by Jo Spurrier
Lips white and bloodless, Marima stood, keeping a firm grip on the girl’s shoulders. Grudgingly, she held one shackled hand out to Rasten. ‘Alright. Take us with you.’
Sierra took a half-hearted sip of her tea. She didn’t really want the stuff. Her stomach was too tense and nervous to accept it, but one of the men had made it for her and she didn’t want to spurn his thoughtfulness by refusing it.
She thought of Rasten and Cam, somewhere in the darkness below. Had Rasten found him yet? It would be easy enough to make contact, but Rasten had said he’d let her know. Interrupting him now would only be a distraction.
She hated sitting here like a useless lump, when she wanted nothing more than to be down there herself. Patience, she told herself. She’d have thought, by now, that she’d have learnt how to wait.
Instead, she found herself reaching for Isidro, questing tentatively along the link.
She found him lying on his belly on sand, squinting into the wind. Issey?
Sirri? What’s happening?
I just wanted to let you know that Rasten’s gone in after Cam.
Good, he said. I can’t talk now, Nirveli’s just walked into the Akharian camp. I expect — He broke off abruptly as Sierra felt his attention pull away. There’s the signal. I have to go. With that, he cut the contact, as clean and sharp as the stroke of a knife.
Sierra bit her lip. She knew what it was like, those tense moments before a battle. She’d felt them often enough and that was without worrying about such a small and helpless hostage as Cadrosec. She took another sip of tea and set the bowl down to wrap her arms around herself.
Instantly, one of the guards near her stirred. ‘Are you cold, my lady? I can fetch you another coat —’
She straightened abruptly and shook her head. ‘No, I’m not cold. I’m just worried. I wish I was down there, that’s all.’
‘Ah. We all do, my lady, I promise you that. But Rasten’s proved himself an ally, and he’ll do his best. Have you heard what folk call him now?’
Sierra twisted around to look at the guardsman. He was an older man, with a kind face beneath the scars and flecks of frostnip. He’d been with Ardamon from the start. Sierra remembered his face watching her over the point of a spear when that fool Brekan had tried to expose her to Mira. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I haven’t.’
‘They call him the Chainbreaker, my lady. He’s earned it. We won’t leave without the king. We’ll get him out of that rats’ nest, by hook or by crook.’
She picked up her tea-bowl again. ‘It must be hard to think of attacking the men inside those walls. They were your comrades not so long ago.’
‘That’s true, my lady. But they’ve chosen to stay loyal when the cursed clan betrayed everything our people and our Gods ever stood for … they chose their commanders, just as we chose to follow ours. There are some choices you have to live or die by, my lady, but I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.’
The guard lifted his head then, at the sound of someone coming towards their sheltered niche. Sierra followed his gaze, and found Ardamon picking his way towards them through the trees, his face grim. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said as he drew near.
‘Akharians. Three of them, heading up the same trail we took. Looks like they’re heading for the cave.’
Sierra clenched her fists with a curse, and Ardamon glared at her. ‘You are not going to fight them.’
‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’ she snapped. It had been her first thought, she had to admit, but she knew it was a bad idea. ‘I know what state I’m in. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to, though.’ Heaving a sigh, she reached for the link. ‘I’d best tell Rasten he’s got company on the way.’
Chapter 21
Once Marima was freed, Rasten snapped the chain that bound the suppression stone around Ricca’s neck. With the worn blanket fashioned into a carry-sling, Marima hoisted the little girl onto her hip and the four of them left the cells.
Cam took the rear, and at first he kept watch on Marima. She was painfully thin, with pallid skin and dark circles under her eyes. He was worried that she’d struggle under the girl’s weight, but her steps never faltered as she hurried to match Rasten’s longer stride and gazed around as alert as a hunted deer.
They’d gone only a little way when Rasten abruptly halted. He stood perfectly still with his head cocked to one side, but after a moment he seemed to unfreeze and cast about, peering down the dark corridors before and behind them.
Cam thought he recognised that peculiar stillness, that tilt of the head. ‘Is that Sirri?’ he asked in a murmur. ‘Or Isidro?’
‘Sirri. Some Akharians came in, three of them, using the same hidden passage Nirveli showed us.’
Marima made a small sound of dismay and wrapped her arms more tightly around her little girl, making the child whine in protest. They must be mages, Cam guessed. Sierra wouldn’t be concerned otherwise.
Rasten turned on his heel, doubling back to take a different path. ‘If we can get behind them, we might slip out before they know you’re gone.’
‘Assume they left a rearguard,’ Cam said. ‘I would.’
Rasten nodded. ‘Come on,’ he said, stretching out his stride. ‘Move quickly.’
The fortress itself was decidedly strange, Cam thought. He was used to structures and defences that grew organically, bits added over the centuries as new wings were needed, or as repairs and fortifications dictated. This place seemed entirely uniform, the stone walls plain with barely any seams between the blocks, and no artistry anywhere, even in the spiralling stairs to which Rasten led them.
Rasten started up, but after a dozen strides, he paused and raised a hand for silence.
As soon as the sound of their footsteps and clothing halted, Cam heard it, too … the sound of many boots hurrying down towards them.
Cam loosened his sword in its sheath. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Mm. The clan knows they can’t fight mages. If they know the Akharians are here, could be they’re hoping to spirit you away before the Slavers find you. Move fast.’
Rasten set out again, taking the stairs two at a time, while Cam held back to match Marima’s pace. Rasten hustled them along to the next landing, where he veered off towards a door, opening it with a metallic click. It was only once it swung open that Cam realised there was no keyhole. Once inside, Rasten closed it with another click and led them along the musty-smelling hall, which had the air of quarters much-lived-in, but insufficiently aired and cleaned.
Though questions were bubbling up inside him, Cam held his tongue until they were too far away to risk being heard. ‘Rasten! What in the Fires Below is this place?’
Rasten pulled a slip of paper from his sleeve and unfurled it, glancing down as he led them on. ‘It used to be a hunting lodge. The Akharians rebuilt it from … well, from the ground up doesn’t really cover it. They excavated seven levels underground and strengthened the three above. You were on level six, and I came in on level two, counting from below the surface.’
Cam glanced back, but the door through which they’d come was lost to the gloom. It was hard to judge distances in the darkness, but from the ground they’d covered … ‘By the Black Sun, this place would have to be as big as the palace at Lathayan.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Mama?’ Ricca said in a small voice. ‘Mama, this place feels funny.’
‘Hush, sweet.’
This time, Rasten did turn back to glance at the girl. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Don’t touch anything, little one, it might bite.’ He glanced back to catch Cam’s eye. ‘I think this was the Akharian quarters and workrooms. They spent a lot of time developing devices and techniques for the attack. There’s a lot of power here, feels like leftover devices and apparatus. Did you see, the doors had —’
‘No keyhole, I saw,’ Cam said. ‘That’s one way to keep the clan from spying.’
‘Mm. Nirveli said two mages had been left
behind to watch over the Akharian interests, but this place is deserted.’
‘It’d be dangerous to keep them around after the Wolf crossed them like they did,’ Cam said. ‘Better to get rid of them if they can. I wonder if we were lucky enough for it to be a permanent solution?’
Rasten made a growl deep in his throat. ‘In my experience, the only luck you can trust is the sort you make yourself.’ He turned the paper so Cam could see it. ‘Alright, assume the Akharians took the same stairs down that I did. The Wolf Clan were heading down the one we took here. There are two others: one here, near the Akharians —’ he traced a route on the page, ‘or this one here on the far side of the fort, nearer the clan.’
‘Can’t we just stay here?’ Marima said. ‘If the clan can’t come in, there’s no danger of them finding us.’
‘No,’ Rasten said, ‘we can’t afford to get cornered. If the Akharians work out where we’re hiding they’ll take out the other stairs to trap us, and I can’t fight through them without risking Sierra. Power is keeping her on her feet right now. If I use too much it’ll put her in danger.’ He turned to Cam. ‘It might be easier to punch out through the main gates and avoid the Akharians completely.’
Cam shrugged and nodded. ‘Perhaps. Take the stairs at the far side. I’d rather deal with regular warriors than three Battle-Mages.’
‘This way, then.’
The map was rough, but as they hurried through the halls, Cam was able to put the chambers and corridors around him into the larger context. The whole structure had been laid out on a neat and orderly grid, just like the Akharian towns in the west. That was an annoyance because it would be easier to search than the warren-like complex of an ancient fort. The odds were mounting against them.
Once they reached another stout door, closed again with a keyless lock, Rasten gestured to them to hang back as he eased the door open to listen.
Marima was breathing hard, and leant her shoulder against the wall as she caught her breath. Ricca rested her head against her mother’s shoulder, and both small hands knotted into her tunic.
‘You’re being very brave,’ Cam told the child in a whisper, and she turned her dark eyes up to him.
‘I want to go home.’
‘That might be a long journey,’ Cam said. ‘We’ll do what we can to get you and your mama there, but for now you need to keep being brave, alright?’
The child nodded, and then hid her face in Marima’s tunic.
Rasten returned, then, and beckoned them with a flick of his hand. With an indrawn breath, Marima hurried to him.
Starting up the spiralling stairs, they made it through two levels before Cam heard footsteps tramping down towards them. Rasten froze, turning to Cam, who reached for his sword. ‘Fight,’ Cam mouthed, and Rasten nodded. They’d wasted enough time trying to hide.
Cam guided Marima to the central pillar of the spiralling staircase, while Rasten gave her a sheathed knife. She tucked it away inside the sling. Hopefully, the guards would ignore her as not a threat, but if they did try to take her and the girl hostage, she’d have a chance of taking them by surprise.
The footsteps were drawing nearer — there were a handful of them, Cam guessed. Sierra could deal with them without breaking stride, but he had no idea how Rasten would handle them. He’d fought beside him only once before, in Demon’s Spire, and back then he’d been drawing power from Sierra while their enemy floundered in shock and surprise.
As Cam drew his sword, Rasten tossed his mage-light into the air and sank into a fighter’s crouch, with a long-bladed knife in each hand. Cam had no shield, but the sword belt was balanced with a dagger with a wide hand-guard, and Cam settled it in his fist.
As the first man came into view, Cam lunged at him, dipping the sword-point under the hem of his cuirass and stabbing it into his thigh. As the man jerked back with a yell, his comrades swarmed around him, only for Rasten to seize the nearest one with a rope of flame-coloured light, throw him down on the steps and rip open his throat with a flash of his blade. The other men lunged for him, but with the stairwell’s central pillar hampering them, Cam drove them back with quick, feinting thrusts. They had the better position here, Cam thought. Most spiral stairs were built so that the men above had the advantage of space when swinging their swords, but these were constructed in the reverse, favouring those defending the lower levels.
Between the shouts and the clash of blades, Cam heard another noise, another shout echoing up from below. ‘More coming up!’
‘I’ll take them,’ Rasten said. ‘Can you hold these ones?’
‘I can try,’ Cam said, through gritted teeth. Of the five, Rasten had killed one and Cam marked two others.
Rasten took one quick glance behind him and turned again to the men above. With another cord of flame he seized one around the ankles, and with a vicious yank brought him crashing down to the sharp-edged steps. As the man fell, Rasten stabbed him in the groin in one thick thrust, opening the artery that ran beneath the inner thigh. His companions snatched at him, trying to haul him back, but he was as good as dead, with blood spurting from the wound like a fountain.
As Rasten turned away to meet the other threat, Cam lurched forward and kicked the fallen man’s sword out of his slackening grip. Then, a bare instant later, the stone around him erupted in a blaze of red light. A man screamed, the sound deafening as it echoed endlessly across the stone. It was so loud Cam couldn’t believe it came from just one person, but he couldn’t look around. The men still facing him demanded his attention.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the light died away leaving a pitch dark that was full of grunts of pain; hard, panting breaths and the iron reek of blood. It snuffed out the lamps the guards carried, too, quenching them as swiftly as dousing water.
Trusting to his cuirass to protect him, Cam reversed his grip on the dagger and raised his left hand to defend his head, and caught a hard blow on the edge of the blade now laid along his forearm. Taking a chance, he guessed which man had chanced the blow and stabbed with his weight behind the thrust, hearing a groan as it skidded over steel and then bit deep. Breathing hard himself, he twisted the blade before pulling it out.
There was a meaty thunk as the wounded man fell. Cam probed with the sword again, slashing and lunging at the darkness as far as he dared without leaving himself exposed, but he found nothing other than the hard, unyielding stone of the central pillar. The sparks drawn from his sword blazed like falling stars, too small and brief to cast any light. Cam took a shuffling step and slipped, almost falling, as spreading blood made the stone slick. He stumbled backwards, disoriented, clamping down on his panting breath as he tried to hear their next move.
He heard the shuffle of feet and rustling clothing, along with hissing breath as someone made a slow, painful retreat.
Cam kept his left hand up to protect his face, and slashed the sword in front of him like a blind man with a cane, expecting at any moment that they’d rush him again. ‘Rasten?’ he said. ‘Can you make a light?’
Someone stirred in the darkness, and a voice spoke, but it wasn’t Rasten’s dark tones. It was Ricca’s small, piping voice, raised in a nursery song.
The moon is my friend
She shines on the snow
From her pale light
All the demons go
She shines in my sleep
Even when clouds are dark
She shines in my dreams
She shines in my heart
Pale shafts of light gleamed through the darkness, flickering with soft, shifting colours like the play of light within an opal.
The girl had her hands cupped together, light streaming between her fingers. Marima was sobbing from fright, her face wet with tears, but Ricca was quite calm as she leant against her mother’s chest, paying no attention to the dead men strewn across the stairs, or the slick streams of blood flowing down them in pattering rivulets.
Behind them, Cam saw Rasten, slumped against the wall with one han
d pressed to his ribs. In the shimmering light, he could see the swift seep of blood spreading from the wound.
Sitting by the fire, Sierra felt as though a wide leather belt had been pulled tight around her ribs. She gulped a breath — or tried to — and in an instant her head was spinning and her chest burned.
She closed her eyes and saw a flare of red light flashing off blood-streaked steel.
Men were dying, she could feel it … but they were so far away, so terribly far. It was like a voice carried on the wind, too distant and faint to tease any sense from the words.
Sirri? What’s wrong? Rasten was there in her head.
Can’t … can’t breathe …
Then, the red lights winked out, as though someone had pulled a hood over her head. Something scored her ribs, a stinging slice that made her cry out. And then there was only darkness, and a warm, creeping wetness spreading over her skin.
An orb of light shot upwards from the Akharian camp, like a falling star in reverse. ‘That’s it!’ Isidro muttered, gripping the spyglass tight enough to make his knuckles ache. ‘Go!’
He couldn’t have kept quiet if he’d wanted to, but there was no need to shout the command. His people were in place, all primed for the signal, and even as he breathed the words he saw them rising up from the hollows between the dunes. Each of his teams carried a camouflage enchantment, setting the air around them rippling like the wavering heat above a fire.
The sentries reacted to Nirveli’s signal with curiosity, not alarm, turning to follow the rising arc of the brilliant globe. That changed when the first of them saw the strange, rippling distortion advancing upon them, and then their shouts brought men boiling out of the tents.
From their camouflage, Isidro’s archers began to shoot, but already he felt the mages’ power flaring. Shields sprang up around the perimeter, and the arrows that struck the shimmering wall flashed to flame and ash. ‘Careful now,’ he muttered, watching the assaulters approach. ‘Careful …’ He’d gathered up two score of mages for this assault, but they were still barely trained, nothing more than rank novices by Akharian standards. Still, even a pack of half-starved dogs could bring down a bear with strength in numbers.
