Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  He raised one eyebrow at me. “The Lady brought you back,” he said. “You were not dead for more than a moment.”

  “Six months,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I sounded asinine.

  “You might bring me back,” Hunger said.

  “I put a man back in his body once. He started dying again immediately. And just a short time ago, I was unable to rouse crows. I can’t do what you ask.”

  “Your animal persuasion is not rooted in the same part of you as your shifting or your spirit-walking. It requires more physical grounding for the animals to recognize your call. But for this—your sister healed my body, and I do not think I will die again immediately.” Hunger looked much more thoughtful than I imagined I’d be in a similar situation. “If you’d be so kind.”

  I’d told Hadúr I’d be damned before raising the dead again. Well, likely I already was.

  “I can’t promise anything,” I said. “You’ll need to put yourself back in your body.”

  Obediently, Hunger lay down, his spirit melding into the contours of his body. With the same prayer I’d whispered over the boy, “Live, be whole,” I sent my inner sense questing toward the body. The shifts were small ones: from an inert heart to a working one, muscles contracting and pumping again. Lungs expanding, pushing oxygen into the blood.

  Hunger choked and sputtered and sat up. Noémi looked at him as though the sun had risen after she thought the whole world had ended. I glanced away. The expression on her face—tender, intimate—was private, meant for one person alone, and most definitely not for her brother.

  A kick of triumph fizzed through my veins.

  I was táltos, and I had made a man live again.

  The triumph was chased almost immediately by a bracing terror. And who am I, to bring a man back from the dead? What arbitrary whim of fate (or God—I would not put it past Him. Or Her) had decreed I was to have such gifts rather than the next man or woman? A gift that could be blessing and curse alike?

  That I could bring a man back did not redeem my failures: it only made the capacity for them greater.

  Damn and blast it all to perdition.

  I blinked—to clear my head more than anything, as my spirit body did not need to blink—and focused on the scene before me. Noémi had wrapped her arms around Hunger and was sitting practically in his lap. The longing radiating from his eyes as he returned her embrace made me blink again. He stroked her hair with infinite gentleness.

  “Did you do this?” Anna demanded of Noémi.

  Noémi shook her head wordlessly.

  “Mátyás put me back. He’s here, in spirit only.” Hunger glanced across the clearing to where Vasilisa was already approaching. “We need to go now.”

  Anna followed his glance. “But Vasilisa wanted us to save you.”

  “Vasilisa’s allegiances are…complicated. We have a very old friendship, and while she will not betray me to Chernobog, she will not let you go free, either.” He looked back at Anna, gestured to the snow falling thick around them—snow I could see but not feel. “She cannot abide running water—that might slow her.”

  Anna seemed to gather something significant from his words, because her face took on an intent expression and then the snow stopped drifting. A sheet of water poured from the sky in its place, blocking Vasilisa’s advance only twenty paces away.

  “The water won’t hold her for long,” Hunger warned. “Táltos, you must shift them now.”

  My hesitation lasted only a heartbeat. I might fail—but I had brought a man back from the dead, and I would not fail now for lack of trying.

  I started with Anna. At this distance, shifting felt less like the fluid run of water and more like pushing through packed snow—difficult but not impossible. A few moments later, a crow fluttered up from the ground.

  “Quickly!” Hunger said. The wall of water was nearly gone, turned to steam by a volley of fire.

  I turned to Noémi. Before she had finished shifting, Hunger transformed into a sinuous dragon, and he rose with Noémi’s crow into the air. The water wall evaporated, and Vasilisa plunged through it.

  She looked up at the retreating shapes, and though I knew she had power enough to pull them back to earth with her net, she only smiled. Complicated allegiances, indeed.

  With the girls aloft, I sent my spirit after them. I knew from Hadúr’s testing that I could not maintain transformations beyond a certain range: if a rabbit-turned-crow got more than a quarter of a mile from me, the shifting reverted. And that was while I was anchored in my body. I needed to stay close enough to Anna and Noémi to maintain their crow shapes.

  I was perhaps a hundred feet from the clearing when something jerked me back like a tether. Then I felt it: the nearly invisible weight of one of Vasilisa’s nets.

  “Welcome back, táltos,” she said, still smiling at the sky. “Don’t worry about your sister and your cousin. They won’t get far without you.”

  Flying was glorious: the rush of wind past my beak, the blood pumping through my featherlight body, the rhythmic flutter of my wings, the lift of an air current beneath me. If this is what Mátyás felt when he shifted to crow form, why did he ever come back?

  Relief made me giddy. For the first time in weeks, the heavy weight of stone did not hang over my head, the constant uncertainty of my future did not gnaw at my heart.

  I cut through the dark night—and I was free.

  Then a hiccup in my flight: abruptly, I was heavy and sluggish, falling through the air rather than floating. I waved my arms, but the motion that powered my flight was worthless without feathers and hollow bones.

  The hiccup lasted only a moment before I was back in feathered form, my heart beating double-time. What had happened? Had Mátyás released our shifting shapes—or had we perhaps outpaced him? I slowed a little and caught sight of Noémi diving toward some shrubs below.

  I was still a good twenty feet above the ground when I lost the crow shape altogether.

  My throat constricted around a scream as I fell. Every experience of falling flicked through my head: trying to soar over the estate pond as a child, crashing into the Binding spell when Lady Berri created her portal, dropping from the air outside the barracks in Vienna. I’d been lucky so far—but how far could I press that luck?

  Four times might be too much.

  A great whoomph and I landed sooner than expected, against something firm but not hard. Great leathery wings were raised around my head, and my dazed senses parsed this: Hunger had caught me. He settled on the ground a moment later, and I slid from his back to collapse in a heap on the cold grasses. The stars spun overhead, and I drew in a ragged breath.

  Chills pricked gooseflesh along my skin. My feathered shape wasn’t the only thing I’d lost in shifting. My clothes were gone as well. I should have guessed as much—I’d seen Mátyás shift, after all—but eighteen years’ drilling in modesty asserted itself: I yelped and crossed my arms, trying to shield as much of myself as possible from the night air and from Hunger—and from anyone else who might be passing.

  Hunger had already shifted, scrambling to the tree where Noémi clung precariously to the upper branches. He was fully dressed, a trick Mátyás could stand to learn.

  “Let go,” Hunger said. “I’ll catch you.”

  “I can’t,” Noémi said. “I’m…naked.”

  “So much the better,” Hunger said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. But from Noémi’s indignant cry, this was not the right response. “Devil take it!” he said. “That’s not what I—that is, I did mean it, I think you’re lovely however you’re dressed or undressed. But if it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll find something. Hold on.”

  I craned my head to see Hunger pluck a few strands of grass and weave them together. Under his fingers the weaving grew, pulling in shadows from the night around us until he
had a length of fabric that rippled like lake water. He threw the cloak up at Noémi, and then tossed a second one to me. It fell over me like the airiest of silks. I wrapped it around me and sat up in time to see Noémi drop from the tree into Hunger’s arms.

  Noémi called Mátyás’s name a few times, but there was no response: no shifting, no other signs that he’d heard us.

  “We need to keep moving,” Hunger said. “We escaped too easily.”

  “You think Vasilisa let us go?” Noémi asked.

  “I think Vasilisa is willing to let Chernobog and Pál believe I am dead, but I know her. She is only toying with you.”

  I wanted to find a place to sleep until my body was drunk on it. Dawn was not far off, and I’d not slept much before the guard had awakened me. Whatever had happened to Mátyás, perhaps he could reach me in my dreams. But sleeping would have to wait until we were safe—or in what passed for safety in this world.

  * * *

  Without Mátyás to shift us, we made our way on foot. Hunger offered to carry us, but I thought a dragon flying in daylight might be too conspicuous, and Noémi vetoed it on grounds that he was still recovering and could scarce bear his own weight, let alone ours. She fretted about the small magic Hunger used to power our cloaks, so as soon as we came within hailing distance of a settlement, Hunger disappeared.

  He returned a few minutes later with blouses, skirts, and a pair of hooded woolen cloaks, and I did not ask how he’d procured them—or how he had come to guess my size so well. I ducked behind a tree to scramble into my new clothes, and the magic cloak I’d worn reverted to a few dried strands of grass.

  We did not speak of what had passed the night before: the attack on the soldiers or Pál’s betrayal or Hunger’s resurrection.

  Near midday, we stumbled across a farmhouse where a pig slaughter was under way. I knew from Noémi that such were common as fall turned to winter: the snowstorm we’d stumbled through had left fainter traces in the valley than the mountains we’d fled but still enough to prompt the household to action.

  We had no money to offer the farmer or his wife—and no time to offer labor in exchange—but Hunger smiled at the woman, and we were each given a bowl of savory pork stew alongside crusty bread. I watched the others work as we ate: wrapping the cuts of meat; grinding the excess into sausage; preparing thick, fat-ribboned slabs of szalonna for storage against the winter.

  Their kindness, as much as the warm food, sustained us as we moved on.

  We sheltered together that night in a rough lean-to made of dead branches stacked together. Noémi and I both gravitated toward Hunger’s radiating warmth, and I tried to ignore the discomfort of sleeping so close to a man who was not a relative—a man who had seemed to be, until the previous night, my opponent, if not my enemy.

  Sometime in the black stillness of middle-night, I woke, chilled. Hunger was gone, and Noémi was curled in on herself like a small child.

  A heartbeat of panic: Had he abandoned us? Betrayed us?

  Then my eyes adjusted to the thin moonlight, and I saw Hunger standing a little distance from our shelter. Without looking at me, he lifted a hand to gesture me to silence. I stood and, stepping as carefully as I could, joined him.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer, but I heard it anyway: the thin, far-away howl of a wolf. Then a second call to answer it, closer. Much closer.

  “Vasilisa?” I asked. There were still wolves in these mountains.

  “I think so.”

  I had not seen Vasilisa’s wolves since she had set them on me and Emilija just before Mátyás found us. I had severed her bond with the wolves, and they had fled from her while she cursed at me. She must have reharnessed them—or collected new ones. I shivered, tugging my stolen cloak closer about me.

  “Stay here,” Hunger said, and with a peculiar lunge, he shifted into his dragon self and lifted into the air. A few minutes later, the orange glow of fire lit the night, and the smell of singed fur filled the air. A pained whimper echoed off the frozen trees. He said nothing when he returned, only shifted back, his black scales shrinking down before melting into the trousers and coat he wore. I woke Noémi, and we moved on.

  * * *

  Some hours later, well into morning, we found ourselves gaining on a small group of women, most young, led by a girl in a distinctive red cloak, with twin braids down her back.

  Exhaustion forgotten, I ran toward them, throwing my arms around Emilija, who stumbled back at the sudden assault. She stiffened under my embrace, then relaxed as she recognized me and returned the hug. Beside her, the lidérc grinned at me.

  “You’re safe!” I said. “But who are all these with you?”

  “Emilija has been collecting them,” the lidérc said.

  “I have been recruiting them,” Emilija corrected. “A motivated woman makes as good a soldier as a man.”

  “But for whom?” I asked, thinking of Emilija’s father leading the Croatian armies across Hungary.

  “For us,” Emilija said. “I was in those caverns with you; we cannot let the Four take over our homes.” She caught sight of Hunger behind Noémi, and her hand went to the butt of a gun at her hip. Where had she found that? She’d been as penniless as we were when she left the caves—and as poorly armed. “What is he doing here?”

  “The Four have driven him out,” I said.

  Emilija did not remove her hand. “What guarantee do you have that we can trust him?”

  “You have none.” Hunger smiled slightly. “Save perhaps this: is there not a human saying that the enemy of your enemy is your friend?”

  “The enemy of my enemy might still prove my enemy,” Emilija said.

  All pretense of humor dropped from Hunger’s face. “I would sooner die than bring harm to Noémi. Beyond that, my goal has always been to save the praetheria. I committed to a path I thought most likely to win them security, but that path is lost now. Ordinary praetheria will be little better off under Chernobog’s rule than under the Hapsburgs’. I will do what I can to help you end this war if you, in turn, will help me find a better solution for the praetheria than these so-called sanctuaries.”

  Emilija studied him for a long moment, then let her hand drop from the gun. “You have my word. But I will be watching you, praetherian.”

  Hunger bowed. “I would expect no less, soldier.”

  * * *

  It was midafternoon on the fourth day following our escape when we finally reached an outlying arm of the Hungarian armies. Emilija’s recruits were better-provisioned than we were, so we did not starve, though I was growing tired of unadorned bread.

  The troops were not hard to spot: long columns of worn, grim-faced men carrying limp standards. They were spread across multiple roads, reaching for miles across the plains. We quickened our pace until we’d reached the trailing line of soldiers.

  The men’s eyes flicked over us. The lidérc kept her pointed teeth sheathed, her feet booted, and her eyes downcast.

  “The Austrian armies are pursuing: this is no place for women. Go home.” It was a boy who spoke, dirt grimed into the creases around his eyes. He looked my age.

  Emilija threw her cloak back to expose her gun. “I’m a Red Mantle. I daresay I fight better than you do.”

  His eyes widened, this time with a grudging respect. “And the rest of them?”

  “We’re looking for General Richard Guyon,” I said, naming Gábor’s commanding officer before Emilija could get into an argument.

  “Guyon?” The boy picked at his ear and glanced toward an older red-haired man who’d stopped to watch our approach. “That the division that was ambushed in the mountains?”

  The man nodded. “Austrian soldiers waited for them just outside a mountain pass, damn near murdered the lot. What’s left of them is up ahead of us.”

  What’s left
of them.

  My heart seemed to stop. Had Gábor made it out?

  “Well, then, they’ll need new recruits,” Emilija said cheerfully.

  I could not seem to breathe. I felt again that cold shock of horror I experienced when I’d returned to my room to find Gábor’s letters gone. Gábor had told me that Guyon’s troops were in the Bükk Mountains, approaching a pass. He didn’t name the pass, but there might have been enough identifying information for someone like Pál to get word to the Austrians.

  The lidérc slid into place beside me. “Anna? You look as if you’ve just seen someone die.”

  I forced my lips to move. “Gábor was with Guyon’s division.”

  Noémi drew close, took my hand. “Don’t despair yet. Maybe he still is.”

  But as we cut south across the fields, to skirt the soldiers clogging the road, all I could hear was the hissing echo of my words: was, was, was.

  * * *

  It was near dark when we reached Guyon’s division, tents already springing up, soldiers huddled around a handful of fires. I pulled my cloak tighter against the chill and tried to remember to breathe.

  Richard Guyon proved to be a dark-haired man with a rather long nose, with his left arm in a sling. He was standing just outside a tent, receiving some briefing as we approached, so we waited until he was done speaking. The private leading us stepped forward.

  “This young woman has a message for you, sir.”

  Guyon surveyed me somewhat skeptically. “Yes? Be quick about it, young lady. I’ve a war to fight.”

  His Hungarian sounded like mine, with the accent of his English homeland. I’d known he was English—Gábor had said as much in his letters. But finding a fellow countryman in the midst of a war was like coming on a rose blooming in December: an unlooked-for gift. A piece of home. My throat constricted, and all the words I’d practiced abandoned me. Where is Gábor? Will you help us end this war?