David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Chalcus gave a cry of wonder. He stepped through the sudden opening, his sword and dagger poised. Ilna, smiling like a coiled spring, followed.

Cashel watched Sharina's slender body shrink as she strode into the yellowish light. She seemed to be flying away with each step, not just walking.

Cashel held his quarterstaff in both hands. He didn't squeeze it out of frustration, just held the smooth hickory with the grip he'd use to put a ferrule through the skull of anyone or anything that tried to hurt Sharina-if he could. She was so tiny, now; a little poppet he could've held in his hand.

Her axe glittered brightly. Cashel hoped and prayed that Sharina knew what she was doing, the way he'd told Garric she did; but he didn't doubt at all that the axe knewits business.

The distant doll of Sharina turned and slashed over her head. There wasn't anything near her. She reversed the stroke without hesitation, bringing the spiked end of the axe around.

Cashel'd used an axe in his time, felling trees for his neighbors and shaping the logs; he nodded in pleased approval as he watched. Sure, that narrow-bladed war axe was a different thing from the heavy tools he'd worked with, but motions like Sharina'd just made took wrists and shoulders that few men could boast of. Oh, she was afine girl!

The air above her went red as a smear of blood. Cashel shouted and strode forward, his staff crossways in front of him. He didn't know or care what dangers Sharina might be facing, just that right now he'd rather die than let her face them alone.

The wall of light collapsed inward before Cashel stepped through it. Sharina was just ahead, full-sized and toppling onto the ice.

There wasn't blood in the air or on the floor below, but there was a stink as bad as anything Cashel'd ever smelled. It reminded him of the time a great shark washed up on the beach of Barca's Hamlet. The fish had been so rotten that its gill rakers hung as tatters of cartilage, but even so this was worse.

It didn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been a wall of pike points between him and Sharina: Cashel was going through. He scooped her in the crook of his left arm. Her lips moved, though if she was saying anything Cashel couldn't hear the words.

She held the axe in both hands. It was talking enough for both of them, chortling, "Two Elementals, two of them, oh Beard never dreamed he would serve a master who would feed him Elementals!"

The axe didn't stop there but it didn't say anything new either, so Cashel ignored the rest like he would a breeze whispering through the trees. Garric, Lord Attaper, and the two soldiers with Garric had come running up only a heartbeat behind Cashel.

Garric put two fingertips on his sister's throat and nodded with relief. "Her heart's beating fine!" he said. "She's just-"

His voice didn't so much trail off as simply stop, because he didn't have any better notion of what'd happened to Sharina than Cashel did. He guessed she was exhausted. Two swipes with the axe weren't much for a healthy girl, but Cashel knew from his own experience that when you got in with wizards and their art it took more out of you than it seemed like it ought to've done.

"She's strong and well," the axe said. "She'll soon bring Beard to more blood and souls! Oh, what a fine mistress!"

It wasn't the sort of talk that generally appealed to Cashel, but hearing that the axe thought Sharina would be all right made it a pleasure this time. He felt her stir, twisting her head against his chest. He could probably set her down on her feet shortly, though he wasn't sure he would.

"Your highness?" said Master Ortron, about the only officer Cashel'd met that he liked as a person. Ortron was an ordinary fellow, not a noble, and he'd been happy to show Cashel how to handle a pike in return for lessons with a quarterstaff. "Are we to hold here, or…?"

"Duzi, no!" Garric said. "We'll resume-"

He paused, looking sharply at his sister, then Cashel. "Cashel?" he continued. "Can you-"

"Sure," said Cashel, rocking Sharina gently in his arm the way he'd have soothed a baby. Ofcourse he could carry Sharina.

He noticed that a couple of the soldiers had picked up the officer who'd been knocked silly for his own good. Cashel was glad of that. The fellow didn't have any more sense than a sheep did, but Cashel'd spent so much of his life looking after sheep that he couldn't help feeling sorry for the man.

"All right, Master Ortron, resume your advance," Garric said. He quirked a smile and added, "We'll go on till we get where we're going."

"Your highness!" called somebody from the back of the formation. Cashel wasn't tall enough to see past the mass of soldiers; he didn't think even Garric was, not with them wearing helmets like they were. "The passage has closed behind us! Let me through, you fools! I have to report to Prince Garric!"

"There's something up ahead of us, too," said one of the soldiers with Garric. "Looks to me like it's a solid wall up there."

Cashel had a clear field of view ahead. There was no doubt about it: the tunnel had closed off since after Sharina made the light come back the way it was down here: not normal, maybe, but normal for this place. As for being solid, though…

"The wall at the end's coming toward us," Cashel said, loud enough for the others to hear him if they'd wanted to. Everybody was looking instead at the officer who'd just come through the formation. He was an older fellow with curled, hennaed moustaches; a regimental commander, though not somebody Cashel knew by name.

Garric did, though. "What happened to the passage, Lord Portus?" he said.

"Behind me!" Portus said, gesturing with a flourish back the way he'd come. "I heard a shout and saw that sheets of ice were growing from either side of the wall. There were several men following closely, but they were cut off from me when the ice joined. They began to attack it with their weapons, but it continued to thicken until I couldn't even see them through it."

Portus took off his gilded helmet and wiped his forehead with the wad of cambric he kept between the leather straps that suspended the bronze above his scalp. "I came on at once. I, ah…

"I thought the ice was following me," he said into the hollow of his helmet. He looked up to meet Garric's eyes. "Your highness, I think itis following me. The wall is growing toward us!"

"Garric, so's the one in front of us," Cashel said, this time loud enough that theyhad to listen. He pointed with his quarterstaff. "There!"

He wasn't exactly angry-he was used to people not paying attention to what he said since he generally let the words stand for themselves. You had to put a lot of fuss and flailing about into the way you said the words to get sheep and most people to listen, and Cashel only did that when he had to.

"Oh, well," said one of the soldiers who'd been looking after Garric. "Maybe her ladyship'll chop a hole in it with her axe, do you think?"

"She's not a ladyship, Prester," the other man said. "She's a princess!"

"And Beard," said the axe sharply, "is not a navvy's pick! Try to cut ice with me, Squad Leader Prester, and you'll find just how quickly I bounce back and empty your skull of what passes for brains!"

"If we advance behind the pikes, as many of them as we've still got…?" Master Ortron said. He didn't sound real confident, showing that he was the sensible man Cashel had always taken him for.

"Garric," said Cashel, "hold Sharina for me. She's coming around fine, but…"

He passed Sharina to her brother without waiting to see if Garric had an opinion. Cashel needed both hands and somebody needed to watch over Sharina for a little while yet; there wasn't anything to discuss.

Cashel stepped forward, balancing his staff before him in both hands. "Anything I can do to help, Cashel?" Garric said.