“From what we hear, he has been training people to seek you, anyway. Make sure you have your mental blocks ready,” Modifi reminded him gently, trading a meaningful look with me. He didn’t need just Skarde to be ready to help against mental attacks, I needed to be ready to help defend Skarde, too. If Fenvitz was able to get mental control of Skarde… We couldn’t even think of that.
Skarde rolled his shoulders confidently. “I will be ready.”
That easy cockiness in his voice was true. He had told me about what had happened when he had held his Berserker ceremony. He said that the sharpened cognition had not yet waned. The klastani effects were still reverberating through his body. He was not necessarily intoxicated, but he said he felt better than he ever had. It had me tempted to try it…
I sighed and watched my breath float away in the air. The trees were gorgeous in white snow and evergreen. The sun was just peeking through their lowest branches and sending sprays of wrinkled light out onto the shivering lake’s surface. The thin ice was melting and crackling. Soon, it would flash into the most solid ice it had ever been.
I could feel Skarde’s eagerness, but also his cautious trepidation. He was mentally prepared to duel the Duke, but I was afraid he was looking past the duel that would come first. I still couldn’t shake the sensation of powerlessness I had felt when suspended by that unseen telekinetic in the mines. That soldier, and likely others, would be waiting to go to war on Skarde’s mind… He was ready, I hoped. We had done extra training along the route here, but no one had ever viciously attacked him mentally. We honestly couldn’t know if he was ready.
Skarde and I waited by the edge of the lake. There was a whisper of movement in the trees on the far side. We could barely make out the other Spec Ops soldiers setting up the blaster cannon. Skarde wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tucked me in close to him, but didn’t speak. There was a lot going on in his mind, but I didn’t think it right for me to pry.
Damox waved toward us from where he stood beside the near blaster cannon. One of the Spec Ops soldiers ran to us, kicking up snow with his boots.
“Duke Skarde, the other blaster cannons are in place. Are you ready?”
“Proceed by the will of Commander Damox,” Skarde said. The soldier ran back. I opened my mind to listen and heard Damox communicate with the other side, giving the countdown. I clutched Skarde’s arm and we prepared for the blast. I hoped the soldiers holding the horses had them well tethered. This was going to wake the whole sleeping village.
The blasters roared to life, their purple lasers arching out over the ice with a sizzling scream. They wrapped a rainbow up and over, a slicing X that bent down and cut through trees, breaking off branches and scaring off birds, and then dove down into the thin ice sheath and plunged into the lake’s water.
Immediately, the lake ruptured, blistering, as different pockets of cooled air flash froze at different moments, ice swelling the lake’s depth and density. The water in the air seemed sucked dry, too, and there was electricity in the air, making the hair on our heads and arms stand on edge. Water spiked up in little towers all along the lake as it solidified into tectonics of ice sheets and froze, not one solid chunk, but splintered segments all stacked on top of each other in a matter of seconds.
They kept the blasters running nearly a minute to ensure full freeze and then called them off.
The ice crept up the edge of the shore and grabbed onto the bits of masa in the soil and began to freeze the ground. I slipped under the new slickness and grabbed to Skarde for support.
The sun made a mirror surface on the ice as it rose up over the trees.
It had happened so quickly…
We could hear shouts from within the village just on the other side of the trees and down the village lane.
They would be here soon.
Damox signaled and the Spec Ops soldiers melted back into hiding in the forest, some of them even floating up into the branches. The Vailstorans stood beside Skarde. Renin and Damox remained beside us. It was our seven standing before the frozen lake with a large blaster cannon aimed down the main village thoroughfare, waiting for Fenvitz and the rightfully elected leader of the Kall to come ask us what we had done.
Figures came into view and I kept my hand near my blaster and one near my knife. We were ready.
A thundering of pain buried itself behind my eyes and splintered my skull, streaking down the back of my neck and making me double over. Skarde collapsed to his knees, holding onto his head, gasping out my name.
I realized the pain wasn’t really coming from within me, I was just feeling some of the pain that he was experiencing: it was a mental attack.
Just as Damox had suggested, Fenvitz’s men had scanned for us, and they had found us.
Nineteen
Fenvitz
The sizzling scream of a blaster cannon ripped through the air and had me lunging from my warm blankets.
“Barzon!” I roared, throwing a coat on while fumbling for my boots at the same time. The world around me was sleep-blurred but my mind was fighting for control about the potential attack. What could be happening? Who? Skarde, of course, right? But, why with blaster cannons?
My lieutenant slept in the barracks right beside mine in this little hovel of a village. He burst through the door, tugging on his own coat and looking wild-eyed, hair smashed to one
