The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  “I’m serious, Falcon. This isn’t some joke! Didn’t Elka ever tell you about Rorjak the Ice King? And Carnak, the end of the world?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Those are just fables, Storm. Stories told to frighten children and keep the worshippers of Wyrn paying their tithes to the priestesses.”

  “No they aren’t! Carnak is happening right now. The garm—terrible monsters from the remote reaches of the Craig—have been attacking villages. That’s one of the first signs of Rorjak’s return.”

  “Is that what all this is about?” He laughed and shook his head. “Oh, Storm, Storm, my gullible little sister. The garm didn’t attack those villages because the world is going to end. They attacked because my men baited a trail to lead them there.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “Technically, it was Elka’s sister’s idea. We needed the temple emptied so Elka could get the sword, and she said the best way to do that was to force your husband to call a Great Hunt.”

  “Reika suggested luring the garm down to attack the villages?” Kham’s hands curled into fists. That evil bitch had a lot to answer for.

  “We met at her father’s estate over a month ago. She was really quite helpful. Doesn’t like you much, though, I have to say.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” she muttered. Of course, Reika had helped Falcon. Reika wanted power. When it was clear she was never going to get it through Wynter, she’d found another way. And Falcon was no better. He’d yet again knowingly set innocent men, women, and children up to die as a distraction so he could pursue Roland’s sword.

  “Have you always been this heartless, and I just blinded myself to it?” she asked bitterly. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do—anyone you won’t sacrifice—to get your hands on Blazing?”

  Her brother’s eye flashed a warning. “No, there isn’t. And you’d be wise to remember that.” He stood up. “I’m going to bed. My men will get you something to eat, and you’re not going to give them any trouble. We’ve still got your little friend with us.” He nodded towards a tree about fifteen yards away. Krysti was slumped over and tied to the tree. “If you value his life—which I know you do—you’ll behave yourself.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Don’t worry, he’s healthy enough. A regular wild child when he gets a chance. Kicked one of my men in the stones and broke another one’s nose on the way here. That’s why they tied him up.”

  Good for Krysti, Khamsin wanted to crow. “He’s Craig-bred.”

  Falcon snorted. “Untamed little monster, more like. Reminds me of you when you were his age.”

  She glared at him. “Tell me, brother, do our sisters approve of what you’re doing? Invading sovereign kingdoms, murdering innocent people, brutalizing little boys?” It would break her heart if her entire family turned out to be as savage and ruthless as her father and brother.

  Falcon’s dark eyes flashed, and his jaw thrust out. “This is king’s business, not theirs.”

  So no, they didn’t know. Kham sighed in relief. Thank Halla for that, at least.

  “Get some rest, Storm. We’ve got a long, hard ride tomorrow, and we won’t be slowing down to see to your comfort.” He headed towards a tent on the far side of the fire.

  “Falcon, please, listen to me,” she called after him. “For all our sakes, you’ve got to let me take Blazing to Wynter. Our lives depend on it. The world depends on it. Please.”

  He just kept walking.

  “Falcon!” She jumped up and started after him, only to stop when his men leapt to his defense, swords unsheathed and ready to skewer her.

  “You heard the prince,” one of the Summerlanders growled. He had several scars across his face and an ugly light in his muddy brown eyes. “Sit down and shut up, or that little Winterbrat over there will pay for your disobedience.”

  Kham glared at the man and subsided into unhappy silence.

  She drank the water they brought to her and, thanks to the sword one of the Summerlander’s held at Krysti’s throat, she made no attempt to escape when they freed her hands so she could eat the journey cakes and dried meat they offered. Whatever happened, she would need her strength, and refusing food and drink hurt no one but herself. When she was done eating, they rebound her hands and laid her down with a curt command to sleep, but she remained awake for at least an hour, observing her captors.

  Falcon was traveling with two dozen men, half Summerlanders, the other half blue-tattooed Calbernans. A small party, much easier to hide in a country as large as Wintercraig. The Summerlanders either ignored her or watched her with cold malice, but she noticed several of the Calbernans frowning in her direction and whispering amongst each other. She recalled from Tildy’s endless geography lessons that the island-born Calbernans revered women. They didn’t look kindly on anyone who would mistreat them. If she could provoke Falcon or the others into striking her, she just might be able to drive a wedge between the Summerlanders and their Calbernan allies. Kham filed that away for future reference.

  Finally, despite the day she’d spent unconscious from the blow to her head, Khamsin fell back to sleep and stayed that way until Falcon came by before sunup to wake her and lead her to a horse.

  “I know you’ve learned to ride, so I’m giving you your own horse so you won’t slow us down,” he said. “But your hands remain bound, and you wear the lead cape at all times. And Storm? The boy will ride between you and one of my men, chained to both saddles. Unless you fancy the idea of ripping him in two, I suggest you keep close to my men.”

  Anger curled in Khamsin’s belly. Falcon knew her too well. They’d spent too many years together, playing games of war, plotting ways to escape from imaginary captors.

  “When did you become such a monster?”

  Falcon didn’t even flinch. “I am no monster, merely determined and more familiar with your ways than you would like. The child is unharmed, and will remain so as long as you do as you’re told. Now get on your horse. We’ve a long way to ride.”

  True to Falcon’s word, they rode for hours without stopping. When they finally halted to rest and water the horses, the sun had risen, and she did not recognize her surroundings. Kham shook the leaden hood off her head and turned her face up to the sky, trying to pinpoint her location in relation to the sun. They’d traveled west of Gildenheim, towards Konumarr and the Llaskroner Fjord. More than a hundred miles, by her estimate. Well away from the hunting lodge where Wynter was recuperating.

  Her only cause for hope was that the deep snow forced Falcon and his men to keep to the roads and established trails through the woods, which improved their chances of being spotted along the way. Wynter had to have scouts. Hopefully, one would cross their path and get word to Wintercraig’s forces.

  She’d tried to leave a trail behind her by picking threads from her cuffs and dropping them into the snow. Thanks to the Wintercraig colors she wore, those threads would blend so well into the snow they’d be impossible to spot, but she dropped them anyways in the hopes that Wynter’s wolves might be able to track her scent.

  As she dismounted, Falcon’s men lit a small fire and melted snow to water the horses. They didn’t bother cooking food. Instead, they passed around strips of dried meat and fruit. Falcon himself removed the bonds around her wrists so she could eat without aid.

  Her arms tingled, little knives of pain throbbing up and down, and she flexed her elbows, wrists, and shoulders. Keeping her tied had also robbed her arms of strength. She could barely hold the bits of jerky and fruit offered to her.

  She chewed slowly on the tough strips of meat and watched her brother. He was staring into the fire, lost in thought, and it struck her how much older and wearier he appeared. The charming roguishness that had always lurked at the corners of his mouth and twinkled in his eyes was nowhere to be seen. He seemed so different from the heroic brother she remembered that she
had to wonder how much of that brother had ever existed and how much was the product of a lonely child’s desperate dreams of love and family.

  “Is it true you sent your men to rape and murder those villagers in Hileje three years ago?” Falcon didn’t look away from the fire. He either hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her. “Falcon?” she prodded. “Did you?”

  Now he glanced up. “Is that what you think I did, Khamsin?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. I would never have thought you capable of it before, but the last two days have made me realize how little I really know you. Perhaps I never did.”

  “We were children. Both of us. We’re not anymore.”

  “Did you send them?”

  He stared at the piece of jerky in his hand, then threw it in the fire. “Yes, I sent them, but I never ordered them to rape or kill anyone. They were merely supposed to create a distraction that would get Wynter and his men out of Gildenheim.”

  “Who did you send?”

  “Noble Redfern and his friends.”

  “Oh, for Halla’s sake, Falcon.”

  “What?” He shot to his feet. At least he could still looked shamed. And defensive. “I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

  “You sent a man you knew to be a vile, drunken bastard who found his pleasure raping servant girls in dark hallways. What did you think he and his equally vile cronies were going to do? You knew what sort of atrocities amused them.”

  “I needed time to get away. Elka and I needed time to get away.”

  “So, in other words, you loosed the dogs without caring who got hurt or how badly. Just like you did with the garm.”

  His fists clenched. He looked like he wanted to hit something. For a moment, she thought it might be her, but Falcon hadn’t become that much like their father yet.

  “I didn’t mean for Hillje to happen, all right? I didn’t order it. But I can’t change it. I’m sorry, Storm. I’m sorry it happened. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “But that didn’t stop you from killing Wynter’s only brother, did it? Just a boy, barely more than a child, and you shot him in the throat and left him to die in the snow.”

  “He shot at me first!”

  “You were one of the greatest archers in Summerlea!” she fired back. “You could have wounded him. Slowed him down. You had other choices that didn’t include killing him. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise.” He wasn’t the only one who’d learned from all the time they’d spent together. Yes, she’d idolized him. Yes, she been blind to the ruthlessness inside him. But she remembered his skills quite vividly.

  “And he had talents that went beyond his skill with sword and bow,” Falcon retorted. “He was Snow Wolf clan, just like his brother. If I’d left him wounded, he would just have called the wolves to hunt us down. I had the Book of Riddles, Khamsin. The key to finding Roland’s sword. I wasn’t going to give that up. And I damn sure wasn’t going to surrender to the king I’d cuckolded and beg for mercy.”

  “So you plunged two kingdoms into war and ran away. Only to come back three years later to start another war. Oh, how proud Roland would be to witness the noble glory of his line.” Every word dripped with acid, and it pleased her to see how it stung.

  Falcon spat in the dirt. “All those tales of Roland were myths, Storm. Legends! A tiny kernel of truth romanticized and prettied up for the ages. But this is real life. Real politics. It’s not noble. It’s not glorious. It’s bitter, brutal, and bloody. That’s what thrones are made of. That’s what kings are made of.”

  “No.” She’d seen the truth, the story played out in her mind when she’d first gripped the sword. She’d heard the voice of a god, deep and pure, burning through her body like cleansing fire and taking every doubt with it. “Not all thrones. Not all kings. Roland was better than that. My mistake was thinking you were, too.”

  Falcon’s lip curled in a sneer. “And is that husband of yours any better? How many innocents died by his hand? He froze an entire kingdom into submission!”

  “Because you drove him to war! Yes, innocents died. But their blood is as much on your hands as his. And if you don’t let me take that sword to stop Rorjak from returning, the blood of every last living soul on Mystral will be on your hands as well!”

  “Enough!” Falcon leapt to his feet and yanked Blazing from its sheath. The radiant diamond at the hilt’s center blazed with light. He jabbed the sword in her direction.

  A hot wind sent her hair flying. Khamsin gasped and ducked, covering her head instinctively to protect against the gout of flame she expected to come pouring out of the blade. When the expected inferno did not engulf her, she risked lowering her arms.

  Falcon was standing ten feet away, staring at her with an indecipherable expression on his face. The snow around the camp had completely melted, leaving bare, moist ground and the smell of damp wood and bracken.

  “I . . .” Her tongue flicked out to moisten dry, trembling lips. “I thought you were going to—” She broke off. No need to give him ideas.

  “What? Shoot fireballs at you?”

  Then again, he’d read the same legends of Roland that she had. “Something like that.”

  “It seems we’ve both read too many legends, Storm.” Anger and bitterness sharpened each word. He shoved Blazing back in its scabbard and slammed the hilt home.

  “Pack up,” he snapped to his men. “Time to get moving.”

  “I’m fine! I told you, I’m fine.” Wynter glowered at Tildavera Greenleaf, who had been after him the last half hour to leave the military planning to his second long enough to lie down and let her tend his wounds.

  The Summerlea nurse sniffed. “You won’t be fine if you don’t hush and let me do my job. I’ve let you ignore me long enough. Now lie back, be quiet, and let me look at that wound. It won’t take a minute.”

  “Gah. You are a tyrant, Tildavera Greenleaf. Has anyone ever told you that?” Just to get her out of his hair, Wyn eased into a chaise and leaned back.

  “Many a time,” Tildy answered without rancor. “Always by patients with more stubbornness than sense.” She glanced up to give him a stern look. “And that includes your wife, for as much good as it ever did her.” She pulled up his tunic and made swift work of peeling back the bloodied bandage wrapped around his waist.

  Wynter scowled at the back of Tildy’s gray head as she bent over his belly wound to poke and prod at him and smear some sort of pungent ointment on the wound. She sniffed again and rebandaged the wound.

  “Well, you’re doing better than you should be, considering all the moving about you’ve been doing. But”—she wagged a finger under his nose when Wyn started to smirk—“you’re still a long way from being healed. One wrong move, and those stitches will pop, and you’ll be in one very unpleasant mess.”

  “Just get me to a point where I can put on my armor and mount a horse. I can’t be carried into battle on a sickbed.”

  “That’s out of the question for a week at least. If you go to battle before that, you won’t be coming back.”

  “If I don’t go to battle before that, none of us will be coming back,” he countered. In a firm tone that brooked no further defiance, he said, “I don’t need your approval to do my duty, Nurse Greenleaf. All I require is that you get me in the best possible shape in the time available.”

  Tildy put her hands on her hips. “Have I not been doing exactly that all this time? Did you think I would stop just because I know you’re going to ignore my warnings and do what you want anyways? Which of us raised our Khamsin from the time she was a wee babe? Or do you think she was a model patient all those years?”

  The laugh slipped past Wyn’s lips before he could stop it. “Point taken. She is much more hardheaded than I.”

  Tildy harrumphed. “I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that. The pair of you seem as
tonishingly well matched in the stubborn department. There was a time, when she was six . . .”

  Telling stories of Khamsin’s youthful exploits was a tactic Tildy employed to keep Wynter calm and resting. He’d discerned her ploy from the start, of course, but he played along because he liked hearing the stories of his wife’s childhood. Khamsin had run her poor nurse ragged—always getting into some sort of mischief or other, never sitting still for long, thwarting every attempt to mold and confine her. Like the storms that answered her call, she was a force of nature, wild and reckless and free. And Wynter wouldn’t have her any other way.

  There was a knock on the door, and Valik walked in. Galacia Frey followed close on his heels. Wynter was surprised to see her. She’d taken off without a word last night after receiving a message flown in by a snow eagle.

  One look at their grim faces, and Wynter knew their troubles had just increased.

  “So, let me get this straight. All this time, you and every High Priestess before you for the last nine hundred years has known the Sword of Roland was at the bottom of the Ice Heart?” Wynter sat at the hunting lodge’s large dining table and tried to keep the freezing power of his Gaze in check. Frost prickled across the wooden tabletop. The pair of them were lucky that the planks of old pine were the only thing frozen at the moment.

  “Wyn—”

  “And you sent my pregnant wife to dive down to the bottom of the Ice Heart—the most deadly dangerous magic in all of Wintercraig—to fetch it? Have I got that right?”

  “Wyn, you don’t understand—”

  “Is that what you did?” His fist slammed on the desk, and he half rose from the chair.

  Laci blew out an exasperated breath. “Yes! Yes, that’s what I did. That’s exactly what I did, and I would do it again, given the same circumstances.” She flung her arms up. “You were unconscious. There was no certainty you would survive, much less be any use to us in battle, and the Calbernans and Summerlanders were invading. We needed a weapon—and that was the most powerful one I knew of.”