Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  I might even start to respect the man, Ishmael thought wryly, if Mycene keeps being reasonable.

  He wished he had had a chance to have Mycene and his men test shoot some rounds, to give them the feel of the weapons and distance. They weren’t as used to handling rifles as they were shorter-range weapons, though several had trained and fought at sea—and Ish, no sailor, had to respect anyone who could master both his weapons and his stomach on a rolling ship. But he had no idea how close the enemy might be and would not risk losing any surprise there was to be had.

  “So the idea is we shoot to sound,” Mycene said, softly. He knelt on a sniper’s rest in a southern gallery in the fifth and topmost floor of the manor. Ishmael was propped against the wall to his right. Ishmael had half of Mycene’s men in this gallery and half in the next, alternating with seasoned Stranhorne reservists. “Have you ever fought these kind of actions before?”

  “There’s been th’odd incursion reach the manor before, but not in this force.”

  “If we’d had time to prepare, I would have suggested volley fire. With the range these have”—he gave a light, possessive caress to the barrel—“we could have started on them as soon as we knew they were within range. You don’t appear to need to stint on ammunition.”

  Was that as innocuous an observation as it seemed? Ish thought, remembering the munitions stored in the locked cellars. In this stir, they hadn’t been able to keep the wrong people away from Mycene. But coordinated fire would have been a cursed excellent idea to have had earlier. They were too used to fighting in the open, in small bands, against a haphazard enemy.

  He sonned his captor, kneeling relaxed in the sniper’s rest, his weapon resting ready on the ledge. Ishmael hadn’t needed to correct his posture or settle him down; plainly he was one of those calmed by the approach of battle.

  “How large is this force?” Mycene said, voice barely carrying.

  “Unknown, except by measuring th’numbers they overwhelmed. Stonebridge was seven thousand people, a fifth of whom were weapons trained—” If Mycene didn’t have an idea already of how large a reserve Stranhorne retained, he would before this night was fought out. “And a good squad.”

  “And what had Stonebridge in the way of defensible positions?”

  “Only the terrain: it’s built on a hill. Th’only reason the manor is walled and built for defense against force is that Strumheller was burnt to the ground during the civil war.” By, as Ishmael recalled, an army led by one of the Mycenes.

  Mycene turned his head and sonned him for the first time. “You think we can hold this manor?”

  “Depends,” said Ishmael, surprised to find himself inclined even toward that much truth.

  Mycene returned his attention to the night. “And, of course, there is the question of magic. My father has a fixation with it; I never understood why. Always seemed unmanly to me.”

  “Nothing unmanly about th’strength needed to bring snow in late summer,” Ishmael gritted.

  “No. It slowed us detecting their approach very effectively. Have you given any thought to what a retreat from here would be like?”

  “Aye,” Ishmael said. “Bad.”

  A humorless smile turned Mycene’s lip. “Worse if there’s no planning for it, that I can tell you.”

  Mycene had suffered a dire defeat during his first campaign against an insurrection in his family’s holdings on the south coast. He’d been young—twenty-two—and entirely too confident. His father had had to issue pardons and make galling concessions to ransom his son. Mycene had never let himself be caught out again.

  Ishmael said, “Aye, nothing like one’s own mistakes t’teach one. I’ll put it to Stranhorne.” He’d be surprised if one of the Stranhornes had not already thought of it. He shrugged off the wall. He wanted another circuit, to steady anyone who needed steadying and to take a last sense of anyone holding or loading a weapon. It might be futile. At this stage, he could not tell whether someone was nervous because of him or because of what might be moving in the night. And although he had intermittently had a transient sense of something that might be Shadowborn presence or magic, it was so faint that he was almost persuaded it was a phantom of his damaged mage sense. But surely—surely if he stood toe-to-toe with a Shadowborn shape-shifter or weather-worker, he must sense that strength.

  The question as to what he would do then was one he had no answer for.

  He moved away, the guards starting to follow. “Let him go,” Mycene said, loudly enough for Ishmael to hear. “There’s no hiding for him anywhere this side of sunrise. Nor for anyone who helps him.” Ishmael nodded over his shoulder by way of acknowledgment of the sentiment, if not the fact, and continued down the gallery. Behind him he heard Mycene say, “And where by the Sole God is di Banneret?” A murmur. Mycene snorted. “He was told not to eat the sausage.”

  Ishmael spared a moment of sympathy for the hapless di Banneret, who would have the insult of his fellows’ mockery added to the wretchedness of his guts.

  He moved from rest to rest, remembering to make a little sound to warn the taut-nerved snipers that he was coming. Speaking of mistakes teaching, he’d more than once nearly been shot by one of his own people before he’d learned not to pad noiselessly up behind them.

  They seemed good, steady. Mycene’s men, too, though most were wary of him, and a couple hostile. One of the hostile ones was a bordersman—by the accent, down toward Odon’s Barrow—and one of those who handled a rifle with ease. Maybe later he would learn the story.

  Boris caught him between rooms. “Father needs you,” the youth said, breathlessly. He leaned closer. “The guards?”

  “Called off.”

  “He needs you in the cellar,” Boris whispered. “Take the east stair.”

  “Finish my circuit for me, would you? Make sure everyone has some food or drink with them, and preferably in them. You, too,” he added, when Boris gulped. “Not a good idea t’start a fight on an empty gut; just makes y’shakier. Your sisters should have told you that.”

  “Yes. But,” he blurted, “I’m not a fighter.”

  “Nor’s your father, but there’s a use for thinkers, too.” He clapped the young man lightly on his arm, knowing not to press. He’d been too terrified to eat the first few times he had gone up against Shadowborn. And he had been even less a fighter than Boris when he had been cast out into the world. No village or town guard would take him, so it was Shadowhunting or banditry. “Go and check on your people.”

  “Ishmael,” the young man said desperately, “the Shadowborn are less than three miles away. What do I say if someone asks?”

  “Tell them the truth. Morale is one thing, trust another. What you do and say affects their trust in your family. So tell th’truth. That goes double if you’ve heard something about one of their families. Swap in one of the loaders if they’re shaky; let them go with no reproaches.” He paused. “You’ll do well. Y’come of good stock, and you’ve solid people around you. They know what t’do. Your part is mostly to steady them.”

  The east stair, Stranhorne had said, which meant hurrying without appearing to hurry the length of the southern corridor, and down five flights into the cellar. It also meant that he encountered only two or three people on the stairs, since most of the movement was up and down the western and central staircases. Only the southeast portion of that wall had sniper cover; the northeast was walled, with a watchtower on that wall guarded by a squad of men. A squad because they had no means of retreat.

  One of Stranhorne’s men unlocked and opened the door at his knock, and led him through the cellars to where the baron and a knot of men stood around a pyramid of boxes of munitions. Stranhorne stepped quickly away from the pyramid, moving to block Ishmael’s sonn—but not before Ishmael had recognized the detonators attached to one of the boxes.

  Stranhorne took his arm and turned him toward a wall. “I’ll trouble you to tell me,” he said in a low voice, “what was the first thing I asked of you?”
/>
  Identity check, thought Ishmael: Stranhorne or Laurel, or both, had been thinking ahead. “That I never discuss or engage in my unnatural practice within your halls.”

  Stranhorne released Ish’s arm with obvious relief and waited. Aside from the damp cold of the cellars, Ish sensed nothing foul or chill around him. He shook his head slightly. Interpreting the gesture, Stranhorne said, “We need to think about what happens if they force an entry.”

  “Y’already are,” he noted.

  Stranhorne gave a grim smile. “You tell me: how strong would a mage have to be to survive this many tons of stone dropped on him?”

  For a moment Ishmael felt like that queasy and terrified seventeen-year-old facing his first fight. “I don’t know,” he said. “If taken by surprise—” The Shadowborn that he and Lady Telmaine had faced together had been strong enough to ensorcell an entire household, and more than Telmaine could hold for more than a minute or so—but that minute or so had been long enough for him to put three bullets into it, and it had not been strong enough to survive those.

  “That’s the aim,” said Stranhorne. “My engineers tell me there’s a good chance we’ll be able to drop the first and second stories into the cellar.”

  There is a reason, Ishmael thought, why intellectuals make a plain working man nervous. “And get out alive?”

  “It’s not a suicide plan,” the baron said, though there was an edge in his voice that said even if it were, he would carry it through.

  “The difficulty is,” the baron said, “to work best, we need to be sure that if they do force entry, it’s through the east gate. I don’t know whether they’re capable of punching holes in the walls, but if they come in through the north gate, we’re going to have to leave to the east, which will put us behind their lines, or break out through that bricked-in entry to the west. I’ve got a couple of engineers up there preparing t’blow it.”

  “Y’ever heard Lord Vladimer on th’subject of plans that depend on enemy cooperation?”

  “No,” Stranhorne said. “But, then, I’ve not been in the habit of making them.”

  Except for the danger in which they all stood, Ishmael could have wished Vladimer were here. If anyone knew how to arrange enemy cooperation . . . “Whichever way we leave the manor could be encircled. We might have to fight our way through. Mycene was cautioning me about the difficulty of an unplanned retreat.”

  Stranhorne tipped his head back, listening and sensing the mass of stone buttressed above their heads. “I’ve read the histories of the civil war, and of the wars in the four and five hundreds. I knew there’d be some difference between sitting at leisure in my armchair and fighting a war, but this . . .”

  This was not the time for Stranhorne to lose confidence in himself. “Every hour we buy gives time for the Crosstracks and th’inner Borders to prepare, and gives time for reinforcements to come.”

  “Did they tell you that only about a thousand people have made it in so far?”

  He could not have told that from passing through the bedlam of the ballroom. “No,” Ishmael said. “They didn’t.”

  “I tell myself that if the Shadowborn were moving that fast, they may not have found or caught most of these people. But there is another explanation—that they may simply have slaughtered them.”

  Numbers or magic, Ishmael thought. Either will do. He could not simply exhort Stranhorne not to despair, or try to chide or shame him out of it. Nor could he leave him in this mood.

  “If it’s the manor they want, we can hold numbers,” he said, at his most stolid. “If it’s not the manor, if they roll past us, then we can muster and attack to their rear, though no leader of any sense would leave a force numbered and armed as we are”—not to mention vengeful—“at their back. So if they’ve any sense, they should make sure the manor has fallen first before they move on, and we should hold until reinforcements come from Strumheller.” Assuming by the direction of the Call that Strumheller has not been similarly besieged, Ishmael thought. They should not count on timely aid from the north, not with Sejanus Plantageter down and the regency council in control.

  “If it’s magic,” Ishmael said slowly, “and we’re speaking of mistakes, those of us in the city should have put this before the Lightborn Temple as soon as we began t’wonder at it. If it’s magic, and they force an entry, then your plan’s as good as any. I’ll be less than no help t’you against magic. I . . . held this back, thinking not to risk it reaching Shadowborn ears”—and because of his own cursed cowardice in speaking of it—“but I did something in Minhorne that likely finished me for magic. Bad overreach, means I try to tap my vitality and I drain it to th’dregs. Nearly done so twice already. I’ve still got th’touch-sense and maybe I’ll still sniff out Shadowborn if they’re close and strong enough; I’ve yet t’test it. But the rest—everything else—is gone.”

  He waited out the other man’s silence. Stranhorne would be the last to acknowledge his grief. “In one respect,” Stranhorne said, slowly, “I’m glad. It means I don’t have to ask you to wait down here with us, in hopes that you might resist an ensorcellment long enough to throw a switch. I can trust that you’ll do whatever it takes to get my son and daughters to safety, and as many of my people with them.”

  “Not something y’need t’ask, Stranhorne.”

  “Good. I’m not courting death; I’ve far too many books left to read. Or I will have,” he amended wryly, “until we throw these switches.”

  “Think on it as having an excuse t’go shopping,” Ishmael said.

  “Now that is something your sister might have said.”

  Over their heads, eerie amongst the muffling, echoing stone, the alarm began to sound. “I need t’get up there,” Ishmael said.

  Stranhorne held out his hand; Ishmael clasped it.

  Then he went up the stairs at a run, spilling onto the top floor to the sound of staccato firing, except for the far gallery, where he could hear crashes of massed fire; Mycene putting his notion of volley fire into effect. It was as good a use as any to make of him and his men. Ishmael ducked into the nearest room, a guest suite adjacent to the one he and Balthasar had occupied. The four slits were manned, all by Stranhorne reservists or retainers, one firing and one reloading, or at one of the slits, two snipers spelling each other. Those he recognized: a teenage brother and sister from the Crosstracks. Nobody reacted to his sonn.

  In the next room he found what he wanted, a man he recognized as skilled and seasoned, who was interspersing his steady firing with brief instructions to his less experienced fellows. Ishmael set his back against the wall. “What’s happening?”

  “Noisemakers started cracking just before we sounded the bell. We shot some to sound, but the racket’s too bad. At least they haven’t brought th’cursed cannon into play upstairs.” He tilted his head. “What’re they doing down in th’gallery?”

  “Mycene, trying coordinated fire.”

  A grunt from the bordersman.

  “Are y’holding them?”

  “Too soon t’tell.” A sideways cast of sonn. “Y’shooting, or just idling?”

  The corner of Ishmael’s mouth tucked in, tugging at the scars. “Have no fear, I’ll have m’turn. I—”

  The man swore and jammed his shoulder into the slit, bracing himself with an outstretched leg as he strained to angle upward. He shot twice into the sky, grunting as the recoil pinned his shoulder against stone. Ishmael remembered then that Stranhorne had mentioned flying Shadowborn. Before the man spoke, he was running for the eastern stairs, one of four that opened onto the roof. In the stairwell he almost collided with Lavender di Gautier, bounding up the steps by twos and threes. She greeted him with gladness changing to shock. “You’re not armed!”

  Mycene’s men had refused to let him carry even a knife, but it was an unforgivable oversight not to have rearmed as soon as Mycene loosed his jesses. Ruthlessly, she stripped the two troopers with her of their second revolvers—the ones she carried would never ha
ve suited his much broader hands—and thrust them and her own knife into his hands, and sent the junior of the two scrambling downstairs to rearm them. “You’re not armored, either,” she complained. She and her companions wore helmets and armor, hardened leather with metal breastplates and shoulder guards. The sound of shouts and shots from overhead forestalled any argument. She took off like a deer, leaving them scrambling in pursuit.

  “Di Gautier,” she yelled warning as she launched herself through the door to the roof, Ishmael’s lunge for her belt falling short. His sonn caught her as she skidded to one knee in the open, revolver raised. He felt a surge of sickening Shadowborn magic, and then something dropped down at her back, wings spread. Shooting it risked shooting her. Ishmael converted his last stride into a dive, slamming into scaled knees and bringing the Shadowborn crashing down on him. He threw it clear with the strength of terror, fending off a raking foot with his left arm. Two shots sounded simultaneously, and its thrashing became uncoordinated.

  Lavender gripped his uninjured arm, adding her hoist to his scramble up. “What are these things?”

  Sonn confirmed that the creature was moribund, and he took a sense of its shape: winged, deep-keeled breastbone, manlike face, clawed hands and feet—claws that would have stripped her rib cage to bone, had they connected. He was shaking slightly and fighting to subdue his gorge; whatever subtler sense was lost to him, the magic around these Shadowborn was as foully potent as anything he had ever met. His left arm was achingly numb and he could feel the sticky warmth of blood between his fingers. He was glad the contact had been fleeting; he had no desire to touch-read that. “N-nothing I’ve met before.”