Wolfsbane Winter (3 page)

A knot of miners clustered behind Faren. Their faces revealed nervousness, contrasting markedly with the impassive confidence of the senior mercenary.

“What do you want?” Faren shouted the challenge.

The tall man planted his feet square on the ground and smiled. “Don’t be silly. We want your gold, of course.”

“At the risk of sounding even sillier, I’d point out that we’re a well-armed band of Iron Wolves, and we’re in a strong defensive position. The miners are just as keen as us to stop you getting their gold. I’m sure they’ll lend a hand, or a pickaxe, if needed. So unless you’ve got a good-sized army to call on, I don’t rate your chances.”

“I don’t need an army. I’ve got something better.”

The man handed his flag to his companion, then reached over his shoulder and pulled a black tube from the pack on his back. The tube was the length of his arm and three or so inches across. A bar protruded from a collar at the midway point. The man cradled the tube in his arms while gripping the bar.

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Martez. And I’m an Iron Wolf too.” He paused and tugged on his ear. “Except I’ve sorta retired, ever since last year when I rode the Trail with the worst bunch of useless assholes I’ve ever had the bad luck to meet. Their own mothers must have been glad to see the back of them. As for the journey, you name it, and it went wrong. We were way overdue on the way back. Luckily, the weather held out for us, and I thought we were gonna make it. And then, four days from Oakan, a blizzard popped up on the horizon. I was about ready to stick my head between my legs and kiss my ass good-bye.” Martez laughed loudly, but little humor underlay his tone.

“No fucking clue where we were. The scout had gotten us lost. Then we saw some ruins. I’d never seen them before, and I’ve done the Trail enough times. Everyone else was too scared to go in. But the sky was turning black and there was a shitload of snow coming. I reckoned nothing in the ruins could kill me any worse than the blizzard. So I gave the rest of the party a one-finger farewell and hightailed it in.”

Deryn glanced at Faren. The senior mercenary had his lips set in a firm line, clearly waiting for Martez to finish his story before responding.

“It must have been a nice little town for the Ancients, back in the Age of Wonders, but the demons had hit it hard, and there weren’t much left to see. I didn’t wander in too far. Didn’t want to bang into a windigo nest. I just dived down the first set of stairs I found, into a cellar. Then the storm hit and the snow started to follow me in. I left my horse by the entrance and moved further along. That’s when it got creepy. The ceiling lit up and the place warmed a tad. I just found a little corner where nothing could sneak up behind me and settled down to wait out the storm. I had supplies. I was snug. My horse would get hungry, but there was nothing I could do about it. The rest of the party—they had no chance. No big loss.” Martez shrugged.

“The storm lasted three days. After the first day, I got bored and since nothing had tried to hurt me, I poked around a bit. That’s where I found this.” Martez gestured with the black tube. “And I guess you’re wondering what it is. Let me show you.”

At one side of the clearing, a lone tree stood a short way clear of the surrounding forest. The young pine was little more than a sapling, too slender to be of use for mine supports and not enough of an obstacle to justify the effort of cutting it down. Martez held his black tube at shoulder height and pointed one end at the tree. Deryn did not see what else he did, but suddenly, a beam of blue light shot from the tube, accompanied by a rush of air. For an instant, the tree appeared to swell, as if from absorbing the light, and then it burst into flames.

Several miners yelled in panic. Deryn felt her guts turn to ice as she watched fire engulf the sapling. Heat washed over her face, carrying black ash and glowing red sparks.

Still, Faren showed no reaction. His voice was impassive when he spoke. “You’ve got one of the demon’s magic wands from the Age of Chaos.”

Martez lowered the tube. “Yup. That’s what I’ve got, and now I want your gold as well. But I’m a reasonable man. I’m going to give you tonight to think it over. When I come back at noon tomorrow, I want every one of you waiting for me out here, with all your weapons and your gold lying on the ground. We’ll take the gold and check round to make sure you haven’t missed any. You can pick up your weapons after we’ve gone.” He took a step back and smiled. “See you tomorrow.” Martez turned and sauntered away, with his silent companion at his heel.

The miners immediately erupted in barrage of curses, but Faren waited until the two outlaws were out of sight before saying calmly, “I don’t think so, sonny-jim.”

To Deryn’s relief, Brise slipped from the cover of the forest and vaulted over the barricade.

“You caught all that?” Faren asked her.

“Yup.”

“Anything else you can tell us?”

“They’ve set up camp about a mile and a half away, to the east.”

“How many?”

“Just the nine.”

“Just!” The miner’s voice was a high-pitched shriek. “With that wand, what else do they need?”

“Shit.” Another miner chimed in. “After all our work here, they’re gonna take…” Her voice faded in despair.

“No, they’re not,” Faren said decisively. “Well, you can hand over your gold if you want. But there’s no way we Wolves are laying down our weapons.”

“But you saw it. He can burn us all. I don’t want to be—”

“Most likely he can’t.” Faren interrupted the miner’s rant. “I’ve seen these demon wands before. They can be nasty, or they can be all show. Martez has had the wand for a year. He’ll have worked out how to make it seem more dangerous than it really is. You can bet we’ve seen the very worst it can do.”

“How much worse does it need to be?” Dace barged his way to the front. He was the most assertive of the miners and always ready to appoint himself spokesman.

“The only thing we know is that it can set fire to trees. It might have no effect on living flesh.”

“Is that likely?”

“Who knows what sort of magic is in the wand? One thing you can be sure of, though, if that thing could burn us all, he’d have done it. He wouldn’t have mucked about telling us stories first.”

“We can’t risk it.” Dace was now standing toe-to-toe with Faren.

“The risk is in doing what he said. If the wand was as powerful as he’s trying to make out, he wouldn’t need us to lay down our weapons. The only reason he told us to do it is because we outnumber his band and he wants us defenseless so he can slit our throats.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’d say it was a sure bet. Either way, I’m not gonna put myself at the mercy of renegade scum like him.”

“You can’t—”

This time, Brise interrupted. “Faren’s right. The Iron Wolves don’t like renegades. Martez won’t let us take our story back to Oakan. He’d be a marked man.”

Dace still looked ready to argue. Faren ignored him. “Brise, you were telling us what you’d seen. What else?”

“The gang stopped the other side of that ridge, just below the skyline.” Brise pointed. “The woman who was here with Martez headed off on her own. She has to be their scout. I thought about taking her out, but reckoned we needed information more, so I let her go and stayed watching the others. After a half hour she was back. I couldn’t hear what she said, but they weren’t happy.”

“She saw we were putting up defenses, so she knew we’d spotted them.”

Brise nodded. “That’s my guess too. They moved their camp down to the small lake in the valley, out on one of the islands in the marsh.”

“Easily defended?”

“Afraid so.”

“No. It’s a good sign. It means they’re worried about us attacking them, which proves their magic wand doesn’t make them invincible.” Faren added the last point with a sideways glance at Dace.

“I guess that’s the positive way of looking at it.” Brise gave a rueful smile. “Once they were all sorted on the island, Martez and the scout set out again. He was clearly the gang leader, so this time I followed. He spent a few minutes studying the camp from up on the hillside, before making the big show with his white flag, coming in to parley.”

“You agree it was all bullshit about not killing us if we let him take the gold?”

“Oh yes. He wouldn’t have admitted being a renegade if he’d any intention of us living long enough to tell the rest of the Wolves.” Brise frowned. “A bit stupid on his part, because it lets us know for sure that he’s bluffing.”

“He couldn’t keep it a secret.” The speaker was Shea. “I recognized him. He was in Oakan at the same time as me, hanging out in the Wolves’ Den. He claimed he was looking for work too. I guess he was just looking for tips on where to find miners he could rob.”

Faren rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder if that explains how he knew where we are. Any idea who he talked to?”

There was no need for Shea to answer. One miner’s face held an expression of unease bordering on nausea, far too blatant for anyone to miss.

“You spoke to him?” Faren challenged.

The miner licked his lips. “Yeah. A bit. Like Shea said, he was in Oakan, making out like he was an Iron Wolf looking for work. We just chatted.” He glared around defensively. “I was supposed to be hiring more guards. How could I do that without talking to them?”

“What did you tell him?”

“I don’t remember it all. We just chatted one evening in the tavern. Talking about all sorts. He seemed friendly. Bought me a drink.”

“Only the one?”

“Well…” The miner swallowed and stared at the ground.

Faren gave a sigh of exasperation. “Fucking fantastic. So Martez knows how many Wolves are here, how our supplies stand, and probably what your granny’s name is too.”

“If it’s so obvious he’s going to kill us, why did he waste his breath talking?” Dace still wanted to argue.

Brise shrugged. “An excuse to study our defenses close up, I’d guess. Maybe buying himself time as well. He’s hoping we’ll wait to see what happens at noon tomorrow before we make our own plans. And that’s one thing we don’t want to do. I’ve got one more thing to report. That wand of his, Martez made a big thing of laying it out in the sun as soon as they’d made camp.”

Judging by the smile on Brise’s face, this was good news. The significance was lost on Deryn and the miners, but not Faren. He clenched his hand in a fist and punched the air. “Yes!”

“What?”

“Does it matter?” Several voices muttered questions.

Faren answered. “A lot of the demons’ magic draws on the power of the sun. This wand must do the same. Martez had to let the wand soak up sunrays until it held enough power for his display. I bet he couldn’t have set fire to a second tree. He didn’t turn the wand on the barricade, and us standing behind it, because the hour the wand had gotten didn’t capture enough sunrays to burn through heavy timber.”

Deryn looked at the burning tree. Already the flames were dying, and now that she was over the initial shock, she could see the wand had set fire to the pine needles and a few twigs, but it had not touched the trunk of the young tree. Nor had the flames spread to others nearby.

Brise frowned at the sky. “There’s another three hours before dusk. We don’t know how many sunrays the wand needs before it can set fire to the barricade. Maybe it never could. And Martez wants to slow things down. That looks good for us.”

Faren took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s how I read it. Martez led his band out here, hoping to hide up in the woods, wait until all of us were in the same spot and then kill as many of us as he could with a single fireball. But we were lucky and caught wind of them. So he’s gone to his fallback plan. They’ve moved to a defensible spot for tonight. He’ll spend tomorrow morning trapping sunrays in his wand. They’ll come over at noon, just in case we’ve been stupid enough to hand over our weapons. When he sees we haven’t, he’ll use the wand to do as much damage as he can, then go back to his camp and repeat the whole cycle again the day after, until there’s none of us left. He knows time and numbers are on his side.”

Brise agreed. “That’s how my guess goes.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Dace sounded less surly than before, as if he was finally convinced of the logic. This did not mean that he was happy.

Faren shrugged. “Doesn’t matter too much. Regardless of what his plans are, we need to disrupt them. And the surest way to stop him calling the shots is for us to get our attack in first.”

*

The image of the burning tree kept running through Deryn’s head. She tried to push the thought aside, but the other, older memories that replaced it were worse. Briefly, she let her face sink into her hand, covering her eyes, but she was not a young child anymore and she had a job do to. Deryn raised her head.

Her position, halfway up the hillside, was a good vantage point to watch the entire lake, while the bush she was lying under provided dense cover. A few straggling leaves danced before her face, tickling her nose. Deryn carefully pushed them aside, giving herself a clearer view of the outlaws’ camp below.

On three sides, the rocky islet was bounded by a lacework of oily black pools and reeds. Only the corner farthest from the bank jutted out into the open waters of the lake. The islet could be reached on foot, but that meant wading through fifty yards of thick mud, where an attacker would be a slow-moving target, out in the open. Even on horseback, the distance could not be covered quickly enough to evade arrows or fireballs, especially since the outlaws had embedded defensive rows of sharpened stakes in the mud.