Springwar (63 page)

She wondered how Avall had resisted this. How he’d been able to swing the thing time after time and still be willing to put it down.

And though instinct warned her that something wasn’t right, that she was in danger of abandoning rationality in favor of this odd new giddy high, she ignored it, overwhelmed as she was by all the emotions that had tormented her since the war began.

… since her affair with Kraxxi had begun
.

Since Strynn had been raped, in fact.

That
jarred her.

Strynn …

She’d left Strynn alone with Eddyn. And guards were now approaching …

She ran.

But though she pounded along as fast as she ever had in her life, she still had time to study everything with the same considered languor as before. And among those things were doors: which ones were locked, and which not. And every door that was locked, she smote with the sword, not bothering to see if anyone emerged.

Behind her, she was aware of flame roaring up to the skies—and finally, of the men in the courtyard noticing her handiwork and starting to react. A few were running toward her, at least as many away.

It didn’t matter. The latter were cowards, the former—she could use a good fight, to burn off some of this energy.

And to bring bodies closer to fuel what must be done, a more rational part of her appended.

A casual sweep of steel smashed another lock, and the follow-through took down a pillar of the arcade.

Stones rolled into the courtyard.

And then she was back at Eddyn’s cell.

She skidded to a halt, breath coming fast, heart pounding, as every sound within a shot echoed in her ears.

And every smell and image.

Strynn loomed large as a giant, where she prodded expertly at one final lock—the one that prisoned Eddyn’s left arm. He was conscious, too—enough to open his eyes and moan.

Strynn’s eyes were huge, her mouth tense with frustration.

“Hurry!” Merryn rasped—though it took a day to sound.

Strynn tried to. The picks flashed and clicked, and then the clasp broke free. “Done!” she cried, trying to get a shoulder under Eddyn, while the other hand sought frantically for the gem.

The first soldier was in the arcade now—a young man,
half-armed, and seriously drunk, to judge by what Merryn could smell on his breath. She leapt toward him, sword bright against the sky, as the blade stole flame from the bonfire.

A slash, a flare of lightning—and he collapsed. His fellows slowed. Two turned to run.

Merryn started after them—

Arms reined her back, hands moving expertly to pin her in a wrestling hold she’d learned when she was nine. Fingers pried at the sword. “Merryn! Enough! We have to get out of here.”

She tried to retain the weapon—but it would not be held. Strynn wrenched it away. She whirled as she felt that precious power start to ebb. Saw Strynn’s blazing eyes …

Strynn slapped her—hard. Pain bloomed through her like dye in water.

“Now! While they’re waiting.”

Merryn started to protest, but Strynn tugged at her with all the strength she possessed, and Merryn felt herself dragged inside, where a naked Eddyn lolled in a clumsy slump on the side of the bed.

“Help me!” Strynn gasped.

Merryn blinked, but then instinct took control, and she sat down at Eddyn’s side, while Strynn took the other. Red flashed in Strynn’s hand: the gem and the blood that woke it. Another red ghosted around: the fire.

“There!” A man yelled, impossibly close.

Merryn reached for the sword, but it wasn’t there. And where anger and arrogance had been, fear rushed in, as she realized she was weaponless in a burning building with half a drunken army bearing down upon her.

And then Strynn was grabbing her hand, with Eddyn an awkward, stinking mass between them, and pain bright in her palm.

An armed man appeared in the doorway, grinning. Before he could take another step, however, Strynn’s will reached out and tore into Merryn’s mind, finding the one thing there it needed.

Out!

Away!

Back to Tir-Eron
—though that was a secondary consideration.

Reality wrenched and whirled. And all the wonder of the Overworld was back: the cold, the heat, the pleasure, and the pain. Maybe Eddyn was there, but if so, he was no more linked to them than their clothes might have been.

Behind them, dimly, Merryn sensed a rush of cold air, as their panic sucked all the heat from the men who pursued them, leaving them cold as ice before the fire. One died—she was sufficiently linked to know that.

She recoiled reflexively, and Strynn, who was the only rational mind among them, seized that and used it to bear them home.

Darkness …

… then light again, but the softer light of a moon.

They were back in the War Court—a few strides from where they’d begun.

And Eddyn was with them. Cold as death, but breathing.

Merryn looked at Strynn, who was meeting her gaze with as grim an expression as Merryn had ever seen her bond-mate wear. “This stays with me,” she gritted, shoving the sword into her belt. “You can get a healer, or I can.”

“I’ll go,” Merryn replied meekly.

“Get two.”

Merryn started off at a near run, then froze abruptly, and turned. “I hope Gynn knows what he’s in for. I hope to Eight Avall knows some way to truly master that thing.”

And then she was gone: a pounding of boots in the night.

Strynn watched her go—then took a deep breath, eased Eddyn down to the stones as carefully as she could, and threw her cloak over him. That accomplished, she found an unused water trough and threw up—copiously.

When the healers finally arrived, she was sitting calmly by Eddyn’s side, staring at the increasingly thick flakes of a late-season snow.

She had taken three baths before Avall returned to their suite, just before sunrise.

“Eddyn’s back,” she mumbled.

“I heard,” Avall replied stonily. “Merryn told me. It was a brave thing to do, but also very stupid.”

“Fate and Balance,” Strynn said for no reason. She let her lids slide closed and did not open them until noon the next day, when her escort downriver pounded on the door.

L
ord Commander …?” The voice was tentative, as though the title stuck in the speaker’s throat. Or as though he were deathly afraid, which he well might be, speaking as he was from the door to Lynnz’s suite in this sprawling ruin that passed for a headquarters. Lynnz resisted an urge to give the man cause for that fear. His hand eased to the geen-claw dagger at his belt, just in case. It had sounded like Lord Morrill, one of his half brothers-in-law. Which could be good or not.

Lynnz sighed and glared up from behind the desk at which he’d been studying supply manifests. It was Morrill, indeed—one of the few people given permission to meet with him directly.

The king was indisposed, so rumor said. Too busy to meet with more than a handful in person. Once they took Tir-Eron, which was to say Eron itself,
then
the king would show himself. So the story ran.

Morrill took a step into the room, inclining his head in what was a bow to equals, not that of subject to king. Yet.

“What is it, Morrill?” Lynnz snapped, reaching for a pot of hot cider laced with spirits. The fire popped obligingly, as though to stress his demand.

Morrill—who, like Lynnz, was wed to one of Barrax’s
sisters—always looked grim, but at the moment he seemed less so than usual. “Lord,” he began, folding his arms across his chest, “the weather-witch says that not only has the snow ended, but that it will be warm as true spring by tomorrow morning.”

“He says this, does he?” Lynnz growled. “Then why didn’t he predict this cursed-be snow to start with?”

“That
one is dead,” Morrill observed wryly. “This one seems more competent.”

“Or more eager to please. Or more eager to lie to the enemy and tell him what he wants to hear.”

“This one,” Morrill purred, “was sent by your allies.”

Lynnz could barely suppress his rage. “Allies, indeed! We haven’t heard a word from them since they came slinking into Barrax’s camp with all that talk of secret alliances and such. It’s just my luck I found out—drinking with the king does have its advantages.”

“Lord, I believe the rest of the clan are still under arrest.”

“Not all of them. They can’t be.” Lynnz leaned back in his chair, studying the map before him, letting his gaze drift now and then to the darkened window. As if to taunt him, a few snowflakes drifted down, close enough to the mullioned panes to see.

“That may be the best place for them, though, if you think about it. If things go as they might, we could be fighting in Tir-Eron this time tomorrow. If we were to free them …”

Lynnz glared at him. “Would you trust men who go against their King?”

A brow quirked upward.

Another glare. “I meant open defiance, not necessity of the moment.”

“As you say, lord.” Morrill bowed again, mockingly.

“Thank you for your report,” Lynnz said coldly. “I will see you in the morning.”

“Your lordship intends to attack?”

“As soon as it is light. We dare not give Gynn any more advantage.”

“Get some rest, lord. It appears you need it.”

Lynnz nodded dismissal, and, when Morrill had departed, rose and strode through a door to his left, and thence through another set of doors. These let onto the second-highest parapet of what had once been, someone had told him, a royal summer hold. Before the plague had rendered such luxuries superfluous.

Cold hit him as his boots crunched on snow the sweepers had missed. He shivered and drew his cloak around him as he made his way to the nearest embrasure and gazed out into the Eronese night.

If I could crave one boon of the Gods
, Lynnz thought with a shiver,
it would be to never see snow again
.

Certainly he was seeing enough of it now: It was High Spring—the beginning of the light half of Eron’s year, just past the equinox—and men back in Ixti would be working bare-chested and barefoot, already complaining of the heat.

But here—he was staring not at the lush green foliage that had greeted his victory at South Gorge, but at a late-season snowfall that had begun five days earlier and forced them to take shelter in these heights, instead of pressing on to Tir-Eron.

Not that such a respite was necessarily bad. He’d pushed his army hard—especially since the rout at South Gorge—and Gynn’s soldiers had been forced to retreat north, as Ixti’s army drove them ever closer to their capital and the heart of their realm. They’d fought like madmen, too, but there was an odd lack of cohesion in Eron’s ranks as well, or perhaps a confusion, as though no one were precisely in control.

Still, Gynn had had war thrust upon him; Lynnz and Barrax had had seasons in which to prepare.

But if not for stolen Eronese supplies, he’d be in dire trouble now.

It was full dark, but the moon was bright, shining on ramparts where snow still shelled most horizontal surfaces, for all the blizzard had stopped earlier that day.

Trouble was, that moon also shone on thigh-deep snow in the valley before him. And it shone on what he’d been told
had been another royal castle and was now Priest-Clan’s summer hold, clinging to the heights opposite, which heights were the last barrier between his army and Tir-Eron.

That fastness—roughly four shots away—seemed to glare at him, too, poised as it was on an equal height to this, with but twenty shots of clear land between its back and the gorge itself.

Which was goal enough for one war. Once he’d taken Tir-Eron, he’d stop for a while, consolidate what he’d gained, beef up the sea war. And pick off the Eronese fastnesses as the season permitted.

That was his main advantage. Cold it might be, and the weather miserable, and he and the army nearly two thousand shots from home. But there was no end to them; indeed, sources said, new recruits were being fed into one end of the vast supply line faster than he exhausted them.