by Tim Akers
33
IAN WOKE AS they dragged him through the snow. Drifts piled up around his shoulders, and his arms screamed in pain as the people of Halfic hauled him by the wrists through the courtyard. He spat bloody snow from his mouth and screamed.
“You can’t do this,” he said. A farmer wheeled and put a boot in Ian’s ribs, causing him to double over. When he lifted his head, he saw two long tracks of bloody sleet carved through the courtyard. The broader track led to a squirming pile of bodies off to the side. The men dragging Ian paused to watch.
At the center of the pile, Elsa’s golden armor shone. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and her teeth were bright white against the smeared blood of her gums. Farmers and servants wrapped arms around her waist and grabbed at her limbs, only to be thrown aside to land gracelessly in the snow. The frair stood at the edge of the fray, mincing his hands together and muttering prayers.
The earl was nowhere to be seen.
“Frair!” Ian shouted. The man startled around, staring at Ian with saucer-wide eyes. “Do you think you’ll escape judgment, just because no mortal eye will see this crime? Cinder will see you! The gray lord will judge your actions!”
The frair walked over, and bent low to Ian’s face. “We have already been judged, Blakley,” he said. “The sentence has been passed. What more can be done to us, that hasn’t already been done?”
“Never underestimate the vengeance of winter,” Ian spat. “The gods will have their way.”
“A strange warning, coming from one such as you,” the frair said. He pulled a rag from his sleeve and shoved it into Ian’s mouth, forcing it so far down his throat that he started to gag. “An ally of the iron hand should not be making threats.”
Ian choked around the stinking rag, saliva and blood clogging his throat. The frair nodded to the men holding his wrists. They resumed their slow, jerky drag through the snow.
His head lolled back, hanging limp against his shoulders as the snow piled up. The pain radiated down through his neck and back, giving sharp jabs with each lurching step. Twice he’d been struck in the head since he arrived at Harthal, twice knocked out, and still he had no idea what was actually going on in this place. If he got out of this alive, Ian swore he was going to start wearing a helmet. All the time. Even to bed. He could learn to sleep in a steel helm.
The men who were dragging him stopped and, after a short conversation, dropped Ian’s arms. His shoulders wrenched flat, muscles popping back into place. He rolled onto his side, trying to catch his breath through sleet-frozen nostrils, his lungs burning. They had reached the gates of the keep. The men were arguing about who would open the doors, and who would drag him through.
“He’s heavy,” the first man said. He was tall and thin, his clothes cut for a man a foot shorter and forty pounds heavier. “You pull him.”
“He’s a whelp. The bar is heavy, mate. You’ve never had to open the gate.” The second man was average in every way, except his arms nearly reached his knees, and his forearms were as thick as Ian’s legs. “You can’t even move the gate, I’ll wager.”
Tall and thin frowned, looking down at Ian as he chewed his lips. “You open the gate, then we both drag him through. Get it done faster.”
“One of us needs to be able to close the gate, if something tries to get inside the keep,” Forearms said. “Can’t let anything else in. Caused enough trouble the first time.”
The first man grunted but didn’t seem convinced. He stared down at Ian.
“Could get help,” he said eventually. They both looked back at the pile of farmers tangled around Sir Elsa. Three or four of the wrestlers skidded away, lying on their backs for several seconds before struggling to their feet and, reluctantly, rejoining the fight.
“Nah,” Forearms said. “They’re… busy.”
“Let me give the gate a try,” Tall said. “If I can’t get it, fine, I’ll do the dragging. But you’re stronger. You can get him outside and back quick.”
“Fine,” Forearms said, shaking his head, “but you’ll never get it.”
Ian watched with detached interest as the tall man sized up the heavy iron-and-ashwood bar that lay across the gate. He rubbed some warmth into his hands, then bent at the knees and hooked his shoulder under it. He pushed, collapsed, reset his legs and pushed again. His face turned turnip red, his lips peeled back from his teeth, and then suddenly the bar shifted. With a groan, it levered away from its seat. A small avalanche of snow tumbled from its face. The man pushed it to the side, sliding it into the sleeve at the side of the gate.
“There!” he said, panting desperately and smiling. “Told you. Told you I could…”
The gate boomed open, knocking the tall man aside. Forearms stepped back and hesitated, but any question of fighting back disappeared as the barrier swung fully open.
On the road beyond stood a man in black, wrapped in a cloak of blizzard. He hung just above the ground, his toes dragging in the snow as he slid forward. Fists of clenched ice swung at his side, powered by muscles of gale winds and sleet. His face was nearly black with ink.
Ian rolled out of the shaman’s way. The man ignored him, digging a trench in the snow with his gheist. At the center of the courtyard the frair fell back, stumbling over himself as he retreated to the doma, where he slammed the door shut.
The crowd still fought Sir Elsa, but those closest to the gate stopped and stood as they became aware of the new threat. As more stepped away from her, Elsa fought her way to her feet, thinking she had finally beaten back her attackers. She stood at their center, whirling back and forth, waiting for the next attack to come.
Then she saw the gheist.
“Gods damn it,” she muttered.
* * *
Elsa straightened, loosening her shoulders and staring down the shaman and his bound gheist. The citizens of Harthal drifted away from her, afraid to move too quickly, their prey-minds telling them that sudden movement might attract the predator’s eye. Elsa held out her hand.
“My sword. Someone give me my sword.”
That broke the spell. The farmers and servants and fools ran, scattering to cover, diving behind snow-covered wagons or running into the stables. A few tried to hide in the doma, beating at the doors before giving up.
“I’m going to have a word with that frair,” Elsa said. “I find his service to the celestial church extremely questionable.”
“Your wards were doomed to fail, vow knight,” the shaman said. “Winter is not your season. You should not have tried to hide within these walls. It has given me time to gather my strength.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Elsa said. She cast around for her sword, finally spotting it near the door of the doma. Ian was behind the shaman. The boy rolled stiffly to the side, slowly struggling to his knees. No good to her. She started edging toward the blade. “But what you did to those children is entirely unacceptable.”
“Children?” the shaman asked. “Do not play games with me, priest. I have come to break the bond with Gwen Adair. You will not use her as bait any longer!”
“Ah, there it is,” Elsa said. She backed up further, keeping her attention on the shaman. Her head throbbed from the beating given her by the people of Harthal. “You’re one of Adair’s pet pagans. I knew I should have killed that girl when I had the chance.”
“It would have saved us both a great deal of trouble,” the shaman said. He clutched a knife to his chest. The blade was shot through with veins of crimson light. The man flicked the knife in Elsa’s direction, and she felt a burning pain in her chest. He had somehow captured her blood bond with Gwen. “But without her,” he added, “I wouldn’t have been able to find you.”
“Something you’ll regret doing, I think,” Elsa said. She clasped her hands together, making a circle of her arms and drawing Strife’s power into the runes of her armor. She had hesitated to use her powers against the citizens of Harthal, but had no such qualms about a shaman of the old ways
. The heat from her invocation began melting a ring of snow around her.
“I have the blood of a dozen vow knights in my blade, woman,” the shaman said. “One more isn’t going to frighten me. Besides, you seem to have lost your sword, and what is a knight without her precious weapon?”
“Far from helpless, I swear you that,” Elsa said.
The shaman swelled, drawing power from the storm that raged all around them. Elsa had a moment to wonder what he meant by the wards that had been hiding the castle, but then the pagan advanced. The weather was turned in his favor, cloaked in winter as he was. It was difficult to tell where his gheist ended and the storm began, and as the man swept toward her, he seemed to collect snow and wind from the swirling grounds of the courtyard.
Small snow-choked tornadoes twisted down from the sky to settle on his shoulders, and sleet rattled the ground as he passed. His fists rose from his sides, clenching knuckles sheened in ice.
Elsa attacked before the shaman could reach her. Even without the sword, her hands burned with summer’s fury, and the gheist cloaking the shaman was bound to winter’s power. In some ways they countered each other, cold and hot, fire and ice, each the weakness of the other, each strongest in the other’s flaws. She slid forward, stepping inside the reach of the bound god, swinging directly at the shaman at the center of the gheist. Gales of wind met her attack, ice forming and melting and forming again as she struck.
The layers of gale force wind parted under Elsa’s attack, but she wasn’t able to reach the shaman. Instead, her fists bounced harmlessly off the bound gheist. Light flared from her runes. A thin coating of sleet-stained ice crusted her armor, and when she moved to retreat, the ice shattered and spun into the air, filling the courtyard with reflected light. As she fell back, one of the gheist’s massive fists clipped her shoulder. She spun, fell, and rolled through the snowdrifts.
“I am not new to this war, knight,” the shaman said. He turned ponderously toward where Elsa had fallen. “I will end you, as I have ended so many before.”
“Funny, I don’t remember a lot of my friends dying of frostbite,” Elsa said. She forced herself to her knees, easing gingerly back to her feet, weaving bindings of protection into the air around her. The shaman hovered in front of her, haughty and unafraid.
“I hunt in different forests, and through all seasons,” the shaman said. “This is the guise I take today, because it is the power that is available today. Our gods are not like yours, Suhdrin. Jealous in their worship! At war with one another. Petty!”
“No, nothing like your gods,” Elsa agreed. “Your gods are mad, like dogs, frothing at the mouth. Waiting to be put down by their masters.”
The shaman laughed, but the sound was full of anger. He struck again, heavy fists spinning through the air like tumbling boulders, crashing into walls and barrels and stone on his way to Elsa. She dodged him easily, taking summer’s swiftness in hand to dance across the icy courtyard.
Unable to slow his charge, the shaman plunged into the stables, spooking horses and sending a plume of hay into the air to mingle with the blizzard. Slowly he stood and moved to the entrance. The gheist was still wrapped around him, but it was showing signs of strain. As Elsa walked around the stables toward the doma, the shaman appeared to struggle with his god. His face was clenched in concentration, and the bands of screaming gale that made up the gheist’s body began spinning loose, like a bolt of cloth unraveling.
“This is the failing of all your gods, pagan,” Elsa said. She brushed snow from her shoulders, smiling. “Too feral. Too much like beasts to be tamed, and yet you insist on binding them, putting them to the lash. Then you are surprised when they slip loose and bite the hand.”
The shaman didn’t answer.
The storm spoke for him. Like a giant hand pressing down from the heavens, the skies unleashed a wind like none Elsa had ever seen. With teeth cut from sleet, it sliced through her Strife-borne defenses and shredded her flesh. Elsa fell to a knee, covering her face with one gauntleted hand, steadying herself with the other.
She heard the horses screaming, followed shortly by the sound of the stable’s slate roof coming apart like a child’s toy. The world disappeared into a haze of snow and ice. The feeble light of her runic armor flickered out. Everything became freezing cold and howling wind. A darkness rose above her. It was the shaman, and his god of winter’s might.
“You are mistaken,” the shaman said, and his voice was laced with madness. Elsa squinted up at him. His robes were shredded, and the flesh that showed through was marbled with the same crimson veins that filled his knife. He had plunged the blade into his belly, both fists wrapped around the handle, now slick with his own blood. “The gods do not answer to my lash. I answer to theirs.”
The demon hurtled forward, riding the blizzard’s wrath into Elsa’s waiting arms. He brushed her defenses aside like they were cobwebs. In the tumult of the storm, the screams were lost to the wind.
34
THE FIRST CHARGE was a ragged, headlong rush into the forest. Branches crashed off Malcolm’s steel helm, battering his ribs and slowing his mount. He braced himself for immediate impact with the enemy, but once he was among the trees, all he saw were flashes of bright color among the trunks, the scattering of archers and the high, lilting shouts of Suhdrin retreat.
Malcolm whirled around, getting his bearings. Tenerran soldiers rushed past him, plunging deeper into the trees, chasing individual archers and running them down. Screams filtered through the underbrush.
“Stay close! Stay tight!” Malcolm shouted, but his voice fell muffled into the dry autumn canopy. His column quickly became a cloud, dissipating into the woods. Sir Harrow clattered past him.
“Harrow! Rein in! Where are you going, woman?”
“Sirs Dannock and Leigh have made contact near the road. A column of spear with archers in support.” Harrow spun her mount around impatiently, anxious to be engaged. Malcolm barked at her.
“Hold! Why would their archers be in advance, if the spear still waits along the road!” he shouted. “Why are they here at all? How did they know?”
“Questions that will not be answered by mincing about the verge, my lord,” Harrow answered. “The enemy is before us. We must meet them!”
“It isn’t right,” Malcolm muttered. Harrow gave him an impatient look, then thundered into the underbrush. Screams filled the air beyond. Malcolm could hear the steady hammer of spears on shields, and hobnailed boots on hard packed stone. “Something about it isn’t right.”
He pulled his horse to the side, running parallel to the clearing, listening to his troops clash with the Suhdrin line far to his right. The whisper of arrows sang through the air, piercing leaves and thudding into trees. Arrows would do little to his riders in the close canopy of the trees, which would prevent the archers from concentrating their fire. Mail caparisons, plate-and-half, strong shields and steel. It was the column of spear that could undo them. The crash of blades continued in the distance. Malcolm thought he should be with them. He should be at their head—but something wasn’t right.
Something among the trees.
There was a flicker of light among the trees. Malcolm slowed, then saw a length of rumpled white linen, and blood. The priestess. Malcolm spurred his horse forward, rattling through a grove of thick trees, drawing his sword as he went.
Catrin had fallen from her horse and lay among the ferns. Her mount stood at the edge of the clearing, cropping at the ground, oblivious to its rider’s wound. Three horses stood beside it, and three men stood beside the fallen priestess. Suhdrin men-at-arms, with their blades drawn. One knelt, his knife going hesitantly to the child’s throat.
“Face me!” Malcolm shouted. The three men looked up in shock. As he thundered forward, the kneeling soldier dropped his blade, standing and stumbling back, falling over himself as he reached for his sword. The other two ran for their mounts. Malcolm shifted his charge, cutting off the runners, forcing them back to the fallen p
riestess. There he circled them.
“This is what Suhdra has come to?” he said. “Murdering the holy of Strife while they lie wounded?” The men didn’t answer. Two of them looked terrified. The man who had been kneeling, though, had collected himself. He stared at Malcolm with cold hatred. Malcolm pulled closer to him, glaring down from his saddle. “Were you commanded to murder this child? Or did it just seem like a good idea to your mud-filled head?”
“I have learned that Tenerran traitors can dress in holy robes,” the man said. “Just as they can dress as nobles.”
Malcolm snorted. “This girl is of Orphanshield’s company. She is Suhdrin born, and Heartsbridge sworn.”
“A gods damned pity, then, if she were to fall while riding with a Tenerran lord,” the man said. “A child murdered by her host. A tragedy.”
“Ah, so that is your plan,” Malcolm replied. “But how did you know we were here? Whose word turned your head. Who summoned your spears to this door?”
“The word of god,” the man said. “A voice you no longer hear, pagan.”
“No god I know would ask for this girl’s blood,” Malcolm said. “Yours, however, seems fine with it.”
The Suhdrins fell back a little bit, lifting blades. Malcolm edged around them, calculating risk and weighing his position. Three of them, but they were on foot, and wearing only chain to his plate-and-half. Not an easy fight, but one he would have to try if he meant to protect the girl. He moved far enough that he was between the priestess and her would-be attackers. They began to spread out, threatening to encircle him.
He had to strike soon.
A thunder rose in the forest. Malcolm whirled. Just at the edge of his line of sight, barely glimpsed between the thick growth of the forest, a column of armored knights streamed past. They rode in tight formation, battering down trees, their armor smeared in mud and leaves. Their progress was slowed by the forest, but their passage was devastating. The ground was churned into mud and broken roots.