Winter Be My Shield (22 page)

The one still standing swallowed hard and shifted his grip on the bow. He was frightened, Sierra realised. He could have just left — he could have quietly slipped away while she finished the one who had attacked her. She wouldn't have bothered searching for any other attackers, even if it was unwise to leave enemies behind her. But instead he'd approached her, demon though she was, to save what was left of his comrade's miserable life. ‘Drop the bow,' Sierra said, ‘and you can take him and go. But tell whoever it was that sent you I won't be so merciful the next time.'

The warrior slowly lowered his weapon until it was aimed at the ground by his feet, then he pulled the trigger and loosed the quarrel into the snow with a heavy twang of the string. Then he let the weapon fall and raised his hands.

With a flick of power Sierra opened a shallow cut across his cheek. The warrior flinched, but made no other move. ‘Don't think you can sneak up on me again,' Sierra said. ‘I'll feel you coming.'

The warrior just bowed his head in reply and, as wary as a pair of spitting cats, he and Sierra moved in a slow circle until he was beside his moaning comrade and Sierra was on the path that would lead her back towards her sled. She stooped to pick up the fallen crossbow and then turned her back on them and walked away.

Back beside the sled, Sierra dropped to her knees to sort through what was left of her gear. No doubt some of it could be salvaged — the stove and pots at least, and probably part of the tent. It would still be more than she had when she'd left the army camp. As she began to pull it apart her eyes started to sting and she bit her lip to keep the tears from spilling. Those men were still close and she would not let them hear her cry.

 

This was the last night of his freedom.

Rasten checked his stride as he dropped below the crest of the hill. After this night he would have to return to Kell with all haste — keeping Sierra contained would not be easy and, once he was back within Kell's
reach, his master would make sure that the memory of this brief respite was driven far from his mind. The night was peaceful and this moment of solitude was paradise. He would enjoy it while he had the chance.

Little Crow, I could strangle you.
She could have ruined everything in her panicked flight from Kell and the king's army. She wasn't ready, and when Rasten brought her back Kell would set about breaking down her will and her mind until she was nothing but an obedient slave, too terrified to even think of resistance. After she had defied him so openly, Kell could do nothing else, and if he succeeded in breaking her they would both be condemned to a lifetime of this miserable existence.

What on earth had possessed her to take such a risk? She had no hope of remaining free, no resources to draw on and no friends to shelter her. What could she possibly hope to achieve? Rasten had done his best to protect her, convincing Kell she wasn't ready for the next phase of her training, that her power still had a way to grow. Now all of that was for nothing. Just another half-year might have let her powers grow enough that Kell's treatment would temper her instead of breaking her down. Even a few more months might have made a difference …

Delaying her capture was not an option. She was simply too vulnerable. Alone in the Ricalani winter an accident or a miscalculation would kill her as quickly as it would any other person, and if she sought shelter in a village or a farmstead it would only be a matter of time before she gave herself away. Once the Wolf Clan caught wind of her they would finish her swiftly. She had power enough to defend herself against swords and knives, but she still had to eat and sleep. No, there was nothing for it now but to bring her in and hope he could keep her from being ruined as he had been.

At least she was alone now. That was a blessing on two counts. Rasten hadn't been looking forward to taking her from Cammarian's camp. Even as unskilled as she was, that handful of people would give her enough power to make the fight a vicious one, if she was desperate enough to turn on them to feed herself.

And then there was Isidro Balorica. The time she had spent with him in her furs had become a torment — and not just because it should have been Rasten making her sob and moan, not that wretched cripple. Of course he understood why she had wanted another warm body in her furs — they both knew what lay in store for her when Rasten brought her
back. What puzzled him was her choice. Why the weak and sickly Balorica and not the prince? Was it the power that drew her? It was the only reason he could think of, but it didn't ring true with the Sierra he knew. She hadn't yet learned that power was the only thing that mattered, and that everything else was a luxury people like them couldn't afford.
Black Sun, let me be mistaken — let her be using him for the power and nothing more.
If he was right, if she really had been foolish enough to develop feelings for Balorica, then she had handed Kell another weapon to use against her. Once he learned of it, Kell would spare no effort to track Balorica down and have him tortured to death in front of her.
You little fool, how could you not have known it would come to that?
But there was nothing to be done about it now. She would learn the folly of her ways soon enough.

She would hate him with every fibre of her being before it was over, but he could live with that. He would do whatever it took to make her strong enough to help him destroy their master.

A prickle of energy interrupted his trail of thought. Rasten stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes, emptying his mind so there was nothing to distract him from the echo of impressions that filtered through his bond with Sierra. In a ghostly vision he saw her running through the trees while the flickering light from her power cast thick black shadows over the snow.

A nagging thought told him he was breathless. Rasten ignored it. Years of experience had taught him to separate his own senses from those of the person bonded to him by ritual. As a flush of energy swelled within her, his body echoed it with a fierce tingling along his bones, and through her eyes he saw a spray of blood, colourless in the moonlight. Somewhere up ahead she was waging a battle and he was too far away to do anything but listen to the echoes that reached him.

For a moment Rasten warred with himself. He wanted to run after her and tear apart the ones who threatened the light of his life and his hope for the future. If he did he would lose these brief impressions, so if she was truly in danger, he wouldn't know until it was too late — but if it did come to that, there wasn't much he could do about it. She wouldn't let him help, however great the danger. All he would do was distract her.

He forced himself to stay where he was as another wave of power washed through him, tingling with such intensity it was painful. A stinging pain on his thigh like the bite of an insect made him slap at it
out of reflex. For a few moments there was nothing but a constant pulse of energy, but then the tension within her eased, and he felt her walking away from the source of the power even though it was still pulsing with energy behind her.
Lackwit girl
, Rasten said to himself in silent disgust.
You'd better not have left a live enemy behind you.

The next sensation confused him completely, as he saw a distinct vision of her weeping in frustration and rage although he knew she wasn't hurt beyond a scratch or two. As her heightened emotions sank back to normal, he lost the contact and found himself alone again. But she was close — so very close.

He set out again, moving silently and cautiously. It was only a short time later that he heard people moving clumsily towards him and ducked off the path to conceal himself behind a stand of trees and wait for them to approach. It was only when they came close that Rasten realised one of them was badly wounded and going into shock — one arm, crudely splinted, was bound across his chest, the other was slung around the shoulders of his companion, who struggled to keep him upright as they staggered through the deep snow.

As the men made their slow way past Rasten removed his mittens and tucked them away, then reached for his dirk. The long, slender blade never saw much use compared with his other tools, but he always kept it close to hand. If one of Kell's subjects began to feed Sierra more power than he and his master could control, the dirk allowed him to finish them quickly and with minimal pain to cut off the supply.

He waited silent and still until the men had their backs to him and then stepped out onto their trail and closed the gap between them with a few quick strides. He seized the wounded man by the shoulder to steady him and punched the dirk into the back of his skull with a crunch of steel and bone. There was no cry of pain or alarm — it was too fast for that. The man collapsed onto the snow with barely a sigh, with the hilt still jutting from the back of his head.

The other hunter turned, gaping at Rasten in a moment of stunned shock before fumbling for his knife.

Rasten threw a lash of power around his wrist and wrenched it away from the hilt. He caught the hunter by the throat and reached inside him with a tendril of power to crush his larynx and keep him from crying out.

In desperation the hunter struck at Rasten's eyes with his free hand, but Rasten caught his arm with another thread of power, locked his wrists together and shoved him to the ground. His lips moving with a hoarse whisper of sound, the man thrashed on the snow, writhing and kicking up clods of ice until Rasten bound his ankles as well and forced him to be still.

He cast a ritual circle around them both, building a wall of pure energy to contain the power and keep Sierra from sensing it.

‘Now then,' Rasten said, squatting down on his heels at the prisoner's side. ‘You can still talk if you keep it to a whisper and there's one thing I want cleared up before we begin. Who sent you after my Sierra?'

The hunter spat at him and Rasten deflected it with a shield that was little more than a blur of ruddy light in the air. He set his foot on the back of the dead man's head and pulled the dirk out with a low moan of steel. With the point of the blade, he cut a nick in the man's jacket, slicing deep enough to cut the skin beneath, and then ripped his clothing open to bare his chest. ‘Let's try again,' Rasten said while the man struggled and writhed in the snow. ‘Who sent you?'

 

Sierra stopped in her tracks with a shiver. The stream of power from the wounded man had stopped, snuffed out as suddenly and swiftly as a candle-flame.
Are you surprised?
she asked herself.
He was going into shock — he probably just fainted.
But her nerves wouldn't stop prickling and she felt a nervous crackle of energy swarm over her skin with an unpleasant tingle. Of course he could have collapsed from shock, but she couldn't sense the other man either and he hadn't gone far enough to be beyond her range.

Rasten.

Sierra struggled out of the mended sled rope and dropped it to the snow, then blindly walked away from the gear she had salvaged from the fire. What was the point of weighing herself down with it? If Rasten was within a few hours of her, he would take her, and that was that. Even with the power she had taken from Isidro and the hunters, she was no match for his years of training and experience. She would have been better off letting the hunters kill her.

Weariness and a deep-seated chill had settled into her bones and the pad of rags she'd bandaged over the cut on her thigh was wet and cold.
The wound was contaminated — Sierra suspected the knife had been smeared with a preparation of blood-root. It was a drug that prevented blood from clotting; hunters and warriors painted it onto their blades and arrowheads so that a wound that might otherwise staunch itself would see human or beast bleed to death. If the hunter had sliced into her inner thigh as he intended, then even if he had missed the vein Sierra would have passed out and bled to death on the snow. As it was, the wound might bleed enough to make her light-headed, but the drug would wear off before she lost enough to be truly in danger.

She'd thought herself lucky when she'd bandaged the wound, but now she wasn't so sure. If only she'd gone back and found the poisoned knife … One good cut on Rasten and even with all his power he would bleed out before he could reach help. Or, if all else failed, she could turn it on herself. But the knife was well behind her now, buried beneath the trampled and bloody snow.

Sierra turned her face up to the sky, blinking back tears that blurred the stars above her. Back when her powers first manifested, she'd overheard a priestess advise her parents to let the winter take her.
If she's truly a Child of the Black Sun
, the priestess had said,
then she was never meant for this world. The kindest thing you can do is send her back to where she belongs, before she brings destruction and despair down upon you all.
Get her drunk, the priestess had told them, drug her with poppy and strong wine, then take her far into the woods and leave her to the snow.

Her parents sent the woman away and began making plans to leave that very night. But her prediction had come true in the end — not just for her kin, but for Cam and his little troupe. Perhaps she should wait for Rasten to find her and let her curse bring destruction down upon them, too. Perhaps Kell would be persuaded to go easy on her if she gave herself up and came in quietly …

Sierra threw her head back and laughed, a near-hysterical giggle. No, she couldn't make herself believe that. Now that he knew she bore the seed of rebellion, Kell would stop at nothing to break her. She'd surrendered once in the hope that it would salvage a desperate situation, but never again. Vasant, the Last Great Mage, hadn't surrendered, even when he knew that death was inevitable — and he'd made Leandra pay for her victory with a river of blood. In her youth, Sierra had wondered why he'd drawn that last battle out in such a senseless display of waste
and destruction, but now she was beginning to understand. She'd tried to do the right thing — she'd given up everything she'd ever loved to salvage some scraps of her life and her family — but it hadn't worked. Kell would never give up, not until he had what he wanted.