Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (71 page)

He lifted his glass as if in toast to my speech, then drank.

I drank with him, not in his honor but in honor of all those who fought. I could not
help but see Bee and myself caught between the mansa and the general—just as, in another
way, we were caught between courts and dragons. Vast forces battled, sweeping us up
in their conflict. At first we had been ignorant pawns, able to run but never to stand.
Alone we did not have the means or the strength to effect change.

But in the midst of the monstrous assembly that is slave to fortune, each solitary
small figure who linked her hand to another built a chain of loyalty and trust.

We make ourselves into the net that we throw across the ocean.

Rory gave a copiously false yawn and rose to open the shutters. Roosters crowed. The
creak of wheels and trample of feet and hooves drifted from the encampment as the
army moved out.

“Where are we going today?” Rory asked as he plundered the remaining bread and cheese.

Aides and attendants clattered into the room to pack away the gear with impressive
speed. The general personally escorted me to the latrines. Youths wearing the red
jackets of fire mages hovered close all the while, like hawks waiting to dive on cautious
rabbits. The truth was, I did fear their fire. Rory did not even try to flirt with
them.

Faster than I had thought possible, the headquarters staff was on the road in a column
of horses, carriages, and dust. We were led by a company of Amazons under the command
of Captain Tira. A battalion of Iberian infantry marched behind. The baggage and hospital
train would follow at the rear.

Rory chatted companionably with the young staff officers, but I stuck next to the
general. I did not like the look of James Drake, wearing yet another of Vai’s purloined
dash jackets to spite me. What I least liked the look of was his squadron of thirty
young fire mages. How many catch-fires he controlled I was not sure, for one of the
carriages was locked, with caged persons inside, while a file of shackled catch-fires
marched under guard of soldiers wearing Lady Angeline’s badge.

We traveled hard all day on the main road, passing sections of the slow-moving baggage
train. Columns of infantry marched away to either side, across fields, the army like
locusts on the move. Messengers
galloped up on spent horses with reports from the vanguard. In the town of Castra,
where Lord Gwyn had died, we were met by cheering locals lining the road.

North of town we stopped to water and feed the horses. Soldiers ate stale bread and
took naps. I walked upstream to wash my dusty face and hands.

Rory lay down on the grass and slid into a doze. I smiled to see his peaceful face
lit by the sun. As for me, I was terribly hungry. The roofs of a farmstead rose nearby.
I would have gone to beg food from them, but I had no money to pay for it and probably
they had already had their granary emptied by a quartermaster.

“I wonder,” I said to dozing Rory, “how a general who comes to liberate makes sure
he isn’t just seen as a thief.”

He snorted awake, rising up on an elbow. I turned. Lady Angeline approached along
the bank. Downstream, horses muddied the waters.

I made a pretty courtesy, for although as wife to the heir of Four Moons House I now
ranked as her equal, I did not want anyone here to know of Vai’s new status. “Your
Highness.”

Her gaze grazed along the length of Rory’s body, and to my amusement she flushed when
he winked at her. Unlike Drake, he did look good in Vai’s clothes, even when they
were rumpled from travel. She turned to me. “What am I to call you?”

“Maestra Barahal, as you wish, Your Highness. May I ask if you have been married long?”

“Let me make myself understood to you, Maestra. Do not make an enemy of me. I am the
only child of the prince of Armorica, he who stands as overlord above the Veneti dukes.”

“Ah.” I surveyed her proud posture and confident stance. Her riding clothes suited
her. Clearly she was a woman of taste, in most regards. “Yet if I am correct, by Gallic
law you cannot rule in your own right because you are a woman. You must marry a man
who will become son to your father and then prince in his place.”

“You comprehend my situation astutely, Maestra. Unlike every other prince’s son, James
has no interest in ruling Armorica and will leave to me the inheritance I have earned.”

I knew how to dig for information. “I suppose his ambitions are set on recovering
his ancestral crown in the Ordovici Confederation.”

“You think he is volatile and angry, but that is because you do not know the circumstances
under which he was driven from his rightful place. In fact, he has a philosophical
temperament, one that prefers to gaze at the stars and plumb the mysteries of the
universe. When the time comes, he will be perfectly happy to leave the administration
of both principalities to me.”

“Goodness! I can understand that the chance to rule two principalities would be an
inducement for a woman of your princely birth and ambition. Yet if the law were changed
to allow the daughter to inherit equally to the son, such a dynastic marriage would
not be necessary for you.”

I had misunderstood her.

“The marriage suits me marvelously well.”

“Ah. Well, then, a word of advice.”

“Cat,” said Rory, warningly.

I poked anyway. “Besides the bad fit, for the dash jackets are too loose and too tight
in all the wrong places, the colors really do not benefit his complexion. Your attire
is so exquisite in all ways that I cannot believe you have urged him to wear another
man’s clothes.”

Her right eye half winked shut in a flicker of irritation. “He has promised to burn
them all when the cold mage is dead.” With that she returned to the main group. Drake
came to meet her.

Rory got to his feet. “Cat, will you ever learn to keep your mouth shut?”

“Burn his lovely dash jackets! Think of the disrespect to the tailors who cut and
sewed them!”

“Cat.”

My volcanic ire subsided before it spilled over into gouts of red-hot stabbing. General
Camjiata beckoned. On we rode through the long afternoon. Fortunately our pace was
slow enough that at intervals Rory and I could dismount to walk instead of riding.

As twilight descended we entered the grounds of a lord’s estate with a long artificial
pond graced with fountains and a terraced set of clamshell-shaped lawns leading to
a stately house. Troops stretched out on the grounds, having not even erected tents.
They leaped to their feet with cheers as the general’s entourage made its way to the
big house.

The general stood on the steps and raised a hand for silence.

“I came ashore in a rowboat from my exile,” he cried. Back in the ranks, men called
his words farther back yet, so all could hear. “You are the ones who had the courage
and the vision to march! Let us not forget our ancient war with the Romans. Our grandparents
did not forget! Our histories and songs do not forget! The bards remind us that from
the northern shores of Africa all the way to the ice, we have all fought the Romans,
sometimes alone, but on this day, together! We are the storm that will batter down
the arrogance of our enemies! One sharp blow, and victory is ours!”

How they cheered, for his presence had a bonfire’s glory. It warmed even me, although
I knew better than to be smitten by a forceful man’s vision of what could be if only
he and I could come to an accommodation. Look how that had turned out, when Vai had
courted me!

What had happened to the inhabitants of the lordly house I did not know, but a cadre
of anxious servants set a hastily prepared meal before us in a once-magnificent dining
room. Brass lamps were set out to replace richer fittings that had been looted. Young
officers waited their turn to bring forward reports as the general and his staff ate
through a leek soup, roasted mutton and turnips, pears stewed in wine, and several
varieties of cheese.

“It will give me pleasure to burn this place down as we leave,” said Drake, looking
at me as he said it, for the man did need to boast constantly as he tried to intimidate
me.

I held Drake’s gaze as I speared a morsel of mutton, popped the meat into my mouth,
and devoted my attention to enjoying its moist savor.

Camjiata glanced up from the dispatch lying at his left hand. “I am so relieved you
enjoy your food, Cat. As for the house, it shall be spared for the hospital train.
Lady Angeline, if you will remain behind to await the hospital, I know I can safely
put you in charge of administering all. Your father asked me to make sure you stayed
well back from the scene of battle, since you are pregnant.”

Pregnant!

Drake’s leering smirk turned to a lift of the chin as he contemplated this signal
triumph. I opened my mouth to ask if it was truly Drake’s, since all knew that fire
mages were indifferently fertile. Rory’s foot pressed down so hard on my toes that
I yelped.

“What Cat means to say,” Rory said as he kicked my shin for good measure, “is how
delightful she finds the prospect of actually being allowed to sleep in a bed. Me,
too. For I swear to you, I hurt all over.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Especially my
thighs, but not, alas, from any riding that would have pleased me.”

The general chuckled, ignoring the blush of one of his younger officers. “You two
will accompany me to the library, where I will spend the night. Perhaps there will
be a chair for you to sleep in.”

Several helpful orderlies dragged in a long couch on which Rory and I fit, curled
up with our heads at each end and our feet commingling. I slept fretfully, for the
general’s lamp burned all night as messengers came and went. Very late, I woke needing
the water closet.

“As soon as we have placed our line across the field,” Camjiata was saying to a collection
of officers, “we will commence bombardment with artillery.”

A short, thin man dressed in the white sash of the Kena’ani sacred band—the famous
Elephant Barca—spoke up just as I wrapped the shadows around me and crept for the
door. “If the Roman army arrives while we’re engaged with the Coalition, we’ll be
crushed between them.”

“We will defeat the Coalition quickly, and pivot to hit the Romans while they’re still
trapped in columns, before they have time to deploy across the field. The key is to
draw out and then capture or eliminate their cold mages.”

A chill seized my heart. Had I made a terrible mistake in coming here, in leaving
Vai behind? The thought took hold in my mind and would not let go. Anxiety muddled
me, for although I found the water closet easily enough, I lost my way going back.
Instead of returning to the library, I found myself at doors opening onto a stone
terrace.

A solitary flame drew my eye. James Drake sat on a stool with five fire mages at his
back, four catch-fires kneeling with heads bowed, and three people facing him like
strangers brought before a prince.

“I will not lie to you,” said James Drake in a kindly voice I scarcely recognized.
“No fire mage is ever safe. If you wish to be safe, then learn from the blacksmiths
how to lock away your fire and hope it never escapes.”

“The blacksmiths would not have me!” said a stocky young man who stood with arms crossed
belligerently.

“What of you?” Drake asked the younger of the two lads.

The youth was so thin he looked as if a breeze might blow him over. “We haven’t the
apprentice fee to pay to the guilds, me and my people.”

“If I gave you that fee, would you choose a blacksmith’s forge? For I will make you
risk your life, right now, if you wish to join my company.”

The lad stammered. “I wouldn’t mind the blacksmith’s guild. It’s an honorable life.
In a few years I could give my parents a cow. Men will pay a bride price to marry
my sisters, if I’m a blacksmith. My parents can’t afford to lose me. I’m the only
son they have.”

“Very well.” Drake gestured. An attendant counted out coins into the lad’s hand as
the boy gaped at this largesse. “Our kind are sorely ill-used here in Europa, the
lands of our birth. Go with my blessing. Make a good life for yourself.”

As the lad hurried off into the night, Drake again bent his eye on the stocky young
man. “Will you risk your life for a chance to join my company of mages?”

“I’m not afraid!”

“Better if you were. Fire knows no mercy. But very well. To weave fire, you must cast
the backlash of the flame into another body. Otherwise it will burn you up from inside.
I will raise an unlit candle. Put a spark to it. As you feel the answering burn from
that combustion in your own flesh, throw it like a rope into the body of this catch-fire.”

A candle and two lamps burned at Drake’s feet. He blew them out. All sat in darkness
lightened only by stars and a rising crescent moon.

“Be cautious,” added Drake. “Even the lighting of one candle can kill a fire mage.”

“I can light a candle!” boasted the young fellow.

With a snap the candle’s wick flared. Then, as in echo, the two lamp wicks began burning
with a bright golden flame.

“Throw the thread of fire into the catch-fire,” said Drake. “Think of casting a line
from a boat to the shore.”

The youth staggered, clapping a hand to his chest, and dropped to his knees choking.
His face got very red. The lamp flames flared with such brilliance that I blinked.
Then he toppled over, mouth open, tongue black, and a trickle of blood coming out
of his ears.

Drake waved forward an attendant. “Dispose of him.”

Men dragged the body away as the others watched in silence.

“You never asked me,” said the third supplicant, a girl about Luce’s age.

Drake pulled off a glove. The skin was red and flaking, mottled with so many burn
scars it was a wonder he could use his hands at all. He knelt and pinched out both
flames. “I have nothing to ask you. The blacksmiths do not admit women to their guild.
They teach them only how to lock away their fire. So either you will go home or you
will try your luck.”