FrostFire

by Zoe Marriott

  “Then you’re cured now. You’ve got what you wanted from Luca. You should go.”

  I scowled. “I’m not leaving him.”

  He spun around to confront me, face desperate. “Why not?”

  Everything came together in my mind. White-hot fury flared within me, and my fist caught Arian soundly in the jaw. His neck snapped back. The shock sang through my knuckles and the bones of my hand as he staggered, catching a tree branch to stay upright.

  “Everything – everything between us – pretending to be my friend, kissing me after the ambush and then again in Livia’s tent… You’ve just been trying to get rid of me! Holy Mother! Are you that desperate to get Luca all to yourself?”

  He let go of the branch and stepped forward, bruised jaw thrust out. “No! This isn’t about Luca! It’s about you. I want you to save yourself before he gets you killed.”

  “You don’t care what happens to me,” I snarled.

  The anger and frustration drained out of his face and he seemed to slump. “I do care. I do.”

  I swallowed hard. “What are you saying?”

  “I did want him all to myself, you’re right,” he mumbled. “When you first came here I was so jealous I could barely see straight. I could tell that Luca felt something for you, and I hated you for it. But how could I keep feeling that way once I’d got to know you? The more time I spent with you the more I could… It’s the way everything lights up when you smile. The kindness in your eyes. The way you can’t stand by and watch anyone suffer, even if it means getting into fights you’ll never win or jumping off cliffs into rivers. And when I realized you liked me – really liked me – when no one ever has, apart from Luca, I … I couldn’t lie to myself any more.”

  He stared at me despairingly. I stared back, bereft of speech.

  Arian – Arian! – cared for me? Me? Loved me, even? Dear Mother, he had a strange way of showing it!

  Or … or had he? I thought about all the time he had spent with me, patiently teaching me to overcome my fears and fight back. About his singing with me by the Mother’s Fire. About how, more and more, I had noticed that strange look in his eyes which I had thought of as a hidden smile. I remembered him awkwardly reassuring me and kissing me before Ion turned up, and how, after I had stepped into the Mother’s Fire, he had sat by the firepit day and night, waiting for me to emerge, instead of going after Luca.

  I am a fool.

  Arian had shown me how he felt in every way possible for a man like him. He had practically shouted it from the rooftops, if only anyone had bothered to listen. If only I had listened…

  I was torn between gratitude and sorrow. He must have been suffering so much, and all in silence. There was a part of me that responded to the tortured nature of a love like that, a part of me that wanted the strange mixture of misery and comfort Arian offered. Because he and I were alike. More alike than me and Luca in many ways. We were both lost souls. Luca had caught us, brought us together, made us feel that we were part of something … and then set us both adrift again. It was natural that we would try to cling to each other.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

  Not long ago, before I had become a hill guard, before I had known Luca’s love, before I had found the courage to walk into the Sacred Flame, I would have been so grateful to anyone for such feelings that I would probably have given myself to them. Just like Arian, cold and wary and damaged as he was, had fallen in love with me simply because I didn’t hate him. Simply because I was there. Isolation and loneliness made a person so vulnerable to even the tiniest scraps of kindness. Hadn’t that been why I began to fall in love with Luca in the first place?

  But gratitude, which Luca had always scorned, was not the same thing as love. Clinging to a person because they made you feel less alone wasn’t love. And what I felt for Arian wasn’t love, at least not romantic love. It was affection and understanding, and friendship.

  The person I was in love with was Luca.

  I had walked into the Sacred Flame for him. Not because he thought I was unworthy – but because he did not. His belief in me had turned me into the person he had always believed I was. I was strong. I was brave. I was decent. And I was good enough for him. Even if Luca didn’t want me any more, even if he never forgave me, I was strong enough to be true to myself now. I was strong enough to keep loving him, no matter what.

  I took a deep, calming breath and reached out to Arian, hoping to comfort him – but before I could speak, his expression changed. He started forward, reaching out. “Frost, you’ve hurt your hand.”

  The punch to Arian’s face had split the skin over two of my knuckles and beads of blood had risen to the surface. I recoiled, holding up my good hand to keep Arian away.

  “Stay back,” I warned him.

  He froze.

  I was shaking, my muscles twitching with instinctive fear. This was the moment of testing. Wolf? Are you there?

  There was a swirl of frosty cold in the air around me, and then a sense of weight, a pressure that made me brace myself. For a moment I could feel the great, furred creature leaning his shoulder affectionately into my side, smell his damp pelt, hear the deep, even rhythm of his breath. Something icy and rough swiped across my scar, and I bit my lip to hold in a cry of surprise.

  Then the presence faded, leaving nothing more than a faint chill, and a stinging cheek, in its wake.

  Thank you, Father. Thank you, Holy Mother.

  Thank you, Wolf.

  “It’s all right,” I breathed, exultant. “It’s just a scratch.”

  Released from my command to be still, Arian stepped forward and took my bleeding hand between his. His rough, callused fingers touched me as gently as if I were made of glass. As gently as if he were still terrified, deep down, that he might hurt me by accident. I knew all too well how he felt, because it was the same fear which had plagued me all my life. I prayed to the Mother that Arian would one day be free of it.

  “I’m glad,” he said at last. “I’m glad that … you don’t have to be scared any more.”

  His eyes slowly lifted from my hand to my face. There was hope in his face – the kind that sits on the edge of agony. I turned my hand in his and clasped his fingers.

  “I can’t,” I said softly but firmly. “I can’t give up on him.”

  Arian drew in a hissing breath between his teeth, and I saw to my horror, the sudden brightness in his eyes. His fingers twitched as if to let me go, and I brought my other hand up swiftly to keep him with me.

  “Don’t. Don’t, Arian.” A warm tear slipped down my face. “I’m sorry. If I had never met Luca—”

  “You’d never have met me either. Or if you had, we’d have ended up killing each other,” he said with a choked laugh. “It all goes back to him. Somehow he just … keeps everything together. He always did.”

  “Not any more.” I whispered. “He’s not even keeping himself together now. He’s broken. You love him as much as I do, so you tell me – can we keep him from destroying the hill guard? Can we keep him from destroying himself? Is it worth risking everything, even our lives, to try?”

  I fixed my gaze on him and looked into him as Luca had looked into me so many times. I let him see everything I felt, and watched as his head came up, as the strength and pride returned to his eyes. I watched as he began to believe again.

  “Yes.” The word held a trace of his old arrogance.

  I smiled through my tears. “Friends, then?”

  Arian lifted my hands to his mouth and carefully brushed a butterfly kiss to my bleeding knuckles. “Friends always.”

  I couldn’t face the humid enclosure of the women’s barracks that night. I made my bed in the warm grass, in the shelter of an ancient tree on the edge of camp, where I could hear the faint sounds of the river in the ravine below.

  After spreading out my bedroll, I curled up on my side with my hands under my face, careful of the still-healing split on the back of my knuckles. Tomorrow everything would
change again. But change no longer frightened me. I had an ally – a friend – who would fight beside me through anything, and no matter what happened, I would never run away again.

  It was surprisingly easy to relax beneath the gently whispering leaves and the bright, silent stars. I let the night sing me to sleep.

  It might have been minutes or hours later that I felt something touch my cheek. The touch whispered gently along the line of my scar, and my breath caught. I opened my eyes in the darkness.

  There was a blur of movement, and something pale flashed away so quickly that by the time my vision had cleared, there was nothing to see. I stared into the shadows, breathing in the faint smell of honeysuckle.

  Thirty-one

  Dawn came to the mountain at last, bleaching the low, heavy clouds from black to purple. I had to squint as I peered over the top of the boulder where I sheltered with Arian. “Snowlight”, Ma would have called this. A sign for those with any sense to get indoors, for a storm was coming.

  The rockfall where we had chosen to hide was three hundred yards from the tall wooden gates that guarded the outer wall of the House of God. Hill-guard scouts had reported that a portcullis lay behind the gates, guarded day and night by a pair of rebel warriors who would slam it down the moment anyone attempted to rush the entrance. It was an excellent system. With one weakness.

  “Anything moving out there?” Arian asked, low voiced.

  I shook my head as I sat back on my heels, absently chafing my fingers. The thin leather of my gauntlets was not much protection against the bitter cold this far up the mountain.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be Uskaandian? This little chill shouldn’t bother you,” Arian said roughly. He reached out for my hands.

  I drew back nervously. “Arian—”

  “Idiot.” In a peremptory gesture, he seized my wrists, and shoved my hands into the bends of my knees. “Leave them there. They’ll warm up.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Um. Thank you.”

  Arian nodded shortly, not looking at me. Guilt and gratitude made my heart ache. We were huddled less than a foot apart, and yet loneliness seemed to form a dark shroud around him, sealing him away from me. I wished I could somehow comfort him in his pain – but I was the cause of it. I would only make it worse.

  After a minute, I said, “In Uskaand we have enough sense to wrap up in the winter. No one leaves their house without a fur-lined coat, boots and mittens. Armour is not the same.” I eyed his hands. “You’re not even wearing gloves. Why don’t your fingers drop off?”

  He shrugged. “The village where I grew up was nearly as high as this, and I never had fur-lined mittens. I’m used to it.”

  “Braggart.”

  His dimple flashed briefly. “Arch-wife.”

  Encouraged by this sign of good humour, I had opened my mouth to offer another insult when there was a scuffling noise behind us. My axe appeared in my hand like magic. Arian whipped a long knife from a sheath on his thigh.

  We both slumped with relief when a stony-faced hill guard climbed over the tumble of rocks into our hiding place. “Two minutes,” she said, voice low. “Get ready.”

  “Is everyone in place?” Arian barked.

  “Yes, S— Yes, Arian.” Arian might not be lieutenant any more, but no one had quite become used to that yet. Not even Arian himself.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She nodded and backed out of sight. “Mother’s blessings.”

  The tension we had tried to dissolve with our bickering flowed into the gap she left.

  “Charge the outer wall, get to the courtyard,” I mumbled, shoving my axe back into its harness. “Stay with the others. Secure the perimeter.”

  Arian grabbed my hands and tucked them under my legs. “Just remember that your most important task is to keep yourself safe. You can’t help Luca, or anyone, if you’re…” He broke off and swallowed. “If you’re dead. No picking fights you can’t win today. All right?”

  “Same goes for you,” I retorted, ignoring the nerves that made my stomach jump. “If I see you making any attempts to bravely sacrifice yourself, I’ll kick you in the head.”

  Arian let out a tiny snort of laughter. “Understood.”

  Light flared overhead and we both got to our knees, watching the point of fire arc across the dark sky, illuminating the outer wall of the House of God. As the light fell I could make out every detail of the wall, the shapes of the stone blocks, the intricate patterns made by spiny mountain vines on the masonry, the small wooden clog abandoned by the entrance.

  With a faint tinkle of breaking glass, the light smashed into the palisade, leaving a black smear on the wood that instantly burst into flames. A second light flew, then a third, all hitting the same section of wood. They were glass bottles, each filled with pitch, a burning rag stuffed into their necks.

  The fire caught swiftly, red tongues of flame licking up the dry timber. A plume of noxious black smoke billowed up.

  Arian made a tiny grunt of satisfaction. “They’ve used water repellent on the logs. It’s helping the fire to spread.”

  I heard a distant shout of alarm, and a moment later the great wooden gates began to swing open, revealing the slowly rising portcullis behind.

  “It’s working,” I breathed.

  Six men, clad in the lacquered armour of gourdin, elite Sedorne warriors, ducked under the portcullis and ran out. Their swords were sheathed. They carried buckets and lengths of cloth. The first of them began to beat at the flames, while the others formed a chain, passing along buckets of water to throw over the blaze.

  “They’re efficient,” I said. The silent, well-organized group bore little resemblance to the shambling, dirty bandits I had fought before.

  “Unfortunately for them, you can’t put a pitch-fire out with water,” Arian said. “Come on, Luca. Come on.”

  One of the gourdin seemed to trip, sprawling headlong on the ground. The man beside him turned to help. This time I saw the arrow sprout from his neck before he fell. The light metal armour the gourdin wore didn’t stand a chance against the specially forged metal-piercing crossbow bolts Luca had instructed the archers to use. The rebel soldiers died quickly, and if any of them cried out, I didn’t hear it.

  As we watched, a dozen hill guards leaped down from the rocks by the outer wall where they had painstakingly hidden themselves the night before. They separated into two groups. One group carried a solid piece of timber, the height of a man, on their shoulders. The other group rushed the entrance, flying through the gates and under the portcullis, weapons already drawn. There was a scream, abruptly cut off, as the advance party found and overwhelmed the two rebels that guarded the gate. The second group reached the portcullis as it began to fall and wedged the timber beneath it, forcing the portcullis back up again. The men turned and waved their swords.

  Attack.

  I scrambled up over the boulder and leaped forward, ripping my axe free of its sheath as I went. Arian landed beside me, sword drawn. All along the slope, hill guards were rising from the rocks and surging up the slope towards the rebel base in a silent, deadly mass. The only sound was the tromp of boots on the shaly, uneven ground. There would be no war cries today to warn our enemies.

  We hit the top of the slope in a wave and flooded through the gates. I was among the first to pass under the portcullis, with Arian a step behind me. Beyond the palisade was the inner wall of the House of God. Just as Luca had warned, it was pocked with gaps and holes, but still far more intact than the outer wall.

  This was the truly dangerous moment of his plan. If the rebels managed to respond in time and trap us here in the narrow crescent between the walls, we would be slaughtered without ever breaching the central courtyard of the stronghold. Hill guards were flying through the gaps as fast as they could, their progress still largely silent. I saw no gourdin, apart from the fallen ones by the gate. Nor was there any sign of Luca. I hesitated, turning to search for a glimpse of the cap
tain among the soldiers. Rock dust and pitch-smoke clogged my throat and stung my eyes.

  “He’s in by now,” Arian said, grabbing my free hand to haul me over a pile of fallen masonry. “Come on.”

  I pulled my hand free. “Stop looking after me. I can manage.” I skidded down the stone blocks and jumped through a gap in the inner wall, landing in the courtyard a step ahead of him.

  The large, circular area was disconcertingly quiet. All that greeted us were neat piles of rope and timber, and barrels and boxes of supplies stacked against the walls of the former House of God. The building itself was a massive stone structure, with dozens of slit windows and multiple layers of ramparts climbing to a thin, stone tower. The front wall of the building showed signs that it, like the outer walls, had once been undermined and pulled down. Clay bricks had been used to repair the gaps and make the building safe again.

  At the eastern edge of the courtyard was a single-storeyed wooden hut with a peaked roof, about twice the size of the hill guards’ mess tent. The gourdin barracks.

  “Squads One and Two, surround the barracks!” I heard Luca call out, not much louder than his normal speaking voice. He was at the top of the courtyard, bandaged face shining white, bloodied blade in one hand. “Secure the entrances!”

  Arian and I exchanged glances. We hadn’t been assigned to any squad. With a shrug, I jammed my axe back into its harness and grabbed a heavy barrel, pushing it onto its side and rolling it towards the nearest entrance. If we could block the exits, all the best rebel warriors would be trapped inside. The members of Squads One and Two clearly had the same thought. They ran towards the provisions stacked against the walls and dragged away heavy sacks and pieces of timber to pile against the doors.

  “Idiots!” Arian hissed. “We don’t have time. Secure the doors, don’t barricade them!” He surged past us all, sword unsheathed, hand outstretched to seize the door handle. Before he could reach it, the door flew open.