She couldn’t believe that all their efforts to make the airship flyable and escape from Falk’s manor had been for naught. She couldn’t believe that High Raven-who she had decided was a fair and honorable man who would not turn Anton over to the fate that Falk and Mother Northwind intended for him-would betray them to the witch just because she used to heal broken bones and chase away fevers for the clan. The Commoners in Falk’s demesne also praised her healing abilities, but that didn’t make what she intended to do any less evil!
But here they were, sliding across the ice pulled by the panting dogs whose breath-fog swept across them, as though to emphasize just how fast they were moving toward the one place they didn’t want to go.
The first night they made use of a rough stone building nestled against a hillside, all of them, men and dogs and Brenna alike, sleeping around a central fire pit, the men taking turns watching through the night. There was little talking.
After another day’s miserable travel, they made camp in a sheltered cove, where piles of boulders formed a kind of protective embrace around a curved beach, and the ground inside sloped up sharply into trees. You couldn’t say it stopped the relentless, bitter wind entirely, but it reduced it to fretful, swirling breezes that, unlike the wind on the lake, didn’t feel like a sharp knife cutting deeper into any exposed flesh… until you couldn’t feel the flesh at all, of course. Before they had left the Minik camp, their new captors had insisted that both she and Anton spread protective animal grease on their faces and any other skin left exposed by their coats and gloves, augmented by the additional clothing their new captors had brought with them. They hadn’t suffered frostbite, but they smelled like last week’s breakfast.
A ring of fire-blackened stones on the beach mutely testified that the cove had been used for camps before. As tents were hauled out and set up by one man, fire and food were arranged by another, and the other two tended to the dogs, giving them food and water and thoroughly examining ther feet-two were already wearing little leather booties that Brenna might have thought cute if the dogs wearing them didn’t weigh better than half as much as she did and had fangs roughly the size of her little finger, which they enthusiastically showed whenever she got too near.
Brenna and Anton sat on rocks as close to the fire as they could get once it was lit. Brenna had been cold the day before; after a second day on the ice, she was beginning to think she would never be warm again. But she’d heard their leader say they would be off the ice some time tomorrow, and now she dared to ask him about it as he hung a stewpot from the metal rod suspended over the fire by two forked sticks.
She didn’t really expect him to answer, but he surprised her. “Before noon. Foam River. Not that we’re going into the town. But that’s where the next lot’ll take over.” He spat into the fire, which sizzled. “Good riddance, I say. Don’t know what you’re wanted for, but I’ll be glad to be-”
He stopped in mid-sentence, looking puzzled, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell face forward into the fire. Brenna screamed and jumped up, and only then, as his clothes began to smolder and the smell of cooking meat rose into the still night air, saw the feathered shaft protruding from his back.
The other three had spun as one at the sound of their leader falling into the fire, and as one they fell, two killed instantly, the third screaming in agony as a shaft shattered his knee. Blood fountained from a severed artery, and his screaming was short-lived.
The screams had set off the dogs, which howled and barked and ran wildly back and forth. Anton ran to Brenna, who grabbed him and hugged him tight, pressing her face into his shoulder, trying to close her ears to the horrible sizzling of the man in the fire, to the noise of the dogs…
… to the crunch of running footsteps in the snow. Her head shot up as six men burst into the light, the naked swords in their hands glittering with frost. Enchanted, she thought.
The new arrivals were dressed all in white: white coats, white trousers, white boots. Even their helmets were painted white. But on their shoulders were round blue patches slashed across with a streak of red.
Army soldiers, Brenna realized. The first, a tall man with a large, beaked nose and a bushy mustache rimed with frost, strode over to them. “I am Sergeant Meerk,” he said. “By order of Lord Falk, I arrest you. You are to be returned immediately to the Palace.”
Brenna exchanged a startled look with Anton. It made no sense! The men who had just died had already been taking them to Falk… well, Mother Northwind, but that would have been on Falk’s behalf…
… wouldn’t it?
But if these men were acting on Lord Falk’s orders, maybe…
“I am Lord Falk’s ward,” she said. “I thank you for your rescue, but I must demand that you-”
“I know who you are,” the guardsman said. “And my orders are to arrest you for certain, him,” he nodded at the boy, “if at all possible… and do what we liked with the others.” He took a couple of steps to the fire and kicked the body off of it. “Commoner trash!” Brenna hid her face against Anton’s shoulder again, but not before she’d had one horrible glimpse of what was left of the dead man’s face.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she mumbled to Anton.
“Not on my shoulder,” he whispered. “Although I guess it would be fair turnabout for what I did to you the day we met…”
Despite everything, that made her chuckle. It threatened to turn into hysterics, though, so she bit it off. “There’s something strange here,” she whispered. “The dogsledders were taking us to Mother Northwind, who Falk told to twist your mind to make you loyal to him. These guards are taking orders from Falk, too… and yet they killed Mother Northwind’s men.”
“I know,” Anton murmured. “Maybe-”
But Sergeant Meerk was pulling him away. “Enough of that,” he snapped. “There’s a carriage waiting to take us to New Cabora, but we have to get to the road and it’s a long walk.”
He snapped orders, and while two men stayed behind to deal with the cleanup, he and the other three formed a square around Anton and Brenna and marched them up the hillside into the snowy forest.
There was no chance to talk again during that hourslong hike, no chance to talk in the carriage with two guards keeping them silent.
As it turned out, there would be no chance to talk again for a very long time.
Karl jerked awake, not sure why. He lay in darkness for one long breathless moment, then heard the noise of splintering wood downstairs, followed by shouts and the clash of steel on steel.
His bedroom door crashed open, letting in red light and acrid smoke. Denson, sword in hand, shouted, “Get up!” Karl, naked, scrambled out of bed and grabbed the dressing gown Goodwife Beth had given him, but he barely had time to slip his arms into it before Denson grabbed him and shoved him toward the far end of the hallway, where the false wall hid the extended corridor built into the hillside. Karl managed to get the dressing gown cinched as they skidded to a halt at the wall. Downstairs there was a flash of blue light and a man screamed, the sound ending abruptly. Denson had opened the panel in the left wall that hid the lever to open the door; he pulled it hard.
“What’s going on?” Karl said. His heart pounded in his ears. Two minutes earlier he had been fast asleep and his brain was playing catch-up to his frightened body. “An attack?”
“Falk’s rutting guards,” Denson snarled. “Jopps must have sold us out. Open, damn it!” he shouted at the wall, which was slowly starting to slide aside.
More shouts, the clash of swords, on the stairs now. Karl, glancing back, saw Vinthor’s head appear. Then Denson grabbed him and dragged him into the hidden hallway, turned and grabbed another lever on that side. As the door began to close, Karl saw Vinthor drop from sight. An instant later two men in the blue-and-red uniforms of Royal guards stormed up the stairs and went straight into Karl’s room. Finding it empty, they turned the other way-just in time to see the door to the secret passage closing, but with no time to reach it before it sealed.