Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) (9 page)

   
Unconsciousness, but not death. Wounded as he was, forsaken as he was, Captain Bernarl of the
Mirrorwave
did not die.

   
His time had not yet come.

Chapter Six: Fire, Ice, and Wind

  
It was deep into the night by the time the three Striders reached the razed remnant of the Treele Tribe Circle. The trip had taken them over and around a veritable sea of gently rolling hills, which Elia called the Icewaves. By the time they reached their destination, Lauro felt as if he could fall asleep right then and there on the ice. His whole body was stiff and aching with the cold. His head felt light and the chill got less and less as he grew closer to total exhaustion.

   
“When do we sleep…?” Gribly wondered groggily aloud.

   
“Not ‘til we’ve escaped… not ‘til we find…” Elia trailed off into silence and stood wobbling a few feet ahead. Lauro tried to wake himself- the journey had been hardest for him, wind striding to keep them going faster than their hunters, but he needed to keep going or they’d all freeze out here!

   
“Come on, come on!” he urged them, “We’ve got to keep moving! We’re here already, now we just need to find those ships you talked about… Elia?”

   
The girl stumbled back limply and he caught her, trying to keep her on her feet.

   
“What… I…” she shook off the stupor and lurched forward again.

   
“You almost fainted.”

   
“Sorry. It’s just…” she shook her head violently, then stood a little straighter and looked more awake. “Sorry.” She looked around. “This is home, all right. I’m glad the stars don’t give much light- I wouldn’t want to see it all again.” She paused again, swaying. Lauro moved to catch her again if she fell, but it turned out she was just searching for the ships- with her eyes or some other sense, he never found out.

   
Lauro punched Gribly in the shoulder a little harder than was necessary to wake him up.

   
That was Elia’s plan: to find the Treele ships, which, hopefully, wouldn’t have been damaged by the draik attack days before. She hadn’t been descriptive, but the vessels sounded more like glorified canoes than anything that would be useful on the open bay. Lauro wasn’t used to having things so far out of his control- but he worked on keeping it in and trying to obey those who- he hated to admit it- knew better than himself.

   
“There!” Elia whispered excitedly, pointing beyond the farthest point of the wrecked Circle. There seemed to be a lighter shade of shadow there, but Lauro couldn’t see anything.
Just allow her to lead,
he told himself.

   
“Right. Let’s get moving.” He turned and shook Gribly, who was dozing again beside him. “Come on, Grib. We’re almost done.”

   
Just as he said it, a long, drawn-out howl came from the hills behind them. The draiks! The thief jerked awake, wide-eyed, and grabbed Lauro’s wrist painfully tight. The prince started, surprised at the younger boy’s strength.

   
“Traveller! What’s-??” Gribly began, then saw who he was addressing and looked away frantically. “Lauro! Where’s Elia??”

   
“Here,” the girl said. Gribly whipped around, totally disoriented, and almost knocked her over.

   
“What’s wrong with you?” Lauro groaned. “We don’t have time for more tricks!”

   
“No, no, no! I’ve had a dream- Elia, where’re the boats you talked about?”

   
“Nearby,” she answered, walking forward. The two followed her. Gribly was all of a sudden the most aware of the three.

   
“We can’t go there! It’s a trap!”

   
“Trap? There’s no-” Elia began.

   
“The Aura visited me again, in my dream,” the Sand Strider insisted. “We need to…
GET DOWN
!!!!” He leaped forward and tackled her to the ice.

   
Lauro’s acute senses told him to do the same, and he did, luckily. His warrior’s instinct saved his life.

   
The largest draik he had seen yet broke through the tattered remains of one of the tents in the Circle and leaped for the trio. Gribly’s tackle and Lauro’s duck saved their heads from being bitten clean off, as the beast sailed over them and crash-landed in the fragile skeleton of another burnt-out tent.

   
The prince immediately took command- or tried. “Get up, both of you! Get to the Treele boats while I hold this thing off!”

   
He kicked his feet up and landed standing, ready to die for his friends. Gribly scrambled up, white with terror, Elia clutching his arm.

   
The huge draik laboriously turned in a circle. Its gears shrieked as they ground together and its hide seemed brittle and cracked, like the skin of a dead thing. It looked as if the long chase through Winterland had taken its toll on the creature, but it was no guarantee of survival.

   
“No!” Gribly shouted back, pushing Elia behind him. “Traveller sent me a dream! He told me this would happen- you two have to go! I have to stay!”

   
“What!?!” Lauro argued, eying the snarling draik. It seemed to regard them with more apprehension than before, now that they had escaped its first ambush. “You can’t fight that thing! It’ll shred you!”

   
“You’ll do no better!”

   
“We can’t be having this conversation!!!!” Lauro nearly screeched. The draik back up, pawing the ground, ready to charge. It was all so ridiculous he could have laughed… had he not been about to die.

   
With a roar and a blast of yellow flame from its maw, the monster attacked. It was Elia who provided the best advice.

   
“SCATTER!!!!!” she yelled. The three Striders split up, leaping in different directions: Gribly to the side, Elia up one of the nearby Icewaves, and Lauro up into the air.

   
The draik missed the thief by inches as it swept by with claws and even a tusk. The ice made it hard to change direction, so the creature evidently fixed on Elia as the easiest target: straight ahead. She slid down the other side of the Icewave and turned to run around the Tribe Circle’s edge before she noticed she was the one being followed. With a shriek she tried to run faster, but there was little she could do without slipping and falling.

   
Gribly rolled up onto his feet and gave chase, screaming at the draik in a vain attempt to distract it.
It’s up to me, then,
Lauro thought.

   
He kicked his feet in a series of short, powerful bursts which propelled him high up in the air. Then he stopped moving entirely and let himself fall heavily through the night air towards the deadly chase below.

   
As he fell his body twisted upside down, and he soared head-first towards the unforgiving ground. The advantage was the few seconds he had to view the Tribe Circle in its entirety while still coming nearer to help Elia- and he made the best use of it he could.

   
Perhaps from some innate instinct, the nymph girl was running straight for the Treele vessels. His vision always seemed to improve when he took to the skies- he could see the boats now, slender, white-wooded craft made to hold five or six people each, with no oars or sails that were visible. He saw it all in less than a second and turned his attention back to Elia.

   
The gap was closing between her and the draik. At this rate she’d be caught before she even reached the boats. Lauro struck out with his arms and pulled himself through the air faster than ever. He had to land in that gap. He had to stop the draik no matter what.

   
A hundred feet. The air whistled so shrilly in his ears that he couldn’t hear the sounds of the monster or the frantic cries of Gribly far behind.

   
Fifty. The pounding of his pulse eclipsed all else.

   
Ten. He kicked his legs forward and curled up in a ball.

   
One. He hit the draik with all the force of his flying momentum behind him, right on the point where its skull was fused to a wide metal crest that jutted up above its head. The monster’s head snapped to the side and it slipped on the ice, wildly snapping at its attacker and blowing a jet of flame. Lauro was ripped out of his fetal position by the impact and went sprawling painfully on the ice.

   
He managed to protect his head, but just barely. His nose banged into his knee and started to bleed, then his legs twisted under him and he rolled over and over, slowing only when he slid partway up one of the smooth Icewaves. Before he could slide back down again he rolled onto his feet and scrambled up, ready to take to the air again if the draik attacked him.

   
The monster roared as it staggered forward. Something in its neck had shattered when the wind Strider hit it: its head was permanently tilted to one side, making its appearance even more grotesque. Lauro wiped blood from his face and stepped back to begin wind striding, but a painful jolt shot up his left leg and prevented him.
Blast it, what’ve I done to myself?
He tried to think straight through the cold and the pain- had he twisted his ankle? Broken his leg? It all seemed possible at the moment, and he had bigger troubles to worry about.

   
The draik charged, and Lauro instinctively raised his arms to defend himself. When he did, a blast of cold air rushed by under his palms and hit the draik full on. It slowed the beast but didn’t stop it. He had used his gifts! That was it! Lauro spun in a tight circle on his uninjured foot and thrust his arms out at the beast. The air shimmered as a torrent of wind blasted the draik much stronger than he had intended, pushing it onto its hind legs and almost picking it up off the ground.

   
I’m getting stronger,
Lauro realized. He hadn’t had much energy to practice wind-striding on this journey… not since he had left home, all that time ago.

   
“For Vastion!” he cried, lifting his arms and whirling them all around to conjure more wind. Was it possible? Could he defeat this thing by himself? The air around him felt electric and alive.
He
felt alive- more so than he had in months. It was as if his powers were maturing to their full potential all in this one moment. The draik slammed back down on four legs and howled, trying to come back at him, but the wind kept it from moving more than a few feet at a time.

   
Streams of ethereal color seemed to form in the air around him. Pink, green, and yellow, blue and gold, white and scarlet red. The murmuring of the wind was a cataclysmic battle-cry in his ears. It filled him and rushed out in all directions like an ember filled to bursting with a fiery energy.

   
“For the Aura!” he shouted, drawing his hands behind him in a complex series of motions, then unleashing the gathered wind with his palms thrust out, throwing a shooting spear of air out in front of him.

   
Chains ripped from their anchors on the draik’s face and flew backwards in pieces. The monster was ripped into the air and hurled onto its back ten feet away. Gears popped from slots in its shoulders and went bouncing away on the ice; steam puffed in great bursts from its nostrils and a pipe jutting from its side; blood spilled and pooled on the ice under its metal-and-hide back.