Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (7 page)

Time to finish it and be done; Savin had other fish to catch. He wove the strands of his power more closely together, thrusting one hand up towards the sky. Physical gestures were unnecessary in working the Song, but it was late and he was bored; it was all too easy to slip back into the habits of childhood.

Viewed through the basin, the clouds above the Inner Sea convulsed, punctuated by the crack and boom of thunder. In his mind’s ear the shrieking wind reached a new pitch and the sea’s heaving grew more violent. Waves smashed themselves into spray, clouding his vision, but he no longer needed to see. He could feel the storm thrumming in every sinew, every muscle. He was one with it, and it was his to command.

Fist clenched, Savin brought his hand down hard.

The shield bowed but still did not tear. He blinked in surprise. How? Alderan was wily, and skilled at making the best use of what gift he had – how else could he have taught his students that, in the right hands, a dagger could turn aside a broadsword? – but in a contest of raw strength the old man should have been outmatched. Worse – the blow he’d just been dealt should have crushed him, yet his weaving remained intact, and it was brightening. Threads of new colour shone through it: vivid emerald, bright gold, gleaming clean and new as if polished.

The Church whelp; it had to be. Somehow that untried boy had reached further, deeper into the Song and turned loose his strength to reinforce the weave beyond anything Alderan could have wrought unaided. Now the shield arched high over the beleaguered ship like a steel breastplate and turned the storm’s force aside. Not stopping it but diverting it, backing the winds around to the east again. Underneath the shield, tiny figures swarmed over sodden decks and out along the straining main yard. Tightly reefed canvas suddenly bellied to the wind, bringing the ship’s head up. In moments she was running before the gale, north and west away from the reefs. The winds he had sent to destroy were instead carrying his old enemy to safety.

What are you doing here, Savin?
Alderan’s voice floated calmly above the roar of the storm.

It’s a pleasure to see you, too
. Savin reached back into his power, twisting thick ropes of air together until the winds screamed.
You have no hold over me, old man. I can come and go as I please
.

More’s the pity
.

Now, now. No need to talk like that – not when we’ve known each other so long. Can’t we be civil?

We passed the point of civility when you killed Aileann
.

Still holding that against me?
Savin clicked his tongue impatiently.
Maybe she’d still be alive if she hadn’t tried to tell me what to do
.

She was your mother!
Alderan snarled. His colours quivered with suppressed emotion, or perhaps the effort of communicating over such a vast distance – Savin didn’t know which and didn’t particularly care. The old resentment burned anew.

Then she should have known better
, he snarled back.

But Alderan was gone, and Savin’s storm was drifting for lack of attention, driven northwards by the hot breath of the desert. Mastering it again would require as much effort as raising it in the first place, and by the time he did so the ship would be well away from the point of summoning and moving faster than he could send the storm after it.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds in the basin as the vessel pulled away, gleaming on the yards and wet rigging like sailors’ fire. The ship was out of his reach now, and his foe with it.

‘
Hjussvoten!
’

He swept the basin off its tripod with the back of his hand. Water sprayed into the air, quickly lost in the rain, and the shallow bowl clanged onto the stones. Before it had stopping spinning he kicked it clear across the tower-top, where it careened off the far parapet with a sound like a cracked bell. Another kick sent the tripod tumbling after it.

Curse him!

Fury boiling through his blood, Savin cast about for something else on which to vent his frustration, but the storm-weathered tower-top was bare.

Curse the crafty old bastard to the stinking pits of hell – and his new apprentice with him!

Lightning arced from horizon to horizon, filling his nostrils with the dry, bitter smell of scorched air. The clouds seethed in response to his rage, and below the castle walls the Kaldsmirgen thrashed itself to pieces on the rocks, hurling spray up over the crumbling merlons. He tasted its salt in the rain, felt its sting in his eyes and howled, and the storm yelled back twice as loud.

At each corner of the tower, squat stone skaldings leered out of the night. Fists clenched, chest heaving, Savin glowered at them. Hideous things. The superstitious Nordmen carved them as both watchers and warnings, and their sly, knowing faces were all over the islands: above every gate, every fireplace, squatting on every gable end. Picking their noses and whispering in each other’s ragged ears. As if life on the Northern Isles wasn’t charmless enough, he had to be surrounded by so much
ugliness
.

The Song surged inside him and he thrust his hand out towards the nearest statue. With a crack like thunder its horned head flew apart in a shower of stone chips. Another crack blew off its wings and a third scattered the rest of it into the sea in shards.

It wasn’t enough, but he felt better for it. Raking his sodden hair back from his face, Savin stalked to the stairs that spiralled down into the keep. The men in the guardroom below glanced up from their dice-cups as he passed but let him be. Just as well, or they’d likely have met the same fate as the skalding. Down the stairs, along the draughty corridor towards his rooms, too furious either to maintain his ward against the cold or feel its lack, despite the chill that prickled his skin with gooseflesh under his wet shirt. He slammed the door behind him and warded it secure, then flung more of the Song at the lamps.

So the Church brat has a gift after all
. A thought stoked up the fire.
And a potent one at that – what a charming surprise that was, eh, Alderan?
Another thought picked logs from the basket at the side of the hearth and hurled them onto the flames one by one, sending gouts of sparks boiling up the chimney.

You wily bastard. Playing your hand as if you held nothing but knaves, and then this!

The fire began to crackle, then to roar.

Heedless of the trail of drips he was leaving across his fine carpets, Savin strode to his bookshelves and hunted along them until he found the broken-spined wreck that had once been a finely gilded
Chronicles of the True Faith: A History of the Founding Wars
by St Saren Amicus, and tossed it onto the table by the sight-glass where it landed with its covers splayed open like the wings of a dead bird.

At the slap of leather on wood somebody gasped, and he looked up. The girl was still in his bed. One of Renngald’s innumerable nieces, or some castle functionary’s plumply pretty daughter; it was so tedious trying to keep track. He hadn’t noticed her amongst the mounded furs but now she was sitting up, staring at him with those mussel-shell-blue eyes. Thick white-gold hair tumbled around her bare shoulders, almost but not quite covering her heavy breasts.

‘My lord?’

She didn’t speak much of the common tongue but knew enough of the important words to please him. He watched her, his fingers tapping absently on the book. Well, it would be one way to vent his frustration. He flicked the cover closed.

‘Up,’ he said.

She kicked off the covers and presented herself on her hands and knees, her back arched and her round white buttocks raised towards him. Such a pretty arse; it made up for her lack of a brain. Not that he kept her for her conversation; she did far more interesting things with her mouth than talk.

Stripping off his sodden shirt – linen; he hadn’t risked silk in the rain – he walked towards the bed. Despite the chill embrace of his wet trousers he was already hardening, his flesh anticipating the girl’s hot cunny.

Peering back at him over her shoulder, she undulated her hips invitingly.

He knelt on the bed behind her, unbuttoning his pants.

‘I told you to shave,’ he said, and shoved himself into her.

She grunted at the abrupt intrusion, but soon caught the rhythm of his movements and pushed back lustily. One hand took her weight whilst she used the other to stimulate herself, the walls of her cunny flexing around him.

Good girl. She was no
najji
, trained from childhood to please, but she’d learned her lessons faster than the others – just as well, as he quickly tired of repeating himself – and had developed something of a knack: her pelvic muscles worked his cock like velvet-gloved hands. Soon the rhythmic pulsing had his balls up tight against his body, the knot deep in his lower belly clenching hard. Yes. He pushed down between her shoulder blades, pressing her chest into the furs, and thrust harder. She mewled prettily, but not too loudly. She’d definitely learned.

He spread his knees, pulled her hips up against him with his free arm and rode her pillowy arse until the knot loosened and he emptied himself in quick, hot spurts. Sitting breathless on his heels, he watched the girl crawl around to take his still-stiff cock into her mouth and suck him clean, murmuring her appreciation.

That bobbing blond head in his lap was proof that even the dullest pupil could be taught, if properly motivated. Those with a bit of ability could even, one day, outstrip their teacher. He grinned. After all, hadn’t he done so himself?

Is that what you want him for, Alderan? To be the good little Guardian that I never was?

The girl’s teeth grazed his flesh and he grunted. ‘Enough.’

Those mussel-shell eyes looked up through bed-tousled hair as she continued to work her lips up and down the length of him. On another day that hot mouth and fluttering tongue might have roused him again, but now his fury was spent the girl had served her purpose.

‘I said enough!’ He slapped her away.

With a yelp she scrambled back to the far side of the bed to hide herself under the furs, watching him warily over the edge like a house-dog in fear of a beating. Knowing it would make her flinch, he snarled at her and laughed when she cringed.

Stupid creature, but what else were pets for?

What is your new pet for, Alderan? Will he fetch for you, walk on his hind legs, sing on command? Careful he doesn’t bite you – even house-dogs have teeth!

A thought dropped into his mind as clean and cold as a drip of snowmelt. His hands stilled on his trouser buttons.
House-dog, or guard dog?

That was no reject from the priesthood he’d met in the inn’s roof garden – not with that sword across his back, and the spread of shoulder beneath his shirt that said he had the muscle to swing it. A Knight, then – or maybe just a novice; the boy was young enough. And with the potential he’d seen in the waters . . .

Oh, the irony was quite delicious. Savin raked his still-wet hair back from his face and thought of the book on his desk, and of a ship on a blue-green sea. The ship was out of reach for now, but all was not lost, not entirely. After all, sometimes an obstacle was just an opportunity in a dirty coat.

Wondering how much that shabby-proud Church youth might know about what had become of Fellbane’s treasure when the battle was done, he started to smile.

Twelve days after the Crainnh welcomed their new chief, they reached the Gathering place. It was a vast, bowl-shaped hollow surrounded by a ridge of black, glassy rock. A crescent-shaped lake lay within, its arms embracing a wide sward. Smoke rose from dozens of cook-fires in the clan camps strewn along the perimeter of the hollow. Corrals of livestock and picketed horses occupied one end of the flat ground by the lake, and at the other stood an open-sided pavilion decked with fluttering ribbons, where the wedding fair would be held. Traders’ pitches chequered the space in between, their wares spread out on blankets. The air smelled of woodsmoke, crushed grass and animal dung, laced with the north wind’s icy bite.

Whilst the womenfolk set about rigging the tents and preparing meals, Drwyn and a dozen hand-picked warriors from his war band went to greet the other chiefs. Ytha accompanied them, dressed in her snow-fox mantle and carrying her whitewood staff.

From the tent doorway, Teia watched them leave. Could she find the time to slip away before they returned? She cast an agonised look around, at the chores awaiting her. Two of Drwyn’s warriors had erected the tent for her, but she still had to furnish it and start cooking.

An idea came to her. She hurried back inside and feverishly spread the ground-skins, unrolling carpets and arranging cushions. Then she changed out of her dress and into elk-hide trews and a thick jerkin, and dug her bow and quiver out of the baggage. Drwyn did not like her to keep them, but she had managed to distract him enough with kisses that he had never got around to taking them from her.

Fingering the beaded stitching around the neck of the quiver, she remembered her father gifting it for her tenth summer. Every Crainnh should know how to hunt, he’d said, then taught her to shoot, and how to care for the bow-stave and the elk-horn nocks. A fierce little pang shot through her and the blue and green beads blurred a bit. Macha willing, she’d be with her family again before too long.