by Jackson Lear
“Jarmella? That’s not the sword they need to see.”
Jarmella glanced to the vampire sword still sheathed at her waist. “Ewen …”
I hesitated, convinced that Jarmella was about to make a critical blunder in front of the might-is-right northerners.
“Fuck it.” Jarmella drew her second sword and held it out like a well armed mercenary. “Good luck everyone.”
“Kiss me Jessica …” murmured Saskia, this time with a deep grin across her face. “Kiss me before I fall apart.”
“Shut her up,” snapped Jarmella.
“I see one,” whispered Gaynun. “Twenty yards out, hiding behind a tree.”
It was difficult to make out anything with the flutter of snow obscuring our vision, but we gave ourselves away immediately as soon as the northerners turned to see what had caught Gaynun’s attention.
“He’s gone,” whispered Gaynun.
I said: “Torunn? Tell your friends to stop looking in the same direction.”
“They don’t want to be ambushed.”
“Then they’re going to want someone looking the other way.”
He translated. Some of them grunted. Glanced over their shoulder.
“Short one to the east,” whispered Menrihk. “Wait, two of them. They look like kids.”
“They might be young and adorable but if they make a move towards us we’re going to obliterate them. There’s too many of us to attack all at once so they’re going to test our defenses and tire us out. Some will run towards us and back again while another will try to pick us off when we aren’t looking.”
“You can’t stay here all night,” whispered Saskia.
The snow blew all around us, making it impossible to see where the rest of the bastards were.
“One of the adults is back,” whispered Gaynun.
I yanked Saskia’s hair and pulled her head up. “Where are they?”
She hissed back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. These are your kind and you can see in the dark.”
“Give me blood and I will.”
One of the northerners muttered behind me. “Three more this way,” whispered Torunn.
I pressed my sapphire wrap against Saskia’s cheek, causing her to squirm and pull away. “Which one’s the leader?”
“Not you.”
“Which one of them is the leader?” I brushed my wrap up against her ear, allowing the sizzle of her skin to scream through her.
“Okay okay okay!”
I held her hair tight in my grip. “Which one?”
Saskia glanced in every direction, looking in between sets of legs and bodies. “That one. The blond one.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“Prove that she’s their leader.”
“She’s waving them all into position. A flick of a finger. Nothing more. Two of the young vampires look like they’re her twin daughters. She’s only looking at us. Everyone else keeps checking in with her.”
“Thank you. Which of Agnarr’s people are here to kill us?”
A couple of the northerners glanced over their shoulder.
“I don’t know,” spat Saskia.
“Menrihk? Translate my question so they understand.”
Menrihk did his best and certainly got an interesting reaction from most of the northerners. Some spun and shouted back at me, right up until I pointed Saskia’s fangs at them.
“Which of them are now more nervous and enraged than before?”
Saskia seethed, glaring at the backs of each northerner as she read their auras. Gods know what it actually looked like but truth be told I had always been curious to see if it was a colored halo surrounding their body or if someone like Saskia was simply reading each and every breath. She motioned to a group of tight-knit raiders. “Those three.”
The same three Jarmella, Gaynun, and Menrihk had spotted whispering to each other when I sat with them the previous night. The threesome turned around, their weapons angled towards me.
Odalis practically jumped out of his skin at the rushing vampire. “Back! Back! Get back!”
The first vampire leapt forward, skidded in the snow, leapt back. Two more behind us landed ten feet away. Two arrows shot into the darkness, missing both targets as the vampires dodged them with ease.
“Don’t loose an arrow unless you’re sure you’re going to hit something.”
The three angrier northerners held their axes towards my face, practically growling from behind their beards.
I glared back at them. “You three can leave whenever you like.”
Stassa whispered the translation. It seemed as though the fellas weren’t all that keen on leaving just yet.
“There!” shouted Menrihk.
Another vampire darted forward. Three more raced in from the opposite side before all four of them slipped back into the darkness. Their chuckling lingered from behind the trees.
“Jarmella, Adalyn, can either of you see the blond female?”
“There’s too much snow,” said Jarmella.
“Right, everyone! Stay in this formation. We’re moving north ten paces. Jarmella and Adalyn, if either of you get sight on blondie, make her head explode. Three. Two. One!”
Everyone shifted, creeping north in a loose stagger.
“Down!”
And doing quite badly at it, if I’m honest. It took another ten seconds for everyone to regroup and fix themselves into a decent position.
The vampires retreated back, matching us pace for pace.
The three northerners turned back towards me, their weapons low but far from lowered. “He’s saying you’re full of shit,” said Stassa.
“Let him know that we heard him and his friends talking last night around the fire. They weren’t as quiet as they think they were.”
Stassa passed it on. A moment of recognition fell upon one of the guys in the back while the two to his side squinted a little more, trying to hold a straight face but failing.
Saskia grinned at the foremost one, who sported a scraggly beard and was wearing a woolen cap. She rasped in the northern language, one that was foreign even to her. She certainly garbled enough of the words as she repeated the taunt phonetically without understanding what any of it meant.
Scraggly Beard leaned back, his face turning ash white. The rest of the northerners shifted towards him, dumbfounded.
“She said he killed his brother when he was sixteen,” whispered Menrihk.
“How?”
Saskia spoke again. More heads turned. Scraggly Beard snapped with what was surely a, “Lie!”
“He put bits of broken glass into his brother’s drink.”
Saskia spoke again.
“Every day for a month. Until the infection killed him.”
“Why?”
Saskia grinned at her victim.
“Because his brother caught him …” Menrihk hesitated before plowing through. “…jerking off in front of Ailsa’s window and he threatened to tell her.”
Scraggly Beard staggered backward in horrified shock. Lifted his sword towards Saskia. Spat at her. “Demon witch.”
“Incoming!” shouted Odalis.
Three vampires charged in. Skidded. One leapt high overhead. Two arrows flew up, another targeting where the bastard was going to land, but the creature was too quick.
Stassa thumped Scraggly Beard in the back and barked at him.
Two more vampires lunged.
“Jarmella and Adalyn, you’re going to need to get eyes on blondie before they tire us out.”
“It’s snowing really fucking hard!” shouted Jarmella.
“Are you a mage or not? Do something to find her.”
Jarmella needed a moment for it to click. Then with a uniquely quiet whisper she said: “Ready? Three. Two. One.” Jarmella and Adalyn both fired off a spell, enhancing their vision ten fold. Their heads turned quickly to the right, the vampire no doubt jumping back at the incoming attack.
The two women’s shouts overlapped, the panic of having to kill something in a split second and needing to use two simultaneous spells taxing them into an instant mana hangover.
A body crumpled into the snow. The shriek from eight vampires told us: one of theirs was down for good. Two of them charged from the east. Three ran in from the north. Leapt … and came crashing down as our mages slammed them into the ground, the infantry skewering them. The vampires slashed back, knocking one man down after the next, a clash of blades against rusted daggers, axes bludgeoning the tops of heads, scrambling from the younger vampires as they tried to escape – only to have every archer in our arsenal loose arrow after arrow into their backs, dropping one with a well placed shot into the back of the skull.
Adalyn recoiled. Dalo spun, his arrow skewering one vampire through its palm, bursting through its wrist as it tried to swipe at the young mage. Adalyn ducked and weaved. The vampire threw one arm against a northern axman, batted him to the side. Two more arrows found their mark in the vampire, both dead center in its chest. Adalyn thrust her sword into its neck, cried out in panic as the vampire flopped on top of her.
Wilbur beheaded another in front of him. Two more vampires lay cleaved and bloodied before the northerners. Two men stepped forward, their hands shielding their eyes, and muttered a spell. A quiet splat sounded in the distance.
The snow fell. Patter from feet ran off into the distance. People keeled over from panic.
We were alone.
Gaynun dropped to his knees, clutching his forearm from where a vampire raked its poison nails across his flesh. Four more northerners collapsed from their wounds, one finding a dagger in his ribs, the others with scratches across their hands and faces.
Stassa held her sword towards Scraggly Beard’s face. Spat a not too hard to understand threat. ‘Leave while you still can.’
Scraggly Beard held his hands up, pleading from one friend to another.
“You killed your own brother?” seemed to be the most common question.
“I fucked up,” came the translation. “I’ve been thinking about it every day since it happened and I wish I could take it back.”
Tempers flared. Accusations flew. Bile spat towards us southerners, that it was our fault this all happened and their lives would’ve been much better if we had never been born. Most of the northerners agreed, yet none of us had encouraged Scraggly Beard to murder his own kin.
Yahnson held his sword towards Scraggly Beard’s face. “Leave.”
The accused glanced my way with death in his eyes. He dropped his mouth open, bracing himself. I pushed Saskia’s face in front of me like a shield. Menrihk fired off the last spell he had prepared, launching Scraggly Beard five feet back and causing the raider to stumble, fall flat on his ass, and struggle to pick himself up. His spell was spent.
He stood. Dusted himself off. And left with nothing but a two day trek down the mountain all by himself.
Jarmella turned to the vampire bodies still primed full of blood. “Drink up. There’s still four of them out there and we need to hustle.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Dalo had passed out, having drunk more of the vampire blood than he probably should’ve. His eyeballs flickered underneath his lids. Odalis stumbled and fell completely on his side, stared back at us with half of his face covered in snow, then picked himself back up and set off into a run again. Gaynun gripped his forearm tightly, wincing with every step and sweating through the pain. Soldiers and raiders alike turned in tight groups, running together with our weapons drawn and legs failing.
Ithka spun, released an arrow, cried out. The rest of our able-bodied archers – Ivar, Magnus, Leif, Arvid, Otario and Aedalis – turned at once. Arrows flew. Thuds rang back to us, followed by a low, guttural growl.
“It’s wounded!” shouted Adalyn.
“No shit!” bellowed Magnus.
“Gaynun?” called Jarmella.
“I don’t know.”
“I need you to look!”
“I can’t lift my arm!”
“Menrihk! How many are behind us?”
Saskia mumbled from her stretcher. Gagged. Impossible to figure out. Menrihk did his best to run backwards through the trees and snow while holding a seeing rod to his eyes. “We need to stop!”
Jarmella huffed. “Fine. Everyone to me! Tight circle.”
We formed up, the northerners creating their own loose group to the side of us. I shouted across. “Torunn! Stassa! Get your people over here!” Most hurried over, grateful for the invitation. The rest begrudgingly stepped closer, still on the outside of the defensive circle but close enough to jump within our ranks if we were attacked.
We gasped, wiped sweat from our brows, started shivering as the cold punched its way through our clothing. One of the older northerners collapsed to the side, struggling to breathe while Yahnson kept a hand on his shoulder for comfort.
“Nothing,” whispered Menrihk.
Saskia murmured again. I lifted one side of her stretcher up. “How many of them can you see?”
She closed her fist. None.
I spun her around, facing the east. “How many hours until sunrise?”
She held a finger up, then pointed eastward. I shook my head at her as discretely as I could. She ran a circle through the air signaling all of us, pointed east with a slight arc to the south. She pointed to me, then to the east with a slight arc to the north.
I leaned in to whisper. “Loken?”
She pointed heavily to the south.
“Ice Bridge?”
East, though slightly to the north.
“Berik?”
She shook her head at me.
“Torunn? Who here has taken this route the most?”
“Ander. Boden.”
“How far away are we from Ice Bridge?”
“Twelve hours.”
“And it’s that way?”
“Aye.”
“Definitely that way and not another few miles north once we’re off the mountain? Or another few miles south?”
They muttered amongst themselves. “Definitely that way.”
Saskia grinned back at me and shook her head.
“You’re going to believe her over us?” asked Ander.
“Maybe. Is Ice Bridge definitely that way?”
They grumbled. A ‘no’ was on their lips, that much was clear. “We’re not going to Ice Bridge.”
“Where are we going?”
“To stop cavalry and get our people back. Ice Bridge is fortress. We hit cavalry on road when no one can help them.”
Jarmella rolled her eyes to me.
Now was hardly the time but we weren’t likely to get a better one, not with the way our luck had been going for the last few days. “Torunn? We need sailors. We need a crew. The vanguard are going to hit Ice Bridge and steal a ship but we need your help to sail it to Orkust. We don’t know how to. Especially with the rest of the ships out there we will be caught. You know the lake. You know how to sail. I know you have hated us in the past and we have hated you, but if you help us get back we will give General Kasera whatever message you want us to deliver. If you want us to give him a threat – we will do so. If you want to offer a truce – we will do so. If you want us to deliver a request – we will do so.”
“Not good enough,” said Torunn.
“And you can keep the ship we give you.”
“Draegor’s ship? No.”
“Keep it or destroy it. Either way it will hurt your enemies, right? You help us get the right ship and it will be a win for you all.”
The cogs started turning. Plans came to mind. Ever so slowly the northerners peeled back, muttering amongst themselves. Draegor was mentioned a couple of times. Agnarr too. Vampires more so.
Torunn squinted back to me. “You definitely go to Ice Bridge?”
“Yes.”
More muttering. Jarmella squeezed Menrihk’s arm. “Anything?”
“Nothing. There’s at least three out t
here. Maybe a fourth if he’s managed to pull all of those arrows out of him.”
Ivar grumbled nearby. “I should’ve gone for the face.”
“You did well.”
“Yeah, but the face would’ve killed him. Now he’s still a threat.”
They all understood, though Ivar was the only one beating himself up over it. Breaking lifelong training in a split second wasn’t easy, especially since aiming for the chest was far less personal than targeting someone right between the eyes.
Torunn looked to me. “You killed Draegor?”
Deep breath. “Yes.”
“How?”
“He was fighting three mercenaries in the great hall. He had a big ax and a big flail. He killed those three easily, stopped to drink some blood wine and I came in, fresh and confident. He nearly got me as well. I threw everything I could and he came at me like a berserker. Somehow I managed to slice him across his stomach. He dropped to his knees. Died.”
Stassa translated most of it. I got a mix of curious looks and admiration.
“And you killed Razoz,” said Torunn.
“Yes.”
More talking amongst themselves. At least it gave us a chance to catch our breaths. At long last there seemed to be a bitter truce between us and the northerners. “Okay,” said Torunn. “You tell General Kasera: no revenge.”
“Okay.”
“We did not trap you. We did not let Razoz trap you. We have families, we want them safe.”
“I understand.”
“If you come for revenge it’s against Desdola.”
“Agreed.”
Torunn extended a hand, pulling back at the last second. “Agnarr lives. We live.”
“Deal.”
We shook hands. Most of the vanguard sighed with relief. Most of the northerners begrudgingly accepted some kind of defeat.
Torunn added: “You will help us fight cavalry to get our people back.”
“We will.”
“And we help you get to Orkust.”
“Thank you.”
I’m pretty sure everyone around me was thinking ‘we can’t possibly trust them.’ Normally I’d be right with them, but after spending two sleepless days hustling across a mountain perhaps exhaustion had finally broken them down enough to be honest.
