Fable: Blood of Heroes (18 page)

“This from the girl who threw the Mayor of Grayrock out a window.”

“
Ex
-Mayor,” Glory snapped.

Winter simply grinned and snatched Kas with one hand. She ran towards the gate, sending blasts of cold to extinguish the small fires that had broken out on the ramp. Redcaps surged towards her from both sides. She froze the road ahead and put on a burst of speed, sliding between the two groups and leaving them to scramble on the ice like overturned turtles.

The planks of the ramp shuddered with her footsteps. On the opposite side of the gate, Skye stood silhouetted by smoke and flame. Fire crackled over the exposed skin of her face and hands. Steam rose from her clothes. Any of Yog’s tainted rain that might have fallen on her would have evaporated instantly.

Winter reached deep into memories of her home, of snowdrifts as tall as her parents and icicles that sparkled in the sun like glass stalactites, some so large they stretched from the edge of the roof to the ground in solid, unbroken pillars. Of flowering patterns of frost spread across frozen lakes. Of snowfall so thick, the world around you disappeared. She gathered that cold and flung it directly into the heart of Skye’s fire.

The flames weakened, giving her a better view of the nymph. Skye stumbled, and a heavier cloud of smoke belched forth from her gown.

“Nothing burns like the cold!” Winter shouted gleefully.

“Focus, child,” snapped Kas. “The nymph was chosen for her strength of Will. Her power is bolstered by Yog. Your Will must be stronger!”

“Don’t you worry your little gravel head.” Cold flowed through the swirling tattoos on Winter’s hands. Lines of frost clung to her skin, tracing the veins below. She poured that cold into her assault, sending serpents of ice and snow racing through the air to devour Skye’s fires.

Another batch of redcaps flew over the wall, and the ramp trembled as one charged up to attack her. Winter did her best to ignore them, just as she ignored Shroud’s shout of “Mine!” and the thump that followed as he picked the redcap off with a shot from his bow.

Powerful as Skye might be, she had been pushing herself hard, and her exhaustion gave Winter the edge she needed. She felt the moment her own Will began to overpower the flames. It was like cresting a hill. Everything shifted, and the cold poured faster. She stumbled closer to the gate. “I’ve got her.”

The words emerged from her mouth in puffs of frost.

“Be careful,” said Kas. “Yog’s Riders aren’t so easily conquered.”

“You think this was easy?”

Skye broke off her assault and whirled in a circle. A thick curtain of smoke billowed from her body. The flames continued to die, but Winter’s power could do little to combat the smoke, which crept through the gate to sting her eyes and sear her lungs.

Winter pressed one arm over her nose and mouth. Eyes watering, she forced herself forwards, trying to overwhelm the nymph, to freeze her where she stood. Tears blurred her vision. “What’s she doing?”

“Just because I’m stone doesn’t mean I can see through smoke.”

Winter tried to answer, but the smoke had crawled into her mouth and chest. Each breath was like swallowing embers and ash. Coughing and half-blind, she had no choice. She retreated, hating each step.

Sterling met her at the base of the ramp. Shroud and Glory provided cover, though most of the redcaps had already been driven back by the smoke. Those who hadn’t broken their legs upon landing.

“Drink this,” said Shroud, pressing a potion into her hand. “Smoke inhalation’s a nasty way to die.”

Winter swallowed the potion and nodded gratefully as it cooled and healed the burning in her lungs. “I had her.”

“You fought well,” said Kas.

“We have to fall back.” Sterling pointed to the north. “It sounds like another group has broken through at the dam. We can—”

“It’s time to face the truth, lad,” Kas said firmly. “You might destroy Yog’s foot soldiers and chase her Riders away, but Grayrock is lost. Her storm has soaked the earth. It’s in the wells. The soil. The crops will drink her poison. Anyone who stays will end up like those twisted wrecks.”

“That’s impossible. No poison is that potent.” Shroud paused. “All right, it’s
theoretically
possible, if you have a strong enough toxin. Iocaine, for example. But this isn’t—”

“Behind you, Mr. Shroud.” The doll pointed past Shroud’s left shoulder.

Shroud spun, shooting another arrow in one smooth motion to take out the approaching redcap.

“We could rally the survivors,” said Sterling. “Never underestimate the strength of ordinary men—”

“Or women,” said Glory.

“—or women, fighting to defend their homes.”

“Their homes are on fire,” Shroud pointed out. “Drenched in poison and overrun by redcaps. Those who haven’t been involuntarily conscripted into Yog’s service are fleeing for the hills.”

Winter wondered if Greta and Ben had made it out, or if they had been caught in the storm.

“Turn me over to Yog,” Kas said quietly. “Trade me for the safety of Grayrock’s survivors.”

Sterling shook his head. “A Hero doesn’t surrender his companion into the hands of evil.”

“Besides,” added Glory, “what makes you think Yog would keep her part of the bargain? She doesn’t sound like the upstanding, honourable type.”

“The refugees are vulnerable. If Yog gets the opportunity”—Shroud paused to kill another redcap—“to hunt down and eliminate William Grayrock’s descendants, she’d be a fool not to take it.”

Winter’s body ached. The skin under her nails had a blue tinge, and her hands felt numb and swollen. She clapped them together anyway. “Then we make sure she doesn’t have that opportunity.”

“That’s the spirit,” cheered Sterling. “And how exactly did you mean to do that?”

She stepped into the middle of the street. “Shroud, I’ll need you to cover me. Glory, you and Sterling escort the remaining survivors out of Grayrock and into the hills. You wouldn’t want to abandon any of your constituents, would you? Take Kas with you.”

“I’m staying with you, lass,” Kas insisted. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I mean to spit in Yog’s eye and make her pay for what she did to me.”

“What
is
your plan?” asked Sterling.

“It’s a surprise.” Winter forced a smile and rubbed her hands together. “You didn’t think that little fight at the gate was all I had in me, did you? That was just to get Skye’s attention.”

She climbed up the nearest home that wasn’t on fire. Her fingers struggled to find holds between the bricks. Back home, she used to sneak out to go climbing all the time, but generally not after spending the day running from one fight to another. Once she reached the roof, she raised the stone doll over her head.

“Easy now,” said Kas. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Causing trouble.” Winter grinned and raised her voice. “Hey, Skye! Tell your mistress I’ve got her husband!”

It was like throwing rocks at a hornets’ nest. Redcaps swarmed out of the smoke, converging on the house. She looked around for Shroud, but he had disappeared.

“If it’s trouble you wanted … ,” said Kas.

Winter leaped to the ground and fell, but bounced quickly to her feet and began to run. The hungry, rasping laughter of the redcaps energised her muscles.

Behind her, mocking laughs turned to shouts of pain and anger. She glanced over her shoulder to see a pile of fallen redcaps clawing at one another. She spied the trip wire a moment later. As the redcaps struggled to regain their feet, Shroud calmly stepped into view and put one arrow after another into them. Half of the redcaps charged after him. Shroud gave her a two-fingered salute and vanished.

Winter dodged around a corner, laughing like a little girl playing tag. A small skull flew past her head, chucked by a redcap slingshot. She glanced over her shoulder. “You brought party favours, did you? Well then, let’s get the dancing started!”

She froze the ground ahead of her and spun in a slow circle as she slid along the ice. Cold flowed from her tattoos and into the air as she conjured an ice shield behind her. Normally, she used such shields to protect herself or her friends from attack, but this time she placed it directly on the ground behind her like a wall.

The redcaps hit the icy patch on the road. Their arms windmilled wildly as they tried to stop, then they slid into her ice shield one after the other.

“At wis a helluva dunt!”

“Get aff o’ me, ya bampot!”

The shield eventually cracked and broke from the impacts, but it had accomplished two important goals: It had slowed Winter’s pursuers, and it made her laugh.

A partially transformed townswoman lurched from between two houses. Winter grabbed Kas by the legs and clonked the woman on the head, sending her reeling.

“Sorry about that, Kas.”

“I’d be grateful if you never did that again.”

“But I thought you wanted to be a part of the battle,” Winter teased.

“She’s over here!” The cry came from an ogre head perched atop a bakery. Headstrong must have set her noggins out as sentries. How in blazes had she sneaked into Grayrock? Winter couldn’t imagine Skye launching
her
over the gate in a catapult.

The ogre’s answering bellow was close, maybe one street over. Winter ran faster.

“They’re heading for the dam,” the noggin shouted.

“Big mouth.” Winter could see the dam now, along with the makeshift barricade Shroud had put together to keep anyone else from entering. Planks and poles formed a crude wall, but she could also make out wires vanishing into the darkness and the gleam of blades waiting to spring.

“Look to the left,” said Kas.

Redcaps jeered from the watchtower at the western edge of the dam. Thick ropes trailed down into the street. “That must be where Headstrong got in. They took control of the tower and lowered ropes on both sides of the wall.”

“Why keep launching them over in catapults, then?”

“Probably because the redcaps enjoy it,” guessed Winter.

Winter avoided Shroud’s barricade and began climbing. The bottom of the dam was little more than a hill of broken rock, deposited by years of flooding and digging. When she reached the point where the hill met the true base of the dam, she turned to check her pursuers.

From this height, roughly ten feet up, she could see redcaps and changed townsfolk closing in from all directions. The ogre was lumbering towards her as well, stopping only to collect her extra noggins. A cloud of smoke to the west marked Skye’s position.

She saw no sign of anyone else. The people of Grayrock might not be the brightest or strongest in Albion, but they knew when to run away.

“This is as good a place as any for a last stand, but I don’t see what you’ve gained,” said Kas. “You can’t possibly beat them all.”

“Last stands are for people like Sterling. And I bet you five gold that I can.”

A rock struck the dam to her right. Another hit her shoulder hard enough to bruise. She craned her neck. Freezing the dam below her would slow them down, but if this was to work, she couldn’t afford to waste any more of her strength.

She climbed faster, abandoning caution. Her fingers cramped and her toes protested as she forced them into the narrowest of holds. Twice she slipped, leaving scraped skin and blood on the dam.

An animal skull shattered beside her, and the shards cut her face. Atop the dam, a redcap laughed and loaded another round into a makeshift slingshot. Winter was out of time.

She looked to either side. Orange and white stains down the front of the dam showed where water had seeped through the stones in the past. Many of the leaks had been patched over the years, some better than others. Winter scrambled sideways, hunching her shoulders against another barrage of rocks and bones, until she found a crack where a trickle of water flowed down the dam. There was no discolouration here, suggesting this was a relatively new leak, likely a result of all the digging below.

She pressed a hand over the crack. The water froze, turning to rippled glass.

“What are you doing?”

“Stone is strong.” Winter grinned and sent the cold deeper into the leak. “Ice is stronger.”

Many times she had seen how water would fill the cracks in cobblestone roads, or flow between broken shingles. In the winter, that water would expand into ice, pushing inexorably outward to split wood and rock alike.

She climbed higher and repeated the process at an older leak.

“Watch it!” shouted Kas.

A stone the size of a human head slammed into the dam, and she almost fell. Headstrong had arrived. The ogre was yanking more rocks from the pile below.

“Keep an eye out,” Winter said. “Tell me when to dodge.”

The iceburn was back, worse than before, causing her vision to sparkle like falling snow in the sunlight. She pushed her Will deeper, driving a wedge of ice between blocks too massive for anyone to move on their own.

“On your left.”

Winter swung to the right, avoiding the rock that would have crushed her spine. Her hands and wrists were starting to cramp. She hadn’t climbed like this in years. She dragged herself back and continued her assault on the dam.

Beneath her, the stone wall that had held back an entire lake for so many generations shifted ever so slightly.

New rivulets of water sprayed forth. Redcaps cried out in anger and alarm. Winter risked another look down. Headstrong—or more likely, her noggins—must have realised what was about to happen. She was running as fast as she could. The rest of Yog’s creatures remained. They dodged the arcing spouts of water and continued to hurl whatever they could find towards Winter.

“Did we ever tell you the rest of Beckett’s prediction?” Winter redoubled her efforts. She froze the new leaks, dislodging the blocks further. “I said that Beckett the Seer had predicted the fall of Grayrock. What I forgot to mention was that he implied it would be Heroes who made it happen.”

Her fingers slipped again. She froze her own hand to the rock to keep from falling. The shouts below grew louder. “We can’t save the town. We can’t stop Yog. But I can make sure she doesn’t have an army to send after the survivors.”