Rebel Ice (26 page)

Teulon felt the madness roaring inside him as he cut his way through the Toskald troops to join the hunters, now fanning out onto the ice. He kept in front of them, leading them against the frantic patrol troops, severing heads and hands and limbs. Bolts whistled through the air past him, reaching some of the Toskald before his blades did. Mouths sagged. Bodies jerked, spun, tumbled.

The
CloudWalk,
and every member of HouseClan Jado save one on it, swallowed by brilliant white light as the ship exploded
.

Teulon killed every Toskald in his path.

Fewer screams punctured the air now. The sun poured merciless light over the battlefield, illuminating the faces of the living and dying. The snow turned pink and then red before it froze into a gory slush. Bsak walked from body to body, inspecting, nudging, gnawing.

That final conversation, before he was taken away.

"You cannot declare me ClanKill, Teulon Jado." Shropana appeared serene, even complacent. "You need kin present to do so, and I have just obliterated all of yours."

Teulon was the ClanSon of a shipbuilder. As a student, he had studied and followed the path of Tarek Varena. He had trained as a warrior, as did every foreman, but had vowed never to use a weapon against another living being unless to defend his kin. He had told his HouseClan that there were better paths to be found. He had dedicated his life to making a path of peace.

That path, that life, had ended. He met Shropana's amused gaze, and uttered the three words. Words that meant he would not rest until each and every member of his HouseClan was avenged. Words that made a monster out of an honorable warrior. No foreman since Tarek Varena, who had witnessed the slaughter of most of his kin, had spoken these words. No foreman had ever lost "You no longer have the privilege of choice, slave."

Some of the Toskald survivors tried to retreat back to their ships, but Teulon saw that Navn's men had arrived and taken up positions there, waiting for them. Crossbows twanged, and the sound of bolts hitting flesh peppered the air, while ghosts whispered behind Teulon's eyes.

"foreman male, sold to Trader Ivicis for one thousand credits."

When the last death cry faded, more than two hundred Toskald lay dead in the snow.

"Gift to the Kangal of Skjonn, foreman slave, male, from Trader Ivicis."

Teulon came back to himself slowly. He found he was standing over the headless body of a Toskald officer, sprawled on the ship ramp up which he had tried to run before meeting the Raktar's sword. In his hand was a timed explosive device that had been activated.

"Presentation of prospect nine-two-one."

The Toskald knew what the Iisleg would do to their ships, and preferred to destroy them before they could.

"Do not clean him. We like how the blood and the sweat make his skin gleam."

Teulon knelt to disarm the handheld bomb, and set it aside. He sensed the hunters drawing close, gathering around him. Many were hurt, bleeding, exhausted. All were silent as they watched him stand and face them.

Bsak padded over to sit at Teulon's side.

"He tried to kill us. Look, we are bleeding! Give him to the kvinka."

A
few moments before Teulon had boarded the launch to fly to Shropana's ship and begin the peace negotiations, Teulon's bondmate, Akara, had suddenly flung herself at him and embraced him. It was not unusual for bondmates to show strong emotion at being separated even for short periods of time, but this was different. Akara was sensitive to many things, and for some unknown reason, she had been frightened.

She had, in fact, been terrified.

Standing in the light now, blood dripping from his sword, Teulon again heard the last words Akara would ever say to him. She had whispered them against his skin. She had burned them forever into his soul.

Do not go, my heart. I fear for you.

She had been right to fear.

"It begins now," Teulon told them. "What is done here can never be undone. There is no apology that can be made. No tithe will pay for this. No Toskald will ever forgive us this. They will know we are no longer their slaves."

Teulon knelt beside the body, and used his claws to tear open the man's uniform. With a second swipe of his hand, he did the same to his belly. He buried his hand inside, digging deep, and wrenched out a steaming mound. He lifted the man's intestines up over his head, displaying them for his men, and for the

"Now." He looked at the pale, bloodied faces, saw the reflection of his trophy in their eyes. "We fight, o
r we die."

Resa reached up to touch the smooth mask the blob had formed over her face. Just as Jarn had said, she could see, breathe, and speak through it.

"It will not hurt you," Jarn promised as she tested the depth of the snow with her walking staff. "It grows hard." It had a smell to it, as well, sharp like cold air was to breathe, but Resa was growing used to it. Still, she would rather have covered her face with a wrap. "Must wear?"

"Yes. Cloth falls away when you are bending over someone." Her tone changed. "There will be many,

from the sound of it." The terrible noises, Jarn had told her, were from ships firing at the surface. The healer had little more to say than that as she prepared her medical packs.

Daneeb had arrived after the worst of the noise died away, and had immediately raised strong objections

to Jarn's taking Resa with her to see to the wounded. "At least I know how to put on the charade," the headwoman had argued. "She can barely speak coherently, and you only began talking again last night."

"We both speak fluent Terran, so we can communicate easily," Jarn had said, "and we do not have to

talk to the wounded. Stop your worrying, Daneeb. I will not let anything stray from us again." Resa had not been with the skela long enough to judge, but she wondered at times if the healer deliberately meant to provoke the headwoman. Their conversations were never very quiet, at least, not on Daneeb's side. Jarn always seemed a little odd whenever she spoke about Resa. As if she was angry with Daneeb over her.

Before they had left, the worst argument of all happened. "What about him?" Daneeb jerked her chin toward the unconscious ensleg. "The cats will guard him." Jarn helped Resa into the strange clothing that she said she had to wear to go

with her. Daneeb seized Jarn by the arm and turned her around. "He tried to kill me. I have the right." A blink of the lashes and Jarn had Daneeb pinned against the ice wall, a blade poised at her throat. "Not one hair on his head will be out of place when I return," the healer said. "Not one drop of his blood

will stain your hands. I will have your word on this." Daneeb eyed the blade. "You cannot kill me, Jarn." "I don't have to kill you, Skrie. I only have to hobble you." She moved the blade down, down, leaning

sideways until she slipped it behind Daneeb's knee. "Your word." The headwoman considered this, and nodded slowly.

"No one will take you in," Daneeb said, wiping a drop of blood from the tiny cut Jarn's blade had made in her flesh. "One day you will walk out there and not return. You know this as well as I." She regarded Resa. "Have you nothing to say? Do you wish to follow her into death?"

"I help," Resa said softly. "Jarn need help. So do men."

"So do we all." With a disgusted sound, Daneeb left.

The trek to the place where the ships had fired on the surface took less time than Resa had thought. Jarn hitched three of the jlorra to a pack sled, and had Resa ride on the back of it with her.

"We must be able to transport the wounded," Jarn said, "and leave quickly. The rebels will return for the ships."

At first it confused Resa, to see the dark, looming silhouettes of the ships on the ice, instead of properly in the air, where they belonged. Then she saw what the ships had been firing on, what they had left on the snow.

More men than Resa could recall ever seeing alive lay dead all around them. Hunters, men in bleached furs, and other men in strange garments.

"So it has begun," Jarn said, her voice very low. "Again."

Resa stared at the dead. "So many."

"Yes. Don't release the cats." Jarn tethered the sled to a stake and looked out carefully over the ice field. No one had been left standing, but there were sounds. Groans. Snow shifting. Muttering. "The ones in the white outfurs are rebels. The others are soldiers of windlords." She paused. "The soldiers will likely all be dead."

So many bodies, and only she and Jarn to tend to them? "How do we do this work?"

"Standard triage," Jarn told her before they went to the first Iisleg hunter lying on the ice. "Check for a pulse first. Clear airways; slow bleeding; dress burns. Pack open wounds and exposed bone. Say nothing unless you must."

The hunter, a young man with a ghastly head wound, was already dead. So, too, was the headless body closest to him. Jarn stepped over him to see the third.

This hunter was older, and not as grievously wounded. His outfurs were scorched in several places, and he had a terrible energy burn to the side of his head and neck. But he opened his frost-crusted eyes the moment Jarn touched him.

"Vral," he whispered. "Find me worthy."

Jarn took a syrinpress in a warming sleeve from her pack and infused the man's neck, rendering him unconscious within seconds. "Scan for internal injuries before you dress his burns," she said to Resa in Terran. "Use the sled to carry him over to one of the ships, and put him inside where he can be made warm." She moved on to the next casualty.

Resa hesitated before reaching into her own pack. She couldn't remember being a healer, and for a Fear faded and was replaced by another, more powerful emotion.
I am a healer. Like Jarn. This is my work
.

Resa took the burn medicines and bandages from her pack and went to work on the hunter.

The sun moved over the two healers, shifting the shadows around them. Resa soon discovered that the majority of the men left abandoned on the ice were already dead. The few who had survived were in shock, most suffering from injuries that could not be healed. More than one died as she worked on him.

With so many dead around them, Resa expected the jlorra to be restless, but they merely stood and watched until they were needed to haul men over to the ship Jarn wanted to use as shelter. One man who had been brought to consciousness and needed only a broken arm bound began helping them load the others onto the sled.

"I will take them," the rebel said, and drove the sled for Jarn and Resa on the second trip from the ice to the ship.

Daylight was an hour from fading when they had finished the work. The survivors, sheltered now in the ship, were as comfortable as they could be made. The dead were left where they lay. The hunter who could walk recovered an abandoned skimmer and told Jarn he would go to Iiskar Navn to summon help to transport the men from the ship to the camp.

He hesitated before climbing onto the skimmer, and looked back at Jarn and Resa. "I thank you for finding me worthy, vral."

Poor Hurgot
, Resa thought as she watched the hunter fly away.
You will be busy tonight
. She noticed that Jarn was staring at one of the other nearby ships. "What is wrong?"

Jarn seized her arm. "Run to the sled. Quickly."

"But we cannot leave—" Resa stopped as she saw rebels in bleached outfurs running from the other ship toward them.

"Now, run." Jarn dragged her down the ramp.

They didn't make it to the sled. Rebels surrounded them on all sides and trained their crossbows on them. They moved only to make way for a very tall male accompanied by a scar-faced jlorra covered in blood. This man's face was shielded, but he was far too large to be Iisleg.

"Vral?" the man said to one of the rebels, who nodded. "Take them to the ship."

Chapter Fifteen

"Why did you not kill her when she violated your law?" Teulon asked when the rasakt had finished the convoluted story.

"I had… thought to be merciful," Navn said, almost stammering. "She did save the life of Aktwar, my son. It seemed appropriate to allow her life."

"As it seemed appropriate to allow her into the camp."

"Yes."

"To work among your own women."

"To earn her place here, yes."

"That is not the truth." Teulon rose. "You follow the oldest ways, Navn. Your own son told me how you despise the freedoms given to women in the western tribes. Yet you allow an alien woman into your iiskar? You permit her to contaminate your women with her off-world ways? And when she makes and uses a weapon, an offense for which you would kill any Iisleg female, you spare her?"

"I was confused." Navn's expression turned resentful. "I have never had to deal with ensleg."

"You lie again. You did all of these things because you feared her." Teulon loomed over him. "Was it because you feared that she could not die?"

"No." Navn looked sick as he turned to his wife. "Go, fetch fresh water for the basins." When Sogayi had left the shelter, the headman slumped back in his chair. "You are right. I was afraid of her. Of what she is. She is very like… but it can't be the same woman. The one who was brought here was too badly wounded. It was too long ago."

Teulon paced the wide interior. "How long?"

"Eight seasons. Perhaps nine." The headman covered his eyes with one shaking hand. "
I
have not slept well since the day they brought her back to show me. That one, not even the skela could kill."

The ensleg that would not die had arrived on Akkabarr at the same time Teulon had. "Tell me about her."

Navn composed himself, and tucked his hands in the ends of his sleeves. "We saw the ship go down. The gjenvin went to work the wreck, as always. A League transport vessel, it was. A small one. There were two on board. The male was dead when the skela recovered his body. The female had survived. Some of the skela committed a sacrilege and were put to the ice for it. The gjenvin master told me the Skjæera shot her with a pulse weapon, but that did not kill her."