Frostborn: The Iron Tower

by Jonathan Moeller

  Once she regained her memory, perhaps she would see Ridmark’s crimes with the disgust they deserved.

  But as he looked at Morigna, a small part of his mind, a small but strident part, pointed out that she already knew herself. She did not believe that Aelia’s death was his fault…but she understood that pain better than most, for she had lived through it. The brand upon his face drove away most people, but Morigna held it in contempt. She would never understand that Ridmark bore responsibility for what had happened to Aelia…but Aelia was dead. She had been dead for five years. Did Ridmark want to spend the rest of his life alone? He had been sure of that, once, but now…

  Of course, he might well perish long before he even came close to stopping the return of the Frostborn.

  But if he did survive…did he want to spend the rest of his life alone?

  He knew that if he drew close to Morigna and kissed her, she would not push him away. She would welcome it. She would pull him closer.

  Ridmark rebuked himself for the thought.

  Yet it refused to go away.

  Morigna’s black eyes popped open. She blinked several times, and then smirked at him.

  “You were staring at me,” said Morigna.

  “You were drooling,” said Ridmark.

  “I most certainly was not,” said Morigna. “And I believe you were right about the prisoner.”

  “The hounds and the horsemen are pursuing him?” said Ridmark.

  “Or her,” said Morigna, “if you are correct that they are pursuing Jager’s Mara. They are heading north, hot on someone’s trail. Six horsemen, and as many dogs.”

  Ridmark nodded. Six against two were not odds he wished to face.

  Yet they had certain advantages.

  “Dogs,” said Ridmark. “Can you control them?”

  “But of course,” said Morigna.

  “How many at once?” said Ridmark.

  “Five or six, I should think,” said Morigna. “If you want me to scare them off, that shall be simple enough.”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “Let’s see what our hunters are hunting, shall we? Which way?”

  Morigna pointed, and they set off through the trees.

  Chapter 5 - Half-Blooded

  Mara’s plan almost worked.

  As she fled into the forest, she realized that if the hounds picked up her scent, she could not possibly escape. Since she had not bathed in weeks, she had likely acquired an unpleasantly ripe odor. The hounds would have no trouble tracking her down.

  Fleeing would mean death.

  So instead of running, she sought a hiding place.

  Her dark elven blood carried a heavy curse, but it also bestowed gifts, and one of those gifts was the ability to see in the dark. The Matriarch had been able to see in near-lightlessness. Mara’s eyes allowed her to navigate through the dark forest without losing her balance.

  And to find the plants she needed.

  Mara snatched them as she ran, grabbing a handful of flowers here, a fistful of berries there. She mashed them over her face, the juice trickling down her neck and chest, the pollen making her nose twitch. The smell was ghastly, but it would blend with the forest, making it harder for the dogs to find her.

  Or so she hoped.

  She ran for a mile or so, zigzagging back and forth to lay down a false trail, the barking of the hounds and the shouts of the hunters growing fainter. But they would not give up. The Constable of the Iron Tower was sworn to Tarrabus Carhaine, and the Dux of Caerdracon was not the sort of man to overlook failure in his underlings.

  The men would hunt until they found her.

  But Mara could use that to her advantage.

  They knew she would not head for the Lake of Battles. It was not as if she could swim her way to freedom. North and west lay nothing but howling, devil-haunted wilderness. Southeast was the road to Coldinium and the safety of the High King’s realm, and any fugitive with her wits would head southeast.

  So Mara went north.

  She needed to hide. Sir Paul’s men would sweep the surrounding woods, but sooner or later they would conclude that she had fled toward Coldinium. Then the Constable would send his men along the road.

  And once the men-at-arms and hunters had moved off, Mara would slip away.

  She had used such gambits to elude pursuit before, when she had still been committing murder at the Matriarch’s command. If it worked, Mara would only need to make her way to Coldinium and find a way to contact Jager. Of course, she would need to find water, food, shelter, supplies…

  One problem at a time.

  First she had to find a damned hiding place.

  A promising tree caught her eye, a centuries-old oak with sprawling branches rising overhead. Yet many of the branches were low enough to the ground that she could reach them. It would be easy to clamber up and hide. Though the tree would make an obvious hiding place. Yet it was dark and the men-at-arms did not have her night vision.

  It was as good as anything she was likely to find.

  Mara scrambled up the tree, moving from branch to branch. She found a thick branch about forty feet above the ground and tucked herself into the hollow where it joined the trunk. She pulled the collar of her shirt up to cover her face and blond hair, and tucked her hands into her sleeves to conceal the pale skin of her hands.

  Then she waited, motionless, and hoped the flowers and berries had thrown the hounds off her scent.

  Twice parties of men-at-arms rode below her tree, accompanied by barking hounds. The men-at-arms carried torches, the scent of wood smoke and oil filling her nostrils. It seemed the firelight had ruined their night vision. If not for the damned dogs, she could have glided past them and picked their pockets, and they would never have known it.

  She listened for any sign that she had been discovered, but in time the men and horses and hounds moved away.

  Eventually, Mara dozed off. She had not slept well for weeks, and while the dead guard’s oversized clothes were malodorous, they were at least warm. She awoke around noon, stretched her stiff limbs, and looked around. There was no sign of her pursuers, but Mara knew better than to move around during the day.

  She waited until dusk, trying to ignore the hunger clawing at her belly, the thirst scratching at her throat.

  At last the sun started to fade in the west, and Mara descended the tree, her head aching from lack of water. She would find some water, and then make her way through the wilderness north of the southeast road. She could subsist on berries and roots as she had as a child. Jager had caches of money and supplies hidden in Coldinium, and once she reached the city…

  A hound started barking.

  Mara whispered a curse.

  Another dog began barking, closer this time. A hunting horn rang out, and she heard hooves striking the ground. Apparently not all of Sir Paul’s hunters were as foolish as the Constable himself. One of them must have guessed her plan and waited.

  And now the trap was closing around her.

  Mara started running as fast as she could, trying to ignore her headache and the throbbing pain in her limbs.

  And the boiling shadows behind her eyes. If she let the shadows embrace her, nothing could ever hurt her again, and she could butcher her pursuers with ease.

  Though she would lose herself forever…and would never see Jager again.

  She kept running, dodging around the trunk of a tree.

  A raven dropped from one of the branches and took flight.

  ###

  “A half mile,” said Morigna, breathing hard. Running with her staff in hand was always tricky. “Or a little less.”

  Ridmark nodded. He never seemed to have any trouble running with a weapon in hand. Of course, given how often he used his heavy staff to fight, he likely had more practice.

  “Wait a moment,” said Morigna.

  She closed her eyes and sent her thoughts to one of the remaining ravens. She had kept a half-dozen of the birds bound and sent them circling ahead to keep an
eye on the hunting party. Morigna sent her will jumping from raven to raven, seeking the horsemen.

  Then she stopped.

  “The prisoner,” she said. “I think I see…her?”

  “A woman?” said Ridmark. “It must be Mara.”

  “Blond woman. Short,” said Morigna, watching through the raven’s eyes. “Running fast. Did Jager tell you what she looked like?”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “I should have thought of it.”

  Morigna opened her mouth to answer, but then fell silent. The blond woman kept running, but the raven had a hard time keeping sight of her. That seemed peculiar, until Morigna realized that the bird didn’t want to look at the woman.

  The raven was afraid of the woman, just as it had been frightened of the tower of iron.

  ###

  Mara ran into the clearing, and the horseman burst from the far end.

  She turned to flee in another direction, but a second rider emerged from the trees. A pair of hounds followed, snarling and growling. The great beasts stood almost as tall as Mara’s chest, lean and sleek and muscled. Just one of those things could kill her without much effort.

  And there were six of them.

  The horsemen and the hounds moved into a circle around Mara.

  “Well,” said one of the horsemen, a hulking, bearded man-at-arms in a blue tabard, “looks like I was right. The halfling’s little whore hid instead of running off to Coldinium. Clever, clever. Looks like we’ll get the reward for bringing her back.”

  “You have to let me go,” said Mara.

  The man-at-arms laughed. “And just why is that?”

  “Not for my sake,” said Mara. “For yours.”

  He pushed his horse another step toward her, an ugly glint in his eye. “Are you going to beg for your life?”

  “I’m exhausted and terrified, and I don’t have the bracelet any longer,” said Mara. “I can barely control myself now. If you take me captive, if you hurt me…I won’t be able to keep it in check. I’ll transform, and I’ll kill you all.”

  The men-at-arms roared with laughter.

  “I would like to see that,” said the leader.

  Mara let out a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. The darkness within her screamed for release, howling for blood and death. She fought against that darkness, as she had struggled against it all her life, but she had lost the bracelet that helped keep it at bay.

  She could not hold it back.

  “Please,” she whispered, opening her eyes. “Do you have a wife? Children?”

  The man-at-arms hesitated. “None of your concern, prisoner.”

  “She’ll be a widow, your children orphans,” said Mara. “I am a monster. You don’t know what I’ll become. Please, for your children’s sake, just let me go…”

  For just a moment, the leader wavered, and then his face hardened.

  “Enough,” he said. “Take her. I want to be back at the Tower by…”

  “Let her go.”

  Mara’s head snapped up. The voice was hard and cold with authority, and she turned to look at its source.

  A man and a woman stepped into the clearing, both carrying wooden staves. The man looked about thirty or so, clad in worn wool and leather, a gray cloak hanging from his shoulders. He had cold blue eyes and close-cropped black hair, and moved with the precise motions of a deadly warrior, the hard lines of his face disfigured with the brand of a broken sword upon the left cheek and jaw. Every shred of Mara’s instincts and experience screamed that he was dangerous, that he would be lethal in combat.

  The woman, too, seemed dangerous. Like the man, she wore leather and wool, though her cloak was an odd, tattered thing of long strips of brown and gray. Likely it helped her move unseen through the forest. She carried a staff in her right hand, thinner and shorter than the warrior’s staff, its length carved with odd sigils. The woman had black hair tied back in a tail, and hard, flat black eyes.

  “And just who the devil are you?” said the bearded man-at-arms.

  “God and the saints,” said another of the horsemen. “I think that’s him. I think that’s the one the Constable warned us against.”

  “If you know who I am,” said the man with the staff, his voice still quiet, “then you know that you want to leave. Now.”

  “I shall do nothing of the sort!” said the first man-at-arms. “The Constable promised us a reward for recapturing the halfling’s whore, and we shall also claim the reward when we lay the Gray Knight’s head at his feet!”

  Mara blinked. The Gray Knight…she had heard the stories of Ridmark Arban in Coldinium. The exiled knight, the disgraced Swordbearer, forever wandering the Wilderland in hopes of redeeming himself. She had thought the stories mere fables.

  Evidently she had been wrong.

  “Take them both!” said the man-at-arms, pointing his sword at the Gray Knight. “Keep the woman alive. We can amuse ourselves with her later.”

  The woman laughed. “A poor choice. One suspects the only amusement shall be mine.”

  The leader shouted a command, and the hounds raced forward, snarling. The woman’s amused smile widened, and she lifted her left hand and raked it through the air, her fingers hooked into claws.

  And purple fire blazed around her palm.

  No wonder Mara had thought her dangerous. The woman was a sorceress. Nor was she one of the Magistri. Likely she was a sorceress from the Wilderland.

  The hounds raced at her, but the tone of their cries changed. Instead of knocking the woman down and ripping her apart, they danced in a circle around her, barking and painting, looking up at her for approval.

  “A spell!” shouted the leader. “She is a witch!”

  “You are good boys, are you not?” said the woman to the dogs, patting one of them on the head. “Such good boys! And so much smarter than your masters, too. Off you go now. Fetch!”

  She made a shooing gesture, and the hounds raced into the trees.

  “Shall you reconsider?” said the Gray Knight, shifting his grip upon his staff.

  “Kill them both!” roared the leader, and the horses surged forward.

  ###

  Ridmark ran forward, and the horsemen raced to meet him.

  Or, rather, they tried. The clearing’s ground was uneven, tangled with roots and rocks. The horses could manage nothing more than a quick walk. Ridmark, however, had no such limitations.

  He charged at the nearest horseman and struck. The man-at-arms tried to raise his sword for a blow, but Ridmark was faster. His staff struck the man’s wrist, the bones of his hand shattering, and the man-at-arms dropped his sword with a cry of pain. The horse spun to face Ridmark, its mouth opening to bite, but Ridmark saw the motion and jumped back, his staff hitting the horse on the nose. The animal reared up with a whinny of pain, and the injured man-at-arms tumbled from his saddle and struck the ground with bone-cracking force.

  Another man-at-arms charged his horse at Ridmark, raising a sword for a beheading swing. Ridmark waited until the last moment and ducked, the sword blurring over his head, and thrust with his staff. The steel-clad tip of the weapon slammed into his foe’s neck, and the man gagged. Ridmark swung again as his foe’s horse passed, and the horseman lost his balance and fell from his saddle with a crunch.

  He spun, seeking new foes, and Morigna cast a spell, striking her staff against the ground. The earth rippled, and the two horses charging towards her stumbled, their riders fighting to keep their saddles. She gestured again, and roots ripped free from the ground to wind around the horses’ legs. The horses tore free from the roots, screaming in alarm, and their struggle unseated their riders. One of the men-at-arms lunged to his feet, swinging his sword at Morigna, but Ridmark got there first. His staff staved in the side of the swordsman’s head, and the man-at-arms fell in to the ground.

  Ridmark turned again as Morigna began another spell, and Mara scrambled up the side of a horse and jumped on the back of a man-at-arms, a dagger flashing in her right fist. She dr
ove the blade into the neck of the man-at-arms again and again, and the man slumped. Mara jumped from the back of the beast as the dead man-at-arms fell forward. The horse screamed in panic as the smell of blood filled its nostrils, and bolted from the clearing.

  A second horse followed suit, and the panic spread to the surviving men-at-arms. They had expected to run down a helpless woman, not face a sorceress and her spells, and they fled from the clearing.

  “We should hunt them down and kill them,” said Morigna.

  Ridmark shook his head. “No need. They’ll be too afraid to come after us again, not until they’ve got reinforcements. By then we shall be long gone.”

  She frowned. “They will alert Sir Paul that we are here.”

  “Sir Paul already knows that we are here,” said Ridmark, turning to face Mara, “and that Mara has escaped. For that is your name, is it not?”

  Mara said nothing, the bloody dagger in her right hand, and Ridmark took a good look at her.

  She was barely five feet tall, and would not have weighed more than a hundred pounds dripping wet. When Jager had mentioned that she had been an assassin of the Red Family, Ridmark had expected someone like the shieldmaidens of the Saxon invaders who had destroyed the realm of Arthur Pendragon upon Old Earth, a terrifying warrior like Boudicca of Britannia or Zenobia of Palmyra. Or a beautiful seductress, a woman who lured men into her bed to slay them.

  Instead Mara had an ethereal sort of beauty, with large green eyes in a delicate face, her pale blond hair hanging around her head like a hood. She looked utterly harmless, but Ridmark had just seen her stab a man to death.

  And Agrimnalazur and Gothalinzur had known how to look harmless, too.

  Morigna joined him, her staff ready in her hand.

  “How do you know who I am?” said Mara at last.

  Morigna snorted. “Who else could you be?”

  “That does not answer the question,” said Mara.