Iron and Blood (16 page)

“Stop!” Artus put himself in Gallo's path, a sword in his hand, but the Delloran let the boy's blade clatter harmlessly off his armor and straight-­armed him into the ground without breaking stride. Before Artus could recover, Gallo had dragged Hendrieux and himself through the anygate and vanished from sight.

“Dammit!” Artus said, wiping the blood from his nose and standing up. “They're getting away, Myreon! Come on!”

She held up her hands, “Not so fast, boy! You don't know where that goes!”

“But they're escaping!” Artus countered, and leapt through the half-­open door.

“Artus!” But he was gone. Myreon stared at the gate, face grim. If the boy was walking into a trap and if they thought he was Tyvian . . .

“Ma'am,” one of the Defenders said, grabbing her arm. “Let him go.”

Myreon shook her head. “If Sahand gets his hands on him . . . he's just a boy.”

“No ma'am,” the Defender countered. “He's a criminal.”

Myreon gave the man a long, hard look. Then, holding her breath, she stepped through the anygate before any of the other Defenders could move to stop her.

B
ody aching, blood running down his legs, Tyvian crawled back to the door in the woodcutters yard and opened it. Within was a simple storage room, filled with icicles formed from a leaky roof. “What? Dammit!”

He closed the door and opened it again—­nothing. He opened it a third time—­still the damned storage room. Somebody had reset the gate. Tyvian lay back in the snow, staring at the sky, and had to laugh. He held up his ring hand. “You've really done it now. See what your moralistic nonsense has earned us? We're bleeding to death in a snowbank. Congratulations, ring.”

Tyvian knew he was as good as dead. Though his free hand pressed feebly against the deep leg wound, he could feel the blood spurting out too quickly to be stopped entirely. “Kroth. Kroth's bloody teeth.”

He imagined Eddereon
was
there, standing over him in the snow, that odd, warm expression on his face, like a father watching his son learn to ride. The big Northron pressed his broad hand to Tyvian's leg, and it was filled with the most incredible warmth. Tyvian felt suddenly stronger, better. He managed to sit up.

Eddereon was there. Eddereon
was
wearing that ridiculous expression. Tyvian scowled at him. “So, you can bring ­people back to life?”

Eddereon nodded. “So could you, if you felt something strong enough.”

“Aren't you even the least bit disappointed in my recent attempted murder of a former friend?”

Eddereon nodded, snowflakes shaking loose from his beard. “Yes, I am. I understand, though. Accepting the ring takes a long time.”

Tyvian frowned. “Did you heal me entirely?”

“Your nose is still broken, your leg will bleed a bit, and your shoulder is . . . well, how does it feel?”

“Like hell.”

Eddereon nodded. “There you are. I could heal you all the way, but some pain will do you good for what is to come.”

“Are you an augur now? You can tell the future?”

“The boy, Artus, is in danger. As is the mage, Myreon Alafarr.”

Tyvian snorted, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet. “Hang the mage. She wants to make me into public art.”

Eddereon sat on the woodpile. “She is a good woman doing what she thinks is right. You can't fault her for that.”

“I can, have, and will.”

“Hool needs you, too.” Eddereon added. “She is in a great deal of pain.”

“Well, can you call me a coach, too? Because I don't see myself limping through a snowy night to find them.”

Eddereon pointed at the anygate. “The Defenders and their Master will be coming through there soon enough. Don't trust him, Tyvian. He isn't who he says he is.”

Tyvian watched as the Northron stood up to leave. “Do you know who he's working for?”

“He is a member of the Sorcerous League. They want you for the ring on your finger, just as they wanted me in the past. Don't let them have you. The ring's secrets are not for them to know.” With that, Eddereon hopped the fence of the woodcutter's yard and was gone.

Tyvian scowled after him, fiddling with the immovable ring, when he heard a soft
whump
behind him—­the anygate had connected. He limped to it and threw it open before the Defenders on the other side could come through.

He emerged into the same room he had been before, deep below Arble Keep. Master Tarlyth with a quartet of Defenders stood there, their firepikes pointed at his face. The Master Defender's tone was dry. “I take it your revenge didn't go as planned?”

Tyvian looked down at his wet, bloodstained body. He was careful not to touch his ring. “Did the bastard get away, then?”

Tarlyth nodded. “Yes. Yes he did. Magus Alafarr and your . . . associate went after him.”

Tyvian noted
Chance
where it lay on the floor and was thinking about how to grab it before the facts hit him. “What . . . Artus? Artus
went after them
?”

“I somehow doubt you will ever see them again, Master Reldamar,” Tarlyth remarked, and snapping his fingers, called
Chance
into his open hand. “You are hereby under arrest.”

Tyvian's shoulders slumped—­that was it. There was no way out of this one. He extended his hands to be shackled. The Defenders weren't gentle.

As they led him up and out of the cellar, limping and exhausted, he heard Hool howling. The long, mournful sound slid down the stairs and through the winding corridors of the cellar, and Tyvian felt a chill leak through his bones like something greasy and foul. This was not a howl of pain . . . at least, not of physical pain.

They found her lying in the middle of the courtyard, facedown, a small, fuzzy creature nestled next to her, which whimpered in a staccato rhythm to mirror its mother's long, grief-­stoked wails. Tyvian, seeing the weeping wounds and foul injuries inflicted on the tiny pup, felt his heart fill with something unfamiliar—­something painful and hard, as though fluid were pumped inside until the pressure couldn't bear it. He looked for a word for the feeling and he found it—­sorrow.

Tarlyth regarded her and grunted. “She's found one of her pups,” he said.

Tyvian's voice was hollow. “Not just one.”

Hool arched her back, head pointed to the sky, and howled for all her worth. They could now all see what was in her lap.

It was a fur pelt.

 

M
yreon stepped out of the anygate and into ankle-­deep snow and air so frigid it made her gasp. This chill, however, was nothing compared to the one that ran up her spine a split second after she looked around and saw where she was: an armed Delloran camp pitched beneath the soaring domes and cracked arches of ancient ruins. She could see out past the pickets and over the whole of the narrow valley in which Freegate sprawled—­they had to be thousands of feet up, well beyond the notice of anybody in the city. The Dellorans could have been here for years and nobody would know.

A cry of pain ripped Myreon out of her shock and brought her back into the present. She saw a group of six men, armored and wearing heavy wool and fur cloaks, standing in a circle around the prone form of a man who looked, for all the world, like a bruised and battered Tyvian Reldamar, except it wasn't. It was Artus, and the Dellorans were beating him to death.

The boy's voice, incongruous in Tyvian's lips, was frayed and hoarse, “No, please . . . I surrend—­” A Delloran boot hit him in the throat, causing him to gag.

The owner of the boot was a man twice Reldamar's weight wielding a wicked dagger with a serrated blade. He knelt down as the other men kept kicking Artus and pressed its blade to the boy's face. “Payback time.”

Myreon's heart was pounding—­six men, many more nearby. As she stood there, the wind fluttering the strips of her tattered, patched cloak like streamers behind her, her golden hair wild, her staff glowing with power, she knew time was of the essence. Slamming her staff into the snowy ground, she released as much anger as she could into the Shattering. The big Delloran's dagger disintegrated with a fiery pop, sending blazing shrapnel in every direction. It scorched Artus's face, but that was better than having his throat cut, and it got the soldiers' attention.
All
of them.

Tents opened, men rushed for their weapons, orders were issued. Myreon heard them saying, “Staff at the gate!” and “Activate your wards!”

Myreon spread her arms, thrust out her chest, and hoped her voice wouldn't crack. She channeled the tiny amount of Lumenal energy given off by all the living bodies nearby into a blazing flare of light that burst from the end of her staff. The shadowy camp was bathed in a harsh white glow, causing many men to shield their eyes. “By authority of the Defenders of the Balance, I hereby order you to drop your weapons and release your prisoner or face the full weight of my Art.”

The Dellorans wasted no time in parley. Four of them advanced on her at a near sprint, weapons drawn. They planned to take her simultaneously from either side, and the plan was a good one. Myreon only had an instant to react, and she did by capitalizing on the Lumenal ley her staff flare had established to release a sunblast at one group of men. The blazing white bolt again lit the camp as bright as noon, and the two men struck recoiled in horror, their cloaks aflame and their faces seared.

The second pair lost a man as well, who fell to his knees clutching his eyes and screaming. The second man, though temporarily blinded by the flash, had the discipline to follow through with a lunge, his short blade barely missing Myreon as she retreated out of reach. He retracted into a defensive stance, but she could see that his eyes were still unfocused and blind, making him vulnerable. She quickly swept the man's forward foot with her staff, knocking him off balance, and then followed the attack with a hard, overhand chop with the full length of the magestaff. The man put his arms up reflexively to guard his head, and Myreon's strike shattered his forearm just below his sword guard. The man screamed, but not before the butt of her staff hit him in the groin, felling him.

Adrenaline surging through her veins, Myreon strode toward the two remaining Dellorans standing over the whimpering body of Artus. She channeled the Lumen again into a simple glow-­glamour, causing white light to pour from her eyes and an unearthly Aura to surround her like a shield. She shouted at the two men and the platoons of armed allies behind them, trying to hide the weakness in her knees and the tremor in her arms. “Cease and desist—­this is your final warning!”

The assembled Delloran host paused. Crossbows were shouldered, spears were leveled, but nobody advanced and nobody shot her. They hadn't called her bluff. A tense silence, broken only by the moan of the wind cutting through the broken tunnels and empty galleries of the ancient ruins, fell over the camp.

A booming voice rose from the assembled guards. “My congratulations to your trainers, girl. In my experience, courage is the hardest thing to teach.” A broad-­shouldered man in a hood moved through the cordon of spears surrounding Myreon.

Myreon pointed her staff at him. “Stand back!”

The man barked a harsh laugh and pulled back the hood, revealing a slablike face, pinched and cracked with a mixture of anger and disgust. Myreon didn't need to see the iron circlet on his brow to recognize him—­Banric Sahand, Mad Prince of Dellor. “Are you sure you know what you're doing, girl? I've bested much better magi than you.” Myreon backed away from Artus as the Mad Prince came to face her from a few dozen paces away. “Is Reldamar worth that much to you?”

She took a deep breath, trying to still her panicking heart. She felt like her entire body was quivering with a peculiar mix of fear and elation. “You are far from home, Your Grace, and in violation of the treaty of Calassa.”

“I didn't sign that treaty; I was freezing on a mountainside at the time.” Sahand stomped a foot and, with a violent, brutish series of arm motions, cast a blazing ball of Fey energy at Myreon, forcing the mage to throw herself to the ground to dodge it. The fireball struck an ancient statue behind her, which burst into an ear-­shattering explosion that obliterated a half-­dozen tents nearby and set the whole area aflame. Roaring, Sahand came at her like a bull.

Myreon climbed to her feet in time to meet his charge. She put her staff up to parry what she assumed would be a physical blow, but Sahand's fist stopped just short of her and then opened as he uttered the harsh word,
“AKRKH!”
A blossom of orange flame burst from the Mad Prince's palm and struck her in the chest. She felt the air pummeled from her lungs as she was sent hurtling through space. She crashed through the burning doorway of a tent and slammed upside-­down against a rack of pots and pans. She collapsed on the floor in a heap, the world a spinning, burning sea of red fire, black smoke, and white pain.

Myreon found, to her surprise, that her staff was still in her hand. Struggling to her feet, the smoke and fire stinging her eyes and choking her nostrils, she focused her attention on drawing a perfect circle on the dirt floor and then striking the exact center with the butt of her staff. The icy-­cold Dweomeric blast boomed outward, extinguishing the fire and blowing what was left of the tent into the air. Breathing clean, cold air again with grateful gasps, Myreon came again to stand before Sahand.

The Mad Prince was still there, waiting for her. “Hmph. Not a quitter. I like that in a woman.”

Myreon gathered as much Dweomeric energy as she could from the cold, wintry mountain air and sent a lode-­bolt at Sahand so large it left icicles on the ends of the mage's fingers. Sahand spun himself in a quick circle and reflected the bolt back at her. She did the same, this time sending it back with enough speed that Sahand was forced to duck out of its way. Behind him the assembled masses of Delloran soldiers threw themselves to the ground in a panic. Myreon permitted herself a tight smile. “You forget that we Defenders have been trained to duel.”

“I don't forget things, girl,” Sahand grumbled, and struck the earth with another Fey invocation that caused the ground to shake and gouts of flame to shoot toward Myreon. She braced herself and worked a Dweomeric dispel that would counter it, but the sheer power of Sahand's casting was such that she was seared and smoking even after the spell had been dissipated.

Sahand followed that spell up with another, and another, each of them such violently powerful Fey spells that Myreon could barely shield them with Dweomeric energy, even though they were fighting on a cold winter mountain slope—­ideal Dweomeric conditions. Exhausted from her efforts to dispel the spells, her breath came in ragged, gasping bursts and she had her hands on her knees. Sahand, she noted, had barely broken a sweat.

“Trained to duel, eh?” he said with a chuckle. “You, girl, are a sorry excuse for a mage. Look at you—­panting like a dog, waiting, no doubt, for some kind of opening or mistake.” Behind him at a healthy distance, his men chuckled in kind. They made lewd gestures and catcalls.

Myreon threw a weak lode-­bolt at Sahand, but the Mad Prince batted it away contemptuously. “That's
it
? This is what they taught you in Saldor? Ha! Get over here, kneel, and beg me to spare your life.”

The jeers doubled at the prospect of Myreon kneeling. The laughter seemed to press in on her from all sides. She realized she was surrounded now—­no way to get back toward the anygate. Trapped.

“You . . . really are . . . mad . . .” she said between breaths, and used her staff to pull herself to her feet. “Let . . . Reldamar . . . go . . .”

Sahand drew a knife and seized Artus by the hair, dragging him to his knees in front of her. “You want him so badly, I'll give him to you. What part do you want first? The ear? The eye?” He let the tip of his blade waver from spot to spot on Artus's disguised face.

“Leave him be,” Myreon growled, and did her best to cast a fireball, but she was so exhausted the spell barely made enough heat to light a candle.

Sahand gave her a cruel grin. “I don't take orders, girlie.” He slid the blade of his knife along Artus's face, sending a rivulet of blood running down his cheek. Artus screamed himself awake.

“Tyvian!” Myreon shouted. “Tyvian, stay calm! I've . . . I've got things under control. I'll save you.”

Sahand's guards leveled spears and advanced on Myreon from all sides. Sahand held his knife up so it caught the light of the burning tents. The blade was slick with blood. “I'm not a patient man, Defender. Surrender or I cut off something that won't grow back.”

Artus's voice blubbered between Tyvian's swollen lips. “D-­D-­Don't do it. Don't . . . please . . .”

Myreon felt sick; he was just a boy. Her pride wasn't worth his death. “O-­Okay. Leave him be. I . . . I surrender.”

Sahand grinned, and Myreon could have sworn his teeth were pointed, like a beast's. “Kneel, Defender.”

Myreon was flanked by two Dellorans, and she threw down her staff and knelt. “I give up.”

“Not fast enough,” Sahand sneered, and with a quick, savage motion of his knife, cut off Artus's left earlobe. Artus screamed and fainted.

Myreon struggled to stand, “You . . .”

Sahand shook his head and laughed. “For a girl who likes to quote the Treaty of Calassa at me, you don't know your history, do you? I'm not to be trusted.” He looked at his men and nodded.

Myreon felt the white-­hot pain of a blade entering her back and the blood bubble to her lips. She then pitched forward onto the icy cobblestones and passed out.

Sahand kicked the unconscious Defender onto her back and snorted. “That's got to be Alafarr.”

One of his men put his sword on Myreon's breastbone and prepared to thrust. “Finish her, milord?”

Sahand thought about it—­much as he liked the idea of killing the Defender here and now, there might be uses for her if she survived the knife wound . . . and uses for her if she didn't, come to think of it. “Pick them both up and throw them in the dungeon.”

“Both, milord?” one of the men asked.

“Question an order again and you're dead,” Sahand snapped, and added, “Clean up the camp and prepare for an attack. The Defenders know we're here.”