Furies of Calderon (39 page)

Aldrick sat up and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand, wincing, gathering himself back together with the resilience of his craft—and of comparative youth, Fidelias thought. He wasn’t young anymore. “Where’s Odiana?”

“I don’t know yet,” Fidelias said. “The storm offers considerable danger. I’ve found two moving groups, so far, and I think there’s at least one more that I can’t pinpoint.”

“Which one is Odiana in?”

Fidelias shrugged. “One is heading to the northeast, and one to the southeast. I thought I felt something more directly east of here, but I can’t be certain.”

“Northeast isn’t anything,” Aldrick said. “Maybe one of the stead-holts. Southeast of here, there isn’t even that. Turns into the Wax Forest and the plains beyond it.”

Aldrick went silent for several seconds. The fire popped and crackled. Then he said, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that, old man.”

Fidelias looked up at him and said, “Aquitaine assigned you to this personally, didn’t he?”

Aldrick nodded, once.

“You’ve been his right hand through most of this. You know all the details. You’re the one who has handled the money, the logistics. Yes?”

“What’s your point?”

“What do you think is going to happen if the mission fails, hmm? If Aquitaine is in danger of exposure? Do you think he’s just going to give you a wink and a nod and ask you not to mention it where anyone could overhear? Or do you think he’s going to make sure that no one ever finds your body, much less what you know about what he is planning.”

Aldrick stared steadily at Fidelias, then tightened his jaw and looked away.

Fidelias nodded. “We finish the mission. We stop whoever is going to the local count, send in the Windwolves, and turn the Marat loose. After that, we’ll find the girl.”

“To the crows with the mission,” Aldrick spat. “I’m going to find her.”

“Oh?” Fidelias asked. “And how are you going to manage that? You have many skills, Aldrick, but you’re no tracker. You’re in strange country, with strange furies and hostile locals. At best, you’ll wander around lost like an idiot. At worst, the locals will kill you, or the Marat will when they attack. And then who will find the girl?”

Aldrick snarled, pacing back and forth within the confines of the shelter. “Crows take you,” he snarled. “All of you.”

“Assuming the girl is alive,” Fidelias said. “She is quite capable. If she has been taken, I am sure she is well able to survive on her own. Give her that much credit. In two days, at the most, we’ll go after her.”

“Two days,” Aldrick said. He bowed his head and growled, “Then let’s get started. Now. We stop the messengers to the Count and then we get her.”

“Sit down. Rest. We’ve lost the horses in the flood. We can wait until the storm is out, at least.”

Aldrick stepped across the space between them and hauled Fidelias to his feet, eyes narrowed. “No, old man. We go now. You find us salt, and we go out into that storm and get this over with. Then you take me to Odiana.”

Fidelias looked out of the shelter at the storm. His body ached in its joints, groaned at the abuse that had already been heaped on it. His feet throbbed where they were cut, steady, slow pain. He looked back to Aldrick. The swordsman’s eyes glittered, cold and hard.

“All right,” Fidelias said. “Let’s find them.”

Chapter 23

Amara had never been so cold.

She swam in it, drifted in it, a pure and frozen darkness as black and as silent as the void itself. Memories, images, danced and floated around her. She saw herself struggling against the swordsman. She saw Bernard, on his feet and coming toward them. And then the cold, sudden and black and terrifying.

The river
, she thought,
Isana must have flooded the river
.

A band of fire settled around her wrist, but she noted it as nothing more than a passing sensation. There was just the darkness and the cold—the burning, horrible purity of the cold, pressing into her, through her skin.

Sensations blurred, melted together, and she felt the sound of splashing water, saw the cold wind rippling across her soaked skin. She heard someone, a voice speaking to her, but the words didn’t make any sense and ran too closely together for her to understand. She tried to ask whoever was speaking to slow down, but her mouth didn’t seem to be listening to her. Sounds came out, but they were too cracked and rasping to have been anything she meant to say.

Sound lessened, and the cold lessened with it. No more wind? She felt a hard surface beneath her and lay there upon it, abruptly and overwhelmingly tired. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but someone kept shaking her just as she was about to get some rest, waking her up. Light came, and an ugly, unpleasant tingling in her limbs. It hurt, and she felt tears come to her eyes, simple frustration. Hadn’t she done enough? Hadn’t she given enough? She’d already given her life. Must she sacrifice her rest as well?

Coherence returned in a rush, and with it pain so sharp and rending that she lost her breath and her voice in the same gasp. Her body, curled into a ball, had tightened into a series of cramping convulsions, as though doing everything in its power to close itself off from the cold that had filled her. She heard herself making sounds, grunting noises, guttural and helpless, but she could no more stop making them than she could force herself to straighten her body.

She lay on stone, that much she knew, in the clothes she’d stolen from Bernard-holt—but they were soaked through with water, and crystals of ice were forming on the outermost layer of cloth. There were sloped walls of rough stone around her that had stopped the howling winds. A cave, then. And a fire, that provided light, and the warmth that had brought tingling pain flooding back into her body.

She was freezing, she knew, and knew as well that she had to move, to get out of the clothes and closer to the fire, lest she sink back into that stillness and never emerge from it.

She tried.

She couldn’t.

Fear filled her then. Not the rush of excitement or the lightning of sudden terror, but slow, cool, logical fear. She had to move to live. She could not move. Hence, she could not live.

The helpless simplicity of it was what stung, what made it real. She wanted to move, to uncurl her body, to creep closer to the fire—simple things, things she could do at any other time. But for lack of that ability now, she would die. Tears made her vision blur, but they were halfhearted, too empty of the fire of life to warm her.

Something came between her and the fire, a shape, and she felt a hand, huge and warm—blessedly warm—settle on her forehead.

“We’ve got to get those clothes off you,” Bernard rumbled, his voice gentle. He moved closer to her, and she felt him lift her like a child. She tried to speak to him, to help him, but she could only curl and shudder and make helpless grunting sounds.

“I know,” he rumbled. “Just relax.” He had to struggle to get the shirts off, though not much—they were so large on her. The clothes came away like layers of frozen mud, until she wore only her underclothes. Her limbs seemed shrunken and wrinkled to her. Her fingers were swollen.

Bernard laid her down again, close to the fire, and its heat flowed over her, easing the cramped tension in her muscles, slowly lessening the pain that had come with it. Her breathing began to be something she could control, and she slowed her breaths, though she still shivered.

“Here,” Bernard said. “I got it wet, but I’ve been drying it out since we got the fire going.” He lifted her, and a moment later settled a shirt, a little damp but warm with the heat of the fire, over her. He didn’t bother to slip the sleeves on, just wrapped her in it like a blanket, and she huddled under it, grateful.

Amara opened her eyes and looked up at him. She lay curled on her side. He sat on his legs, holding his own hands out to the fire, and was naked above the waist. Firelight played over dark hairs on his chest, over the heavy muscle of his frame, and made soft lines of several old scars. Blood had dried in a line on his lip, where a blow from the other Stead-holder had apparently split it, and his cheek had already darkened with a bruise, reflected by others on his ribs and belly.

“Y-you came after me,” she said, moments later. “You pulled me out of the water.”

He looked over at her, then back at the fire. He nodded once. “It was the least I could do. You stopped that man.”

“Only for a few seconds,” she said. “I couldn’t have stood up to him for long. He’s a swordsman. A good one. If the river hadn’t flooded when it did—”

Bernard waved his hand and shook his head. “Not that one. The one who shot the arrow at Tavi. You saved my nephew’s life.” He looked down at her and said, quietly, “Thank you.”

She felt her cheeks color, and she looked down. “Oh. You’re welcome.” After a moment she said, “Aren’t you cold?”

“Some,” he admitted. He nodded toward where several articles of clothing were spread on stones near the fire. “Brutus is trying to spread some heat into the stones beneath them, but he doesn’t really understand heat too well. They’ll dry in a while.”

“Brutus?” Amara asked.

“My fury. The hound you saw.”

“Oh,” she said. “Here. Let me.” Amara closed her eyes and murmured to Cirrus. The air around the fire stirred sluggishly, and then the smoke and shimmering waves of warmth tilted, moved toward the clothing. Amara opened her eyes to inspect Cirrus’s work, and nodded. “They should dry a little faster, now.”

“Politics.” Bernard spat into the fire. “I took a stead-holt out here because I didn’t want anything to do with the High Lords. Or the First Lord, either.”