by Spurrier, Jo
The sled was ablaze, flickering with yellow flames along its length and pouring off black and greasy smoke. Someone had cut the cord that bound the waterproof wrapper and doused the gear beneath with oil before setting it alight, while the wrapper protected the flames from the melting snow beneath. As she neared it, Sierra could make out her tent and her kitbag charring and twisting within the blaze. All the things she would need to survive on her own were being reduced to ash and char.
She drew a quick breath of air that stank of burning fur and held her hands out over the sled, pouring her energy over the flames to smother them. Before Kell locked the rubies around her wrists there had been a time when the spill of her power would light small fires a dozen times a day. Rasten had been run ragged trying to find them and put them out, but Sierra only stirred herself to extinguish them if the flames threatened something of hers — or if they came too close to the poor souls Kell kept for the rituals, who suffered enough without her adding to their pain. It was only once Kell locked the punishment bands in place that she’d had any incentive to keep her powers under control.
Even as the smoke cleared Sierra could see she’d come too late. Her tent, her spare clothes and her supplies were all ruined, either soaked with oil or charred beyond repair. Whoever lit this fire must have moved in the moment she left the sled behind.
Inside her, curling like a strangle-vine around her spine, her power pulsed and writhed. Provoked by the darker and more primitive of her emotions, it craved destruction and revenge. Slowly Sierra circled the blackened sled and found a set of tracks leading away. She’d been foolish to leave it unprotected — she should have known that anyone sent to kill her wouldn’t have come alone.
Light still blazed around her: questing strands of power that crawled over the snow at her feet. As she set out to follow the trail Sierra called them in with an iron will, shoving them back inside her until no light showed. She didn’t stop to think what she would do once she found the ones who had done this, or what she could hope to achieve now that all her gear was ruined. There was no thought, just a raw and furious thirst for revenge. All she had wanted was to be left in peace, and they couldn’t even allow her that!
A figure loomed ahead of her, a vague pale shape in the darkness, moving with a hurried stride as though his only thought was to get away. He must have heard her behind him — it took more patience than she could currently muster to move silently over snow. The man glanced back and stumbled, tripping over his snowshoes and floundering in the soft and airy drifts. He threw his hands up in supplication, hiding his face in the shadows they cast. ‘P-p-please don’t hurt me! It was Nars who set fire to your gear, not me! Have mercy, I beg you!’
Her power pulsed within her, straining at the bonds she’d placed on it, but Sierra forced it back down. ‘Who sent you?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Never meant no harm, I swear! Oh mistress, please, have mercy!’
His grovelling made her turn away, disgusted at the thought of what she would have done if he’d turned and fought, or waited in ambush as the archer had. Then Sierra heard the distinct sound of a twig snap behind her and without thinking she turned her back on the man floundering waist-deep in the snow to seek the source of the noise. She realised at once she had made a mistake, but by then it was too late. From the corner of her eye she saw him lunge at her with a dagger in his hand.
He stabbed low, aiming for her inner thigh and the enormous blood vessel there beneath the muscle. Sierra stepped back to dodge and tripped over the long tail of her snowshoe. She twisted as she fell and instead of her inner thigh, the tip of the dagger slipped beneath the thick leather and fur of her coat and dragged across her leg, slicing cleanly through leather and fabric and skin. If it stung for a moment, Sierra didn’t notice — she was already swinging her hand at the man’s knife-arm. It wasn’t much of a blow. From any other person it would have been little more than a slap, but as she moved Sierra loosed the bonds that held her power in check. It roared like a dragon up her arm and burst from her palm in a brilliant spear of light. It struck his forearm with an audible crack, splintering the bones like dry twigs. The hunter screamed as his knife-hand went limp, dropping the dagger into the snow where it vanished in the powder. The man screamed again and kept screaming as tendrils of light crawled over his arm, his sleeve rapidly soaked in blood that dripped in a gentle patter onto the snow.
Sierra stopped the threads from reaching any further, but it took a moment longer for her to haul her power back. He lay sprawled across her legs, shaking; she shoved him off and stood carefully, wary of the knife that lay somewhere beneath her. Her leg stung where the dagger had sliced her — it was little more than a scratch, but it was bleeding freely, and her thigh felt wet with blood. Where it seeped into the cloth, dry snow clung to the moisture and froze it in a crust that looked black in the meagre starlight.
‘Stay where you are!’ a man’s voice called out, and Sierra cautiously turned, wary of tripping over her snowshoes again. She saw him making a careful way through the trees, sighting at her down the bolt of a crossbow. She glanced down at the other warrior, but he was still lying in the snow and groaning as he clutched at his shattered arm. It was only then that Sierra realised she’d inflicted almost the same injury on him as Rasten had on Isidro.
The man on the ground seemed to be of little threat, but all the same Sierra moved to keep them both in sight. Backing up in snowshoes was a precarious manoeuvre but still safer than turning her back on the man with the crossbow.
‘I said, stay where you are or I’ll shoot!’
‘Oh, come now,’ Sierra said. ‘Why would you do a thing like that? You’ve already seen me stop one arrow.’ Once she could keep them both in view without shifting her gaze she stopped and relaxed all the bonds on her power, letting it spill around her in the form of a dozen writhing tendrils of light that stretched out into a sphere with her at the centre. With power flowing in from the man on the ground it was easier to let it have its head than keep it so closely contained.
The one still standing swallowed hard and shifted his grip on the bow. He was frightened, Sierra realised. He could have just left — he could have quietly slipped away while she finished the one who had attacked her. She wouldn’t have bothered searching for any other attackers, even if it was unwise to leave enemies behind her. But instead he’d approached her, demon though she was, to save what was left of his comrade’s miserable life. ‘Drop the bow,’ Sierra said, ‘and you can take him and go. But tell whoever it was that sent you I won’t be so merciful the next time.’
The warrior slowly lowered his weapon until it was aimed at the ground by his feet, then he pulled the trigger and loosed the quarrel into the snow with a heavy twang of the string. Then he let the weapon fall and raised his hands.
With a flick of power Sierra opened a shallow cut across his cheek. The warrior flinched, but made no other move. ‘Don’t think you can sneak up on me again,’ Sierra said. ‘I’ll feel you coming.’
The warrior just bowed his head in reply and, as wary as a pair of spitting cats, he and Sierra moved in a slow circle until he was beside his moaning comrade and Sierra was on the path that would lead her back towards her sled. She stooped to pick up the fallen crossbow and then turned her back on them and walked away.
Back beside the sled, Sierra dropped to her knees to sort through what was left of her gear. No doubt some of it could be salvaged — the stove and pots at least, and probably part of the tent. It would still be more than she had when she’d left the army camp. As she began to pull it apart her eyes started to sting and she bit her lip to keep the tears from spilling. Those men were still close and she would not let them hear her cry.
This was the last night of his freedom.
Rasten checked his stride as he dropped below the crest of the hill. After this night he would have to return to Kell with all haste — keeping Sierra contained would not be easy and, once he was back within Kell�
�s reach, his master would make sure that the memory of this brief respite was driven far from his mind. The night was peaceful and this moment of solitude was paradise. He would enjoy it while he had the chance.
Little Crow, I could strangle you. She could have ruined everything in her panicked flight from Kell and the king’s army. She wasn’t ready, and when Rasten brought her back Kell would set about breaking down her will and her mind until she was nothing but an obedient slave, too terrified to even think of resistance. After she had defied him so openly, Kell could do nothing else, and if he succeeded in breaking her they would both be condemned to a lifetime of this miserable existence.
What on earth had possessed her to take such a risk? She had no hope of remaining free, no resources to draw on and no friends to shelter her. What could she possibly hope to achieve? Rasten had done his best to protect her, convincing Kell she wasn’t ready for the next phase of her training, that her power still had a way to grow. Now all of that was for nothing. Just another half-year might have let her powers grow enough that Kell’s treatment would temper her instead of breaking her down. Even a few more months might have made a difference …
Delaying her capture was not an option. She was simply too vulnerable. Alone in the Ricalani winter an accident or a miscalculation would kill her as quickly as it would any other person, and if she sought shelter in a village or a farmstead it would only be a matter of time before she gave herself away. Once the Wolf Clan caught wind of her they would finish her swiftly. She had power enough to defend herself against swords and knives, but she still had to eat and sleep. No, there was nothing for it now but to bring her in and hope he could keep her from being ruined as he had been.
At least she was alone now. That was a blessing on two counts. Rasten hadn’t been looking forward to taking her from Cammarian’s camp. Even as unskilled as she was, that handful of people would give her enough power to make the fight a vicious one, if she was desperate enough to turn on them to feed herself.
And then there was Isidro Balorica. The time she had spent with him in her furs had become a torment — and not just because it should have been Rasten making her sob and moan, not that wretched cripple. Of course he understood why she had wanted another warm body in her furs — they both knew what lay in store for her when Rasten brought her back. What puzzled him was her choice. Why the weak and sickly Balorica and not the prince? Was it the power that drew her? It was the only reason he could think of, but it didn’t ring true with the Sierra he knew. She hadn’t yet learned that power was the only thing that mattered, and that everything else was a luxury people like them couldn’t afford. Black Sun, let me be mistaken — let her be using him for the power and nothing more. If he was right, if she really had been foolish enough to develop feelings for Balorica, then she had handed Kell another weapon to use against her. Once he learned of it, Kell would spare no effort to track Balorica down and have him tortured to death in front of her. You little fool, how could you not have known it would come to that? But there was nothing to be done about it now. She would learn the folly of her ways soon enough.
She would hate him with every fibre of her being before it was over, but he could live with that. He would do whatever it took to make her strong enough to help him destroy their master.
A prickle of energy interrupted his trail of thought. Rasten stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes, emptying his mind so there was nothing to distract him from the echo of impressions that filtered through his bond with Sierra. In a ghostly vision he saw her running through the trees while the flickering light from her power cast thick black shadows over the snow.
A nagging thought told him he was breathless. Rasten ignored it. Years of experience had taught him to separate his own senses from those of the person bonded to him by ritual. As a flush of energy swelled within her, his body echoed it with a fierce tingling along his bones, and through her eyes he saw a spray of blood, colourless in the moonlight. Somewhere up ahead she was waging a battle and he was too far away to do anything but listen to the echoes that reached him.
For a moment Rasten warred with himself. He wanted to run after her and tear apart the ones who threatened the light of his life and his hope for the future. If he did he would lose these brief impressions, so if she was truly in danger, he wouldn’t know until it was too late — but if it did come to that, there wasn’t much he could do about it. She wouldn’t let him help, however great the danger. All he would do was distract her.
He forced himself to stay where he was as another wave of power washed through him, tingling with such intensity it was painful. A stinging pain on his thigh like the bite of an insect made him slap at it out of reflex. For a few moments there was nothing but a constant pulse of energy, but then the tension within her eased, and he felt her walking away from the source of the power even though it was still pulsing with energy behind her. Lackwit girl, Rasten said to himself in silent disgust. You’d better not have left a live enemy behind you.
The next sensation confused him completely, as he saw a distinct vision of her weeping in frustration and rage although he knew she wasn’t hurt beyond a scratch or two. As her heightened emotions sank back to normal, he lost the contact and found himself alone again. But she was close — so very close.
He set out again, moving silently and cautiously. It was only a short time later that he heard people moving clumsily towards him and ducked off the path to conceal himself behind a stand of trees and wait for them to approach. It was only when they came close that Rasten realised one of them was badly wounded and going into shock — one arm, crudely splinted, was bound across his chest, the other was slung around the shoulders of his companion, who struggled to keep him upright as they staggered through the deep snow.
As the men made their slow way past Rasten removed his mittens and tucked them away, then reached for his dirk. The long, slender blade never saw much use compared with his other tools, but he always kept it close to hand. If one of Kell’s subjects began to feed Sierra more power than he and his master could control, the dirk allowed him to finish them quickly and with minimal pain to cut off the supply.
He waited silent and still until the men had their backs to him and then stepped out onto their trail and closed the gap between them with a few quick strides. He seized the wounded man by the shoulder to steady him and punched the dirk into the back of his skull with a crunch of steel and bone. There was no cry of pain or alarm — it was too fast for that. The man collapsed onto the snow with barely a sigh, with the hilt still jutting from the back of his head.
The other hunter turned, gaping at Rasten in a moment of stunned shock before fumbling for his knife.
Rasten threw a lash of power around his wrist and wrenched it away from the hilt. He caught the hunter by the throat and reached inside him with a tendril of power to crush his larynx and keep him from crying out.
In desperation the hunter struck at Rasten’s eyes with his free hand, but Rasten caught his arm with another thread of power, locked his wrists together and shoved him to the ground. His lips moving with a hoarse whisper of sound, the man thrashed on the snow, writhing and kicking up clods of ice until Rasten bound his ankles as well and forced him to be still.
He cast a ritual circle around them both, building a wall of pure energy to contain the power and keep Sierra from sensing it.
‘Now then,’ Rasten said, squatting down on his heels at the prisoner’s side. ‘You can still talk if you keep it to a whisper and there’s one thing I want cleared up before we begin. Who sent you after my Sierra?’
The hunter spat at him and Rasten deflected it with a shield that was little more than a blur of ruddy light in the air. He set his foot on the back of the dead man’s head and pulled the dirk out with a low moan of steel. With the point of the blade, he cut a nick in the man’s jacket, slicing deep enough to cut the skin beneath, and then ripped his clothing open to bare his chest. ‘Let’s try again,’ Rasten said while the man strugg
led and writhed in the snow. ‘Who sent you?’
Sierra stopped in her tracks with a shiver. The stream of power from the wounded man had stopped, snuffed out as suddenly and swiftly as a candle-flame. Are you surprised? she asked herself. He was going into shock — he probably just fainted. But her nerves wouldn’t stop prickling and she felt a nervous crackle of energy swarm over her skin with an unpleasant tingle. Of course he could have collapsed from shock, but she couldn’t sense the other man either and he hadn’t gone far enough to be beyond her range.
Rasten.
Sierra struggled out of the mended sled rope and dropped it to the snow, then blindly walked away from the gear she had salvaged from the fire. What was the point of weighing herself down with it? If Rasten was within a few hours of her, he would take her, and that was that. Even with the power she had taken from Isidro and the hunters, she was no match for his years of training and experience. She would have been better off letting the hunters kill her.
Weariness and a deep-seated chill had settled into her bones and the pad of rags she’d bandaged over the cut on her thigh was wet and cold. The wound was contaminated — Sierra suspected the knife had been smeared with a preparation of blood-root. It was a drug that prevented blood from clotting; hunters and warriors painted it onto their blades and arrowheads so that a wound that might otherwise staunch itself would see human or beast bleed to death. If the hunter had sliced into her inner thigh as he intended, then even if he had missed the vein Sierra would have passed out and bled to death on the snow. As it was, the wound might bleed enough to make her light-headed, but the drug would wear off before she lost enough to be truly in danger.
She’d thought herself lucky when she’d bandaged the wound, but now she wasn’t so sure. If only she’d gone back and found the poisoned knife … One good cut on Rasten and even with all his power he would bleed out before he could reach help. Or, if all else failed, she could turn it on herself. But the knife was well behind her now, buried beneath the trampled and bloody snow.