Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two)

by Gregory J. Downs

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-str
iding 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.

  Lauro smirked triumphantly and wrung his arms to get the feeling back into them. Wind striding was tiring work, and he needed to be ready for-

  -But he never finished the thought. The draik recovered faster than he had thought it could, twisting in a way no natural animal could to get on its feet and charging again. He hurriedly conjured a blast of wind and swept it up towards the monster’s head to lift it off balance again, but the draik dug its iron claws into the ice and kept its head low, riding out the whirlwind and charging forward again as soon as it was done.

  It can’t reach me in time, Lauro knew, raising his arms for a grand finale of striding. But the draik knew it too, and it didn’t have to reach him to do what it wanted. Before it could be pushed back again it sucked in the cold night air and blasted it out in a hellish inferno of white flame that engulfed the stout prince immediately.

  “No!” he shouted, cowering, but the torrent never reached him. It was diverted on two sides by a dark form that sprang in the way at the last second, black against the evil light of the flames. Even then Lauro was knocked flat by the heat and the air that accompanied them. “NO!” he shouted again, “ELIA!”

  Chapter Seven: Speech of Mastery

  Elia had just reached the wessiles; pale-hulled wave-riders unique to the Treele; when she realized the draik was no longer following her. Spinning around, she caught sight of the wind Strider boy flopping head-over-heels across the ice, the monstrous draik struggling to rise to its knees with a twisted neck from the impact.

  What does he think he’s doing? She wondered frantically, but she already knew. He’s giving me a chance to escape. He’s trying to save me. He was no coward, for sure. Foolish, but brave.

  For a moment she stood, undecided, wanting to flee and make good her escape but knowing she could never live with the death of her new friend. While she rocked nervously between the two ideas, she noticed a darker shade of night behind the shadows of the draik and the prince. Gribly! The hapless thief was running up behind the monster, still yelling at his friend to stop. What was wrong with him? He was going to get them both killed!

  “Father of Sea and Sand, protect me,” she whispered, setting out at a run up the slight incline of the Berg to reach her friends before it was too late.

  As she ran, she tried to gather her thoughts for her next move. Her only chance was her gifts, but so far she had little to no luck wave striding with snow, let alone ice. Picking up her pace, she tried to imagine the ground beneath her molding to her feet and pushing her forward a little faster than she could go on her own. She thought she could feel her speed increase, but then again… she knew she could be imagining it.

  Either way, it wasn’t fast enough. Up ahead Lauro was being charged by the draik, and some wound or injury was keeping him from flying away.

  “STOP!” she screamed, but at that moment Lauro began to summon wind and use it to fight the predator. Her voice was drowned out in the shrieking gale the wind Strider brought to bear on his enemy. The sheer power of his attacks surprised her so much she slowed down, gaping at the scene with little comprehension.

  What Lauro apparently didn’t see when he threw the weight of his wind striding against the draik was that Gribly had almost reached the duel. The force of the wind knocked the Sand Strider down at the same time it flipped the draik on its back. Gribly fell and didn’t get up. Elia forced herself to go faster despite the burning in her lungs and the pounding blood in her ears. She had to get there- had to do something!

  A hundred feet between her and the deadly battle, she pushed herself to cross the last distance faster than she had run since her home was burned.

  Fifty feet. The draik seemed to be resisting the wind better. Lauro paused in his attack and the beast surprised him with its speed and resilience.

  Ten. The draik clung to the icy ground and withstood the wind Strider’s powers without injury and opened its maw to blast the prince with fire. On the far side of the combat, Gribly sat groggily up, and his eyes locked with Elia’s.

  She never knew afterwards just what in the boy’s face made her do what she did. Without thinking, riding on an instinct that had never been there before… she flung herself in the way. She hurtled forward, sailing through the air and landing between the monster and its prey. Flames gushed out of the draik’s open jaw, swirling in deathly patterns around her and rushing at her from all directions in a hypnotic display of light and heat.

  Cringing, she threw her hands up in front of her face, wrists crossed. Her arms and splayed palms burned like they had been dipped in molten rock, but the rest of her stayed strangely cold. Her chest heaved manically as the shock of the blast threatened to overwhelm her. Then, as suddenly as they’d started, the flames stopped. She looked up, shaking and frightened.

  The inferno hadn’t touched her. She was standing in a pool of steaming water where the fire had melted the ice, but the flames had left her unharmed.

  “How in…” Lauro gaped behind her, rattled at her sudden and startling intervention.

  She turned back to him. “I don’t… I… I don’t know.”

  “LOOK OUT!” he shouted, and she spun back to the draik, just as it leaned back and delivered another, stronger blast.

  With nothing else to guide her, Elia threw her palms outward again, crying “No!” in her shrill, frightened voice.

  Once more, the flames parted mere inches from her hands and spurted to each side, searingly hot on her arms and hands but ultimately harmless. The second burst lasted longer than the first, but she waited it out. Though it hurt her eyes she kept them open, to convince herself that she really was, apparently, stopping the flames.

  “Impossible,” she breathed, but there it was- she was staring death in the face and yet… not dying. She lowered her arms experimentally- no more than an inch- and immediately felt a fatal increase in heat. She quickly returned to her former position, wondering how much longer she could stand it.

  How was she doing it? She had no idea, but it seemed similar to… No, it couldn’t be. Could it?

  Was she striding fire like she did to water? Was it even possible to stride more than one thing? She could think of only one way to test it.

  When the draik lessened the flow of flames to see if she had succumbed, Elia kept her arms angled toward the last of the torrent as it shot off to either side. Squeezing her fists shut, she tried to imagine that it would obey her and stay lit where it was. For a moment the flames coalesced into two separate balls of fury, whirling in on themselves- then they went out. It had lasted only a second, but it had been enough to convince her. I can stride fire!

  ~

&nbs
p; A hundred yards. Gribly kept running and shouting, hoping against hope his friends would hear him.

  “Stop! You have to stop! It’s too strong! I’m the only one who can stop it in time!”

  Fifty yards. It wasn’t working. Lauro was too high to hear and Elia was too far. If he could only reach the draik before it hurt either of them! Why couldn’t he run fast enough, blast it?!? He was pushing himself so hard he thought his heart might pound itself right out of his chest. The wind whipped his hair back in a fluttering flag of pale yellow behind him as he sped through the night, pumping his legs and slamming the ice with each foot as they fell faster and faster. One-two-one-two-one-two-one!

  Twenty yards. He raced on and on, ignoring the pain from the hard ground against his soles. Whatever footwear the Zain had given to him he had lost in the Ice Demon’s storm. Now only rags bound his feet, but he was used to such conditions from his life in Ymeer.