The War and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  The Calatians screamed as they were dropped seemingly into the fire, but Kip knew there was only one other fire sorcerer in the world and he trusted that although Cott would consume a ship out from under the people on it, he would not burn the people alive.

  I have you, master, Nikolon said as Kip pulled in magic and sucked the fire out of the frigate. The dozen Calatians last pulled away from the group, now free of Valkuni’s spell, moved across the Road quickly.

  “Malcolm, ward the ship,” Kip called down to his friend. “Alice—”

  Alice floated beside him. “I’m going to get them back,” she said, and sped toward the stolen Calatians.

  Take me to where the Calatians disappeared, Kip asked Nikolon, and he moved after Alice and then past the Calatians, now slowing under Alice’s magic. Several hundred feet past the Road, a ship shimmered and appeared on the ocean in front of him. He’d been prepared to send fire down to it, but the sight of it took him aback. The warship below him was not a wooden frigate nor even a ship of the line, but a small, sleek vessel low to the ground and plated from stem to stern with great iron sheets. Smokestacks rather than sails jutted up from its center, but the usual array of small cannon bristled from its bow, those now the center of a flurry of activity. They fired toward the American frigate, and sailors set to reloading.

  Those Kip could do something about. The gunpowder that they needed was stored in metal canisters, but as the cannon were reloaded the canisters were open, so he sent fire to the base of every cannon he could see. Loud bangs and puffs of smoke arose from each one, sending sailors staggering back with curses, some bleeding, a few falling and lying still. Kip searched for his Calatians on the deck of the boat and then he was jerked to the side and a small cannonball went whistling past him.

  Thank you, Nikolon, he said, and focused on the ship. Flame could consume iron, but Cott could draw the flame out of it as easily as Kip could. Where did this ship draw its power from? It couldn’t be only sorcerers pushing it through the water. The smokestacks meant that something was being burned there in the heart of the ship.

  No; the stolen Calatians were his first priority. Nikolon pulled him out of the way of another cannonball, and then he spotted twenty Calatians huddled on one of the decks together. He directed Nikolon to bring him down, but then a raven flew at him, and he had to fend it off. Can you get just those Calatians on the boat? he asked.

  Perhaps, but then it would be harder to defend you from cannonballs.

  Kip cast a physical magic spell to keep himself in place and then called up fire again, eager . He would have to cripple the ship somehow so it couldn’t follow once they got the Calatians away. Let me worry about the cannonballs, he said as he scanned the ship. It would take a lot of power to consume the iron and it might take too long, but it would occupy the sorcerers while Nikolon rescued the Calatians, he hoped. His body thrummed with nervous energy.

  A voice spoke in Kip’s ear: Malcolm’s demon Daravont. “Kip,” it said in Malcolm’s voice, “Alice made it back, but the ship is leaving. They say they can’t risk waiting here. The cannon are almost in range. I can hide them, but they’ve ravens and we don’t.”

  “I’ll catch up,” he said, his eyes lighting on the smokestacks, and at that moment Nikolon lifted the Calatians from the deck. Watching for cannonballs, Kip sought out the fire within the ship that he knew must be there somewhere, found it, and fed it twofold, threefold, fivefold.

  Smoke poured from the ship and the creak of tortured metal came like a great groan from its inside. The cries of sailors rose to Kip again, and then the Calatians were pulled hard back down, two of them onto the deck of the boat and the rest into the ocean.

  “Penfold!” came a voice from the deck he didn’t recognize. One sorcerer stood looking up, robes flapping around him. “Leave off destroying our ship or you’ll kill all your fellows there in the water.”

  Nikolon, lift them out!

  I am trying, master, but they are being held in. He is very strong.

  “Turn over the rest of the Calatians you’ve stolen from us or I’ll kill every one of these, one at a time.”

  Desperate, Kip sent fire at the sorcerer, but it flared only briefly and then was sucked away. Now he saw another sorcerer, who must be Cott, kneeling beside one of the Calatians that had fallen onto the deck, a mouse that lay still.

  The one who wasn’t Cott sneered at Kip and pointed out into the ocean. “Just for that…you see that fox there?”

  One of the Calatians floating in the water was a fox. Kip didn’t think it was Abel, but as soon as he turned his attention there, the fox disappeared under the water before he could be sure.

  Nikolon, help me save him!

  He turned his own physical magic to the fox, combining it with Nikolon’s to pull the struggling Calatian above the surface of the water. Then he lifted the fox and with some effort kept him up in the air. It was not Abel.

  “Well done,” the sorcerer called. “But while you were saving one, you lost another.”

  He gestured with a hand, and a dormouse-Calatian broke the surface of the water, hanging limply in the air with his head at an unnatural angle before falling with a splash. The others screamed and tried to swim away. With a wrench, Kip recognized the dead Calatian as Thomas Trewel.

  Despair gnawed at his chest but he pushed it away. There were still many Calatians left alive that he could rescue, and if he could keep this physical sorcerer occupied, he might yet save the others. There would be time to mourn Thomas.

  Help them get to the Road, please, Kip instructed Nikolon. The farther you get from him the weaker he’ll be. A cannonball flew toward him, slower than gunpowder would propel it; he wrenched control away and sent it back toward the sorcerer, and then, letting some of the anger consume him, he took Thomas’s body from the water and threw it at the sorcerer as a following shot.

  The man diverted the cannonball easily but was startled by the sodden corpse and only narrowly avoided it, stumbling to the deck. Kip pressed his advantage, trying fire again only to have Cott pull it away.

  “Damn you, Cott,” the sorcerer cried, throwing another cannonball. “Take care of him! Use that!”

  He pointed to Thomas’s body. Cott turned and looked up, and Kip saw his round boyish face clearly, the petulant look he so often wore replaced by sorrow and confusion.

  When he met Kip’s eyes, the sorrow intensified, and Kip knew an attack was coming. But Cott, like Kip, was no military sorcerer. He threw a wall of flame at Kip, which Kip swept away easily, and then ignited the air around the fox. Kip pulled the flame back and sent it down to the boat.

  A cannonball burst through the flames, headed directly for him. He didn’t have time to grab it with magic so he twisted to try to avoid it, reaching out with a paw to fend it off. His paw slowed it only a little, but he got mostly out of the way before it glanced off his chest.

  Pain burst through his ribs. His concentration faltered for a moment and he dropped toward the water, then kept going down even as he recovered. If they thought he was wounded or dead, they might let their guard down. Nikolon, show me the Calatians in the water.

  They were struggling toward the Road, close to it now. They were going to make it. Kip hit the ocean, cold salt water closing over him in a shock. He pushed himself to the surface. Show me what’s on the deck of the boat.

  Cott knelt over the body of Thomas, a knife out. He hesitated, and from Nikolon’s viewpoint, the horror at his situation showed plainly in his wide-eyed grimace. “I can do it without,” he said.

  The other sorcerer didn’t let him finish. “Do it!” he yelled. “We can’t let them escape.”

  “But—“

  “Do it now or I swear I’ll hold you down and drench you in his blood.”

  Cott shuddered and bent back to the corpse. Revulsion on his face, he plunged the blade into the dead dormouse’s arm and lifted it to his mouth. Blood ran down his chin in a gruesome display. Kip, unable to close his eyes or tur
n away, fought against a wave of nausea.

  The other sorcerer turned to stare out over the water. “I think the fox is down, but we should be sure.”

  “I’ll send Ash.” Cott straightened and wiped his mouth, leaving bloody smears on his face and hand. He stared ahead, face still twisted. “I’m ready for the frigate.”

  The cold of the water was nothing compared to the ice that those words brought to Kip’s chest. There was only one reason Cott would need to enhance his power: he needed to be able to overcome Kip’s resistance, to keep the frigate burning until it fell apart around the Americans and Calatians. And then what?

  The great ironclad ship groaned again and then lifted from the water, pulling Kip toward it in the wake it created. The physical sorcerer closed his eyes, focusing as the ship came free of the water entirely and slowly moved across the Road. So that was his answer: they were going to recapture the Calatians. And what about Malcolm and Alice? Cott might not want to kill, but his companion clearly had no compunctions about that. Kip knew the wartime strategy when encountering enemy sorcerers who might translocate away: kill them immediately.

  Struggling against the wave to keep himself above water, his mind and heart raced, veering toward the edge of panic until he reined himself in. It was down to him now, just him, and if he failed, he doomed his friends to death or capture. He wasn’t trained for this, but there was nobody to defer to now.

  A black shape swept past him. Cott cried out, “The other Calatians are escaping onto the Road.”

  “Let them go. We can retrieve them later,” his companion said in the strained tones of someone maintaining a difficult focus. The ship had moved halfway across the Road.

  Cott’s raven returned, and its eyes met Kip’s. Through Nikolon’s eyes, he saw Cott open his mouth to speak and then hesitate. He turned to the side of the ship, staring out over the ocean to see Kip. “Get away,” the raven whispered in Cott’s voice.

  In that moment Kip saw his chance. “I can’t let you kill them,” he said, and poured fire into the steel of the ship, heating it quickly.

  Cott felt it and pulled the fire out, but Kip had only meant that attack as a distraction. As soon as Cott reacted, Kip sent fire to consume the other sorcerer, hot and powerful and deadly.

  By the time Cott turned back to the deck; his companion’s smoking, charred corpse had fallen to the deck in a spray of fiery ash, and Cott only had a moment to register that before the ship fell onto the Road, half of it still hanging off the southern edge. Sailors scurried around the ship, and the two Calatians who’d been dropped onto the deck, a mouse and an otter, took the chance to dive overboard into the ocean.

  Kip flew himself to the Road and then above it, and Cott’s raven followed him, shrieking. “Why did you do that? Why did you kill him?”

  Fire burst around him again, an immense inferno fueled by Cott’s enhanced power, but Kip was prepared and sent much of it back into the hold of the ship. The ironclad shuddered and rocked alarmingly, throwing Cott into the railing. He clutched it as his raven flew at Kip’s face and Kip had to hold it using physical magic while he dispelled the rest of Cott’s inferno. The boat wasn’t going to go anywhere now. Kip had won.

  Below him, the otter helped the mouse up onto the Road. Kip dropped down to join them. Nikolon, find the other Calatians along the Road. He reached out with magic to the mouse and the otter. “I’ve got you now. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “No!” Cott howled, watching from the side, eyes wide and face bright red. “No!” He sent fire again, and again Kip drew most of it away.

  The ship groaned and then shrieked as metal tore and the half hanging in the ocean shuddered and lurched. Cott lost his balance and then scrambled to his feet. “Wait there,” Kip said, preparing for another fire attack. “I’ll get the ship—”

  His former mentor stared not at Kip and his charges, but at the Road that his ship was breaking upon, where the Calatians were escaping. He raised his hands.

  Too late Kip realized that Cott wasn’t forming a spell; he was casting already. The Road began to glow, first white and then yellow. The salt on it sizzled. With a curse, Kip gripped the raven in one paw and cast his physical magic spell on himself and the other two Calatians, lifting them from the heated surface of the Road. “Master Cott!” he called. “Please stop!”

  Cott was beyond hearing him now. He poured fire into the Road even though Kip had lifted himself and the Calatians off it. The glow extended as far as Kip could see, and the water on either side of the Road bubbled and steamed. Nikolon, get them off the Road!

  I have just found them.

  Get them—

  Cott screamed, and the raven in Kip’s paws opened its beak and echoed the scream. The Road glowed unbearably bright, waves of heat emanating from it. Around the Road, the ocean steamed, and next to it, white froth bubbled up. The mouse and otter cried out and shielded their eyes, and Kip flew them higher.

  How far could Cott heat the Road? Were there people at the inns, in the middle of the ocean, whose skin was blistering? Kip tried to reach into the Road to draw out the fire and encountered a surge of power unlike anything he’d ever felt. Reflexively he pulled free of it, feeling as though he’d passed out for a moment.

  He still hung in the air, the mouse and otter safely alongside him, and Cott still gripped the railing of the ship, staring down at the luminescent cauldron that he’d made of the Road. How much fire must be coursing through him? His skin glowed bright red, and over the hissing and popping below them, Kip could make out Cott’s voice in a strange keening moan. The raven he held opened its beak as well, but no sound emerged.

  The air crackled and burned. Kip’s fur stood on end. He had to do something, anything, to stop this. But what—

  With a deafening crack, the Road disappeared.

  The ironclad fell back into the water with a crash. Kip plummeted toward the ocean, his physical spell inexplicably gone. Wind rushed past his ears, hot, steaming; he sought magic and it exploded into him. A body’s length above the water, he caught himself and reversed his fall.

  Screams filled the air as the mouse and otter hit the boiling water. Squinting against the billows of steam, he found and lifted the otter, but the churning waves hid the mouse, and a moment later the screams died away. Kip pulled the otter to his side; she clung to him and he put an arm around her shoulders, holding the limp raven in the other paw. She was sobbing. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  “I knew you would,” she said, and only then did her scent filter through to him. This was Coppy’s sister, either Ella or Tokka. He hugged her more tightly.

  The ironclad listed dangerously to one side. Many sailors had jumped overboard, but those who remained on the ship had watched their fellows scalded and boiled in the water and now clung to the railings crying for help. Cott lay prone on the deck of the ship, unmoving, blank eyes staring out at the devastation he’d caused.

  Nikolon! Kip called, speeding toward the ship. Nikolon!

  The raven in his paw stirred as Nikolon answered. I am sorry, master. My spell died. I have six. The rest perished.

  Six is better than none, Kip replied, though his heart sank. Come find me.

  He looked down at the raven. If it was still alive, then Cott was too, but its movements were growing weaker and more strained. He stared down at its eyes, trying to connect. “Cott?”

  “Cott?” it echoed, and stared back at him, calming. “Cott?”

  Something pushed into his mind. He panicked, resisting at first, and the raven fluttered in agitation. “Calm down,” he said. “Calm down. It’s…”

  “Cott,” the raven said, and as Kip relaxed he saw himself through the raven’s eyes, exactly as if it were a demon. In his paws, it settled, but he could feel strength return to it.

  He’d—stolen Cott’s raven? No; the raven must have been unbound at Cott’s death and had sought out another soul to bind to. Cautiously, he let go, and the
raven spread its wings and soared. When he tried to see through its eyes again—there, he could see what it saw.

  He sent it to the railing where the sailors were clamoring. “Hold for a moment,” he said, and they quieted, hearing his voice come from the raven. “I’ll get you.” There were a dozen of them; between himself and Nikolon they could surely lift them all over the steaming swath of ocean that a moment before had been a magical Road.

  Kip landed next to Cott on the deck, the otter floating next to him (Ella, he was almost sure it was Ella, Coppy’s oldest sister). “I’ve still got you,” he told her, seeing her panic at the listing deck. “I just need to take care of this.”

  His former mentor had not moved; his eyes remained open and sightless. Kip checked for a heartbeat anyway, and was not surprised to find none. He closed Cott’s eyes and took a moment to say a prayer for him. Cott had done so much for him, had taught him to be careful with fire, and in the end fire had consumed him anyway despite all his care. Kip’s chest tightened. He’d hoped to visit Cott again after the war, to compare notes on what he’d discovered. Now he wondered if he too would end in fire, if for a fire sorcerer there was any other kind of death.

  The metal of the deck was hot enough to be uncomfortable on his feet. He lifted himself back to Ella, who was sobbing quietly. Kip put his arm around her again and closed his eyes, saying a prayer for all the souls that had been lost, Cott and the Calatians and even the other sorcerer, committing their loss to God so he would not have to bear it alone.

  14

  The Master

  On the American frigate, an hour later, they took stock of their losses. Kip had rescued eleven sailors from the ironclad before it sank, and seven of the stolen Calatians between himself and Nikolon. Nobody had kept close track of how many Calatians had been sent to New Cambridge, nor even how many had originally set out on the mission, but Abel estimated thirty had been lost, including those Nikolon had tried to save, the mouse Kip hadn’t been able to save (one of Ella’s friends named Tamrin), and several who had gone overboard from the frigate in the chaos following the destruction of the Road. One had also been crushed on board in the confusion and killed. This didn’t count the injured, including the six Nikolon had rescued, who had burns of varying severity over their bodies.