North Star Guide Me Home

by Jo Spurrier

  There was a brief crackle when he broke the contact, and then that odd, flattened voice returned. ‘Sukaro, Prince Makaio’s ships will shortly be under attack. Six Akharian vessels, four galleys, two balingers, approaching from north and south. Prince Makaio and his guests have made landfall and are seeking shelter in the ruins on the bluff overlooking the cove. The prince wishes you to pass this on to the Ricalani prince and ask him to come lift the siege with all haste.’

  The cove in which Makaio’s ship was anchored was a quiet and sheltered place. There was a sandy beach at one end, protected by steep cliffs breached only by a small gorge. That narrow passage was easily defended, but the beach itself … as Mira stood there, watching Ardamon’s men unloading the boats, she knew that if one of the galleys made it into the cove, they’d be overrun. At a pinch, they could crowd into the gorge and try to hold it at either end, but the ruined fort seemed a better bet.

  She tugged on the sash that bound her son to her chest as Ardamon came over. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Keep moving. Makaio’s men have horses waiting for us at the top of the cliff. Stay close, Anoa, and by the Black Sun, where’s that wretched young lass run off to?’ With a scowl he cupped his hands around his mouth to shout. ‘Alameda!’

  She came darting through the crowd with her fair hair streaming behind her. ‘Sorry, sir, I just needed a few more things —’

  ‘Stay by Mira’s side from now on.’

  Alameda bowed. ‘Yessir.’

  Ardamon was already striding for the gorge, and Mira hurried to match his pace as the men formed up around her. She glanced back at Alameda. ‘Any more contact?’

  Alameda pulled the stone from her sash, showing Mira the glowing streak across its face. ‘Before, they were checking it every hour or two, but it’s on all the time, now. I think it means they’re close, my lady.’

  Mira glanced up at the sky. It had been mid-afternoon when the captain brought the news. How long ago was that? An hour? Two? The brilliant blue of the clear winter day was fading, and before long the first stars would be out. ‘I hope so,’ she said.

  To Isidro it felt like they were racing against the night. The winter sun had faded and the air was growing cool and damp, the sky darkening to a dusky shade. The light was fading fast.

  Darkness wouldn’t be a problem, he reminded himself. Sierra would soon set the sky alight … and then there was his power to consider, as well. He thought back to the night he’d awoken, and felt a chill run through him. For all his efforts to control his power, he hadn’t tested himself in battle since that night. The thought made his stomach clench. It wasn’t just Cam who stood to see what he truly was, it was Mira and Ardamon and all the others as well, not to mention their would-be ally, the Tomoan prince.

  Isidro clenched his teeth and tightened his hand around the reins. Perhaps they’d get lucky and would reach Mira before the Akharians attacked.

  The sea was out of sight, as the road took them through a low point in the countryside, but he smelled salt in the air. They were getting close.

  Then, drifting through the still air, he heard a shout of alarm and a woman’s shrill cry, a shriek like the call of a hunting raptor.

  Beside him, Cam stiffened and for a moment he straightened, but with a rallying shout he bent low over his horse’s neck, kicking the weary beast forward.

  Isidro did the same, though his horse had scarcely anything left to give. He strained his ears, trying to pick any sound over the drumming of hooves and the snorts of the weary mounts. It came to him, tinny and distant — a clash of steel. On Cam’s other side, Sierra threw her head up, like a dog scenting the air. ‘There’s blood on the ground,’ she said.

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Not far at all. Ahead of us and a little to the west.’

  ‘Good,’ Cam said. ‘Give them a signal, Sirri. Let our friends know we’re coming — and our enemies know what they’re about to be dealing with.’

  She nodded, her eyes growing cold and distant. Isidro felt her power flare, and then a bolt of lightning struck out of the clear sky, hitting the road behind them with a sound like the earth being split open.

  The sudden shocking noise of it startled the horses into a final burst of speed as they climbed the hill, the crest still awash in the last of the daylight. At the top of the rise, Isidro saw the fight perhaps half a mile away. The scuffle of men and horses was lost in the gloom of dusk and the shadows cast by the sinking sun, but something else drew him to it — the beast within him caught the ethereal scent of blood and pain. It stirred, rising up from the depths to climb his spine, straining towards the battle with a desperate hunger.

  ‘Down there,’ Sierra said to Cam, pointing at the shifting shadows, and as she spoke there came a flare of light to guide them, a veil in a hue of delicate, blushing pink. A shield.

  Cam drew his sword with a battle-cry that carried to the rest of their men and charged towards the fight.

  The defenders were on horseback, huddled together with the shielded figure in the middle. They were outnumbered by attackers on foot, armed with spears that kept the mounted warriors at too great a reach to use their swords.

  Isidro felt Sierra loose her power and, as it spilled, Cam’s sword blazed with Black Sun’s Fire, an eerie blue glow wreathed through with hair-fine bolts of lightning.

  The sight of them rallied the defenders, but the attackers redoubled their efforts. There couldn’t be a soldier in the empire who didn’t know the signs of Sierra’s power, Isidro thought. They knew their only chance of survival was to take hostages.

  It seemed to take an age to close the gap, the horses thundering along the muddy roads in the last of the dying daylight, but while they were still a hundred yards away Isidro felt Sierra reach out with a thick lash of power.

  It struck like a vast whip, a flash of brilliant blue light that flung a dozen men into the air and hurled them against their comrades.

  As the men fell in a tangle of limbs and splintered spears, broken bones and sharp-edged blades, he felt it, as clearly as if his own body was shattered and split by the impact. It swept through him in a red-hot wave that then ebbed away in a wash of seething power.

  It must be an echo from Sierra, he realised — his old peculiar habit of absorbing power, somehow made more intense. It seemed the encroaching night grew brighter.

  He’d expected the attackers to break and run when they realised what they were facing, like the green troops he’d faced in the damp hills, but the men pushed towards the veiled figure as though their lives depended on it — which in truth, he reflected, they did.

  Cam shouted Mira’s name, and from within the shield Isidro heard her voice shriek in reply. Sierra rode on Cam’s right, so with a touch of his heels, Isidro swung his horse the other way and dropped the knotted reins as he reached for the power coiled, snake-like, around his spine.

  The beast within him stirred with hunger, flexing its claws, straining towards the enemy soldiers. Isidro gritted his teeth — it went against everything he’d been working for these past long weeks, every vow he’d sworn since the day Kell had snared him in that net of power, but by the Black Sun, those were his kin trapped within that knot of men. Power roared like liquid fire in his veins, and with a thought that was half curse, half prayer for forgiveness, Isidro flung a bolt of raw power towards the striving men.

  It shot from his hand in a glob of molten flame and splattered over the men. Where it struck, it clung like hot wax and then spread out like oil over water, flowing over armour in rivulets of trickling fire and seeping into the cracks between the plates. Within moments a dozen men blazed like torches, in flames from head to toe. They abandoned their weapons and fled, rolling on the road in a futile attempt to quash the flames.

  His horse spooked, shying away from the blazing men scattered like coals from a spilled brazier, and Isidro snatched at the knotted reins, digging his heels into the beast’s flanks to turn it back towards the fight. Ahead of him, a blazing man was crawling th
rough the mud, trying desperately to escape. As Isidro kicked his horse towards him, the man looked up in horror as the beast leapt over the flaming mass.

  The soldiers were faltering, now — they knew they were losing. Isidro reached for his power again, and it flowed down to his hand in a torrent of molten steel.

  The fight was short and ugly — by the time Isidro cut through a second lot of soldiers, Sierra had circled around to meet him. It was no longer dark, not here, at least. Between the still-burning corpses and the eerie blue glow of Black Sun’s Fire, there was more than enough light to see the carnage that had been wrought.

  Cam kicked his horse into the knot of defenders. ‘Mira!’ he called, as the blushing pink shield dropped away, revealing her with the baby bound to her chest, one arm wrapped protectively across him and the other gripping the reins. ‘Cam!’ she called, her face wet with tears, but smiling widely. ‘Oh, Cam …’ He dropped his reins to lean across and pull her close, embracing her with one arm while the other still held his bloodied sword.

  All around were familiar faces. Ardamon and his men, the same ones who’d searched for Cam in the ranges last spring. Anoa and Amaya were there, and even little Alameda, who he’d never expected to see again, certainly not with her hair bound up in northern braids. But scattered between them were dark-skinned foreigners, men in armour patterned with giant scales like the skin of a giant lizard. There were a few women scattered through them as well, elegantly turned out with dark curls piled atop their heads and power throbbing beneath their skin.

  Sierra wheeled her horse to face the south. ‘Cam!’ she shouted over the confusion of voices, as Mira tried to introduce the dark-skinned man at her side. ‘Some of them broke and fled south. We should go after them!’

  ‘One of the galleys made landfall and sent men ashore to ambush us,’ the foreigner said. ‘There’ll be more where they came from.’

  ‘Once they realise what they’re facing I expect they’ll change their tactics,’ Cam said. ‘Prince Makaio of Tomoa, I presume?’

  The man made a bow from his saddle. ‘The very same. Well met, Prince Cammarian.’

  ‘Cam!’ Sierra snapped, a finger-thick bolt of lightning crackling from her shoulder to the ground. ‘I’m giving chase.’

  ‘We’ll go together,’ Cam said. ‘I’m not leaving anyone behind. Mira, Ardamon — is everyone fit to ride?’

  ‘We’re good,’ Mira said, patting the bundle on her chest and then gathering up the reins again.

  ‘Let’s get this done,’ Sierra growled, and kicked her horse onwards.

  It was an easy trail to follow, even in darkness — the path was scattered with the wounded and dying, men unable to keep up with the hasty retreat. It led them first along a ridgetop overlooking the cove below, where a ship battled a low-slung galley, its sides bristling with oars as two great ballistae were being brought to bear. At the entrance to the cove, another craft was surging through, a shadowy mass against the darkly glittering sea. Prince Makaio slowed his horse to gaze down at the scene. ‘Your grace!’ he called to Cam. ‘Your mage here — how close does she need to be?’

  Cam followed his gaze down into the cove, and reined in. ‘Sirri?’

  She turned to him with a dark glance, and looked down at the ships. ‘This is near enough.’ She turned to Makaio. ‘The big one’s yours?’

  The prince inclined his head. ‘It is. I am most grateful, my lady.’

  She gave him a narrow glare, full of suspicion, and then rode to the edge of the cliffs while reaching for her power.

  Cam and a few of his most trusted men gathered behind her to guard her back, and with a sudden flush of unease, his power squirming within him, Isidro nudged his horse forward.

  On the water below, a flicker of blue displaced the orange gleam of torches and ship’s lights. The galley shifted in the water, lifted partially out as though grasped by massive hands. The men scurrying about on the deck faltered, stumbling at the sudden movement.

  Then, even from this distance, Isidro heard the wood groaning under pressure, and the panicked shouts of the men on board. With a tearing crash, Sierra tore the ship in half, like breaking a branch across her knee. The touch of her power was so intense that the tar-smeared wood flashed to flame where her cords of power roved over it, but as she released the wreckage it winked out once again as the two halves sank, dragged swiftly under the foaming water.

  As the ruined vessel sank, Isidro felt a sudden swift rush of pressure in his chest, a suffocating band tightened around his lungs. It grew until he thought his chest might burst, but then it ebbed away again, replaced by a suffusing, golden warmth. By the Bright Sun, he thought. Galleys … galley slaves. How many men went down in that, chained to their oars? He felt suddenly sick.

  There was silence on the clifftop, while the cries of men who’d leapt from the wreckage into the water rang faintly up from below.

  Sierra turned to the prince. ‘Do you want the other one dealt with, too? Or can your own people see to it?’

  Makaio was squinting into the darkness at the mouth of the cove. The other galley was already retreating. ‘My captain can handle what’s left. You have my thanks, my lady.’

  Sierra looked him over with a cold, imperious gaze, and turned to Cam. ‘Now, the rest of them.’

  Some hours later, Isidro found himself pacing the ruins where Mira and the others had proposed to wait for them. The Akharians had rushed to attack them on the road before they could reach the shelter of the broken walls. He glanced up at them now to see the sentries posted there, keeping watch over the darkened countryside — Ardamon’s men and Makaio’s, mostly. After the day’s hard ride, Cam had spared his own men the first standing of the watch.

  Isidro knew he ought to be weary, but the power still coursing through him chased exhaustion away. His skin prickled all over as though it had suddenly grown too tight and, if he didn’t take care, would split open like a sausage spluttering in the pan.

  The last of the fighting had gone quickly — they’d found the cove where the galley landed a mile or so to the south, with the ship just pulling out to sea. Rather than burn through her remaining power to repeat the trick, Sierra had simply set it alight, keeping her power on it until it burned too fiercely for the sailors to have any hope of putting it out. They’d ridden away with it still blazing over the black water.

  Isidro gazed down at his feet as he paced. The soft winter grass was already giving way to mud under his boots. All around him were voices, talking and laughing. Makaio had erected a pavilion within the ruined walls, and by the time it was raised and fires lit within, Cam’s baggage train had caught up with them. Now Cam’s captured general’s tent stood opposite the bright pavilion. Inside was a rough and ready feast. Makaio had been planning a celebration for the following day, and had whatever was ready brought up from the ship and the beaches below, while Cam contributed the stewpots that had been prepared that morning and wrapped in straw to keep them cooking throughout the day.

  Isidro had been served a generous portion, but set it aside barely touched before coming outside to the darkness and the cool night air.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a man wreathed in flames, desperately crawling through the mud. His shrivelled hair, his blackened skin, his charred and smoking clothes … he could still smell the reek of it. It clung to his skin, clotted in his nostrils.

  Isidro shook his head and kept pacing, the unfamiliar weight of the false hand hanging by his side. When he forgot himself, it struck against his thigh, and he already had a bruise forming there. He savoured the throb of it.

  He’d left the tent when Cam started his tale of the past year, though he’d offered to let Isidro go first and recount what had happened since that night in the ranges. Isidro had merely shaken his head, and Cam didn’t press the matter. He’d lasted only a few minutes longer before the weight of eyes upon him drove him out. Now there was nothing enticing in the light and voices that drifted through the tent’s canvas
walls. If anything he wanted to be further away, beyond sight and hearing of everyone … but he didn’t want to risk it. There might be more Akharians skulking around the ruins. If they came across him out there, then there would be more men blazing like torches as they crawled through the mud.

  Isidro felt a subtle shift in the air around him, and fell still. There was power around him, as thick as humidity on a summer day. He stayed where he was for a moment, watching, as a slender figure with long dark hair wandered away from the main tent, seeking the same darkness and seclusion that had drawn him here.

  She started towards him, but when his silhouette loomed against the ruined walls, she stopped, though with her face turned away from the light he couldn’t read her expression.

  She watched him for a long moment, but when he made no move and no sound, she started forward again, placing every foot with care, like a doe feeling her way through the snow. ‘Issey?’

  ‘Couldn’t take it any longer either, huh?’ he said.

  Sierra swept a tangled lock back from her face. ‘All this time, I thought I just wanted to go home. But seeing them all again … by the Black Sun, how can I explain it? Why I left; what’s happened since then? Living through it once was bad enough. I just want to forget it.’ She stooped, tearing up a handful of tender green grass, and began to shred it between her hands. ‘They don’t ask, though. They just watch me, and stare when they think I’m not looking. I couldn’t explain myself if I tried, and yet … the fact that they don’t dare ask makes it worse, somehow. You know?’

  Isidro nodded, slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’

  She dropped the shredded grass and looked down at her hands, stained green in the filtered light. ‘You did well out there,’ she said. ‘Your power … it has come a cursed long way. I could see you’ve been working on it.’