Bladedancer

by Michael Wallace

  Katalinka was already in motion, her swords in hand, glad she hadn’t yet taken them to the forge. Miklos ran by her side, then suddenly cursed. She glanced his way to see his hands grasping futilely over his shoulder, as if expecting his sword to be strapped to his back, but of course he’d already shoved the blade into the coals at the smithy.

  Bartal remained half-buried in the snow, trying to get his head above the surface while the creature wrapped itself around his body in an attempt to hold him down. He had one of his swords up, turned the wrong way against the creature’s throat, but sufficient to keep the snapping jaws from biting off his face. Miklos reached one of his massive arms into the snow and grabbed hold of something. The intent of his sowen drove into his grip, and he heaved both the frater and the ice lizard onto the surface. The creature whipped about and sank its teeth into Miklos’s forearm. The warbrand cursed, but didn’t let go.

  Katalinka had her swords out, the black demon blades glinting, and she swung at the creature’s head when Miklos pulled free. The first of her blows glanced off with nothing more than a few ice chips flying free. She pushed her sowen into the blades.

  The second blow was more effective, and bit deeply into the lizard’s back. The creature bucked like something possessed. It released its jaws from Miklos’s arm, its legs from Bartal, and turned around to attack Katalinka.

  She crouched knee-deep in the snow and waited for its leap. When it sprang at her, she thrust out one of her swords and impaled it. The other blade swung around and cut it in two as it drove her back. She shook it loose and regained her balance. The ice lizard lay hissing and flailing as it died.

  Someone shouted in alarm. Another lizard scrambled up the pathway through the woods from the direction of the post road. A young warbrand faced it, unarmed except for a blacksmith hammer. Katalinka sprang across the snow in an attempt to reach the girl’s side, but quickly realized she wouldn’t arrive in time.

  Miklos clenched his hands into fists and roared a challenge. Sowen blasted outward and struck the ice lizard just before it sprang at the girl. It stumbled and went head down in the snow. The young warbrand struck it on the top of its skull with the hammer before it could rise, and the lizard hissed in pain. Katalinka arrived before it could get up and renew the fight, and this time knew how to wield her swords and sowen in conjunction. She cut the creature to pieces.

  More blobs of light drifted from the sky. One landed on the snow nearby. It was only the size of an apple when it struck, but very quickly began to swell like a sickly green blister.

  “Stop it before it bursts!” Miklos called to her. He sprinted toward the shed, presumably to fetch his sword.

  Katalinka charged at the swelling green bubble and shoved one of her swords through it, then leaped back, coughing, when a cloud of stinging gas burst through the hole. Something slithered out—one of the lizards, only half-formed—and she hacked it in two.

  The heavens rumbled with more of the strange, slow-moving lightning, and with it came more of the drifting green lights. Were all of them turning into ice lizards when they fell? She had to assume they were, and while they might land haphazardly, some miles or more from the temple grounds, creatures would surely find their way here eventually.

  Another low, dull rumbling sound came from the east, farther down the canyon toward Manet Tuzzia. A huge mass of clouds hung in the sky in that direction, black with a building storm in the center, and more flashes of green around the edges. A cold wind was driving down from the heights, yet the cloud seemed to be moving against it, climbing the canyon toward the sword temple.

  Here came another ice lizard, half-sliding, half-swimming through the snow on the hillside to her left. This was opposed by a pair of lesser warriors from the firewalker and bladedancer temples. She let them fight the thing while she probed the approaching cloud mass with her sowen.

  What she found was disturbing. There was a void in the middle that she couldn’t penetrate. Enveloping that void was a mass of cold air, more bitterly chill than anything she’d ever felt.

  Miklos emerged from the blacksmith shed armed with his two-handed sword. The tip glowed, and the heat it radiated made the air shimmer. Kozmer followed, and the elder was already shaping his sowen for a fight.

  “No!” she ordered, waving her swords. “I’ll handle this. You stay with the weapons—they need to be ready for the dragon. Miklos, keep your sword hot. And tear down that damn wall. We need to get in and out of the shed unimpeded. Do you understand me?”

  “But Katalinka—” Kozmer began, looking around him with eyes wide open, before Katalinka cut him off with a gesture from one of her swords.

  She knew what he was thinking as he took in the scene. The young bladedancer and warbrand pair had not yet finished off the ice lizard, yet already two more of the creatures came slithering down from the direction of the mill. There were shouts from up the hill, near the shrine, which told her that those still working up above had also fallen under attack.

  “Forget the lizards. I’ll deal with them. The dragon is coming. Look!”

  Kozmer turned his gaze skyward, and she felt him send probing tendrils into the sky. He would shortly discover what she’d already learned for herself, and she had no time to wait for it. There were lizards breaking into the clearing from all sides, and while some of the younger members of the temples were putting up a good fight, they lacked leadership and weren’t facing the enemy as a coherent, unified front.

  Katalinka took charge, shouting for a pair of young firewalkers to join a group of four bladedancer fraters and students who blocked a stream of lizards climbing the pathway from the direction of the post road. She sent the warbrand with the hammer to fetch a sword, then turned to attack a pair of lizards that exploded from the snow to her left. They leaped at her with outstretched arms, ready to wrestle her into the snow and finish her off.

  By the time she’d dispatched them, she looked up to see Miklos emerging from the shed. People inside were knocking down the walls as she’d instructed, but she wasn’t pleased to see him armed.

  “Forget these lizards,” she told him. “Your sword needs to stay hot. It’s the only way—”

  “Shut up for a moment. I know, I understand. This isn’t my sword.”

  She took a closer look. It was a different weapon, still a falchion, but made for a shorter warrior. It didn’t radiate the same power as Miklos’s master weapon, either. He must have snatched it from the warbrand Katalinka sent to arm herself. That made sense; even with a lesser sword he’d be ten times the warrior as the young woman.

  The small collection of men and women she’d ordered to fight off the onslaught coming up the path had killed a pair of lizards, but in the process two of their own number had suffered gruesome bites on their arms and legs. The exposed wounds turned gray, with ice coating the skin. They staggered through the snow away from the fight, and the remaining temple warriors faltered.

  Katalinka and Miklos waded into the fight. Others cleared out of their way, and together, the sohns quickly dispatched the last of the attackers.

  “I’ve got this,” Miklos said. “Heat your swords.”

  “I’ll heat them with my sowen.”

  “Not enough. They need fire, and you know that already. What’s good for me is good for you, too. Take your swords into the shed and make sure they’re ready. It’s the only way to do that monster any damage.” He said this last part with a glance at the sky. The mass of clouds was nearly upon them. More snow began to fall, thick flakes that swirled about in the gusting wind.

  Katalinka cast a glance up the trail that led through the temple grounds. The sound of fighting carried from above. “What about the mill, the shrine?”

  “There are others—Drazul is leading them. They’ll manage. And if they don’t, there’s nothing you can do about it. The dragon is coming, and if we don’t stop it, nothing else matters.”

  He was right. She’d been caught up in fighting off this preliminary attack and h
adn’t given enough thought to the main battle. There wasn’t a moment to lose, and she left Miklos without a backward glance as more lizards burst out of the snow. She even ignored a pair of the green lights that landed on the clearing and began to expand outward with more of the creatures growing within.

  The other temple warriors had torn down the back wall by the time she reached the shed, leaving only the support beams standing. To further aid rapid ingress and egress, they’d also pulled the door off its hinges and tossed it into the snow. The shed was now open to the elements on two sides, yet in spite of the cold air blowing through, it was nearly as hot inside as before. Someone had set up a second pair of bellows and both were heaving in and out like the lungs of an exhausted beast of burden. With every pump, the coals glowed brighter, and flames licked along the top.

  Swords and spears and arrows jutted out of the coals, making it look like a giant, burning porcupine. Kozmer had returned to his work keeping arrow and spear shafts from catching fire, using his sowen to draw away scorching air from where metal met wood. Katalinka thrust her demon blades into the coals almost all the way to the hilts. They flanked Miklos’s falchion, which dominated the middle of the display in its size and the strength of its auras.

  She was looking through the weapons, anxious to swipe some lesser blades so she could return to the battle, when another low rumble vibrated in her chest. The dragon must have arrived. There was no time to fight ice lizards or to run to the shrine to call the temple warriors together in one final defensive battle. It was too late.

  Even as this despairing thought came to her, her sowen pulsed outward through her surroundings, and the others still working inside the shed glanced her direction as if she’d called to them aloud. She’d done it unintentionally. It must be a power granted to her when she was cursed, still lingering in her body.

  Katalinka closed her eyes and reached for her sowen to guide and shape the message. She formed a command and sent it radiating outward.

  Run to the forge! Come together, all of you. Here we will make our stand.

  When she opened her eyes, they were all staring at her, including Kozmer, who had a curious expression on his face. They’d clearly heard her, and she had little doubt that the rest of the warriors spread across the temple had as well.

  “You’ve changed,” Kozmer said.

  “I was called to the fight,” she said grimly. “The abilities won’t leave me until it’s over.”

  “If they ever do. They might be a part of you now.”

  She had no answer for this, and no time to consider it, either. Instead, she grabbed her swords from the fire and hurried back outside. Miklos was leading the fight against a seemingly never-ending onslaught of ice lizards. The creatures were relentless. The only way to stop them was wounding and driving off the dragon, much like how the demons had vanished after Narina defeated their king.

  Other temple warriors were already streaming down the path after hearing her call. Several carried crudely shaped bows. She directed the newcomers toward the shed for arrows and spears.

  Miklos and the small knot of men and women at his side had got the upper hand on the ice lizards, many of which lay dead or dying at their feet. The victory came at a cost. At least one person had died, his body a bloody mess in the snow while others either fought off the remaining lizards or tended the wounds of those who’d suffered less grave injuries.

  The mass of dark clouds drifted overhead, flashing with green lightning, and here it stalled. Katalinka’s sowen couldn’t penetrate it, so she squinted against blasts of cold wind and stinging ice. The lightning lit up the clouds, and she spotted a huge dark shape circling within.

  There was another roar, deeper than any thunder, that vibrated through her chest. The longer it continued, the more it felt like her bones were turning to jelly. Others cowered, dropping weapons and crying out. The rumbling sound had a similar effect on the ice lizards, and they fell down, curling into balls or flipping onto their backs as if paralyzed.

  Katalinka dropped to her knees when her legs would no longer support her. Someone wailed nearby, and another person called for her help, but she was incapable of righting herself, let alone coming to anyone else’s aid.

  No, she thought. Then, stronger: No!

  She rose to her feet and let her sowen expand until it filled the clearing. Miklos was there with her—at least she felt his sowen—and so was Kozmer. Together they joined forces and pushed back the rumbling, crippling sound. People rose to their feet and shook themselves as if waking from a dream. Finally, the sound stopped.

  And then the clouds opened and the dragon appeared.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Narina came to her senses, she found herself lying on her back, half-buried in snow, and a searing pain in her side. She rose to a sitting position, gasping as the pain knifed deeper, and was alarmed to discover that her swords were missing. The last few moments came back to her.

  She’d stabbed the dragon. She’d only glimpsed its head in that brief moment—its jaws and its terrible, baleful eye—but such was the force of her blow against its snout that she knew she’d inflicted a wound it would not soon forget.

  She may not have done any serious harm, but the dragon hadn’t expected any sort of resistance at all, had thought, in fact, to dispense with her using a mob of ice lizards. That she would fight through them and deliver a blow straight to the demigod itself did not seem to have occurred to it, or it wouldn’t have ignored her while it continued building its magical storm. She’d felt a hint of its surprise, pain, and rage when the blade struck home.

  And then it had. . .what, exactly? Flexed somehow, using its wings or its body or maybe just bending its surroundings. The cap of green ice that had covered it burst open, and she went flying. She must have landed here, on the slope of the frozen volcano. Thankfully, the blast had thrown her clear of the green ice that would have otherwise swallowed her.

  The sky was heavy with clouds, and snow fell at a steady pace, but the storm seemed to be moving away from Manet Tuzzia and up the canyon. The backwards movement of the storm already suggested its supernatural origin, but there were also flashes of green lightning along the edge and pulsing lights that fell from the clouds. She probed the mass, but felt only a huge, sucking void at the center. The dragon must be inside, moving against the temple.

  Her plan had worked. She’d enraged the Great Drake and sent it looking for revenge. Because she’d slashed her way through the auras of sky and cloud when she made her leaping flight, it was easy enough for a demigod to follow her trail back to where she’d come from, if it hadn’t already known to begin with.

  But why hadn’t it killed her first, that was the question. The blast had thrown her clear, knocked her unconscious. Why hadn’t it fallen on her and swallowed her whole?

  There was a hiss and a sort of snicking sound, like scale armor sliding into place. Narina felt movement in the auras around her, other creatures coming to life after the violence of the explosion. It was the ice lizards. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of the things by now, and she was injured and unarmed. She kept her head down while she desperately tried to heal herself.

  The pain was the most intense a few inches below her left armpit, and she discovered a folded, bulging piece of bone that made her gasp when she touched it. At least one rib, probably several, were badly broken, and the way she labored for air meant the shattered bone had likely punctured her lung, as well. She forced sowen into the wound, which began to heal almost at once.

  Where were her blades dammit?

  She groped outward with her sowen, calling to them. They glimmered in the snow, bending the surrounding auras. One was a good fifty feet away, which was problematic enough, but the other seemed to have landed on the opposite side of the blown caldera, maybe four or five hundred feet distant. There was no way she could get to either of them without exposing herself.

  There were ice lizards moving all around, and they should have found he
r by now, even half-buried in the snow as she was. Every moment was a greater risk one would sniff her out with its flicking tongue, and then the lot of them would mob her.

  Soon her ribs were feeling better, and she drew breaths of icy air. She crawled along on her hands and knees, and found the going slow, as if she were fighting through pine pitch, not snow and air. It was a strange, unsettling sensation, and she didn’t immediately understand its cause. All she knew was that she could barely inch forward and had to stop and struggle for air, muscles burning, still some distance away from reaching the first of her lost blades.

  She lifted her head above the snow for the first time to take in her surroundings. A lizard glided past, half-crawling, half-slithering in a serpentine motion. It whipped its head toward her, tongue moving out and in, and seemed to look her right in the eyes before continuing on.

  What? Why the devil hadn’t it spotted her? It was only when she tested her more immediate surroundings that she noted the intensity of the distortion her sowen left in the nearby auras. It was as if she’d bent her surroundings and disappeared into a crease.

  Her sowen must have reacted instinctively when the Great Drake blew open its icy shell, and wrapped her in a protective cocoon so deep that she’d effectively vanished from the landscape. The dragon must have searched for her across the ice fields crowning the volcano, not seen her, and decided that she’d either died in the blast or fled for home. Instead of searching more deeply, it had flown off determined to destroy the temple and all of its defenders, whether she was there or not. The same mechanism was now concealing her from the ice lizards scouring the side of the volcano, hunting for her.

  Unfortunately, that was also the cause of the struggle forward, she decided. She’d so effectively warped her surroundings that she was stuck in the very same crease in the auras that was hiding her. Until she burst it, she wasn’t going to get far. At least she was safe while she determined what to do.