Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  On the southern side of the river, the fields and pastures that lay beyond the city wall were crowded with the encampments of the Coalition army. An entire market had sprung up to serve the soldiers. I was glad to pass quickly through the market’s sprawling, reeking, noisy clamor into the relative quiet of Lord Marius’s command tent. The djeli walked in front, announcing our arrival with a song lauding Four Moons House and the exceptional nobility and formidable power of its mansa and the skilled magic and excellent cooking of its women. After this preface the djeli changed his tune. Singing with the very same melody Lucia Kante had drawn out of her fiddle, he detailed a brisk version of the battle of Lemovis in which Andevai’s quick thinking and astonishing magic figured prominently.

  Vai did not smile, but the man did develop a bit of a cocky swagger as we approached the waiting dignitaries. Not every man was announced with a song in his praise, although I wished the djeli did not insist on repeatedly referring to him in the Celtic way as “Andevai Hardd.”

  “Andevai the Handsome!” I murmured. “I shall have my work cut out for me, keeping your monstrous self-regard from swelling any larger than the bloated whale it already is.”

  He did not deign to look at me. “It’s only conceit if it isn’t true.”

  “Here are you, Andevai Hardd,” said Lord Marius with a laugh, “just as you promised you would be. Apparently, I should not have doubted you, as some claimed I must.”

  He glanced into the crowd of men. The mansa of Four Moons House was not there, but his surly nephew glared, his lips curled in a triumphant sneer as he awaited Vai’s downfall and humiliation. It was clear by the vulture-like expressions of the Roman legate and his tribunes that Vai had been the subject of discussion before we arrived.

  We made our courtesies to the elders, the princes, the mansas, the Roman legate, and Lord Marius. Rory grazed down their ranks like a hungry saber-toothed cat through the succulent flanks of recently deceased cattle, being introduced, admiring their clothes and military adornments, making them laugh and putting them at their ease.

  Vai addressed the company with a cool smile. “We had planned all along to give a demonstration of how weak the defenses are at Two Gourds House and how thoroughly unprepared even the most skilled djeliw can be for one such as my wife. I did not realize she meant to act so soon, for as you must imagine a spirit woman captured from the bush can at times be a trifle wild and ungovernable.”

  The men chuckled, as Vai had meant them to. Their condescension was irritating, but it put them off the scent of his disgrace.

  The mansa’s nephew pushed forward. “You may all be intrigued by his success in holding on to such a freakish creature, but when a man’s mother was born in a cart, he must be accustomed to living in the stable with the rest of the animals.”

  “Like all honorable men, I show respect to the mother who bore and raised me,” said Vai with just the right touch of sternness. “As for your own envy, you’d have done better to apply yourself in the schoolroom instead of drinking, gambling, and whoring. Anyway, I don’t see that you could have managed to win and keep such a wife even had you the courage and ambition to attempt the hunt.”

  “You were chosen to marry her only because the mansa did not want to waste a real man on a low marriage to a Phoenician girl who is merely a bastard with peculiar magic.”

  “You simply are incapable of comprehending the mansa’s subtle mind.” Vai nodded at Rory.

  To my astonishment Rory stripped right there in front of everyone with an alacrity that needed no dreams of dragons to predict. When he was stark naked—and never the least ashamed to be so!—he smiled charmingly around the company and then looked at Vai. Given another nod, he changed in a smear of darkness from man to cat.

  Of course there was a gratifying outcry as Rory prowled the tent’s interior. He did look so lovely and magnificent, so sleek and powerful. The big cat padded up to the mansa’s nephew and butted him so hard in the belly that the man tumbled onto his ass. No one laughed; they were all too cursed nervous.

  Then the big cat turned around and sprayed him.

  The harsh smell overwhelmed everything except the sudden silence. When Lord Marius burst out laughing, the rest felt free to join in. The mansa’s nephew boiled up with knife drawn, full into the force of a roar that shook the air and made every man stop laughing and cower. All except Vai, who casually walked up to the cat and rested a hand on the beast’s shoulder.

  I approached Lord Marius. “My lord, I am truly sorry about Amadou Barry. Please remember that Bee did try to save him. I come before you to offer my services as a scout and spy.”

  He examined me, then nodded curtly. “You may pour the wine, Maestra Barahal.”

  Thus was my status restored. They were so enamored of their rank and privilege that they could not imagine I would reject it.

  The men settled to places at the table. The mansa’s nephew had to leave because he stank. Rory padded behind a screen and returned all dressed and smiling, to be offered a seat among the younger men, whom he quickly had eating out of his hand.

  Lord Marius addressed the table. “Once the three legions out of Rome arrive, our Coalition will be too large a force for the general to defeat, whatever weaponry he carries in his arsenal. However, we suffer from a lack of reconnaissance. In the last months not a single scout has reported in.”

  The Roman legate gestured with his empty cup. “You cannot believe a woman spy can succeed where men have failed?”

  “What have we to lose by trying?” asked Lord Marius. “It was a shepherd’s wife who brought us news that Iberian skirmishers had been sighted near Cena.”

  The legate shook his head. “Camjiata’s outriders can’t have reached Cena so quickly. Such an ignorant woman most likely mistook our own skirmishers for Iberians. Women are not fit for war. More wine, Maestra.”

  As I poured, I smiled. “Do you think not, Your Excellency? I can easily sneak into the Iberian camp and out again without being seen.”

  He saluted me with his full cup. “A pretty young woman like you must always be seen and admired. The Iberians have stymied every attempt by the Coalition and our own imperial troops to spy. I cannot recommend you dress as an Amazon to infiltrate their camp because everyone knows the general merely entertains his troops with that battalion of prostitutes. No chaste, modest woman like yourself would wish to be associated with such unnatural creatures.”

  Vai tensed, surely preparing to defend my mother’s honor. I shook my head to warn him off replying, for I did not care one fig about the legate’s opinion.

  To my surprise Lord Marius retorted in a sharp tone, “You would not speak so if you had seen the Amazons smash the gate at the siege of Burdigala. One man will certainly out-grapple one woman, but train a battalion of women with soldierly discipline and superior rifles, and you will find them hard to break. I will never again speak slightingly of the Amazon Corps, let me assure you.”

  But just as I was feeling in charity with him, he turned to me, proffering a smile tinted with the prick of petty revenge. “I have a troop of skirmishers departing just now to scout south on the Cena Road. You can leave at once, Maestra. We will provide a kit for you.”

  Since I had brought my basket and cane, I could scarcely refuse. Maybe it was better to make the parting swift and sudden, for the pain of leaving first Bee and then Vai cut regardless.

  We took a moment’s privacy behind the screen. Vai clasped arms with Rory and released him. I thought he would kiss me, but instead he held my face in his hands as he whispered, “Return safely to me, my sweet Catherine.”

  I could not speak, for a throat-choking fear deadened my heart. Blind Fortune had us in her claws. Any terrible thing might happen.

  We had to press on.

  Rory and I left the tent at once to be given over into the care of a competent cavalry commander named Lord Gwyn, who was as white in complexion and hair as his name suggested.

  Two main roads led south from Lut
etia. To the east the Liyonum Road ran via Senones to the old city of Liyonum. The mansa had gone that way to meet the Roman army. Lord Gwyn and his troop rode down the central Cena Road past a fortified estate they called Red Mount, which overlooked the road and the prospect of the city walls a mile away. On golden fields, laborers were cutting hay. They measured our passing in silence.

  We made camp for the night in a grove of trees.

  I crept away to do my business in privacy, for the split skirt made riding easy but peeing difficult. As I was making my way back, I stumbled onto a footpath. Soft footfalls alerted me to the presence of someone else. A rushlight appeared, revealing a girl of perhaps sixteen years hurrying along with a sack slung over her back and her head down as she marked each fearful step.

  I drew my shadows around me. That was why the soldiers did not see me when they stepped onto the path. “Here, now, lass, running away to meet a lover, are you?”

  She bolted back, but a man stepped out on the path behind her as well. “What a pretty treat this is on a dark night!” he said in a tone I could not like.

  She raised the feeble rushlight. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll burn you if you do!”

  “With that little flame?” The threat brought gales of laughter.

  “I’m a fire mage,” she said stoutly, but her hand shook.

  “Yes, we’ve all heard the rumor that the fire-stained can run to the general’s army and make a new life there. You should have stayed home, lass, for we can’t let you pass.” They moved in on her.

  I unwound the shadows. “Let her go on her way unmolested,” I said.

  Yet my appearance so startled her that she broke for the trees, and her mad dash so startled the soldiers that they jumped to attack. One grabbed her arm. She screamed and shoved the rushlight into his face. It blazed with a bright gout of fire that caught up into the leaves of the nearest tree. He shouted with pain and stumbled back.

  Blessed Tanit! I knew I was too late even as I ran for her. She spun tumbling into the underbrush, keening and moaning and then abruptly silent. The rushlight guttered out. The flames in the branches died, but the smoky taste of her death lingered, for she was quite dead, killed by the backlash of her own untrained magic.

  “Lord Gwyn sent us after you, Maestra,” said one of the soldiers, grasping my arm. “You’re not to leave camp ever, on Lord Marius’s orders, unless the commander says so. Cursed little witch got what was coming to her, didn’t she? Ragno’s got a burn on his chin now.”

  “Let me go!”

  He hesitated, grasp tightening, then looked past me. A black shape stalked the trees. It yawned to display saber teeth. The soldiers retreated hastily, and so did I, for there was nothing I could do for the dead girl.

  She was dead because she had no catch-fire, no training, no chance of a normal life. No wonder she had hoped to run away to the general’s army.

  Rory stayed in cat form all that night. At dawn he gifted me with a dead rabbit. In its own small way, the gesture was rather sweet, and seared over the campfire the meat was tasty.

  Our troop moved south with skirmishers’ haste, changing out horses, stopping at a village to commandeer sacks of grain from unhappy villagers before riding on. The soldiers treated me with propriety but their stares made me uncomfortable and Rory was in a constant state of half-leashed snarl. Lord Gwyn frequently halted to interview the locals. More than once he called a file of laborers out of the field and cracked questions over them as they stood with heads bowed, their surly anger like a cloud. They never had anything to say.

  Another few miles south an old woman appeared, trudging with a bundle of reeds atop her head. She stopped stock-still, seeing the thirty soldiers and their horses. Then she saw the big cat.

  “Salve, domine,” she said with remarkable aplomb. “Lord of cats, what brings you here to this lonely community, riding with the prince’s men?” With a wise smile she dropped her voice to a murmur. “Forty years too late if you chanced to wish to seduce me in your human body. For if you are as beautiful in your other form as in this one, I think I just might have let you.”

  Purring, Rory approached her cautiously and licked her hands. She smiled, then sobered as she eyed the soldiers and, with a frown, considered me alone among them.

  “Do not fear us, old aunt,” said Lord Gwyn. “Be on your way.”

  Rory escorted her past the troop and waited until she was out of sight before he loped after us as we rode on.

  The blissful scent of summer lay everywhere. Ahead a tower and roofs marked the town of Castra. We clattered into town past well-tended buildings. People hurried inside and closed their doors. A small river ran through the middle of the town. After we crossed the bridge the soldiers led the horses to water. I walked downstream along the grassy bank, whacking at leaves. Birds warbled. An object spinning past on the silty green water caught my eye. I fished out a tricornered hat. One peak had been crushed. A badge in the shape of a lion’s head was pinned on the felt.

  With a shiver of misgiving I scanned the river. A white tassel flowed past, too far away to reach. A little farther downstream something had gotten caught in a bush that hung over the river: a sleeve trimmed with gold braid. I walked down and prodded at it.

  An arm was still inside, although the hand had been blasted off, ragged bone shining. A dead man was caught in the branches. His face was bloated, his left eye was a gaping hole, and half his teeth were missing. Tendrils of black hair streamed out from his head, and he wore a white sash embroidered with the twin lions of Numantia.

  I reeled back, gasping. Noble Ba’al! Death lay at hand, ugly and violent.

  Yet my mind grasped the whole: Camjiata’s army was somewhere upstream.

  Lord Gwyn’s shout carried from the bridge. “Can you cursed men not keep your eye on the girl?”

  With no warning, volleys of rifle fire shook the air. Gouts of smoke rose all about the bridge as Lord Gwyn’s skirmishers were attacked so suddenly that I stood in gaping confusion. Had the day not been peaceful just one breath ago, even the quiet corpse in its watery grave?

  The battle raged in plumes of smoke, in the ragged cries of men hit and fallen, in the rumble of horses’ hooves as survivors tried to escape the ambush. Rory raced up still in cat shape and shoved me with his head. Several men appeared on the other side of the river with rifles pointed right at me. They wore the same uniform as the dead man: Iberians! I pulled the shadows around me. Shot peppering behind us, Rory and I bolted through the dirt paths and fenced gardens of the outskirts of town. A cart track lay empty but for a solitary bird hunting for bugs. The shooting ceased. Crows flocked overhead, heading for the battleground.

  We broke onto an empty pasture recently mown. Drying grass lay in raked strips along the uneven ground. A bird whistled in a lovely waterfall of song. Another bird chirruped four discordant notes. The skin of my neck prickled. Rory halted, ears forward. I slipped my cane from its loop.

  We trotted across the pasture toward a towering shrub riddled with orange flowers. All was peaceful until a brightly plumaged body burst out of its branches, as tall as me, talons gleaming.

  I leaped forward to whack the creature on the head. With a clicking stutter, it fell back as I fell back. We panted, at a momentary standstill, staring at each other.

  A dancing spin of tiny mirrors and shards of polished metal flashed in my eyes. The feathered person stood clothed in a mimicry of a soldier’s uniform weighted with shards of all the shiny things its kind loved. It flashed a bold yellow-and-red crest as it opened its muzzle to grin with predator’s teeth, like a shark giving you a moment to accept that you’ve been honored by being chosen for its next meal.

  Blessed Tanit protect me! Gracious Melqart give me strength! Noble Ba’al grant me wisdom!

  It lunged for me.

  Rory leaped. He smashed right into the troll, and they rolled, crashing through the brush. Orange petals spun in a cloud of color. I pulled shadows around me and ran after them. The troll
snapped at Rory, who dodged aside to rake at the troll’s flanks with his wicked claws. It stumbled. Its fluid whistle pierced the air, answered by a click and whistle. Blessed Tanit! Of course they never went anywhere alone.

  As the troll whipped around to slash at Rory, I smacked it right over the eyes. Staggering back, it retreated with nostrils flaring, momentarily blinded.

  A stab of reflected light cut across my face. Rory faded into the brush as two feathered people crept out of the trees about twenty paces apart, in hunting formation. The way they had of bobbing their heads as they swept the scene crawled a shiver down my skin. The blinded one whistled and clicked to them, blinking as it recovered. I held steady. Even in daylight and entirely exposed, my shadows hid me from them, and right now the wind was behind them so they could not smell me either.

  They raised mirrors. Where these glances of light lanced across the field, they cut the threads of magic that bind the worlds. My shadows shredded into fraying ribbons whose ends I could not furl about myself. Whistling, the hunters stripped me of my concealment as they fanned out. One lashed its paddle of a tail as in a prelude to attack.

  Yet the mirrors also cut right through the binding that made my sword appear as a cane in daylight. Freed from its net of shadow, the ghost hilt flowered into solidity. I grasped the hilt and drew my cold steel blade out of the spirit world and into the mortal world.

  All three stopped dead in their tracks. Judging by their feathering and size, two were female and one male. They looked me over first with one eye, then the other, and then full on. My throat tingled, anticipating their bite.

  “It’s very shiny,” I said, raising the blade as in salute. Their heads swayed as their gazes raptly followed the movement of the sword. “But don’t think you can take me easily. The spirit of my mother is bound into this sword.”

  I turned and raced into the trees, thrashing through undergrowth in a rattle of noise, then stumbling unexpectedly onto a bushy verge along a major road. I was pretty sure we had found our way back to the main road to Cena, but I could not be sure. Rory nudged up beside me. He had a shallow graze on his right flank but nothing serious.