Winter Be My Shield (43 page)

‘Sirri, wait!' Cam grabbed for her arm and pulled her back. ‘Can you do this? If you couldn't face Rasten …'

‘Even Rasten wouldn't face me in the middle of a battle,' Sierra shouted back. ‘You worry about the soldiers. Leave the mages to me.' She felt something stir at the end of the aisle, a prickle of energy that skittered along the edge of her senses. She gathered up her power, now too great to hold in. It covered her in a writhing, flashing veil of lights. When she stepped up to the shield wall again this time they parted to let her through.

A trio of men stood at the far end, heads together and conversing. As she stepped out of the ranks their heads snapped up and as one they cast shields around themselves. She could tell at once that it was a more complex structure than the one that had failed to protect the mage she had killed. There was a lot of power held between them and they felt …
different.

The only other mages she had had any contact with were Kell and Rasten and their power was tainted by the method they used to raise it. Their energy always felt greasy and unclean but this was as hot and fierce as flame and it felt somehow cleaner. It didn't set her nerves on edge or make her skin crawl the way Kell and his rituals did.

There was a sudden hum in her head and Sierra felt Rasten's awareness settle around her. For a moment her vision was doubled with a view of a dark chamber hung all around with tapestries and hangings, but then he closed his eyes to spare her the distraction.
What
are
you up to, Little Crow?

Akharian mages
, she told him.
What do you know about them?

Battle-Mages or civilians
? he said.

This
is
a battle, so I'm guessing the former. I've killed one but there are three more I can see here. Is there anything I should know?

She felt rather than heard him chuckle.
Only that no mage in his right mind would chose to face a Sympath on a battlefield. They don't know what you are, Little Crow. This is going to be fun.

People were still dying all around. The battle raged on in the other aisles and at the edges of the village as well. This was the only place spared the carnage. Sierra was sure now that these three were the only other mages the Akharians had here. Everywhere else the archers and the sling-throwers were hard at work. All the arrows and stones, the blows and cuts had all run together and melded with the golden hum of power to fill her body with fire. It burned within her in a sensation too harsh to be called pleasurable but wasn't exactly painful, either. It made her want to climb out of her skin, to leave the husk behind and become a being of pure energy.

Then the mages struck. Acting as one they sent a spike of power against her shield. It actually hurt and that surprised her. She felt it as a line of fire across her body, a searing heat, quickly quenched as her power rushed in to shore up her shields. Her power surged with a fierce heat of its own. Between their spear and her defence she could see the struggle in the air between them as the power stained the night sky with a vivid glow, rippling and pulsing like the northern lights.

The power was fighting and thrashing against the controls she placed on it. She could feel it slipping away, like water pouring between her fingers.

Flames were licking along the edge of the buildings to either side of her and water from melting ice dripped and pattered from the eaves. The packed snow beneath her feet shifted, reminding her of the tipping of the ice on the river. All around her little jets of steam erupted from the ground. Elsewhere, wicked spears of ice pierced through the snow, glistening in the firelight.

Her power was fighting to break free and Sierra could feel her control slipping. She felt it tearing at her skin from the inside, fighting like a wild beast caught in a net. The Akharian mages were increasing their attack but she could do nothing to respond, not without setting all this power loose.
Help me
! she cried to Rasten.

I can't, Little Crow. The beast is out of its cage now and you won't be able to coax it back in until it's sated. If you want those who call themselves your allies to survive, you had best tell them to flee now, before it's too late.

‘Cam!' she screamed, her voice rising like a bird's shriek over the crackling of power and flame.

He pushed his way towards her, battling through the maelstrom of power like a man forcing his way through a storm.

‘Cam, you have to sound the retreat!' Sierra said. ‘I … I don't think I can hold it any longer.'

‘Sirri —'

‘Just do it, Cam!'

‘I can't! If we turn tail and run, they'll slaughter us! We're only barely holding our own as it is.'

‘If you stay here you'll all die!'

You need to make a barricade
, Rasten said.

How?

Pull the houses down on top of them.

Sierra went cold at the thought. The attackers would be trapped under the rubble — injured, not dead, but unable to flee. They would slowly die in a rising storm of power. That spike of power would take her further than she'd ever been before. There was no telling what the consequences would be.

It won't help. My people will still die.

You will have to shield to keep the worst of it off them. You should be able to hold it for a few minutes. If they're quick they'll be able to get away. Most of them will, anyway. It's the only choice you have if you want them to live.

And why should I trust you? It would suit your purpose if they all died and left me alone.

Perhaps
, Rasten said.
But I'm trying to show you that you can trust me and that's not going to happen if I trick you into killing them. These allies of yours are an annoyance, but the way they're going they'll get themselves killed soon enough, and without any help from me.

He was right about one thing. She had no other choice. ‘Alright,' she said to Cam. ‘Get the archers down off the roofs and tell the men to be ready to run. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to give them. Tell the women and children to flee as well.'

He hesitated for just a moment and then nodded. ‘It'll take a few moments for the orders to reach everyone. I'll tell you when they're ready.'

Sierra nodded and turned her attention back to the mages as they renewed their attack against her shields. They worried her less than the power she was struggling to contain, which clawed and fought and wrenched at her.

If you were a mage like them you would be growing weaker by now, not stronger
, Rasten murmured to her.
They're beginning to realise they've strolled into an Akharian mage's worst nightmare.

Behind her, Cam shouted that the men were ready. Sierra squeezed her eyes shut and sent a silent prayer to the Bright Sun, begging forgiveness for what she was about to do.

Then she loosed the bonds on her power and unleashed all her pent-up fury on the houses strewn along this side of the village.

For a moment there was peace and the sort of relief one felt upon setting down a burden. Sierra felt hands of pure energy take hold of each of those buildings, sturdy constructions of wood and stone and iron, built to last a hundred years or more of the harsh northern winter. Under those insubstantial hands they cracked open like eggs. Setting it loose eased the pain of holding all that power in and she breathed a sigh of release as the wood splintered and tore and the houses toppled down into the aisles, crushing the attackers below.

Your shield, Sirri, get your shield up!
Rasten barked at her and she had just enough wit and will left to respond before the great tide of power hit her and lifted her up beyond the reach of any care for the physical world. For a moment she felt as though she was dying as the sensation
of hundreds of souls with broken bones, twisted limbs and vital organs damaged beyond repair all washed over her. Then in the next instant she was flying as the world around her erupted into an inferno of flame and destruction, a beautiful, terrible vision of light and power that boiled away the ice and snow and consumed everything else that remained, blazing like the birth of a new sun.

And then all that Sierra remembered was the golden song of the power echoing through the night.

Cam signalled the men to slow as the Akharian camp loomed ahead of them. It was surrounded by a ditch and wall dug from snow and topped by a palisade of wooden stakes. Beyond it there was no movement in the camp and no sound other than the distant crackle of a fire, the gleam of which he could see over the wall.

‘Halt,' Cam ordered. ‘I want some volunteers to skirt around the outside and see if there is anything to be seen. But for the love of life stay beyond bow-shot of that wall. If you see any tracks or signs of life report back at once.'

A few of the men and women had whites. They'd had foresight enough to tuck them inside their coats in case they were needed. The darker browns and greys of worn and smoke-cured leather which had camouflaged them in the village made them targets on the barren snow.

‘The rest of you form up in a shield wall,' Ardamon bellowed. ‘It looks quiet enough, but I wouldn't put it past them to stage a ruse. Stay on your guard.'

It was possible, Cam conceded, but unlikely. The time it had taken the villagers to regroup and then find the Akharian camp was more than enough to allow the Slavers to retreat in some semblance of order. The tracks they had left were littered with the dead and dying, but only the most grievously wounded had been left behind. He had organised a group to check them as they passed for any who could be interrogated.

The village was some way behind them but Cam could see the ground where it had stood when he turned to the west. It was covered by a flickering, seething storm of power just visible over the tops of the trees that stood between the Akharian camp and the village. Flame and lightning seemed to be warring with each other beneath a black and oily pall of smoke. Sheer terror at the sight of it had made them take
a longer way around it than they probably needed, but if that meant the Akharians had had more time to retreat, Cam was in no mind to complain.

If they had regrouped he didn't like to consider the fate of this rag-tag militia of hunters and herders against an army of professional soldiers, even one stinging from the defeat they'd taken in the village.

Once they were sure there was no threat awaiting them, he and Ardamon led the men into the abandoned camp. What he saw confirmed that the Akharians had taken heavy casualties and were retreating as fast as they could go. The camp was a shambles. The survivors had taken what they could carry and could not live without and attempted to render the rest unusable. Tents had been cut down and dragged into piles, contents and all, doused with oil and set alight. Stoves that had been heated in preparation for the soldiers' return had been toppled, still hot and sizzling, onto the ice and snow so the brittle iron would crack from the cold. Sleds had been hastily chopped and hacked to render them unusable and sacks of food and other supplies had been slashed open, spilling out onto the snow and splashed with oil and other substances in an attempt to spoil them.

‘You lot,' Ardamon roared, indicating a few dozen defenders with a sweep of his arm, ‘set up a perimeter. We don't want any more surprises. The rest of you pull those fires apart. Let's see what we can salvage.'

The tents were made from a stout woollen cloth and though the ones on top were scorched badly, the ones beneath were untouched. Some of the supplies were ruined either from the flames or from the oil poured over them but more could be salvaged. ‘Looks like they were in too much of a hurry to make a proper job of it,' Cam said to Ardamon.

‘I suppose that's one stroke of luck,' Ardamon said. ‘I wasn't looking forward to telling these folks that we'd saved their lives only for them to starve to death. I doubt there'll be anything left to recover from the village.' Ardamon shook himself. ‘I'll send word back to Mira and the others to make their way here. The Akharians made this camp defensible, so we may as well make use of it. The horses we have had better go back with them, to help carry the wounded.'

It was entirely due to Mira's quick thinking that they had any horses or medicinal supplies, other than what Rhia had carried in her bag. Even before Cam had sent her the message to flee, she had the women ready
any horses or oxen in their barns and gather whatever supplies they had, and prepare to turn their herds loose rather than leave them to be captured. The women and children had fled the western half of the village in a much more orderly fashion than the fighters, who had only moments to get clear once Sierra's shields went up.

The next few hours passed in a frenzy of activity as they set up the Akharian tents and lit the stoves to heat them. Even the cracked ones were put to use, and as the survivors trooped up to the Akharian camp the tents were soon crammed with the wounded and those too weak to go without shelter, the elderly and the very young. Mira recruited an army of assistants for Rhia and set a score of them to search the abandoned gear for any medicines they could find. There was none left among the spilled and scattered supplies; but Cam knew that any dedicated soldier would keep a small stock for himself and sure enough, the searcher party soon assembled a cache of cleansers, astringents, clean bandages and medicinal herbs.

Aside from guards posted to watch for any further attack, all those who were able were set to work. Salvaged tents were erected to ease the crowding and give Rhia and her assistants more room to work. While the fighters took on the dangerous task of venturing into the forest to round up whatever animals they could find, as well as seeking out survivors lost during the retreat, the women and children set to salvaging supplies and providing wood and water to the camp.

Cam had no idea of the hour when Mira sought him out and found him at the eastern gate of the camp. Staring out in the direction the Akharians had left, he wondered if they were gone for good or if they had reinforcements nearby and would return with more men and more mages. The warring lights over the village had faded but they still flickered over the trees like a distant storm and he had no idea how long it would be before Sierra returned.

‘Cam!' Mira called to him and beckoned him towards the growing row of tents. ‘There's some news you should hear.'

He followed her to a tent at the end of a row, away from the cries and moans of the wounded. ‘Any word on how many we've lost?'

‘So far there are about three hundred unaccounted for, but there are still survivors trickling in,' Mira said. ‘Of the wounded, Rhia thinks a dozen or so won't live to this evening, but the rest of them have minor
injuries for the most part. Most of the folk who were hurt badly weren't able to make it out of the village before …' She trailed off and glanced to the west. Perhaps once people would have known how to speak of such things, but the vocabulary had been lost along with the craft of the mages, when Vasant and his followers had died.

He and Mira reached the tent just as Ardamon came out, followed by a grizzled fellow in winter whites who wore the Wolf Clan's colours in the sash binding his coat. Cam was weary enough for it to take him a few moments to realise the man wasn't one of Mira's escorts, but someone he hadn't seen before.

‘Cam, this is Hassarec, one of my uncle's trusted men,' Mira said. ‘Hassarec, this is Cam.'

Hassarec nodded to him and began to pull his outer gloves on as Ardamon signalled to a boy, who led the man's horse over.

‘We thought Dremman and his men must be close,' Mira said. ‘It turns out they were only a day's march from us. The sentries saw the light from Sierra's … well, from the village, and they're heading towards us. Dremman sent some scouts on ahead and some of the men searching for stock ran into them and sent them here.'

‘How far away?' Cam asked.

‘Commander Dremman should be here by sunrise with a thousand men,' Hassarec said. ‘They are travelling light. The rest of the men should arrive by sunset.'

Cam breathed a sigh of relief. As near as he could tell from the size of the camp and the amount of gear left behind, the Akharians had lost fully half their men and perhaps a little more. Nevertheless, the number of men they had left even without reinforcements would still be enough to give their depleted band of defenders trouble, especially without Sierra directly on hand.

‘Hassarec's riding back now to report to my uncle about what's happened here,' Mira said.

Cam nodded. ‘May the Gods grant you a safe journey.'

‘From what I hear there should be no one left in these hills to give me any trouble, my lord,' Hassarec said. He saluted Mira with a gloved fist. ‘My lady, my lords, with your leave …'

Mira nodded her permission and Hassarec wheeled his horse and kicked it towards the gate while the villagers scattered out of his way.

‘Was there nothing you wanted to pass on about Sierra?' Mira asked Cam.

‘Not through a messenger,' Cam said. ‘I would rather speak to Commander Dremman face to face.' Frowning, he turned towards the village. ‘I'd better go down there and see if I can find her. It's probably best not to let her walk unprepared into a camp full of strangers.'

‘I'll go with you,' Mira said. ‘But first have something to eat, Cam. There's fresh bannock and hot tea inside.'

Cam half turned towards the men who were standing a miserable sentry duty at the gate. ‘The other men should eat first —'

‘Theirs will already be on its way.'

She ushered him into the tent, where two covered bowls, one of tea and one of shredded bannock, were waiting on a salvaged trestle table. As Cam sat down to eat Mira poured herself another bowl of tea and sat across from him. She swept the knitted cap from her head to press her fingers to her temples. Her hands and the sleeves of her jacket were stained with dried blood from where she'd been helping Rhia with the wounded. Her face was smudged with soot and grime and her shoulders slumped with weariness. ‘Do you think she's alright?'

‘Sierra?'

Mira nodded.

‘It's hard to see how any harm could come to her in the middle of all that.'

‘What about the village? Will there be anything left?'

Cam shook his head. ‘I don't know, Mira. But there's only one way to find out.'

 

Sierra stood on scorched and blackened rubble, unable to tell if she was awake or dreaming. The golden song of the power still hummed and chimed in her head, but it was in the background now, not filling and overwhelming her as it had before.

There was no snow, but her breath misted in the air. She didn't feel cold, even though she seemed to have lost her coat and her gloves. The ground had been blasted back to bare earth and there were patches where even that had melted to an opaque black glass, which crazed and shattered when it cooled, leaving edges as sharp as one of Rasten's knives.

Of the houses that had stood in the village, very little remained. The stone foundations were blackened and cracked and the stove-walls that had marked the heart of each house had toppled, leaving behind, if anything, only a few spindly fragments of what had been massive and sturdy structures. Everything else was gone.

All Sierra could remember following that ecstatic release was a hazy vision of beauty and wonder, of brilliant lights and shifting colours. While the entrancing song of power filled her mind it never once occurred to her that her vision was an inferno of destruction. It seemed impossible that she was the one who had turned this place into such a strange and barren wasteland. Once her power faded enough to let her think clearly she felt ill at the thought of how many had died here — not just died — destroyed completely, leaving no trace of their existence. There were no bones lying on the blasted earth, only dozens of strange milk-white nodules littering the ground, hard like stone but warm to the touch.

Nothing else moved in this strange, blasted landscape, but Sierra could see snow in the distance marking a crisp, defining line between the ruined village and the world beyond. Cam and the others would be waiting out there somewhere, or so she hoped. If Rasten had lied to her … No, that was too terrible to think about. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to trust him, but she'd had no one else to turn to. Soon she would have to venture out to find them, but not just yet. There would be wounded and though her power was winding down she couldn't trust it not to spring up again with fresh blood to feed it.

In the end, Cam found her. She heard him calling her name as she was lying on a fallen portion of wall studded with white crystals like a constellation of stars. ‘Over here, Cam,' she called to him and sat up, giving off a shower of blue sparks.

When he found her, she was surprised to see he was not alone. Mira was at his side, staring wide-eyed at the ruin all around her.

Sierra suddenly didn't know what to say. She stared at them for a moment, bundled up in their heavy furs while she stood there, wearing soft indoor clothes in which anyone else would have frozen to death by now. ‘Um …' Sierra said, feeling foolish beyond words. ‘Is everyone alright?'

‘There are some wounded, but Rhia's seeing to them,' Cam said. ‘The Akharians abandoned their camp and fled so we've taken it over. We've got shelter and enough supplies to keep us for a little while.'

‘I have your pack, too,' Mira chimed in. ‘One of my women grabbed it when we sounded the evacuation.'

‘Oh,' Sierra said, surprised. ‘Thank you.' She'd assumed her gear was gone, and the wretched book and Kell's enchantments along with it. Now she wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed. ‘Do you have any water?'

Mira unbuckled a water-skin she was carrying beneath her coat and passed it over.

‘Dremman and his men are finally here,' Cam said as Sierra drank greedily. ‘They were close enough to see something was happening and they're marching through the night to reach us. According to their scouts they're not far away. Are you ready to head back to the camp? We can go and find a coat for you first if you need it.'