Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (27 page)

“No, but I should have.” A bitter smile touched Prokief’s lips. “Don’t expect to take back your title, Lord McFadden. Donderath’s losing the war. By now, your lands and women either belong to Meroven—or to Lord Pollard.” He coughed up blood.

With a growl, Blaine scooped up the fallen dagger and with one broad movement drew its blade across Prokief’s throat. Prokief, forever silenced, hung limply from the sword.

As the adrenaline of the fight drained away, Blaine came back to himself, realizing that he was breathing hard and that his hands were shaking. The sound of a nearby scuffle jarred him into the present and he jerked back on the sword, letting Prokief’s corpse slump to the ground. Blaine grabbed his sword and ran.

On the other side of the carriage, Taren was still fighting off his opponent. Given that both men held their swords as if it were the first time, it amazed Blaine that they had not already killed each other from sheer blundering.

“A hand here, Mick, if you please!” Taren’s sleeves on both arms bore several fresh slashes tinged with blood. The mage had fared no better. A slice down one cheek oozed blood, and
Taren had managed to get in a good cut to the mage’s right thigh. From the panicked look on his face, Blaine guessed that Ejnar had never had to fight using anything except his magic. Taren’s arms shook with the weight of the sword as he held it in a white-knuckled, two-handed grip.

Blaine raised his sword and gestured for Taren to step back. “I remember you,” Blaine said, stepping in to engage Ejnar’s wild thrust.

“All convicts look alike to me,” Ejnar muttered, doing his best to swing for Blaine’s throat, an off-balance stroke Blaine easily parried.

“Oh, it was you, all right,” Blaine replied grimly. “Prokief turned me over to you right before he threw me in the Hole.”

Ejnar chuckled. “Pity he let you out.”

Blaine’s sword caught Ejnar’s strike, though the force of it sent a jolt down his arm. While their swords were caught against each other, Blaine shoved forward, pushing Ejnar’s arm out from his body, and giving him a clean shot to send Prokief’s dagger straight into Ejnar’s chest.

Blaine heard steel whistle through the air, and abruptly, Ejnar’s head toppled from his body as his corpse collapsed in the opposite direction. Behind Ejnar stood Taren, ashen and wide-eyed, his bloody sword gripped with both hands.

“We couldn’t let him live,” Taren said breathlessly. “What if the magic came back again?”

Blaine nodded. “No, we couldn’t.”

“Prokief?”

Blaine let out a long breath. “He’s dead.”

A mixture of relief, bewilderment, and horror crossed Taren’s face. “Prokief’s dead? Truly?”

“Truly.” Blaine shook himself out of the moment. “Leave the bodies. Bring your sword. We still haven’t found Dawe.”

“Or the other survivors,” Taren put in, gingerly stepping around Ejnar’s corpse.

“I think I know where to look—in both cases.”

Taren followed Blaine to the next and last large barn. This barn held bales of wool sheared from the prison’s sheep, and bundles of cloth woven on the looms that the female prisoners worked in half-day shifts. Blaine and Taren yanked open the doors. Blaine nodded toward the many footprints that had tracked through the thick dust on the floor.

Before he could call out, figures began to step out from where they had hidden. Some clutched farm implements and other crude weapons, but many looked ready to flee.

“You’re safe,” Blaine said, raising his hands and holding them out from his body. “Prokief’s dead. The mages can’t hurt you.”

Men and women began to move out of the shadows and into the light. More and more came, leaving Blaine amazed that they had all found places to hide. From the shuffling he could hear in the loft above, even more of the convicts had taken shelter up there.

“We’ll find a way to get you into town as soon as possible,” Blaine said. “After that… well, we’ll figure something out,” he said. As he spoke, Blaine realized that without Velant, Bay-town and the other small settlements had lost both persecutor and heavy-handed protector. Without Velant’s guards, there was no one to keep order. And without Prokief’s military organization, no mechanism existed to assign colonists to homesteads.

Blaine scanned the crowd. “Is Dawe Killick among you?”

No one answered, and Blaine bit back a curse. He looked around, and saw that Taren and two men in convict garb were trading good-natured punches and backslaps. As the newly
freed convicts milled around the barn, Blaine stepped back outside.

He was quite surprised when Taren joined him. “I thought you found your friends,” Blaine said with a jerk of his head toward the crowd in the building.

“I did. They’re a little shaken up, but otherwise fine.” Taren paused. “But you haven’t found the man you’re looking for.”

Blaine shook his head. “No, and I’d think if he were in one of the open buildings, he’d have come out by now.” Blaine scanned the blacksmith’s forge, a stone building open on one side, and several long sheds that also stood open on one side to shelter oft-used items and firewood. “But there’s one place we haven’t looked yet.” He looked around the barn, and spotted a large coil of rope hanging from a peg on one of the posts. He grabbed it, and headed for the door.

Fearing the worst, Blaine strode across the open yard. He spared a glance toward where Piran had gathered at least a hundred soldiers and was in the midst of accepting their surrender. The looters had also grown more organized, forming a human chain to hand bales, boxes, casks, and jugs from hand to hand from the storage barns to wagons. A flash of light caught Blaine’s eye and he watched as a flaming arrow soared through the air, ripping through the flag that flew above the prison, Donderath’s flag, the banner of the kingdom that had exiled and then abandoned them.

Near the northern edge of the enclosure, close to the latrine trench, was an area with several sunken places in the icy ground. Just the sight of them made Blaine’s stomach clench.

“You think your friend is in there?” Taren asked quietly.

“Yes.” Blaine kicked the snow away from the first of the sunken areas, revealing a square metal door with a large padlock. Taren cleared the snow from another door a few feet away.

“Here, see if one of these fits.” Blaine dug out the handful of keys Verran had stolen from the guards in town, taking half for himself and tossing the others to Taren. Blaine knelt and realized he was holding his breath. He fumbled the lock and blew on his fingers to bring back feeling in the cold. After trying several keys, one turned in the lock, and Blaine dug his fingers under the cold metal and shoved with all his might.

These were the Holes, shafts sunk deep as wells into Edgeland’s frozen ground. They served as Prokief’s greatest threat and, often, as his personal oubliettes. Blaine had barely survived the Holes, but many others had not lived through the experience, dying alone in the freezing darkness. Blaine set his jaw, expecting the worst. If Dawe was down one of these Holes, he had already been there for at least a day.

The darkness of the shaft was impenetrable compared with the permanent twilight above. “Dawe! Dawe Killick! Are you down there?”

Blaine’s heart sank as his voice echoed but no reply came. He stood and walked over to the blacksmith’s forge, taking a thin piece of wood from the stack and dipping it in pitch, then using the smith’s flint and steel to strike a spark to light the torch. Blaine carried the torch back to the Hole and leaned as far in as he dared, holding the torch to see. The shaft was empty.

He heard Taren shove the lid away from another of the Holes. The smell that rose from the shaft was unmistakable. Someone had died at the bottom of the oubliette. Blaine joined Taren and once again held the torch as low as he dared. He recoiled, swallowing hard to keep from retching. The body at the bottom had been down there far longer than Dawe had been absent.

Together, Blaine and Taren headed for the two remaining Holes. Blaine wrested the next door free. The smell that greeted him was of shit and blood.

“Dawe! Dawe Killick!”

“Mick?” The voice that answered was faint and shaky. “By the gods! I must be dead or dreaming.”

“Neither. Can you stand?”

“Doubtful.”

Blaine cursed under his breath. “All right. I’ve got a rope. I’ll make a loop in it and toss it down. Can you manage to get the loop under your arms?”

“Yep.”

As Blaine tied a solid knot in the rope, he looked over toward Taren. “Anyone in there?”

Taren nodded. “Not much better off than your friend, I wager. Once we bring him up, we’ll need to do the same here.”

Blaine tossed the rope down to Dawe, and waited. The rope jerked. “I’m ready,” Dawe rasped.

Together, Blaine and Taren pulled on the rope. Length by length they drew it up from the bottom of the shaft, until Dawe’s head and shoulders appeared. Dawe’s face was purple with bruises, and one eye was swollen shut. His lip was split. But to Blaine’s great relief, his friend had not been whipped and had been thrown into the Hole fully dressed.

Blaine looked around and grabbed a sooty piece of oilcloth from where it was stretched over the blacksmith’s wood to shelter it from the snow. “As soon as we get someone out of the other Hole, we’ll steal you a coat,” he said.

Dawe was shaking with cold, and his swollen lips had a bluish tint, but he managed a semblance of a smile. “I’m not complaining. I thought for sure I was going to die down there.”

Blaine and Taren hauled up the second man from the Hole. Though he had been able to get the rope under his arms, the man looked much worse than Dawe, with several gashes that had the smell of a wound gone bad and a chalky, gray cast to his skin.

“Let’s get them both to shelter and find them coats,” Blaine said. But when Taren went to get under the other man’s shoulder to help him to the barns, it quickly became apparent that it would take both Blaine and Taren together to carry the man to safety.

“Take care of that man first,” Dawe said through chattering teeth. “I’ll be all right for a few more minutes.”

Blaine took the prisoner’s shoulders, while Taren got his feet. Together, they hefted him across the open space and into the closest of the barns. The surviving convicts gathered around them as they entered.

“That’s Ivar!” one of the convicts said in recognition. “Good thing you could get into the Hole. He’s been out there for a couple of days.”

“Go find some clothes,” Blaine said to the convict. “We’ll need two coats—there’s another man who’s waiting for us to come back.” The convict ran for the door and came back a few minutes later with two uniform coats plus shirts and pants.

“We can care for Ivar,” one of the women assured Blaine. “Go get your friend.”

Blaine and Taren went back to where Dawe waited. He was shaking with cold, but he managed a wan smile. “Thought you got lost,” he said.

“Let’s get you inside and into some warmer clothing,” Blaine said.

Dawe eyed the uniform coat and managed a smile. “Can I be a colonel? I’ve always wanted to be a colonel.”

Blaine chuckled despite the situation. “Can’t guarantee the rank, mate. I wager my helper stripped the first corpse he came to.”

After they got Dawe to shelter, Blaine looked around at the convicts, who were now refugees from the burned prison.
“I’m going to go see about arranging for transportation back to Bay-town,” he said. “And if there are coats and blankets to be found, I’ll get them to you.”

He looked to Taren, his accidental deputy. “Stay here. Try to get a good count of how many people we’ve got who can’t make the walk back to Bay-town. I’ll need that for the wagons.” He didn’t say it, but the survivors he and Taren had found were just a fraction of the convicts he had expected to find inside Velant. Unless several hundred could be accounted for from the mines and fields, the death toll from the fire had been terribly high.

Blaine headed out of the barn and found Piran walking his way. “Are the guards accounted for?” Blaine asked.

Piran nodded. “All that didn’t run off. We found several uniforms behind one of the buildings. My bet is that a dozen or so guards chucked their uniforms and changed into convict garb when it became clear Prokief wasn’t going to hold the gate.”

Blaine shrugged. “As long as they don’t give us any trouble, that suits me. They’ll have to learn to live with the other colonists unless they plan to row home.” He paused. “And the rest? Did they surrender?”

“Without a fight. Threw down their weapons and knelt down as pretty as you please.”

“Before they scatter, let’s find out what they know about the war in Donderath. It could be worse than we know. Besides, we need to get some kind of oath from them that they won’t turn on us if a ship from home does happen to turn up.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Piran’s expression was grim, and Blaine was sure his friend guessed the answer.

“No, I don’t. I think we’re totally on our own now.”

“Any sign of Prokief?”

“Dead.” Briefly, Blaine recounted the fight he and Taren had in the carriage barn, and the deaths of Prokief and Ejnar.

Piran gave a low whistle. “So you got to be the one to kill Prokief, huh? Can’t say I’ll mourn him. Saves us the bother of hanging him.”

“Did you find any other warden-mages?”

“Yeah.” Piran’s expression hardened. “We spared the soldiers, but the mages we killed. Can’t chance having the magic come back.”

Blaine looked out over the ruins of the camp. “We’re rid of Prokief, but we’re going to have a whole new set of problems with all these new colonists who’ve got nowhere to go. The guards won’t be harassing us, but they won’t be policing, either.” He met Piran’s gaze. “We’d better figure out how to keep a lid on things with the long dark coming, or we might not be around by the time the sun rises again.”