“If we commit, we can save the smaller group.” Dews looked at his brother, his expression grim. “Should we risk eighty to save an equal number? None might survive.”
“What choice do we have? If we are crushed again, the rebellion is over for good. No one will follow you or me or any leader other than King Lorens.”
“Then we attack.” No confidence rang in Dews Gaemock’s words.
“Death to the royalists!” shouted Efran. “No quarter! No quarter!” He put spurs to his horse and drew his sword, leading the all-out assault. Anything less would doom them all.
Even this drastic attack might prove too weak. If so, he would die with his men.
CHAPTER XVI
Birtle Santon pulled up the wool scarf and tried to keep the snow from getting onto his cheeks. They had already frozen — or so it felt. Dancing needles on his face kept him aware of continued life. Everything else assured Santon that he had long since died.
His body aches had gone away. The tingling in his fingers and toes had ceased. Even the nagging pain in his arse from being overlong in the saddle had vanished. His entire body, save for the incipient frostbite in his cheeks, had deserted him.
“We must rest,” came Lokenna’s plea. “To go on in this storm is madness.”
“We have no choice,” said Santon. His voice rang hollow and strange in his cold ears. It was as if another spoke. His mind floated free and looked back on his useless, frozen body. “There’s no shelter, and without it we die.”
“We die if we continue,” argued Lokenna.
From Bane Pandasso there came only muffled grunts and peculiar whistles. He had long since ceased complaining and rode with his head bowed, more dead than alive.
“The storms shouldn’t have been this vicious this early,” Santon might speak the words but fact made a liar. They had ridden steadily and well across the plains to the ochre buttes lifting to the Uvain Plateau. Once they crossed the upper lip of the plateau the first freezing rainstorm struck.
Cold water had smashed into their faces; the rain froze on their faces and bodies almost instantly in the gusty, bitter winds coming down from the north. Santon had found a small cave along the plateau rim. For two days they had waited for the storm to lessen in intensity. Santon lied to himself for a third day that no blizzard could maintain such ferocity. On the fourth day it became apparent that no cessation would occur.
They had journeyed on, daring the elements.
That dare had become a curse. Santon knew the storm was not born from the natural actions of wind and wave. Only the Wizard of Storms’ magic could produce such unrelenting cold and impossible tenacity. As effectively as if he’d stationed a thousand soldiers to guard the road to the Castle of the Winds, the cunning wizard defended himself with snow and fierce gale.
“Birtle,” the woman said sharply. “We cannot go on like this. I cannot ride another instant.” She reined in and stood, her horses shaking from the intense cold.
“Where do we camp?”
Lokenna had no answer. The flat plateau provided scant windbreak. The land had been farmed in such a way as to reduce elevations. The winegrowing regions that Vered cherished so for their alcoholic products had been devastated by the preternatural cold, stripping even vegetation from the ground.
“Fire,” croaked out Pandasso. “There. Fire.”
For a moment Santon thought Pandasso wanted only to start a fire. Then he saw the man painfully lifting a frozen hand to point. A desultory column of smoke rose, seemingly from the middle of a field as flat as the land over which they rode. Santon stood in the stirrups and tried to see the source of the smoke.
It might have been steam naturally occurring or it could have been due to a man-made fire. The former would save them. The latter might pose as much danger as freezing. The Uvain Plateau had been beleaguered by brigands for as long as Santon could remember. The civil war in lower Porotane had sapped the will of the monarch to patrol this section properly, and the rebels encouraged any breakdown in civil authority in nearby towns.
The result after twenty years of civil war had been to turn the plateau into a welter of small fiefdoms, each ruled by a brigand warlord. No visitors from lower Porotane were welcome. In this winter weather, Santon thought that any visitor threatening to take away heat and food from a local would be killed on sight.
“We ride to the fire,” Lokenna said. “I know your objections. What matters it if we freeze into statues waiting for spring before rot sets in or we die with hot steel in our guts? That, at least, would warm us for an instant before we died.” She turned her protesting horse toward the column of smoke. Pandasso followed.
Santon tried again in vain to identify the source of the smoke. He snapped the reins and got his horse moving after Lokenna. She had a point. Dying in one fashion as opposed to another meant little.
A hundred yards away, Santon saw a deep crevice cutting through the fertile farmland. That explained why he had been unable to see the source of the smoke — and smoke it was. Tiny embers rose and flared at ground level before turning to soot and ash. Only grey smoke rose above the ground.
“Can you see who lit the fire?” asked Santon, peering over the edge of the rim. Below he saw the campfire in the centre of a tiny bivouac.
“No one,” said Lokenna. She blinked her eyes. The eyelashes had frosted over and turned them into long snowflakes. This decided Santon. Brigand camp or not, they had to have shelter soon or die. This deep ravine gave it. They would never be able to fight for the right to stay, but even a hint of warmth might do wonders to restore feeling in their limbs.
“There. A way down. A narrow path. Can the horses stay on it?” Santon pointed to the rocky ledge hardly wider than his shoulders.
Lokenna said nothing. She dismounted and led her horse down. It stumbled and found footing difficult on the rock-strewn path but the escape from the cutting wind gave both animal and woman incentive to continue. Pandasso and a spare horse followed. Santon and the remaining spare animal brought up the rear.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ravine, Santon again felt pain throughout his body. The dancing needles had left his cheeks and now applied themselves to his hands and legs and any other portion of his anatomy that had begun to freeze.
“The fire is untended. What happened to the men who started it?” wondered Lokenna. She rubbed her hands together as she bent over the campfire. Santon threw on fresh wood and caused huge gouts of flame to leap skyward. The intense heat drove him backward. He knew how dangerous it was to thaw out quickly.
He skirted the camp, studying the blankets and other gear left behind. It seemed that the former residents had simply evaporated like the snowflakes falling into the column of rising hot air from the fire. Santon dragged out several of the blankets and gave them to Lokenna and Pandasso, then put one around his own shoulders. They had arrived on the plateau ill-equipped for the storms. With this camp’s equipment, they’d stand a much better chance when they continued.
“I don’t see any sign of them,” Santon answered after a ten-minute pause. His teeth no longer threatened to chatter uncontrollably. “It is as if our unwitting hosts simply got up and left.”,
“I don’t like it,” said Pandasso. “It’s not natural for men to leave like that. Not in foul weather like this.”
“For once he said something I can agree with,” said Santon. “The fire had not burned down. Whoever started it couldn’t have been gone longer than fifteen minutes before we arrived.”
“Perhaps longer,” Lokenna said thoughtfully, “but where are they? We would have seen them if they’d departed in the last half hour. It took us some time to reach the edge of the ravine and at least fifteen minutes to come down.”
Santon’s green eyes scanned the sides of the rocky ravine for sign of ambush. No caves providing convenient hiding spots were evident. The question nagging at Santon was simple: Why leave camp, even if the former residents had intended an ambush?
Lokenna fixed their fi
rst decent meal since arriving on the Uvain Plateau from provender left by those now departed. The food rumbling in his belly, his arms and legs again working as well as they ever had, Santon went exploring. He didn’t like what he found. Footprints went fewer than a dozen paces — then nothing.
It was as if the men who had been here simply evaporated.
“They must have been brigands. Look at this!” Bane Pandasso spilled out a bag filled with silver coins. In different times, Santon would have been interested. Now the piles of silver coin meant nothing. He wanted to tell Pandasso to stop weighing himself down with the useless coins he eagerly stuffed into his own pouch. Food mattered more than inert metal. Even if they encountered a farmer with grain or fresh meat, he would be unlikely to trade it for silver.
Food, not silver, meant survival in this unnatural winter.
“A storm is forming directly overhead,” observed Santon. He watched uneasily as the lead-bellied clouds flowed past, giving him the impression that they stood still and he moved. He blinked hard and the illusion vanished.
But seeing more clearly did nothing for his peace of mind. Wispy tendrils of cloud formed on the underside. He and Vered had seen this before in the Yorral Mountains.
“The Wizard of Storms sent warriors from the sky in a similar fashion,” he told Lokenna. “Why would he destroy an entire camp of brigands using his magical warriors?”
“My impression of him is sketchy and distorted,” she admitted. “But there seems to be an overriding need for solitude. He can never achieve that when Lorens wears the Demon Crown.”
Lokenna’s eyes locked with Santon’s. “The Wizard of Storms has brought all this down on our necks because he wants to be alone?” he asked.
“Who can say what a wizard’s motives might be? I can think of stranger ones.” She shuddered, and it wasn’t from the cold. “My brother sought power through the crown. Now he seeks total domination of all Porotane.”
“He’s about got it,” said Pandasso.
“No thanks to you,” snapped Santon. He could not forget the man’s betrayal, but he cut off this futile argument. What Pandasso had done was past — for better or for worse. Vered had not shown up and Santon could only assume his friend had perished.
“Take heart,” came a soft whisper of wind that formed words next to his ear. Santon jerked upright, whirling around. A patch of gauzy white fog blew apart at his sudden movement.
“What’s wrong, Birtle?” Lokenna asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Santon started walking, carefully avoiding the drifting fog. In a low voice he called, “Alarice? Is that you?”
“My phantom, dear Birtle. Wait! Stop! You must not seek me. I find it hard to remain here.”
“Show yourself. Please! You appeared to Vered.”
“He still lives. Do not despair.”
“Alarice!”
He called after the wind. The white fog he thought was her phantom drifted apart and blew damply across his face, leaving a thin film of moisture. He wiped away the droplets that intermixed with his tears.
“Birtle, are you all right?” came Lokenna’s worried cry.
“I am. We must leave immediately.” He looked upward and saw the tendrils from the clouds dipping ever lower. In a few minutes the cloud tails would sweep along the bottom of the ravine. He remembered all too well the power of the Wizard of Storms’ magical defenders. The cloud warriors had decimated the pranks of Lorens’ soldiers with little effort. What had driven them away, he could not say.
Whatever it was — the wizard’s whim or Lorens’ magic — it lay beyond his call.
“Get on your horses. We leave now!”
He vaulted into the saddle. His horse protested. He patted the mare’s neck and tried to soothe the tired and frightened animal. “We must race the wind, you and I,” he told her quietly. “We will not get a second chance.”
The whites showed around the horse’s fearful eyes. She tossed her head and looked at the long streamers of cloud that came from above.
“The clouds turn into warriors,” marvelled Pandasso. “Look at them!”
“Those are what killed the brigands who camped here. We will follow them as phantoms unless we get out of this trap.” Santon herded Lokenna before him and decided that Pandasso might finally serve a useful purpose by remaining behind as living decoy. When the first of the cloud warriors took form and reached out a vaporous hand in the man’s direction, Pandasso let out a shriek of pure terror and frantically spurred his horse after Santon.
The trip up the side of the ravine took no longer than the journey down, yet Santon aged a hundred years. The cloud warriors lacked mobility. In the bottom of the ravine they reigned supreme but lacked the power to follow up the steeply winding trail.
Panting with exhaustion, the horses heaved themselves over the rim of the ravine and once more entered the full-blown snowstorm. To Santon it came as a breath of fresh air. The warmth of the ravine vanished, but he felt a freedom that had been lacking below.
“The clouds! They bring us more magic warriors,” Pandasso shouted over the howling wind.
Santon saw the growing danger even as Pandasso spoke. New pillars of mist descended and solidified into warriors twice the height of a man. With footsteps that left behind frozen patches, the cloud warriors advanced on them.
“What can we do?” asked Lokenna.
“Unless your talents match those of your brother, all we can do is flee.”
“I am untrained as a wizard. I know only what was revealed to me by the crown.”
“Then we ride!”
Visibility limited, Santon chose the easiest path he could. They rode along the gentle contours of the land but the very flatness prevented him from finding adequate hiding places. The cloud warriors might not be able to climb steep ravine walls — but on this part of the Uvain Plateau they walked unhindered by anything larger than a fist-sized rock.
‘They’re catching up,” wheezed Pandasso, still at the rear. The horse he led stumbled and fell.
Santon looked back in time to see one immense cloud warrior lift a bulbous hand and point a stubby finger in the fallen animal’s direction. A shaft lanced forth. At first Santon thought it rivalled the lightning still dancing in the clouds above. Then he saw that the white shaft reflected light rather than produced it.
“Ice. The cloud warrior threw a spear of ice at the horse.” Santon swallowed hard when he saw the massive ice lance pinning the horse to the rocky ground. The animal kicked feebly but life slowly drained from its dying body.
The nearest cloud warrior lifted a hand and made a sweeping motion. Hail pelted down on Santon with such force that he felt his skin bruising, even through the heavy layers of cloak and blanket circling his shoulders. One hailstone caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head. He wobbled and would have fallen from his horse if Lokenna hadn’t reached across to steady him.
“There,” she said. “Veer to the left.”
Santon, dazed, did as he was ordered. He fell from horseback when the reins were yanked from his hand and the horse dug in all four feet to come to a skidding halt.
He lay on his back, staring up at the underbelly of the storm cloud spawning the magical warriors. Santon watched the cloud drift back in the direction they’d ridden from. He came up to his knees, then got to his feet ready to fight.
“They’re ignoring us,” he said in awe. “Lokenna! You used a spell to confuse them!”
“No, Birtle, I did no such thing. I saw a horse and rider through the fog and snow. By swerving from our course, the other acted as decoy. The cloud warriors are powerful but slow to react.”
“You sent another to death to save us?”
“What choice was there?”
Santon dashed into the fog until he got a better look at the portion of farmland that had become a fierce battlefield. Not one or two riders had drawn the attention of the cloud warriors but a full dozen. From the way they fought, Santon knew they were not simple fa
rmers.
Arrows arched into the cloud warriors and received answering shafts of pure ice. Swords flashed and tried to sever cloudy tendons. In return came monstrous fists laden with hail and searing lightning.
The fight was uneven and ended swiftly.
“Brigands,” Lokenna said from beside him. “The Wizard of Storms seeks out brigands and methodically slays them.”
“Why? I mean, the brigands are a menace to everyone on the plateau, but what does it matter to a powerful wizard? He is secure in his fine castle.”
“Is he?” asked Lokenna. “The brigands are a symptom of the problem in Porotane. The Demon Crown is the cause of the trouble.”
“But the brigands have nothing to do with Lorens. I don’t understand.”
“The Wizard of Storms desires only solitude for his research. The civil war disrupts the kingdom for a score of years, but this affects him little,” said Lokenna.
“It passed by him — until Vered and I returned from the Desert of Sazan with your brother and the Demon Crown.”
“The crown disturbs the Wizard of Storms,” she said. “He wants it sent back into oblivion, and if he cannot do that, and I think it likely his powers are not that great, he will kill Lorens.”
“Our goals are similar.”
“Not so,” said Lokenna. “I have no love for Lorens, but he is my brother. I will not see him dead without purpose.”
“Can you imagine him handing over the crown — or putting it aside?”
“No,” she said in a small voice. “But he is all the family I have.”
Santon looked back at her husband. Bane Pandasso cowered near the horses. Fate had dealt with Lokenna cruelly. A crazed tyrant for a brother and a craven for a husband.
“Can we use this need on the wizard’s part to enlist his aid?”
“I have believed that for some time. We must reach the Castle of the Winds soon.” Lokenna looked at the clouds and the warriors dropping to earth from them. “We have little chance of escaping the Wizard of Storms’ minions.”
“I wish Vered were here to enjoy this bit of irony,” Santon said. “The very one we seek to align ourselves with wants us dead.”
A Symphony of Storms (Demon Crown Book 3) Page 14