Ashes of a Black Frost

soldiers shuffled close to stand beside and behind her in a crescent.

“This is the best I can manage,” Visyna said. It truly was. The dawning realization that she now had to maintain this wall while walking several hundred yards over increasingly difficult terrain and surrounded by rakkes made her question if she could really do it.

“Not much though, is it,” Zwitty said, clearly unable to contain himself. “Now that boulder of ice you used to crush Kritton, now that was some good magic. This, though, it’s just a bit of snow swirling around, isn’t it?”

Before she could shout a warning, Zwitty yelped.

“That could have scoured the skin right off my bones!” he shouted. “It’s scalding!”

Visyna felt his hand briefly touch the wall without having to see it. “Do not touch it. The longer the wall is maintained, the hotter it will become. I should warn you, it will likely become very warm in here.”

“I’m still freezing my-Well, it’s freezing right now so a bit warmer would be just fine,” Hrem said.

Let’s hope that’s all it becomes, Visyna thought, easing back on the pace of her weaving. It was going to be a delicate balance. The rakkes would sense the use of magic, so all the swirling snow in the world would only mask them for so long. She’d need to keep them hidden with enough of a barrier to dissuade any curious rakkes from trying to see what was inside.

“Hrem, you’re all soldiers. We need to walk at a steady pace.”

“That I can help you with. All right, ladies and gentleman. Nice and easy. I’ll give the cadence and you just follow along. Ready? By the right. . and by that I mean your right foot. . forward. . march.”

As Hrem called out a soft “left, right, left, right” Visyna used the tempo to help her weaving. She soon had a comfortable rhythm going. Chayii kept her hand on Jir, but for now he seemed perfectly content to pad along with them. He still favored his wounded shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down.

“Left, right, left, right, I see the fort straight ahead, left, right, left, right,” Hrem said, saying the words at the same tempo as the cadence.

“Any sign of rakkes?” she asked. “I have to concentrate on this. It’s difficult to see beyond it.”

Hrem didn’t answer right away. “Well,” he said, dropping the cadence, “we’re about to find out just how hot that snow is. Can you brace yourself?”

Visyna risked a quick push of her senses beyond the wall and immediately regretted it. “There’s hundreds of them!”

“I can’t see all that, but I can see enough. We don’t even have any damn weapons,” he said.

Sweat began dripping off the end of Visyna’s nose. She blinked and more drops stung her eyes. She couldn’t afford to wipe her hands across them so she rubbed her face into the cloth of her sleeve while still maintaining her weaving. It was already hot inside the circle and they had barely traveled twenty yards.

“Just stay close. . and keep moving,” Visyna said, really talking to herself. She already knew she couldn’t keep this up all the way to the fort.

A rakke howled from just outside the swirling wall of snow.

A moment later, Visyna felt the creature impact the wall. Its screams were cut short as the small group continued moving forward and over the rakke’s smoking body. Jir growled and barred his fangs at the sight of the rakke, but other than giving the corpse a good sniff, he left it alone. Visyna stepped over it while doing her best not to look, but the smell of singed hair and flesh made her gag.

“Well, that’s all right then,” Zwitty said, his voice startling loud inside the small area. “Any rakke stupid enough to try to get through this is in for a nasty surprise. Good. But could you turn down the heat a bit?”

“I can’t,” she said, wiping her eyes again. She licked her lips and tasted salt. Her skin felt like she was lying in the sun at high noon. “I’m sorry. It’s only going to get hotter.”

There was a commotion on the other side of the wall and several rakkes began screaming in pain. Fortunately, none of them fell down in their path, but now the snow and sand beneath their feet was turning to mud. Walking was becoming increasingly difficult. If anyone slipped they would fall through the wall. If that didn’t kill them, the slavering beasts on the other side would. They were all walking a tightrope with just one wrong step meaning a horrible death. “I’m going to have to stop,” she said. Her legs were shaking and she was having a hard time walking. Between the fear and her exhaustion it was becoming a challenge just to stand upright.

“Are you mad? We’ve barely-” was all Zwitty managed before the sound of a thump suggested Hrem had knocked him off his train of thought.

“The fort is still quite a piece away,” Hrem said.

“I know,” she said, lifting her sandals out of the mud one at a time only to sink back down again. “I just can’t keep this up. I’m sorry, I thought I could but I can’t.” It was as if the muscles in her legs had been replaced with solid lead.

“You’ve done everything you could, child, no one is blaming you,” Chayii said, her voice calm and without a hint of accusation.

I am, she thought to herself. Her hands were cramping and her hold on the spinning wall was faltering. If she didn’t dissipate it soon, she might lose control of it completely and risk all their lives.

Her right foot caught as she pulled it from the mud and she stumbled. She fumbled her hold on the storm. She struggled to get it back, but it would take more strength than she had left to pull it in tight and keep it strong. The best she could do now was focus it outward, pushing the swirling snow and heat further away while still keeping it swirling around them. Visyna knew before long she would lose even that ability, and when that happened, they would be completely exposed.

And when it happens, I will have killed us all.

TWENTY-THREE

Viceroy, I want another exit, now!” Konowa shouted. His right knee was throbbing after jumping the last six feet off the ladder, but pain could wait. He limped across the courtyard of the fort, his mind a whirl of conflicting emotions.

Visyna is alive! And his elves. . he sped up his gait and to hell with the stabbing sensation in his knee as he tried to process everything. After all this time, they were just a few hundred yards away. Everything and everyone he’d wanted and searched for were now on the outside of the fort.

But it wasn’t what he expected.

The soldiers he thought of as his sons and brothers weren’t the elves out there, but the raggedy-arsed collection of human misfits he’d led into battle from Elfkyna to the Wikumma Islands to here.

The smell of leather, polished copper, and sawdust snapped him back to the here and now. He’d come to a stop under a tattered canvas awning tacked to the inside of the fort’s west wall and held up by two broken cart shafts at the other end. It created about the saddest, leaky, and sagging roof he’d ever seen, but it did serve to keep most of the snow off Pimmer, who had taken refuge underneath it. The spot had clearly been a workshop at one point. Everything from boot soles to leather and canvas straps, bits of brass and pewter, and clay jars littered the ground. Pimmer sat on an overturned bucket while his ever present map was spread out on a door resting on bricks, which created a more than adequate table. His small brass lantern gave off a surprising amount of light.

RSM Arkhorn sat off to the side on a tangled mound of coiled rope, chain, and burlap sacks. He was turning the handle of a small grinding stone set upright in a wooden yoke while holding a piece of copper sheet to it. A rat- sized pyramid of copper dust already filled an earthenware basin set at the base of the grinding wheel.

“I think Kritton’s dead,” Konowa said, “Visyna killed him. Or at least, I think she did. Dropped a huge chunk of ice on him.” The image still shocked him. Between the snow, the dark, and the distance he couldn’t be sure, but even if his eyes couldn’t confirm it, something in his heart did. . or at least, very much wanted to. That huge chunk of ice had come plummeting from the sky and hit someone. He had no idea she could do that.

Yimt stopped grinding. “Blast. I was looking forward to putting a permanent crimp in his spine myself. You’re sure he’s dead?”

“If he’s not, he’s at the bottom of a crater with his head in his boots.”