She did, however, douse the fire.
And they ran into the cold morning, towards the Hold.
It was late morning when they entered the tunnel, and the heat of the Hold almost suffocated Redmede. But willing hands plucked their lord from the elk and bore him away, and Tamsin placed a warm kiss on Redmede’s cheek that burned there like faery fire until he met his own lady-love at the door of their own hut.
She threw her arms around him. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said.
Ticondaga – Ghause, Amicia, and Ser John
The road along the lake was yet another military road built by the Imperial legions, and it was good stone covered in good gravel. The wagons moved well, even in snow, until they reached the Break, a three-mile stretch where low limestone cliffs had collapsed into the lake, wrecking the road and forcing a wide detour into the Wild. Those three miles of paths and rutted cart tracks took them two days; they made camp at the edge of a frozen swamp that nonetheless seemed to move, and no one from the lowliest squire to Ser John himself went to sleep.
The woods were alive, despite the season. Ser John’s outriders brought in deer, and a cold-slowed boggle; they saw a hastenoch, one of the monstrous armoured elk, across a beaver swamp, and every archer in the column cranked his crossbow.
Something low to the ground, black as night and fast, tracked the column, and on the fourth night, despite torches, fires, and doubled sentries, they lost a horse. In the cold light of a frozen morning, the poor horse’s shocking wounds suggested that the black thing was huge and very hungry. And that it could fly. The horse had landed a blow and there were long black feathers in the snow.
On the fifth evening, the advance guard caught a pair of Ruk crossing a frozen stream. The giants had to be careful of their footing, and the scouts began to pelt them with crossbow bolts.
As the rest of the company came up, the soldiers crowded to the stony bank and shot volleys of bolts. The men were excited – charged with spirit, animated, eyes glittering as they spanned and shot, spanned and shot, and the men-at-arms awaited the inevitable moment when the giants rushed their tormentors. But the twenty heavy crossbows made short work of the monsters. The larger went down last, screaming with rage, and yet the final look welded to its broad features was one of baffled puzzlement, like an old dog confronted with a strange new thing.
The men fell silent.
Sister Amicia rode up the column, looked at the dead creatures in the stream, and then at Ser John.
‘They had to die,’ he said defensively.
Amicia met his eye and he flinched. ‘If they’d got among us-’ he said.
She pushed a tendril of hair back into her hood. ‘Ser John, I will not debate military matters with you.’ More quietly, she said, ‘But the Ruk are as biddable as children, and I could have sent them about their own business as easily as you killed them. They were ensorcelled. I can feel it.’ She shook her head. ‘It is a crime,’ she added. ‘A crime to make them into tools, and a crime to murder them.’
The soldiers around her were dismayed, and they reacted in all the ways men react when dismayed. Some grew angry. Others turned their heads away.
Ser John shook his head. ‘Listen, sister. I understand – the Wild is not a simple enemy. But neither can we stop to bargain with the Wild.’
‘Men are always in a hurry,’ she said. ‘And they kill what they do not understand.’
The next day, Amicia said mass. It was odd, to say the least, for many of the soldiers to take communion from a woman, but it was odd to be in the Wild in mid-winter and Ser John made no scruple to kneel and take the host from her hands. Her mass was well attended.
The company marched away as the red ball of the sun peeked above the mountains to the east across the lake.
About the time the bells would have been sounding for nonnes at Lissen Carrak, they rolled into a heavy snow shower.
Amicia drew on her second hood, and Ser John reined in beside her. ‘We’re less than a day from Ticondaga,’ he said. ‘Can you foretell the weather?’
She steadied herself. ‘I can try,’ she said. She reached out-
She gasped. ‘There is something malevolent – in the woods.’ She paused. ‘Virgin protect us – they’re ahead of us and around us-’
Ser John loosened his sword in its sheath. ‘How close?’
She shook her head. ‘Let me pray,’ she said.
‘Stand to!’ shouted Ser John, rising in his stirrups.
Conversation stilled. The wagons halted. The Etruscans leaped onto their wagon beds and untied heavy ropes and then lifted wooden shutters into place, making their four wagons into small fortresses full of crossbowmen in the twinkling of an eye. Horse harness jingled, and the bowmen spanned their weapons.
‘It is north of here, moving-’ She paused. ‘Moving west. I hid myself. Ser John – it is- There is already fighting. Hurry.’
‘What kind of fighting?’ he asked.
‘People are under attack,’ Amicia said. ‘Come!’
She rode ahead.
‘Damn it!’ Ser John cursed. ‘Cover her!’
Amicia bolted away and was lost in the soft curtain of snow, and the vanguard of the column cantered after her.
‘Contact!’ shouted a man in the main column, far behind him.
‘Shit,’ Ser John said. He heard crossbows snapping away. Behind him.
The convoy was his duty, but the belle soeur was his friend.
‘Follow me!’ he roared, and galloped into the snow after the mad nun and her palfrey into a snowfall that got worse by the second.
Men were riding hard, struggling to get frozen fingers into steel gauntlets as they rode through blinding snow, and none of them had their visors closed. It was a recipe for disaster.
He heard Amicia’s shout. Then she said – quite distinctly – Fiat lux.
He almost lost his seat at the burst of light. Behind him, a mounted knight and his horse went down on the road. It was as if he was at the centre of the sun.
Something hit him in the head, and darkness brushed his face – he felt a burning, and his sword arm acted. He connected – the thing screamed, his horse reared under him and he managed to get his visor closed by slamming his chin down onto his breastplate as the winged darkness descended again.
He cut at it, wondering what in the name of hell he was fighting.
‘Trolls!’ shouted one of his knights.
Ser John had time to think that whatever he was fighting was no troll.
He put his spurs into his mount as he was struck a third time – his horse burst forward, and he passed behind Sister Amicia, whose hands were the centre of a circle of radiance. As he rode through it, the black thing vanished from around his head and he caught – in the interrupted peripheral vision of his visor – a glimpse of a wing with barbed black feathers.
There were two trolls in the road, towering over a red puddle, and then he struck two-handed and his great sword shattered – but so did the nearest troll’s arm. The thing roared, its bottomless violet gullet illuminated by Amicia’s working.
Its other fist knocked him from the saddle and he landed heavily. All that saved him was the snow, and even with a foot of the stuff over the rock, he hit hard, there was pain in his back and his head struck a projecting stone hard enough to deform his helmet.
He had no idea how long he’d been out and he made himself move. His back screamed. He couldn’t rise to his feet, but had to roll onto his stomach and get to his knees, and with every heartbeat he was conscious that the two trolls were just a horse length away in the snow. Men were screaming, and blood was pouring out of his nose.
Another wave of brilliant golden light. The nearest troll turned and counter-cast a purple-green fog, and where the two workings met they sparkled like metal struck with a hammer on the forge and there was a long crack like lightning striking close by – except that it went on and on. Ser John, who was old in the ways of pain, got his left foot under his left hip and pushed himself erect. His horse was screaming, down the bank, its shrill neighs speaking of pain and panic.