Song of the Fairy Queen (37 page)

Above the trees another flight of Fairy dove, water from buckets spilling over the trees.

Within the forest the clear sound of a great tree crashing to the ground echoed and the ground shook.

Where was Kyri?

Then Morgan saw her, a flutter of iridescent wings on high, diving down to take a message from a rider on horseback and then soaring back up.

It was like watching a firefly, or a butterfly… She danced on the air…

A second. A breath.

He saw her turn on a wingtip…toward him, her hair swirling around her…so beautiful…and then her wings folded….

Kyri spun in midair, sensing Morgan, and dove like an arrow.

“Morgan,” she said, with relief.

Smoke had shadowed her fair skin, smeared and stained her clothes and there were rents here and there in it, but so far she appeared tired, but unhurt. A tension within him relaxed.

“Your people?”

With a sigh, she said, “The families are out. We lost some people defending the glen, but the children are safe, flying south.”

He nodded, signaling his people to fan out, as Kyri soared upward again.

It wasn’t as if she were safe up there. Recognizing the advantage of her position, the General leading the attack directed his archers to shoot her out of the sky.

Morgan saw the archers turn, targeting her and his heart was in his throat even as he and his people charged.

Time and again flights of arrows whirred past her, but Kyri dodged them like a lark, spinning and turning, swooping this way and that, trying to stay above them.

Morgan kept his eyes away from the sky with an effort, although it was difficult not to watch. He even found one or two of the enemy watching, open-mouthed as Kyri twisted and turned, dodging arrows, darting this way and that to redirect their forces. Those who did paid for their inattention.

The flare of magic was what warned her and Kyri turned into a spinning dive as a fireball suddenly crackled past her. She ducked and dodged frantically as another flashed by even as she spiraled out of its way. A third came close enough to scorch her leg as it went past.

If they couldn’t shoot her down one way, it seemed that they would shoot her down another. The trees no longer burst into flame, so there was fire in the sky instead.

Morgan’s heart was in his throat, watching both the pyrotechnics and Kyri’s aerial acrobatics to escape it.

So was Galan’s and that of every other Fairy, it seemed, as all of them suddenly focused on the attack on their Queen.

Where was the damn wizard? Morgan raised himself in the saddle even as he hacked around him with his sword, trying to see.

Galan shot past him, a furious blur of shimmering gilded wings, diving for a solitary figure in the midst of the strike force, risking a bow shot on the wing. It was enough to distract the wizard, though, to draw his attention from Kyri as he fought to defend himself.

The archers set around the wizard for protection sent a flight of arrows after Galan, one close enough to make him flinch as he spun away.

Morgan didn’t even need to call the order, his people were already turning, regrouping and tightening into a flying wedge, spurring their horses toward the wizard.

A flight of Fairy dove toward him as well, dodging fireballs and arrows while loosing their own.

The momentum of the horses bowled over the first rank of the armored men, to fall beneath the charging hooves, as Morgan’s people hacked, kicked and beat at them to get past.

Morgan spurred his horse to the fore as the wizard turned to face this new danger.

Trusting to Kyri’s talisman, Morgan set spurs to his horse. It surged forward.

The fireballs had stopped coming. Kyri checked up, spinning in the air to see what was happening below.

Morgan and his Marshals drove toward the dark-robed figure of the wizard in the center of Haerold’s men while her own people dodged and darted, trying to reach him, too. A fireball flashed and her heart leaped into her throat even as it splashed itself across the warding of the talisman she’d given Morgan, the magic sizzling over her nerves.

The wizard’s cordon of archers saw them coming, too, some turned to face this new threat.

Her talisman was no protection against an arrow.

Fear and fury flared and she dove, coming in fast from above and behind Morgan, bow drawn and fired at the first to turn an arrow on him or any of his.

Morgan knew who it was who flew at and above his shoulder, each arrow striking true, as he swung at the gap in the helmet of the man swinging his sword at him, driving the man back, Caleb guarded his right, another Marshal named Barton at his left.

Then he was through, the archers falling away, the wizard trying to wrench his horse’s head around with the wrong hand even as he tried to cast another spell with the free one. Morgan hefted his sword like a spear and threw it with every ounce of strength he had in him.

Unhampered by armor, the sword drove deep into the wizard’s belly and the fireball flashed uselessly up into the sky as the force of the blow threw him backward in the saddle. Then the wizard toppled and fell.

Morgan spun his horse around, reaching down to reclaim his sword. His people spun, too, ranging themselves around him, Kyri still at his shoulder, bow drawn. A flight of Fairy dove down from above them, every one of them with arrows notched, to let fly on those surrounding Morgan, Kyri and the Marshals to help cut them out from amidst the enemy.

Another flight came in from one side, catching Haerold’s forces unprepared for the sudden, concentrated attack of Fairy.

“Out,” Morgan shouted, as Kyri sent an arrow into the first soldier ahead of him.

He sensed the shift, too, as Martin’s rebels turned to try to fight through to them at Galan’s behest.

They battled their way back out again, through the smoke and the men, coming together with Martin’s men and Martin himself.

“Martin,” Morgan said, beating off one of Haerold’s men as his own fanned out around them. “Good to see you.”

“And you, sir,” Martin said with a grin, his dark blonde hair blowing in the wind raised by the fire. “Lady Kyri.”

She nodded, wings stroking, reaching a hand to Morgan.

Morgan took it, to steady her as she put a hand onto his shoulder so she could drop into the saddle behind him.

The tide of the battle had turned.

Haerold’s Captain had already called a retreat, trailing fire behind him, setting the plain ablaze behind him.

It was over. For now.

The snow fell thick and heavy as Morgan’s horse forged through the deep drifts. He pulled the heavy fleece coat more tightly around him as he huddled into it for warmth, his collar turned up, more snow spilling now and then from the brim of his hat. It was bone-chillingly cold and they rode through near white-out conditions, almost blind. He swore softly. It would be almost impossible to find some kind of shelter in this, but they didn’t dare camp out in the open. They would freeze.

Haerold might huddle before the fire in his castle, but he had no qualms about sending his people out in the storms of winter, resolving the problem of shelter by simply having his captains put people out of their own homes, forcing them to sleep in the barn or hayloft for the night. Tax collection came rain or snow but now the tax collectors came surrounded by soldiers, or risk their very lives at the hands of the rebels or the townsfolk themselves.

Wars, however, didn’t end because winter had come. The taxes, too, had to be collected. Which was what Morgan and his people had successfully prevented. If they could deny Haerold the revenue, he couldn’t pay his hired mercenaries.

Unfortunately, the tax collector hadn’t been alone.

And so Morgan had been attempting to throw them off his trail.

The storm had been threatening and part of the plan, but it had come faster and more heavily than anyone had expected. With it had come the wind.

Snow swirled, rendering visibility nearly nonexistent. He could hardly see Caleb riding alongside him only feet away.

It blew in curtains and sheets, the wind sending it swirling around them.

A flash of red through the flurries and eddies of white, as brilliant as a cardinal’s wing, caught the eye but no bird with any sense flew, they were huddled in the branches of the trees. It had to have been his imagination.

Until the snow parted again in a flurry of white and he saw it yet again.

Kyri flew out of the blowing storm, buffeted by it, a light dusting of flakes sparkling on her golden hair, her wings beating hard as she fought the wind. At first Morgan thought he was seeing things, knowing how much he wanted to see her and especially given how she was dressed, the thin, brilliantly red dress whipping around her legs.

He shivered reflexively.

It was, indeed, Kyri, though.

Shaking his head, pleased and amazed to see her, horrified that she was out in this storm dressed that way, he said, “Kyri? What are you doing here? Aren’t you cold?”

Everyone stared at her in astonishment, as the wind buffeted her again, her hair swirling wildly around her.

With a wry smile, she said, “I probably will be once these stop moving as much,” pointing to her wings, “but have you ever seen a bird wear a cloak?”

That got a dry chuckle out of almost everyone. Even him.

“But I’m also Fairy, so I don’t feel the cold as much as you.”

“And now that you’re here?”

“There’s a barn about a mile ahead,” she said. “It seems mostly abandoned, but there is still hay in it. It will be warmer there under cover and out of the wind.”

In these hills it was likely the barn was for the local village’s summer grazing fields. The cattle and horses would have been brought down closer to the village at the first sign of snow.

Morgan and his people wouldn’t have come so high into the mountains themselves at this time of year if they hadn’t been trying to lose the Hunters and the soldiers that had come with them, trailing the tax collector in the event of an attack just such as theirs.

“Can you find it again in this?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

A brilliant cardinal red, her dress gave them a beacon to follow, but it was clear that even she struggled to battle the wind, raising a hand to keep her hair and the snow out of her eyes, her wings stroking hard, nearly invisible amidst the thick, heavy snowflakes.

Then she pointed and he saw the darker shadow of the old gray wood barn against the snow. If she hadn’t found it, they might very well have ridden right by it without ever seeing it.

She dropped to the ground, the wind nearly sweeping her off her feet, despite trying to tuck her wings close as soon as her feet touched. It blew her skirts around her legs, her golden hair streaming as she turned to look back at them.

Morgan, too, checked to be certain they hadn’t lost anyone as he swung off his horse, taking the reins to lead it through the thick and more than knee deep snow as Kyri hurried ahead to try to wrestle the barn door open.

It was frozen in place, snow and ice packed into the wooden runners.

Morgan kicked along the bottom of it with his heavy boots and then joined Kyri, both of them hauling hard back on the door to pry it open.