Winter Be My Shield (11 page)

A tremor of unease ran through Isidro. ‘How much was Kell relying on you to face the Akharian mages?'

She gave a small, tight smile, but it quickly faded. ‘He's going to have to change his plans … unless he finds those cursed stones and tracks me here.'

The more he heard, the less he liked the situation. If Sierra was so important to Kell's strategy, then he and the king would stop at nothing to get her back, even if it meant losing ground in the short term. The northern lands were all held by Ricalanis and the king would lose no sleep for holdings burned and villages enslaved north of the Mesentreian settlements. They had to get word of this to the Wolf Clan — and yet it was too dangerous now for them to dare show their faces in a village.

‘I'll leave here as soon as I can,' Sierra said. ‘I've put you in enough danger as it is.'

‘You should talk with Cam,' Isidro said. ‘We've been living on the run for a long time now. We might be able to come up with a plan for you.'

They were approaching the tent when the flap swung open and Cam ducked through, settling his coat around his shoulders. As soon as he straightened and saw them, he stopped. ‘There you are, Issey! You were gone so long I was starting to worry.' He turned to Sierra with a frown. ‘He's not strong enough to stand around out here in the cold.'

Isidro could feel Sierra bristle but he spoke before she could reply. ‘The cough got me again, that's all. Sierra waited with me until it passed.'

‘Sierra?' Cam said, raising one eyebrow. ‘I thought you said your name was Kasimi.'

Isidro pulled the crumpled paper out of his belt and handed it back to Cam. ‘It's her. I mean, the story's a load of horseshit, but it's her they're searching for.'

Cam tucked the paper away without looking at it. ‘Now why is that?
I don't see how one woman could be worth a reward of ten thousand crowns; so just who are you,
Sierra
?'

‘Cam —'

‘She can tell me herself. Better yet, we can go inside and she can tell all of us.'

Isidro shook his head. ‘Better to keep this quiet. Trust me, you don't want  —' An odd sound reached his ears and Isidro broke off mid-sentence. It was faint, but he could have sworn he heard the whinny of a horse carried on the wind. Sierra caught her breath in a gasp and Cam raised a hand for silence.

‘Did you hear that?' he said in a breathless whisper. Isidro pointed to their own horses huddled at their tether with their rumps turned into the wind. The lead mare had raised her head to scent the wind and pricked her stubby ears to listen.

Sierra had turned pale. ‘Rasten —'

‘No one could have recognised the stones so quickly,' Isidro said. ‘Anyone who has found us now would have to have followed the others from the village. Cam, is there any chance you could have been recognised?'

Cam grimaced. ‘The local commander was asking a lot of questions. I didn't think he'd come to any conclusions, so I didn't say anything. I didn't want to worry anyone.'

‘Couldn't it just be a trapper?' Sierra asked.

‘Trappers don't bother with horses,' Cam said. He ducked back into the tent and returned with his sword belt, which he buckled over his coat, and then reached for one of the spears standing upright in the snow outside the tent. ‘Both of you go inside — tell Garzen what we heard. I'll go and check it out.'

‘Take Sierra with you,' Isidro said. ‘Cam, she's Kell's second apprentice — she fought her way out of the Mesentreian camp. If there's trouble the two of you are the best ones to face it.'

Cam blinked and then, as the information sunk in, he recoiled. ‘Kell's apprentice? How —' He broke off and shook himself like a dog. ‘No time for that now.' He turned to Sierra. ‘Are you with us?'

 

He didn't trust her. She could tell from the way he kept glancing back. Isidro's calm acceptance of what she was had come as a shock but this wariness and suspicion was something familiar and Sierra felt herself
bristling in response. By the Black Sun, if the Mesentreians had found their camp, they were all in danger and yet Cammarian was watching her like an enemy. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her — was it a frightened herder-girl in borrowed clothes or a demon in the flesh, trailing destruction and despair in her path?

With the spear held low, Cam moved in near silence over the snow, any small sounds he made covered by the moaning wind. To her surprise Sierra found she slipped easily into the stalk she'd learned as a child during the long hours she'd spent watching over the goat herd, with nothing to break the boredom but practise with her leather sling and a handful of stones. She knew it was irrational, but she would have given anything to have her old sling again. The only weapon she had now was her power and if she was forced to use that it would be bloody.
Black Sun please let it be a false alarm. I don't want to kill again.

Cam gave her a sidelong glance and she steeled herself to meet his gaze. ‘How do we do this?' Cam murmured.

‘I'm not much of a warrior, but I can watch your back,' she whispered. ‘If there is trouble, it'll be messy, and it'll be bright. If I have to kill someone,
everyone
nearby will know something is going on.'

Cam nodded. ‘Hang back then and let me go in first.'

Sierra mimicked Cam as they crossed the saddle, hunching low to disguise her silhouette until they were concealed behind a thicket of bare twigs. They were some distance from the camp now, moving into a small valley. It was sheltered from sight and sound, but cold air pooled in low ground, and it grew steadily colder as they descended.

Down on the slope below someone had lit a fire. A small cloud of mist had formed and the firelight reflected off the haze of ice crystals hanging in the air. There was a string of horses tethered to a line strung between two trees and a pair of laden sleds on the snow nearby. One man left to guard them sat huddled beside the small fire with a tea-bowl in his hands and a crossbow within easy reach at his side.

Cam was perfectly calm as he surveyed the intruders; Sierra envied him. She was shaking, certain that at any moment the guard would look up and see them.

‘This isn't good,' Cam murmured. ‘If they were travellers, they'd have unsaddled the horses, pitched their tents.'

‘Should we kill him?' Sierra asked.

Cam shook his head. ‘If we do, the others will know they've been spotted —'

A woman's scream pierced the air behind them, a high, thin sound, attenuated by distance and the cold. Sierra started and the man by the fire lifted his head. Cam swore under his breath and turned back in the direction from which they'd come. ‘The camp,' he said. ‘Go!'

Sierra had turned back the way they had come when a soldier lunged out of the gloom to block her path. He was shrouded in a white war-coat and only blue eyes and red cheeks were visible between his cap and his cowl. He feinted high with his short sword, making her reflexively raise an arm in a futile defence before he swung the blade low and thrust at her belly.

Without thinking, Sierra struck him with a lash of power. It leapt from her palm in a thick blue bolt, crackling like flame in dry grass, searing through the metal and down his arm and through his chest. A roar of fire speared through Sierra's right hand and arm, a flash of pain followed by a sumptuous wave of power that washed through her and filled her with calm, golden light.

The soldier gave a grunt of pain as the power struck and then went rigid. Paralysed, caught mid-swing and off balance, he collapsed.

‘Crossbow!' Cam shouted, breaking the spell the power held over her. She turned away, not noticing that as her attention shifted it broke the contact of power that held the warrior immobile.

Cam was facing another man in white, parrying and thrusting with his spear against the Mesentreian's sword while the man beside the fire had snatched up his crossbow and was sighting down the quarrel towards them.

Gathering her power, Sierra threw up a shield to cover them both. It hung in the air like a glowing net of blue light. Kell and Rasten hadn't taught her much about using her power but Rasten had shown her this and drilled her on it until she could respond in an instant. Sorcerers were feared even in the king's own camp and there was always the danger that someone would try to kill her before her powers reached their full strength, even if it meant sacrificing his own life.

The bolt struck the net of power and shattered into splinters that rained, burning, onto the snow.

Distracted by the light, Cam's opponent fumbled a parry and Cam ran him through with the spear. The soldier crumpled, collapsing over
the shaft and dragging it out of Cam's hands. He discarded the weapon and drew his sword instead. ‘Don't let him reload!'

Before Sierra could respond she felt a hand close around her ankle. The man she had felled still had his hand locked around the hilt of his sword and he swung it at her knee.

Sierra threw herself down and the blade missed her by a hair's breadth. She kicked at the man's head and his grip slipped.

Cam hacked at his arm and Sierra scrambled away; a ribbon of fire seared across her forearm and then another across her throat as Cam slashed at the soldier's neck.

At the foot of the slope the third man had his foot in the stirrup of the bow as he hauled the string back. He had a bolt held ready in his teeth and as soon as the string slipped over the notch he slapped it into place on the stock and raised it to take aim again.

Sierra was a dozen paces away when his finger found the trigger. The two men behind her were dying — a furnace burned within her chest to match the line of fire across her neck, their nerves flooding her with sensation and power even as their blood pumped out onto the snow.

Shaking with terror, the crossbowman squeezed the trigger, but Sierra already had a shield in place. The quarrel shattered against it and Sierra's power tore loose from her grasp and swarmed over him, wrapping him in a seething cocoon of light. It bore him to the ground, thrashing and shrieking, while the horses screamed and reared, throwing themselves against the tether until it broke and they bolted into the night.

Sierra tried to choke the power off but it had a will of its own and refused to be called back, struggling against her like a leopard caught in a snare. A heart still beat within that tangled cocoon of light, feeding the beast: it was only once it faltered and stopped that the light died away and her power consented to be tamed.

She found herself standing amid a splattered circle of blood, but in the gloom of night it was black, not red. The corpse, too, was a black and twisted thing — all raw meat and yellow bone — while scraps of clothing flickered and rippled with flame.

Cam grabbed her by the arm and Sierra jumped, loosing a belt of nervous sparks that coursed over her body before earthing themselves in the ground.

‘The camp,' Cam said. ‘Hurry.'

Isidro lifted the tent flap enough to lean inside. ‘Garzen,' he said, beckoning him outside with a jerk of his heads then dropped the flap and went to the other tent. Eloba heard the crunch of snow beneath his boots as he approached and lifted the flap before he reached it.

‘What's going on?'

‘Strangers nearby,' he said. ‘We heard a horse off to the northwest. Cam and Kasimi have gone to check it out.'

‘I'll tell the others,' Eloba said and ducked back inside.

Garzen emerged from the larger tent with Rhia on his heels and Isidro repeated what he had told Eloba. Garzen puffed out his tattooed cheeks at the news. ‘That's all you heard? One horse could just be a deserter.'

‘Or it could be that someone in the village spotted Cam and followed him back here,' Isidro said. Still a little light-headed from coughing, he turned carefully on his heel to scan the countryside around them. Their camp was pitched in a small clearing; the ground before them swept down to the frozen river while the slope above grew steeper up to the wooded crest. To the west there was the scattering of bare birches and snow-laden pines where he had confronted Sierra but to the east was a much thicker stand of trees sheltering the tethered horses. ‘If I were raiding this camp I'd come from the east,' he said. ‘There's cover enough there to let the men spread out to scout, and with the wind blowing from the west, horses and dogs won't catch your scent.' A pair of dogs would serve them well just now, if they'd had the means to feed them.

Eloba, Brekan and Lakua came out to join them, Brekan with his brother's sword and Eloba with her bow and quiver slung over her shoulder. Lakua had a hatchet and twisted her hands nervously around the oiled wooden handle.

‘Laki, you and Rhia should go into the big tent,' Eloba said. ‘There's no sense in all of us milling around like sheep.'

Her face pale, Lakua nodded and slipped past them to duck under the flap.

‘Isidro, you too,' Rhia said, laying a hand on his arm. ‘You have been out in the cold long enough.'

Isidro drew breath to argue, but he gave up before he'd even opened his mouth. He couldn't fight any more — couldn't even defend himself. A few months ago they would have turned to him for leadership but now he was just a distraction.

‘As you wish, then,' Isidro said and lifted the tent flap for Rhia to step inside. The three standing on guard were still watching him with their backs to the western woods. Behind them, Isidro saw a movement at the edge of the trees. The lead mare threw her head up and backed away with a nicker of alarm.

Isidro cursed. ‘They're here,' he said. ‘Get on your guard; they'll break cover any moment.' The three finest warriors in the camp stared at him dumbly. ‘We're under attack!'

Eloba was the first to turn and follow his gaze, just as the warriors broke from the woods, heading for them at a run. With a wordless cry of surprise she nocked an arrow to her bowstring and took aim. Shouting, Garzen and Brekan took up positions to either side of her, each armed with a long-bladed spear but with swords near to hand if the fighting pressed too close. Men were swarming out of the trees; too many to count at a glance. Before Isidro could take stock someone took hold of his arm and dragged him into the tent.

He spun around angrily and found himself face-to-face with Rhia, her hands locked around his good arm. In the past he could have shaken her off, but weeks of illness had robbed him of his strength. He tried to brace against her but Rhia was stronger than she looked and she simply pulled him off balance. ‘Isidro, no! You cannot fight!'

‘Black Sun take you, Rhia! Let me go!'

There was a scuffle and a shout from outside, and the point of a sword stabbed through the thick fur that covered the tent. A sweep of the blade cut a man-sized slit and a soldier shoved himself through.

Lakua screamed and dropped her hatchet. Rhia still clung to Isidro's
arm but her eyes grew wide and her grip lax as she recoiled from the soldier, a Mesentreian man with ash-blond hair and pale blue eyes.

Isidro jerked his arm free of Rhia's grasp and bumped her out of the way with a quick shove from his shoulder. Lakua's hatchet had fallen at his feet and he stooped to snatch it up. The soldier was still only half in the tent, caught between two of the poles, and Isidro stepped around his flailing sword to swing the hatchet at his arm. The blade was sharp but his left arm was weak and clumsy — the hatchet cut through the thick leather and fur of the soldier's coat, carved through the flesh and then turned on the bone. If he'd been able to swing it with his right hand Isidro would have severed the limb. As it was the blade skidded down the bone, carving off a thick tongue of muscle and skin.

The soldier screamed and the sword slipped from his hand. Isidro stepped in front of him and swung the axe again, aiming for the neck, but between his own poor aim and the soldier's flinch as he saw the weapon swing towards him, the blade hit high and struck him in the face, biting deep into his cheek and his nose. With a choking cry, the soldier wrenched himself free of the tent poles and threw himself backwards.

Even dressed in his outer fur Isidro had lost enough bulk that he could slip between the tent poles with ease. He followed the soldier out onto the snow, dropped to his knees at the man's side and sank the axe into his throat.

With a bellow of rage, another figure lunged towards Isidro out of the darkness. The light spilling from the tent flashed bright along metal and Isidro threw himself back while the blade hissed through the air in front of his face. The soldier raised his sword for a second swing and an arrow hit his chest with a meaty thunk.

Isidro was already scrambling back when Eloba grabbed his arm and pulled him the rest of the way into the sheltered spot between the tents. The sleds and the stack of firewood made just enough of a barrier to give her a safe spot from which to shoot. Isidro scrambled to his feet with the bloody hatchet still in his hand and saw shadowy figures coming around from behind, seeking a way across the barrier.

Brekan and Garzen were hard pressed, and step by step the attackers forced them back between the tents. Eloba dropped another with an arrow in the belly, but it made little difference. There might be only
a score of attackers, but that was more than enough. Even half that number could overwhelm them.

‘Rhia! Laki!' Isidro bellowed. ‘Get out here on defence!' They couldn't make it through the doorway — it was too close to the fighting, so instead they lifted the wall of the tent and scrambled out from underneath to snatch up the last of the spears still standing on end in the snow.

Isidro abandoned the hatchet — the handle was too short to be any good here — and instead he found the ice-chisel, a hardened iron tip fixed to a six-foot pole, used to cut through river ice to the flowing water beneath. It was a poor substitute for a spear but it would do.

While men pressed close around Garzen and Brekan, Isidro saw more shadowy figures rush around the back of the tents. As one of the men clambered up onto the woodpile Isidro couched it under his arm and rammed the blade into the soldier's chest, angling up beneath his sternum and into his heart. He fell and Isidro nearly lost the weapon as the weight of the attacker's body almost wrenched the shaft from his hands.

Beside him Garzen cried out and Eloba screamed. Isidro could spare only a glance in their direction before turning back to the men trying to breach their makeshift wall, but what he saw burned into his vision. He saw Garzen on his knees doubled over an enemy's hand, with a bloody swordpoint emerging from his back.

Rhia was already moving towards Garzen. ‘Leave him, Rhia!' Isidro barked. ‘Help Brekan!'

‘But —'

‘We'll
all
be dead if we can't keep them off! Take your spear and help Brekan!'

Her face drained of colour but she did as he said and Isidro moved back to take her place on the wall. Lakua was bloodless and trembling, her lips drawn back in a grimace as she jabbed and parried. Isidro risked another glance back to see Garzen crawling towards them into the meagre shelter and then turned back just in time to clumsily parry the sweep of a sword. The attackers were pressing closer — a few more moments and they would be overwhelmed.

A fat blue spark crawled over the iron point of the chisel and the metal began to glow with a nimbus of blue light. Isidro stared and his attacker was startled enough to hesitate. His sword glowed, giving off a faint, mist-like haze and a minute bolt of lightning crackled over the
steel, as fine as a hair and as long as man's arm. It was Black Sun's Fire, a rare phenomenon of the summer storms — Isidro had seen it only once before, and had never heard of it appearing in winter.

The witch-stone on the pommel of the man facing him blazed like a falling star. ‘Witchcraft!' the man spat in Mesentreian and swung at Isidro's head. Isidro ducked back and then lunged forward and jabbed with the chisel just as another bolt arced from the steel to flail in the empty air. As the warrior jerked away from it a figure loomed out of the darkness behind him and the pale blue light flashed over Cam's face.

The point of a sword burst from the soldier's chest, glowing blue and flickering with lightning like a distant summer storm. With a strangled cry, the warrior stiffened and Cam whipped the blade free and slashed at the last man striking the rear of the camp. While the soldier tried to parry Cam's glowing sword Isidro caught him under the ribs with the ice-chisel. As he fell, Cam leapt to the top of the woodpile and down the other side.

‘Garzen's down!' Isidro said. ‘Where's Sierra?'

‘You'll see her,' Cam said, and took Rhia's place beside Brekan.

An eerie blue light was creeping over the slope down to the river, flickering like firelight and growing steadily stronger.

A man at the back of the crowd of attackers shouted a warning, but his cry quickly became a shriek as thick ropes of jagged light wrapped around him and lifted him bodily into the air. He kicked and thrashed and screamed as the writhing lights cut through clothing and armour, biting deep into his flesh. Blood spattered onto the snow.

Sierra stepped into view. She stood at the centre of a storm of power while lightning tore and writhed at the air around her with the roar of a wildfire.

The attack faltered as the screams rang out and then abruptly stopped and the man fell with a sickening thump. The men at the back of the crowd gaped in horror at the demon approaching them. The men facing Cam and Brekan couldn't look away without leaving themselves open — one of them tried it and Cam killed him at once, only to be forced back again as his fellows surged forward with a shout of rage.

All the while Isidro's skin was tingling. Every hair on his body was standing on end and he could feel the energy coursing over his skin, humming like a bell the moment after the ringer strikes.

A few men at the edge of the crowd of attackers turned and ran for the trees just as the hum of power reached a crescendo.

Lightning burst out of the ground at their feet, erupting up from the snow like a forest of glowing spears; each one a strangling vine that wrapped a jagged tendril around the men facing them, bearing them to the ground in a sudden gout of blood. Light swarmed over them all, wrapping each of the men in a shroud of power while he screamed and thrashed, heaving beneath a veil that obscured everything but a fine mist of blood settling over the snow.

Mesmerised by the sight, Isidro couldn't look away until Brekan, gasping for breath, stumbled against him with one hand pressed to a bloody rent in his jacket. Isidro grabbed Brekan's arm with his good hand and tried to steady him as he fell to his knees. When he looked back the light was gone and Sierra stood alone amid a ruin of bodies and bloody snow, her eyes wide and sightless. Pure energy crackled in the air around her, questing strands rising up out of the ground and reaching high overhead so that she stood amid a tempest of light and power that bathed her in a flickering and unearthly glow.

‘Help me!' Rhia cried, her voice breaking the spell. She was kneeling at Garzen's side with his shirt open and her hand buried inside the wound beneath his ribs as she worked to staunch the bleeding. Judging from the trail of blood Garzen had left when he dragged himself back, she was fighting a losing battle. Isidro's makeshift spear fell from his numb fingers and he stumbled back and out of the way as the others swarmed around to help her.

‘I need light!' Rhia shouted, with a sob in her voice. ‘Bring blankets! Someone make a stretcher. As soon as the bleeding slows, we must carry him inside.'

Garzen was conscious, but beneath the tattoos his face was drained of blood and his lips were tinged with blue. ‘Too late for that,' he whispered.

Light blazed over his body and Isidro glanced up, expecting to see Lakua with a lamp, but it was Sierra, her hand cupped around a glowing sphere the size of a child's fist.

‘Demon!' Rhia spat at her. ‘Get away from him! Haven't you taken enough lives for one night?'

Sierra ignored her. ‘I can help you,' she said to Garzen.

Garzen shook his head. ‘You can't, girl, I'm dying.'

‘I know,' Sierra said. ‘I can't change that. But I can take the pain. I can give you peace.'

‘Don't say that!' Rhia said. ‘You will not die! I will not let you!' Blood was welling around her hand and Garzen gave a low moan of pain. There was a sour, acrid stink in the air, the scent of vomit and bile, and Isidro had seen enough of war and butchery to know Sierra was right. The wound had pierced his gut — even if Rhia could halt the bleeding Garzen would still die a slow and painful death as it seeped poison into his body.

Sierra pulled off her gloves and laid her hands on Garzen's bare chest. He gasped at her touch and arched his back with a groan of pain, but then he relaxed and took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Ah … by the Black Sun, it's gone,' he whispered, and laid his head back on the snow as all the tension and fear drained from his weathered face. ‘The Black Sun, she calls to me …'