by Spurrier, Jo
The sword flew from his hand and Cam landed hard on the river ice, winded by the impact. He could feel something warm and wet against his skin, and when he raised his head to look Cam saw that Rasten’s lash of power had cut his clothes to shreds and blood was seeping through from wounds beneath. His head spinning, Cam pressed a hand to his chest, forgetting for a moment that he wore gloves, and felt a sting as the coarse fibres brushed against raw and ragged flesh.
Rasten staggered to his feet, exploring the wound on the back of his head with one hand. He scowled at the blood on his fingers and took a step towards Cam.
On the ground at his feet, Sierra pushed herself up, and Rasten hesitated. Cam vaguely remembered what Isidro had told him — she drew power from those in pain. Gritting his teeth, he shoved his gloved fingers into the wound again. At the same time he heard Sierra gasp and saw her blue-white light spill out and cover her with a second skin composed of minute threads of lightning.
With a curse Rasten dropped to his knees at Sierra’s side. He shoved her to the ground again and put his knee between her shoulders to keep her there. He grasped her hair and wrenched her head back hard enough to make her cry out. The light died as quickly as it had come and Rasten turned away from her, twisting around to fix his gaze on Cam. He held out one hand and Cam felt Rasten’s power settle around him, pinning him to the ice with a heatless blanket of flame.
Then the pressure against him turned cold and, too late, Cam realised the danger he was in. He kicked and struggled, but couldn’t move so much as a hair’s breadth against that shroud of power. Within seconds, Cam began to shiver violently: as panic gripped he struggled harder and his body fought to curl up and conserve its heat. Rasten was stealing his warmth, chilling him to the temperature of the ice. Of course, Rasten couldn’t kill him outright, Cam realised as his hands grew numb. Even a swift death — breaking his neck, cutting his throat — would give Sierra a boost of power and they must both be nearly spent by now. Cam was feeding her and so must be disposed of, but without sending her any more power. The creeping numbness of hypothermia would do just that.
As his shivering grew weaker, Cam felt a calmness sweep over him. The ice, hard and unyielding a few moments before, seemed to grow soft and paradoxically warm. He was so very tired and the soft gurgle of the running water was a soothing, drowsy sound.
Pinned as she was, Sierra struggled while Rasten fought to get hold of her other wrist. He twisted her arm so far that Isidro expected it to break at any moment and yet she would not give in. He could hear Rasten panting and cursing in frustration and at last he wrapped his free hand around her throat and slowly strangled her into submission while Sierra clawed and scratched at his fingers.
Isidro wouldn’t let himself look at Cam. There was nothing he could do for him now. His eyes were on Sierra and Rasten and his left hand was clamped around the hilt of his knife while the palm of his glove grew damp with sweat.
Sierra sobbed for breath, feeling herself grow weaker with every moment. Rasten had given up on grabbing her second wrist for now — he just kept squeezing her throat, indifferent to her fingers plucking and clawing at his hand. She had lost her mittens somewhere in the water and wore only her thin inner gloves. They made her fingers slick, so she couldn’t get a grip that would allow her to bend his fingers back and loosen his grasp. He would strangle her unconscious and then secure her before she regained her senses. He would have done it already if Cam hadn’t interrupted him. She could no longer feel Cam lying on the ice. The small trickle of power he had given her was still there but she couldn’t focus enough to use it while her lungs screamed for air. Even as she struggled for breath, Sierra felt despair clawing at her heart. She should have died twice over, once in the avalanche and then in the water but she had been cheated each time. Why had she fought so hard to stay alive when this was all that awaited her? A life of pain and degradation as Rasten’s plaything and a weapon of pure destruction in Kell’s hands. It seemed utterly futile to keep fighting when the darkness was rising up to swallow her. She could see it now, creeping in at the edge of her vision.
And then she felt a trickle of power flowing in to her, a little thread of light that reached through the creeping blackness. It grew steadily stronger and at once the burning in her lungs and muscles began to ease — or perhaps it just became unimportant next to the fire that awakened within her. Her right arm burned with a voluptuous heat, a rising tide of light and warmth that nearly swept her away. For a moment she stopped fighting and felt Rasten’s hands tighten with anticipation of triumph. But then the knowledge of what she felt struggled up through her sluggish mind. Isidro!
She felt him clenching his right hand into a fist, the torn and battered muscles contracting around the jagged shards of bone.
Rasten dug his fingers harder into her throat. ‘Where’s it coming from?’ he snarled in her ear. ‘Don’t tell me that wretch is still alive?’ She felt him twist around to glance at Cam, but it had been some minutes now since she had felt anything from him. ‘Well, he won’t last long,’ Rasten growled. ‘Give it up, Sirri. You’re only making things worse for yourself.’
With Isidro’s pain sending a river of fire through her Sierra twisted and squirmed, kicking at him until he gave her arm a vicious twist to make her stop. She cried out and for a moment lost control of the power gathering within her so that it burst out in a brilliant flare of light that made Rasten wince and curse aloud. Sierra writhed hopelessly, trying to ease the strain in her arm and for a moment she saw a flash of vision — the two of them struggling while another man loomed above them with a shaft of silver in his hand.
Sierra raised her head and saw Isidro standing behind Rasten with a knife in his hand. His eyes were wide and blank and she knew in an instant the flare of light had blinded him, but he had one chance to strike.
He took it before Rasten had time to notice the shift in her attention and drove the blade into Rasten’s unprotected back.
With a shout of rage and pain Rasten threw himself forward, crushing Sierra beneath him and pinning her right arm between their bodies. She barely noticed it. All her thoughts were on the searing touch of the blade as it parted skin and flesh and grated against bone. Momentarily blinded, Isidro’s aim had been off and the blow had fallen more to the shoulder than the back, but the knife had cut deep. While Rasten clenched his teeth against the pain it sent a flood of power pouring into Sierra.
Rasten rolled off her, every movement twisting the blade within him. The pain didn’t slow him down. He was conditioned to ignore it. Attacking a Blood-Mage was suicide unless one was sure of killing him quickly and Isidro knew enough to understand that. As soon as his weight was off her Sierra tried to push herself up but her muscles, still cold and starved of air, were too weak to obey. Her throat was burning and her right arm throbbed with a deep, tearing ache that told her Rasten had done some damage in his effort to pin her, but all of that was made remote and distant by the power that pulsed within her.
Rasten stood, breathing hard through the pain, and swept Isidro’s feet out from under him with a lash of flame.
His lips twisted in a snarl, Rasten kicked Isidro in the ribs, slamming him back into the snow with a grunt. As he fell back Rasten stepped onto the elbow of Isidro’s broken arm, pinning him to the ground. ‘So, you’re still alive!’ Rasten said in a breathless growl, his face twisted in pain. ‘I didn’t think you’d have the balls to face me again. This time I’ll skin you alive.’ Rasten lifted his foot and stamped with all his weight on Isidro’s broken arm.
Light flared over the riverbank as Sierra abandoned all restraint and erupted in a storm of power. The world seemed to pause and that one instant stretched out so that time appeared to move with glacial speed. Rasten couldn’t take her now and he knew it — the pain of his injury would feed her power beyond his ability to control her. She might be safe for the moment, but Rasten would make Isidro pay for what he had done.
Isidro pressed his head back on t
he snow, bracing for the blow. He had made his decision and he expected to die here. The sight of it made Sierra’s heart ache. Death had been her choice tonight, not his or Cam’s.
She struck at Rasten just as his foot fell on Isidro’s arm with a muffled crack. Isidro cried out, a low bellow of pain, and then Sierra’s blast drove Rasten off him, leaving him staggering to keep his feet. It would have killed any other man but Rasten’s power met hers head-on with a clash of brilliant light and crackling energy.
In the midst of it all Isidro curled around his ruined arm, his face an ashen grey. Rhia’s splints and wrappings had given him some protection but they weren’t enough.
The clash of power had also thrown Sierra back. Shakily, she crossed the snow to Isidro’s side while Rasten turned to face her. With a rope of flame he reached over his shoulder to pull out the knife and dropped the bloody blade onto the snow.
Sierra wanted to drop to her knees next to Isidro and take his pain away, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from Rasten. Instead she stayed where she was with Isidro curled and gasping for breath at her feet. For this moment at least, his agony was all that kept him alive. She needed the power his pain gave her and though she hated herself for it, she would leave him to suffer.
Breathing hard, Rasten backed away. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said. ‘Not by a long shot. You’re a monster, Little Crow, and without someone to guide you your power will grow until you can do nothing to rein it in. You’ll bring pain and destruction wherever you go. We’re the only ones who can help you, Sierra. Remember that.’
‘Just go,’ Sierra said. ‘Just go, Rasten, or I’ll kill you where you stand.’
He laughed, a humourless chuckle, and cast a shield of flame over himself. ‘If you could do that you’d have done it already,’ he said. Veiled in flame he turned and walked away, blood seeping from the wound in his back and staining the white leather of his coat black in the moonlight.
Chapter 17
Sierra crouched at Isidro’s side but when she reached for him he pushed her hands away. ‘Cam,’ he said through bloodless lips. ‘Help Cam.’
Still trembling she ran for the river, where Cam lay in a pool of icy water with his lips blue and frost glittering in his hair. Pulling off her gloves, Sierra dug her bare fingers into his neck to feel for a pulse. His heartbeat was a faint and irregular flutter, like a dying moth beating against her palm.
‘Black Sun help me,’ she muttered, hands hovering over his still form. Rasten had warmed her from this state but she had only a vague idea of how he had done it.
Isidro heaved himself up and staggered unsteadily towards her. ‘Sirri.’
‘Just let me think!’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want to kill him!’ Her forearm throbbed with a sympathetic echo of Isidro’s pain. The burning in her wrist and shoulder where Rasten had locked her arm behind her back, however, was all her own.
Isidro sat heavily at Cam’s head. ‘He’s already dead.’
Biting back on her snarled reply Sierra ripped aside the tatters of Cam’s shirt, slapped her palms against him and loosed a bolt of energy into his chest. Jagged cords of power swarmed through him and Sierra felt them wrapping around his heart. He was cold, so very cold.
‘Sierra —’ Isidro pleaded.
‘Just wait!’ Sierra snapped. ‘I don’t dare give him any more. I want to warm his blood, not boil it.’ After an interminable moment his heart lurched beneath her hands and roused to a slow and erratic pulse.
A wave of pain swept through him as sensation returned and his nerves awoke with a rush that made Sierra’s power spike. He moaned, and began to shiver violently, more alive now than dead.
‘Cam!’ Isidro said, reaching over to shake him. ‘Cam!’
Cam opened his eyes, bleary and unfocussed with no hint of recognition. They were, Sierra realised, an extraordinary shade of green, quite rare in Ricalan. The strain of channelling the power and keeping it steady was draining her and as the adrenaline of the fight faded her muscles were trembling with fatigue.
Cam drew a deep, shuddering breath and tried to sit up. He pushed Sierra away and wrapped his tattered furs around him but not before she saw the red marks her palms had left on his chest and the smear of blood as his wounds began to seep. He made a groan of pain as his shirt rubbed against the burns and he hunched within the fur, still shivering.
She helped him shift away from the water and dried his clothes with a pulse of power and the sudden reek of scorched wool. Then she and Isidro pressed close around him, wrapping their coats over his to pool their warmth. Sierra kept channelling power into him but it was still a few minutes before Cam was recovered enough to speak through chattering teeth. ‘W-where’s R-Rasten?’
‘Gone,’ Sierra said. ‘Isidro stabbed him in the back and he knows he can’t take me if he’s feeding me power.’
‘F-f-f-fatal?’ Cam stammered.
‘Doubt it,’ Isidro replied.
‘It didn’t feel like a mortal wound,’ Sierra said.
‘C-c-can he heal it? He’s a s-sorcerer, after all.’
Sierra shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work that way. You can’t heal a wound with power.’
Cam turned to Isidro and saw for the first time that his brother’s face was white with pain. ‘What happened?’
‘Rasten stomped on his arm. The splints saved him from the worst of it, but …’
‘Can’t you do something?’
‘Better not,’ Isidro said, his voice hoarse. ‘She might need the power before the night is out.’
‘Can you stand?’ Sierra asked Cam. ‘You’ll warm up faster walking and you and Issey need to head back.’
Cam’s hand tightened around hers. ‘Not just us. You’re coming, too.’
Sierra turned away. ‘I can’t go back. Mira —’
‘I saw what Mira’s hunters made of your gear,’ Isidro said. ‘You don’t have any more choice than we do.’
It was pointless to argue. She knew he was right. Her chances of survival had been slim before, but now they were non-existent.
Once on his feet, Cam squinted through the gloom to pick out the trail of blood Rasten had left in his retreat. ‘Seems a shame to let him get away,’ Cam said. ‘If we had the men I’d say we run him to ground and finish the job.’
‘Don’t think for a moment he’s any less dangerous,’ Sierra said. ‘He won’t risk facing me when he’s wounded but he’d make short work of anyone else.’
‘She’s right, Cam.’ Isidro turned to Sierra. ‘Rasten killed the other two hunters, but he made one of them talk first. This will be a disaster for Mira’s clan once word gets back to Kell. She needs to be warned.’ His face was deathly pale: the pain was wearing him down swiftly. Sierra could feel his strength draining. She glanced at Cam and found him looking his brother over with the same critical eye. ‘We should get moving. Sirri, where are your snowshoes?’
She jerked her head towards the site of the avalanche. The massive weight of snow and rock was still pressing the ice into the lake; at the site where Rasten had punched through the ice to drag her out the water level had already risen enough to spill over the top of the ice. ‘Lost. I’ll have to rig something to get back to the camp.’ The cord Rasten had intended to use to bind her wrists lay on the scuffed snow and she stooped to snatch it up.
Cam went to a nearby pine to cut a pair of branches for Sierra to use as makeshift snowshoes while she stayed with Isidro, watching over him while he rested.
Crouched on his heels, Isidro scrubbed at his face with his good hand. When he closed his eyes he swayed dangerously and Sierra grabbed for his shoulder to steady him. ‘Isidro, you have to let me help.’
‘No,’ he insisted with a shake of his head. ‘You might need it.’
‘I still get power from it, you know. Maybe not quite as much, but it’ll be enough to deal with anything that comes up.’ Even as she spoke the power she was taking from him was roaring in her ears. Her whole body ached from the effort of contain
ing it. At this rate, by the time they made it back to Mira’s camp she would be overflowing.
Sierra touched her bare hand to Isidro’s cheek. ‘You’re cold, Issey,’ she said and pulled the cowl hanging around his neck up to cover his ears. ‘Don’t you have a hat?’
He fumbled in the front of his coat. ‘Somewhere. Couldn’t get it on with one hand.’
Sierra put it on for him, pulling it down to his eyebrows and then settling the hood and wrap of his coat over it all. It reminded her keenly of doing the same for her younger brothers and sisters. Isidro would normally refuse this kind of fuss but now he just closed his eyes and submitted without complaint. ‘Sirri?’ he said. ‘Don’t let me fall asleep.’
She touched her face to his, forehead to forehead, nose to nose. The pain that refused to let him rest was no match for the creeping somnolence of hypothermia. ‘We won’t,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
When Cam returned Sierra borrowed his knife to cut the cord in half, and bound the branches to the soles of her boots. The bushy twigs would splay out to spread her weight over the surface of the snow.
‘Come on, brother,’ Cam said, taking Isidro’s good hand and hauling him to his feet.
Sierra created a globe of light and held it up to light their path. ‘I’ll take the lead,’ she said. ‘Let’s just hope there are no more surprises heading our way.’
Someone in Mira’s camp must have realised Cam and Isidro were gone because her men met them on the trail near where Rasten had killed the hunters and herded the three of them back to the camp under a tight guard. A pair of crossbowmen took up position at Sierra’s back, making the skin between her shoulder blades tingle with unpleasant anticipation despite the shield she cast beneath her coat.