The tree spirits were writhing in wild undulations no spirit, not even an awakened one, should have been able to achieve. They jerked like seizure victims, moving in crazy, unnatural spasms. It was as though every tree had suddenly been cut off from whatever anchored them and were now shaking themselves to pieces in their struggle not to collapse.
Nico couldn’t explain the sight, couldn’t fathom it within what she’d come to understand as the natural order since she’d first started seeing as spirits saw. One thing, however, was perfectly clear. Josef wasn’t going to get to Eli before the writhing trees crushed him.
Before she could think further, Nico dove into the shadows. She came out in Eli’s own shadow, the one cast below his falling body. Her arms shot out of the ground to wrap around his waist. The second she had him, Nico pulled him down, and they vanished together into the sand just before the trees crashed.
Throwing Eli over her shoulder, Nico stepped out of the shadows again, emerging directly in the path of Josef’s charge. The swordsman had no time to stop. He barreled into them, and Nico let his momentum carry them into the shadow of the thrashing forest itself. The moment she hit the dark, she grabbed the men tight and started to run.
It was harder than she’d expected. Her body felt heavy as a mountain as she struggled forward, and the shadows clung to her like tar. In her exhaustion, even she could feel the fear.
The cold seeped into her bones, turning her legs to jelly until she was tripping over her own feet. But even as she felt the demon closing around her, Nico forced her body into submission. Her will was absolute, and she wrapped it around them like a fiery cloak. The cold fled as she reestablished control, but the fear lingered. Nico ignored it, focusing her will like an arrow on the enormous presence looming in the distance, their end goal, the Shaper Mountain. The ache pounding through her mind told her this was probably her last jump. Clutching Eli and Josef, Nico made it a good one.
She stretched herself through the dark, forcing her body forward. Each step felt like her last, but every time she managed to take another and another until, without warning, she hit the end of her strength.
It was like running face-first into a wall. All at once, the darkness began to tilt and spin. Nico didn’t even know where they were, but it would have to work. With a final, desperate flail, she burst from the darkness into air that felt cold even after the cold of the shadows.
Snow crunched against her knees as she fell, and she was painfully aware of the loss of Eli and Josef’s warmth as her arms gave out. The sky spun into view as she toppled, a dull, cloudy dome marred with sharp, white shapes. Mountains, she realized belatedly. Snowcapped mountains.
Nico eyes fell closed with delicious relief. She’d done it. She’d brought them to the mountains. Victory ran through her, sweet and burning, warding off the biting cold. Her coat was already winding around her, and she felt something else. Arms. Josef’s arms. That thought was sweeter still, and she fell gleefully into a deep, happy sleep.
Josef trampled the snow down, cursing with each stomp. It did no good. The howling wind stole the words from his mouth, denying him even the satisfaction of his own anger. Just another irritation on top of the mountain of things that had gone horribly wrong in the last half hour.
Kicking the ice off his boots, he reached over and gently picked up Nico again. The demon fear rolling off her was stronger than ever now. It bled through the coat, stealing what little warmth he’d managed to keep. Gritting his teeth, Josef ignored it. He cradled Nico to his chest and turned his back to the wind, shielding her as he inched across the flat stretch of ground to the ditch he’d stomped into the deep snow of the mountain slope.
He fell to his knees and laid her down as gently as he could, turning her so her back was against the packed snow. The short wall was a poor windbreak, but it was better than nothing. When he had her arranged to his satisfaction, he stood and went for Eli.
The thief looked worse than Nico. His face was gray as dirty soap, and there was blood running from his temple where the tree had hit him. Josef picked his friend up gently, mindful of his head, and laid him feet to feet with Nico.
When they were both safely out of the wind, Josef straightened up and started looking for something to burn. Fire was vital if they were going to last more than a few hours in this cold. There was precious little fuel here, but Josef had made fires in the high mountains before. He would find something to burn. He would keep those idiots alive, and the moment they woke up he would tear into both of them for being reckless, self-sacrificing bastards and making him worry.
He’d just spotted a likely lump down the slope where a bush could be growing under the snow when he heard a strange scraping sound. Woodsman routine forgotten, Josef spun to face the noise, the Heart of War leaping into his hands. But as he stepped into first position, he froze, eyes going wide. Eli and Nico were lying under the windbreak just as he’d left them, but there was something wrapped around Eli’s chest. Something glowing.
They were bright white and delicate, almost intimate, but so dreadfully out of place that it took Josef a full second to realize the things were arms. A pair of woman’s arms had wrapped around the thief’s chest in a lover’s embrace. The realization hit him like a punch in the gut, and suddenly Josef knew exactly what was about to happen. He’d seen it before, in Osera.
“Eli!”
He lunged as he shouted, moving with the Heart’s supernatural speed. But even that wasn’t fast enough. A split second before his hand caught Eli’s shoulder, the white arms jerked and Eli vanished. Josef crashed into the wall of snow where the thief had been, crushing the left half of the windbreak he’d worked so hard to make. He rolled and scrambled to his knees just in time to see the last of the white line as it faded.
Josef dug his fingers into the hard-packed snow and shouted a fresh string of curses into the wind, but even as he howled in rage, the swordsman in him, the ever calm, ever watchful core he’d nurtured for close to fifteen years, raised a warning.
He fell still instantly. All around him, the daylight was growing dimmer. Josef raised his head. The sky, which had been white with snow clouds when they’d first landed, was now a dark gray, and growing darker. With hours until sunset, Josef didn’t even bother looking west. Instead, he turned south against the wind, and his eyes went wide as he saw the wall of black clouds rolling toward him like an avalanche.
After that, Josef wasted no more time. Shifting the Heart to his right hand, he scooped Nico up with his left and began to climb down. He half ran, half slid down the mountain’s snowy slope, angling sideways along the ledge toward the spot where he’d spotted the bush.
He jumped down a little cliff and pressed Nico’s slumped body into the space between the lee of the stone and the woody shrub that was indeed growing from a crack in the stone. It was so dark now he could barely see what he was doing, so Josef left the task to instinct, trusting his hands as they bound the thick, stubborn branches into Nico’s coat, pinning her upright to the cliff face. When she was as secure as he could make her, Josef turned and took in the battlefield.
The base of the ledge was flatter than the mountain slope, but it was still steep. There was snow on the ground and ice under that. Treacherous footing, but he could find a way to use that. He could use the wind, too. It was blowing hard up the mountain, pushing him back toward the ledge above him. A good position, Josef decided. The wind would help keep him away from the steep drop down the mountain, and the cold would help numb the pain.
Satisfied, Josef stripped off his bag and the leather pouch at his belt. His swords went next. He tossed them, sheaths and all, on the icy stone. The larger blades were followed by his throwing knives and the daggers he kept in his boots and sleeves. Josef stripped off every bit of excess weight, dropping the lot of it at Nico’s feet. Finally, completely unencumbered, he stood and rolled his shoulders, warming and loosening his body as he waited for his enemy to arrive.
He didn’t have to wait long. Thunder crashed overhead, a deep roll that grew to a deafening crack as trunks of lightning flashed in the sky, lighting up the world in a blinding blue-white that banished every other color. The second flash came before the first had finished, and as the lightning spidered across the sky, the man appeared.
The Lord of Storms formed from the air itself. He loomed as the light faded, his shape a dark afterimage on Josef’s blinded eyes. Josef ignored his lost sight and focused everything on his sword. He might be blinded, but the Heart of War followed the Lord of Storms like a compass needle. He could feel the man stepping into position, his boots digging into the icy ground.
