From a High Tower (38 page)

“I look like a durn fool,” he said, voice muffled by the scarf.

“There's no one to see you but me and Kellermann,” Giselle pointed out. “And Kellermann looks even sillier.”

That was because Kellermann was also disguised as Giselle, with another two braids dangling over the cloak he wore. Which was Giselle's. As were the dirndl and smock, and perfume. Rosa had worked the much more difficult spell of
seeming
on him, and even to Rosa's eyes, she had to concentrate on the man she knew was under all that in order to see him. Otherwise it was like looking into a mirror.

“All right, out you go,” she said, and off Cody went. There was a window in the storage above the kitchen he could just barely fit through and climb out of that would let him out onto the snow drifted to the second floor. He trudged down the stairs, and in about half an hour, the witch bit off an exclamation.

“The girl!” she spat. “The little bitch is getting away! What a time for Dieter to be cutting wood!”

“I'll get her, never fear,” the old man rumbled, and got to his feet. A moment later a sort of ripple passed over him, and he seemed to disappear. “She'll never see me coming. Ha.”

“She had better not. She's at full power, and
you
are—” Johann snapped.

The old man interrupted him. “I am your senior in years, wisdom
and
power, boy!” his voice snarled out of the ripple in the air. “And don't you forget it. Or cripple or not, I'll teach you that lesson all over again.”

Then came the hardest part. Waiting. Waiting until they were sure that the old man was too far from their camp to call back. “All right,” Giselle said, finally. “Now, Kellermann.”

He was faster than Cody had been, even with the burden of a dress. It wasn't more than fifteen minutes later that the witch let out a volley of curses that practically scorched the air, and Johann, who had been watching the mirror beside her, echoed her. “It was a trick! It was all a trick! The first one must have been the Bruderschaft hunter.
This
one is her!” The old woman looked wildly about, cursed again, and picked up a staff and a sickle. “Curse men to the darkest hells, why are they never with you when you need them?”

And with that, she scuttled off across the snow like a black spider, leaving Johann alone. She didn't even give Johann a chance to respond.

The mirror she had left beside Johann went dark, no longer controlled by the old woman. Now Johann was limited only to what he could scry . . . and it didn't appear that he knew how.

“My turn,” Giselle whispered.

T
HEY
had been counting on Johann not knowing how to scry, and it seemed that they had been right. Like Rosa, Giselle was wearing several layers of men's clothing and an oversized coat to fit atop all of it, although she did not have anything like Rosa's silver-lined leather “armor.” And, like Fox and Rosa, she was swathed in an over-garment made of white sheets. Fox had not known how to create an “invisibility” spell, and there was no time to experiment.

Unlike the men, since she did not want to be seen, she did not try to get out though the first-floor window of the side of the abbey facing Johann's camp. Instead, she squeezed out the second-floor tower window opposite where Johann still sat; the snow had drifted up to that point and formed a steep slope downward. Making sure her chosen rifle and its little stand were securely fastened to her back, she eased herself belly-down onto the snow and pushed off.

Under other circumstances, the ride would have been exhilarating. It definitely took her breath away, and she and Mother had often made toboggan runs back when she was a child. With her heart racing, she dug in with her toes to slow herself down, and prayed she wouldn't hit anything as she catapulted down the slope, then managed to force her hurtling body into a curve that took her in the direction of Johann's camp.

Guiding herself with her hands, she used the momentum of the slide to get quite some distance closer to where her quarry sat. After she slowed and finally stopped, she kept her head down and well covered by the sheet and slowly slid herself along on her stomach, as she had done when sliding as a child. She didn't want to move too quickly; even at this distance, if Johann looked in this direction, he might notice movement. Every so often she peeked out from under the sheet to see if she could spot Johann, or the
vardo
. She saw the
vardo
first, by the splash of yellow against the white of the snow. Finally, she made out Johann; she knew him by the blue blanket he was wrapped in, a single spot of blue against the yellow and red wagon under the trees. Moving carefully so as not to dislodge her camouflaging garment, she worked her rifle off her back, eased the sheet forward, and slowly worked the rifle out until only the very tip of the barrel might be visible. Then she looked through the thing that made this rifle unique.

It had a telescope sight.

It was the only one in Cody's entire collection that did. Telescopic sights were incredibly rare, and she had been frankly astonished he had one at all when he'd shown her this summer. It was a very fine rifle to begin with, and with the scope on it . . . well, it transcended “fine.” That meant that she could use it at a much greater distance than she usually shot targets. That meant that even if Johann took into consideration that she was an
expert marksman,
he would be under the impression that she would have to get close enough to him that he would see her before she could shoot him. The problem was, it only really worked within a certain range: the maximum range of the rifle itself.

Too far. He's still out of range.
The blue blur in the sight told her that. Keeping her eye on the sight, she inched forward, slowly, moving carefully to minimize the chance that she would be spotted.

It seemed to take forever, and the cold seeped into her, despite all the layers between her and the snow.
Don't start shivering or you won't be able to stop,
she reminded herself.
And breathe slowly. You don't want a bit of foggy breath to escape and give you away. Let it all get caught by your scarf and the sheet.

Her joints ached with the cold by the time she got into place. She set the little stand up and propped the rifle barrel on it; at least now she could concentrate on her magic and her aim. Then she closed her eyes, gathered up a little, little bit of Air Magic, and used it to seek out Fox's raven.

?
it replied.

Yes, now,
she told it.

From the forest behind where Johann sat, a black form exploded skyward, shouting out exactly four raucous alarm calls as it sped away from the
vardo
as fast as it could flap its wings.

The sound rang out across the quiet valley, sending other birds all across the valley into the sky, sounding out their own calls of alarm. In the scope, Johann merely looked annoyed.

Good, he must think something else scared the birds.

But that had been the signal for the others to stop leading their targets away and go on the attack. Hopefully, they had already chosen better ground to fight on than six feet of snow with ice on top of it.

Then, it started, and even though she was prepared for it, it still made her jump and her heart start to race uncontrollably. The noises of conflict erupted from all over the valley; the echoes made it impossible to tell how many fights there were, or where, exactly, they were happening. Male and female shouting, then one shout turning from a yell into a bestial roar. Her skin was crawling, and she clenched her teeth so hard her face ached.

Concentrate,
Giselle reminded herself, and began to work her magic. She needed to create that tunnel of air . . . but she needed it to
stop
about a foot or so from him, so he wouldn't detect it. Yet.

And I'm using my magic to kill someone. No. Not just kill him. Murder him in cold blood. . . .
She felt ice in the pit of her stomach, and not from the snow or the frigid air.

How would the Great Elementals feel about that? They had warned her against using her lesser allies to harm on her behalf. But what about using the magic itself? And not in self-defense, either. That was something Rosa apparently had never done; in every story she had told about destroying something, it had either pretty much been in a purely physical manner, or she had broken the renegade's magic so that his own Elementals turned on him. This, well . . .
I can't do this without magic.

She could try, but she did not
dare
take the chance that this would fail. And to be certain, she had to use magic. She hadn't mentioned this to the others, or they might have tried to talk her out of it.

I couldn't let them do that.
She watched Johann through the scope, she felt her insides twisting up with conflict.
I'm the only one that has a chance of pulling this off. And Johann
must
die, or we will find ourselves facing the Frost Giant, the Breath of the Ice Wurm, or both.
She had no doubt that Johann was conserving his magic and his strength, manipulating his parents and his brother to expend theirs on his behalf. He was the mastermind here. She had watched him prod and twist them with his words, keeping them all at each others' throats . . . but except for Dieter, never really at
his.
And the father had Dieter firmly in check. He flattered his father and mother obliquely, yet with challenge, making them prove themselves by expending themselves over and over while he sat in his chair like a spider in a web, waiting, waiting. She reckoned that if he needed to, he could continue those two terrible pieces of magic all by himself.

Is he even still a cripple?
She could not be sure. It certainly suited him to be thought one right now. But he was an Air Master, so . . . it was possible he was no longer as handicapped as he once had been. Air was not noted for being able to heal, but . . .

Who knows what he has been able to coerce out of the Elementals he has in his thrall?

She was probably going to get only one chance for this shot. When she touched him with her magic, he
would
feel it. He had to be suitably distracted at that moment, so that he would not react immediately.

He was not distracted enough yet. He had expected the sounds of conflict; in fact, he was smiling a little. She realized in that moment that he
did not care
if one or more of his family fell, so long as there was at least one left. So long as
she
ended up in his hands. And the best person to take her was probably his mother. His mother was a witch, and he was probably counting on the fact that there was not a lot, magically, that even an Air
Master
could do against the knowledge and stolen powers of a witch. Witches were too unpredictable. There was no way of knowing what they had stolen, what they had learned from old books of spells, what they managed to get from pacts with Elementals or . . . other things.

It's murder him, or he murders us.
She tried to rationalize it, and . . . then she realized what she was doing. There was no way of escaping what she was about to do.

I cannot rationalize it. So be it. To save my friends, I will murder. With my powers. In cold blood. And I will accept whatever comes of that.

A great calm settled over her. Her hands steadied. Her breathing steadied. And that was when Rosa's coach gun roared out over the valley.

That
startled him. His head jerked in that direction. In that instant, she thrust the tube of air forward, touched it to his temple, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle butt snapped into her shoulder. In the scope, a bright red spot blossomed at Johann's temple. And he toppled forward, out of the chair, to lie motionless in the snow.

A scream rent the air from above, and Giselle threw back the sheet and looked up to see the Thunderbird plunging toward her. She watched it come, feeling . . . still calm.
So be it—
she thought.

And then its talons skimmed a good foot above her head, and she heard a screech behind her as it hit something, and there was thunder all around her as it beat its wings to gain the sky again.

Instantly she rolled over, to see the great Elemental thundering upward with something in its talons. Some
one.
Someone screaming.

Johann's mother. The witch. The Thunderbird had caged her with its talons, holding her fast as the sickle and staff dropped from her hands to land in the snow.

The witch writhed and shrieked as the Thunderbird carried her higher and higher, until it was so high that her voice faded to nothing in the distance.

Then it let go.

The witch's screaming didn't end until she hit the snow with the same
crack
as a rifle bullet, but much louder.

Nothing could have survived that fall.

Stunned, Giselle stared, unable to move, until she realized that Fox was standing motionless beside her. How had he come up beside her without her noticing? She looked over at him and met his solemn gaze.

“Strictly speaking,” he said, in a conversational tone, “It was not the Thunderbird that killed her, it was the fall. And strictly speaking, it was not your magic that killed the Air Master, it was the bullet.”

“Oh,” she replied. And that was all she could manage, until he took her by the elbow.

“I think we should make sure of our friends,” he said.

Rosa's fight with the
berserker
had gone as she had coolly planned; Giselle read the signs in the snow and the grass when they reached her. She had ambushed him in an area of forest floor scrubbed bare by the blizzard wind. She had goaded him into shape-shifting by taunting him and staying just out of his reach. Then, once he had shifted, she had unloaded both barrels of her coach gun into him—one barrel holding a silver slug, the other silver shot. It had been a short fight. They found her calmly waiting for them, sitting on a stump, with the lacerated remains of the man-bear lying in a splatter of bloody snow at the edge of the cleared spot.

Cody they found slumped over his knees, panting heavily, while the body of Johann's father lay burning a few feet away. When he looked up at them, they could all see he'd taken a battering. One eye was swelling shut, his lip was split, and his nose was broken and bleeding.

“Mighty glad t'see y'all,” he said, thickly. “Reckon I need a little he'p getting back.”

“What happened?” Giselle gasped, and with Fox, ran to help him up.