Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

I stuck him in the gut with my sword so hard up under the ribs that the point tapped brick behind as he gurgled. His eyes opened wide as his mouth formed soundless words, as a man might practice a polite introduction. A silent owl woven out of smoke swooped down and snapped up his soul.

If you are not to be killed, then you must kill. That is the law of the hunt.

I was halfway across the room to the stone stairs before any of the others noticed the captain’s body sliding down the wall as he collapsed. As a sergeant came running I slashed my wicked sharp blade across the throat of the orderly behind him. No one noticed because they were all staring at the dead captain. I slipped past a pair of men guarding the steps and began my climb, dodging around men pressed to window slits, waiting to loose their bolts.

“Felt you a breeze—?”

“Bastards can’t even hold the line against cursed beasts of women—!”

This foul-mouthed man I stabbed from the back and shoved so he tumbled down, his weight staggering those below him. How they shouted in consternation, looking about for the spirit haunting them. Fool! Fool! Always letting my reckless lusts take hold of me.

That was how Andevai had courted me. I had seen what he was, arrogant and vain and determined to win once he entered any contest, and yet despite knowing he would see me as a challenge to be won, I had still allowed myself to be dazzled by his physical beauty and his unrelenting admiration. He had seen my weakness, which was my desire for him, and so he had fed me one morsel at a time until I could no longer resist devouring the whole of what he offered. So be it. Maybe I was a fool, maybe I would one day get so angry at him that I would rip out his throat, but I cursed well was not going to let Drake or the mansa have him. He belonged to me.

red 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.

I ran for the stone house, dodging and ducking. I had to reach the tower before Drake did. The ribbon of his fire weaving spun up into the tower to splash into the well of the cold mage who sheltered there. Whoever that cold mage was, he was immensely powerful, able to absorb every bit of the backlash that Drake channeled into him. In a burst of heat, flames skimmed along the roof of the stables and sheds as Drake wakened more fire.

The stronger the cold mage, the better for Drake!

The door to the stone house was shut tight. Window slits gave cover for defensive shooting. A bolt loosed from within kissed my hair, just missing my ear. I slammed up against the wall of the house, now inside their range. How to get in?

The door burst into searing flames that chewed through it with such ferocity I had to retreat from its billowing heat. Men shouted inside, but not in panic. They sounded like soldiers sure of their strength and their good defensive position. In the courtyard and stables and orchard the battle raged on, a chaotic ferment of blood, noise, panic, and determination. Half the roofs in the compound were on fire.

A rising breath of cold magic warned me. I dropped to my knees.

Cold hammered down. Every soldier in the courtyard hit the ground as if felled by an axe blow. Where Drake was I did not know, but all the fires went out. The door of the stone house opened, half fallen off its hinges. Soldiers poured out. So intent were they on their foes that one stumbled over my back, knocking me sideways without even noticing I was a stone in their path. I dodged into the house as, behind me, the Amazons tried to rise before they got cut down.

I could not look back. I had my orders.

A Tarrant captain stood by an old-fashioned brick fireplace. He had a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.

“The officers wear feathers in their caps. Aim for them,” he said to his soldiers, who were standing calm and collected at the window slits leveling their crossbows.

I stuck him in the gut with my sword so hard up under the ribs that the point tapped brick behind as he gurgled. His eyes opened wide as his mouth formed soundless words, as a man might practice a polite introduction. A silent owl woven out of smoke swooped down and snapped up his soul.

If you are not to be killed, then you must kill. That is the law of the hunt.

I was halfway across the room to the stone stairs before any of the others noticed the captain’s body sliding down the wall as he collapsed. As a sergeant came running I slashed my wicked sharp blade across the throat of the orderly behind him. No one noticed because they were all staring at the dead captain. I slipped past a pair of men guarding the steps and began my climb, dodging around men pressed to window slits, waiting to loose their bolts.

“Felt you a breeze—?”

“Bastards can’t even hold the line against cursed beasts of women—!”

This foul-mouthed man I stabbed from the back and shoved so he tumbled down, his weight staggering those below him. How they shouted in consternation, looking about for the spirit haunting them. Fool! Fool! Always letting my reckless lusts take hold of me.

That was how Andevai had courted me. I had seen what he was, arrogant and vain and determined to win once he entered any contest, and yet despite knowing he would see me as a challenge to be won, I had still allowed myself to be dazzled by his physical beauty and his unrelenting admiration. He had seen my weakness, which was my desire for him, and so he had fed me one morsel at a time until I could no longer resist devouring the whole of what he offered. So be it. Maybe I was a fool, maybe I would one day get so angry at him that I would rip out his throat, but I cursed well was not going to let Drake or the mansa have him. He belonged to me.

The stairs led past an empty first-floor room and up to the top floor, which was a square room with four windows. On a table lay an unrolled map of the landscape over which the two armies struggled, with Red Mount marked by a bold red X. A man with lime-whitened spiky hair bent over the table, tapping a knife’s point on the house in which we stood. The old mansa of Two Gourds House sat calmly in a chair. A middle-aged magister sat cross-legged on the floor, hands on knees, head bowed, panting as he collected himself. His face was reddened, blistered in places. He was not Vai.

“Let me take the next attack,” said the old mansa. “You are weakening.”