Dawn of the Ice Bear Read online

  “They are still out there,” Gestian warned. “They have pulled back to rest, but they still watch.”

  “I know,” Sharzen said. He stood with the others outside his private stable. He had selected his sturdiest stallion, and had allotted the rest of his horses to soldiers who had none. “But we will not get a better chance. They will expect us to hold out for at least one more night.”

  “Probably,” Gestian agreed.

  “Then of all days, this is the one they will least expect us to make a break for it.”

  Gestian came closer to him. Sharzen could see how weary the man was—no less so than himself, he was sure. But then, he had not been at the wall most of the night, fighting. He had not slept, but he hadn’t been on his feet, either. “I should tell you, Governor,” the captain said. “Many of the men do not agree with your plan. They think we should stay and fight, keep the fort until the reinforcements arrive from Aquilonia.”

  “Those reinforcements would come here to find our headless corpses,” Sharzen insisted. “Anyone spared by those savages would wish they had not been.”

  “I agree,” Gestian said quickly. “I just wanted you to know that there is some grumbling in the ranks. Especially from those with families, who feel the women and children merit our protection more than you.”

  Sharzen had anticipated discontent over his decision. But what could he do? Some of the soldiers had chosen to bring their families to a dangerous place. The border was no place for wives and children. If they tried to remain in Koronaka, they would be committing suicide. At the same time, there were not enough horses for them all to ride, nor enough soldiers to provide them an effective escort to safety. “I am sorry that we will most likely lose some. But they’ll stop grumbling when they realize I helped the rest survive.”

  “Like as not,” Gestian said.

  “Then let’s get on with it,” Sharzen said. “To the north gate.”

  Tanasul was two days’ ride to the north, under normal conditions. Scouts had made it in a day by pushing their mounts to the limits, and beyond. With a group this size, and not nearly enough horses available to them—and with Picts waiting to block their way—Sharzen figured the first ones would reach it in two or three days, the stragglers a few days after that, and many not at all.

  He mounted his dun stallion, and the guards climbed into their own saddles. At his signal, the gate was thrown open and the horses spurred into sudden action. They burst from the gate and out onto the road in a thunder of hoof-beats, kicking up clouds of dust. If the Picts aren’t watching, Sharzen thought, they’ll no doubt hear us anyway.

  But as they put more distance between themselves and the fort, he began to feel more confident. The Picts should have been close by, even if they had gone to tend their wounds and catch some sleep. If they hadn’t rallied by now, perhaps they had gone all the way back across the Black River. The road was lined with thick pines on both sides, and a soft breeze rustled the branches, making a lulling sound barely heard over the horses’ hooves.

  Sharzen was about to suggest that they had made it out safely to the rider nearest him, a Poitainian named Martel, when an arrow slammed into Martel’s chest, knocking him from his mount.

  Another soldier cursed. As one, they put spurs to their horses, raising shields to ward off more arrows. More of the shafts got through in spite of the shields, and the phalanx surrounding Sharzen was reduced by nearly a third in the space of a few seconds. The governor ducked his head and rode on.

  Around him, more soldiers fell.

  “Keep riding, Governor!” Gestian yelled, drawing up beside Sharzen. The solid formation of the riders had broken apart.

  “I am!” Sharzen returned.

  He estimated they had covered less than a mile when the first attack came. With every stride his horse made, he felt encouragement. The Picts had put their effort into surrounding Koronaka—they could not possibly control every mile between there and Tanasul.

  Like the soldiers around him, Sharzen drew his sword. He had been a warrior before he became a politician, and he would not allow an ambush to interfere with his escape. He preferred to have others do his fighting when possible—after all, hadn’t he done enough of it in his younger days? But he would fight if the need arose.

  Now the Picts stopped relying only on their arrows and flooded out from between the trees, bearing spears, axes, and war clubs, screeching their war cries at ear-piercing volume. They leapt from branches, sprang from behind thick trunks, almost seemed to erupt from the earth itself. Their skins were painted blue and dark gray, feathers had been tied to their hair in many cases, and they howled and glared ferociously as they attacked.

  Aquilonian soldiers fought back from their horses, or from the ground if their mounts had already been killed. Two of the nearly naked warriors came toward Sharzen, thrusting with spears. He nudged his mount toward one of them, and when the Pict drew away from its slashing hooves he swung the sword in a wide arc, slicing the man across the face. The Pict fell back, blood fountaining from him. Still, the other one tried to lunge at him. Sharzen kicked out with a booted foot, knocking the spearpoint away, and then he leaned out of the saddle and stabbed down into the Pict’s upper chest. His sword nearly got stuck in the man’s breastbone, but the momentum of the horse tugged it free.

  More of the savage men came, and Sharzen hacked and cut until his shoulders grew weary. He was drenched in blood, most of it belonging, Mitra be praised, to the enemy. Here they had the disadvantage of not being mounted, and the Aquilonians were better armed and armored. Except for those hiding in the trees with bows, the Picts had to show themselves to engage their foes. And once they were engaged, the archers didn’t dare shoot.

  And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the battle was over. No more Picts appeared from the trees. The mounted Aquilonians continued on their way. Somewhere behind them, those on foot would encounter the remains of the battle and perhaps have another force of Picts to contend with. But ahead, the road seemed clear.

  Sharzen blew out a sigh of relief. He was not safe yet, would not feel safe until the gates of Tanasul were barred behind him.

  If then. Possibly he would be haunted by Picts until he was in Tarantia itself.

  But for now, for this moment, he had a strong steed under him, a cold breeze in his face, and an empty road ahead. He sheathed his sword and rode.

  USAM ALLOWED HIMSELF a brief, troubled sleep, and by midday he was inside the abandoned settlement, walking through the empty roads with Klea of the Bear Clan. Buildings were everywhere, mostly constructed of logs or stone. Walls, those that had not burned down, surrounded everything.

  “People really choose to live like this?” Usam wondered, waving a hand at the high walls. “Like animals in cages, but of their own making?”

  “These do,” Klea replied. “When I was carrying on with Kral’s work, attacking the wall at night, I could scarcely believe they would go to so much trouble to build a wall that kept them in as much as it kept us out.”

  “I do not understand how they could breathe in here,” Usam said. He tried to picture thick and sturdy Klea clambering over walls and slipping unheard through the brush. She was a Pict, so he did not doubt she could do it. But some Picts were more suited to stealthy attacks than others.

  “Maybe they couldn’t,” Klea said. Klea was aged, and her voice sounded brittle, like dry branches in winter. Usam had not known her long, but the lines in her face had deepened just over the past several weeks, it seemed. She was one of the only two known survivors of the Bear Clan. The youngster, Kral, had disappeared, and Mang was back at the village, ready to take his place as Guardian when the crown was found. “Maybe that is why they ran like frightened dogs as soon as we attacked.”

  Usam grunted with satisfaction. Klea had a point. The settlers had fought for only two nights. He had thought the siege would last for days and days, and probably cost hundreds of Pictish lives. Perhaps more.

  But it had not. They didn
’t have a firm count yet, but it appeared to be in the dozens, not the hundreds. Now that the battle was over so quickly, the warriors had been instructed to search Koronaka, leaving no spot untouched in the search for the Teeth of the Ice Bear. Since it had been stolen by soldiers from Koronaka, it must have been brought back here. It could have been taken away again, by the settlers who had escaped today, or earlier. But they wouldn’t know unless they looked for it.

  As they walked, Usam kicked over bits of charred rubble and peered into windows they passed. He tested doors, and if they opened, he left them that way for the search crews. If they did not, he marked an X on them with his knife, to indicate that someone needed to break them down. “And if it is not here?” Klea asked.

  “Then we split the force,” Usam answered. He had given this a lot of consideration, especially after he’d heard that the settlers had already run away. “Half go to Tanasul, half to Thandara. We do to those settlements as we have done here, and search the ashes for the crown. If we do not find it there, we move to the next two, north and south along the Thunder River, until we do.”

  “And if it has already been removed to Aquilonia?”

  “Then we will have eliminated all the settlements that stand in our way, and we march on Aquilonia herself.”

  “But . . .” Klea began. Usam gave her a hard stare, and she held her tongue. He was in charge of the Pictish forces and would brook no dissent now that the war had begun. His word had to be law, or the fragile unity of the Pictish clans would unravel.

  “The Teeth is the most important thing in all of Pictdom now,” he said. “Until we have it safely in its place, no Picts are safe. We keep fighting until it is returned, or until the Ice Bear comes and claims that which was denied him so long ago—the end of our people.”

  “It will take some time to search this entire settlement,” Klea pointed out. “Even with all these hands.”

  “It will take what it takes,” Usam said. “We can only do what we can do, and nothing more. For the sake of every Pict, though, I pray we find it before it is too late.”

  DONIAL FOUND TARAWA on deck, standing at the port side, staring off into the night. Stars glimmered overhead, occasionally reflected in the churning, deep water of the sea. Where sea and sky met was darkest black.

  “Are you ill?” he asked, concerned.

  She turned and graced him with a smile.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Merely . . . entranced, in a way.”

  “By what?” Donial could not see much to be entranced by out in the distance. Just the night.

  “The sea,” she said, indicating it with a wave of her muscular arm. “The sky. I had begun to think that Stygian nights were all I would ever know.”

  The idea of slavery was repulsive to Donial, and he felt uncomfortable even discussing it. Instead he tried to shift the conversation in a different direction. “Have you ever been at sea?” he asked.

  “Not on the deck of a ship,” she said. “In a cargo hold, when I was brought to Stygia originally.”

  “In the hold?” Donial echoed, aghast.

  “They were not particularly concerned about our comfort,” Tarawa said.

  “How many were you?”

  Tarawa considered for a moment. “Around ninety, I suppose,” she said. “About half of our village, at any rate.”

  In spite of his initial discomfort, Donial found himself fascinated. Staggered. He caught hold of a ship’s line, wrapped it around his wrist as he stood there. “Half? That is incredible.”

  “But true,” she said. She sat down on the deck with her legs crossed, causing Donial to believe she was planning to tell a long story. “My village, called Dugalla, was at the border where vast savanna met thick, deep jungle. Dugalla was little more than a collection of thatched huts where we slept, surrounded by pens where we raised cattle, and fields where we tended some crops. The land provided us with everything else we needed, and we were contented and at peace for the most part. We were not all as primitive as this sounds—my father had been to Aquilonia, as I mentioned, and believed it important that his children know languages and hear about the world.

  “Early one morning, I woke and came out of my hut to a strange stillness in the air. Dust motes seemed to hang there, as if suspended on strings. The embers of the previous night’s fire glowed without apparent heat or sound. I looked around, and could see a few dogs lying in the early sun, a few people bent over their morning meal. Nothing looked odd, but for some reason I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  “And then—” Tarawa’s voice broke, and she paused, but only for a second. “And then the stillness was broken by a sudden, brutal attack. Slavers, swarming out of the jungle. They charged us with crossbows, with spears, with swords and axes and other weapons I don’t even know the names of. There were several hundred of them, far more than we numbered. Everyone took up arms, but in the end we were too few, and they wore armor that protected them from our weapons.”

  Donial felt her account affecting him even more strongly than it should have, considering he knew her only slightly, and the rest of her villagers not at all. After a moment’s contemplation, he realized it was because her story sounded so much like his own imagination’s version of the battle at the Bear Clan village—the battle instigated by his uncle Lupinius, during which his father had been murdered. Likely by that same uncle, he now believed.

  “And then what?” he asked, almost dreading the answer.

  “They slaughtered many of us,” she said simply, betraying no more emotion now that she had reached this part of her tale. “Including my father and two brothers. The rest they locked into chains. For days, they marched us toward the sea. Any who complained were whipped, and after the second infraction, killed. Any who tried to escape or to fight back were killed. Their bodies were released from the chains and left beside the trail.

  “Once we reached the coast, we were all loaded into the cargo hold of a ship—crammed in like so many netted fish. Every now and then they threw handfuls of food down to us, usually food that had spoiled so greatly that they would no longer eat it themselves. They gave us buckets of water. We had to ride in that hold with our own wastes and our own dead. We could not see out, did not know if it was day or night, or for how long we traveled. Not terribly long, I imagine, but it seemed like forever.

  “Finally, we arrived in Stygia. By now there were barely half of those we had started out with, and of course the rest of us had died back in Dugalla. We were brought to the great slave market of Luxur. There, we were sold, one at a time. Many of the families still together by then were broken up. I was purchased, along with my mother and one remaining brother, and a couple of the other attractive young women of my village, by a representative of Shehkmi al Nasir, although at the time I knew it not. As a master, he was not as harsh as some I have heard of—we females, at any rate, were well fed and housed. But the things he made us do . . . I do not want to even think of them, much less describe them to you. Suffice to say I expect they would repulse you as they do me.”

  She really was lovely, Donial thought. He hated to think of that wizard’s long, bony fingers on her tender dark flesh. “I am . . . I scarcely know what to say, Tarawa. I had never thought it would be so awful.”

  “I know a little of what you have been through, from Alanya,” Tarawa said. “I know that you, too, are orphans. And she told me about Kral, about the Aquilonian attack on his home. So we have all suffered loss, it seems.”

  “Indeed we have,” Donial agreed. “Mine seems almost insignificant compared to yours and Kral’s. Alanya and I have a home, an estate, friends.”

  “And I had . . . well, nothing,” Tarawa said. “Acquaintances, among the slaves in Kuthmet. A life I dreaded waking up to every day. Every night when I went to sleep I prayed that it had all been a dream, and I would awaken back in Dugalla. But, of course, that never happened.”

  “Of course. And so you were willing to help us when we asked
.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “More than willing, in fact. Ecstatic would be closer. I do not mind saying that I hate Shehkmi and would do anything to make him unhappy. If I thought we could have killed him, I would have suggested that. But he is too powerful, and his magic would have destroyed us.”

  Donial felt a sudden chill tickle the back of his neck. “Do you think he will let us get away with stealing from him? Or is he tracking us, even now?”

  Tarawa held his gaze for a long moment. “It is not like him to give up easily, I fear.”

  Which, Donial thought, is the answer I was afraid of.

  14

  THE RESTLESS HEART, crewed by the remainder of Captain Ferrin’s crew and the Kushites Tarawa had brought along, caught favorable winds and sailed steadily into the setting sun. Shem slipped past off the starboard, then Argos, then they cut to the northwest, past Zingara. Alanya found herself weeping at the glimpse she had of the forested Zingaran coast. The last point of Zingara they would pass, Kordava, at the mouth of the Black River, was where Mikelo had been kidnapped and the place to which he had desperately wanted to return.

  They sailed perilously near Zingara’s coast. The course had been the subject of considerable debate, with the sailors wanting to go wide, passing around the Barachan Isles with plenty of room to spare. Those isles were full of pirates, all knew, and they didn’t want to take the chance of having the ship attacked.

  But Kral argued that time was of the essence. Skirting between the islands and the coast would save days, if not weeks, depending on weather and winds out in the open ocean. In the end, Kral won the debate by reminding the others that they had agreed to accept him as the captain and had further agreed to the destination he had insisted upon. That, and the fact that Allatin was frankly afraid of him, and so readily took his side after the slightest intimidation on Kral’s part.

  So they rushed through the narrow channel between islands and shore, anxious the whole time lest they become the object of assault from one direction or the other. Once clear of the Barachans, they steered out to sea a bit so that instead of passing right by Kordava, they could come at the Black River’s mouth from out of the west. The river’s mouth was vast, and Kral wanted to avoid close scrutiny from Kordava, Zingara’s biggest city, which sat on its eastern edge. The western side was more sparsely settled. Zingarans were often at war with Picts, and Kral wanted to avoid the populated parts of that country if at all possible.