Текст книги "Ice Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Twenny-Nine

Kissing Skye doesn’t make my emotions any less frayed. If anything, it forces them even closer to the surface.

I want things to be normal, for Goff to be a distant memory, to get Jolie back, to get to know Skye. To really get to know Skye.

But that’s not where I’m at. That’s a dreamland, so far away that I’ll have to grab a passing cloud to get there.

We keep on traipsing through the forest, down, always down, until we reach the borderlands. With the air warming, Siena returned my coat a mile or so back, but it’s too hot to wear it now so I’ve got it draped over my shoulder.

Skye and I haven’t said a word since her comment about the kiss, but I’m glad for it. Words can only screw things up right now.

Fire country stretches out like an endless blanket of sand, while ice country rises up behind us like a ghost. And the two are stitched together by us, as if we’re the only link between two worlds.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Wilde says.

Buff looks like he wants to do something, maybe hug her, but he just rocks back and forth awkwardly.

“We’ll be waiting,” I say, a promise I have little control over. Skye’s eyes are all over mine and I can tell we’re sharing memories, clinging to them like the branches of a tree that’s about to be chopped down.

“Fight like the Killer hounds of scorch are at your heels,” Siena says and I smile at her way with words.

“That’s just what we’ll do,” I say.

Circ thrusts a hand out and I shake it. Feve offers a firm nod, but it’s clear he’s ready to move on, to get back to his family.

As Skye moves in close, the others look away, already moving off into fire country, while Buff pretends to be looking at a bird at the very top of one of the border trees.

She whispers in my ear. “Find yer sister,” she says. “Find her and we’ll find you.”

“And then we’ll find your sister,” I say. Her cheek slides back against my skin and then she brushes her lips against mine, lingering for a second, causing my blood to flow and my emotions to swirl.

I grab the back of her head and pull her in, kissing her exactly the same way I kissed her before. We both come up gasping and open-mouthed.

That’s when a swarm of black swamps the edge of our vision.

“Skye,” I say, but the others have seen it too, are already running back toward us.

For a moment Skye and I just stare as the horizon fills with black, an avalanche of darkness, a single roiling mass, close to the ground, sending up clouds of dust all around them.

Dark like the tapestries on the palace walls; the dark men on dark horses, burning, burning everything, slaughtering Icers and the strange water riders as easily as if they were pulling leaves off a tree.

My first thought is: are they coming for us? But I shake that one away as quickly as it comes, because the black mass shifts to the right, turning, dust billowing behind them, as if marking their trail. They’re heading for…They’re heading for…

They’re heading for ice country.

“Oh, Heart,” I say.

“Who are they?” Skye asks, looking at me—looking right at me—like she expects me to know. Like I should know.

But I don’t. I don’t have a Heart-icin’ clue.

The others surround us, watching—nay, gawking—as the black horses gallop across the border, into the forest, their dark riders urging them on by sticking their heels into the horses’ sides. It’s not a friendly advance, like the Glassies coming to pay a visit, wandering silently up the mountainside. As the last of the dark men plunge into the woods, the sun catches the steel in their hands, glinting like silver coins in the distance.

Swords. The men are all carrying swords.

Ice country is under attack.

~~~

There’s no discussion, barely a word other than Go! and Run! as we charge back the way we came, back under the cover of the trees, back up the slope that seems to want to do anything to slow us down, seeming steeper and thicker with undergrowth than when we came down it in the first place.

Just by coming with us, the people of the Tri-Tribes have proven their mettle. They’re willing to help the Icers even at the risk of their own lives.

Even though we’ve got another couple hours before we reach the village, everyone who’s got a weapon has it out, ready, as if the dark men and their horses might be lying in wait to ambush us.

Buff, breathing heavy beside me, says, “What do they want?”

I don’t know, but if the tapestry was any indication of reality, there’s only one thing: “Blood,” I say.

Buff doesn’t ask any more questions after that. In fact, no one says much, just keep running, getting slower as we tire. I’ve got half a dozen cramps, from a dull ache in my calves and shoulders, to a sharper pang in my side. I fear by the time we reach the top we’ll be too exhausted to do much to help anyone.

I bite away the pain and try to focus on the situation at hand. If these men are here to attack ice country—and what else could they possibly be here to do?—then they’ll go for the palace first. It’s the only real threat to stopping them, what with the well-armed and trained guards, the thick, stone walls, and the head of the dragon, King Goff, hiding behind it all. Which means that—

That—

I can’t say her name, can’t even think it, but I know it’s the truth.

She’s in grave danger. More than she is with Goff.

“We’ll save her. We’ll save Jolie,” Skye says, on my other side.

I say nothing, just keep running.

The day is dark as the clouds seem to thicken for war. At some point snow starts falling, but I barely notice it. Then it starts falling harder, thicker, and I look up at the sky, feeling cold and wet all over my face.

Autumn has arrived.

I put my head down and keep running.

~~~

Before we reach the town we can smell it. Burning. Fire. Destruction. Violence.

It hangs in the air like a haze, coating everything; every breath, every movement, blackening our skin and our hearts. Smoke rushes in living columns above the trees, far thicker and heavier than the exhaust created by fireplaces, a stark contrast to the whiteness of the falling snow. Smoke caused by fire that’s eating bigger things than a few logs of firewood.

I throw the weariness and fatigue off me the same way I discard my coat, which has become too hot and heavy, as stifling as the dense forest.

Quickly and completely.

I half-notice Siena picking it up and pulling it tightly around her shoulders.

Exhaustion is nothing. Pain is nothing.

My sister is everything.

Jolie is everything.

Saying her name in my head stings me like the nettles on a pine branch, and I wince, but I don’t stop. Will never stop until she’s back in my arms.

Finally—freezin’ finally—we break through the trees and see the village standing before us, spotted with snow. The Brown and Red Districts sit heavy and low at the base of the slope, with their rows of small, densely clustered houses, while the houses of the Blue and White Districts rise above, with their tall columns and pointed roofs, generous gaps between each residence. All burning, swept with orange and red and the darkness of the black riders, ripping holes and tears in the blanket of snow covering everything.

And above them all…

Above them all, the palace, an impenetrable barrier protecting the king and his men.

Smoke pours from beyond the gates.

“Hurry,” Skye says, grabbing my arm with one hand, a blade gripped tightly in the other.

I lead the way into the Brown District, where most houses are burning, spitting mountains of black clouds. A dark rider and his horse run off a ways, and we watch as he closes in on a group of Brown District Icers, who have organized themselves and are brandishing planks and clubs. The rider sweeps past them, slashing with his sword, cutting them down one by one. They don’t get one good shot in before they fall. I scream something indecipherable and I think Buff does too.

The enemy rides on, seeking out his next target. A cluster of children run from a burning house, shepherded by a slightly older, but still young, girl. Her mannerisms are so familiar, surprisingly mother-like despite her young age. A wad forms in my throat when I realize I know her.

“Darce!” Buff shouts, warning his sister of the rider that’s now only a few gallops away.

But she doesn’t hear, not amongst the children’s cries and the crackle of flames and the pound of horse’s hoofs—and the screams of the men not five houses down.

Buff takes off and the rest of us do too, because we’re not separate people now, not anymore, we’re like a single living, breathing creature, with lots of arms and legs and more hearts than anyone could ever break.

But we’re also too slow and too far away and too late. Far too late.

The rider closes in, his sword out, level with Darce’s neck. Buff screams and screams and screams—

And I think I’m screaming too, my throat hoarse and dry—

And the rider raises his sword—

And my body’s all tensed up, preparing itself for the slash, slash, slash and more slashes that’ll destroy Buff’s life far worse than mine’s been destroyed, that’ll change him forever—

But it never comes.

It never comes.

The rider gallops on, a shadow passing down the road, cutting up the slope toward the upper lofts of the Brown District.

Toward where I live. Where my mother, even now, is likely in a drug-induced stupor and oblivious to the world falling down around her.

Chapter Thirty

We leave Buff to take care of his family, his brothers and sisters. His father, who was in the group of men defending themselves, is lying in the snow bleeding, being worked on by a group of healers.

There’s nothing more we can do to help them.

But we can still help my mother.

Can still save my sister.

(Can’t we?)

Buff thinks so and he pounds my back before we leave. I think he’s trying to boost his own morale, because of his father bleeding in the snow. I say, “I can stay, Buff,” even though I know I can’t.

“Nay,” he says. “Fight.”

I try to smile, but it comes out all crooked. “Even now, I fight with you,” I say.

And he says, “Cut the cosmic shiver. Just get it done.”

Up the hill we go, stepping in the snowy horse prints, seeing spots of red where blood’s dripped off the rider’s sword. Buff’s father’s blood, so fresh the rapidly falling snow hasn’t had time to cover it.

I’ll kill that rider. I swear to the Mountain Heart I will.

We reach Clint and Looza’s place, which isn’t burning, which, if you look just at their house, appears to be separate from the battle that ravages everything else. Untouched. Pristine. Just another house in a snow-covered village.

I burst through the door, nearly snapping it off its hinges.

Clint and Looza, who are sitting in the dark, look up sharply, their eyes wide and white. “Dazz?” Clint says. His eyes flick to the posse of brown-skinned people behind me.

“My mother,” is all I say, my eyes darting everywhere and seeing no one else.

“She’s here,” Looza says, pointing to a pile of blankets on the floor. “She passed out and we couldn’t bear to wake her.”

“There are riders,” I say.

“They came here,” Clint says.

“What?” I say. And then again, “What?”

“One of them barged in just like you did. We just sat here looking at him, not moving, not doing nothing at all, and he left, like he couldn’t see us. He left.”

“Oh, he saw us all right,” Looza says. “He looked me right in the eyes and I could see him deciding, like he was working out whether we were any kind of a threat, which of course we aren’t. I guess he decided the same, because he left us alone.”

“Thank the Heart,” I say. I bend down, pull the blanket away from my mother, touch her cheek with my knuckles, kiss her once on the forehead. “Wes is dead,” I say, and both of their mouths open, as if they might say something, but then they don’t. They just nod. “Don’t tell her. I have to tell her.”

They nod again and I leave, out into the autumn snowstorm.

There’s only one place left to go: the palace.

~~~

We don’t see any more riders as we run through the Blue District. They’ve come and gone, leaving burning buildings and bloody bodies in the snow, who are being tended to by healers, of which ice country seems to have plenny; they’re crawling like insects out of the woodwork.

Every rider seems to have moved on, focusing everything on the final goal of taking the palace.

Where Jolie is. Trapped with Goff, who’s surely the riders’ ultimate target.

The gate’s been cranked wide open, but the guards didn’t just open it up and let the riders in. There are signs of a major fight littered all over the ground. Hundreds of arrows lie in bunches, some on their sides, some stuck in the snow, some poking from the dozens of black-skinned bodies of riders and their horses, which lie at a dozen different angles, forcing us to weave our way through the carnage.

There’s red and white and black everywhere.

Long ropes are slung over the walls, which explain the gate being open. The riders dismounted, fought their way up and over, and then cranked open the gate for the rest of the riders to pass through. Several lengths of rope are coiled at the base of the wall, riders tangled in them, stuck with arrows. The rope would’ve been cut by the archers, sending them to the earth before shooting them.

We move for the gate, an Icer, a Heater, a Marked, and three Wildes. A strange and deadly combination.

Before we pass through the opening, we see the battle in the courtyard. Compared to this, our own fight to escape was child’s play. Men play the parts of murderers in a game of death.

Skye pulls up short, raising a hand, and we all stop with her. This is her game.

I want to look at her, but my eyes are glued to the fight. With a hack of his sword, a rider slices off a guard’s hand, which falls like a rock to the ground, still clutching an axe. Weaponless, the man runs, bleeding from his wrist, which is now just a stump, but he only gets three steps before the rider plows into him, trampling him beneath his horse’s feet.

“Dazz,” Skye says.

But the rider doesn’t get far, because as soon as he kills the guard, an arrow pierces his chest. He clutches at it with his hands, his mouth agape as if surprised, his eyes and teeth looking as white as the snow against his dark skin. He slumps back, back, back, hanging from his horse, which keeps running with a dead man bouncing on its back.

“Dazz,” Skye says again, and I manage to pull my gaze away from the dead rider, the trampled guard. Skye’s eyes are fixed on mine.

The others are watching me too, waiting patiently. Perhaps only a moment has passed, perhaps several.

Skye says, “We’ll stay in front of you, protect you.”

“Nay,” I say, shaking my head. “We’ll move through together.”

“Yeah, we will,” Skye says. “But you need to stay alive so you can git to yer sister. Leave that to us.”

I close my eyes.

They were on their way home. A week-long trek across the desert, a day to rest, and a week back. Fifteen days they wouldn’t have been here, having to fight an enemy they don’t even know—fifteen days to be alive. And now they’re going to die today? For me? At risk of what Buff will say later, I want to throw my arms around all of them, hug them, thank them. For me, for Jolie. For Wes.

“We’re doin’ this,” Skye says, as if she thinks I’ll try to stop her. That’s what I should be doing. Stopping them. But I can’t.

I won’t.

Not when the king’s in there with my sister. Not when the riders are fighting their way to the king.

“Thank you,” I say.

~~~

Amidst the swirling snow, we enter the courtyard in a line, with me behind them, like I’m someone important, someone worth protecting. I should be at the front, fighting alongside them, but—

Jolie.

I swallow my pride and try to keep up because they’re moving fast. They’ve all got weapons from before, but a few of them traded up for the weapons of those dead outside the palace walls. Circ and Feve found shiny new swords and Siena grabbed a bow and a satchel of arrows from beside an Icer archer who was so bent and broken he must have fallen off the wall.

Guards are everywhere, swinging double-bladed battle axes, shooting arrows, jabbing swords at the dark, mounted warriors, who are deflecting them with their own swords, which are long and heavy. For the first time I notice the black riders are not only men, but women too, fierce and carnal and full of brutal violence that even Skye would be proud of.

The fight slams into us from all sides.

Circ gets thrown back into me by a heavily armored guardsman who’s using a metal shield like a battering ram. Skye deflects a blow from a passing rider with her blade. Siena starts shooting arrows at anything that moves.

We’re fighting two armies. Having sun-kissed skin here means everyone wants you dead. And I’m with them, so I’m a target too.

An arrow whistles past my ear and I duck instinctively even though it’s already behind me.

Distracted by the arrow, I’m falling behind already, the others pushing forward. Everyone’s got their hands full.

Circ manages to discard the guard with the big shield, slipping past its edge and stabbing hard and deep, practically splitting him in two. I look away.

On my other side, Feve and a dismounted rider circle each other, their eyes wary. Their swords ring out as they parry but the sound is immediately swallowed by the clang and grunt and screams of the battle around them. Feve blocks an attempted kill stroke and then aims one of his own, which the rider swats away too easily. Another jab by Feve, another block. Then a flurry of strokes by the rider has Feve on his heels, retreating, blocking, retreating some more.

“Dazz!” Skye yells. “This-a-way!” She’s found a seam, her and Wilde and Siena, a weak spot in the battle, a place where I might be able to slip through to the palace. They’re holding it open for me, keeping the path clear, swinging blades and shooting arrows and kicking and punching.

My eyes flick back to Feve, to the black-garbed rider. Feve’s losing, getting knocked back by a heavy onslaught of sword strokes, barely keeping his footing as he steps backwards over a dead body. But then he slips, is forced to use his hand to keep his balance, giving the rider an opening, which he gladly takes, swinging with enough force to crush stones, slamming his sword into Feve’s with a fierce

CLANG!

and Feve goes down, rolling onto his back amidst blood and bodies, trying to scramble to his feet, but being forced to scrabble backward while blocking another swipe from the rider’s blade.

Feve’s dead—

If I don’t do something—

Dead.

“Dazz!”

Do something!

I run toward the rider, weaponless, except for my fists.

The rider doesn’t see me coming. He’s a mountain lion with a mouse trapped under his paw and nothing can disturb him from his meal.

He swings again, harder than any of the other blows, so hard that Feve—even Feve—can only throw his sword up in a last-ditch effort to protect himself.

CLANG!

Feve manages to block the strike, but he can’t hold onto the handle any longer, and it skitters out of his hand, creating a sword-shaped hole in the snow, disappearing.

I keep running.

The rider raises his sword over his head—

I keep running, still too far away.

–thrusts it down—

I keep running, and I’m screaming now.

–and Feve rolls away, narrowly avoiding the kill attempt.

Hearing my scream, the rider turns just as I barge into him, leading with my shoulder, smashing into his chest, which is as hard as iron, perhaps from muscle or from some hidden form of body armor. He lands on Feve with me at the top of the pile. Feve grabs at his face from behind, poking his fingers into the rider’s eyes, doing anything he can to help from his precarious position.

The rider rains down a barrage of punches on the back of my head, his sword not in his hand, disappearing just like Feve’s. But I don’t feel his hits. This is my territory now and shots to the head are a way of life.

I lay into him, punching him first in the gut, and then in the face.

Gut and face. Gut and face.

I get a rhythm going while he continues to pound from the back and squeeze his eyes shut against Feve’s raking fingers.

Buff always said I had a head harder than an ice sculpture, on account of how many bar fights I won with my signature finishing maneuver. I crank it up now, still pounding away with my fists, leaning my head back slightly, waiting for the perfect moment…

Feve’s hands slip away from the rider’s face as he’s crushed underneath him. I snap my head forward, butting the rider’s skull like a goat defending my young. I hit him so hard—too hard probably—seeing stars myself and feeling an instant throb in my temples, but my pain’s nothing compared to what the rider’s feeling. He screams, clutching at his forehead, wailing something fierce. Then he stops screaming and lies unconscious.

I pull and Feve pushes and we get the rider offa him. We look at each other and it’s one of those moments when you think you should say something, but it’s impossible because another rider’s swooping in and you’re both dead if you don’t get your arses in gear.

Feve cracks a strange grin, dives for the snow, somehow finds his sword, slashes at the rider, and knocks him off his horse, which keeps on running without him. When I just stand there, Feve yells, “Go!” and I take off, sprinting in the direction I last saw Skye.

But she’s not there anymore and any path is all closed up. There are so many bodies, alive and standing and fighting, dead and crumpled and broken, that I don’t see how I’ll get through them all. Then I spot them, Skye and Siena and Wilde, and now Circ too, moving off to the side, looking back for me and Feve. Skye spots me.

She waves me over and I run, run, run, ignoring a fallen guard with a sword in his gut who cries out for help from the ground, leap over the lean flanks of an injured horse, which blows steam out of its nose, whinnying in pain, give a wide berth to an axe-wielding guard who’s facing off against a sword-swinging rider.

While Siena continues to let arrows fly at anything that gets close, Skye, Circ and Wilde hack their way to the wall. And then Feve is with us again, still grinning, his sword slick with red.

We move along the palace wall, only having to fight foes on one side now, which makes all the difference. None of the guards or riders get anywhere near me, because the others are so good at keeping them away. We inch our way forward, skirting the battle, which continues to rage hot and fierce, neither side seeming to gain an advantage. Small wooden supply structures burn along the edge—the source of all the smoke we saw earlier—but we run past them, barely feeling the heat.

I’m coming. I’m coming, Jolie.

We reach the pillars that hold up the roof just before the palace entrance. A wall of guards blocks the way, fifteen, twenny of them. Too many to fight our way through.

But it’s not just us. The riders want to get through just as badly.

A half a dozen riders charge the line.

We charge the line.