by Sarah Ash
Now Gavril spotted one of the scouts returning at a gallop across the snow, crouched low in the saddle as though to avoid enemy fire.
The scout wheeled his mount around and the horse skidded to a halt, hooves scuffing up lumps of snow.
“Narvazh—attacked—” His words came out on clouds of steam. “No sign—of Kazimir—”
“Attacked!” Gavril felt a shiver of fury, hot as fever, burn through his body. “Who attacked them? Are the attackers still there?”
The scout, trying to catch his breath, shook his head.
“On to Narvazh!” Gavril cried.
Narvazh lay huddled beneath them in a narrow cove, a scatter of gray stone fishermen’s cottages and fish-gutting sheds, braced against the bitter winds that swept across the Saltyk Sea.
Gavril and his druzhina dismounted on the clifftop and stared down at the little port. The wind off the frozen sea battered them, stinging ears, eyes, and nostrils. There was no movement below, no wisps of smoke rising from the stunted chimneys, but on the wind, Gavril thought he caught a distant sound of coughing.
The scout beckoned them to lead their horses down a winding cliff path. As they entered the village, they saw overturned barrels of salt fish leaking their contents onto the rocks.
“This feels wrong,” Jushko muttered. “Just like walking straight into a trap.” He sent two men back up the path to keep watch.
A door banged suddenly, slammed by the wind. Jushko whirled around, saber blade hissing from its sheath. The druzhina froze where they stood, axes and crossbows at the ready.
“Come out!” Jushko shouted. “Show yourself!”
Gavril caught sight of a flicker of shadow within one of the cottages. He forced his chapped lips to move, tasting salt in the cracks.
“There!”
Two of the druzhina kicked in the door and dragged out a man, flinging him down in the trodden snow.
“M-mercy, my lords.” The man cowered in the snow, hands raised above his head in supplication.
“This isn’t Kazimir,” Jushko said. He sounded a little disappointed. “Get up. We mean you no harm. Tell the lord Drakhaon what’s happened here.”
“L-Lord Drakhaon—” stammered the man, even more terrified. “S-soldiers came over the ice. Fired on us. Smoke everywhere, white smoke—made everyone sick.”
“Fan out!” Jushko ordered the druzhina. “Search. Everywhere!”
“How many soldiers?” Gavril asked.
The man gave a helpless shrug. “Difficult to—t-tell through the smoke.”
“More than my druzhina here?”
“Yes, oh yes.” He nodded his head weakly. “Many more.”
“And which way did they go?” Jushko demanded.
“Couldn’t see.”
“We’re looking for a doctor. Calls himself Kazimir,” Gavril said.
The man gave a shrug. “Never heard the name.”
“And where are all the villagers?” Gavril thought he had heard the faint sound of coughing again.
“Sick. The old ones and the young, very sick. Our livestock dying. White smoke—must have been poisoned—”
“Look at this, Lord Drakhaon.” One of the druzhina came back, balancing a twisted fragment of metal on the tip of his saber.
Gavril took it in his gloved hand and examined it. It looked like a spent cartridge case—though larger than any ammunition he had ever come across in Smarna. The metal gleamed dully in the raw air, and it seemed as if there was a faint trace of some substance on the inner side. Cautiously he raised it to his nose and sniffed. “Faugh!” He let it drop to the snow. “That’s not gunpowder.” The dried, powdery deposit had given off an unpleasant odor, not dissimilar to some of the poisonous chymical compounds he used to mix to make his oil paints.
A feeble wail came from the open door of the cottage. Gavril turned and saw a young girl-child leaning against the doorframe, face sickly pale.
“Da—” she said, extending her arms shakily toward the man. The weak cry turned into a retching cough that went on and on.
“Go back to the warmth, Milla.” The man hurried to her and gathered her up in his arms. The child was wheezing uncontrollably now, thin ribs heaving as she struggled to breathe.
Why had the attackers fired on harmless villagers? Gavril turned away, clenching his fists.
“You heard, Lord Drakhaon?” Jushko murmured in his ear. “They came over the ice? These soldiers have come from Tielen.”
One of the scouts came slithering down the rocks at the far end of the cove.
“We’ve found tracks! Heading north.”
Jushko gave the fragment of metal a vicious kick, sending it spinning far out over the snow.
“Let’s get after them,” Gavril said.
As they followed the scouts, leading the horses along the windblown sands, Gavril found himself tormented by a tumult of premonitions and forebodings. That dangerous, volatile mood gripped him again as it had outside Klim. He could—and might—do anything. And the consequences . . .
Stay in control.
He forced himself to concentrate on his surroundings.
Such a bleak, rocky shore, the crags and boulders white with a rime of frozen salt . . .
Beyond the shore stretched the sea that should have crashed against the rocks with the energy of great breakers but lay inert, a sheet of frozen water. And beyond, far across the Saltyk Sea, a distant suggestion of land that Jushko told him was Tielen. . . .
“Where’s Kazimir?” muttered Jushko, scanning the vast expanse of gray-green ice.
“Over here!” One of the druzhina who had gone on ahead appeared from behind a large rock farther up the beach.
Something lay half-hidden from view, camouflaged beneath driftwood and canvas.
“Looks like some kind of craft,” Jushko said, pulling away the concealing branches and canvas. “See, this canvas has been used as a sail.”
“It’s not a boat,” Gavril said, kneeling down to look more closely. “The bottom’s flat. More like a giant sled. Or ice craft . . .”
“A Tielen ice craft? Kazimir’s craft?”
Before Gavril could reply, there came a sudden sharp retort, as if the ice were cracking. And then another and another—
Bullets whizzed into the rock. Chips of grazed rock flew into the air.
“Ambush! Get down, my lord!” hissed Jushko, grabbing Gavril and pulling him down.
Explosion of bright pain, then darkness.
One of the druzhina rolled groaning on the sands, clutching at his shoulder. Another lay still, facedown, where he had fallen. The others hastily ran for cover, ducking behind boulders to avoid the hail of bullets.
“Where are they?” Jushko muttered between clenched teeth. “And why didn’t we spot ’em?”
Gavril shook his head, trying to clear the last dizzying vestiges of the brutally shattered bloodbond. He didn’t need to look at the blood trickling into the sand to know one man was dead.
“Kazimir, eh? We fell for this one!” Jushko began to laugh, a dry self-deprecatory chuckle. “What fools the Tielens must think we are. Easier to lure into a trap than woodcocks.”
“We don’t stand a chance here, not against their carbines. They can pick us off, one by one.” Gavril peered up at the cliffs behind them, listening for the telltale click of carbines being reloaded.
“Our scouts are still up on the cliff—”
“Ssh,” Gavril whispered. “Listen.”
“Can’t hear a thing.”
“Exactly. If they were going to fire again, we’d have heard them priming their weapons.”
Jushko had said there were scouts close by. Gavril closed his eyes, searching for them with his mind.
Druzhina. I’m under attack. Come to my aid.
They had not heard him in the distant mountains. But now, he thought he sensed a faint response and caught a twitch of movement among the frozen gorse bushes high on the clifftop.
“Our men are on the cliffs, Jus
hko.” He rose to his feet. “Come out, Tielens!” he yelled in the common tongue. “You’re surrounded. Show yourselves!”
Jushko walked out to stand beside him, arms contemptuously folded, as though daring the unseen attackers to fire on them. And then he let out a low whistle. “Well, now . . . would you look at that.”
The crumbling base of the cliff rippled, as if a snowmist were suddenly melting away.
Where there had seemed to be nothing but bare cliff rock, Gavril saw men, uniformed soldiers, each one pointing a carbine at him. He swallowed down a sudden surge of panic.
“I am Gavril Nagarian. I was told to come here to meet with Altan Kazimir. Where is he?”
Gavril saw the soldiers glance uneasily at their commanding officer. He was young, not much older than himself, with a wild shock of ice-pale hair, barely confined beneath his tricorn.
Had they understood him? Gavril wondered. Did his name mean anything to them?
Slowly he stretched out one hand toward them. Claws blue as slivers of sapphire glittered in a sudden shaft of cold winter sun.
“Tell your men to throw down their weapons.” Little shocks of sensation ran up and down his arm.
I will not lose control. It was taking all his willpower to subdue the dark impulse that threatened to overwhelm him.
The Tielens gazed uncertainly back at him. The young officer raised his hand, too. The front column dropped to one knee, leveling their carbines at him. This was not what he had anticipated at all. . . .
The officer’s hand dropped suddenly. “Now!” Gavril heard him shout, and the word was almost muffled in a fusillade of shots.
“Look out!” Jushko grabbed hold of him, trying to fling him out of the line of fire.
Bullets thudded past them, exploding against the rocks behind.
One bullet, larger than the rest, landed close to Gavril’s feet—and, to his astonishment, opened up like a flower.
“What in God’s name—”
A strange fizzing sound drowned his words. Clouds of white smoke came hissing from the opened shell and blew across the shore like sea-mist, obscuring the Tielens from view. A dry alchymical smell poisoned the air.
“Cover your faces!” Gavril yelled. Pulling out his handkerchief, he clapped it over his nose and mouth.
All he knew now was that they were under attack.
He must retaliate—or die.
Gavril battled his way forward, head down, through the white vapors that billowed over the sands.
His eyes stung. The dry, bitter taste of the alchymical smoke was in his mouth. Yet still he forged stubbornly on.
Behind him he could hear his own men coughing and spluttering as they inhaled the fumes.
But beyond the clearing smoke he saw indistinct figures hurrying away. The Tielens were retreating under the cover of their poisoned smoke screen.
The people of Narvazh had offered no resistance, yet the Tielens had fired on them indiscriminately, men, women, and children alike. Now it was their turn to pay.
A plume of flame spurted from Gavril’s fingertips, luminous, blue as a kingfisher’s wing.
As the blue flame pierced the last drifts of smoke, they spotted him coming toward them.
“Fire!” Gavril heard the young officer scream the command aloud—but as if from a great distance away.
Aim at their weapons, not at the men. . . .
He raised his hand—and sent the blue flame streaking toward the Tielens.
Bullets whizzed close past his head, but many went wide as his attack met its mark.
His head swam with churning heat; sparks danced before his eyes, blue fireflies, and still the pressure was building within him. . . .
“Enough!” he cried. He must keep control. He must not let the Drakhaoul take him over again.
He dropped to his knees on the frozen sand.
His ears rang with dizziness.
On the beach below, the last wisps of smoke lifted from the sands, drifting away out across the frozen sea.
Where there had been soldiers, living men, lay several charred heaps of blackened ash and bone. He had aimed at their carbines—but even at this range, his power had been too great.
“You should . . . have surrendered . . . while you could . . .” whispered Gavril.
Jushko led the druzhina off along the shore to search for survivors. Those who had inhaled the Tielens’ smoke still coughed and retched miserably.
Gavril sat watching, hugging his knees close to his chest. His whole body ached, and his skull felt as if it had been seared in a furnace.
He heard the druzhina calling to each other as they searched the rocks and caves.
The face of the young Tielen officer, eyes wide with fear and anger, flashed into his mind. He had not wanted to die.
A cloud of guilt overwhelmed Gavril, blacker than the drifting smoke.
And yet he had only acted to defend his men. He had offered terms of surrender—and they had been flung back in his face.
From farther down the beach, he heard Jushko calling to the other druzhina, his voice gravel-dry from the effects of the smoke.
“These prints here, in the sand. Looks like some got away, after all.”
He came back toward Gavril, his lean face twisted into a frown of incomprehension.
“How the devil did they escape? And why didn’t we see them go?”
“Their weapons are far superior to ours,” Gavril said slowly, hearing his own voice as if from a great distance away. “Bullets that release poisonous smoke. We don’t stand a chance against them.”
“But we have you, my lord.” Jushko squatted beside him in the sand and passed him his water flask. The water was ice-cold and tinged with a dash of aquavit to keep the taste clean. Gavril gulped it down, hoping to ease the burning in his throat and mouth. He did not acknowledge what Jushko had said; the effort of controlling the outburst of power had exhausted him. Already he could feel the return of the dark, searing thirst that would not be quenched by water or aquavit.
His situation was hopeless. If he allowed himself to become the war leader the druzhina wanted him to be, it would be at the cost of his own soul. The creature that inhabited him would force him to give in to its monstrous appetites and desires. His own humanity would be slowly eaten away. Even now he knew he was losing touch with his true self, forgetting the little things that had once been so important to him: the hue of Astasia’s eyes, dark as the velvety petals of a viola; or the sound of his mother’s laughter as they played shuttlecock together on the overgrown lawns of the Villa Andara . . .
He would become nothing but a shell for the Drakhaoul.
Two of the druzhina flung their prisoner onto the sand in front of Gavril.
“Doctor Kazimir, Lord Drakhaon.”
The man who lay sprawled at Gavril’s feet was mud-stained, wet, and ragged. Gavril glanced at Jushko for confirmation of the prisoner’s identity; Jushko nodded his head.
“D-don’t hurt me—” The doctor was shaking, his hands clasped over his head as if to ward off blows.
“We found him hiding in a sea cave.”
Slowly the doctor dragged himself to his knees, head drooping forward. His fair hair hung in damp rat’s tails about his face.
“You have instructions for me,” Gavril said.
Kazimir fumbled in the inside of his stained jacket and drew out a leather folder. As he took the folder from Kazimir, Gavril saw with a sudden quickening of the heart that the Orlov crest was tooled on the leather.
Was there some communication inside for him from Astasia?
Tearing open the ribbons, he unwrapped three crumpled papers, two of which bore his mother’s characteristically bold, looping handwriting.
“From my mother,” he said, unable to hide the emotion in his voice. News—after so many long weeks of absence. Now that he held the longed-for letters in his hands, he could hardly bear to open them.
The first was Kazimir’s safe-conduct letter, but the second
was addressed to him:
Dearest Gavril,
We have so much to talk about. I cannot wait to see you. I have missed you so much!
Blinking the tears from his eyes, he read on, devouring her words, then returning to the beginning to read them again more slowly. And then he looked sternly at Altan Kazimir, who crouched trembling in the sand at his feet.
“I don’t understand. This reads as if my mother were on her way to see me.”
Kazimir fumbled in his pocket and brought out a pair of twisted spectacles, which he balanced on the bridge of his aquiline nose, winding the wires about his ears. He glanced at the letter and nodded.
“Your mother has been severely misled in this whole affair. Duped. She came to Tielen with me on the understanding she would be granted safe passage to Azhkendir. And now she is Eugene’s prisoner.”
“So it is true?”
“It’s explained in the other letter.”
The third letter was sealed in glossy blue wax with the sign of a swan. Gavril broke the seal and swiftly scanned the contents.
To Gavril Nagarian, Lord Drakhaon of Azhkendir:
By the time you read this, my armies will have crossed onto Azhkendi soil.
My terms are these: first, that you allow my armies safe passage through Azhkendir; second, that you relinquish all rights to the throne of Azhkendir in favor of Jaromir Arkhel, rightful lord of Azhkendir; and third, that the said Lord Arkhel is restored to me, unharmed.
In return, I guarantee the release of your mother, Elysia Andar, and a safe passage to permanent exile in Smarna.
Eugene of Tielen.
Jaromir, Eugene’s protégé? Gavril slowly lowered the paper, staring unseeing at the distant horizon. He knew himself to be outmaneuvered. Betrayed. And by the man to whom he had sworn an oath of friendship.
“Well, my lord?” demanded Jushko impatiently. “What does it say?”
Gavril could not speak. He stared at the words as they swam before his smoke-stung eyes. Eventually he said, “It says we are to offer no resistance to Eugene’s armies. If we do, my mother’s life will be forfeit.”