Mage Hunter Omnibus (Complete 5 Book Series) (13 page)

Ildra had to die, regardless of what some ice witch or old man wanted or didn’t want. If he ran across her, he would slay her if possible. He did not enjoy the prospect of butchering a pregnant woman, but he would do so in the name of vengeance for the deaths she had brought and to protect his own country. He had met her once a week or so in the past, and she had been a beautiful woman, but that would not stop him. Neither would her pregnancy. At the time he had not noticed her swollen belly, but perhaps she had not been very far along or perhaps her heavy fur cloak had hidden her stomach’s girth. Either way, at the time Guthrie had had other thoughts on his mind, such as survival.

The thought of killing the wyrd woman brought him around to checking his crossbow again, to make sure the arrow was placed properly and their would be no mishaps there. Staring up the trail the other man had taken, Guthrie glanced from side to side hoping to find a less obvious route. If there was only one way up to where Ildra might be, then it would be difficult to sneak there, especially if there was a guard or two stationed at the top of the climb.

Spotting no other path than the direct one, the sergeant cursed under his breath. He took a last look toward the tents and the busier part of the camp and found it even more subdued than he had upon finding this place. It seemed the Dartague were bedding down for the night. Fine with him. Less people lurking about. Perhaps at a distance he could even pass for one of the barbarians himself what with his stolen furs, though his helm would likely stand out under any light since the Dartague rarely wore such apparel.

So, the way forward was as safe as it was likely to be.

Guthrie rushed toward the path of packed dirt that ascended this side of the ravine. Seeing it was useless, he did not try to be quiet, and wasted no time stomping up the climb. He soon found his breathing heavy as the path became more steep.

Still he moved up and ahead, the arrow’s tip of his crossbow leading the way. Whether Ildra would be alone or there were a hundred barbaric warriors with her, Guthrie intended to reach the top of his climb. It being the only path open to him, there was little need to be quiet. If a guard at the top heard him coming, the man would likely think it was one of his brethren approaching. A spy or assassin would creep along, and Guthrie was anything but creeping. He could not hide any longer, not where he was going.

Just as he thought his chest would burst from exertion, Guthrie came out on flat ground. It was a large area, nearly as large as the first part of the encampment he had spotted below. But this place was hidden away, surrounded on three sides by stone crags reaching for the sky. The one side that was open to the elements was the way Guthrie had come, leaving open air between him and the ridge he had been upon when he had first spotted the glow of magic.

Now that glow was brighter, nearer. It came from a long tent directly ahead of him a couple of dozen yards away. Closer to the sergeant was a small fire, two burly warriors seated in front of it, one with his back to Guthrie and the other facing him. The man who had pissed beneath the tree below was only several steps ahead of the sergeant, Guthrie coming out right behind him. That man heard or sensed movement behind him and turned just as his comrades at the fire stood, the one facing Guthrie now pointing at him.

Guthrie pressed the bar beneath his crossbow. The arrow shot forward, stabbing deep into the stomach of the nearest Dartague. The man cried out and dropped to his knees, grabbing at the wooden shaft protruding from his gut. Guthrie stepped forward and kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling and screaming.

The other two were already charging, hefting shields and shouting as swords whipped out at their sides.

Guthrie dropped his bow. His dagger sprang into his left hand as his mace came free of his belt in his right.

The first man to him was as big as they came, his long red beard shaking over top of his shield as he lashed at his opponent with his sword. Guthrie stepped back from the blow and slammed his mace forward, the weapon’s head cracking against the top of the shield and sending splinters flying.

The other Dartague came around the side of his companion, his shield raised to rush into the sergeant. Guthrie didn’t have time to avoid the attack, so he thrust up his arms in front of his face. He was struck direct and knocked back, his arms acting as shields themselves to save him from a broken nose. The problem was Guthrie landed on his rear and found himself sliding down the packed earth of the path he had just climbed.

The two Dartague chuckled at the misfortune of their foe and jumped forward, each vying for the claim of killing the enemy.

Now on an angled path, Guthrie rolled backward, flipping his legs over his head until he was standing again. He brought up his weapons but knew he was in a tough spot. He faced two big men, likely experienced, who now had the high ground.

But those two big men did come smarter. In their zeal to slay their foe, they did not pay attention to the fact they were both barreling down a descending trail. They slammed into one another and both fell forward with looks of surprise on their faces.

One of the Dartague fell right at Guthrie’s feet, the sergeant wasting no time in bringing the head of his mace hammering down into the face of his foe, leaving behind a red mess of squalor.

The other Dartague rolled past the sergeant and kept right on rolling down the hillside.

Guthrie laughed at his luck and charged back up the incline. At the top he found the body of the man he had shot with his arrow but moments earlier. The young fellow was dead or at least unmoving, curled into a ball up against the side of the mountain on Guthrie’s right.

Surprised there were no warriors streaming forth from the tent to attend to their comrades, Guthrie paused for a moment. He was twice surprised then. There were no calls coming from the tent. No one was screaming about an intruder. There were no sounds of approaching boots thundering upon the dirt below. It seemed impossible to him that none of the Dartague had heard the combat here at the top of the path from below.

Not able to make sense of his situation, Guthrie dropped to a knee next to his crossbow. Returning his hand weapons to his belt, he busied himself loading the bow yet again.

When he stood, a large flap to the tent had been tossed back. The golden light of magic now streamed from within as if a hundred lamps had been lit. No one else would have witnessed such a sight, but it was nearly blinding to the sergeant. He blinked as his eyes teared up, and he took a step back, raising an arm to shield himself from the luminescence.

The light began to throb, to become almost a physical presence, as if Guthrie could feel it beating inside his chest along with his heart. He was still new to being able to detect magic with this supposed gift from the ice witch, but he had yet to come across any sign of magic so strong, so bold, so
powerful
. Before magic had appeared as a slight sheen of gold around the body of the person Guthrie was viewing. Now there was no person, not unless they were tucked back within the tent, and the brightness was enough nearly to take his breath away.

It had to be Ildra, the wyrd woman. She had to be quite powerful. She was the enemy, the one responsible for all Guthrie’s woes.

He raised a flat hand above his eyes to help block the light and took a solid step forward. If the wyrd woman was within, that was where he had to go. His other arm aimed the crossbow through the open flap of the tent and he took another step. Then another.

It was like wading through water, that pulsing force pushing back on him.

But he could not stop. He had to proceed.

He stepped again, and again. His free hand rose and fell with his motions, shielding his streaming eyes for a moment before a glance revealed the tent again.

Ducking his head against the brightness, Guthrie trudged on, fighting the magic as if he were walking against a storm of wind and snow.

He walked forever. For a thousand years, a million. His mind was going numb. He could barely remember why he was there. He could barely remember his own name. But he had to walk, to push ahead. Only then would the end come. Whatever that end might be.

Then the light died. Not immediately, not like a candle being snuffed, but it vanished like a lamp drained of its oil, quickly but in steps, a little, a little more, and more and more, then nothing.

When Guthrie looked up, he found himself standing just outside the tent’s entrance. Now that the glow of magic was gone, Guthrie could tell the room was lit by oil lamps hanging every so often from a thick support beam running down the center of the long tent. He could see inside a lengthy wooden table stretched along the middle of the room created by the walls of hanging skins. Chairs were lined up on either side, some of the chairs simple stumps or stones while others were folding seats likely taken from one Ursian outpost or another or from the homes of Ursians who had been raided. Atop the table were sheets of paper and vellum, some in piles, others loose and stretched forth. Even from his little distance, Guthrie could tell many of these sheets were maps or official papers of the Ursian military. Sometimes it had seemed to the sergeant the military was nothing more than filling out papers between long, boring bouts of standing guard; he had learned differently, of course, but that still did not stem the tedium that often approached the work of those in charge.

Realizing he could not make out either end of the long tent from his position, Guthrie raised his crossbow and stepped inside.

He could now see to his far right a large bundle of furs on the floor, likely a makeshift bed. Looking to the far left, he spotted what looked to be a large throne of sorts made from entwined tree limbs. The seat of the large chair was covered with thick, green grasses, and Guthrie could not imagine from where the padding had come in the middle of winter.

But there was no one to be seen. Not a single soul.

Across the table from him was another flap, though it appeared to have been tied down, making it unlikely any had recently gone out that way.

He was stumped. The glow of magic had assailed him but moments earlier. Now the glow was gone and there was no one here.

His crossbow lowered.

And he was struck from behind.

The blow knocked Guthrie forward. He slammed into one of the small folding chairs, the slender wood cracking beneath his weight as he plummeted onto the top of the table. Somehow he managed to keep a hold of his crossbow, and Guthrie rolled onto his back bringing the weapon around.

There was no one there.

He stared through the open flap into the darkness of the outside and listened. Still no untoward sounds. No calls of alarms. And no signs of an enemy.

What was happening?

Guthrie shifted his weight and scooted off the end of the table. Landing on his feet, he kept the crossbow pointed toward the open flap.

“Ildra.” He said the word loudly so anyone outside would have no problem hearing.

There was no response. He stood staring into the darkness.

“You spared me once, Ildra,” he said, figuring perhaps his words could draw out a target, “but I hope you do not expect the same in return.”

Still there was no answer, no call, no sound of movement. Nothing.

Guthrie began to wonder if all he was experiencing, the tent and the camp fire and perhaps even his fight with the three warriors outside, was all a mirage, a vision summoned up to fool him for one reason or another. But that did not feel right, at least not the notion that everything was an illusion. He had seen the man urinating below, and it seemed unlikely to the sergeant that the magic had been extending into the lower valley. Also, with his special sight to behold magic, if everything he was seeing was of a magical nature, would he not be seeing the familiar glow?

No, the tent was real, as was the fire and the three men. Still, there was the odd fact that sound seemed not to drift to the camp in the valley. Could that be caused by magic? Possibly. But why would someone go to such trouble? Did Ildra want him for herself for some reason?

“Your mind speaks true to you,” her voice said.

Guthrie spun, his crossbow lifted to his shoulder.

The wyrd woman sat upon the throne-like chair of twigs.

Chapter 6

Her features were as beautiful as ever behind the sheen of glowing magic. Her lightly-colored hair cascaded around her features, and she still wore the same heavy cloak of fur Guthrie had seen before. The emotions of her face, however, were different. Before there had been a sense of peace, almost pity, but now there was disdain, almost haughtiness.

“
You can tell my very thoughts,” he said to her.

“
General impressions,” she said. “To delve further would pain me, to have to enter the mind of an Ursian.”

“
You hate us that much?” Guthrie asked.

Ildra sneered. “For what your kind have done to my people, yes. Your priests and your soldiers have crossed our borders for hundreds of years, spreading word of this god you worship, promising holiness to my kin while stealing from us behind our backs, enslaving the weakest of us, taking the very food from our mouths. But no more. Now we push back.”

Guthrie lowered his weapon as he slowly moved along the length of the table until he came to its end. There he stood, not daring to go nearer the woman for fear she would retreat or attack. Hoping to keep her there, he placed his crossbow on the table. “It seems to me your people have done your own share of thievery over the years. You sneak onto our lands, take our goods and animals, then hide among your mountains.”

“
Only along the border!” Ildra shouted. “We never tried to ... to ...
convert
your people to us, to any cause or beliefs we might hold. We never crawled like a snake into your dens to fester among your very children.”

“
No, you only slaughtered them.”

Her eyes flared. “Only after the murders of our own. Never before!”

Guthrie chuckled. There was no winning with this woman. He shrugged. “Then what would you have of me? Obviously you’ve brought me here for some purpose.”

“
I suppose you wondered at your ease of gaining this location,” she said.

“
It occurred to me, yes,” he said. “Only now has it dawned on me you must have some reason for it. Before you let me live because you wanted me to spread word of the Dartague attacks. Well, I’ve done so, and have suffered the consequences of it, watching my own people butchered.”

The woman leaned forward in her chair, her eyes narrowing as she gazed into the Ursian’s soul and heart. He could feel that look boring into him, he could feel it shaking his very core.

“Do you not realize?” she asked. Then she barked a laugh. “Of course not.”

“
Of what do you speak?”

Ildra sat back in her chair again. “I did not allow you to survive before only because I wanted you to spread the tale of slaughter. The ice witch did not give you her ...
gift
... simply because she believed you would continue to fight against me. The skald did not make contact with you only to help you slay me. No, the issue runs deeper than that. Did you not wonder why you were picked out for single combat, and then allowed to live while your comrades fell?”

“
At the creek where we were attacked?”

“
Yes, there.”

Guthrie shrugged again. “I figured I bested some champion, and your people respected me enough to let me live.”

“Fool!” Ildra tossed back her head and laughed. No more was she beautiful, though she retained the glow of youth. Her features were now harsh, heavy, fearful. “You were marked! I marked you myself when we first met!”

Guthrie did not know what to say. There were only questions. “Marked?”

“Yes, marked! I saw you for what you were the moment my eyes fell upon you.”

“
I have no idea of what you speak.”

“
You are a wizard, fool! And you don’t even know it.”

Now anger began to build within the Ursian, bringing heat to his words. “I am no wizard! I have never studied sorcery!”

“It matters not,” the wyrd woman said. “You are a natural-born mage, an oddity. Not one is born per generation of man. You have the power within you, yet you do not even recognize it.”

“
Foolishness.” Guthrie’s hands tightened on the grips of his weapons at his belt. “I am no wizard.”

“
You are,” she went on, “and when I recognized it within you, I marked you. I did not want you to die because you are unique, something special, something worth saving. I gave you a mark that is unseen by all except other Dartague, a mark my kin recognize as a sign to leave its bearer alone, to allow them to pass freely. Those fighting your countrymen near that church did not notice the mark until most of the combat was finished. This is what they told me. The one man who challenged you was a chieftain, one who tried to stand against me. He went against my mark, my warning, and he paid the price for it. He was fortunate. If he had lived while slaying you, the tortures I would have fed upon him would have had him begging for death.”

Guthrie had to admit to being astonished. He believed the woman’s words, there was no doubt of it. What she said
felt
true to him for some reason. It was as if she was telling him things his soul already knew. But did everything the woman said make sense?

He shook his head and gestured toward the open tent flap. “If what you say is true, then why did your men outside attack me?”

“It is dark and they could not see you well,” Ildra said. “The mark upon you, it has no light to it. It appears as a dark blemish across your face, a tattoo of sorts in the shape of a bear’s head, that of my clan. No Dartague warrior would knowingly disregard such a mark, not unless he wished the caster of the spell to become a personal enemy.”

“
I still do not understand why I am here, tonight,” Guthrie said.

“
I allowed it,” Ildra said. “After some of my men told me about the fight near the church, I knew you would come. Then I sent out my mind’s eye to search for you, and I saw you approaching across the snows. I can watch from a distance, but I cannot read your thoughts from afar. I needed you near, and there were details which I wanted to understand. Now I understand. Now I no longer need you.”

“
What was it you wanted to know?”

“
The faces of my true enemies,” she said. “You think of them as the ice witch and the old skald. They are familiar to me, but I had not guessed at their treachery, at their plotting behind the scenes to destroy me. Now I know, and now I can thwart their moves with magic of my own.”

“
I suppose that means killing me,” Guthrie said.

The wyrd woman’s head tilted slightly to one side as if she were a child staring with interest at the dying throws of a smashed insect. “I am afraid so. I had wanted you to live, the only known natural mage, but now you have placed yourself as my mortal enemy. I cannot suffer you to leave this camp alive.”

A sly grin crossed Guthrie’s lips. “Then you decided poorly in allowing me so near to you.”

His left hand flashed. The dagger shot forward.

There was a wink of light and Ildra vanished, the short blade of steel skewering the air where she had just sat. The dagger sank into the mass of tree limbs that made up the chair.

Feminine laughter rang through the air, its source impossible to detect.

“Prepare yourself, Ursian,” the wyrd woman spoke, her voice as if from a distance. “My mark no longer protects you, my ward of silence has been dropped, and my kin are aware of your presence.”

Guthrie rushed to the chair and retrieved his dagger, then glanced around the room. Nothing else had changed except the woman was no longer there. He cursed under his breath. As far as he could tell, he was no closer to finding Captain Werner, and now the wyrd woman had evaded his grasp. Would he never learn when dealing with those steeped in magic?

Motion from outside drew his attention. Guthrie sprang to the open flap and looked outdoors. The camp fire still burned, revealing on its other side a dozen large men in various types of furs ranging toward the tent, weapons and shields drawn and ready. At there head was the fellow Guthrie had watched roll down the hill.

They were coming directly for him.

Stabbing at the open flap with his dagger, Guthrie snagged the cloth and yanked, pulling the tent’s opening closed. Then he shoved backwards, rolling onto and across the long table, landing on his feet on the other side. Cries of anger went up from outside, but the sergeant did not allow that to slow him. He had but moments to act, and was assured of nothing to save his life.

Not bothering to unravel the flap on this side of the tent, his dagger slashed out, cutting into the tent’s wall. He squeezed through the new opening and found himself facing a sheer cliff wall that rose into the night’s darkness above. No way out there. Not even a handhold in sight.

Guthrie shoved off the wall and back into the tent. As he was spinning around, the entrance across the table from him was pulled open revealing the determined faces of the Dartague warriors beyond.

His mace swung up out of its belt loop, smashing into the nearest of the lamps hanging above the table. Metal bent and glass tinkled as the lamp came down, oil spewing forth and turning into liquid flame that shot across the table. There was a gasp from the other side, but Guthrie wasted no time and swatted at the next lamp and the one beyond. Oil and flame sprang alive on the table and along the dirt and stone floor nearest the tent’s open flap.

It was not much. The fires were small and would likely burn out within seconds. But it was something. It would keep the Dartague back, perhaps long enough for Guthrie to think of some way out of his situation.

He slid his weapons back into his belt and jogged to the end of the table to retrieve his crossbow. At least he could hit one of the bastards before they got to him.

Then he heard the groan.

It had come from behind the massive chair that was Ildra’s throne.

Guthrie jumped to the side of the chair and looked behind it in hope of finding something, anything to save him. There spread out on a blanket of wool was Captain Werner, the older man’s features pale and bruised, though otherwise he appeared relatively hail. The captain seemed unconscious, his eye lids fluttering.

A shout from behind. The Dartague were coming.

Guthrie spun about.

A half dozen men had already entered the tent, their shields up and swords pointed at the Ursian as more and more barbarians piled in from behind.

There was nowhere to go. And this was a fight Guthrie could not win.

The sergeant gritted his teeth and prayed.