Dawn of the Ice Bear (16 page)

Another second passed. The blade came closer to the Pict's eye. Then, faster than Sharzen could even follow, the Pict moved. He grabbed the flat of Pulliam's blade and wrenched the sword from the governor's hand. Before Pulliam could even react, the savage had spun the sword around so the grip ended up in his fist. Evidently deciding that a disarmed Pulliam posed little threat, the Pict ignored him and slashed out at the nearest of the guards, slicing through the flesh of his sword arm. The one wielding the halberd jabbed at the Pict with his long-handled weapon, but the Pict snatched the halberd's shaft and tugged the soldier off-balance, onto his outthrust sword. The soldier made a choking noise and fell backward as the Pict yanked his blade free.

The two uninjured soldiers both stabbed at the prisoner with their swords, but the savage blocked one of the attacks and ignored the second, which raked across his naked ribs. He charged, heedless of the soldiers' greater familiarity with swords or their armor, slashing with his stolen blade as if it were a stick or club. The sheer ferocity of his attack drove the soldiers back, and though they were unable to land another blade on him, he drew blood again and again. The soldier who had been cut first tried to help, but his sword arm was weakened and when the Pict's blade slammed into his, he let go of the sword and it flew away, bounding off the ceiling before clattering to the floor. Pulliam dove for it.

Sharzen's own sword had been in his hand since before they had entered the room, and he realized that it was still there. He had not intended to interfere, but at this point it was beginning to look as if the Pict would escape if he didn't—maybe even killing him in the process. He started toward the fray. Before he could make it across the room, however, two more soldiers were down, one spraying blood from his throat and the other writhing on the floor, in serious pain. The last one was barely upright. The Pict made short work of him. Pulliam stood there, the reclaimed sword in his trembling hand.

“Pulliam, move!” Sharzen shouted. Pulliam's head twitched, and he seemed belatedly to understand Sharzen's urgency. He began to back away from the prisoner. At the same time, Sharzen advanced, blade raised, ready to meet the threat if the Pict got through the last soldier. “Sound an alarm, Pulliam!” Sharzen said. “Call for help!”

As if a string had been cut, Pulliam reacted, turning his back on the Pict and preparing to run. But the Pict took advantage of the moment to plunge his weapon into Pulliam's back, and the point burst, dripping with gore, from the governor's shallow chest. Pulliam made a sucking sound and clutched uselessly at his breast, then lurched forward as the Pict shoved him off the blade with a bare foot on his lower back.

Now only Sharzen stood between the Pict and the door. The Pict showed him gnashing teeth, as a trapped animal might. He advanced, his sword making short, cutting motions. Sharzen considered his plight for a moment, then stepped aside.

Outside, the place was crawling with soldiers. No doubt some were already on the way, having heard the clash in their governor's office. Better to let the soldiers stop him. With Pulliam dead, Tanasul would need experienced leadership. The Pict stopped before him, looked him in the eye, and whispered, “Coward,” then dashed out the door.

Sharzen went right behind him, screaming at the top of his voice. “He's loose!” he called. “Pict on the loose! Stop him—he's murdered Pulliam!”

Soldiers came running at Sharzen's cries, but the Pict was already a blur, racing across the open square away from the office. At the nearest gate, three soldiers made ready for the Pict's arrival. They stabbed at him when he reached them, but he let out a horrendous war whoop and sliced through them as if they were mere children playing at war. Before the nearest other soldiers could reinforce their comrades, the Pict was working open the great wooden bolt that held the gates closed.

And from the other side, pressure on the wooden gates caused them to bulge inward where they met. Soldiers reached the Pict and skewered him against the log gate, but too late. The gates pressed inward and a swarm of dark bodies pushed through, overwhelming the soldiers with spears and clubs. Their triumphant war cries echoed throughout the log walls of Tanasul, drowning out the shouts of alarm from the Aquilonians. Sharzen stood in the doorway of Pulliam's office, carnage behind him, and watched as the Picts flooded in.

Soldiers streamed toward the square now, many tugging on armor as they came. Sharzen knew that Pulliam had put his best men on the night watch, and that now they were sleeping in preparation for the coming night's expected assault. At the sound of the Pictish incursion, they were being roused, but they were unprepared, sluggish. The Aquilonians were cut down by the fiercely energized Picts, like so much tall grass falling before a scythe.

Sharzen retreated inside the office. The stink of death assailed him here, but at least he was safe for the moment from the melee outside, though the sounds of combat rattled his nerves. Hazarding a glance out the door he saw that the stream of Picts rushing in through the gate continued, like water through a burst dam. Shouts from the parapets alerted him to the fact that arrows were flying as well, slaying many of the soldiers on guard there.

Sharzen sat down heavily on one of the couches. Nearby, a soldier whom the Pictish prisoner had only wounded but not killed made gurgling noises as he tried to draw air into his damaged lungs. Sharzen found himself wishing the man would be silent, even though he knew it would mean the soldier's demise.

Oddly, he found himself recalling an incident from his youth. He'd been raised on a sprawling farm outside Poitain, and on this one occasion in his ninth year, he had gone wandering in the fields. As afternoon wore into evening, he found himself far from home. A strange noise had drawn his attention to a patch of forest near the fields, and, torn between curiosity and outright terror, he had forced his young legs to carry him there.

After searching for several minutes, Sharzen found a den of some kind—a hole about ten inches across, dug at the base of a large bush. The sound, which he had decided was a whimper of pain, came from there. He tried to peer inside, but the sun was dropping fast and this part of the forest was lost in shadow. He barely dared to get closer—what if it was an injured animal who would attack him? He had no weapons, nothing with which to defend himself.

But the noise continued, like nothing he had ever heard.
What if it is some kind of fairy?
he thought. A magical being who would reward his help? He'd heard tales of such things before, and he would hate to miss his chance if that was the case.

Looking rapidly about him, he found a stick about as long as his arm and big around as his wrist. He returned to the hole, or den, from which the high-pitched, squealing noise came louder than ever. Kneeling before it, he prodded with the stick. Whatever was inside gave a sharp screech, as if he had hurt it. He poked again. Another screech, and the thing inside seemed to snatch at the stick. Sharzen pulled it free, glanced at the sky. Darker and darker. He didn't want to be here with whatever was down there in full dark, he knew.

Back on hands and knees, he tried once again to see into the den. “Hello?” he asked, his voice quaking with anxiety. “Are you a fairy?”

Only the agonized whimpering answered him.

“Something else, then? A troll?” He tried to remember what other types of creatures dwelled in the woods, in the stories his parents had told him. Part of him knew those stories weren't true, but to admit that would mean giving up a precious part of his childhood, and he was not yet ready to do that. “Some sort of boggart?”

Only the whimper.

Finally, he had clapped his hands over his ears and run out of the forest, back through the broad fields toward home. He had been careful to stay away from that part of the farm for many months, and when he finally worked up the courage to look again, winter's rains had collapsed the hole.

He'd felt a powerful self-loathing then. He had exhibited undeniable cowardice. He might have been able to save something's life, even if it was just the injured animal he suspected it had been. If not, he might have been able to end its agony with the stick. Instead, he had done nothing, had run away.

He determined then, as a boy of ten summers, that he would become a brave man. A soldier, a warrior, a leader of others. And he had done those things, swallowing his fears, pushing aside his moments of insecurity, the late-night panics.

And now? Now he was hiding in a dead man's office, watching a brave, wounded soldier breathe his last, doing nothing to help the man because it might call attention to the fact that he was in here.

So,
Sharzen thought.
The truth of it comes out at last, all these decades later.
If bravery meant facing things one feared and doing them anyway, then he had been brave for a long time. But in the end, as he neared what would be the twilight years of his life, his real nature pushed to the fore again.

Born a coward,
he thought.
And you'll die one.

But not here, not now. In a soft bed in Aquilonia, surrounded by round, yielding feminine bodies. And only when age had weakened his limbs, stolen his strength and sapped his will.

Because Sharzen was not only a coward. He was also a survivor. If he had only been a coward, he would have died a hundred times by now. The fact that he yet lived was testament to his most powerful trait. It had pulled him through dozens of close scrapes before, and it would this time as well. He just needed to apply his intellect and instincts to the problem at hand.

Cautiously, he went back to the door and took another look. Measuring his chances.

He would stay right where he was for a while longer, he decided. The tide of battle may have been turning, but he wasn't confident of that yet. A little more time.

He came back into the office, sat down again.

Thankfully, the noisy soldier had died.

THE BORDER BETWEEN Zingara and the Pictish lands was not marked in any way. Kral knew that if they had been traveling on the road, it would have been well marked—on the Zingaran side, not the Pictish one. Picts cared little for the borders demarcated by men. They were used to being able to wander at will, and the only borders that mattered to them were natural ones: the coastline or the nearly impenetrable mountains that separated them from Vanaheim.

But here on the river, the borderline came deep in the Rabirian mountains. Kral had no way to know precisely when they had crossed over. He assumed that they had when he could see the top of the seemingly endless forest canopy, instead of merely more and higher peaks.

The Rabirian mountains were tall, forbidding mountains whose peaks were blanketed with snow. The Black River sliced through canyons with steep vertical walls that seemed to keep the sun out altogether. In those canyons, the only sound that could be heard was the pounding of the river as its course cut deeper and deeper into the hard granite surface. No birds flitted about down here, no insects buzzed. The air was bitingly cold, the river frozen at the edges. Frequently, they had to carry the canoe up bare rocky slopes where the water tumbled down with ferocious power.

At the top of one such rise, Kral paused and pointed through a slender gap in the rock walls. “Look,” he said to no one in particular. “That is my homeland.”

“I thought Kush had a lot of trees,” Tarawa said. “Does the sun ever reach the earth there?”

Kral chuckled. “Yes, it does. We have clearings, and hilltops bare of trees. But the forests are life to us, and sacred.”

Donial had put on all his clothing and wore a fur cloak over everything, and still he shivered. “I never thought I would be so happy to see Pictish lands again,” he said. “Perhaps it will not be so cold there.”

“It does get cold,” Kral acknowledged. “But seldom like this.”

“Then we should get down there before we freeze to death,” Alanya said.

“I'm for that,” Tarawa said. Like Donial, she was so bundled up Kral could barely understand how she could move. Even with all that on her, however, she still managed to take her turn rowing.

“Why do we stand here talking, then?” Kral asked. “The sooner we move on, the sooner we reach warmer climes.”

They launched the canoe into calmer waters and paddled toward home. Even more rapidly than he had anticipated, they left the Rabirians behind, and welcome sun shone down on them once more. Before long, however, the tall trees arched over the river, shielding it from the sun's rays. Kral was surprised to realize that it was no warmer here than it had been in the hills. The leaves had turned brown or fallen; early frosts had killed underbrush that should still have been green and thriving this time of year.

That evening, they beached the canoe and built a roaring fire beside the river. Kral was no longer worried about the smoke alerting anyone. The only people who would see were fellow Picts, and at this point he would be glad to encounter them.

But none came to see who had started the fire. In the morning, while the others slept, he rose early and walked away from the river, inscribing a wide circle. He found, nestled against the base of a hill, an abandoned campsite where it appeared that a clan had lived, at least for a time. The fire pits were cold, the huts empty. He looked around, kicked over blown leaves, hoping to find some clue as to where they might have gone. Fear rushed through him—had the Aquilonians attacked this clan, too? But he saw none of the bodies or burned-out rubble that would indicate that. The people had simply left.

When he got back to his own camp, the others were up, getting ready for the day's voyage. Alanya gave him a concerned look. “Where have you been?” she inquired.