Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“My lord Keita, we have cut off Lord Marius so he cannot reach the city gates. The Parisi prince is dead on the field. We have taken thousands prisoner. The citizens of Lutetia have barricaded the gates to their city. Of cold mages we have captured twenty-eight alive.”

Twenty-eight cold mages taken prisoner! My icy heart flamed hot. Was Vai among them?

The general lowered the spyglass, handed it to me, and took the wrinkled paper to scrawl a note on it. “Tell the marshal that the cold mage Andevai Diarisso is to be sent directly to me.”

“Marshal Aualos said to tell to your ears alone that the particular mage you seek is not among the prisoners.”

I pressed a hand to my locket. It was still warm.

“I want the marshal to secure the encampment and the city gates. Harry any retreating Coalition units until they rout. I want Lord Marius captured, or dead if must be. When the Romans arrive, we will have them surrounded on three sides, with the river at their back.”

We stood without water or shade for an hour or more as troops ponderously trudged past our position to meet the approaching Romans. Far to the south the crack and boom of rifle fire started up; about half an hour later the rumble of cannon woke a mile or more away. But for the sound, and the departure and arrival of messengers, our watch on the ridge passed uneventfully. I couldn’t think for the constant noise. Rory tucked himself into the shade of a tree, where he leaned his head against the trunk and closed his eyes. Exhausted, I sank down beside him.

The pounding hammer filled every crevice of flesh, and blood, and air, and earth. I fell as off a cliff into a dream.

Winged as an eru, I flew above an ocean of smoke. All around clamored my brothers and sisters, each fashioned in their own shape, and all of us killers. Flashes of light like silvery minnows caught in the waves as the dying gave up life. My siblings dove into the waters to gulp up each soul.

The spirits of the dead walked through us, the hunter’s children, from the mortal world into the spirit world.

I saw everything: A man rides away from his comrades on a desperate errand although they urge him to turn back. My eru’s sight could not encompass the features by which a mortal person recognizes another: the flash of sweetness when he really smiled, the way his eyebrows rose when he was teasing me, the promise of his lips. I saw instead the fathomless well of a cold mage whose person is the conduit through which weave the energies that bind the worlds.

Vai.

Thunder jostled my sight, and I lost track of him. The current of battle swept me south. Camjiata had deployed his artillery parallel to the road. It pounded into the Roman columns caught marching at double time, trying to reach their Coalition allies. Every time the Romans tried to break out they were met with a fierce attack from the general’s Iberian Lion Guard or his Amazon Corps. The Kena’ani skirmishers with their white sashes had moved miles down the column to hit the hapless rear guard, which was cut off from the front by the lumbering baggage train.

So small rats were, seen from the height. Their lives of no moment, not truly. So much death churns through the world that we look the other way lest we be overwhelmed by its weight. But I was my sire’s daughter. I had no heart whose conscience burdened my wings.

Separated from its Coalition allies by the tide of the battle, the Invictus Legion retreated step-by-bloody-step south, hoping to meet and join up with its brother legions. However much I had disliked the legate, he held the ranks together under merciless fire. The remnant hunkered down at last within the walls of a lord’s estate.

Farther south an eagle standard went down amid screams of angry victory shouted by jubilant Iberians. Pressed by an unrelenting stream of cannonade, the Romans broke and ran, all but the Ironclad Legion. Under the command of an unflappable young tribune, it worked its way along the river and, in a meeting of grim embraces, joined up with the Invictus.

Twilight reached its fingers out of the east as a front of cold air. The current of the past hauled me into the tower room where I had stalked hours ago.

The first two men have no warning. I am no cold mage, to kill with merely a cut, so I slice their throats open to bleed them out. Cold steel has a sharpness that tastes like finest wine. The others realize they are trapped in the room with a monster. They try to fight, even the old mansa of Two Gourds House tries to draw cold magic to stop me, so I incapacitate him next. The officer puts up the worst struggle, for he is a canny and experienced man who does not want to die. The pulse of his ebbing heart’s blood booms in my ears.

“Cat! Wake up!” Rory was shaking me. Everything was all blurred and smeary. He embraced me so tightly I couldn’t move. “Cat, you were having a nightmare.”

Thunder shuddered through the earth. Drops of icy rain spattered onto my forehead. Instead of blood-soaked clothing, I wore an Amazon’s uniform. Who was I? What had I become?

Rory pulled me to my feet. “We’re moving out. Look at those clouds! No one wants to be up on this hill in a storm.”

“The general is asking for you, Maestra,” said a young officer. He ducked at a growl of thunder, for there really was a storm crashing in on the wings of twilight. “Hurry! The walls of Lutetia have caught fire.”

The glow of flame lit the north as Camjiata’s retinue moved out. A terrible fear ripped through me. The whole city would burn. Drake would burn it all, the mage House and every building inside the city walls, just to show he could do it. Bee was in there, and not just Bee but tens of thousands of ordinary people going about their lives.

Blessed Tanit protect them! I stared in horror as flames leaped along Lutetia’s walls.

A blizzard of sleet swept in with the night, swift and brutal. Born out of cold magic, the storm slammed down and, just like that, extinguished the flames.

43

The sleet icing down over us could not cool my gloating smile. Now Drake would know who was stronger! Yes, he was a savagely powerful fire mage, but he lacked the wisdom and discipline that made a mage like Queen Anacaona so formidable.

Fiery Shemesh! I had completely forgotten about the head.

“Rory! Where is the cacica’s skull? I left it with you!”

“Don’t snap at me! I hid the basket and your satchel in the prickly branches of that felled pine. No one will find it, I assure you.”