Purring, Rory approached her cautiously and licked her hands. She smiled, then sobered as she eyed the soldiers and, with a frown, considered me alone among them.
“Do not fear us, old aunt,” said Lord Gwyn. “Be on your way.”
Rory escorted her past the troop and waited until she was out of sight before he loped after us as we rode on.
The blissful scent of summer lay everywhere. Ahead a tower and roofs marked the town of Castra. We clattered into town past well-tended buildings. People hurried inside and closed their doors. A small river ran through the middle of the town. After we crossed the bridge the soldiers led the horses to water. I walked downstream along the grassy bank, whacking at leaves. Birds warbled. An object spinning past on the silty green water caught my eye. I fished out a tricornered hat. One peak had been crushed. A badge in the shape of a lion’s head was pinned on the felt.
With a shiver of misgiving I scanned the river. A white tassel flowed past, too far away to reach. A little farther downstream something had gotten caught in a bush that hung over the river: a sleeve trimmed with gold braid. I walked down and prodded at it.
An arm was still inside, although the hand had been blasted off, ragged bone shining. A dead man was caught in the branches. His face was bloated, his left eye was a gaping hole, and half his teeth were missing. Tendrils of black hair streamed out from his head, and he wore a white sash embroidered with the twin lions of Numantia.
I reeled back, gasping. Noble Ba’al! Death lay at hand, ugly and violent.
Yet my mind grasped the whole: Camjiata’s army was somewhere upstream.
Lord Gwyn’s shout carried from the bridge. “Can you cursed men not keep your eye on the girl?”
With no warning, volleys of rifle fire shook the air. Gouts of smoke rose all about the bridge as Lord Gwyn’s skirmishers were attacked so suddenly that I stood in gaping confusion. Had the day not been peaceful just one breath ago, even the quiet corpse in its watery grave?
The battle raged in plumes of smoke, in the ragged cries of men hit and fallen, in the rumble of horses’ hooves as survivors tried to escape the ambush. Rory raced up still in cat shape and shoved me with his head. Several men appeared on the other side of the river with rifles pointed right at me. They wore the same uniform as the dead man: Iberians! I pulled the shadows around me. Shot peppering behind us, Rory and I bolted through the dirt paths and fenced gardens of the outskirts of town. A cart track lay empty but for a solitary bird hunting for bugs. The shooting ceased. Crows flocked overhead, heading for the battleground.
We broke onto an empty pasture recently mown. Drying grass lay in raked strips along the uneven ground. A bird whistled in a lovely waterfall of song. Another bird chirruped four discordant notes. The skin of my neck prickled. Rory halted, ears forward. I slipped my cane from its loop.
We trotted across the pasture toward a towering shrub riddled with orange flowers. All was peaceful until a brightly plumaged body burst out of its branches, as tall as me, talons gleaming.
I leaped forward to whack the creature on the head. With a clicking stutter, it fell back as I fell back. We panted, at a momentary standstill, staring at each other.
A dancing spin of tiny mirrors and shards of polished metal flashed in my eyes. The feathered person stood clothed in a mimicry of a soldier’s uniform weighted with shards of all the shiny things its kind loved. It flashed a bold yellow-and-red crest as it opened its muzzle to grin with predator’s teeth, like a shark giving you a moment to accept that you’ve been honored by being chosen for its next meal.
Blessed Tanit protect me! Gracious Melqart give me strength! Noble Ba’al grant me wisdom!
It lunged for me.
Rory leaped. He smashed right into the troll, and they rolled, crashing through the brush. Orange petals spun in a cloud of color. I pulled shadows around me and ran after them. The troll snapped at Rory, who dodged aside to rake at the troll’s flanks with his wicked claws. It stumbled. Its fluid whistle pierced the air, answered by a click and whistle. Blessed Tanit! Of course they never went anywhere alone.
As the troll whipped around to slash at Rory, I smacked it right over the eyes. Staggering back, it retreated with nostrils flaring, momentarily blinded.
A stab of reflected light cut across my face. Rory faded into the brush as two feathered people crept out of the trees about twenty paces apart, in hunting formation. The way they had of bobbing their heads as they swept the scene crawled a shiver down my skin. The blinded one whistled and clicked to them, blinking as it recovered. I held steady. Even in daylight and entirely exposed, my shadows hid me from them, and right now the wind was behind them so they could not smell me either.
They raised mirrors. Where these glances of light lanced across the field, they cut the threads of magic that bind the worlds. My shadows shredded into fraying ribbons whose ends I could not furl about myself. Whistling, the hunters stripped me of my concealment as they fanned out. One lashed its paddle of a tail as in a prelude to attack.
Yet the mirrors also cut right through the binding that made my sword appear as a cane in daylight. Freed from its net of shadow, the ghost hilt flowered into solidity. I grasped the hilt and drew my cold steel blade out of the spirit world and into the mortal world.
All three stopped dead in their tracks. Judging by their feathering and size, two were female and one male. They looked me over first with one eye, then the other, and then full on. My throat tingled, anticipating their bite.
“It’s very shiny,” I said, raising the blade as in salute. Their heads swayed as their gazes raptly followed the movement of the sword. “But don’t think you can take me easily. The spirit of my mother is bound into this sword.”
I turned and raced into the trees, thrashing through undergrowth in a rattle of noise, then stumbling unexpectedly onto a bushy verge along a major road. I was pretty sure we had found our way back to the main road to Cena, but I could not be sure. Rory nudged up beside me. He had a shallow graze on his right flank but nothing serious.
We crept forward through the grounds of a little roadside temple dedicated to the patron of travelers, Mercury Cissonius with his rooster and goat. Not a single priest attended the altar. The basin for ablutions had been overturned. Six corpses sprawled on the road, buzzing with flies. Their pockets had been turned out and their weapons and kit ransacked. I found Lord Gwyn, quite dead. Worst, one man’s face was half ripped off as by the slashing bite of a big predator. A humble farmer’s cloth cap lay on the ground, pierced by a shard of glass.
A thundering rumble rose and faded. A bird whistled in a waterfall of notes. Four trolls pushed out of the woods and onto the road. A fifth and sixth appeared on either side of the god’s statue in the temple. We were surrounded.
No wonder no scouts or spies ever returned. Camjiata was using the feathered people as skirmishers to protect his lines and hide his army’s movements. I braced myself for their attack as Rory hissed beside me.
A gust of wind rattled the branches. A drum rhythm paced through the woods. On its beat I heard a woman’s voice call out a verse, answered by a chorus of women singing the response.
Man try to give yee money, what can he get?