Cold Steel

We trotted across the pasture toward a towering shrub riddled with orange flowers. All was peaceful until a brightly plumaged body burst out of its branches, as tall as me, talons gleaming.



I leaped forward to whack the creature on the head. With a clicking stutter, it fell back as I fell back. We panted, at a momentary standstill, staring at each other.



A dancing spin of tiny mirrors and shards of polished metal flashed in my eyes. The feathered person stood clothed in a mimicry of a soldier’s uniform weighted with shards of all the shiny things its kind loved. It flashed a bold yellow-and-red crest as it opened its muzzle to grin with predator’s teeth, like a shark giving you a moment to accept that you’ve been honored by being chosen for its next meal.



Blessed Tanit protect me! Gracious Melqart give me strength! Noble Ba’al grant me wisdom!



It lunged for me.



Rory leaped. He smashed right into the troll, and they rolled, crashing through the brush. Orange petals spun in a cloud of color. I pulled shadows around me and ran after them. The troll snapped at Rory, who dodged aside to rake at the troll’s flanks with his wicked claws. It stumbled. Its fluid whistle pierced the air, answered by a click and whistle. Blessed Tanit! Of course they never went anywhere alone.



As the troll whipped around to slash at Rory, I smacked it right over the eyes. Staggering back, it retreated with nostrils flaring, momentarily blinded.



A stab of reflected light cut across my face. Rory faded into the brush as two feathered people crept out of the trees about twenty paces apart, in hunting formation. The way they had of bobbing their heads as they swept the scene crawled a shiver down my skin. The blinded one whistled and clicked to them, blinking as it recovered. I held steady. Even in daylight and entirely exposed, my shadows hid me from them, and right now the wind was behind them so they could not smell me either.



They raised mirrors. Where these glances of light lanced across the field, they cut the threads of magic that bind the worlds. My shadows shredded into fraying ribbons whose ends I could not furl about myself. Whistling, the hunters stripped me of my concealment as they fanned out. One lashed its paddle of a tail as in a prelude to attack.



Yet the mirrors also cut right through the binding that made my sword appear as a cane in daylight. Freed from its net of shadow, the ghost hilt flowered into solidity. I grasped the hilt and drew my cold steel blade out of the spirit world and into the mortal world.



All three stopped dead in their tracks. Judging by their feathering and size, two were female and one male. They looked me over first with one eye, then the other, and then full on. My throat tingled, anticipating their bite.



“It’s very shiny,” I said, raising the blade as in salute. Their heads swayed as their gazes raptly followed the movement of the sword. “But don’t think you can take me easily. The spirit of my mother is bound into this sword.”



I turned and raced into the trees, thrashing through undergrowth in a rattle of noise, then stumbling unexpectedly onto a bushy verge along a major road. I was pretty sure we had found our way back to the main road to Cena, but I could not be sure. Rory nudged up beside me. He had a shallow graze on his right flank but nothing serious.



We crept forward through the grounds of a little roadside temple dedicated to the patron of travelers, Mercury Cissonius with his rooster and goat. Not a single priest attended the altar. The basin for ablutions had been overturned. Six corpses sprawled on the road, buzzing with flies. Their pockets had been turned out and their weapons and kit ransacked. I found Lord Gwyn, quite dead. Worst, one man’s face was half ripped off as by the slashing bite of a big predator. A humble farmer’s cloth cap lay on the ground, pierced by a shard of glass.



A thundering rumble rose and faded. A bird whistled in a waterfall of notes. Four trolls pushed out of the woods and onto the road. A fifth and sixth appeared on either side of the god’s statue in the temple. We were surrounded.



No wonder no scouts or spies ever returned. Camjiata was using the feathered people as skirmishers to protect his lines and hide his army’s movements. I braced myself for their attack as Rory hissed beside me.



A gust of wind rattled the branches. A drum rhythm paced through the woods. On its beat I heard a woman’s voice call out a verse, answered by a chorus of women singing the response.



Man try to give yee money, what can he get?



He can’t get nothing. Especially no kiss!



“Wait!” I said, brandishing my sword. “Look!”



They slewed their heads around. We all looked south to a bend in the road.



A column of soldiers marched into view, although they were almost dancing, so proud and mighty were they, and every single one a woman.