She stopped, suddenly, and flung her head up to catch the breeze, hitting him in the face with the back of her skull, and nearly knocking his front teeth out.
:Sorry. They're near. I smell woodsmoke, heated stone, burned venison, and them. Get down, and we'll take this quietly. There's bound to be a sentry, but whether it'll be on the walls or outside them-:
Let's hope it's outside, Stef thought, flexing his stiff hands, then sliding off her back to land knee-deep in snow. We won't be able to get past him if there's a sentry on the wall, and I don't know the first thing about taking one out.
He let Yfandes lead the way, picking his feet up carefully to keep from falling over anything. Finally she stopped, right on the edge of a screening of bushes.
:Careless, lazy, or stupid,: she said, and for a moment he wondered if she meant him -
:They've let all this undergrowth spring up on the edge of their clearing,: she continued, her mind-voice thick with contempt. :We can come right up to the walls without anyone ever seeing us. Ah, there he is. Stef, look up there, just above the door. See him?:
Stef picked his way up to the bushes and looked - sure enough, there was something there, pacing back and forth a little. A shadow among shadows, on the top of a wall that even in the dim moonlight showed severe neglect. The square-built keep would not have lasted a candlemark in a siege.
:That's the sentry and that's the only one they have.: She paused a moment. :Now what that means is that this is probably the only way into the building, which is not very good for us.:
“I could just walk up there,” he offered. “I'm a Bard, I could just pretend I'm a traveling minstrel -”
:In the dead of winter, the middle of nowhere? Minstrels don't travel in winter if they can help it. How the blazes did you get out here, and why did you come? They may be stupid, but they're probably suspicious bastards.:
“Uh - I could say I was turned out of my post -”
She snorted. :Have you seen any Great Houses since three days before the Border?:
“My inn, then - the innkeeper's wife and I -”
:Why here? This isn't a very promising place. It's all but falling to pieces.:
“I'm cold and hungry, and I wouldn't care if it was the first place I saw with people and food and fire -”
:Wait.: She raised her head to look over his :Something's happening.:
With no more warning than that, the center of the building went up with an ear-numbing roar in a sheet of red and green flames.
Stef squeaked, and hid his eyes with his forearm, then peeked under the crook of his elbow. The entire front of the building had burst outward in the time he'd hidden his eyes; the door was splinters, and the right side of the keep had already collapsed outward. There were screams, but no sign of fire, and Stef realized then that what he'd just seen was an explosion of mage-power.
:Get on!: Yfandes ordered, and he scrambled onto her back. She didn't even wait this time until he'd settled himself; she just leapt through the bushes with the Bard clinging to her mane and trying desperately to get a grip on her with his legs.
She raced across the small expanse of clear ground between the bushes and the keep, and crashed through what was left of the door, coming to an abrupt halt just inside. He blinked, his eyes burning from the foul smoke blowing into them, and tried to make out what was going on. Here, inside the building, there were fires, small ones. Furniture burning. Piles of rags, smoldering -
Men.
With horror and nausea, Stefen realized that fully half of what he had thought were burning piles of flotsam were actually burning bodies, aflame with the same blood-red fires Van had used to destroy the raven-thing. And some of the piles were thrashing and screaming.
He tumbled from Yfandes' back as she pivoted, lashing out with hooves and teeth at a man running by. He tried to make some sense of the confusion, looking, without consciously realizing he was doing so, for Van.
And then the fires rose higher, reflecting off a single figure, the red glare concealing until this moment the fact that the man wore shredded Whites. Scarlet mage-fires turned his white-streaked hair into a cascade of ripping shadow threaded with blood. Just beyond, a group of terrified men crouched against the far wall, cowering away from him; some pleading, some simply trying to melt into the stone of the wall in numb fear.
“Vanyel!” Stef shouted. The Herald turned around for a moment, but a movement by one of the men he had cornered made him turn back to face them. It was Vanyel, but not a Van that Stefen recognized. Like Yfandes, his eyes and the mage-focus around his neck glowed an identical, angry red, and beneath the glow the eyes were not sane. His clothing was tattered and bloodstained, and his face disfigured with bruises, but it was not that mistreatment that made him impossible to identify. It was those furious, mad eyes, eyes which held nothing in common with humanity at all.
Vanyel gestured, and one of the men shivering against the wall jerked upright, and stumbled toward him. As he did so, the last of the screaming stopped, though the fires continued to burn in eerie silence. In that silence, the man's whimpering pleas for mercy were sickeningly clear.
Vanyel laughed. “What mercy did you grant me, scum?” he replied in a soft, conversational voice. “It seems to me that I remember you. It seems to me that you were the first and the last to sate yourself. 'Little white mare,' I believe you called me.” He gestured again, and the bandit stooped, like a clumsily-controlled marionette, and picked something up from the floor.
It was the splintered end of a spear-shaft, ragged, but as sharp as anything of metal. The bandit's arms jerked again, and the jagged end of it was placed against his stomach.
The bandit's eyes widened; his mouth opened, but nothing emerged. There was a popping sound, and as the point of the wood penetrated the bandit's clothing, Stefen realized with horror that Vanyel was forcing the brigand to disembowel himself, controlling his body with Mind-magic. “No!” he screamed. “Van, no!”
He flung himself between the two, and faced that frightening mask of insanity, his hands held out in pleading. “Van, you're a Herald, no matter what they did to you, you can't do that to him!”
The red glow died from Van's eyes for a moment; then his jaw hardened, and something like an invisible hand pushed Stefen out of the way. The Bard stumbled and fell to the filthy floor, but was up again in a breath, and right back between the Herald and his victim. The brigand fell onto his back, writhing, then stiffened as Vanyel stepped forward.
“Van - Van, don't! If you do this, you'll be just as bad as he is. Don't let him do that to you! Don't let them make you into something like they are!” Vanyel froze, with his hand still outstretched. Then the angry red glow faded, first from his eyes, then from the pendant at his breast. He blinked, and sanity returned to his face.