“But it means everything to me.” Rufus held out a hand, then closed his fist. Something tugged at Vlad’s throat, then snapped. The gold chain and locket snaked from beneath his uniform and floated to the Norghaest. His hand opened again and it came to rest in his palm.
He chuckled. “Names may grant power, but this is much more powerful. I can connect through this back to your wife. Ah, and she is with child. Perfect. I can let her know you’re dying, right now, your child, too. I can kill you slowly, and I can even give her the option of accepting your fate unto herself. Would she die to save you, Vladimir? Will she sacrifice herself and your child? Shall we find out?”
The Prince raised his left hand. “No, you can’t do that.”
“Why not? They will die regardless. As precious as your wife is to you, she would be nothing to me, not even a diversion were I to take her as the spoils of this paltry little war.” Rufus held his hand up, letting the locket dangle from the slender chain. “Yes, I think I will let her make that choice. I think I will let her die in your place. And do you know why?”
Vlad shook his head.
“Simply because, Vladimir, I can, and you have no way of stopping me.”
Movement through the trees alerted Owen to Ian’s ordered retreat. He glanced back. “How are you doing, Kamiskwa?”
The Shedashee looked up from the pit. “Almost there, but I need your lock.”
Justice Bone came forward as Owen fell back. Owen went down to one knee beside Kamiskwa and dug into the pouch on his belt. He pulled out a thick lock of the Prince’s brown hair. “Here.”
The Shedashee took it and twisted several strands into a slender thread. “This should fix it.”
In digging down they had uncovered the tip of the stone marker which the Norghaest had thrust up through the earth. It formed one of the points of the Octagon-the point through which energy entered the Octagon from the direction of the outpost. Once they had cleared enough dirt and snow away, Kamiskwa had drawn a crown using pine resin. He’d used the Prince’s hair to cover the symbol. The resin stuck the hair fast to the stone. The lock Kamiskwa took from Owen completed the base of the crown.
Owen nervously tucked the rest of the lock away. “Is this going to work?”
Kamiskwa took a deep breath. “It better.”
Owen looked up. “Report, Mr. Bone.”
“Rathfield’s men is drawing mighty close.”
Owen patted Kamiskwa on the shoulder. “It will work.”
The Shedashee closed his eyes. He raised his left hand to the design, letting his middle finger drift over it. Owen hadn’t been told specifically what Kamiskwa was doing, but he knew enough of the new magick to figure it out. The crown represented Prince Vlad. They’d used a similar design to designate his thaumagraph units. The way Kamiskwa touched the design, the directions his fingers took, the pressure, all of these things were linked to his impressions of the Prince. That and the hair, because of its link to the Prince, would combine with Kamiskwa’s magick. The spell anchored within the stone gathered power, then split it to other stones, each of which was represented by a symbol. Kamiskwa’s job was to substitute one for the other.
Ian’s voice echoed from nearby across the hill top. “Ready. Aim. Fire!” His men responded with a staccato rippling of gunshots. Trolls thudded to the ground, but more kept coming.
And we’re going to have to stop them.
Ian arrived, breathless, saber slick with blood. “Have we done it?”
Kamiskwa gasped, then sagged sideways. The stink of singed hair rose from the rock. Owen glanced over. The crown had been burned into the stone’s gray surface as clearly as if it had been branded into the rock. “It’s done.”
“Good.” Ian laughed aloud and pointed with his sword at trolls squeezing between the trees. “So, I fear, are we.”
Owen turned, raising his rifle, and fired a single shot. “Don’t give up yet, General. More trolls need killing and we’ve got plenty of fight left in us.”
Vlad stiffened, his back arched, as argent fire poured over his body. “No. I forbid it!”
“You forbid it?” Rufus smiled and made the locket dance on the end of the chain. “You can’t forbid it. You completely underestimate me if you think you can.”
“Not you. I don’t have your measure.” Vlad pointed his index finger at Rufus as the first trickle of magick streamed to him. “But I do have the measure of the man whose flesh you wear.”
Vlad shaped the energy flowing from the stone around the most basic spell he knew-the spell that would snuff a fire. With a tiny adjustment, it functioned to cancel magick, but to work, it required a key. It required the person using it to know his opponent so well he could wrap it around that thing which would paralyze his enemy. And while Prince Vlad had no idea what that might be for Sun’s Whisper, he knew it intimately for Rufus Branch.
Around that spell he wrapped the image and essence of Rufus’ mortal enemy, Nathaniel Woods.
Vlad stuck that essence on the tip of a spell like a spearhead on a shaft and stabbed it through Rufus’ left eye. The Norghaest’s hands rose to his face, an inhuman shriek rising from his throat. Sun’s Whisper staggered back a couple of steps. The locket still hung from between his fingers.
The Prince threw his head back and shouted loudly to the world. “Now, Mr. Woods, if you would be so kind.”
To be held back as guns cracked in the distance had all but killed Nathaniel Woods. Save for it being an explicit command from Prince Vlad, and its being described as the only chance they had to win, Nathaniel would have refused. He would have been out there on the right, leading the Northern Rangers in place of Makepeace. He would have been shooting trolls dead left and right.
But the Prince had other plans.
As Rufus reeled back not fifty yards away, Nathaniel tracked him effortlessly. Settling his thumb on the firestone, Nathaniel steadied his rifle, and formed the spell in his mind. He pushed it into the firestone.
He shot to kill.
The ovoid lead slug reached its target less than a second after leaving the rifle’s muzzle. It blew through Rufus’ left hand, burst his eye and shattered bone. It passed into his brain case and hit the back of the skull, cracking it, but it failed to punch all the way through. It ricocheted downward toward the base of the skull, and bounced again to crush the man’s first vertebra. It severed his spinal cord even as blood and brain squirted back out through the entry wound.
Rufus’ body pirouetted, arms flying out wide. The staff whirled away. The light in its orb died before the staff disappeared beneath the snow. Rufus went to one knee and for the barest of moments Nathaniel feared he’d get back up. The ruin of his face suggested that was an impossibility, but he knelt there, defying gravity even as brains ran down his cheek.
Finally, his body convulsed, then he collapsed in a motionless heap.
Beyond where he lay, trolls poured down the hillside and demons took wing. Nathaniel didn’t know if the Norghaest had somehow given them a final command, or had magickally ripped a gaping hole in the earth so more could avenge him, but the legions of Hell raced east. Nathaniel, having no time to reload, ran to the Prince. He knelt and handed him the rifle.
“I reckon you load and can get one shot off.” Nathaniel drew his tomahawk. “I got a throw in me, which means ’tween the two of us, we outta kill something.”
Ian slashed a troll’s thigh, opening a gaping gash. The man spun, bringing his saber back down, and wrapped both hands around the hilt. He aimed his cut at the back of the troll’s knee, preparing to hack that half of the limb off.
The troll twisted, roaring in pain, and backhanded Ian with a glancing blow. It sent him flying. He collided with a sapling, then spun into a larger tree. The impact numbed his back and leg. He rebounded from the tree and landed face-first in a snowdrift.