Chris Evans - Ashes of a Black Frost

“What-” was all he managed to say before Rallie turned and shoved him hard. Konowa reached out to Rallie to steady himself and managed to grab a scroll of paper from her robe before he was falling off the wagon, face-first into the snow. The shock of the snow against his flesh brought him fully awake. He scrambled to his feet cursing, only to be knocked flat again when Rallie landed on top of him. Before he could try to get up, an ear-splitting noise of rending, splintering wood shattered the night followed by the rush of wind and screams. He drove himself up using his elbows and flopped over onto his back. The backboard of the bench on Rallie’s wagon was in pieces. Two seconds later and that would have been him.

Soldiers ran and stumbled to get away from it. Two of the camels had broken free from their harness and were galloping off into the night. The other two were little more than bloody heaps on the road, staining the snow a bright red. A single wheel from Rallie’s wagon broke loose and rolled down the road like a drunken sailor.

The acorn flared a biting cold, and he heard the thrum of air on wings accompanied by the creaking of wood he’d only ever associated with a ship’s masts. He followed the sound and his legs began to tremble of their own accord at what he saw.

A flying tree in the shape of a dragon. His mind refused to accept it even as something deeper and more instinctual in him understood the horror approaching and sparked every fiber in his body to move.

“What is it with these damn trees?!” he shouted. He jumped to his feet as his fear gave energy to his anger. His understanding of the world kept shifting under his feet. The transformed sarka har flew in low over the column, dipping its front branch laced with thick, sharp spikes. Three soldiers dove out of the way, but a fourth wasn’t as lucky and was impaled through the shoulder.

The sarka har flew up until Konowa could barely see it. He followed its movement by the screams of the soldier. When the pitch of the screams changed Konowa knew the tree had let go. A moment later the soldier fell in a blur to impact onto the road with a sickening thud. Konowa didn’t bother to wait to see his shade appear, but said a silent good-bye to another Private Grostril, whoever this one might be.

“Rallie, are you okay?” he asked, remembering the scribe and turning to check on her. She was already sitting up and had her quill and the scroll of paper in her lap. Konowa felt relief flood through him to be replaced by a cold emptiness a moment later when she began cursing and tossed the scroll away.

“It’s too wet. The ink just smears and won’t hold its shape,” she said, climbing to her feet. She still clenched a cigar in her mouth, the tip of it burning like a smithy’s forge. “My fault entirely for not giving you fair warning, but time was working against us.”

“Isn’t it always,” Konowa said, drawing his saber. “Stay low and try not to move.”

“Go, I’ll be fine,” she said.

Konowa turned and ran onto the road, shouting to the soldiers around him. “Stay low! Load your weapons and fix bayonets, but hold your fire until I give the command.”

A piece of wing from a shako fluttered down to land by his boots. He looked up and saw the two sarka har circling overhead.

“What in the blue heavens are those?” Viceroy Alstonfar said, trotting up to Konowa with something close to glee in his voice.

“Dead in another minute,” Konowa barked, spying RSM Aguom ten yards away rounding up more troops. “Have you seen Private Renwar? We need those damn shades and we need them now!”

Aguom shrugged his shoulders. “No, but I’ll find him!”

Konowa slashed his saber in the air. “Send someone. You stay here and get the troops organized. We’re going to fire a volley straight up at the things and knock them out of the sky.”

“Yes, sir,” Aguom shouted back.

Konowa turned and saw the Viceroy was still standing beside him. “You should find a place to hide, Viceroy, the road is not safe.”

“I’m not sure the surrounding desert offers any better cover. Better to stay among the column and be one of many than off by myself I think.”

The logic of it made Konowa pause. “Where’s the Prince?”

Pimmer’s face turned a ghostly white. “Mercy, in all the hubbub, I forgot all about him! The future king and I left him alone!”

“We’ll find him,” Konowa said, not caring a whit if they did or not at the moment. “Right now we have more pressing duties.” Turning, he marched over to a group of Iron Elves and crouched down on the road beside them. “Just like before, only we’ll be shooting up. On the next pass we’ll shoot at the first one that comes.”

“But Major, what are those things?” a soldier asked.

“Dead in another minute,” Viceroy Alstonfar said, coming up to crouch beside Konowa. “Listen to the major and follow his lead and you’ll all be fine.”

Konowa twisted on the soles of his boots to get a look at the Viceroy. The diplomat met his gaze and gave him a big smile followed by a wink. Konowa decided, barely, that he didn’t want to make a habit of killing viceroys.

“Nicely put,” he finally said, spinning back to face his men.

“Good to keep the men’s spirits up,” Pimmer said, reaching out and patting Konowa on the back before quickly removing his hand as frost fire crackled to life and stung his bare flesh.

“They’re coming!”

Snow swirled and buffeted into trailing vortexes behind the wings of the sarka har as they dove. The column lay spread out and vulnerable.

Each tree lowered its jawlike branch. Wicked-looking thorns gleamed like saliva on wet teeth. More thorns sprouted at the end of branches now shaped like claws.

Several soldiers started to get up to run.

“Hold your ground!” Konowa shouted. “You’re not chickens being chased by a hawk. You’re Calahria’s finest. On my command you will fire and you will knock those bloody trees out of the sky. Is that clear?”

The responding “yes, sir” wasn’t as enthusiastic as Konowa would have liked, but it would do. The men were back under control.

“RSM, did you hear that?” Konowa said, looking over toward the group of soldiers ten yards away.

Aguom waved. The whites of his eyes were visible, but his voice remained rock solid. “We’re ready, Major, just say the word.”

Konowa stood up and walked down the road so that he was just in front of the massing soldiers. He stopped where Rallie’s wayward wagon wheel now stood forlornly upright, completely undamaged. He turned briefly to look as many in the eyes as he could before spinning abruptly and facing the sarka har .

He felt naked in the cold. Every survival instinct told him to run, but he ignored them. Other instincts came to the fore, whispering in his ear to jump into the air and tear the trees apart with his hands and teeth. He settled on something between the two and raised his saber high into the air.

“Ready. .”

Soldiers ground their knees a little deeper into the snow to steady themselves. In all their training they’d never practiced shooting up into the sky. Several wound up with bloody knees as they pressed hard enough to reach the gravel of the roadway itself. An enterprising few rested the barrel of their musket on the shoulder of the soldier in front of them while three chose to lay flat on their backs and use the very ground itself as a means of steadying their aim.

Unaware or uncaring of the reception that awaited them, the sarka har dove. Each tucked in their branch-and-leaf wings with a grating shriek and steepened their dive. A high-pitched whistling began to build, cutting through the wind and the shouting.