but her weary eye measured me the same as if I had been her own niece.
“Gave a man some trouble to you? Are you harmed, girl?”
I wanted to laugh but the sound would not come. “No. No man harmed me.”
I found a dead Amazon’s uniform that fit me well enough with its sturdy wool jacket and cunningly sewn skirt that could be tied up to different lengths depending on what a woman needed on the march. The cloth was dirty but unbloodied, by which I assumed the woman who had worn it had died from a head wound. My cold steel had returned to a cane. Cupping the locket in my hand, I closed my eyes and breathed down the thread that bound me to Vai.
He was alive.
The barn really stank, not just with ash and blood and piss but with pain, which has a tang as hard as a claw. I found Rory holding the hand of an unconscious soldier. My brother’s sweet smile calmed me, for the groans and whimpers and sobs rubbed like thorns against my heart.
I crouched beside him. “I have to go. Are you coming with me?”
“Shh. I like to hold the hands of the ones whose souls are passing over.”
Curious, I rested a hand on the unconscious man’s cheek. When I closed my eyes and sank my thoughts as into a soundless ocean of smoke, I could first feel and then almost glimpse the delicately wavering glimmer of brightness that sparked through the man’s body: the flickering brain, the subsiding heart. The settling darkness of death’s tide hauled him out to sea. The soldier took in a shallow breath, and then not another. In the dark ocean of death, a shark glided past to snap up the man’s soul and carry it to the other side.
Rory released the lifeless hand. “It brings them comfort to know they aren’t alone when they depart. I love to hunt, Cat, but there’s just something wrong with all this. It tastes bad.” He closed the dead man’s eyes and arranged the hands atop the chest. “You wouldn’t rather stay here? There are so many who need aid and comfort.”
“I have to find Drake.”
With a sigh he rose. “I know better than to try to stop any female when she’s determined to go out on the hunt. Very well.”
“You stay here, Rory. I can see the noise and confusion trouble you.”
“Vai told me to keep an eye on you.”
“Is that what he told you? To keep me out of the fight?”
He laughed, a startling sound amid so much suffering. Yet not one head turned our way. No one cared if people laughed; it was better than crying. “You don’t know him well if that’s what you think he would say. He told me once that any person who knows the stories of hunters who captivate spirit women in the bush knows that a man does not try to cage or leash a spirit woman, because if he does, she will vanish back into the bush and nothing he can do will stop her. He asked me to walk beside you, Cat, as he would do if he were here. Goodness, you’re being very snappish, and I must say that you stink of blood.”
I shuddered, for there was a chasm in my heart blessedly veiled in darkness, and I did not want any light to shine down there.
“Calm, Cat. Calm.” He stroked my arm. “I better come with you or you’ll do something foolish. Probably you already have.”
At the doors children were digging out precious bolts and bullets from the walls and collecting them in a sack. In the courtyard riders gathered. General Camjiata emerged from the stone house, writing on a scrap of paper. He handed paper to a messenger and pen to an aide, then saw me. With a nod he indicated I should accompany him.
“I have to find Drake,” I said as I took the reins of a horse led up by an orderly.
“Cat, you’ll never find him in this chaos. Stick with me, and he’ll turn up. He always does.”
“I’m not sure he will this time. I think he’s gone rogue.”
He did not answer, for we were already riding out of the estate. I had no grasp of the time, only that it was now late afternoon and the thrust of the battle had raged away to the southeast. The land was a sweep of trees, fields, and pasture. No doubt this bucolic landscape made a restful scene on ordinary days. Now it crawled with soldiers and was strewn with bodies, discarded weapons, and lost hats and tassels. Camjiata was right: Alone, I had no chance of finding Drake or Vai among so many tens of thousands.
Because the general had rolled up the Coalition’s western flank, Lord Marius had fixed his efforts to the east in an attempt to keep open the Liyonum Road for the Romans as they marched up from the south. Even without the spyglass, it was easy to tell from a distance where cold mages were still fighting to kill the general’s guns. Smoke would billow in clouds that hid whole sections of the field from view, then patches would clear with startling urgency as artillery and rifles ceased firing for a space. A wind was really picking up out of the east, and black clouds had piled up as if about to break down over the city.
Rory had his head down, hands over his ears. The noise just never let up.
“There they go!” said Camjiata, holding the spyglass to his eye.
Tents in the Coalition’s encampment caught fire. A battle by magic chased through the field, fire rising, then dying, rising and dying and finally rising again, as in a game being played like cat and mouse. Fire mages were flushing out cold mages and tracking them down. Was Drake directing them? Was that where he was? A gray sleet moved in over the city but just before it reached the camp it died in a violent updraft of air. The encampment began to burn in earnest.
Meanwhile artillery was being shifted to the south and east. We followed it to a ridge, where the command unit halted. The hillside sloped down to a stream beyond which ran the Liyonum Road. The general intended to bombard the Romans as they marched in column along the road, thinking to rescue their allies.
A soot-stained messenger came pounding up. He wore the badge of the Iberian Lion Guard. “Dispatch from Marshal Aualos, General.” He held up a folded paper.
Camjiata did not lower the spyglass, which was fixed on the burning encampment. Figures fled in all directions, many of whom surely were not soldiers.
“Read it to me,” he said.
“My lord Keita, we have cut off Lord Marius so he cannot reach the city gates. The Parisi prince is dead on the field. We have taken thousands prisoner. The citizens of Lutetia have barricaded the gates to their city. Of cold mages we have captured twenty-eight alive.”
Twenty-eight cold mages taken prisoner! My icy heart flamed hot. Was Vai among them?
The general lowered the spyglass, handed it to me, and took the wrinkled paper to scrawl a note on it. “Tell the marshal that the cold mage Andevai Diarisso is to be sent directly to me.”
“Marshal Aualos said to tell to your ears alone that the particular mage you seek is not among the prisoners.”
I pressed a hand to my locket. It was still warm.
“I want the marshal to secure the encampment and the city gates. Harry any retreating Coalition units until they rout. I want Lord Marius captured, or dead if must be. When the Romans arrive, we will have them surrounded on three sides, with the river at their back.”
We stood without water or shade for an hour or more as troops ponderously trudged past our position to meet the approaching Romans. Far to the south the crack and boom of rifle fire started up; about half an hour later the rumble of cannon woke a mile or more away. But for the sound, and the departure and arrival of messengers, our watch on the ridge passed uneventfully. I couldn’t think for the constant noise. Rory tucked himself into the shade of a tree, where he leaned his head against the trunk and closed his eyes. Exhausted, I sank down beside him.
The pounding hammer filled every crevice of flesh, and blood, and air, and earth. I fell as off a cliff into a dream.
Winged as an eru, I flew above an ocean of smoke. All around clamored my brothers and sisters, each fashioned in their own shape, and all of us killers. Flashes of light like silvery minnows caught in the waves as the dying gave up life. My siblings dove into the waters to gulp up each soul.
The spirits of the dead walked through us, the hunter’s children, from the mortal world into the spirit world.
I saw everything: A man rides away from his comrades on a desperate errand although they urge him to turn back. My eru’s sight could not encompass the features by which a mortal person recognizes another: the flash
