Winter Be My Shield

by Spurrier, Jo

  ‘It was my idea,’ Sierra said. ‘I won’t ask anyone else to do my dirty work.’

  Rhia ignored her. ‘I would have thought you had seen enough of the effects of torture to renounce its evils forever.’

  ‘Rhia, there are things we need to know,’ Cam said, his voice apologetic but unflinching. ‘Our safety depends on it.’

  Rhia wound a bandage over a padding of clean rags on Brekan’s chest. ‘Help me with this,’ she ordered Cam as she began wrapping the damp leather. It would shrink as it dried, pulling tight over the ribs as they healed. ‘And what of your prisoner, then?’ Rhia said. ‘Will you cut his throat and leave him for the crows, or will you just leave him in the snow to freeze?’

  ‘He’s dying anyway,’ Cam said. ‘Sierra thinks that the arrow pierced his spine. But we’d need you to look at him to be certain, of course.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Rhia said. ‘I will stay. I will not look the other way and pretend I do not see evil when it is done in my presence. You are done,’ she said to Brekan. ‘Stay somewhere warm until the leather dries; it would not be wise for you to take a chill.’

  Brekan dressed quickly and left without a word. More than anything, Isidro wanted to leave with him, but he would not let himself move. Panic was warring with his nerves, making his heart beat faster and squeezing his chest so tight it was hard to breathe. But he wouldn’t let himself give in.

  Desperate for some distraction he cast about the tent and his eye fell on Sierra. Her face was impassive, an expressionless mask, but it seemed that he could feel a force pulsing in waves over his skin, sending goosebumps prickling beneath his clothes. He’d felt it before, he realised, in those moments before she’d stepped out behind the attackers, and earlier still when she’d left the tent in distress. Was he sensing her power building in those moments before it spilled over? If that was the case then her calm was all an act and she was hiding some great tension beneath that impassive gaze. But after two years with Kell he couldn’t be sure if it was excitement or dread she was hiding. My power comes from the pain of others …

  ‘Isidro? Do you hear me?’

  Isidro shook himself, realising that Rhia had been talking to him. She pressed her lips together and gave him a look of such pity it made him grit his teeth in anger. ‘Isidro, you should not watch this. Go sit with Brekan, or help Eloba with the pyre.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’

  ‘Issey …’ Cam said with a frown.

  ‘Oh, leave the man be,’ Sierra said as she began clearing a space for their prisoner. ‘He knows his own mind. Don’t keep harping on at him like a child.’

  Cam frowned at her back but all he said was, ‘I’ll bring him in then. Rhia, I’ll need your help to move him, and Isidro, a word?’

  Isidro followed him outside where the cold air hit him like a slap in the face. While he shivered, sweat was beading around the scars on his back. Even in the quiet and stillness of the night he felt as if the world was too loud, pressing so close he couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Issey, don’t do this,’ Rhia said. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but believe me, you have nothing to prove.’ She laid a hand on his arm, but Isidro shrugged it off. He knew she meant him no harm, but in his mind he couldn’t separate her touch from the memory of the leather cords they’d used to tie him down. It’s in the past, he told himself firmly. It’s over. They did all they could to me, but I still won. That was the reason Isidro had survived all they’d done to him with his mind and will unbroken — Cam was beyond their reach and that meant they’d lost.

  ‘Issey …’ Cam settled a hand on his shoulder, and Isidro flinched violently, stumbling back out of reach.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  Cam pulled back, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘I’m sorry. By the Black Sun herself …’

  Isidro turned his face into the wind and imagined for a moment that it could blow right through him and carry him away, scatter him across the sky like smoke from a fire. The pain would be gone and the memories of that time would no longer torment him.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Cam said. ‘But stay out here, will you? You don’t need to watch this.’

  Isidro nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to look his brother in the face. ‘I’ll stay with him while you see to the prisoner,’ Rhia murmured to Cam as they headed into the tent where the dying soldier was waiting. ‘Do whatever you feel you must.’

  But Isidro left them behind and trudged down the slope towards the frozen river, where he hoped he’d be far enough away not to hear the sounds of what they’d do to make the soldier talk.

  He’d been fearless once. No man could be master of the Ricalani winter but he’d been as much a creature of it as any beast that lived in the frozen north. He still knew the ways of the forest and the snow, but his life in Ricalan had ended with the first blow of Rasten’s club. All his knowledge and experience was useless to him now. Rasten had left him as helpless as a babe in arms — there was no room for a cripple in this harsh world.

  Keep walking, said a small voice in the back of his mind. Just keep walking and let the winter take you. Cam will spend the rest of his life looking after you and it will doom you both. Just keep walking and it will all be over.

  Isidro pictured the water flowing beneath the ice. He could feel the world moving on around him, just like that water, but he was fixed in one place, rooted to the ice and unable to move with it.

  Some moments later, a long scream of agony rang out, carrying clearly through the cold air. He turned without thinking and saw the tent flap swing open and a slender, dark-haired figure stumble out and stagger a few paces before she fell to her knees and retched into the snow.

  The prisoner struggled as Cam drew the knife across his throat, throwing himself about with a strength he hadn’t expected from a man paralysed from the waist down. The knife didn’t bite quite deep enough and the prisoner got one scream out before Cam finished him off. He looked up just in time to see Sierra stumble out of the tent and double over to vomit into the snow. He followed her out to see the other women stopped in their tracks and staring at her with their arms still full of cut wood for the pyre.

  Cam crunched over the snow to Sierra’s side. The blood on his hands had already dried to dark smears, the moisture whipped away by the dry and icy wind. He gathered up her tangled hair and held it back from her face as she doubled over again. It was a peculiarly intimate gesture — he’d only ever run his hands through a lover’s hair and that was a far cry from the stinking, visceral moment that had brought them together now.

  Sierra spat and gathered up a handful of snow to wipe her mouth.

  ‘All done?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘You might have warned me first.’

  ‘Warned you?’

  ‘Before you cut his throat.’ She ran shaking fingers over the winter-pale skin of her neck. ‘I don’t just take power from it. I feel it, too.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and then he understood. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise. I’m sorry …’

  ‘It doesn’t usually get me quite so badly, but you took me by surprise.’ She brushed some loose snow over the mess and sat back on her heels, still too shaky to stand. Cam’s hands had grown numb with the cold and he tucked them into his armpits as he crouched on his heels beside her.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Would you have done it? If you hadn’t been able to just scare him into talking, would you really have tortured him?’

  There were deep shadows under her eyes, so dark they looked like bruises. ‘I don’t know, Cam. I really don’t know.’

  Chapter 11

  The horse slipped and stumbled on the icy path. The movement ripped Rasten’s shirt away from the wounds on his back and he snatched at the pommel of his saddle, biting back a curse. When the king’s cousin had dragged him out to investigate this supposed sighting of the fugitive prince, Rasten had been torn between resentment that Osebian was pulling him away from the search for Sierra and gratitude
for taking him beyond Kell’s reach, even if just for a few days. Losing Sierra, together with the first skirmishes with the Akharians, had aroused in Kell a lust for blood and pain that would not be sated.

  Somewhere behind him one of the men sniggered. ‘Look at ’im squirm! Just like a virgin in a brothel! I ’eard ’is master sends ’im out with a broomstick up ’is arse, just to remind ’im who’s bitch ’e is.’

  Ah. A distraction — just what he needed. Rasten turned in the saddle, his aches forgotten. He knew which man had spoken by the way his comrades edged their horses away from him, steadfastly avoiding his gaze.

  The man was drunk. His face was red and he listed in the saddle, leaning so badly it was throwing his horse off balance. Many of the men had brought flasks of strong liquor with them to stave off the cold, as they would be riding through the night to reach the village where Cammarian had been sighted, but most of them were wise enough not to get stupidly drunk in the presence of Lord Kell’s apprentice.

  Rasten wrapped a cord of power around the soldier’s neck and lifted him from the saddle. The men around him scrambled out of the way and when the weary horse shied out from beneath his kicking legs, one of them caught the reins and led it quietly away. No one spoke or tried to come to the defence of their comrade, who was kicking at empty air and clawing at the insubstantial cord crushing his throat.

  As the men milled around in the road those coming up behind had no choice but to stop. There was a commotion from the front of the line as well, as those at the head realised what was going on behind them.

  The drunken soldier’s red face was turning purple, his eyes bulging from their sockets. Rasten threw his head back as the power surged through him, flowing from the amulet the man wore on a leather thong around his neck. Before they had set out, every one of these soldiers had been issued with an amulet which allowed him to draw power from them without the preparation of a ritual. If by chance they did run across an Akharian sortie it would give him a distinct advantage, no matter how many of their Battle Mages were spread among the legionaries.

  Having Sierra around had spoiled him with power — he and Kell both had grown too used to having her there, a seemingly endless reservoir of power to be tapped at will. The last few days had felt like a famine in comparison, even with the captured Akharians to feed upon.

  With a clatter of hooves on ice the duke guided his horse into the circle of bare ground the men had left around Rasten and reined in sharply. ‘Is there a problem, Lord Rasten?’ Osebian said. He looked over the struggling, strangling man with no more concern than he would show for a horse that had slipped a shoe.

  ‘You need to pay more attention to the discipline of your men,’ Rasten said.

  ‘I’ll mention it to my captain,’ Osebian said. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Ask your men,’ Rasten said. ‘Let’s see if any of them dare repeat it.’

  Osebian turned to the man who had ridden to fetch him and raised one inquiring eyebrow. The soldier simply shook his head. ‘Well,’ Osebian said. ‘If Lord Kell’s apprentice believes the matter is important enough to warrant his concern, far be it from me to contradict him. But I will remind you, Lord Rasten, the trail grows colder with every moment. The king will be displeased if he hears that avoidable delays caused us to lose his trail.’ He pursed his lips, watching the feebly struggling drunk. ‘If it’s his life you want, I’ll have his head off for you now, so we may at least keep moving.’

  Rasten released the man and he fell to the road with a force that cracked the bone of his thigh. Too winded to cry out, the soldier lay there gasping like a landed fish. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Rasten said. ‘Take his weapons and bind him to a horse — but don’t splint the leg.’

  ‘See to it,’ Osebian snapped to the nearest soldier and turned his mount. ‘If we might press on, Lord Rasten?’

  It was well past midnight by the time they reached the village. A handful of sleepy sentries stood watch around a signal fire to guide them in and, as soon as the duke’s personal guard of fifty men appeared out of the darkness, one of the sentries ran into the village to tell the commander of their arrival. Now that the first clashes with the Akharians had begun, and it was clear that at least one legion was marching eastwards, the men stationed in this part of the country had been ordered to pull out and report to the king’s encampment, but when Cammarian had been sighted, they’d had no choice but to pitch camp again and await further orders. As much as the king wanted the fugitive prince dead, he wanted Cammarian dead by his own command, not slaughtered by some nameless foreign soldier.

  Osebian left his men at the Mesentreian camp and rode with Rasten into the village itself, escorted by a soldier to the house their commander had taken for his quarters. An aide was waiting for them at the door and he bowed deeply as he ushered them through to the chamber where Captain Corasan was waiting.

  ‘Your grace, Lord Rasten,’ Corasan greeted them, while a servant prepared mulled wine over a brazier. ‘I am honoured by your presence. I wasn’t certain until now, your grace, but seeing your face, I have no doubt. You do bear a striking resemblance to Queen Valeria, and I do say you look so like the man I saw today you could be his brother —’

  The man droned on, but Rasten had stopped listening. There was something in the air here, a frisson of energy that skittered over his skin. He accepted the tankard from the servant and drained half of it in a gulp, then stalked around the room, searching for the source of the power. Usually only a powerful enchantment could be sensed from a distance, but one that he had made or participated in making always had a more powerful pull than one made by a stranger.

  ‘Captain,’ Rasten said, interrupting the man mid-sentence. ‘You have in your possession a square-cut ruby the size of a fingernail —’ He hesitated for a moment, frowning. ‘More than one, I think. Show them to me.’

  The captain’s jaw dropped, but he recovered himself with a hasty bow. ‘At once, my lord.’ He barked a command to his servant, who opened the officer’s campaign chest and took out a small parcel of silk. The officer unwrapped it, and placed it gingerly in Rasten’s palm.

  A dozen rubies were nestled in the square of silk and the deep red stones winked at him in the lamplight. Rasten brushed one with his fingertip and it sent a searing jolt of heat through his hand.

  The enchantments were intact. It was only when he heaved a sigh of relief that Rasten realised he’d been holding his breath. The stones Sierra had been wearing were worth far more than the reward offered for her, more than enough to justify killing her to get at them. Killing a sorcerer of her calibre wasn’t easy, but there were ways it could be done. But if Sierra had met a violent end the discharge of energy at her death would have destroyed the enchantments and could well have shattered the stones themselves. ‘Where did these come from?’ Rasten asked.

  ‘It would appear that one of the men in the prince’s company sold them,’ Corasan said.

  ‘He’s not a prince,’ Osebian growled. ‘The king disinherited him; the dowager disowned him. He’s nothing but an outlaw.’

  ‘My apologies, your grace,’ the captain said with a bow. ‘As I was saying, my lords, Cammarian was travelling with two companions, a man and a woman. The man sold these stones to the village smith —’

  ‘A woman?’ Rasten said. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘It was not the woman you are searching for, Lord Rasten,’ Corasan said. ‘My men checked every female who entered the village against the portrait that was circulated and I saw this one myself.’

  ‘Go on, captain,’ Osebian said. ‘How did Cammarian identify himself?’

  ‘He had papers identifying himself as belonging to a southern clan. They appeared genuine, my lord …’

  ‘Forgeries,’ Osebian said. ‘It’s known that he has sympathisers among the clans. No doubt one of them supplied him with identification.’

  Rasten only half listened. The humiliation of coming so close to the prince only to have him
slip between their fingers still stung, but Sierra was far more important. Clearly, though, they’d underestimated Cammarian — for years, they had all assumed he was as dull-witted as his brother the king and that Isidro Balorica was the brains of the pair.

  ‘I do have a list of the goods he and his servants purchased — supplies and horse feed for the most part, but he also asked for a particular list of medicinals —’

  Rasten’s head snapped up. ‘Let me see that,’ he said and snatched the list from the captain’s hands. They had believed that Balorica was dead — the remains of the caravan taking him to Lathayan had been found, along with the frozen-over hole in the river where the wagon had fallen through the ice. The enchantments Kell had left on him would have kept him alive long enough to reach Lathayan but they would do nothing to protect him against further injury. Even a mild bout of hypothermia on top of the injuries he had already sustained should have been enough to finish him. The list said otherwise. Rasten had studied enough healing to know the properties of the medicines and compounds on the list. ‘Well, what do you know?’ he said. ‘It appears that Balorica is still alive — although judging from this list, not exactly well.’ He kept reading and frowned. ‘And what’s this? Your report says the woman left the blacksmith’s house with a kitbag, but there’s no mention of what it contained.’

  ‘Well,’ Corasan said with a nervous smile. ‘I don’t see that it could have been important …’ He faltered at Rasten’s black look.

  ‘Imbecile,’ Rasten said.

  ‘Uh, if I may interrupt, my lords?’ the aide said. ‘I did speak to the women of the blacksmith’s household. I’m sure it was simply an oversight that it was left out of the report —’

  ‘Get to the point, man,’ Rasten said. ‘What did she get from the women?’

  ‘Clothing, my lord. I understand she told them she’d lost a bag off a sled and needed to replace a full kit.’

  Rasten closed his eyes. If he’d still had any faith in the Gods, he might have offered up a prayer of thanks, but as it was he merely held onto the thought in an ecstasy of relief. She was alive, alive and with people. Sorcerer or not, a person alone with only the clothes on her back could not expect to survive long in a Ricalani winter. It was nothing short of a wonder that she hadn’t fallen into Akharian hands, or blundered into an outlaw camp — but it was sheer bad luck that she’d stumbled into the company of the one man in Ricalan who couldn’t be tempted to turn her in for the reward.