Twenty-Two Blood Upon the Snow

TWENTY-TWO

Blood Upon the Snow

SAMUEL

H ooves rippled. Dogs bayed. Mary and I huddled close in the saddle, following Grant's lead down a track of ice-crusted mud and dusted snow. With every thunder of my heart, I resisted the urge to shout to Grant, to question him and drive our mounts to a gallop. The road was too uneven, slick with ice and scattered with fallen branches, not to mention our horses were already fatigued.

Grant threw out an arm and we diverted, clustering on the bank of a swift creek. Ice rimmed the shores but a recent thaw had opened the center, where water glistened in the filtered forest light.

"Take the saddlebags," Grant instructed. He helped Benedict dismount and lean against a tree. "Ben, give me your shirt."

"Pardon me?" Benedict squinted at him, the question disorienting him.

Mary and I dismounted, and I pulled off the saddle bags.

"For the dogs. Give it to me." Grant drew his pistol and primed it, sparing my brother half a glance. "Mary, get into the river and sing up the thickest snow you can. Start walking, that way."

He pointed downstream.

Shivering, Ben pulled his shirt over his head and passed it to Grant. The top half of his pale stomach fluttered above his breeches and belt. He wore layers of bruises, better seen in the daylight.

Mary held out her hands to me. "Give me some of those."

I laid the lighter saddlebags over her shoulder and watched as she picked her way across the ice. It cracked beneath her feet, but she kept upright and, gasping at the cold, grinned stiffly back at me.

"Brisk," she commented and began to slosh downstream. She hummed as she went, picking up notes of a simple tune.

Dogs continued to bay, jarring with her song. Closer now. The wind picked up, ghosting across my cheeks, thick with the scent of snow and frozen forest.

A whirl of fresh snow swept Mary up in a ripple of clothes and hair, then she vanished from sight.

I squinted through snow-laden lashes at Ben. "Ready to move?"

My brother finished buttoning his coat over his bare chest and held out an impatient arm. "Help me."

I put an arm under his shoulder. We descended into the creek with a splash and a round of muffled curses, only half of which came from Ben. The water was shockingly cold, and my bones hurt from my toes to my clenched jaw.

"Say goodbye," Grant called. That was all the warning we got before he slapped the flank of my anxious mare. Both horses cantered away up the road, tack jingling and hooves thundering. I glimpsed Ben's soiled shirt fluttering from one saddle, then they too disappeared into the snow.

"How many times have you done this?" I asked Grant as he joined us in the water, wincing and muttering. We started off after Mary, I supporting Ben while Grant watched our backs.

The former highwayman shrugged. "Four or five. Though I've never had a Stormsinger to cover my tracks, and I prefer to weigh the horses down with something. Hopefully the snow will disguise the trail enough. They'll likely scout the creek after us regardless, but the hounds will go after the horses."

"If I remember correctly," Benedict said through gritted teeth. "You met Mary in prison?"

"I was only caught once," Grant scoffed. "And I escaped."

"Thanks to Mary." Despite the situation—or maybe because of it—the flash of resentment I felt at Grant's casual mention of the incident caught me by surprise. "Whereupon you sold her."

Grant fell silent, cowed. In that quiet Mary's voice came to us in eerie gusts and snatches.

"Desperation makes fools of us all," the highwayman muttered.

A plodding, wind-harried silence overtook us. Our pursuers drew ever closer, my Sooth's senses prickling, teasing the hair on the back of my neck. I looked back, edging into the Dark Water, and noted magelights off in the forest.

I caught Grant's eye. "They are still closing. One Sooth, one Magni."

"That we can see," Ben interjected. "There may be more with talismans."

Grant surveyed our surroundings. We had entered a thick stand of cedars, dark leaves and fraying trunks girded with white. "We should make a stand. This is as good a place as any."

We made for the bank.

"Can you shoot?" I asked Ben as he slouched into the shelter of a thick, divided trunk.

He unshouldered his musket and set to priming it, despite a perceptible shiver in his fingers. He drove the ramrod down in two sharp passes. "I can, but I would prefer not to waste that shot Mary stole. I would prefer they killed one another."

He spoke with the practicality of a butcher at his bench.

Grant met my gaze, and I saw in his face the same look I had seen in the eyes of my uncle, my aunt, Mary, and countless others when they were reminded of the depths of Ben's power.

"Try to leave one of them alive—an officer, if there is one," Grant suggested. "Samuel, will you find Mary?"

Ben nodded and looked to his priming.

He and Grant fell into position, and I slipped up the bank, moving quickly away from the uneven creek bed. The wind and snow whipped past me in a steady stream, but my feet had long numbed, and I felt no cold beneath my thick coat. There was only heat, sweat, and the unyielding threat of danger.

Mary came into sight, harried by nearly horizontal snow.

"We shall make a stand," I called, just loud enough to carry. "They have a Sooth and a Magni, at the least."

She took my proffered hand and splashed onto shore then followed me back towards Grant and Benedict. I spied my brother on the far side of the creek, rifle nestled in the crook of a branch. Grant crouched beside him, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other.

Mary dropped the saddlebags on our side of the water and reached into her pocket, producing a few lead balls. She plucked out two—one marked with a red splotch of paint, one green. "I have extras to give the Admiralty. But there is only one for a Sooth. I think it is worth using."

She held up the ball in question. I paused, simultaneously grateful for and saddened by her pragmatism. I plucked the green shot from her hand, bare and cool, and pinched with cold. My connection to the Other immediately faltered, then recovered as the ball disappeared into my musket's barrel.

Mary's own fingers closed on the red shot, and she readied her pistol.

After an interminable time, six figures emerged from the snow— three on each bank. They crept soundlessly, even with the wind at their backs, and my esteem for Mereish soldiers rose a grudging notch. For soldiers they were: they wore the pale grey of Mereish infantry rather than the brown of the prison guards.

The Other tugged at me, and I let it swell. Daylight fled and gloom rose as the creek overflowed its banks and transformed into the Dark Water. Mary and Ben were both hidden, their talismans intact, but a small woman was surrounded by a deep, forest green. Their Sooth. The Magni was across the creek, on Mary's and my side.

"The Magni is that older man—grey hair, short beard," I murmured to Mary. "The Sooth that short woman, on Benedict's side."

She nodded, already seeking out her target. I did the same, tracking the other Sooth on the opposite bank. She was small, the kind of woman one might mistake for a child in a crowd, but there was nothing childlike about the cool set of her lips. She slipped through the trees, her gaze flicking from my location to Benedict's sheltering tree. She might not be able to see Ben in the Other like she could me, but she had certainly sensed his presence.

Benedict met my gaze across the water, through the veil of snow. His expression was cool, but I saw a twitch beneath it, a readiness for violence that bordered on hunger. It was a face he had worn a hundred times before. On any other day, this was the moment when I should intervene, talk him down, seek to separate him from circumstances where the full brunt of his corruption might be unleashed.

But I did not. Instead, I dropped my chin in the barest nod, and he inclined his in return.

The soldiers all halted in their tracks. I saw the terror and confusion in their eyes for an instant, then Benedict had them completely in his thrall. Their expressions glazed.

Only the mages broke free. The Sooth dove for cover while the Magni, not ten paces from Mary and I, stepped neatly behind a tree.

What happened next came in rapid sequence, nearly too quick to follow. Benedict's musket rang out. A soldier's head snapped back in a spray of blood, brain and skull, and the rest of her crumpled. One of her comrades screamed—a fractured, masculine wail that made my stomach flip. That cry cut off with another shot as one of the grieving man's own comrades, on Mary's and my bank, turned to shoot him in the throat. Arterial blood burst, scattering across the white of the snow.

His cries turned to a gargle, and Ben allowed him to collapse into the water with a splash and crack of ice.

In the same breath, the Sooth rose up from behind a hulking, many-trunked cedar and shot Benedict. My brother spasmed back into the snow, roaring in frustration and clutching at… his chest? No, his upper arm.

Grant shoved in front of my brother and shot at the Sooth, but she was already gone.

The enemies on our side of the creek broke out of Ben's thrall and scattered for shelter. Mary crouched lower beside me, still as a rabbit in the brush, and I sighted the Sooth down the length of my barrel.

"Shoot her," Mary hissed.

The other mage vanished behind a tree and did not come out again. "No clean shot," I grunted.

My voice sounded louder than I intended. Silence had fallen around us, a thick hush that clawed at my nerves and compounded my aching head as each party waited for the other to act. In the creek, the soldier who had been shot in the throat ceased to bleed, and the last tendrils of red dispersed in the bubbling current.

I glimpsed Ben exchanging rapid whispers with Grant. Ben pulled a knife and shoved it into the other man's hand, jerking his coat from his wounded arm. Grant looked ill, and I guessed what was happening: Ben wanted him to cut the Magni-suppressing shot from his arm.

"Tane wants to use the trees." Mary's voice was low and soft, carried between us on a tamed scrap of wind. "We can force the Mereish out of hiding."

"They will know you are ghiseau ," I countered, though my mind already leapt to the possibilities.

"They already may." Mary shifted into a crouch. "Besides, they won't be telling anyone else. Am I doing this?"

"Do it."

She pressed her bare, free hand into the bark of the tree and closed her eyes.

A new voice cut through the forest.

"We have twelve more soldiers on their way," a female voice called in Usti. The Sooth, her small frame well hidden behind her tree. "This is your opportunity to surrender. Three of you are mages. Two of you are ghiseau . Your lives have value, and I do not want to kill you."

None of us were foolish enough to reply. Mary remained eerily still, a faint glow manifesting where she touched the tree.

On our side of the river, a different tree shuddered. A male voice cried out and a musket immediately cracked, tearing my focus from the hidden Sooth.

One of the hidden soldiers toppled into sight, scrabbling at his chest and gasping. Grant meanwhile ducked back under cover, gunsmoke dispersing above him. Benedict could barely be seen beside him, tucked into the tree and clutching an arm soaked in blood. I could not tell if Grant had been successful in removing the shot.

The entire forest began to shudder, then to sway and creak. Branches broke and toppled into the snow with muffled whumps , while the ground began to ripple with coiling roots.

The Sooth twitched into sight. I fired. She fell.

My victory was short-lived. I had barely felt the musket kick before Mary darted out of shelter and sprinted through the snow and falling branches—directly towards our enemies.

The Magni man rose, facing her down. I had no time to reload; Mary, steadily advancing through the snow, leveled her pistol and fired.

The Magni jerked and dropped his musket, but not before the muzzle flashed.

A shot slammed into a tree branch right in front of Mary's head— a branch that had not been there an instant before. The branch exploded and ghisten light flared.

Not a single shard touched Mary. She was already behind another tree, breathing in quick, measured breaths.

The mages were down. There was only one soldier left.

An agonized shout broke the stillness. Across the river, Ben rose to his feet. His arm was still sheathed in blood, his coat hanging off him and shoulder exposed.

But I felt his power billow out once again. The last soldier stepped out from behind the tree, her arms raised, every inch of her trembling as she pointed her own pistol under her chin.

More blood splattered across the snow.

In the stillness that followed, Mary's eyes found mine. I saw relief in her face, along with an odd closedness—an echo of shock and a shadow of turmoil.

I went to her, but something in her posture warned me not to pull her into my arms. Instead, I extended a hand, and she took it. Her touch wavered, fingers trembling, but, as I tightened my grip, they stilled.

"Ready?" I asked.

She ducked her chin.

The four of us regrouped around the Mereish Sooth. She sat against a tree, bleeding profusely from a wound to the chest. I had been aiming for her arm and felt a rumble of regret. Whether or not that wound was fatal would entirely depend on how far behind her comrades were.

It also destroyed the possibility of recovering our single Sooth shot without killing her outright, and the thought of sifting around in the open chest of a still-warm corpse was not one I entertained.

"How are you tracking us?" I asked.

The Sooth clutched her chest, her face sheeted with pain and her eyes battling to stay open.

"She's in too much pain, it's useless," Mary said. She looked more frantic than ever. "We need to move."

Ben crouched before the Sooth, and she cried out, though he had not touched her.

"How are you tracking us?" Ben asked. Using his good hand, he pulled the Sooth talisman from beneath his shirt. "Does this not work?"

"The Ess Noti," she rasped. Her eyes were so wide with panic I half feared they would rupture. "Tracking him ."

"How?" Mary demanded, turning on me. "When did a Mereish Sooth touch you?"

I shook my head, more unsettled than I cared to show.

"How are they following me?" I repeated to our prisoner.

The Sooth shook her head in a compulsive shudder and every muscle in her body flared taut. "I don't know!"

"Then who is it and where are they?"

"Enisca Alamay. Magni. And Inis Hae, the Summoner," she rattled, her voice weakening. In her compulsion to speak, Ben was not allowing her to breathe. "Coming. Close."

Summoner. A Sooth Adjacent, like me. As to Enisca—that was a woman's name.

A piece clicked together in my mind, backed by my sorcery. "Is Enisca Alamay blonde?"

The Sooth stared at me in blank desperation, tears streaming down her face and blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. The sound of her breaths was becoming thicker.

"Are they with the other soldiers you spoke of?" Ben pressed.

"No." The word was almost inaudible, the tension in the dying mage difficult to watch.

"Ben," I snapped. "Be gentler."

My brother muttered something under his breath, but he stepped back. The other Sooth sagged as if a hand had dropped from her throat.

"We need to leave," Mary said, her voice far calmer than her expression. She stared back downriver. "We're losing any lead we had."

Grant nodded reluctantly. "Agreed. But… should we leave her? Alive?"

The Sooth's legs contorted as she tried to push herself farther away, but there was nowhere to go. "Yes, there is no reason to kill me! Just… leave me as I am. Please. They already know who you are. They will follow you everywhere you go. They find us. That's what they do."

"Us?" I repeated.

Her eyes swiveled to me, now filled with haunted desperation.

"Us," she affirmed in a whisper. "Mages. Mereish or Aeadine, there is little difference."

My skin crawled. "What else do you know?"

"Nothing." Her voice was a whimper now, Ben squeezing each word from her. "I'm given orders. I execute them."

"And I am leaving now," Grant said, grabbing his and Ben's muskets and giving us all a flat smile. He caught Mary's gaze and raised his brows.

She took a step backwards, away from Ben and I, then went to retrieve the saddlebags from where we had dumped them in the snow.

Mary's departure was like a dash of cold water. I took Ben's arm— his good one, as the other was limp and soaked with blood. "They are right. We cannot afford to waste time, and you are already injured."

Ben remained, looking down at the helpless Sooth. "She shot me," he pointed out, his voice cold again. "I want to kill her."

"And I shot her. Let us go ."

I thought Ben would not comply, but he did. Together, the four of us set off, leaving behind the carnage—the soldiers and the mages, some dead, some clinging to life.

"I am going somewhere warm after this," my brother told me, scrubbing blood from his face as we trudged into the forest. "The Mereish South Isles. I hear it hardly snows."

I felt myself smile, but there was no emotion to it. "Maybe I will come with you."