Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (75 page)

“Trooper! What in the seven hells are you doing here? Your Amazons marched out two
hours ago!” A sergeant wearing the Armorican ship jabbed at me with his finger. “Dereliction!
Guards! Arrest—!”

I grabbed his out-thrust wrist and twisted it until he yelped. “I am Camjiata’s ward,
not an Amazon. Leave me be!”

When I released his wrist, he retreated two steps. A tang of fearful respect charged
his scent. “By the Black Bull! Are you the assassin they say killed twenty men in
the first assault without receiving a scratch?”

I did not care to dignify this with an answer. “There’s a tunnel in the well that
leads out. Best you make haste to block it so no raiders can come through.”

He backed away.

Through the open doors of the half-burned barn, I glimpsed a figure I knew. “Rory!”

I found him doing nurse’s duty among the wounded, moistening faces, offering sips
of water. He embraced me with a snarl of relief but pushed me away at once. “I’m very
busy. I find I quite like tending the wounded, for I detest the hateful racket of
the guns. If you go to the corner, you’ll find some local women sorting through garments
they’ve stripped from the dead.”

The local women were a trio of old dames, one toothless, one deaf, and the third the
very same old woman who had greeted Rory in his cat body as
dominus
. She did not recognize bedraggled me, but her weary eye measured me the same as if
I had been her own niece.

“Gave a man some trouble to you? Are you harmed, girl?”

I wanted to laugh but the sound would not come. “No. No man harmed me.”

I found a dead Amazon’s uniform that fit me well enough with its sturdy wool jacket
and cunningly sewn skirt that could be tied up to different lengths depending on what
a woman needed on the march. The cloth was dirty but unbloodied, by which I assumed
the woman who had worn it had died from a head wound. My cold steel had returned to
a cane. Cupping the locket in my hand, I closed my eyes and breathed down the thread
that bound me to Vai.

He was alive.

The barn really stank, not just with ash and blood and piss but with pain, which has
a tang as hard as a claw. I found Rory holding the hand of an unconscious soldier.
My brother’s sweet smile calmed me, for the groans and whimpers and sobs rubbed like
thorns against my heart.

I crouched beside him. “I have to go. Are you coming with me?”

“Shh. I like to hold the hands of the ones whose souls are passing over.”

Curious, I rested a hand on the unconscious man’s cheek. When I closed my eyes and
sank my thoughts as into a soundless ocean of smoke, I could first feel and then almost
glimpse the delicately wavering glimmer of brightness that sparked through the man’s
body: the flickering brain, the subsiding heart. The settling darkness of death’s
tide hauled him out to sea. The soldier took in a shallow breath, and then not another.
In the dark ocean of death, a shark glided past to snap up the man’s soul and carry
it to the other side.

Rory released the lifeless hand. “It brings them comfort to know they aren’t alone
when they depart. I love to hunt, Cat, but there’s just something wrong with all this.
It tastes bad.” He closed the dead man’s eyes and arranged the hands atop the chest.
“You wouldn’t rather stay here? There are so many who need aid and comfort.”

“I have to find Drake.”

With a sigh he rose. “I know better than to try to stop any female when she’s determined
to go out on the hunt. Very well.”

“You stay here, Rory. I can see the noise and confusion trouble you.”

“Vai told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Is that what he told you? To keep me out of the fight?”

He laughed, a startling sound amid so much suffering. Yet not one head turned our
way. No one cared if people laughed; it was better than crying. “You don’t know him
well if that’s what you think he would say. He told me once that any person who knows
the stories of hunters who captivate spirit women in the bush knows that a man does
not try to cage or leash a spirit woman, because if he does, she will vanish back
into the bush and nothing he can do will stop her. He asked me to walk beside you,
Cat, as he would do if he were here. Goodness, you’re being very snappish, and I must
say that you stink of blood.”

I shuddered, for there was a chasm in my heart blessedly veiled in darkness, and I
did not want any light to shine down there.

“Calm, Cat. Calm.” He stroked my arm. “I better come with you or you’ll do something
foolish. Probably you already have.”

At the doors children were digging out precious bolts and bullets from the walls and
collecting them in a sack. In the courtyard riders gathered. General Camjiata emerged
from the stone house, writing on a scrap of paper. He handed paper to a messenger
and pen to an aide, then saw me. With a nod he indicated I should accompany him.

“I have to find Drake,” I said as I took the reins of a horse led up by an orderly.

“Cat, you’ll never find him in this chaos. Stick with me, and he’ll turn up. He always
does.”

“I’m not sure he will this time. I think he’s gone rogue.”

He did not answer, for we were already riding out of the estate. I had no grasp of
the time, only that it was now late afternoon and the thrust of the battle had raged
away to the southeast. The land was a sweep of trees, fields, and pasture. No doubt
this bucolic landscape made a restful scene on ordinary days. Now it crawled with
soldiers and was strewn with bodies, discarded weapons, and lost hats and tassels.
Camjiata was right: Alone, I had no chance of finding Drake or Vai among so many tens
of thousands.

Because the general had rolled up the Coalition’s western flank, Lord Marius had fixed
his efforts to the east in an attempt to keep open the Liyonum Road for the Romans
as they marched up from the south. Even without the spyglass, it was easy to tell
from a distance where cold mages were still fighting to kill the general’s guns. Smoke
would billow in clouds that hid whole sections of the field from view, then patches
would clear with startling urgency as artillery and rifles ceased firing for a space.
A wind was really picking up out of the east, and black clouds had piled up as if
about to break down over the city.

Rory had his head down, hands over his ears. The noise just never let up.

“There they go!” said Camjiata, holding the spyglass to his eye.

Tents in the Coalition’s encampment caught fire. A battle by magic chased through
the field, fire rising, then dying, rising and dying and finally rising again, as
in a game being played like cat and mouse. Fire mages were flushing out cold mages
and tracking them down. Was Drake directing them? Was that where he was? A gray sleet
moved in over the city but just before it reached the camp it died in a violent updraft
of air. The encampment began to burn in earnest.

Meanwhile artillery was being shifted to the south and east. We followed it to a ridge,
where the command unit halted. The hillside sloped down to a stream beyond which ran
the Liyonum Road. The general intended to bombard the Romans as they marched in column
along the road, thinking to rescue their allies.

A soot-stained messenger came pounding up. He wore the badge of the Iberian Lion Guard.
“Dispatch from Marshal Aualos, General.” He held up a folded paper.

Camjiata did not lower the spyglass, which was fixed on the burning encampment. Figures
fled in all directions, many of whom surely were not soldiers.
People will die regardless
.

“Read it to me,” he said.

“My lord Keita, we have cut off Lord Marius so he cannot reach the city gates. The
Parisi prince is dead on the field. We have taken thousands prisoner. The citizens
of Lutetia have barricaded the gates to their city. Of cold mages we have captured
twenty-eight alive.”

Twenty-eight cold mages taken prisoner! My icy heart flamed hot. Was Vai among them?

The general lowered the spyglass, handed it to me, and took the wrinkled paper to
scrawl a note on it. “Tell the marshal that the cold mage Andevai Diarisso is to be
sent directly to me.”

“Marshal Aualos said to tell to your ears alone that the particular mage you seek
is not among the prisoners.”

I pressed a hand to my locket. It was still warm.

“I want the marshal to secure the encampment and the city gates. Harry any retreating
Coalition units until they rout. I want Lord Marius captured, or dead if must be.
When the Romans arrive, we will have them surrounded on three sides, with the river
at their back.”

We stood without water or shade for an hour or more as troops ponderously trudged
past our position to meet the approaching Romans. Far to the south the crack and boom
of rifle fire started up; about half an hour later the rumble of cannon woke a mile
or more away. But for the sound, and the departure and arrival of messengers, our
watch on the ridge passed uneventfully. I couldn’t think for the constant noise. Rory
tucked himself into the shade of a tree, where he leaned his head against the trunk
and closed his eyes. Exhausted, I sank down beside him.

The pounding hammer filled every crevice of flesh, and blood, and air, and earth.
I fell as off a cliff into a dream.

Winged as an eru, I flew above an ocean of smoke. All around clamored my brothers
and sisters, each fashioned in their own shape, and all of us killers. Flashes of
light like silvery minnows caught in the
waves as the dying gave up life. My siblings dove into the waters to gulp up each
soul.

The spirits of the dead walked through us, the hunter’s children, from the mortal
world into the spirit world.

I saw everything: A man rides away from his comrades on a desperate errand although
they urge him to turn back. My eru’s sight could not encompass the features by which
a mortal person recognizes another: the flash of sweetness when he really smiled,
the way his eyebrows rose when he was teasing me, the promise of his lips. I saw instead
the fathomless well of a cold mage whose person is the conduit through which weave
the energies that bind the worlds.

Vai
.

Thunder jostled my sight, and I lost track of him. The current of battle swept me
south. Camjiata had deployed his artillery parallel to the road. It pounded into the
Roman columns caught marching at double time, trying to reach their Coalition allies.
Every time the Romans tried to break out they were met with a fierce attack from the
general’s Iberian Lion Guard or his Amazon Corps. The Kena’ani skirmishers with their
white sashes had moved miles down the column to hit the hapless rear guard, which
was cut off from the front by the lumbering baggage train.

So small rats were, seen from the height. Their lives of no moment, not truly. So
much death churns through the world that we look the other way lest we be overwhelmed
by its weight. But I was my sire’s daughter. I had no heart whose conscience burdened
my wings.

Separated from its Coalition allies by the tide of the battle, the Invictus Legion
retreated step-by-bloody-step south, hoping to meet and join up with its brother legions.
However much I had disliked the legate, he held the ranks together under merciless
fire. The remnant hunkered down at last within the walls of a lord’s estate.

Farther south an eagle standard went down amid screams of angry victory shouted by
jubilant Iberians. Pressed by an unrelenting stream of cannonade, the Romans broke
and ran, all but the Ironclad Legion. Under the command of an unflappable young tribune,
it worked its way along the river and, in a meeting of grim embraces, joined up with
the Invictus.

Twilight reached its fingers out of the east as a front of cold air. The
current of the past hauled me into the tower room where I had stalked hours ago.

The first two men have no warning. I am no cold mage, to kill with merely a cut, so
I slice their throats open to bleed them out. Cold steel has a sharpness that tastes
like finest wine. The others realize they are trapped in the room with a monster.
They try to fight, even the old mansa of Two Gourds House tries to draw cold magic
to stop me, so I incapacitate him next. The officer puts up the worst struggle, for
he is a canny and experienced man who does not want to die. The pulse of his ebbing
heart’s blood booms in my ears
.

“Cat! Wake up!” Rory was shaking me. Everything was all blurred and smeary. He embraced
me so tightly I couldn’t move. “Cat, you were having a nightmare.”

Thunder shuddered through the earth. Drops of icy rain spattered onto my forehead.
Instead of blood-soaked clothing, I wore an Amazon’s uniform. Who was I? What had
I become?

Rory pulled me to my feet. “We’re moving out. Look at those clouds! No one wants to
be up on this hill in a storm.”

“The general is asking for you, Maestra,” said a young officer. He ducked at a growl
of thunder, for there really was a storm crashing in on the wings of twilight. “Hurry!
The walls of Lutetia have caught fire.”

The glow of flame lit the north as Camjiata’s retinue moved out. A terrible fear ripped
through me. The whole city would burn. Drake would burn it all, the mage House and
every building inside the city walls, just to show he could do it. Bee was in there,
and not just Bee but tens of thousands of ordinary people going about their lives.

Blessed Tanit protect them! I stared in horror as flames leaped along Lutetia’s walls.

A blizzard of sleet swept in with the night, swift and brutal. Born out of cold magic,
the storm slammed down and, just like that, extinguished the flames.

The sleet icing down over us could not cool my gloating smile. Now Drake would know
who was stronger! Yes, he was a savagely powerful fire mage, but he lacked the wisdom
and discipline that made a mage like Queen Anacaona so formidable.

Fiery Shemesh! I had completely forgotten about the head.