A bullet smacked him in the head. His hat offered slight protection, besides the spell, but it still knocked him sideways, leaving him dizzy. Stars danced in his eyes.
“Freddy?” Samuel saw him struggling to pull himself up on his hands and knees as the world whirled. “What happened?”
“A bullet got me in the head…I’m protected, but…it grazed my temple.”
“Just sit a moment and recover. I’ll bring them to you.”
Freddy sat back, watching the dancing lights in his eyes recede as he heard another man grunting slightly, carrying a body toward him. Freddy always feared the next man down might be Sebastian, even though he was keeping back, and that fear was heightened by his disorientation, but it was one of Opitz’s. He touched his face.
Around him, men were screaming, “Commander, their armor is resisting our bullets!”
“Try to get the wheels, shoot between cracks—anything you can—just keep at it!” Sebastian’s voice moved closer to Freddy. “You all right?”
“I’m getting there. Just give me another minute.”
They kept bringing him fresh deaths.
Twenty-six down…
Twenty-seven…
Almost half their initial number were now dead or injured. His vision had cleared, and although he still felt a little dizzy, he staggered to his feet, waiting a moment for the swirling to end. The chugging engines were growing alarmingly close now, and when he glanced out he could see them rolling over fallen bodies, and how large their guns were.
“Best’s hanging back, but he keeps pointing up here,” Sebastian said. He frowned. “I think we need to evacuate.”
“Sir, they’re loading the last truck! Commander Opitz wants to know if you can hold them off for fifteen more minutes.”
“We can try. Give them everything you’ve got! We can’t let those guns breach the gates!” Sebastian looked uncertainly at Freddy. “Freddy, maybe you should retreat now.”
“Not if you aren’t.” A man was down on the other end of the wall, and Freddy was already making his way. In this moment, the whole world existed inside of this battle and the men he had revived to fight. He might walk out of this, but they fought knowing they would never see their loved ones again. He wouldn’t leave them. He owed them this much.
His ears were beyond ringing now, the guns deafening as everyone poured their ammo into the guns that were now almost close enough to knock on their doors, but even as bullets shot off the iron bodies, the first gun fired point-blank, rocking the wall. Sebastian was shouting, waving his arm to keep up the attack. Twenty-nine down…thirty…
Freddy couldn’t hear, but he saw Aleksy grab Sebastian’s arm and speak to him frantically. The gist was plain: You need to take the survivors and go.
Sebastian grimaced, grief barely restrained in his eyes, as he quickly embraced Aleksy and thumped his back. He approached Freddy, his expression resolved. They know you’re here, he mouthed.
“They do?” Freddy supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; everyone in Urobrun seemed to know.
“All right, men, if you can fight another day, retreat!” Sebastian motioned for the stairs, even as another assault from the guns knocked him off balance. Aleksy, still keeping an eye on him, caught his arm and steadied him. “Move!” Sebastian shouted, as Freddy took one long look at the men he had revived. He would never have a chance to thank them.
He took Sebastian’s arm to help him hurry down the stairs as one of the guns breached the gate. Now all the men, living or dead, were rushing to the ground, some of them to escape and others to hold off the army. Sebastian stumbled, jerking Freddy’s shoulder.
“Damn my stupid leg!” Sebastian snapped. “You go ahead of me.”
Freddy glanced around, but no one else was near to help Sebastian. In the chaos, some of them had run ahead; a few others had joined the defenders at the gate.
“Don’t worry about it, just keep moving,” Freddy said. “You’re steady. Just don’t outrun yourself. We both need to come back.”
Something fell from the sky, ripping through the roof of one of the smaller buildings at the base, blowing out the windows in shattering glass.
“Artillery?” Sebastian cursed vehemently. “Move, move!”
Another explosion threw up dirt. A man’s body flew sideways. Freddy forced his eyes ahead to the bridge, breathing heavily with exertion, but he barely felt his own feet. He kept his arm around Sebastian, trying to shield him—if anyone shot at them, the bullets wouldn’t hurt Freddy like they would Sebastian.
The last truck drove across the bridge. Freddy fixed his eyes on the bank ahead—true home soil, not this little stolen piece of Irminau. Across the way, men were setting up explosives, waving the escaping men forward with wild gestures. Freddy could taste safety as they set foot on the bridge—the sounds of shooting and screaming were behind him.
Not halfway across the bridge, another explosion dropped from the sky, the force knocking Freddy sideways—Sebastian grabbing him, stumbling over the guardrail—both of them losing their anchor to the world as death rang in Freddy’s ears. He threw his arms tightly around Sebastian and looked at the sky, trying to be the one to hit the cold rock-studded waters below, in that longest second of his life as they both blew off the bridge together.
Freddy’s body plunged into rushing, cold water, scraping rocks. He lost hold of Sebastian, or maybe Sebastian tore away from him. He couldn’t tell. I can’t swim.
“I’ve got you,” Sebastian panted, and Freddy realized that although the water was rushing around his head, his face was above the surface. Sebastian had a hold of him as the current pushed them forward, but Freddy had never felt so helpless. His body was breathing fast in uncontrollable panic, while his mind was still trying to grasp what had happened.
“Play dead!” Sebastian’s shouts seemed thin against the rushing river. “Just do it, quickly! I’ve got you.”
Freddy forced his body to go as limp as he could, but his teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, his body shivering. Sebastian had an arm around him and raked his other hand through the water quickly to steer them away from other rocks.
“Now, let the dead go! Make them think you’re dead.”
Freddy wanted to question this decision—the dead men were still defending—but Sebastian knew more about the Irminauers than he did. The frigid dark water surrounding him made him feel so close to death himself that severing ties to his magic came easily. As he let them all go, it felt as if their spirits were floating away with the current.
“We have to get out of this cold river!” Freddy said.
“Yeah, I’m aware!” Sebastian glanced back, just as the river began a gentle curve ahead, the water glinting in the moonlight below the tall, shadowed banks.
“Your men are going to think we’re dead!”
“I’m aware of that also!” Sebastian loosened his hold on Freddy. “Can you swim?”
“No.”
“Just paddle and don’t let go of my hand. Follow my lead.”
Freddy wasn’t so sure there was a leader here, except the river itself. As they fought their way to the bank, his toes briefly touched the bottom but were swept away again. The cold was quickly sinking deeper toward his heart, and he wondered how long before hypothermia set in, but he shoved that thought aside and kept kicking and paddling until he found the river’s bottom for good and they managed to clamber out onto a wide, flat rock large enough to set up camp on.
If only they had a camp. A warm fire and dry clothes—he fixed on that thought, drawing some suggestion of warmth from his imagination. Now the open air was a fresh assault on his soaked and heavy garments, every little breeze like a thousand knives. He offered Sebastian a hand. “How’s your leg?”
“Still here. My glasses, too. Now I know we’re going to live because clearly I have a guardian angel.” They spoke through violently chattering teeth. “Move.”
Freddy wasn’t sure of their prospects of climbing the six-foot slopes th
at led up from the river, but a quick glance at their surroundings revealed a path carved up the riverbank. A railing made it visible even though it was covered with snow.
“Maybe someone lives up here,” Sebastian said.
“But we need to get back—”
“We’re not going anywhere until we warm up. That river must have swept us a mile already.”
The path led to a cottage; perhaps a little vacation getaway or fishing shack. The door was locked, but they were able to push up a window and climb in. The cottage held little of value to protect, but there was a bed with blankets, and a fur rug on the ground. They immediately peeled off their wet clothes, and Sebastian spread the fur rug over the bed. Once in bed, Sebastian unfastened his leg and put it on the ground.
“Well, we’re not going anywhere for a while,” he said.
“What happened?” Freddy asked, once his teeth stopped chattering enough to talk. “Why were you so adamant I let the dead go?”
“You didn’t see because you were busy working magic, but Baron Best had his binoculars, and he was pointing excitedly at the men you revived. Aleksy and I were both sure he’d figured out what it meant: He knew you were there. If he thought he could get a hold of you, he’d do anything to bring you back to my father. But if you let them go abruptly, he’d probably assume you were dead. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, our people might also assume we’re dead.”
“You aren’t worried how people will react if they think you’re dead?”
“I am worried,” he said softly.
They stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“Thea—” Sebastian began.
“No,” Freddy said. “You don’t have to explain.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it anyway.
Sebastian took a deep breath. “We would have been in huge trouble without you today. We all owe you our lives.”
“Yeah, well…” He kept thinking of Thea’s name on Sebastian’s lips. She was waiting for Sebastian to return. Not Freddy. But his pain felt stupid at this point, his feelings illogical and out of control. He should have been able to just shove Thea’s face out of his mind. What did she really mean to him? A shared experience, a new world, but it was sheer coincidence that they had gone through all that together.
But whenever he thought of Sebastian with his arms around her, he felt possessed by demons of jealousy that just wanted to punch things.
“Freddy, I feel very uncomfortable making use of you in my army, and…you saving my life, when—”
“You saved my life as much as I saved yours,” Freddy interjected.
“Maybe. I just need to tell you. Thea doesn’t want to hurt you, but I don’t think—”
“I know what you’re going to say, for god’s sake. We don’t need to have an official conversation. It isn’t as if I didn’t suspect she had feelings for you from the moment we arrived. I thought at first it was the enchantment, but I know better now.”
“I try not to pay attention to girls,” Sebastian said. “Everything gets more complicated when romantic feelings are involved. But they have a way of sneaking up on you. And I couldn’t ignore Thea. I feel responsible for her losing her hand, for unleashing Ingrid on the world in general.”
Freddy understood this. He felt responsible for the workers who labored underground, including Thea’s father. He could try and reason these feelings away, and he could tell Sebastian that Ingrid wasn’t his fault either, but feelings often defied reason.
He had a lot in common with Sebastian. They could be good friends. Only he didn’t know if he could stand to watch Sebastian’s relationship with Thea develop.
“Look, I’m glad Thea’s happy. That’s really all I can say,” Freddy said, his tone sharp.
“I know how it feels to be lonely,” Sebastian said, in almost a whisper.
In the following silence, Freddy crashed into sleep, the after effect of so much magic. He woke in a room that had the gentle brightness of white snow falling in the night. He could just make out the silhouette of Sebastian sitting on the floor, pulling on his undershirt.
“Sebastian?”
“Our clothes are drying out. We should spread out the coats.”
Freddy, holding the blankets to his neck, propped himself up on one elbow to look around the cottage. It was not an inviting place, between bare wooden floors and drafty windows. Even if there had been firewood ready, they couldn’t dare start a fire just in case Baron Best hadn’t given up that easily.
Freddy pulled on the legs of his long underwear, feeling like some unkempt mountain man—who broke into cabins and slept in strangers’ beds, at that. Although the dry air and howling winds that leaked into the cracks of the cabin had sped up the drying, they still felt damp and almost crackly, as if turning into ice. He yanked a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around himself like a cape.
While Sebastian spread out their clothes, he searched every drawer, shelf, basket, and crock in the cabin, finding matches and candles, and a bit of usable food. A mood of grim determination pervaded the cabin.
“Peas and crackers for dinner, pumpkin and crackers for breakfast?” Freddy said, regarding the selections.
“Sounds…sensible.”
Freddy frowned at the kitchen tools. “You know how to use a can opener, right?”
“Hand it over.”
Freddy stepped out to fill cups with snow, and they used the candle to melt them into water as they sat around the table wrapped in blankets. Sebastian regarded his bowl of cold peas and handful of stale crackers, the flickering candlelight adding to his skeptical expression. Freddy was hungry enough to find them almost delicious. The wind gusted and howled around the cracks in the windows, snow sometimes hitting the windowpanes.
“What did you say was for breakfast? Pumpkin?”
“Yes. A can of pumpkin.”
“I really hope they sent a search party.”
An urgent message for Freddy arrived shortly after the men left for Lingfeldt.
“Do you suppose we should open it?” Marlis asked Thea.
“Open his mail?” Thea frowned. She already felt she was keeping secrets from him; she didn’t want to invade his privacy on top of it.
“But it’s marked ‘Urgent.’” Marlis decisively pulled up the edge of the envelope and slashed it open with her thumb.
The letter was from Freddy’s parents, letting him know they had heard he was with the revolutionaries, that they were safe with friends, and they would let Freddy know where as soon as they could.
I hope we will finally get to know you as we should have known you all along, the letter said near the end, and tears came to Thea’s eyes. The tragedy of her own father being alive without her knowing seemed parallel to Freddy being torn from his parents.
“Isn’t it good news?” Marlis asked.
Thea pulled herself together quickly, ashamed at having had such an emotional reaction in front of Marlis. “I just feel so bad for him that they are such strangers.”
“He’ll be all right. I don’t think he needs you feeling sorry for him.” Marlis sounded a tad defensive. “You don’t even know him that well.”
“I know him.”
“I know you went on a date or two.”
“And we went underground and found the workers together. That wasn’t a date.”
“No, I imagine not.” Marlis let the matter drop, but Thea felt oddly provoked by this conversation. She hadn’t realized Marlis knew she had a romantic history with Freddy, and now she thought, Marlis probably also knows I dropped him without explanation.
Thea had thought herself a direct person. She didn’t know why this was the one thing she couldn’t seem to face.
That night at work, when Ruthie said she had found kittens in her neighborhood and needed to find homes for them, Thea impulsively agreed to take one home. Freddy had seemed very fond of his cat that had died; maybe it would be a nice surprise when he returned. That night she carried home a tiny white creature with black marking
s that reminded Thea of a tiara and necklace.
She brought it into Freddy’s room, since she wanted it to get used to him. The kitten crawled under the bed and wouldn’t come out for an entire day, and when Thea pushed food under the bed, the kitten let out a tiny hiss, but the plate was empty later. All the men who were familiar with cats assured her this was normal. It was nice to have something to fret over, rather than the empty feeling inside the house with Sebastian and so many others away.
She had more to fret over than she could have imagined the morning of the party, when the Lingfeldt unit returned with the horrifying news that they had lost twenty men during the battle, and Sebastian and Freddy had gone missing.
“It was getting dark by that time, and they were escaping the base. We think they fell off the bridge when the opposition destroyed it.”
“Did no one search?” Marlis demanded.
“We left behind four men, but we couldn’t spare more with so many losses. We had to get the weapons back. Those were Sebastian’s orders. If they’ve been found, we wouldn’t know right away, of course, but all the men Freddy had revived went silent right after the attack. And the water’s frigid…their chances would have been slim, Miss Horn. I’m so sorry.”
Thea felt like she had been dropped into an icy river herself. Everyone began to speak of canceling the party, to mourn the men who had died, and murmur of what would be done with Sebastian lost, as if the matter was certain. They kept saying, No one could survive on a cold winter night like that.
“Sebastian isn’t the type to just give up,” Thea said. “And Freddy, he—he’s protected by magic, and he would have let the dead go anyway if the battle was over!”
A number of skeptical, battle-hardened faces turned to her. They all seemed to say, Poor girl, she doesn’t get it. War doesn’t care who it claims.
“Listen!” Marlis said. “The party should go on. It will be more of a somber gathering now, but if Sebastian is dead, we mustn’t let his work be in vain. Sebastian’s vision for this land went beyond what our current leadership can offer; if we retreat into mourning, we might give up our chance to join the fight.”
Glittering Shadows Page 27