Mage Hunter Omnibus (Complete 5 Book Series) (3 page)

No more.

He slammed his dagger into its home and slung his mace on his belt, then turned back along the path between the houses built of stones. He would find food, build a small fire and slink away to sleep in a bed somewhere. In the morning he would travel the distance to the stronghold, give his report, write letters to the family members of his slain men, then ask the captain for his pay and his letter of discharge. With any luck within a week he would be someplace warm, looking for a new manner of living besides hacking away at barbarians between relentless months upon months of tedium, sifting through merchants’ wagons, standing guard duty in the cold beneath a tower, running errands for the officers or the stray knight, protecting caravans, watching over peasants who spoke snide words about the soldiery behind the men’s backs ... Guthrie could go on. Soldiering was a thankless business. Always had been.

But regrets about his past life and dreams for the future fled from his mind as he neared the open doorway where he had discovered the dead man.

The man was still dead, his legs still sticking out the door, but he was no longer alone.

Guthrie reached for his mace.

“There will be no need for your weapons,” the woman said, if she was indeed a woman. The sergeant had never seen her like before, but he had heard stories here in the north about ice witches. She was a head taller than himself, and Guthrie was no short man, though her form was slender beneath the tattered brown rags that draped across her body. Children often held to beliefs of witches as ugly beasts, but the creature before him was quite stunning, her face slender, her lips a dark shade of coal, her eyes black and shaped like almonds, her ears ... here the woman’s resemblance to humanity ended. Her ears were narrow and rose to points. Her flesh was a pale azure, the color of ice beneath the snow. The hair of the witch was as black as oil, and hung in strands from her head like dead snakes.

Despite her words, he hefted his mace, the smooth leather wrappings of the club sliding through his right hand until he felt the weapon’s weight balancing at the end of his reach.

“If you have plans to slay me,” Guthrie said, “I wish you would get about your business instead of lurching from shadow to shadow.”

She grinned. It was an impish grin, almost girlish, but the sharpened teeth beyond her thin lips revealed a darker side to this woman.

“I have no wish for your death, sergeant,” she said. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Guthrie’s eyes narrowed. How had she known his rank? He had yelled out he was a soldier, but he had never mentioned ... then it struck him. How silly to have forgotten. The helm hanging on his back from his belt held the insignia of his station.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“
Assurance,” the ice witch said. “Assurance I am to live for many years yet to come.”

Her answer made no sense to the Ursian. “I do not bargain with sorcery. Whatever you have planned for me had best be forgotten.”

She cackled, the sound proof it had been her who had made the noise earlier. “So little do you know.”

“
You are right. There is much I do not know.” He waved his mace around to indicate the village where they stood, him in the road and her next to a corpse. “I suppose you are the reason the farmers have fled.”

“
No,” she said. “They left without my prodding.”

“
Do you expect me to believe you?”

“
Believe what you will, but I brought no harm to these simple folks. Why would I? They have never done ill to me. For that matter, none of them even knew of my existence. It is only recently I have returned to this region, having come down by the mountain trails you yourself plodded a day ago.”

“
And why did you not stay in your own lands?”

“
Because I have need of one such as yourself,” the witch said. “I need a soldier, a leader of men, someone who has the ear of the Ursian commanders.”

Guthrie guffawed. “You are a witch! By law I should smash in your skull and burn you at the stake!”

She smiled again. “Yes, you Ursians have no love for my ilk, do you? But what you do not know, sergeant, and what many of your countrymen have already learned, is that I am not your enemy. You have a foe far more deadly than myself.”

Guthrie’s eyes narrowed. “Of what do you speak?”

“The Dartague,” she said.

“
The Dartague are border raiders, little more. Every few years they send a party into our lands, claiming vengeance for our priests spreading the faith of Ashal, all the while pillaging.”

“
What you say has been true in the past,” the witch said, “but no longer. A number of Dartague clans have gathered under one leader. They have declared they will drive the Ursians away from their borders, forever.”

He spat into the snow. “The Dartague are barbarians, little more. They fight among themselves so much they could never present a true threat to Ursia.”

“To your nation as a whole, perhaps, but their numbers are quite large, more than enough to force your garrisons further south.”

Guthrie had heard enough talk. The witch was boring him with nonsense. He shrugged at her. “What evidence do you have for any of this?”

“Look around you,” she said. “Where are the villagers?”

“
They fled,” Guthrie said. “That much is obvious.”

“
But why?”

“
That I do not know, and frankly, I’m not sure I care. I was to be discharged from the army this very day. As soon as I see my commanding officer, I can take off my sword.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “A veteran, then. All the better.”

“I have told you, I will not do your bidding.”

“
Perhaps,” the witch said, “but what would you say if I told you it was the Dartague who drove off the villagers?”

Guthrie glanced around at the empty buildings with the broken doors and busted window shutters. “I would say you are wrong. I was here after the Dartague raid. There were a number of villagers dead and many wounded, but they were not ready to run.”

“They would and did when a larger force came upon them from the mountains.”

Guthrie’s face screwed up in confusion. “Witch, do you even know of what you speak? I’ve just returned from hunting the very raiding party that struck here.”

“Yes, and while you were traipsing through the mountains on a fool’s errand, a small army descended here. If not for the snow, you would see the obvious signs of the march.”

“
This makes no sense.”

“
You were deceived, sergeant, lured into a trap. You and your men. All along the border, for hundreds of miles, there were minor skirmishes and raids. All on the same day at approximately the same time. A dozen or more villages were raided, but not too harshly, not enough to cause the locals to flee nor seek the protection of larger forces. Your own men were only involved because of the nearness of your fortifications to this village. Elsewhere, local sheriffs rounded up small groups of men and went hunting for revenge. Most of them likely have found death, though some few might have been allowed to survive, like yourself.”

“
What are you saying?” Guthrie asked, his weapon lowering, nearly forgotten. “Why would the Dartague do this?”

“
To lure out small groups of your men, to make sure your villages were left without protectors.”

What she said made some sense. It was an old tactic, but not one familiar to the Dartague. A small force attacks before pulling back, then when hunters are sent out, a larger group of warriors drives in to finish off an unprotected village, all the while an ambush is laid for the hunters themselves. Such strategies had worked in wars of the past. But the Dartague did not fight this way. They were not treacherous.

“I see by the look in your eyes you are still not quite believing,” the witch said.

“
It does not seem like something the Dartague would do,” Guthrie said.

“
Oh, how little you know of the Dartague.”

“
I have lived within their reach for several years now.”

“
And you have learned nothing,” the witch said. “You know only what you have seen, what some few prisoners or slaves have told you. All of it lies. All of it meant to lull the senses of you Ursians.”

“
Are you saying some kind of major attack has been in the works for years?”

“
The Dartague always have plans for an attack against foreign enemies. Always. It is why they fight among themselves so often, to strengthen their arms and their stomachs against the ferocity of war.”

The sergeant shook his head. “I still don’t understand. Why would the Dartague attack here a second time? Why would they lure out the fighting men all along the border?”

“Because they seek annihilation of your kind,” the woman said, adding, “at least along the border, within their own grasp. They have no desire to fight a war all the way to your capital of Mas Ober, but they will no longer tolerate the interference of your priests and your soldiers at the very steps of their homeland.”

“
Then ... the villagers here, they fled a second wave of attack?”

She nodded. “Yes, a much larger attack, hundreds of bulky warriors in their furs and carrying their swords and spears.”

“Then where is this Dartague army?”

“
They have moved on.”

“
To where?”

“
To your fort.”

“
What
?”

“
My guess would be by now the Ursian stronghold at the crossroads has already been taken, the soldiers slain and the officers tortured. Some few might have been fortunate enough to escape.”

Guthrie stood up straighter, his voice rising. “When did this happen?”

“Likely within the last day or so,” the ice witch said. “I have been here, waiting for you, so I have not been following the marching Dartague.”

Ignoring any danger the woman might represent, Guthrie turned away from her, facing the cold flatlands once more. He stood there motionless, his eyes staring across the ocean of white to the mountains. If what she said was true, then there would be hundreds, possibly thousands, of his countrymen dead all across northern Ursia. The Dartague plan, as the sergeant understood it, made some sense. The barbarians took out the local men of fighting age without drawing the immediate threat of the army, then once rested and furnished with supplies from the very villages they had assaulted, the Dartague moved in to wage war on the local troops. It was not actually the plan of a genius, but it was more complex than any strategy Guthrie had witnessed from the uncouth barbarians. His mind was already altering, changing how he thought of these men and women who had been his foe for years.

“Do you know the outcome of the battles along the border?” he asked

“
No,” she said, “at least not yet. I have my ways of discovering such information, but at the moment I am more concerned with you.”

“
Me
?”

“
I was drawn to you after Ildra allowed you to live.”

“
The wyrd woman?”

“
Yes, that is her. I have had my sights on her for some time, which is why my gaze fell upon you.”

“
What do you have to do with any of this?”

“
Little,” the witch said. “I am no friend to the Dartague and, despite your own countrymen’s wrath against my kind, I have never done harm to one of your own.”

Guthrie thrust up his hands. “Then why are we here? Why am
I
here?”

“
You are here because your captain sent you forth to hunt down a small party of raiders,” the woman said, “but the truth is you were played a fool and your Ursia will suffer along with you. You came to this village to seek aid, but instead you find me. I am here because I have been awaiting you. For my safety, the weather is my own doing. Once your stronghold has been taken, the Dartague are more likely to remain there for a few days if there is a storm blowing across the land. I wanted to keep them there long enough for us to meet.”

His shoulders slumping, hope fled from Guthrie’s features. His country attacked, many dead, and him miles from any safe haven. And still he was not out of the army. Most likely he would never be discharged now, not if the witch was right that a major border conflict had now erupted. The sergeant had no hatred for the army, but he had done his ten years and was ready to move on to a more simple, less dangerous life. But now that was not likely to happen.

Still, he did not know what the witch wanted with him. He turned to face her once more, placing his back against the wide expanse of the snow-covered realm.

“
Why have you sought me out?” he asked.

She grinned yet again. “Finally we are getting to the heart of the matter.”

“Which is?”