Iron and Magic

Get up. Get up, get up, get up…

“The sun is up.” She slipped out of the bed and swiped her clothes off the floor. “I’ve upheld my end of the bargain, Preceptor.”

“Paid in full,” he said.

She stretched, giving him one last good look, yawned, and went out the door naked.

The door slid shut.

It hit Hugh like a gut punch – she was gone. For the few blissful hours she was with him, he had forgotten about the death, the blood, and the void. He’d poured his rage and wretched ache into her, and she’d drained him so completely, the only thing that remained was a satiated calm. Happiness, he realized. For the first time in years he felt happy.

She was only a few feet away, walking to her bedroom. The sheets where she’d lain, curled up against him, still held the warmth of her body. He missed her the moment the door closed behind her. His mind conjured up her face, her scent, the way her skin glided against his. The ache rose in him. He wanted her back.

He would get her back. But first, he had to make sure they survived.

Nez was coming. He showed up “in person” to bargain with her, which meant their time was short and when Nez came for them, he would hit them with the full force of the Golden Legion. They weren’t ready. They barely had two weeks.

His mind cycled through everything that still needed to be done to make them ready for the assault. Sleep wasn’t in the cards. He would sleep when he was dead.

Hugh pushed himself off the bed, took a pitcher of cold tea from the refrigerator, and drained half of it. He shook himself, sending the magic through his body, fixing small aches, knitting battle cuts closed, realigning, healing, bringing himself back to fighting shape.

He had to make sure Baile stood firm. He had to make certain that when Nez came, his Golden Legion broke on the old castle like a wave on a pier.

15

Night had fallen, bringing with it an autumn chill. Elara pulled the long blue-and-white shawl around her shoulders and leaned on the wall. Fog had crawled in from the lake, twisting and spilling into the clearing before the castle, thick and milky. The darkness leached the color from the woods and behind the curtain of the fog, the mighty trees looked like a mirage, a careless charcoal sketch on the rough canvas of the night.

Next to her, Rook waited, a silent shadow. He’d come and gotten her a few minutes ago.

In the lower bailey, Hugh and his four centurions pulled the barrels out of storage and loaded them onto a horse-drawn cart.

Elara shifted more of her weight onto the stone. Her feet hurt. It had been a long, long day. First, they’d had to finish evacuating the last of Aberdine’s defenders. She had sent them back to their town fed and clean, with their wounds tended. As much as she wanted to help, Aberdine would have to fend for itself now.

That done, she had inspected their siege fund. The possibility of an attack was always there, and they had stockpiled rations and water since they took over the castle. Grain, dried fruit, dried meat, cheese, canned goods. Their short-term supplies, cheeses, smoked sausages, and so on, everything that wouldn’t keep for too long, looked good. The long-term stockpiles had taken a hit. Several barrels of grain had gotten pantry moths in them somehow, despite being sealed. The entire affected supply went to the livestock. The loss hurt and now they had pantry moths to deal with, which were damn near indestructible. She had to call the witches to fumigate the entire supply house.

At least the water in the cisterns under the castle hadn’t turned foul. They still had the well, but Hugh had been right when he told her on that first day that the well would be a target. Knowing there was an extra supply helped.

Hugh spent most of the day running around the castle like a man possessed, checking the siege engines, healing the last of the wounded, surveying the land around the castle. She saw him only in passing. At some point they’d crossed paths in the kitchen, drawn there by the scent of fresh pirogis. She was on her way in, he was on his way out. They nodded at each other and kept going. Sometime after that, Dugas found her to tell her that Hugh asked for a fog tonight and that he wanted it to look natural. She told the druid to do what he could. And now Hugh was here, doing something with the barrels.

Bale heaved the last barrel in place. Stoyan took the horse by the bridle and walked him forward. The three other centurions followed.

She went down the stairs. Hugh was waiting for her in the lower bailey.

“You promised me you would tell me what was in the barrels, Preceptor. Now you’re sneaking off with them.”

“I told you I’d show you if you played your cards right. You should’ve tried harder last night, sweetheart. With more enthusiasm.”

Oh you jackass. “If you’d impressed me with what you offered, I would’ve tried harder. But a woman can only do so much with mediocre equipment.”

He grinned at her. They strolled through the gates, following the cart.

Stoyan turned the horse left and stopped. Bale and Lamar took the first barrel off and set it on the ground. Bale raised his hands, index and middle fingers crossed. Stoyan knocked on the cart three times, then spat over his left shoulder.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Lamar asked in a low voice.

“For good luck,” Bale told him.

Lamar shook his head. Together they tipped the barrel over the water. Lamar broke the seal, unscrewed the lid, and lowered it into the water. The two men gingerly slid the barrel into the moat and let it sink. Nobody moved.

“Now what?” Elara asked.

“Now we find out if we’re fucked.” Hugh pulled a small metal flask from his pocket, stepped to the edge of the moat over where the barrel had sunk, unscrewed the lid, and poured the dark contents into the water. The dark liquid spread over the surface. Magic slid over Elara like a tepid rotten smear. Vampire blood.

The water lay placid.

Bale waved his crossed fingers around.

The water boiled, as if something large slid underneath it. The red stain vanished.

“Ha!” Bale barked.

“Shhh,” the three other centurions hissed at him.

Stoyan pulled on the horse, leading it around the moat.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What will you give me if I tell you?”

“Hugh,” she ground out.

“Fine. Some years ago, Roland sent me up to Alaska to talk to Ice Fury. It’s the biggest shapeshifter pack in the US. The talks got us nowhere. The Ice Fury shifters are separatists. All they want to do is to run around their woods and be left alone. They spend most of their time in animal form. The way they’re going, in a couple of generations they’ll forget how to be human. So the talks didn’t go as planned, but since I was already in Alaska, I figured why not make a trip of it. We went up North and ended up in Mekoryuk. It’s a city on Nunivak island. Nuniwarmiut people have lived there for two thousand years. While I was there, I met an old woman who told me they weren’t worried about Roland or his vampires, because they had dirty ice and it would protect them. Long story short, I went and got some of that dirty ice. Cutting it out and dragging it back home was a pain in the ass, but I knew Nez or whoever came after him would be gunning for me sooner or later. Here we are.”

The cart stopped, and Felix and Bale took another barrel off. Elara watched as they took off the lid and sank it.

“Yes, but what’s in the ice?”

“A bacterial strain,” Hugh said. “Nasty bugger, highly aggressive. We had to cut down to permafrost to get it. Harmless to humans as far as I can tell. Loves water. Guess what it likes for dinner?”

“Vampires?”

He nodded. “Any undead is fair game.”

“Have you used it before?” she asked.

“We tested it.”

“But not in actual battle?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know if it will work.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” he said.

“Now isn’t the best time to get philosophical, Preceptor.”

“Would you rather have an empty reassurance?”

Yes, she thought. She would. It wouldn’t do her any good, but right now reassurance would be nice. Sadly, nice wasn’t something she could afford at the moment.