey. Who are you?”
She sounded curious rather than arrogant. “Willow North. Lady Willow North.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of you, so we’re even.” Willow leaned against the wagon and wished her ribs would stop hurting. “You surrendered.”
Lady Godfrey shrugged. On her, the gesture meant what else could I do? “I would prefer not to die,” she said, “and you’ve drained me of my source. How is that possible? I feel a little dead already.”
“You can’t expect me to believe you’ll swear fealty to King Felix. Not after Terence sent you to kill the boy.”
“That was before I saw how powerful your weapons are. My loyalty is to Tremontane, and I thought Lord Valant was best for it. If your people are capable of rendering an Ascendant useless, you’ll defeat Lord Valant, and I want to serve the King. Whoever that turns out to be.”
“You’re not very faithful.”
“As I said, my loyalty is to my country. And I don’t want to die. Let me swear fealty to King Felix, and I’ll serve him however you deem best. Even with those weapons, it can’t hurt to have an Ascendant on your side.”
Willow regarded her closely. She still showed no fear, was staring Willow down with eyes that were uncomfortably like her own. Willow fitted a silver disc to her wand and pointed it at Lady Godfrey, turned the ivory cuff. Nothing happened. She was drained, for now. “Cut her feet free,” Willow said, “and I’ll take her to meet Felix. But understand, Lady Godfrey, I’ve got a knife as well as a wand, and that knife still has an Ascendant’s blood on it. If I so much as suspect you’ve got foul play in mind, I’ll send you after him.”
“I mean the King no harm.” Lady Godfrey got down off the wagon awkwardly, shaking out her legs when she wobbled. Willow prodded her with her knife, and the two of them set off toward the head of the line.
Now that the battle was over, common, everyday sounds returned: the swish of wind across the rain-damp grass, the high, thin creaking of insects in the fields, and the twittering of birds sailing across the sky to find shelter in the forest. The earthquakes had torn through the wagons, upending some and spilling their contents on the ground. A few lay broken and were being repaired by soldiers and insurgents. Willow had little attention to spare for them, but the sight of Eskandelic and Tremontanan working together heartened her. At one of these wagons, Soltighan left her with a salute, and she and Lady Godfrey proceeded alone.
Her own wagon still tilted crazily to one side, though the horse had been unharnessed and led to where the animals were being temporarily corralled. Their trunks and other belongings made a neat pile to one side, with Felix perched atop it and Ernest scampering around it. Kerish and Rafferty were removing one of the front wheels from the broken axle. Rafferty caught sight of her and gave her his usual grin. “Never thought I’d turn my hand to wagon repair,” he said. He noticed Lady Godfrey, and the grin slipped away. “Who’s this then?” His eyes flicked to her bound hands.
“Lady Godfrey has surrendered and wants to pledge fealty to King Felix.” Wil
low prodded the Ascendant to make her stop a good distance from Felix. “Felix, do you know her?”
Felix shook his head, a wary expression on his face. “I don’t trust her.”
Lady Godfrey awkwardly got to her knees, not minding the muddy, torn ground. “I mean to serve Tremontane, whoever its King is. I think you can defeat Terence and I want to be on the winning side. You can trust that, your Majesty. I pledge my fealty to you and your cause.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rafferty said, letting go his side of the wagon and forcing Kerish to drop his with a pained grunt. “She’s an Ascendant. She’s guilty of heaven knows how many crimes against Tremontanans. She can’t be allowed to go unpunished.”
“I’ve never committed a crime,” Lady Godfrey said.
“So you say. You’ve still profited from the labor of ordinary folk.”
“You might say that of any noble, Ascendant or no. I’ve done nothing to reproach myself for.”
“Typical Ascendant arrogance. Kill her, Willow.”
“I’m not going to kill an unarmed, defenseless woman, Giles.” Willow sheathed her blade and went to Felix’s side. “Are you afraid?”
“No.” Felix shook his head. “But I don’t trust her.”
“I want a chance to prove I’m trustworthy,” Lady Godfrey said. “I can tell you Terence Valant’s plans. His resources. The size of his army and the number of Ascendants on his side. It’s not all of us, you know. Many Ascendants just want to live in peace and don’t care who rules Tremontane. You might be able to convince them to fight for you, your Majesty.”
“Willow,” Kerish said in a warning tone of voice, “this is dangerous.”
“So is fighting Terence. I’m willing to trust her that far.” Willow looked at Rafferty. His normally jovial face was hard, his eyes burning with fury. “I’m taking her to Soltighan for interrogation. Is this going to be a problem, Giles?”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the Ascendant. “No. It won’t be a problem.”
Champion of the Crown Page 7