Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (73 page)

The fire mages had gotten their range.

Yet even in the face of these devastating casualties, still another Coalition troop
galloped down toward the artillery. Riders and horses fell before the barrage, but
this time where fire broke out it was quenched. The artillery went dead. With shouts,
the Coalition troops closed. Grass fires sparked up and died. Men fought hand to hand,
swords and bayonets flashing.

A young officer wearing the white sash of the Kena’ani Sacred Band rode up on a lathered
horse, pushing in front of another messenger. “General! Captain Barca sends his compliments
and this message: The first outriders of the Roman column have been engaged about
five miles south.”

Camjiata glanced overhead to where the sun had almost reached the zenith. “We should
have broken the Coalition army before now. Drake, why have your fire mages not crushed
every cold mage on the field? You assured me that fire would easily defeat ice.”

“There are so many cold mages, and they’re working in concert in a way they did not
before, not even at Lemovis.”

“No doubt they can learn from experience as well as we can,” remarked Camjiata as
he took a spyglass from an orderly. “Matters grow urgent. Lord Marius need only hold
his ground and not retreat until the Romans arrive, and then we will be crushed between
anvil and hammer. Our frontal attacks are hurting them, but not fast enough.”

He examined the sprawling field of battle in all its churning confusion, so many thousands
of men that it seemed the earth crawled. “There. See how the Invictus Legion holds
its ground. We have to turn their flank, for a frontal attack will not break them.”

He angled the spyglass to the north. About half a mile away a fortified estate stood
amid the green crowns of an orchard. I remembered passing the house and gardens with
Lord Gwyn’s skirmishers, who had told me it was called Red Mount. The compound had
two walls, an outer wall that ringed the orchard and gardens and an inner wall that
fortified the stone house. The flag of the Tarrant infantry, Lord Marius’s own crack
troops, flew from the main house.

A column of Iberian infantry had laid siege to the estate an hour earlier. As we watched,
a skirmish raged. Fire scorched across the orchard. Defenders hiding in the trees
raced for the inner wall to escape the flames, but even as they were running the flames
were sucked right out, killed by cold magic. Crossbow bolts rained over the wall,
pummeling the Iberian infantry as it tried to advance. The struggle within the walled
orchard was not visible, nor from this distance could I hear the sounds of whatever
desperate melee was taking place beneath the trees.

“How can it be we have not yet taken that estate?” demanded Camjiata of his staff.
His temper flashed, as dark as storm clouds. “Can you not see that it anchors the
western flank of the Coalition army? No wonder Lord Marius holds the field. He need
not worry about this flank, and thus can keep his center strong and take heavy losses
against our superior weaponry but smaller numbers. Drake, why have the fire mages
you brag of been defeated yet again by cold magic?”

Drake had his own spyglass, which he turned toward the estate.

A second fire seared across the treetops. With a shout of triumph the Iberians swarmed
forward. Yet once again the fire was sucked clean out of existence as quickly as if
a god had inhaled it into immortal lungs.
Bolts and arrows from within the estate’s inner wall poured down on the attackers,
driving them back.

“There is your answer,” said Drake. “There must be several powerful cold mages inside
the walls of the estate. Some are absorbing the backlash while others are killing
the fire.”

“Then take care of this problem personally, James! Else I shall have cause to wonder
if all your talk is nothing more than idle boasting. Probably it is the Diarisso cold
mage, the one who is evidently stronger than you.”

Drake threw the spyglass angrily to the ground and his blue eyes actually sparked,
but then he controlled himself and, without another word, stalked off.

Camjiata watched him reach the horses before turning to his staff. “Captain Tira!
Let the Amazons take the estate and hold it against all counterattacks until the Coalition
army breaks or you are dead.”

She nodded, as calm as if he had asked for tea. “It will be as you command, General.”

I ran over to the fallen pine. Rory had passed out, dead drunk, his head pillowed
on the satchel. I unslung the basket from my back and tucked it into Rory’s embrace.
The thought that Vai might be caught helpless within the compound as Drake poured
fire through him while the general’s forces advanced filled me with a frantic desperation.
Luce was fighting, too! But Luce had made her choice, and I had to respect her decision.

I raced back to the general. “Let me go with the Amazons.”

He stared as if I had sprouted snakes for hair and turned him to stone. “You truly
fear your husband is the cold mage who defends the estate. You fear Drake
can
kill him.”

“Drake said it himself. When they are being used as catch-fires, cold mages are helpless
and vulnerable. I can help you. I can creep in unseen.”

Anger did not knit his brow, but suspicion grew like a brewing storm. “Creep in and
warn them? Is that your plan? If we do not take Red Mount, we will lose the battle.
If we lose the battle, we lose the war. Do you understand me, Cat?”

For the radicals of this generation not to be stamped out and imprisoned and executed,
Camjiata had to win. For Vai’s village to
be released from clientage now instead of decades from now, if ever, Camjiata had
to win. For Bee to have a hope of living in peace, Camjiata had to win.

And if Camjiata lost, and the mage Houses and princes won, I would probably lose Vai
to the mansa in the end.

“I understand what is at stake.”

The ringing thunder of the artillery boomed around us, thrumming down into the belly
of the world. Smoke gusted out of the wounded earth in murky clouds.

He studied me, and what he read in my expression I did not know. But he nodded. “Very
well. Let the Coalition break, and the Roman army fall, and then you can have Drake
and save your cold mage likewise. But not a moment before victory is mine.” He glanced
over to where Rory was huddled in the shadow of the tree. “I’ll keep an eye on him
for you. Strange. Why does he hate battle so? He did not strike me as a coward.”

“He’s no coward,” I snapped. “He just has a heart, unlike you and me, General.”

We marched to Red Mount. Luce was not in the company I was assigned to. The Iberian
riflemen had hunkered down along the estate’s outer wall. With caps set on the wall
to draw enemy fire, they shot over it into the orchard. Drifting smoke spun into coils,
concealing half the world. Soon I was sucking in lungsful of heat, chaff, and powder.
I kept my gaze fixed on the feather in Captain Tira’s shako, like a bird’s wing in
fog. A hand touched my back as for balance and a shoulder brushed mine as I waited,
crushed within the close-packed ranks of my sisters.

We made our way in a crouch to the smashed gate. The constant hammer of noise pounded
through my body. The Iberians were using planks and doors as shields behind which
they pushed forward into the orchard. Scorched leaves crumbled underfoot. Spent bullets,
musket balls, arrows, and crossbow bolts crunched under my boots. The peppering fire
of rifles melded with the rhythm of drums.

I wrapped myself in shadow and smoke. Using a tree trunk as shelter I peered into
the smoky fog of the orchard. Bodies littered the ground. The bloody and battered
Iberians had stalled as a rain of arrows and the pop of musket fire trapped them in
the ashy trees. One man cowered, huddled up like a broken child, sobbing.

Yet not five paces from him, a different man called laughingly to the Amazons, “These
Tarrant bastards are saying no man can dislodge them. Let’s see what you women can
do!”

Amid the trees, a soldier was dragging himself along the ground with his arms. His
uniform was so covered in ash and his face so smeared likewise that I could not tell
whose side he was on. A white
fox nipped at his heels, until I blinked and realized it was only smoke pooling on
the ground. The soldier slumped forward, facedown. A flash of light about his form
dazzled me. The smoky fox leaped, swallowed the light, and vanished. I shook myself,
for I was seeing things that weren’t there.

Through patches of smoke I surveyed the layout of the inner compound. There was a
two-story fortified stone house with a tower, as well as a long stable and several
sheds. The compound wall and the stable wall were cut with loopholes for defense.

A pattern emerged, once I looked for it.

I slipped out of my shadows to report to the captain, who was sheltering behind a
broken door propped between two trees. “Captain Tira! All of their musket fire is
coming from the western corner. That means the eastern gate and the house are where
the cold mages stand.”

“Of course it is,” shouted the captain. It was hard to hear her even though I could
have reached out to touch her. “Do you see that reflection of light in the tower window?
It’s a spyglass. They’re directing their forces from up in the tower.”

A body fell not ten strides from me. A cloud of wasps swirled over the corpse, but
there were no wasps, only grit in my eyes.

A man ran up from the outer gate and crouched beside Captain Tira. I pulled the shadows
around me just in time, as I realized it was Drake. He did not notice me. His lean
face shone as pale as if he never got any sun, but I thought it was just that he was
sweating. His blue eyes were so bright they gleamed like polished gems on the edge
of burning.

“There are four cold mages,” he shouted, already hoarse as he struggled to be heard
above the din. “Three in the tower and one at the carriage gate. I will burn the carriage
gate using the one at the gate as my catch-fire. I’ll also set the roofs of the stables
on fire. You’ll have to move fast to break through once I do, or their arrows will
kill you regardless.”

“Why did your mages not set fire to the stables before this?” the captain asked.

“They’re young and inexperienced,” said Drake. “Also, there’s a mage in the tower
who is the strongest mage I’ve ever touched. He’s
the one we must defeat. His reach covers all but that one corner of the enclosure,
where they’ve focused their muskets. Do you see?”

“Yes, I already know.” Captain Tira smiled as to herself. “Very well, Drake. At your
signal, we’ll advance. You rid us of the cold mages, and we’ll kill the officers.”

She lifted a hand to give the command for forward, just as she nodded toward where
she had last seen me. Thus was I given my orders:
Kill the officers
.

Drummers beat the roll of advance. A cadre of Amazons shielded Drake as the line pressed
forward pace by pace through the trees into withering flights of arrows and the sting
of musket balls. I could hear nothing but the shattering thunder of rifles around
me. After an eternity we had made it halfway along the trees.

In my veil of shadows, the path I crept seemed to weave in and out of the interstices
that bind the world. Threads stitch the world together. Every substance, solid or
liquid or air, moves with the quivering resonance of a struck bell. I saw with altered
eyes: Behind the closed carriage gates lay the bright well of a cold mage.

Rifles cracked in my ear. Beside me an Amazon collapsed, bleeding into the dirt. I
flung myself down to use the fallen woman as a shield, but I had to roll away quickly
when her body writhed and glowed. Drake was pouring the backlash of his magic into
the wounded.

The carriage gates burst into fire so bright that its light speared into the sky.
In answer a wash of ice slumped over all, and the flames died. I was close enough
that my sword bloomed, so I twisted its hilt and drew the blade out of the spirit
world.

Fresh fire tore into the roof of the stables as Drake poured the backlash into the
mage at the gate. The magister flared like a candle, too weak to channel so much power,
and his light snuffed out: He was dead. Within a fire blazing with doubled force,
the carriage gate was consumed. This time, when the fire was killed by cold magic,
the damage was already done, the gate demolished.

With a shout the Amazons pressed through the smoking ruins of the gate. The sound
of a desperate melee rang on the air, groans and shouts and bayonets striking and
the clatter and thunk of crossbows and the incessant fire of rifles. Just as I reached
the gate, a hammer of cold killed every rifle in the orchard mid-fire and doused the
flames on
every roof. Still in shadow, I plunged through the charred planks and beams of the
gate. The dead cold mage lay twisted in the wreckage, smoke pooling in his open mouth:
He was not Vai.

I stared across a gravel-paved courtyard churned with smoke and bodies. A rifle cracked,
and a man in Tarrant green who had taken cover in a stone arch went down as blood
sprayed his head. A snarling cat as insubstantial as darkness clawed the bright spark
of his soul out of his chest. A wolf sewn of mist leaped upon a woman who had a bayonet
in her gut and swallowed her unmoored soul.

As the skirmish boiled across the courtyard, spirit hunters nipped at the fallen.

The Wild Hunt rides on Hallows’ Eve, but its shadows linger all the year long: It
is the Hunt that consumes the souls of the dying at the moment of death. There they
prowled, my brothers and sisters, a glint of teeth in the smoke, a sliver of light
on the wind. Because I stood with a foot anchored in each world, I could see the whole.

The Hunt does not take blood, only souls. For the Hunt itself is the gate through
which the souls of the dead pass from the mortal world into the spirit world.

A bolt shot from the tower skimmed my hat’s feather, jostling the cap off. Even invisible,
I was not immune to death. No one in the mortal world is immune.