by Simon Kewin
A runaway horse and cart, spooked by some fire or explosion, came thundering down Mainway then, a cloud of ice crystals flying off it like white flame, the people crying out in alarm to jump out of its way. The cart clipped one of the ice sculptures, a model of the Doge's palace, sending it crashing to the ground. The lights within it continued to twinkle on the ice, like a trapped constellation of stars. Thirty yards behind, laughing as he followed, the Lord of Misrule approached, a flaming torch in his hand. Spooking the horse had been his doing. He bowed low when he saw Cait, then raced off to cause more mayhem.
A little farther down Mainway, teams of people were competing to hurl flaming iron balls attached to chains, seeing who could throw them the farthest. Danny, eyes wide, clearly fancied his chances. “Most of them are drunk out of their heads, look.”
They watched as one competitor, swivelling his flaming ball wildly, overbalanced and sent the object flying into a nearby tent that housed a company of dancers performing for a small crowd. Screams of panic and amusement competed as the dancers scattered from the burning tent.
“Have a go if you want,” said Cait.
“You don't sound very enthusiastic.”
“It's just, you know, all this. Everything that's going to happen.”
“Doesn't your gran always say to live for the moment, that you never know what's around the corner?”
“Suppose so, yeah.”
“There you are, then.”
He turned out to be good at it. A small crowd gathered as he competed against a tall, powerful man, the muscles of his arms bunching as he practised his swings. The man looked on with amusement as Danny lifted his flaming iron ball and swung it around, trying not to get tangled up in it. They took it in turns to hurl the spheres farther and farther onto the ice, each throw greeted with great cheers. In the end the man won, sending the iron ball high into the night sky like a shooting star, farther than Danny could hope to manage. Unable to speak the language, he bowed in defeat, to the delight of the crowd.
“Didn't know you could do that,” said Cait.
“It's all in the timing. Done something similar at school. That guy was amazing, though. See the muscles on him? Maybe with people like him on our side we'll have a chance after all.”
“Maybe.”
They walked on, past jugglers keeping four, five, six flaming torches in the air at the same time, past stalls selling roasting chestnuts and meat from spit-roast animals and more hot wine. There seemed to be very little trouble, although occasionally a laughing youth weaved headlong through the crowds, pursued by some shouting, red-faced merchant.
They walked farther still, through swept drifts of snow that crunched and cracked beneath their feet. The crowds began to thin out and the stalls become more scattered. Overhead, the stars blazed down in the cold night, reflecting so perfectly in the swept ice that it felt like they were walking through the air, depths beneath them and gulfs above. They reached a line of the iron braziers and, thirty yards beyond, the ropes and the wooden slats that covered the Line of Fire. In the distance, a guard paced about for warmth, no doubt wishing they were having fun at the Fair like everyone else. A chill wind had picked up, making Cait's cheeks sting. She'd run out of Merdoc's hot drink. They had to be nearly beyond Guilden Bay, out on the river proper, its vast waters surging beneath their feet. Anxiety fizzed within her.
“We should stop,” said Danny. “Head back in case Hellen needs us.”
Cait turned to survey the scene behind them. The twinkling lights from the Fair and, beyond, the houses and palaces of Guilden, windows aglow with candle fire. Some of the black powder had apparently been salvaged for a firework display after all. As she watched, bright globes of stars blossomed over the scene as rocket after rocket was launched into the sky. A second after each explosion the rattling bang hit them. They could hear the whoops and roars of delight over the background jumble of voices.
She turned away again. Westward, apart from the stars, it was fully dark. For some reason she wasn't ready to go back just then, “Let's go a little bit farther.” Perhaps she wanted to know if the ice really did stretch all the way across.
“Sure?” asked Danny.
“Yes. I think we should.”
They walked for ten more minutes, alone on the ice, until they saw the line of bobbing, twinkling torches moving across the ice toward them. At the same moment, the mournful cry of warning horns from the sentries set by Nox wailed through the night air.
9. Blood on the Ice
Cait and Danny ran for the land. More horns echoed as other watchers picked up the call. The lights of the Fair seemed distant as they slipped and skated along, holding onto each other for support. She expected attack at any moment. She tried to find the presence of the undain in the night behind them, look for any speeding forward at them. She could sense only a huge, unfocussed cloud, like a storm massing in the night sky.
“Nearly there,” said Danny. He sounded badly out of breath. He still hadn't recovered from being imprisoned beneath the White City. There was a clear edge of panic to his voice.
The line of braziers marking the Line of Fire was up ahead. Still the undain hadn't broken rank to intercept them. They had to reach the safety of the Fair and the city. Hellen's witches and Nox's defenders would give them a chance. Out here they were alone.
A spark of light flared in the corner of Cait's eye. At the same moment she heard a roar like an express train powering through a station as the spark became a raging fire rushing at them, suddenly searing hot. The ice beneath her feet rumbled and shook. Lumps of ice crashed through the air, hurling the two of them backward.
The Line of Fire had been ignited, a wall of flame rising up to obscure Guilden. She and Danny were on the wrong side of it.
They scrambled to their feet. The smell of burning oil filled her nostrils. Toward Guilden, the black powder had blasted a wide crack in the ice. If they'd been a few yards nearer, jumping over as it was ignited, they'd have stood no chance. The fire raged, wood and straw bales coated with oil burning with an angry red flame. Many floated on the water where the ice had been blasted away. She could see no way to reach the safety of the other side.
They turned to face the undain. The Angere army was perhaps two hundred yards away. In the glimmer of the torches the undain carried, she could make out individuals. The glowing blue of the giant dragonriders and, behind them, other more hulking shapes. The ice reverberated with a weird metallic noise, echoing to the tramp of their feet. Danny glanced at her in wide-eyed terror, then back to the undain.
Cait stepped backward, but the raging fire at her back stopped her. They were trapped. She reached out with her mind's eye, hoping against hope to find some gap in the ranks, some flaw she could exploit.
She saw then who walked at the head of the army. He was suddenly clear in her eye: the stooped old man she remembered, unarmoured and unarmed, the large key around his neck. Charis walked at the head of the army. Walked directly toward her.
Another figure appeared on the ice then, arriving from nowhere, to stand mid-way between Cait and the approaching army. She could discern only a silhouette from the light of the undain's torches.
“Is that Hellen?” said Danny.
Cait's mind found the stranger. Not Hellen. Another old man, another she recognized. The rower who had brought them from Andar.
The undain army stopped as Charis raised his right hand. The only sound was the roar and crackle of the flame and, beyond, cries and shouts from the Ice Fair. Cait watched as Charis walked forward to meet Hyrn. Both figures looked so frail and weak it seemed ridiculous they should be there. Her mind's gaze hovering in the air above them she heard the words they spoke to each other.
“This is not your domain, Hyrn of the Green,” said Charis, his voice the weak quaver Cait recalled. “Go back to wrapping your arms around your trees while you still can.”
“You and your army of death can go no farther,” said Hyrn. It was the first time she
'd heard him speak. His voice whispered like the leaves of a forest in a high wind. “Return to the Lost Land.”
Charis laughed a dry little laugh. “We are the gods now, Hyrn, not you. You are faded and broken, You do not matter any more. The wild woods of Angere are gone. Hadn't you noticed?”
“Woods can grow again. It takes only a few tiny seeds and a little time.”
“But you have no time. Andar is ours. You should be grateful to us. You've lain wounded and broken these five hundred years. Now we will do what you always wanted. We will reunite the two halves into a whole. All of An under the control not of Hyrn, but Menhroth.”
Now it was Hyrn's turn to laugh, a thin creak of a chuckle. “I never controlled these lands. I never wanted to control them. Your mind is so full of hate and conquest and destruction that you don't see it, thing that was once Charis. All I ever did was walk in the green spaces of the world and feel the sun on my face.”
“Then run and find what greenery you can. Your time is over.”
Hyrn seemed to consider Charis' words for a time. “No, I think not. Because it isn't only me. The land rises in revulsion at what you are. I am old and weak, it is true, but the lifeblood of An runs strong and true even if all of Angere is lost.”
“And what do you intend to do, Hyrn? Tie us up in brambles and ivy so we can't walk? Make the flowers bloom at our feet and hope we will be distracted?”
Hyrn shook his head. “I could do all those things, but it would achieve nothing. Besides, I don't intend to do anything to stop you. I don't need to. There are others who will.”
Charis hesitated, and Cait saw the briefest moment when understanding flashed into Charis' eyes. Then the ice behind him, the ice the undain army stood upon, exploded.
She'd seen glimpses of the serpents on their crossing of the An, slopes of grey flesh in the mists. Now she understood their true scale and ferocity as they smashed through the ice, giant heads like wrecking machines from back home, roaring and lashing as the ice splintered around them. Perhaps twenty or thirty of them: their coils lashing so that it was hard to know where one of the creatures stopped and another started. The An boiled with their fury. They reminded Cait of the mind she'd touched in Caer D'nar. Xoster, the mother of the dead dragons.
Many of the undain were hurled into the seething waters of the An. The others fled, breaking rank to run for the shallower waters where Cait and Danny cowered, or away upstream and downstream. But always there was another serpent rising through the depths, mouth like a pit gaping wide to snap and crush them.
Some among the dragonriders tried to fight back. One leaped onto a serpent, as if determined to become a wyrm rider once more. Straddling the serpent's coils, the rider hacked away with their sword, the creature's blood spattering the ice. The serpent, roars so deep Cait felt them in her chest rather than heard them, dived, taking the rider into the depths.
In their hundreds, Cait felt the undain disappearing in the aether, blinking out of existence. One or two were crushed or cut in half by the serpents' teeth. The waters of the An took most of them. Magic couldn't cross running water, and being submerged in the flow of the An meant destruction for the sorcerous undain. In a few minutes of roaring and screaming chaos, the entire undain army was gone, scattered to the waters.
Charis, still standing apart, stepped backward from the carnage as one of the serpents, head lashing, came for him. Hyrn was gone, disappearing as abruptly as he'd arrived. She could feel Charis beginning to work some magic, the power of it building within him. He clutched the key about his neck, as if he planned to banish the serpent through some portal into the aether.
“Cait, do something.” Danny, still standing beside her.
For the moment, Charis' attention was focussed on the serpent towering over him. Could she work the magic without Bethany to guide her? She reached for the familiar well of coldness within her. As Phoenix had once promised her, it came to her more easily than it ever had. Perhaps it was just easier because she was standing upon ice. Suppressing any troubling thoughts of the effects too much power would bring, she unleashed a gale of cold directly at Charis' back. She wasn't powerful enough to defeat him, she knew. She might be able to knock him off balance for a moment.
The cold blast hit him, sending him reeling to the ground. He rose, puzzled, and looked back at her with his white eyes. There was a moment, the briefest moment, when he recognized her, knew what she'd done to him. And, she knew, Menhroth saw as well, watching through Charis's eyes.
Then the serpent's head smashed down, taking Charis and a wide circle of ice with him. The ancient undain was gone. Silence washed across the ice as the last of the vast creatures slipped beneath the waters.
“I don't believe it,” said Danny at last. “We defeated them. You and Hyrn defeated them. Even Charis.”
Exhaustion filled her as she waited for another attack, for Charis to rise from the waters and come for her like some end-of-level monster in a video game. Nothing moved. “Yes. I suppose so.”
“I mean, just like that. Andar is saved.”
“There's still the Witch King.”
“Not much use without an army is he?”
“I suppose. Come on, let's get away from here.”
“Yeah.”
Supporting each other, they hobbled back to the Line of Fire. The flames were all-but burned out now, but the gap of water was there, just as the Doge had promised. It was too far to jump. Neither of them fancied a dip in those freezing waters.
“Jump,” said Cait. “I'll boost us over.”
“You can do that?”
She nodded. “I can't manage flight yet but I reckon I can do this. Not sure I can give us a soft landing though.”
They ran together, holding hands, and jumped. She gave them a little kick as they left the ground, the pinch of pain within her slight. They flew alarmingly through the air, arms and legs flailing, to land hard on the other side, sprawling in a heap.
“Anything broken?” she asked.
“Don't think so. Let's get back to the land.”
The Ice Fair looked as though a hurricane had swept through it: tents and braziers and stalls were strewn to the ground, knocked flat by the crowds fleeing in their panic. The ice sculptures were all smashed, a sea of tiny lights glimmering among the shards. They passed Merdoc's stall, flattened to the ground, drinks from his copper vats staining the ice red and purple. The people of Guilden finally believed the invasion from Angere was real. Only a few individuals milled on the ice, those too drunk to understand what was happening. The Lord of Misrule was among them, walking with his arms wide as if he'd staged the whole thing as a huge joke. His big finale.
When they reached the shore, Hellen came hurrying out of the crowds to meet them.
“There you are, girl. And Danny. You saw what happened?” She looked alarmed, her hair wild. She looked, as Cait's gran would have said, like she'd been dragged through a hedge backward.
“We were out there when the attack came,” said Cait. “On the ice.”
“What were you doing out there? Do you never listen to anything I say?”
“The serpents rose and killed them all,” said Cait, ignoring Hellen's question.
“Did they? That's good.” She didn't sound particularly surprised.
“That was your doing wasn't it? When you said you were communing with the powers that be you meant Hyrn.”
“Half of Andar is here at Guilden. It seemed the obvious place to defend.”
“But I thought the serpents couldn't smash through the ice?” said Danny. “That's why this hard winter is such a big deal.”
“They wouldn't have been able to if the ice had been any thicker,” said Hellen. “But the biggest and oldest of them were able to break through. Hyrn shepherded them to this one place. It left the rest of the coast undefended in case of other attacks, but there we are.”
“Other attacks?” said Danny. “What do you mean? The whole army was just swallowed up by the An.
We've beaten them. Andar is saved.”
As if to answer him they heard more horns then. Many of them, their mournful cries echoing across the city from the north.
“The wall,” said Hellen. “The other half of the army is approaching. I think Charis intended the two to strike at the same time.”
“The other half?” said Danny.
“Charis is gone,” said Cait. “A serpent took him.”
Hellen's eyes widened in surprise. “Good. No loss to the world that one. Just leaves his army to deal with. Come, we must hurry to the walls to see what we can do.”
The streets of Guilden were thronged with panicking people. No one laughed and joked now. People ran from blind terror, one or two screaming as if they were pursued by the undain. It was a struggle for Cait, Hellen and Danny to fight their way through the crowds. Everyone seemed to be going in the opposite direction, save for one or two trying to press through to the northern wall, clutching what weapons they could find. Some seemed to have no idea where they should be going, darting first one way and then the other. Bells rang out from the towers and domes, but no one seemed to have any idea what they meant.
In the end, Hellen had to hold out her hand and blaze a great light before her, enough to make people shield their eyes and shrink away. Even so, it took them twenty minutes or more to push through the throng to find Nox.
He stood observing the defences from a guard tower on the northern wall. He was bellowing out orders to anyone who could hear. Beyond the wall, a sloping plain covered with evergreen trees led to the rocky foothills of the mountains. Many of the trees were decorated with garlands and baubles for Midwinter. It was a weird sight. Black powder explosions bloomed among them here and there as Nox's traps were triggered. In between, the undain soldiers were clearly visible: thousands of them, a force even larger than the one that had marched across the ice. They'd crossed farther north and marched south on this side of the river. They stood unmoving, waiting.
A line of perhaps a hundred defenders stood scattered along the length of the wall. As Cait watched, a few of them broke ranks and fled rather than facing the undain onslaught. Despite Nox's commands it was clear order was breaking down among them.
