Cold Magics (17 page)

The knights were wreaking havoc on their opponents. The enemy, whoever they were, didn’t seem to have much in the way of armour, and the knights used that and their horses to best advantage, charging and hacking. Several men lay on the ground, bleeding out the last of their inner light into the snow. There was another scream from one of the horses, and Thomas turned to see one of the knights—Gareth, he thought—go down under the weight of his falling animal. A pair of the enemy closed on him, but another knight charged in to protect him. The two attackers backed away and one of them held something out that glowed achingly bright with magic. He pointed it at the knights.

Before Thomas could shout a warning, flame burst from the man’s hand, engulfing both the knights and their beasts and lighting up the night.

It was Gareth on the ground, Thomas could see. Michael, on fire, jumped off his horse and threw himself down in the snow. The enemy charged forward again, and two men’s weapons stabbed down at Michael. A pair of arrows sang out toward the screaming, burning horse, killing it.

“Back!” shouted Henry, turning his own animal and riding back toward Thomas and his friends. “Get back!”

Thomas, without thinking, jumped down from his horse as the knights broke away from the battle. The burning flesh of the dead horse and men lit the battle field with a grisly orange light. At least a half-dozen of the enemy lay in the snow. The one with the glowing object stepped forward again, and flames shot out from his arm. The fire licked at Lawrence, making his horse scream and catching the end of his cloak on fire. He kept riding, struggling with the cloak’s clasp. By the time he reached Henry, Lawrence had used his sword to cut the cloak off, coming perilously close to slicing his own throat to do it.

“Form up!” shouted Henry. “Get ready to charge!”

“We should retreat!” shouted Sir Martin.

“To where?” demanded Henry. “Form up!”

Thomas ran straight at the enemy, ignoring Eileen’s screams for him to come back. Thomas raised his hand towards the attackers, breathing deep and focusing his mind as he pulled himself to a stop. The last time he’d done this, he had been much more powerful and had far less control. The man who had thrown the fire raised his hand again, but this time there was no light shining from it. Thomas didn’t wait to find out what that meant. He opened his hand, and lightning jumped from his fingers.

The thunderclap was deafening, and the sudden flash of light ripping through the semi-darkness dazzled Thomas’s eyes. The man was hurled backwards to the ground, his body smoking and convulsing.

The enemy froze in place. Thomas, his hand still raised, turned to the archers. Lightning lanced out, the thunderclap hideously loud in the sudden silence. One of the archers fell to the ground, smoking and twitching.

“Charge!” screamed Henry, his voice barely audible over the ringing in Thomas’s ears. “In the name of the Four, charge!”

Henry drove his animal toward the nearest enemy. A moment later the four remaining knights followed, moving in a mass and forcing the enemy to scramble away from the charging wall of swords and horseflesh.

Thomas made certain he was clear of the knights and raised his hand for a third time. The enemy broke and fled into the night, leaving most of the dozen swordsmen on the ground. “Take them all!” screamed Henry. “There’s no cover! Don’t let any get away!”

Thomas watched in horror as the knights charged out into the darkness, chasing their fleeing opponents and hacking them down. It took surprisingly little time. The knights returned, their swords and horses spattered with blood, their faces grim and set. Without talking they formed a semi-circle around Thomas, who stood alone in the snow. Behind them, Thomas could see George and Eileen, looking as scared as Thomas felt. No one spoke until Henry and Lawrence rejoined them.

Henry broke the silence. “Are you all right?”

“Aye,” said Thomas. “What about Michael and Gareth?”

“Dead,” said Sir Martin. “What did you do?”

Thomas looked at the smouldering bodies on the ground—the men and horses the flames had taken and the two he’d killed with lightning.

“Magic,” said Thomas. “I did magic.”

11

“He did what I brought him here for,” said Henry. “Get on your horse, Thomas. We need to get out of here in case there are more of them nearby.”

“It’s witchcraft,” said Martin. “Like the enemy uses.”

“The enemy uses fire,” said Rowland. “Fire, not lightning.”

“It’s still witchcraft!” said Martin. “Is that why you can see in the dark?”

“Aye,” said Thomas.

“Why couldn’t you see them before they attacked?” asked Rowland. “If you can see in the dark, why couldn’t you see them and warn us?”

“They were hiding,” said Thomas, “under the snow. I couldn’t see until they stood up.”

“The snowstorm,” said Lawrence, his eyes widening. His voice filled with either fear or awe—Thomas couldn’t tell which. “That was you.”

“Aye,” said Thomas.

“You’ve saved us twice, then,” said Patrick, frowning. “With magic.”

“Aye.”

“Enough of this,” said Henry. “We need to ride. Martin, Lawrence, strip Gareth and Michael of anything that their families might value. Get locks of their hair as well. When we get to Baron Bellew, we’ll send a party back for the bodies.”

Martin hesitated, but Lawrence dismounted and headed to their dead companions. Henry looked at Thomas. “Are you going to mount, or stand there?”

“Neither,” said Thomas. “I need to look at the one that was throwing the fire. He had something in his hand.”

“Go with him, Rowland,” said Henry.

Rowland hesitated, wariness creasing his brow. In the pause, George dismounted. “I’ll go with him.”

T
homas nodded his thanks, and the two of them moved forward. The horse was still smouldering, and the smell of the burnt hair and charred flesh made Thomas wonder if he was ever going to be able to eat meat again. He circled around the beast and examined the man he’d killed.

The man’s thick winter clothes were covered over with a leather cuirass and leggings, all charred from the lightning. Thomas forced the bile back down his throat and instead looked to the man’s hands. One of them still clutched a sword; the other was empty. Thomas scanned the ground around the body.

“What are we after?” asked George.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I only saw it a moment, but it was as long as a dagger, maybe.”

“Wood, steel?” asked George as he stepped up beside Thomas to survey the body and the area around it.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas.

George squinted out into the dark. “This would be a damn sight easier with a torch.”

“Aye, it would,” agreed Thomas, peering out in the darkness. A moment later he realized his own stupidity. “Of course, I could just do this, couldn’t I?” he said, calling a ball of bright blue light to his palm as the words left his mouth.

George inhaled quickly. When Thomas looked at him, he shrugged. “Still not used to it.” George looked back at the knights. “Is that wise?”

“After the lightning?” said Thomas. “This is a parlour trick.”

“True.”

The two turned their eyes to the ground once more and started moving around the body in slow circles until George spotted a hole in the snow.

“Here,” he said, reaching down.

“Don’t,” said Thomas quickly. “It might go off again.”

George yanked back his hand as if it had already been burned. Thomas used the tip of his sword to probe into the hole in the ground. It came up against something hard. Thomas pushed a little harder, and the end of something small and brown broke through. Thomas knelt down. It was about a foot long, and polished smooth. He moved his light closer and saw that the brown was actually flecked with bits of white and red. “It’s stone,” he said. “Quartz, I think.”

“You going to pick it up?” asked George.

“Aye.”

George moved away. Thomas circled until he was standing perpendicular to the ends of the object. Gingerly, he reached forward and touched it with a finger tip. Nothing happened. He pushed on it a little more firmly, then reached forward and picked it up. Still nothing happened.

Thomas looked at it closely, but in the pale light of his magic he couldn’t really see anything special about it. No magic glowed from within the rock. It was a polished piece of quartz, nothing more. He stood and tucked it inside his coat. Even through the layer he wore underneath, the cold of the stone bit into his flesh. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Martin and Lawrence joined them a few moments later, each holding a dead man’s sword and several other objects which they quickly stowed away into saddle bags.

“Are we ready?” asked Henry.

“We are,” said Martin.

“Then let’s ride. I want to be at the castle by midnight. Thomas, take the lead.”

The remaining knights formed a loose perimeter around Eileen and George as they rode. Thomas stayed in front, eyes on the road, trying hard not to think about the carnage they’d just witnessed, or the screams of the horses and men on fire. Henry brought his horse forward and rode beside Thomas. The young lord’s faced was pinched, and his inner light held a red tinge that was slowly fading away.

“So,” said Henry after a time, “are you going to pass out?”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I’m a little shaky, but the lightning isn’t nearly the effort that the weather was.” He remembered healing Lionel in the city. “Or healing, for that matter. I could still do magic, this time. Last time I couldn’t even walk.”

“Good,” said Henry. “I’d rather not have to make camp.”

Thomas looked back over his shoulder at the men behind him. “How badly are they taking it?”

“Taking what?” asked Henry.

“The magic.”

Henry snorted. “How should I know if I’m riding up here with you? What did you find?”

“A stone rod. Quartz. Polished. No sign of magic in it.”

“Then why is it important?”

“Because I’m sure it was glowing with magic just before the man threw the fire,” said Thomas. “Bright as anything I’ve seen.”

“But not now.”

“No.”

“Then why keep it?”

“Because if I look at it in the day, I might learn how it works.”

Henry thought about it. “Could you learn who made it?”

Thomas shook his head. “I’m not like George is with pie; I can’t tell who made it by the taste. Magic just feels like magic. The strange thing is, it doesn’t feel at all like magic right now.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Don’t know,” said Thomas. He scanned the horizon again. “There’s something ahead.”

“I see it,” said Henry. “And about time, too.”

There was a faint, flickering glow of red and yellow light in the distance—a torch high up from the ground.

“Faster pace,” called Henry. “We can see the village.”

He kicked his heels into his horse and moved it up to a brisk trot, the rest doing the same a moment later. Thomas kept himself even with Henry as the horses crunched their way down the snow-covered track.

The village was walled in behind a palisade, with a large stone keep in the middle. The lights they had seen were torches on the towers that bracketed the gate. Henry led the troop up to the gate and called, “Hello within!”

There was a long silence. A head appeared at the top of the wall. “Who calls?”

“Henry, son of the duke of Frostmire, seeking shelter.”

“What?” The head peered further over the wall, then retreated. “Wait!” the man called, and then the man disappeared from sight.

“He’s gone to get his sergeant,” said Lawrence. “Then the sergeant will ask the same question, then go and get his captain.”

“I know,” said Henry. “Meanwhile, we freeze.” He turned back to his men. “Gather around.”

The men rode closer, their horses jostling together.

“The enemy does not need to know that we have magic,” said Henry, his voice low enough not to carry to the wall. “There was a fight, they used magic, we beat them anyway. Not a word about Thomas’s magic. On your oaths. Understood?”

The knights looked uncomfortable, but they all nodded.

“Good,” said Henry. “Now let’s pray they let us in before we all freeze.”

As Lawrence had predicted, the next man up was the sergeant, who listened to Henry’s name, then retreated behind the battlements. Thomas waited for the lieutenant to arrive. Instead the gate cracked open and a dozen spearheads pointed through it. The sergeant stepped forward, a torch in his hand, and peered out from between the spear shafts.

“I thought it was you, Sir Lawrence,” said the sergeant. “I served with you against the bandits four seasons ago.” He looked at Henry. “Is this man as he says?”

“Aye,” said Lawrence. “As are the rest of us.”

“Then you’ll be needing shelter,” said the sergeant, gesturing to the men behind him. The spearheads were withdrawn. “Welcome, my lord. My men will escort you and your guests to the keep at once.”

***

The keep was big and stone and cold and draughty, and much, much better than riding through the snow all night. Baron Bellew built up a roaring fire in the hall and served up large mugs of a rather heady cider and a stew that, while obviously reheated from dinner and not very well flavoured, was very welcome after days of cold rations.

“What in name of the Four were you doing out there?” said the baron.

“Riding here,” said Henry. “Our messenger got intercepted. When did the enemy start operating so far south?”

“The last month or so. Your father’s called us all to pull in our troops and wait for the spring. Says he has a plan to get them on the run.”

“The spring is months away,” said Henry, his tone making it quite clear that he was not impressed. “The turn of the year isn’t even for another two months. Do we let them roam and kill as they like until then?”

“Not much to kill,” said the baron. “The cattle are all in, the sheep are all in, the people have all moved into larger settlements.”