~ 10 ~
Leaping to her feet, she raced out.
In the next room, Prem perched on the corner of her desk as she talked with a few of the older acolytes.
“Fetch my winter jacket, cloak, and gloves,” she told them. “I need healers and Defenders to meet me down at the dock. Now.” Then, as all three frozen women stared, she shouted at them, “Run!”
That galvanized them into action. Eyes wide, they scattered.
Lily raced down the halls and through courtyards. Urgency beat at her with frantic wings. It was quicker to cut through the temple, so she did. Voices rose behind her, calling out questions and exclamations.
“Your grace—what is it?”
“Is anything wrong?”
Then, from Margot down one hall: “Lily!”
She didn’t stop for any of them. By the time she reached the wide stairs that led down to the great barred doors to the dock, she was flanked by three Defenders.
One of them, Justin, tried to give her his cloak, and she waved it away impatiently. The two others joined them as she plunged down the steps and ordered the doors be opened. Together they stared across the white expanse to the mainland.
“I don’t think we can force the barges through that, your grace,” one Defender told her.
She focused on Wulf’s sentry on the mainland, but she couldn’t communicate with them from that distance. The only way to get help to her people was by crossing the strait.
Go, Camael whispered.
She didn’t pause to question it. There was no time to have a crisis of faith.
She ran.
“Your grace, wait—we haven’t tested the ice yet!” Justin roared behind her. “Oh, flipping hells.”
She ignored everything else—the biting wind, the cold that numbed her hands and face and sent stabs of pain shooting into her chest—and raced as fast as she could toward the shore. Wulf would help. She just had to get to him.
Once, her feet slipped out from underneath her and she would have fallen, but strong arms caught her. Giving her a wild-eyed look, Justin set her back on her feet again.
Glancing back at the abbey, she saw others following them. That was all she took the time to notice, for as soon as she regained her footing, she ran again.
Then, on the shore, she saw more soldiers gather. Some set out on the ice and raced toward her. One of them was Wulf.
He was among the fastest. His long legs tore over the distance, and his body in motion was a study in power and grace. She had never felt so glad to see anyone in her life.
As they neared, Justin drew his sword. Sparing him one exasperated glance, she snapped, “Hold, damn it!”
Trying to talk while running made her abused lungs protest. She sucked in a breath, and the dry, frigid air bit the back of her throat. As Wulf reached her, she bent over in a spasm of coughing.
He grasped her by the arms. “What’s wrong?”
The only way she could speak was by telepathizing. We need soldiers—horses—healers… We need to hurry!
Whipping off his cloak, he wrapped her up, scooped her into his arms, and raced for shore.
“Gods damn it—your grace!” That was Justin who raced alongside them.
She was still coughing too hard to respond out loud, her throat raw while the muscles in her chest squeezed like a vise.
I’m all right, she told Justin. He’s helping. I don’t want any of our people picking a fight with the Braugnes. Pass the word.
Yes, your grace. Giving her an unhappy look, Justin started shouting at the other Defenders who drew near.
By the time Wulf climbed onto shore, she had caught her breath again, and he set her on her feet. Lionel appeared at his shoulder, along with Gordon and Jermaine. As she looked for Justin, she saw with gratitude that Estrella, the captain of her Defenders, had reached her side, and Margot too.
More Defenders were climbing to shore, along with priestesses carrying their healer packs. Even Prem joined them, clutching Lily’s cloak and gloves, which she handed over wordlessly.
Wulf captured her attention. Looking up into his hard face, she saw the commander was present in full force.
“How many horses do we need?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He gave her a fierce frown. “Well, how many fighters and healers?”
“I don’t know! How many is a lot?” Closing her eyes, she tried to bring back the image of the snowy countryside and the ridge behind the trees. “I know where we need to go. There’s a ridge about five miles away, near a waterfall that’s frozen right now.”
Estrella said, “I’m familiar with that place.”
Lily met Wulf’s gaze. “We have a party with wounded who are trying to get to us. They’re being pursued by many more troops than they had expected. I saw them pour out of the tree line. Our group is spent, and they aren’t going to make it if we don’t get there in time. I don’t know how to gauge how many are after them, because I only got the images in flashes—but I’m going to guess over a hundred. Wulf, I want my people to come back home. Plan for much more.”
He nodded and squeezed her arm then rapped out orders, and soldiers leaped into action. A dozen cavalry, already mounted, danced on restless horses.
Wulf told Lily, “Every minute counts, you said. I’m going to send them ahead while the others muster. We just need to know where to go.” Telepathically, he added, Brace yourself. The advance scout will have a higher casualty rate.
There would be time for grief later, when they knew how much this had cost them. Lily looked at Estrella. “Go with them.”
“Yes, your grace!”
Estrella joined the party, and they plunged off.
After that, Lily figured the best thing she could do was get out of the way. She was a visionary, not a fighter. Within a remarkably short time, a much larger force comprised of Defenders, Braugne soldiers, and healers was assembled.
One short, intense argument punctuated the gathering when Wulf discovered Lily in the process of mounting a mare that one of the Defenders had brought to her. Eyes blazing, he snatched her horse’s bridle.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped. “Stay here! You have no business putting yourself in danger.”
Behind his preemptory attitude was a deep, genuine alarm. She didn’t waste energy on getting angry. Instead, she asked, “Can you see the things that I can see?”
A single heartbeat passed, an intense throb of silence. Wulf’s jaw clenched and his eyes blazed, and she could see just how badly he wanted to refute her. But she had him, and he knew it.
“Fine, you stay with me,” he growled. “Right by me, do you hear? I want you close enough I can cut off anybody’s head that tries to get to you.”
Behind him, Lily saw Justin, Lionel, and Jermaine. Jermaine didn’t appear to be surprised, but Lionel and Justin looked flabbergasted.
In a clear voice that carried to everyone nearby, she told Wulf, “Of course. You’re the commander.”
His dark gaze lit. He touched her knee. “You bet I am.”
They raced for the ridge and the frozen waterfall.
The advance party had met up with the fleeing wounded, and the group was in the process of being overrun when two hundred cavalry, comprised of both Defenders and Braugne, hammered down on the attackers.
For the first time in his life, Wulf led command from the sidelines. Not that there was much to do once the main body of troops arrived.
“They don’t leave this battlefield,” he said to Jermaine. “I don’t want word of this getting back to Varian. We either capture them or we kill them.”
“Understood, Commander.”
Jermaine rode off to execute his orders, and in a complete reversal, what had begun as a rout quickly turned into a slaughter of the other side.
It was hard to stay on the sidelines. He couldn’t deny it. But every time he felt the impulse to roar forward and engage with the enemy, he looked around for Lily. Her face was white and set while she watched the fray, her restless horse pacing back and forth.
And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave her, not even when the most logical part of his brain insisted that she would be safe with a dozen fighters surrounding her. So he dealt with it. While the future might be a wide-open, unpainted canvas upon which they would make a multitude of other choices, for now the ones they’d made on that day were okay.
Even in the best scenario, the aftermath of battle was difficult. There were prisoners to control and question, the wounded and dying to tend, and, inevitably, they had casualties to identify.
Like their fighters, the abbey’s healers worked side by side with the Braugne army doctors. Wulf knew they got lucky, and the casualty list was going to be as good as it got in times of war, but that didn’t ease the stricken look on Lily’s face as she dove into helping the healers.
Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. Pulling her away from the triage station, he said gently, “Go back now, love.”
She gripped his shirt. “I can’t just leave.”
“Yes, you can. You can’t be everything to everybody all the time, so don’t even try, otherwise eventually it will kill you. Let everyone else do their jobs, and at least go back to one of the inns. I’m going to get a few questions answered, and then I’ll meet you there.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right. I’ll see you back in town.”
He kissed her lingeringly, right there, in front of his people and hers. Without looking, he heard everything around them grow quiet.
She sucked in a breath, but she didn’t pull away. In fact, rather uncertainly, she kissed him back, and he counted that as a win too.
“Bold choice,” she murmured against his lips. “Unexpected.”
“Advance communiques are effective at disseminating new policy to a populace,” he whispered, letting his fingertips linger on the soft curve of her cheek.
“Oh dear goddess, did you just say that to me?” Pulling back, she eyed him askance. “Was that remarkable sentence your way of flirting?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Of course not. The chocolate and the terrible orange food were my way of flirting. This was me making a public statement of intent. You’ll know when I’m flirting again.”
“Will I?” One corner of her lips tilted up. “What were you doing when you climbed my tower?”
He paused to consider. “Yes, that was flirting too.”
“Re-eally. I thought that was you looking for an argument.”
“It was an arguing kind of flirting,” he told her. “Remember, I brought the orange food and the chocolate with me. And since you’re going to bar your windows anyway, that was a singular event.”
“I’m not going to bar my windows,” Lily told him.
His voice hardened. “Unacceptable.”
“Isssss it?” Her eyebrows rose slowly to her hairline. “Tough. That’s my decision to make, because nobody in their right mind would make that climb, Wulf. Nobody except for you. And for your information, I was firm but very nice when I talked to Gennita this morning, and I offered her beautiful solutions to resolve our conflict. So you go ahead and do what you do, but you leave me to do what I do.”
He had already recognized he wanted her, but that was the moment Wulf fell in love. Because he might take her, and she might give in to him, but he knew he would never succeed in conquering her.
Laying his hand against her cheek, he whispered softly, “Lily.”
That was all, just Lily.
He knew his expression transmitted everything he was feeling, because he made no attempt to hide it. Her gaze softening, she put her hand over his.
When they finally drew apart, Margot swooped down on Lily like a bird of prey and bore her away, and that was a conversation Wulf was perfectly content to avoid. He plunged into work, and much later, he went to find her in town.
She hadn’t been idle, he saw as he walked down the main street. The doors of several homes stood open, and from the glimpses of the interiors and the activity in the streets, the houses were being turned into temporary hospitals—an idea so superb and obvious he should have thought of it himself.
He found Lily in the Sea Lion, drinking wine and picking at a plate of food, with Defenders strategically placed throughout the taproom. Her tired face lit when she saw him.
Deliberately he walked over, bent, and kissed her on the lips. All movement and discussion in the room stopped, then slowly started up again.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now I’ve declared my intentions to your bodyguards and the townsfolk too.”
There went those slender, expressive eyebrows again. They were excessively talented at telling him off, those eyebrows. No words were necessary, although that didn’t stop her.
“You haven’t declared anything to anyone, not least of all to me,” she retorted. “All you’ve done is kiss me, and…” She held up both hands and laughed. “So what?”
“If I did not have a healthy self-esteem, I might take that the wrong way,” he told her. He sat on the bench beside her, close enough their hips brushed, propped his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand, and angled his body toward her.
When she laughed harder, he smiled. Then she sobered. “Estrella has already given me her report. She said the weather mages were all dead, and that the attacking party was so large because they had been the focal point for the weather mages. The mages would split away from the main group to cast their spells and then meet up with them again afterward. That’s what I know. What else do you have?”
“Your priestesses did well. After comparing accounts from several different prisoners with our own head count, I’m pretty certain we either captured or killed everyone in their group, which was what I was hoping for.” After a brief pause, he added, “They’re Guerlan, of course.”
“Of course,” she muttered. She shoved her plate of food over to him, and he ate hungrily. Shredding a heel of bread with restless fingers, she said, “Anything more?”
There was no way to make the next part easier. “From what we can gather, word was sent to Varian as soon as the first weather mages fell. He’ll know soon enough that Calles was involved. They fought so hard to take your party before it got back to you because they didn’t want Calles to know it was them.”
“Everything he’s done, he’s tried to do in an underhanded way.” Her mouth tightened.
“Yes,” he said. “He’s tried to take gold that wasn’t his, and then he killed my brother in an attempt to cover it up. He’s spread rumors about me and my troops, and killed people and set fire to their homesteads to create terror and resistance in every land we’ve passed through. He’s poisoned my troops to slow us down and tried to assasinate me, and the weather mages were meant to either finish us off or drive us back to Braugne to wait out the winter.”
Brushing aside the shredded crumbs of bread, she murmured, “He’s working hard avoid meeting you on the battlefield.”
“That’s because he’ll lose,” he said flatly. There was not a shred of doubt in Wulf’s soul about that. “Varian’s living on borrowed time, and I think he knows it. Enough about him for now. I want to talk about you.”
The wary look came back into her eyes. She said, “All riiiiiigght. What do you want to talk about?”
“Winter solstice is only a few days away now.” Capturing one of her hands, he played with her fingers. “My men have marched across a continent. They’ve fought off magical attacks and poison, and they need a break, with something to look forward to. Does Calles celebrate the Masque?”
“We do,” she told him, smiling. “In fact, there would already be decorations out in the streets except everyone evacuated to the abbey. Why, would you like to celebrate the Masque with us?”
Let Varian stew for a few days over the disappearance of his mages and troops. In the meantime, Wulf wanted to conduct another campaign that was of the utmost importance.
He returned her smile. “Yes, I would.”