Captain's Fury

Chapter 44

The plan was working perfectly, and that made Amara nervous.

An evening and morning practicing under Gaius's tutelage had drastically expanded Amara's ability to craft a veil. It was not so much a matter of learning something new as it was of being presented with techniques she was already familiar with in new ways. Gaius seemed to have an instinctive knack for picking out the strengths and weaknesses of her crafting, and showed her how to apply the stronger aspects of her personal talents in a new way.

By the time the sun was high, Amara was holding a veil nearly ten feet across, with only a little more effort than it took to fly.

"Excellent," Gaius said, smiling. "I believe Maestro Vircani must have been your windcrafting instructor."

"Yes," Amara said, smiling. She had never imagined herself managing a veil so large with such comparative ease. "Yes, he was. He thought very little of my work, too. Except for the flying."

"Small-minded old goat," Gaius murmured, suppressing another cough. "He was of the school of thought that held that any furycrafting concept worth employing was already being employed, and therefore there was no need to teach multiple approaches to any given task since the one that he knew was already good enough."

"I just never thought thinking of light as a windstream," Amara said. "Only bending it, like for a farseeing. I can concentrate on windstreams all day."

"Furycrafting is as much about imagination as concentration," Gaius murmured. "Bear that in mind when you try anything new in your crafting, Countess. Imagination. Different ways of visualizing your goal. It wouldn't startle me in the least to see you manage quite a respectable level of weathe re rafting, should you wish it."

Amara blinked at him. "Really?"

"Certainly."

Bernard murmured, "A breeze to blow away some of these bugs might be nice." He squinted through the grass at the patrolled area. "I'm still not sure we shouldn't do this at night."

"Of course we should do it at night," Amara said. "And that's when they'll expect anyone to try to sneak through their pickets. They'll have more men on duty, and they'll be more alert-whereas if we move through during the day, the men will be less cautious and more likely to be distracted.'

Bernard frowned and nodded. "But if one of them does notice us, they'll have awfully nice light for shooting."

"And we'll have nice light for running away-unless you prefer to flee through strange country in the dark."

Her husband's mouth twisted sourly. "I suppose there's no good way to do this, is there?"

"Precisely," Gaius murmured wearily.

Bernard nodded. "Then now is as good a time as any."

"All right," Amara breathed.

Bernard took up Gaius's stretcher and nodded at Amara. Then he half closed his eyes, and the ground beneath her feet quivered for a moment, a pulse of movement that she could barely detect. A moment later, it repeated, at the pace of a sleeping man's heartbeat.

Amara murmured to Cirrus and felt the light around them change subtly as she brought up the veil. Everything outside the veil blurred, colors twisting and overlapping, shapes softening to mere blobs of color. It was one of the things that made a windcrafter's veil different from one crafted with wood furies. The woodcrafted veil hid and concealed, as long as there were shadows and vegetable shapes to manipulate. The air veil needed no such condition-but it did limit the amount of light that could pass through it, making the world outside the veil look like something seen through poor glass, or murky seawater.

"There," Amara said quietly- "Bernard?"

"Ready," he said.

And they started toward the enemy positions, with Amara in the lead. It took them most of the afternoon to reach the edges of the swamp, where the ground began to rise. Amara almost wanted to hold her breath as they approached the first concealed position. They passed by it, close enough to smell the smoke from a campfire-and to smell the aroma of freshly baked bread. Amara's stomach practically leapt from beneath her belt, and even Gaius looked a little wistful.

It wasn't for another several steps that Amara saw the dogs, great rangy beasts, outside the camp. They were sprawled in the sunshine, asleep, and likely to stay that way under the gentle, slow pulse of Bernard's earthcrafting.

And then they were past the outpost, with their foe none the wiser.

The second watch post was much the same. They walked slowly, steadily by the tree supporting the observation blinds, and no one seemed to detect them. They kept up the same slow, careful pace for several hundred more blessedly dry, firm-grounded yards, uphill all the way.

It couldn't be that simple, could it? Amara had imagined dozens of ways for their efforts to go disastrously awry, but none of them had come to pass. Something had to go wrong. Something always went wrong. Yet nothing had, and it made her nervous.

A fresh breeze hit them, clean air that smelled of pine, and Amara felt like singing.

And then hunting horns began blowing behind them.

She and Bernard whirled to look back at the swamps, and Bernard cursed. "One of their patrols must have swept by and found our trail. They'll be coming."

Amara felt obliquely reassured by the sudden dour turn of events. Certainly, it meant that a great many madmen were shortly to be pelting after them, determined to wipe them out-but at least she was in a familiar element.

"Very well. Our options?"

"Limited," Gaius said, and coughed some more.

"I can't erase our trail and still carry the stretcher," Bernard said. "We should run for the mountains. Dark's coming on. If we're still free by then, it should give us enough time to get Gaius close enough."

Amara nodded. "Then we run."

She turned and began jogging forward, up the hill, disdaining the wind-crafted veil. The enemy already knew they were here. The veil would just be a drain of energy that could better be used to keep moving. Bernard kept up with her, even bearing Gaius's stretcher, though he breathed heavily as they ran.

The land rose steadily, the willows and fronds of the swamps dying away, replaced by fir and pine. The hunting horns kept sounding behind them, and Amara thought she could hear them coming steadily closer.

Amara had never particularly loved running, but the weeks of travel had done somewhat to harden her for the pace, and a gentle effort to guide Cirrus ensured that she never ran short of breath. As a result, her muscles didn't begin burning until well into the first hour, and she kept the pace quick and steady.

The ankle the garim had injured twinged several times, and she took care to place her foot carefully; but evidently she'd had enough time to recover from the injury, and she was able to keep the pace she had set for them.

Bernard lumbered along behind her, implacably moving ahead despite his burden, and though his breathing was labored, his steps never faltered.

Amara found a smooth track leading up toward the mountains and followed it, her shadow lengthening on the hillside in front of her as the sun set behind them. She kept running for another half hour, and felt her arms and legs beginning to shake with weariness.

That was when they heard the hunting horns being blown ahead of them as well as behind. Amara slowed up, looking over her shoulder at Bernard.

"Aye," Bernard panted. "Surprised it took them this long." Fie came to a halt, breathing heavily, and Amara wished she could send Cirrus to ease his breathing as well-but without being able to sense the changing pressures, the way she sensed her own breathing, she could inflict a number of forms of injury on him, ranging from the inconvenient to the excruciating.

Bernard glanced around, frowning in thought, as he settled the stretcher on the ground, staring up the slope toward the mountains, golden in the setting sun. "They're moving fast. Mounted. We've only got a few minutes." He reached into the stretcher, murmured, "Excuse me, sire," and drew out his bow.

"Mounted," Amara murmured. She went to check on Gaius as Bernard strung his bow. The First Lord was pale with pain. He gave Amara a faint smile, and said, "I hardly have the right to say it, but I th-think I've had enough running today."

"Just rest," Amara said. She dragged the stretcher as gently as she could to one side, under the shelter of some pine branches. Then she went to her husband. "I need to know something."

"Yes," Bernard said. "I was serious when I said I'd never done that with any woman but you."

She slapped his shoulder lightly. "Mind on business, Count Calderon. You can calm animals. Can you uncalm them, too?"

He grimaced. "Spook their horses? Hate to do it. Horses are big, strong animals. Get them scared enough, they can hurt themselves pretty bad."

"They're coming to kill us," Amara pointed out.

"The riders are. I doubt the horses have strong feelings one way or the other."

Amara stopped and stared at him for a moment, smiling faintly. "You can strike down enemy Knights, shoot furious High Lords from the sky, make war on creatures out of nightmares, and fight garim the size of ponies three at a time without flinching. But you don't want to frighten horses."

Bernard looked at something of a loss. He spread his hands, and said, "I like horses."

She leaned over and kissed him. Then she said, "I need you to do it."

He winced but nodded.

"Can you tell how many are coming?" she asked.

He jerked his head in a nod and rested his fingertips lightly on the ground. "Eight," he reported after a moment. "There's another group several miles behind them. Much larger."

"Then the first eight are the men who were on duty. The others, perhaps, the men who had been sleeping."

"Yes, dear." Bernard sighed, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. "You were right."

Amara peered at the falling sun. "I want to hit them and take two of their horses. Mounted, in the dark, we can get farther."

"And the horses will know their way back to their stables," Bernard said. He glanced toward the First Lord's stretcher. "He can't ride. And in the dark, on this terrain, there's no way we can sling the stretcher between our mounts."

"We don't need to," Amara said. "Remember how you pulled me, back at Second Calderon?"

Bernard grinned suddenly. Amara had been too weary for full flight, and the skies had been heavily patrolled by the enemy. To catch a group of men they'd been pursuing, he'd used his intimate knowledge of the valley's furies to travel on a ripple of moving earth, a feat that only someone with such knowledge could manage. Amara could never have kept the pace, and so she had crafted a cushion of air to lift her from the ground and had held on to a tether fastened to Bernards belt.

"Might work," he said. "But it will be loud."

"Not as much as you'd think. I can suppress some of it."

"How long can you sustain it?" Bernard asked.

"As long as I need to."

Horns sounded again, upslope, and were answered distantly from behind them. This time, Amara actually caught a flash of movement in the trees.

"All right," she said quietly. "This is what I want to do."

The first rider to come plunging down the trail never had a chance. Amara dropped her veil when he was twenty feet away, and by the time he saw Bernard standing with his great bow drawn tight, it was too late for him to avoid the shot. The Count of Calderon's arrow took him in the bridge of his nose and lifted him from the back of his horse as if struck with a lance. A flash of silver collar proclaimed the man one of the Immortals.

The second rider shouted and lifted his spear, but could do no more before Amara settled a veil around him, blotting him from sight and half-blinding him. The man hesitated, slowing, and the horse of the rider immediately behind him crashed into him, screaming in sudden fear at the scent of hot blood.

Horses and men went sprawling, and the equine screams abruptly rose in pitch and volume. Animals bucked and thrashed in pure panic, under Bernards earthcrafting, sending some of the Immortals sprawling to the ground while others clung to their inexplicably hysterical mounts and were carried in every direction.

Bernard wasted no time. A dismounted Immortal rose, weapon in hand, his eyes gleaming with exaltation as he turned toward his prey. Another arrow slammed into his head, felling him instantly. A third Immortal raised a circular steel shield to protect his face as he charged. Bernard shot him through the thigh, breaking the bone that supported it, and the Immortal went down in a sprawl. Before he could recover, Bernard put a second arrow through his neck in a fountain of gore. The man staggered to his feet despite the horrible wounds, took two wobbling steps forward, and then sank to the earth and was still.

Amara did not dare close with the remaining Immortal on the ground. She was not entirely unskilled at swordplay, but she was no match for one of Kalare's manufactured madmen and doubted she could kill him without being slain or badly injured herself.

So with a flick of her hand, she dropped the veil that was hampering him and sent Cirrus surging around the Immortal's face and head to cut off his air.

The man staggered forward, sword raised, and Amara kept her own weapon in hand-but she circled away from him nimbly, carefully keeping the distance between them open. The Immortal's face turned pink. Then red. His steps began to falter. His face went purple. At the last, his lips were blue, his chest heaving desperately. Amara could feel him, through Cirrus, struggling vainly to draw a breath.

Then he simply dropped, eyes staring sightlessly, and struggled to breathe no more.

Amara stared at him blankly for a moment.

Then she retched onto the ground in front of her.

She remained there, head bowed forward, hands resting on her knees, and tried to get herself under control.

Bernard's hand touched her shoulder.

"I've…" she gasped. "I've never… I mean, I learned how, but I've never… I thought he would black out, and I could let him go, but he just kept fighting…"

His fingers tightened on her arm, gentle.

"Bloody crows," she whispered. "That's an ugly way to kill a man."

Bernard withdrew his hand and offered her his water flask. "Love," he said quietly. "Time."

The hunting horns behind them sounded again.

Amara squeezed her eyes shut, nodded once, and straightened. She took the flask, washed the horrible taste out of her mouth, and then drank. As she did, Bernard moved slowly forward, toward the two horses he'd excluded from his crafting-the two lead horses, who were presumably the fastest of the group. Bernard spoke gently, and once again Amara felt the slow, steady pulse of a soothing earthcrafting. Within a minute, he had the reins of both animals, and led them to her.

Amara mounted up while Bernard drew' Gaius's stretcher out of its concealment, then tied one end of a line to it, the other to the saddle of Amara's mount.

Amara turned, focusing on the stretcher, murmuring wordlessly as she willed Cirrus to lift it from the ground. Within seconds, a small whirlwind had gathered beneath Gaius's stretcher, lifting it perhaps eighteen inches above the earth.

This time Bernard took the lead, veiling them as they rode through the darkening wood. Amara followed, dragging the stretcher on its miniature cyclone behind them to wipe away whatever trail they left behind. It wouldn't prevent Kalarus's men from tracking them, but it would conceal their numbers and the pace they set, denying the enemy information that might help them make intelligent choices in the pursuit. It would also force them to slow down if they wanted to keep the trail, especially after night fell.

Shadows began to fall as Bernard led the horses north, off the trail and into the thickening forest. He turned east, toward the mountains, in a gradual arc, and all the while the horns of the Immortals sounded in the gloom around them.

Evening turned to dusk turned to twilight. Terrain that had been difficult in dim light became treacherous in the dark, and Bernard slowed them down, allowing the horses to pick their way forward. The night began to turn cold. The strain of all the travel, of the run, of her ongoing furycraft to support the stretcher began to tell on Amara, and she found herself shuddering with cold and exhaustion.

She very badly wanted to sleep. She very badly wanted to fall off the horse and lie still. But she clung grimly to the saddle and stayed upright for what felt like a week. Then a month. Then a year.

And then the horses emerged from the pines, and Bernard let out a grunt of satisfaction.

Amara lifted her eyes. In the starlight, she could see very little, despite the hours her eyes had been given to adjust. It was as if half the stars were simply blotted away-or, she realized, overcast with clouds. She wearily hoped that it wasn't about to start raining, too.

Then she realized what she was looking at, and her heart leapt.

The Kalare Mountains. They rose above them in silent, stark majesty, their enormous peaks casting a shadow over half the starry sky.

Bernard murmured in the darkness, "There's not enough flora for me to veil us along that trail. From here on out, if we're seen, we're out of options. You want to do this fast or slow?"

Amara's teeth were chattering, but she managed to say, "Fast. I'm almost done."

Bernard took a deep breath, nodded once, and said, "Here we go."

Then he kicked his weary horse forward into a listless canter, and Amara followed suit. They hurried up the trail in the dark, and Amara began to feel nervous again. It took her several moments, until they were riding over a level patch of trail that must have been the first pass through the mountains, to realize why.

The Immortals' hunting horns had ceased to blow.

Light hit them first, painful in the mountain night. The horses, too tired to truly panic, threw back their heads and danced nervously. Amara raised a hand, trying to block the painful glare-the great furylamps sometimes used in sieges, surely-and felt Cirrus suddenly falter.

The First Lord's stretcher crashed to the ground.

She sagged in her saddle, saw someone approaching on her right side, and kicked weakly with her right leg. She hit something, but a grip like stone seized her ankle and dragged her off the horse and to the ground.

Bernard roared, and she heard his'bow hum. She turned her head enough to see an Immortal stricken cleanly through one lung with her husband's arrow. The man never slowed his pace, seizing Bernard's belt and hauling him to the ground. Bernard turned as he fell, and seized the Immortal, reaching for his throat with fury-borne strength.

The Immortal seized Bernard's hands…

… and slowly, steadily forced them away.

Bloody crows.

Immortal Knights.

Bernard's eyes widened, and he clenched his teeth in desperate effort, but to no avail. The Immortal twisted suddenly and threw Amara's husband face-first to the ground, rapidly secured a lock on one of his arms, and dislocated his shoulder with a single savage motion.

Bernard screamed.

Amara became aware of more men, then, all fully armored, all bearing the shining steel collar of the Immortals. She looked around dully. Indeed, the light had come from enormous furylamps which must have been moved up by teams of horses long before. Armored men were everywhere. Not twenty, or thirty, or fifty, but hundreds. All of them Immortals-and led by Knights.

Footsteps crunched over the cold, stony ground. Several gauntlets banged to armored chests. A pair of boots appeared before Amara's eyes, and she looked up.

A young man stood over her. He was a little taller than average, very thin, and dirty. There was something ugly in his eyes, lurking behind contempt and rage and a certain amount of petulance. It took Amara's stunned and weary mind a moment to place the young officer-Kalarus Brencis Minoris, the High Lord Kalarus's son and heir.

"I can't believe this," the young man said. "This is the elite team of soldiers First Lord Has-Been sent down with the north wind? This is what Father's had me slogging all over the bloody swamps for?"

Brencis shook his head with disbelief and, almost idly, struck Amara across the face with his mailed hand. Pain made her world go white. She felt her neck wrench as it twisted sharply to one side under the force of the blow.

"I could have been sleeping in a bed," Brencis snarled. "And instead I'm out here frozen to the balls and bored out of my mind, setting up the trap, worried about a whole cohort of Knights sneaking in the back door, and for what?"

Amara tasted blood on her tongue. She lifted her head dizzily.

Brencis spat. It struck her cheek.

"I'm here for this!" he snarled. He seized Amara by the hair, baring her throat, and drew his dagger in his other hand. "For two pathetic little sneaks? Two of you? Two!"

Light hit them first.

It washed over Amara's back and shoulders in a sudden wave of warmth and color, as if someone had convinced the setting sun to reverse its course and rise once again over the mountainside behind them. The light cast knife-sharp black shadows over the entire mountain, its luminance so brilliant that the glare of the enormous furylamps became utterly insignificant.

Immortals, Knights, and infantry alike, cried out in surprise. Brencis turned white, took a step backward, and lifted a hand to shield his eyes, releasing Amara and letting out a low moan of fear.

And then came a voice.

A voice spoke in a gentle tone that resounded from the stone and the sky, a voice that rang with a depth and richness of power the mountains had not known since their fiery conception-a voice that contained a certain amount of biting amusement as it answered the heir of Kalare's question. Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, murmured, "Three."