“Danger?” Winloki gave him an incredulous look, though all the time her hands were busy cleaning, bandaging, rubbing on salve from an iron pot. “Why should I be in more danger than anyone else? It ought to be less. Surely even Eisenlonders respect the sanctity of healer’s grey!”
Arvi abandoned the imperfect concealment of the tent pole and came over to stand beside her. Not so long as ten days ago he had been carried into the fortress as cold and stiff as a frozen corpse, after one of the sorties. It had taken all of Winloki’s skill, all the power of the runes on her ring, to bring him back again. “I suppose there must have been healers in some of those settlements we saw, the ones that were levelled and burned,” he said. “Where are they now? It’s certain we never met any among the refugees.”
The din, which had receeded while she worked, broke out afresh. Men swore or vomited in pain; some of the more serious cases babbled and begged for relief. Winloki pressed the heels of her hands to her temples, willing the pounding to cease. Yet she had never been one to give way or to ask for protection, and she was not about to do so now.
“If the barbarians have been slaughtering healers, you ought to be guarding Syvi, Thyra, and all of the rest of them—I can look after myself.”
As if in answer, she heard the crash of a ram, followed by wild horns blowing. A volley of rocks overshot the walls and landed not far from the tents, striking sparks off the marble pavement.
All this time, the gates had continued to hold, though one side hung slightly askew on twisted hinges. A party led by one of Kivik’s captains began to build a barrier of carts and wagons just inside, an added precaution should the gates finally fail. It must have been a powerful magic the witches had woven into the fabric, or the timbers would have split long ago.
For Kivik up on the wall-walk, exhausted after hours of fighting, it seemed that his movements had slowed, that every movement he made required an infinite effort. The only thing keeping him alive was a similar lethargy on the part of his opponents.
He had discarded his shield as much too heavy, had been forced to abandon the axe when it lodged in an enemy’s skull and refused to come loose. He was fighting two-handed, using a sword that somebody tossed him when he lost the axe. There was a hard ache in his chest, and pain stabbed at him with every breath; he thought that some of his ribs must be broken.
It hardly mattered by now, because he knew he was going to die. The battle had continued too long; no skirmish in the field had ever lasted for so many hours. His men were dropping from sheer exhaustion, but the numbers of the enemy were constantly refreshed. He fought by instinct rather than conscious thought. When two men tried to engage him at once, he sidestepped to avoid a blow, raised his sword, and struck and struck again. Blood fountained, turning to ice in the freezing air, landing with a faint rattle on the stonework.
Then, unexpectedly, lightning leaped across the sky; thunder crashed and roared. The snow stopped falling—not gradually, but suddenly, unnaturally. Kivik watched in a daze as all of the snow that was in the air rose up with a whoooosh in a great turning cloud and went whirling away into the sky. A hush fell over the fortress and the enemy camp below.
In that moment of dreamlike clarity, he forced his way to the parapet and gazed out across the valley, watching the approach of three gaunt figures in scarlet cloaks who rode at a headlong pace through the ranks of the Eisenlonders.
The air still crackled with the promise of lightning. On they rode, these phantoms in red, their white hair lifted by the speed of their passage, and the dark mass of the barbarian host gave way before them. So pale they were, their faces frozen to a heartless immobility, that Kivik nearly mistook them for the ghosts of dead witch-lords come back to claim their own.
One of the specters lifted a withered hand, and a spiderweb of purple lightning flashed across the sky.
The concussion that followed shook the wall under Kivik’s feet, knocking him over; others, not so lucky, were thrown from the ramparts. He could hear them screaming all the way down.
Then a section of the fortifications close to the gate began to sway. Those who could flung themselves to safety where the ramparts stood firm; those who could not sent up a wail. Bits of mortar and fragments of flying stone went racketing and tumbling as the wall that had never been breached in a thousand years crashed down, taking more than a hundred men with it.
9
They were a day and a half riding through the foothills, a shapeless landscape of dry grasses and rough stones. By noon of the second day King Ristil’s army began their ascent of the mountains. At first the way was easy, the road leading through grassy uplands where the slope was gentle. Later, they came into a forested region of birch, alder, and hawthen, where it was necessary to slow the pace. There the ground was steep and rocky, and the trees came right down to the edge of the road, causing the way to narrow until no more than six or seven men could ride abreast. In the disciplined confusion of re-forming the line, those to the rear had a long wait before they were able to fall in and follow after the leaders.
Riding along beside the King, Sindérian finally found an opportunity to ask him the question she had been longing to ask since their first meeting. “You told us,” she said, “that Éireamhóine was separated from the Princess’s nurse in the Cadmin Aernan. Yet I’m certain I recognized her at the Heldenhof—and more than that, she knew me, too!”
All along King Ristil had maintained an appearance of unruffled serenity, but Sindérian was healer enough to sense the taut nerves, knotted muscles, and clenched jaw beneath his outward display of calm. She knew that he had been thinking of his son and adopted niece, that behind that unclouded blue-eyed gaze a thousand fears were gnawing at his mind. But now he smiled at some pleasant memory, and his whole aspect brightened.
“The answer to that is such a remarkable story, I wonder if you would even believe it.” He laughed and shook his head. “And yet—why not? No doubt you’ve heard more incredible things at your school for wizards on Leal.
“My tale begins more than two years after the wizard brought Winloki to Lückenbörg. It was that time at the end of winter when it first becomes possible to cross the Cadmin Aernan, and a large party of merchants was travelling from Hythe to sell their goods in Arkenfell and Skyrra. Strange things are often seen and experienced in those mountains, as perhaps you know, but none more amazing, I think, than the sight that met these travellers as they neared the summit: a beautiful young woman encased in a block of ice. One of them said that she looked like an enchanted princess sleeping in a crystal coffin; another said no, she resembled a mermaid or a water nymph, floating just under the surface of the water. He almost believed he could see her long brown hair moving in an invisible current.”
Caught up in his own story, the King had relaxed. His jaw unclenched; some of the rigidity was gone from the muscles in his neck and shoulders. “They thought it would be a fine thing to take the frozen maiden with them, as a kind of curio. So they loaded the block onto a sledge, covering her up with their furs and woven blankets to keep the ice from melting, and made their way down from the Cadmin Aernan, through Arkenfell, and across the waters of the Necke to Skyrra. Spring is slow to arrive in the north, but by the time they came to the channel the ice was already slowly melting.
“I first saw her at a village not far from the coast, where I used to keep a hunting lodge. By then, very little of the ice remained. The crystal coffin had become a crystal shroud, a thin skin of ice clinging to her own skin. Still, she was a wonder! She looked so fair and so perfectly lifelike, I knelt down beside her to take a closer look. You will be thinking,” he added, with a faint reminiscent smile, “that I woke the lady with a kiss.”