Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (74 page)

I ran for the stone house, dodging and ducking. I had to reach the tower before Drake
did. The ribbon of his fire weaving spun up into the tower to splash into the well
of the cold mage who sheltered there. Whoever that cold mage was, he was immensely
powerful, able to absorb every bit of the backlash that Drake channeled into him.
In a burst of heat, flames skimmed along the roof of the stables and sheds as Drake
wakened more fire.

The stronger the cold mage, the better for Drake!

The door to the stone house was shut tight. Window slits gave cover for defensive
shooting. A bolt loosed from within kissed my hair, just missing my ear. I slammed
up against the wall of the house, now inside their range. How to get in?

The door burst into searing flames that chewed through it with such ferocity I had
to retreat from its billowing heat. Men shouted inside, but not in panic. They sounded
like soldiers sure of their
strength and their good defensive position. In the courtyard and stables and orchard
the battle raged on, a chaotic ferment of blood, noise, panic, and determination.
Half the roofs in the compound were on fire.

A rising breath of cold magic warned me. I dropped to my knees.

Cold hammered down. Every soldier in the courtyard hit the ground as if felled by
an axe blow. Where Drake was I did not know, but all the fires went out. The door
of the stone house opened, half fallen off its hinges. Soldiers poured out. So intent
were they on their foes that one stumbled over my back, knocking me sideways without
even noticing I was a stone in their path. I dodged into the house as, behind me,
the Amazons tried to rise before they got cut down.

I could not look back. I had my orders.

A Tarrant captain stood by an old-fashioned brick fireplace. He had a pistol in one
hand and a sword in the other.

“The officers wear feathers in their caps. Aim for them,” he said to his soldiers,
who were standing calm and collected at the window slits leveling their crossbows.

I stuck him in the gut with my sword so hard up under the ribs that the point tapped
brick behind as he gurgled. His eyes opened wide as his mouth formed soundless words,
as a man might practice a polite introduction. A silent owl woven out of smoke swooped
down and snapped up his soul.

If you are not to be killed, then you must kill. That is the law of the hunt.

I was halfway across the room to the stone stairs before any of the others noticed
the captain’s body sliding down the wall as he collapsed. As a sergeant came running
I slashed my wicked sharp blade across the throat of the orderly behind him. No one
noticed because they were all staring at the dead captain. I slipped past a pair of
men guarding the steps and began my climb, dodging around men pressed to window slits,
waiting to loose their bolts.

“Felt you a breeze—?”

“Bastards can’t even hold the line against cursed beasts of women—!”

This foul-mouthed man I stabbed from the back and shoved so he tumbled down, his weight
staggering those below him. How they
shouted in consternation, looking about for the spirit haunting them. Fool! Fool!
Always letting my reckless lusts take hold of me.

That was how Andevai had courted me. I had seen what he was, arrogant and vain and
determined to win once he entered any contest, and yet despite knowing he would see
me as a challenge to be won, I had still allowed myself to be dazzled by his physical
beauty and his unrelenting admiration. He had seen my weakness, which was my desire
for him, and so he had fed me one morsel at a time until I could no longer resist
devouring the whole of what he offered. So be it. Maybe I was a fool, maybe I would
one day get so angry at him that I would rip out his throat, but I cursed well was
not going to let Drake or the mansa have him. He belonged to me.

The stairs led past an empty first-floor room and up to the top floor, which was a
square room with four windows. On a table lay an unrolled map of the landscape over
which the two armies struggled, with Red Mount marked by a bold red X. A man with
lime-whitened spiky hair bent over the table, tapping a knife’s point on the house
in which we stood. The old mansa of Two Gourds House sat calmly in a chair. A middle-aged
magister sat cross-legged on the floor, hands on knees, head bowed, panting as he
collected himself. His face was reddened, blistered in places. He was not Vai.

“Let me take the next attack,” said the old mansa. “You are weakening.”

“No, no,” gasped the other man. “You are the strongest, Mansa. As long as you remain
strong, you can kill any fire they can raise and hammer them all to the ground.”

The old mansa sighed, then beckoned to a pale youth even younger than Luce. “Take
the secret way, child. Hurry. Deliver a message to Lord Marius that we must have reinforcements.
We will hold, or we will die.”

“I can help you by staying here, Mansa!” With his eager, innocent face, the lad reminded
me of Luce before she had gone to war, the way she had been back in Expedition.

“No. This is not your battle. Go!”

I stepped aside to let the youth pass down the stairs because I could not bear to
touch him any more than I could have hurt Luce. He looked so innocent. The middle-aged
magister brightened as a
new aura of fire’s backlash wrapped his body. Fire broke out again across every roof
in the compound except for the stone house’s tile roof. Through the north-facing window
I looked over a second courtyard, this one ringed by a barn and cowshed and with a
brick well at the center. The lad came running out the back of the house, then hesitated
and glanced up at the tower where the officer, standing all unaware next to me, looked
down at him.

“Curse it! Go!” shouted the officer to the youth.

Two Amazons and an Iberian burst into the courtyard through an arched gateway that
linked the two courtyards. The taller Amazon plunged toward the youth, striking with
her sword. The lad parried, but the deficiencies of his sword craft reminded me of
Vai: He was the pupil who learns fighting by rote and works on perfect imitations
of the forms taught by the sword master. That did not make him an effective fighter.

Yet he had no need to be a masterful fighter. Just as I realized the lad was wielding
cold steel, the backstroke of his blade caught the glove of the woman and cut just
deep enough to draw blood. The tip of the cold steel blade writhed like a viper’s
tongue. The soldier swayed as the steel serpent drank her soul; she toppled.

Beside me the officer released a bolt that struck the Iberian in the back, sending
him to a knee. The other Amazon dashed back to the clot of soldiers fighting hand
to hand under the arch, dragging the Iberian with her.

The young cold mage climbed into the well and vanished.

“He’s in the tunnel,” said the officer.

A hailstorm battered over the estate, pounding so hard I could not hear anything except
its drum on the roof. The catch-fire sagged forward as the channel of Drake’s fire
was cut off. A soldier caught him as he sagged sideways, too weak even to sit up.
The other soldiers around me shot at the felled Iberians and Amazons below, taking
their time, making each bolt count.

“An unlawful and dangerous power these fire mages wield,” said the old mansa to the
officer. He looked winded and weary, but his outrage was a cloak that shielded him.
“Fortunate for us that the young Diarisso mage understood it before the rest of us
did.”

“Fortunate for us that the mansa of Four Moons House recognized the young man’s worth,
given his low origins,” agreed the officer.

The old mansa smiled grimly. “True enough. More importantly, he knew exactly how to
bridle the young man’s rebellious spirit.”

Perhaps the words angered me, just a little.

The old mansa looked right at me. “What shadow beast haunts this chamber? Beware!”

They turned on me, the five soldiers, the officer, the old mansa.

But I was the hunter’s daughter. So I killed them, all of them, even the old man,
because Camjiata had to win the battle today. I killed the blistered magister who
had so courageously taken in all Drake’s fire and was dying; ending his agony was
a mercy.

When the Amazons broke through and poked their heads into the chamber, they found
me crouched by the old mansa, wiping blood from my sword with hem of his boubou. Blood
pooled around me. Cold steel cuts deep.

Their laughter hurt my ears. “Bellona bless! Our work’s done for us already!

Rising, I wiped blood from my cheek with the back of a hand just as Drake appeared.
He went straight to the mansa and nudged the old man’s body with a foot in a most
disrespectful manner.

“Stop that,” I said. “Show respect to the elders.”

He paused, taking me in from top to toe with a gaze made narrow by his deepening frown.
“You pick a strange way to show respect. Think of what a powerful catch-fire he would
have made. But I can’t expect you to understand that.”

He brushed past me. I could have bitten out his throat, but I crushed Camjiata’s words
close to my heart, hiding them from everyone else. Win the battle first, or the enemy
will triumph. The old order has to go down if we mean to break the chains that shackle
us.

At the north-facing window, Drake swore. “The other cold mage is escaped, curse it.
Did anyone see him?”

I said nothing.

Boots stamped up the steps, and Captain Tira appeared. Her gaze swept the chamber.
She said, “Excellent. Remove the bodies. This will serve as a good command post for
the general. Cat Barahal. Are you injured?” She looked me up and down. “Wasn’t that
fabric green?”

The Amazons chortled. “Did a quick dye job, she did!”

Their laughter seemed discordant to me, although they found
themselves amusing enough with their voices pitched loud, for they, too, had been
deafened by the constant thunder of gunfire. I wiped another thread of blood off my
chin, flicked a wet drop out of my eye, and glanced around the tower chamber. A spray
of blood cut a line across the map on the table. The officer lay slumped, his head
caught on the back of the chair. The five soldiers sprawled at all angles across the
room, throats slashed and bellies opened, their blood a spreading stain. Its smell
rose like flies, stinging and noxious. A drop of blood seeping from the ceiling dripped
onto my hand.

I staggered, bumped into a wall next to Drake, and sank to my knees.

He shoved me away. “Cruel Diana! You reek of blood! Get away from me.”

Trembling, I could neither speak nor stand.

He rolled over the other magister and studied the two cold mages with a flat, emotionless
expression. “With a strong enough cold mage, I can do anything,” he murmured to himself,
so quietly that I knew he did not mean for me to hear. “I don’t need him. He’s kept
me caged all this time because he’s afraid I will figure that out.”

He stepped over to the table where Captain Tira was carefully wiping blood off the
map and examined the topography, then snagged a spyglass that was lying across one
corner.

“Where are you going, Lord Drake?” asked Captain Tira as he walked to the stairs.
“The general is already calling the advance against the Coalition center. He’ll need
you soon enough.”

“He does need me, doesn’t he? Far more than I need him. I only need fire banes.” The
sting of his presence faded as he vanished down the stairs.

Captain Tira watched him go, but she said nothing and did nothing. I needed to follow
him, but a heavy exhaustion pinned me down. A fog of oblivion hazed my vision. How
long I knelt there, shaking, I did not know. The chamber was cleared of the dead.
An orderly scattered buckets of dirt over the floor to absorb the blood. People left
and arrived while I watched the wall go nowhere.

Captain Tira said, “She’s been in a stupor since we took the tower, General.”

“Send an orderly to find her something else to wear. Bloody Camulos! Give me a spyglass!
Look at the Coalition center collapse! Captain
Tira, I want the Amazon Corps to march to the eastern flank. Lieutenant! Ride this
dispatch to Marshal Aualos. I want Lord Marius’s retreating forces cut off from the
city gates. I do not want any Coalition troops or any mages escaping into Lutetia.
I want no street-by-street fighting. I want a clear, emphatic victory.”

Artillery boomed in sheets of thunder. Drums and horns beat out the pace of the advance
as Camjiata’s army roared forward, rifles ablaze and smoke gusting in windy bursts.

Messengers came and went as the general directed the battle from the tower. The stone
house echoed with the groans of wounded.

A man bumped into me, swearing as he dumped a pot of scalding coffee to splash on
the floor.

The general said, “Get her out of the way!”

I opened my hands to find them coated in sticky, drying blood. Swells and ebbs of
memory surged in my head: the way flesh parts like a sigh as the blade slices; the
submissive acquiescence of the hunted when it accepts it has been marked for death.
Blood was spattered all down the front of my clothes. I tried to shake myself free
of the awful sight, only I could not get away from myself.

No one took the least notice of me stumbling down the steps. The stone house was crammed
with wounded. The stink of blood and piss and excrement melded with the rumble of
artillery and gunfire, although the sound was ebbing because the advance of Camjiata’s
army was pushing the battlefront away from our position. I staggered into the back
court and to a trough filled with pink and slimy water. I stripped off my blood-sodden
jacket and fumblingly managed the slippery buttons of the skirt. Then I dumped a bucket
full of dirty water over me once, twice, three times until I was gasping and shivering
and began, at last, to feel human.

In my bodice and drawers I decided I would have to hunt for clothes, for I could not
bear to dress myself back in the blood of men I did not remember killing.