Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga)

by Gail Z. Martin

  Blaine nodded. “The warden-mages can’t hurt you. We’ve broken down the gate. You’re free.”

  The convict looked at him skeptically. “For now, you mean. What happens if the ships start coming again from Donderath?”

  Blaine gave a shrug of his own. “Then we’re all dead men. You can stay if you want to.”

  “No, that’s quite all right,” the convict hastened to answer. “Rather have a few weeks of freedom than die in this cursed place, and they’ve been dying in scores lately. First, a fever, then the flux. Seemed like the guards or the mages killed someone near every day.” He shook his head. “I’m happy to leave. We were already dead men in here, just waiting for the day our lot came up. I’ll take my chances out there, anytime.”

  Blaine nodded again. “We don’t know where the guards have gone, or Prokief. Until we find out, you’re safest in hiding, for now. As we find more survivors, we’ll send them here. Once we’ve accounted for everyone, we’ll use the wagons to get you into Bay-town.” He paused.

  “Do you know anything about the colonists who were taken in Bay-town yesterday? I’m looking for a friend of mine who was arrested.”

  The group’s self-appointed spokesman shook his head. “Until the fires started, we hadn’t been out of our buildings. When everything started to burn, the guards tried to put out the fires, and when they couldn’t, they ran away and left us to fend for ourselves. We know nothing about what’s gone on in the town.”

  Blaine sighed, though he was not surprised. “It was worth a try,” he muttered, turning away.

  Blaine and his fellow searchers turned their attention to the rest of the barn, but found nothing. They stepped back into the twilight. The walls of the laundry building were aflame and its roof had collapsed. Thick smoke blanketed the prison yard.

  Bodies littered the parade ground. Many lay just outside the burning buildings, those who had jumped to avoid the flames or who had managed to drag themselves outside before succumbing to the smoke. Quite a few guards were among the dead as well. He wondered whether they had been overcome by smoke or set upon by rebellious inmates.

  Across the courtyard, Blaine spotted Piran and his volunteers. They had rounded up more than two dozen guards, who were kneeling, hands clasped atop their heads in surrender. Piran and his men had armed themselves from the pile of weapons they had collected. Others among the colonists busied themselves looting the prison’s granary and storehouse, while some were leading wild-eyed horses out of the stable. Given the size of the mob that had accompanied them up the hill, Blaine had no doubt that the rest of the prison’s farm animals would also be liberated in short order.

  “We’ve got to find Dawe,” Blaine said to the man who had come with him in search of survivors.

  “Aye, and I’d like to find my friends as well,” the man replied. Blaine got a good look at him for the first time. He had an angular, pox-marked face with unremarkable blue eyes and high cheekbones. His woolen cap was jammed down on a shock of light-brown hair that appeared to have been hacked more than cut to fall shoulder-length. “I’m Taren,” he introduced himself.

  “I’m Mick, Mick McFadden.”

  “What do you think’s become of Prokief and the rest of the mages?”

  Blaine shook his head. “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.” He lit a lantern for Taren and then one for himself. “Come on,” Blaine said to Taren. “Let’s keep moving. Prokief had to have at least two thousand prisoners inside Velant, not counting the ones who were out on the farm or in the mines. We haven’t found nearly all of them.”

  “Assuming they’re alive.”

  Blaine drew a deep breath. “Yeah, assuming that.”

  Blaine held his scarf against his face for scant protection from the smoke and gestured for Taren to follow him. He flung open the doors to a large barn and heard a hurried rustle and hushed whispers.

  “If you’re convicts, we’ve come to free you. You’ve nothing to fear,” Blaine shouted into the dim interior. “And if you’re guards, give yourselves up. The prison has fallen.”

  The barn remained quiet. Blaine nodded to Taren, and they entered slowly, their swords raised. The barn smelled of leather and sawdust. After a glance around, Blaine realized it was one of the workshops where convicts made the leather gear needed by the miners, and on the other side of the barn, half-finished nets were strung from beam to beam, the work of those assigned to provision the fishing fleet.

  “Come out. Show yourselves,” Blaine shouted. “You won’t be hurt.”

  Footsteps shuffled in the gloom. Shadows began to move, and figures rose from where they had hidden, stepping into the faint light. As the convicts gave up their hiding places, Blaine did his best to make a quick head count, and guessed that close to two hundred prisoners had sought shelter in the barn.

  “You’re free,” Blaine said. “Stay here out of the cold. We’re trying to account for survivors, and then we’ll see about getting you out of the camp.”

  Blaine and Taren moved down the line of buildings along Velant’s outer wall. A slight movement in the shadows between buildings caught Blaine’s eye and he motioned for Taren to be still. Swords at the ready, they moved as quietly as the snow-covered ground would permit.

  “Show yourselves! The camp has fallen. Surrender, and we won’t hurt you.”

  In response, two dark forms fled to the other end of the narrow alley. Blaine and Taren took off in pursuit. When they rounded the corner, the figures had disappeared. Blaine blinked to adjust to the sudden change from shadow to the glaring snow.

  “They can’t have gone far,” he said. The closest building was a large shed. Taren saw it as well, and nodded. Silently, they moved toward the building. Blaine had hoped to follow the tracks of whoever had run off, but with the fires and the general chaos, the snow was hopelessly flattened by dozens of footprints.

  “In here,” Blaine murmured as he led the way. The barn was silent, but something seemed out of place. Cautiously, he moved into the half-lit center of the first floor. The light from his lantern cast deep shadows around the barn’s walls. A carriage, testimony to Prokief’s pretense of finery, sat on one side of the building. Yokes and plows took up most of the rest of the floor space, as well as a large sledge and a huge troika. Tools for the prison’s large farm leaned against the wall, and some tools lay abandoned on the ground, as if their users had seen the fires and fled.

  Taren pointed, and Blaine nodded. Next to the carriage lay a bit of fresh snow on an otherwise dry floor.

  Blaine and Taren split up, moving around the carriage without making a sound. They both set down their lanterns in preparation for a fight. Taren had armed himself with a stolen sword, though Blaine would have been surprised if the man had ever before wielded such a blade. It had been many years since Blaine had labored in his father’s salle under the tutelage of an arms master, and since colonists were forbidden from owning swords, he’d had no opportunity for recent practice. Before, he might have counted on magic to enhance his abilities, but now he was on his own.

  Together, Blaine and Taren jerked open the doors to the carriage. The two men inside hurled themselves at their discoverers, and Blaine realized they had found Prokief and Ejnar, his favorite warden-mage.

  Prokief fell on Blaine with a fury, screaming with incoherent rage. The man wielded a sword, raining blow after blow. One of the blows slashed Blaine hard on the left shoulder, sending searing pain down his arm. Blaine gritted his teeth and parried with his broadsword. Out of the corner of his eye, Blaine spotted Taren skirmishing with Ejnar, who was dressed in singed and dirty mage robes. Taren was holding his own; Blaine returned his attention just in time to parry another deadly blow from Prokief’s sword.

  Blaine scored a slice on Prokief’s arm, and a hail of curses greeted him as his opponent gave a pounding set of blows that pressed Blaine to parry. Blaine felt his temper rise. His fighting magic might be gone, but sheer anger rose to replace it.

  Prokief sw
ung hard for Blaine’s head and Blaine dodged, though the tip of the blade grazed his temple and a trickle of blood started down his face. He heard Prokief laugh.

  “You never had it in you to be the kind of soldier your daddy was,” Prokief taunted. “And he was a piss-poor excuse for a man if there ever was one.” He grinned. “No matter. You’re a dead man, and you don’t even know it yet. Pollard made sure of that.”

  “Pollard? What’s he got to do with anything?” Blaine barely moved in time as Prokief hammered home several more blows, relying on sheer brute force. Blaine parried, feeling the shock of the blows in his bones, wondering if he could turn the attack before Prokief shattered his arm.

  “I told you the day would come when Merrill wouldn’t be around to care what happened to you,” Prokief jeered. “The ships have stopped coming. Looks like that day is finally here. I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Training and anger took over. Blaine struck back with full fury, using the sword with a two-handed grip, driving Prokief back pace after pace.

  Prokief scored again, slicing into Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine pressed forward, guessing that Prokief was waiting for him to tire. Blaine had fought well so far, but Prokief was a professional soldier. From the gleam in Prokief’s eyes, Blaine guessed that the commander was toying with him. In a fair fight, stamina and skill tipped the odds in Prokief’s favor.

  Blaine smiled. In a fair fight. He dove for a scythe that lay abandoned on the barn floor, swinging it with his left hand in a deadly arc that sliced through Prokief’s jacket and opened a bloody slice on his chest.

  “You insolent cur!” Prokief grated, but the blow had rattled him enough that Blaine saw the opening he needed. With his full strength, Blaine brought his blade down on Prokief’s wrist. Both the hand and the sword it clutched fell away in a shower of blood and the man sank to his knees. Blaine glimpsed the flash of steel in the dim light and jerked aside just as a shiv flew from Prokief’s left hand.

  Blaine lunged forward and sank his blade deep into Prokief’s chest, pinning him to the side of the carriage. Blood seeped from the wound, spreading across Prokief’s smudged and torn shirt, and a trickle of blood started from the corner of Prokief’s mouth.

  Prokief regarded Blaine balefully. “Did you start the fires?” Blaine demanded.

  Prokief had grown ashen from the loss of blood, but still Blaine kept an eye on Prokief’s remaining hand. Blaine stepped back. Hatred and arrogance glinted in Prokief’s eyes.

  “No, but I should have.” A bitter smile touched Prokief’s lips. “Don’t expect to take back your title, Lord McFadden. Donderath’s losing the war. By now, your lands and women either belong to Meroven—or to Lord Pollard.” He coughed up blood.

  With a growl, Blaine scooped up the fallen dagger and with one broad movement drew its blade across Prokief’s throat. Prokief, forever silenced, hung limply from the sword.

  As the adrenaline of the fight drained away, Blaine came back to himself, realizing that he was breathing hard and that his hands were shaking. The sound of a nearby scuffle jarred him into the present and he jerked back on the sword, letting Prokief’s corpse slump to the ground. Blaine grabbed his sword and ran.

  On the other side of the carriage, Taren was still fighting off his opponent. Given that both men held their swords as if it were the first time, it amazed Blaine that they had not already killed each other from sheer blundering.

  “A hand here, Mick, if you please!” Taren’s sleeves on both arms bore several fresh slashes tinged with blood. The mage had fared no better. A slice down one cheek oozed blood, and Taren had managed to get in a good cut to the mage’s right thigh. From the panicked look on his face, Blaine guessed that Ejnar had never had to fight using anything except his magic. Taren’s arms shook with the weight of the sword as he held it in a white-knuckled, two-handed grip.

  Blaine raised his sword and gestured for Taren to step back. “I remember you,” Blaine said, stepping in to engage Ejnar’s wild thrust.

  “All convicts look alike to me,” Ejnar muttered, doing his best to swing for Blaine’s throat, an off-balance stroke Blaine easily parried.

  “Oh, it was you, all right,” Blaine replied grimly. “Prokief turned me over to you right before he threw me in the Hole.”

  Ejnar chuckled. “Pity he let you out.”

  Blaine’s sword caught Ejnar’s strike, though the force of it sent a jolt down his arm. While their swords were caught against each other, Blaine shoved forward, pushing Ejnar’s arm out from his body, and giving him a clean shot to send Prokief’s dagger straight into Ejnar’s chest.

  Blaine heard steel whistle through the air, and abruptly, Ejnar’s head toppled from his body as his corpse collapsed in the opposite direction. Behind Ejnar stood Taren, ashen and wide-eyed, his bloody sword gripped with both hands.

  “We couldn’t let him live,” Taren said breathlessly. “What if the magic came back again?”

  Blaine nodded. “No, we couldn’t.”

  “Prokief?”

  Blaine let out a long breath. “He’s dead.”

  A mixture of relief, bewilderment, and horror crossed Taren’s face. “Prokief’s dead? Truly?”

  “Truly.” Blaine shook himself out of the moment. “Leave the bodies. Bring your sword. We still haven’t found Dawe.”

  “Or the other survivors,” Taren put in, gingerly stepping around Ejnar’s corpse.

  “I think I know where to look—in both cases.”

  Taren followed Blaine to the next and last large barn. This barn held bales of wool sheared from the prison’s sheep, and bundles of cloth woven on the looms that the female prisoners worked in half-day shifts. Blaine and Taren yanked open the doors. Blaine nodded toward the many footprints that had tracked through the thick dust on the floor.

  Before he could call out, figures began to step out from where they had hidden. Some clutched farm implements and other crude weapons, but many looked ready to flee.

  “You’re safe,” Blaine said, raising his hands and holding them out from his body. “Prokief’s dead. The mages can’t hurt you.”

  Men and women began to move out of the shadows and into the light. More and more came, leaving Blaine amazed that they had all found places to hide. From the shuffling he could hear in the loft above, even more of the convicts had taken shelter up there.

  “We’ll find a way to get you into town as soon as possible,” Blaine said. “After that… well, we’ll figure something out,” he said. As he spoke, Blaine realized that without Velant, Bay-town and the other small settlements had lost both persecutor and heavy-handed protector. Without Velant’s guards, there was no one to keep order. And without Prokief’s military organization, no mechanism existed to assign colonists to homesteads.

  Blaine scanned the crowd. “Is Dawe Killick among you?”

  No one answered, and Blaine bit back a curse. He looked around, and saw that Taren and two men in convict garb were trading good-natured punches and backslaps. As the newly freed convicts milled around the barn, Blaine stepped back outside.

  He was quite surprised when Taren joined him. “I thought you found your friends,” Blaine said with a jerk of his head toward the crowd in the building.

  “I did. They’re a little shaken up, but otherwise fine.” Taren paused. “But you haven’t found the man you’re looking for.”

  Blaine shook his head. “No, and I’d think if he were in one of the open buildings, he’d have come out by now.” Blaine scanned the blacksmith’s forge, a stone building open on one side, and several long sheds that also stood open on one side to shelter oft-used items and firewood. “But there’s one place we haven’t looked yet.” He looked around the barn, and spotted a large coil of rope hanging from a peg on one of the posts. He grabbed it, and headed for the door.

  Fearing the worst, Blaine strode across the open yard. He spared a glance toward where Piran had gathered at least a hundred soldiers and was in the midst of accepting their surrender. The loot
ers had also grown more organized, forming a human chain to hand bales, boxes, casks, and jugs from hand to hand from the storage barns to wagons. A flash of light caught Blaine’s eye and he watched as a flaming arrow soared through the air, ripping through the flag that flew above the prison, Donderath’s flag, the banner of the kingdom that had exiled and then abandoned them.

  Near the northern edge of the enclosure, close to the latrine trench, was an area with several sunken places in the icy ground. Just the sight of them made Blaine’s stomach clench.

  “You think your friend is in there?” Taren asked quietly.

  “Yes.” Blaine kicked the snow away from the first of the sunken areas, revealing a square metal door with a large padlock. Taren cleared the snow from another door a few feet away.

  “Here, see if one of these fits.” Blaine dug out the handful of keys Verran had stolen from the guards in town, taking half for himself and tossing the others to Taren. Blaine knelt and realized he was holding his breath. He fumbled the lock and blew on his fingers to bring back feeling in the cold. After trying several keys, one turned in the lock, and Blaine dug his fingers under the cold metal and shoved with all his might.

  These were the Holes, shafts sunk deep as wells into Edgeland’s frozen ground. They served as Prokief’s greatest threat and, often, as his personal oubliettes. Blaine had barely survived the Holes, but many others had not lived through the experience, dying alone in the freezing darkness. Blaine set his jaw, expecting the worst. If Dawe was down one of these Holes, he had already been there for at least a day.

  The darkness of the shaft was impenetrable compared with the permanent twilight above. “Dawe! Dawe Killick! Are you down there?”

  Blaine’s heart sank as his voice echoed but no reply came. He stood and walked over to the blacksmith’s forge, taking a thin piece of wood from the stack and dipping it in pitch, then using the smith’s flint and steel to strike a spark to light the torch. Blaine carried the torch back to the Hole and leaned as far in as he dared, holding the torch to see. The shaft was empty.