The Sentinel Mage (30 page)

Gerit snorted.

“An untrained mage is dangerous,” Cora pointed out. “He could harm someone. Harm himself.”

“
If
he’s a mage.” Petrus’s tone made it clear he didn’t think so. “He’s what? Twenty-four? It would have shown by now.”

“Perhaps,” said Dareus.

Innis scraped her bowl clean.
Or perhaps not.

She slept as Justen alongside the prince. In the morning, while she was tying her bootlaces outside the tent, Dareus wandered casually over. “Have a big breakfast,” he said in a low voice. “I want you to be a bird all day.”

“All day?” Innis glanced across the smoldering campfire at the prince. “But—”

“Find that second group of soldiers. We need to know what we’re up against. And Innis—be careful. Remember what Gerit said: they’re shooting at anything that moves.”

Innis nodded.

She ate a big breakfast, then ducked back into the tent. A brown field mouse sat on her bedroll. It lifted its head and scratched vigorously under its chin. It wasn’t pale enough to be Petrus or gingery enough to be Ebril. Which meant it was Gerit.

Innis stripped quickly and shifted, also taking the form of a mouse. She scurried to the tent flap and peeked out. Dawn flushed the sky. Her ears pricked at rustling sounds behind her. She glanced back. Gerit was dressing in Justen’s clothes.

She slipped outside. Smells assaulted her: the odors of food and horse manure and dozens of different humans.

Innis scampered across to Cora’s tent, taking cover behind tufts of grass. The tent was as large as a palace, looming up beyond the reaches of her vision.

Inside, she shifted into a hawk. Magic flowed through her, tingling. The tent shrank in size around her, becoming no larger than a house. Innis pushed out under the flap and flew up to the tent ridge, where she sat for several minutes watching the bustle of the camp. When she was certain Prince Harkeld had seen her, she spread her wings and swept up into the sky.

She hadn’t been a bird for two weeks. The exhilaration, the pure joy of flying, caught her like an updraft. She circled upwards. Soldiers scurried like ants below her. Her eyes picked out Dareus, Prince Tomas in his forest-green uniform with the officer’s badge on his shoulder, Prince Harkeld and Justen—and then she swung westward, heading for the bluffs and the forest.

T
HE SUN WAS
well above the horizon by the time Innis flew over the first party of men. They wore the trews and jerkins of commoners, but their weapons, their mounts and equipment, were clearly military.

Ahead, in the distance, her hawk’s eyes saw the escarpment that marked the edge of the Masse plateau. The high cliffs shone palely in the sunlight.

Innis flew north for several hours. It was close to noon by the time she found the second party: fourteen men on horseback. Their lack of uniforms didn’t disguise what they were: a disciplined troop of trained men.

She followed them for more than an hour, soaring on the air currents over the forest, careful to stay out of sight of the archers. Finally, the men halted at a creek to water the horses and eat. She glided down to perch on a branch, then shifted into the shape of a forest robin and flitted cautiously through the tree trunks until she was close enough to hear their conversation.

“W
HY DID YOU
send the girl?” Tomas asked Dareus, when they halted for lunch. “Surely the men are stronger fliers. Faster.”

“They are,” Dareus said. “But they can’t hold a shift as long as Innis can.”

Harkeld glanced at the witch, surprised.

“You mean...she’s stronger than them?” Tomas asked.

“Quite significantly so,” Dareus said. “The others can hold a shift for half a day, perhaps a whole day if they’re pressed. Innis...” He shrugged. “We haven’t found her limits yet.”

Harkeld bit into an apple and chewed thoughtfully. The girl didn’t look powerful. She was slender and shy, ordinary. “Her magic is unprecedented?”

“Not unprecedented, just extremely rare. There are strong fire mages, too. Perhaps once in a century. Mages who can set stone alight. Your grandfather was one.”

Harkeld stopped chewing. He rose abruptly to his feet and strode away, pushing through the soldiers and horses that surrounded them. Rage trembled inside him.
We made you
, the witch had been telling him.
You are one of us.

He spat out the mouthful of half-chewed apple. It lay on the ground, glistening in the sunlight.

The witches may have made him, but he wasn’t one of them, would never be one of them. There was no fire inside him, no scales and feathers. He was a human, not a monster.

O
NCE THE SOLDIERS
had mounted and moved off through the trees, Innis glided to the ground and shifted into her own shape. She drank from the creek, thirstily.

Back in the shape of a hawk, she spread her wings and climbed above the treetops, looking north to where the bluffs and forest met the Masse escarpment. To her hawk’s eyes, the towering cliffs seemed very close.

Innis veered south, flying back the way she’d come, uneasy. Within the next day, the men below her would reach the Masse plateau. And in a few more days, the second party would be there too. Twenty-six men. Swordsmen, archers.

It was close to dusk by the time she reached Prince Harkeld and his escort. She circled slowly down. Beneath her soldiers hurried to pitch tents, to build fires, to tend horses. She picked out Cora, with her long plait of hair, Dareus—

Innis shied in the air as another hawk swooped down alongside her. Petrus, his pale breast feathers gleaming in the last rays of sunlight.
Don’t do that!
she told him, as her heart beat far too fast. It came out as a harsh squawk.
You scared me.

Petrus uttered a sound that was suspiciously like a laugh. He veered away from her in a steep dive and then soared upward again, his manner playful.

Ordinarily, Innis would have chased him; today she was far too hungry. She spiraled down.

T
HE WITCH,
I
NNIS,
joined them when she was fully clothed. She pushed her curling black hair back from her face.

“Did you find them?” Dareus asked, handing her a mug.

“Yes.”

Dareus gave the girl a handful of nuts, which she ate while she talked. Harkeld listened in silence, his eyes on her face.

“Captain Ditmer,” Dareus said when she’d finished. “Do you know him, Prince Harkeld?”

“He commands one of my father’s elite squadrons. They’re not ordinary soldiers. They have a reputation for ruthlessness, for brutality.”

Gerit grunted.

“Fourteen men,” Tomas said. “And they’ll reach Masse ahead of us?”

“Yes,” the girl said. “Tomorrow.”

“How far behind them are the others?” Cora asked.

“At a guess, two days.”

“So, within three days, they’ll all be there. Twenty-six of them.”

The girl nodded.

“We’re only taking twenty men up.” Tomas’s brow creased in a frown. “If Ditmer and Anselm join together and attack us at the top of the cliff—”

“We don’t know that’s what they’re planning,” Cora said. “Remember, they don’t know where we are. For all they know, we’re already in Masse. They may head directly for the anchor stone.”

“Yes, but we’re only taking twenty men up—”

“We can take more, if need be,” Dareus said. “But let’s not decide that until we reach the cliffs. By then we should have an idea of their intentions.”

Tomas nodded. He looked at the girl. “Will you fly again and watch them?”

“Innis, or one of the others,” Dareus said. “Don’t worry, prince. They won’t surprise us.”

I
T TOOK ANOTHER
four days to reach the escarpment. The witch, Innis, flew twice more to watch the Osgaardan soldiers. The first time, she reported that Captain Ditmer’s men had gained the desert plateau; the second time, that Ditmer’s men weren’t stopping, but were striking into the heart of Masse, and that Captain Anselm had reached the desert and was following Ditmer’s route.

“They’re not going to attack us on the escarpment,” Tomas said, relief audible in his voice. “If they’d held the top, it would have been almost impossible to get past them.” He turned to Dareus. “How many men should we take up?”

“As few as possible. We need to travel fast.”

“There are twenty-six of them—”

“In two separate parties.” Dareus examined the cliffs thrusting up from the plains, less than a day away, and then turned to the girl. “Can we reach Anselm before he joins with Ditmer?”

She frowned for a moment, as if she was calculating distances in her head, and then nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you certain?” Tomas asked.

“I’ll show you on the map.”

They unrolled the map and crouched over it. The girl pointed, showing them where Ditmer was, where Anselm was. Harkeld stared down at the parchment, measuring the distances, trying to convert those markings in ink into landscapes—the blank section where her finger rested was barren desert, the wriggling line was a river, the drawing of a broken tower was the ruined city of Ner, where the first anchor stone lay.

When the girl stopped speaking, there was silence. Tomas glanced at the witch, Dareus. “Well?”

“We take twenty men,” Dareus said. “That gives us speed and mobility, and we’ll still outnumber each party.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

B
RITTA FLOATED NEAR
the ceiling. It was safe up here, peaceful—

She woke suddenly, squinting against lamplight shining across her face, and found that she was lying in bed, not floating near the ceiling at all. Duke Rikard’s bed, where she was smothered by silk sheets and the scent of him.

The feeling of peace, of safety, vanished abruptly. Memory tried to push into her mind: the duke touching her, his weight on top of her—

No, don’t remember.

The rumble of Duke Rikard’s voice came to her ears. He was in his study. The door was open several inches, lamplight shining through on her face. She heard him speak, heard another familiar voice reply: her father’s.

Hatred stabbed in her chest, brief, fierce.
I hate you, Father.

Britta turned away from the light, away from the sound of voices. She curled up on her side, hugging her arms, and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to float back up to the ceiling, where everything was safe and peaceful.

Her body became light. She began to drift upwards—

The sound of voices pulled her back down. Her father said something, Duke Rikard replied. She heard the rumble of Jaegar’s voice.

Britta opened her eyes again.
Go away.

Her father laughed.

Britta pushed back the sheet and stood unsteadily. The floor dipped and swayed beneath her feet. She held on to the bed, let go and lurched across to the wall. Her legs were boneless. Suddenly she was on her knees. Had she fallen?

Britta leaned her head against the wall. The ceiling seemed very close. She was floating again, drifting a few feet off the floor.

“...Lundegaard.”

“Ours for the taking,” Jaegar said. “They’re fools to allow so many refugees in.”

The open door, the band of lamplight, the voices, were just beyond the reach of Britta’s fingers. If she could just shut the door—

“How many men do we have there now?” her father asked.

“Three squadrons, sire.”

“Then we should be able to move within the month,” Jaegar said.

“Yes.”

“Excellent,” her father said. “Excellent.”

She heard the
clink
of glass against glass, the gurgle of liquid being poured.

“A toast!” Duke Rikard said, more loudly. “To the invasion of Lundegaard!”