Shadowborn (16 page)

“I need—,” Neill gasped, and Balthasar jumped violently as something bristled and muscular thrust against his legs, pushing first him and then the boy aside. The balewolf padded up to Neill and pressed its muzzle under Neill’s hand and whined, like a solicitous hound. A second joined it. Silently, first one, then the other, sank to the wet rubble, their bristled flanks moving feebly as though they were exhausted. The cavity in Neill’s chest no longer bubbled.

“Why didn’t you—?” the boy protested, his tone hurt.

Neill said, roughly, “Don’t be a fool. You’ll need your vitality.” He summoned two more of his surviving wolves to him, and their limp bodies joined the rest. The man stroked the nearest bristled heap gently.

Something moved within the smear of smoke and nascent heat, and from the ruined interior staggered a huge wolf moving on lacerated paws, its fur soaked—the smell was that of blood—and hide burned. Neill pushed himself painfully around to gather it in. “Ah, Mayfly,” he said hoarsely, resting his face on the gory fur. The wolf let him lean on it, mild as a sheepdog.

“What—?” the boy began, plaintively.

With a swift strike that belied his injury, Neill caught his chin in one hand. “How, by the . . . Mother could you . . .
not
find out . . . that the cellar . . . was full of explosives?”

“It was not my fault!” the boy cried, struggling free. “How was I supposed to know? No one taught me enough.”

The wounded Shadowborn gurgled a laugh. “D’you think . . . you’re
alone
?” He fell back against the wall, throwing his hand up to bark knuckles against the stone. “I wanted this manor intact. Its
library
alone—” He swallowed down the confession and let his head drop back. “Midora’s dead,” he said, flatly. “Beam fell on her; couldn’t help. Could barely keep myself alive.” He snorted wetly and swept a wrist across his nose. “Speaking of overconfidence.”

“I’d rather it was her than you,” the boy said.

The man’s expression was one common to the elders of antisocial juveniles everywhere. He turned his face toward Balthasar. “You’re Hearne’s brother. The physician.”

“He’s mine!” the boy said, sharply.

“I can sense that. You poor sod . . . not the least idea what’s going on, by the look of you. Don’t know whether to pity or envy you . . .” Behind Balthasar, something grumbled deep in its massive throat. He could now smell blood, ordure, and warm, wet, living fur. An atavistic sense told him he was ringed by Shadowborn. Neill raised his hand as he went to turn. “Don’t—,” he said, softly, and the ensorcellment reinforced that injunction. “They won’t harm you, as long as you just stay as you are. I try not to repeat my mistakes.” He rolled his head on its stone pillow toward Sebastien. “What happened in Minhorne?”

“We killed the Lightborn prince!” the boy blurted. “Set up the magic on the munitions—everything was going fine. Jonquil ensorcelled Vladimer, was going to let him slowly die, keep his people disorganized, but then Strumheller became involved. And even though he was accused of the ensorcellment and . . . and murder, he was directing other people toward us, and Jonquil thought he could hurry Vladimer’s death as well as trap Strumheller’s allies. But Strumheller was working with a mage, a
strong
mage—it wasn’t the Broome woman; it wasn’t any one of those we knew about—and she managed to resist him, and Strumheller . . . He
shot
Jonquil dead while
she
held him.”

Telmaine
, Balthasar thought, and desperately tried to stifle the thought.

“I got some of Jonquil’s agents and waited at the station for Vladimer, but the mage was there again—I didn’t think he was supposed to work with mages, and she turned my fires back at me. I was . . . I was alone. I was,” he said in a small voice, “scared.”

“I can understand that, Seb, but Emeya won’t be in a mood to listen. You need to go back to Minhorne and finish up what you and Jonquil were ordered to do, and you need to do it before Emeya gets here.
Come!
” The boy jerked forward as though a rope had been hooked to his breastbone. “Trust me,” Neill said, as he laid the back of his hand against the boy’s cheek. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” The boy stiffened and whined through his teeth, and Balthasar’s body tensed in ensorcelled protectiveness, remembering the man’s searing touch. But, fortunately, before he could otherwise react, the man’s hand fell away and he slumped sideways onto his elbow, arm across the oozing hole in his chest. He had tapped his own vitality to work whatever magic he had on the boy, and paid for it.

Sebastien scrambled away, but only until he bumped against one of Neill’s wolves, which growled at him. Then he crouched, staring at Neill, mouth opening and closing. Slowly, Neill raised his head. “I’ve shown you how; now would you
get going
, before
she
calls us back?”

The boy lunged out of his crouch to catch Balthasar’s hand, though Bal’s sensation of it was no more than of a jar at the end of a stick of wood. And then the boy threw his arms around him, and Balthasar felt an instant’s disorientation before they fell.

Someone caught Ishmael—by his left arm, curse it—and hauled him close to shout in his ear, “Baronette wants you! Up front in the grand coach.” He pointed, though how, in the shambles that was their retreat, he knew
where
to point, Ishmael did not know. He was supposed to be in the vanguard, but the van was already well up the road and Mycene had it. Stranhorne’s plans notwithstanding, if ever a man was temperamentally unsuited to be rear, Mycene was. By the croaking shouts from his right, Lavender was mustering Stranhorne to guard the rear. Sharp woman, but with that throat, she’d be living on hot lemon and honey for the next week. So Lavender was with them, and Laurel. “The baron?” he shouted. “Boris?”

“Don’t know about the baron. The baronet took a mauling. He’s in the coach.”

Holding his throbbing arm against his chest to spare it further insult, Ish struggled forward through the mob. He had not been privy to the planning of the retreat, but he had the essence: troops to the van, rear, and flank, running or riding; wheeled vehicles—everything from the Stranhorne state coach to a coal man’s wagon—just behind the van, drawn by horses, mules, oxen, and teams of men harnessed together; and a long train of foot travelers following behind. With the fugitives from the west, the manor staff, and reservists, they had thirteen hundred people to get to the Crosstracks, five miles away.
And only two hours to do it in,
he thought, hand going out to steady a young woman who was lugging a screeching, thrashing child of three or four. In this press, a child that size could unknowingly be trampled.

Feeling the strength in his grip, she appealed over her shoulder, “Take him, please, sir. I can’t carry him and keep this pace.” He realized she was not a woman, but a girl, twelve or thirteen, tall for her age, but slender. Not a mother, then—a sister or cousin or nursemaid, or simply someone with a pair of empty arms. He accepted the burden. “I’ve to go forward past th’wagons. I’ll find him a place.” He hoisted the child over his shoulder, which spared his ears the howls and his wounded arm the little fists, and continued forward as rapidly as he could. The noise did seem to help clear his way.

He handed the winded but still gamely protesting child up onto a covered cart, where he joined a crop of small ones and their harried caretakers. The jouncing had already made several of them sick, and no doubt the rest would follow. He quickly assessed the solidity of the cover over their heads. It would do. It would have to do.

He found Laurel riding shotgun to one of her own coachmen, a rifle across her knee. Four members of the Stranhorne troop were keeping a high watch atop the coach. He swung up on the running board beside her, head level with her waist. She reached down, and they exchanged a lingering arm clasp. She wore a heavy leather jacket, too large for her frame, over her loose dress and stout riding boots, and someone—probably not she—had tucked a plump cushion behind her back. Her hair was caught back in a braid beneath her helmet. Her face was composed, even stern. He could sense her influence in the calm assurance of the people around her. He’d always known she had courage and a cool head, but this was more than he would ever have expected of her or her sister.

From beside and behind her, she produced a holster and a brace of revolvers, a pouch of ammunition, and a staff—all his own, he realized, as he took the holster in hand.

“Lavender’s at the rear. Your father?” he said, knowing he could not spare her.

She shook her head once. “The way the manor was burning, the way it went up . . . he and the others may not have had time to get out.” Her voice was small and tight. “We can’t spare anyone to go back.”

“Y’can spare me, I think, though your father’ll take my hide, since his orders were t’get you clear. But it’s still only a few minutes run t’get down to the southwest corner.”

“Assuming,” she said, “you meet no trouble.”

“Assuming that,” he said. “But I doubt I’d make any great difference t’you here.”

“Then there’s Dr. Hearne,” she said.

“Who’d be th’first after me t’tell you you’d done the right thing by leaving him, if his mind wasn’t his own. But, yes, I’d try for the baronelle’s garden as well.”

“You shouldn’t go alone.”

“I’ll move fastest, going alone.” He hooked his right arm around the leg of the coachman’s bench, and quickly checked both revolvers. Not that he didn’t trust her, but he’d worked too hard to instill good habits in her and her sister.

“Ishmael . . . ,” she said. “Please take care.”

He briefly covered the hand on the rifle stock with his own gloved one. Being in the open air had restored him, and he felt as though he could run for hours. Illusion, but it should carry him where he wanted to go. “Who’s the best we’ve got on th’south side?”

“Dyan.” She pointed.

He wove through the crowd until he found the squad leader holding a firm seat on a young thoroughbred that had more spirit than sense; it was Boris’s favorite horse. He should have asked after the baronet, but too late now. Trotting at Dyan’s stirrup, Ishmael pointed out his course. He would fall out across the field, keeping level with Dyan and his squad until he was out of range of sonn. Anyone he found, he would bring up the rear.

I should do something about my cursed legend,
he mused as he scrambled over a stile and angled his path across the new-mown field.
Anyone thinking to attempt this ought to be told he’s daft, and tied up and thrown into one of the sick carts for his own good.
Stranhorne would have plenty to say, though a man who’d torch munitions in his own cellar was hardly one to condemn. But Stranhorne’s trap had shifted a balance; Ishmael could feel it in the air. The rain had lightened to a drizzle and was almost warm, and he could sense very little of the Shadowborn’s former strength.

On the far side of the field, he followed the wall until the corner and the gate, opened the gate, and slid through, onto the manor grounds. He moved as quietly as he was able at that speed. He could still hear the retreat: not even abject terror could keep quiet that many horses, carts and carriages, injured men and women, children and infants. But he could also hear the hiss of the wind through drying stubble, the chirp and flutter of an early rousing bird, the flap of a tarpaulin weighted down under stones—all the ordinary sounds of the area. The wind was in his face, blowing from the manor, so it would not betray his presence. Though with the heavy reek of smoke and munitions, he would be hardpressed himself to smell anything before he came on it.

He knew the manor grounds, having spent a number of enjoyable nights training with the twins and cadet members of the troop, trying to teach them how to move silently and with the minimum of sonn, and how to place and number others in the dark. In addition, he had a perfect, and unwelcome, lodestone in the form of the Call. All he needed to do was keep driving himself away from it and keep from thinking that its strength made his leaving the retreat doubly foolish. With a momentary lapse in concentration, he might well find himself walking southwest.

He had the choice of following the wall of the manor or coming directly across the warning field. He chose the latter; the wall would be shelter, but would also restrict his direction of retreat. He wondered if he should regret that decision; the dry sticks were soaked, but he still had to navigate over sliding stones, crunching gravel, and deadfalls deep enough to break his leg, if he missed being impaled. The wind was blustering and shifting, pushing and lifting the smoke and stinging ash, and when the smoke shifted away, he could smell violent death and the beginning of rot. He stepped carefully around the crumbling edges of a pit occupied by several wolves. One struggled weakly on the stakes that pinned it, and a second was gnawing on the carcass of one of its dead companions. A few yards in, he came across the first of the Shadowborn brought down by the fire from the manor, more wolves, the first scavvern—a young one, by its growth—and one of the flying Shadowborn, crumpled and broken-backed in death.
Who might that have been before?
. . . Some thoughts were simply best not had. The wind shifted, and he shielded his face against the ash, trying not to cough, until it was done playing with him. Not far now. He moved forward, listening ahead of him, listening through the muffled crackle of the fire, the creak of heated stone, for the sound of voices, even for the sound of moaning. To his right, a wolf howled out its pain, and several more answered. He could no longer hear the retreat, and he was stricken by the sense that should he also throw back his head and howl into the emptiness, none of his own kind would answer.

He did not know when exactly he gave up hope, but it was gone by the time he reached the southwest corner. He could not even have said where the bricked-up entrance had been without going right up to the wall and examining where the stones lined up one atop the other. There was no breach in the wall, no place for Xavier Stranhorne, Erich, and the men and women with them, to have escaped.