Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) (4 page)

   
Wham!
His legs buckled as he smashed into the wood, then splayed out as the ship’s direction flipped over and tossed him up towards the ceiling- which was now the floor, and he was falling towards it.
Wham!
sounded again, and something hard and metal jabbed painfully into his lower back. Instinctively he reached under himself and grabbed at whatever-it-was. A trapdoor latch.

   
Without warning the mechanism snapped and the trapdoor popped open, spilling him out into the open night air.

   
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!” he screamed in an extremely unprincely fashion. Spars, tethers, and hooks flew by him as he fell. It would take an hour to describe what he saw in half a second: the world turned topsy-turvy under him, the
Mirrorwave
hoisted upside-down a hundred feet above the churning waves and blocky ice-floes, the ship’s mainmast hurtling towards him at lightning speed- and the unimaginably huge creature that held the vessel in its grasp.

   
Without taking time to consider it, Lauro began to wind stride. He kicked his legs out and spread his arms, willing the harsh element of the sky under his power. His fall slowed as he wheeled his limbs every which way, desperately trying to stop himself from being crushed by the approaching mast. Arching his back, he managed to propel himself out of the wooden pillar’s way, but just barely. A flailing myriad of cables and ties snatched at him as he tumbled lower, slower… and slower…

   
…Until he was able to reach out and grab one of them. Jerking to the end of its reach, he found himself hanging once more, suspended under the
Mirrorwave
’s ruined hulk. A storm raged around the nightmarish scene, unexpected and deadly. That wasn’t the problem. Lauro almost lost his grip as he caught his first steady glimpse of the creature that was the cause of both the storm and the trireme’s position.

   
Big as the vessel was, it was a play-toy to the monster that held it in its grip. Tall as a mountain, the massive beast stretched up into the sky like one of the legendary giants from the frightening fireside tales he’d been told as a child. He almost thought that the monster was such a giant: it was the right shape, in general, though it seemed to be made of rushing water and churning, swirling tendrils of white ice.

   
But its head and face clearly marked it as some beast from the Blaze: long tentacles of the strange, almost-alive ice and snow sprouting from every part; a jutting jaw and hideous mouth that spewed sea-scum and a thick, red substance that might have been blood. Its mandibles writhed and snapped, but no sound came from its icy throat. Hideous, bulbous eyes were set in its head: silvery-white, lidless, and crisscrossed with webbed blue veins. Despite their menacing appearance, it struck Lauro that the demon-beast couldn’t see. He fleetingly imagined that it had spent its life at the bottom of the Inkwell, only to be woken by the
Mirrorwave
’s untimely passing.

   
Or had it? Lauro was too courageous to be paralyzed with fear; instead it galled him into action. He began to climb laboriously up the hanging tether just as a hideous screech broke across the thunderous sky above him.

   
The clouds parted for a moment, throwing a wide beam of moonlight on the sea-beast’s shoulder. High in the ether above it, a twisted black shape was flying. In a flash the light was gone and so was the shape, but Lauro’s keen eyes had picked it out before it faded: a black horse with tattered black wings spreading out from its shoulders. A robed, hunched figure rode on its back, face shadowed by the hood the prince had grown to know and hate.

   
“Pit Strider!!!!”
he shouted bitterly, and the sheer volume of his voice made him jolt mid-climb. He had been expecting his voice to be drowned out by the waves and thunder, but through some previously undiscovered avenue of his wind striding gifts, the wind itself carried his voice as far as he had wanted it to go. What the Pit Strider himself most likely heard was more along the lines of:

   
“PIT StriderRR!!!!!!!!”

   
Unfortunately, the monstrous ice-beast heard it as well. Its ugly visage reared at the sound, then slowly (it seemed) turned to glare with blind eyes at Lauro. He felt all of his utter insignificance in that one blank glare.

   
I’m going to die,
he realized. The recognition of it calmed him, and he had the presence of mind to wonder what had happened to Gribly, Berne, and the rest of the crew he’d seen or met.

   
Widening its maw into a grotesque parody of Lauro’s expression, it bellowed. The sound shattered the prince’s hearing and made his ears bleed with its force. Spittle and hail splattered him as the roaring torrent of water and wind ripped him from his hold on the rope and flung him backwards in an endless straight line- like an arrow from the string. By the time he had brought his own powers to bear and countered the wind with his own air blast, he was ten feet from the highest wave crest and a hundred yards from the beleaguered trireme.

   
Fly away,
a voice inside him whispered urgently.
You know you can do it. You’ll live if you just leave them all behind…

   
“NO!!!!!”
he screamed at himself.
“I won’t abandon my men!!!!!”

   
Kicking his legs to remain airborne, he rocketed forward and up into the stormy sky, drawing his sword as he flew.
If I die now, I die fighting… even if it’s a fight without a chance of winning.
Rain stung his face and pelted his body all the harder for his speed. His flight was higher and farther than he’d ever tried to accomplish before, but rage and honor drove him to prevail.

   
He had crossed half the distance when the furious sea monster finally snapped the
Mirrorwave
in two, one half of the hull in each icy-clawed fist.

   
“NO!” Lauro screamed, but his powerful wind-voice had deserted him and the storm plucked the word away like a wilted flower in a flood.

   
The beast howled an unearthly howl from innards not used to the action, shaking the Inkwell with its ferocity. Raising the two halves of the trireme above its head, the demonic beast hurled them at the attacking wind Strider.

   
The wreckage arched towards him too fast to react. The first half he was able to dodge, twisting his body and soaring over it, buffeted by the passing hulk. As he flew by he seemed to see the world in slow motion- splintering wood, tearing canvas, rope whipping back and forth; even what looked like a lone tooth floating past his ear. Then it had hit the water behind him and he was past.

   
The second came too fast and too hard. The broken mast clattered and spun into him, clipping his side.

   
There was a bloody shock of pain and the rushing shock of hitting water.

   
Time and motion disappeared under the torrent of the blackness.

Chapter Three: Elia

   
“Getting into trouble again, are we?” after so many extraordinary happenings, it really didn’t surprise Gribly to see the Aura and his mountain again.

   
“You could say that. I call it
adventure
.”

   
Traveller laughed. “Most people would call it
crazy
.”

   
“True, but I didn’t send me on this
crazy
quest, did I?”

   
“Be careful who you incriminate,” the Aura cautioned, but he seemed amused. “All the same, I can’t help you as I’d like… rules, you know.”

   
“You’re practically a god. What kind of rules can you possibly have?”

   
“The kind that stop me from pulling you out of the water so you don't drown... which is what you happen to need at the moment.”

   
“I knew it- I’m going crazy.”

   
“I already told you that.”

   
Gribly waved him off. “So you’re not going to help.”

   
Traveller laughed and tossed his staff up into the air. It sprouted wings and flew off into the clouds.
Why doesn’t this surprise me anymore?
The Sand Strider wondered. “I never said I wasn’t going to help,” the Aura explained. “I just said I couldn’t save your life.”

   
“I fail to see how I’m helped at all by dying.”

   
“You won’t die.”

   
“That makes no sense!”

   
“You’ll live…” Traveller stared off after his staff. “…I think. I pray. My prayers usually work, you know.”

   
Gribly just kept his mouth shut. When the Aura didn’t continue immediately, he scanned the horizon for any sign of the flying staff. Eventually he looked back, only to find that Traveller was already gone.

   
“Goodbye, ah… friend.”

   
Gribly felt sleep coming on him again. He slumped in the grass, cradling his head. It hurt. He couldn’t breathe. His vision grew fuzzy and gray.

   
He fell asleep.

   
Then he woke up.

~

   
“What the…” he moaned. Instead of drowning, or bleeding, or dying in any number of the horrible ways he’d imagined, he was lying on his back. Instead of the great white demon-thing he’d seen before being knocked out, all he saw was a cold blue sky. His whole body ached like he’d just run the gauntlet between twenty strongmen with clubs. Ugh… where was he, and why wasn’t he dead? Had one of the Aura reached out of heaven and snatched him away to live with them?

   
No, his back hurt too much for that. And everything was so
cold
… and wet!

   
“Ughhh…” he groaned, rolling onto his side. Ice. He was lying on one of the icebergs he’d seen before the ship was attacked. Ignoring the pain as well as he could, the Sand Strider rolled onto his stomach, then pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around. His mouth dropped open and he staggered clumsily to his feet.

   
The world had changed overnight. A blue-gray winter sky spanned from one end of the horizon to the other, dotted with low-flying, frosty-looking clouds in a myriad of shapes. The sun blazed overhead, but it seemed to give off cold instead of heat; a pale, wan sort of light that set everything to a bluish tint.

   
Gribly had expected to see the Inkwell’s choppy waters on one side and the Bergs on the other, as he had seen them from the
Mirrorwave
’s deck. He had been off his mark: the landscape that surrounded him now resembled less a body of water than a forest of snowy spires and white-peaked mountains. He was standing in a small hollow, the edges of which rose higher in a series of strange mounds and shapes. Further up they changed to cliffs of white ice, and past that he could see no further.

   
I’m in Winterland,
he thought. He would have chuckled if his situation hadn’t been so grim. Somehow he’d survived whatever catastrophe had befallen the trireme and her crew, but now he was left with no food and no protection, completely alone. Suddenly he realized just how cold it was, and began to shiver uncontrollably. Without knowing why, he thought of Byorne, dead and buried back at the Arches.
Byorne’d know what to do. He’d be able to call on Wanderwillow or Aura and get them to help. Or maybe not… but he’d get me out of here.