Warsong (Chronicles of the Warlands, #6)(38)

Her fear eased when she saw that Joden still lay in the cocoon of bedding, clearly warm and sleeping. He stirred at her arrival, but did not waken.

She bit back all her questions, and set to work.

First was starting a fire. She’d found two flat rocks that she’d brought back with her, so she built the fire on top and around them. Once the flames rose, she filled her pot was water and placed it close to boil.

She unbuckled her sword, keeping it close beside her. Then she knelt and finished cleaning the rabbits. The meat would cook on the flat stones, the bones would go for a broth. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of fresh meat.

She had a thought that they could use the uncured skins to protect Joden’s feet, secured with strips of cloth. Not much protection, but better than nothing for the trip down the mountain.

She eyed the white cloth. She’d cut it, make a kind of tunic from it for Joden, belted at the waist. She bit her lip. What if it was sacred cloth of some kind, for a ceremony?

She shrugged. Well, if it was, it was too bad. It would have to serve their needs.

She shook her head, and focused on her work. The animals had a series of burrows on the side of the mountain, and had been easy targets for her rocks. They hadn’t seemed to even recognize her as a threat. That thought made her shift uneasily, and she glanced over at Joden, still fast asleep.

How had he known? And he’d mentioned airions. How did he know of them?

Once the meat was ready and the bones simmering in the pot, Amyu cleaned her dagger and her hands and indulged her curiosity. She rose, and went to examine the passage.

It went back into the mountainside a fair way, only to end in a sheer rock wall, reminding her of the mountainside at the top of the highest tower of the castle. She searched, but it was all stone, the bricks of the wall going right up to it. No doors, no openings. Silent, solid rock.

Amyu knew the dead were sometimes buried in stone in Xy. Othur’s body had been placed in something called a crypt. But there were no dead here, no places in the walls for bodies in boxes.

Amyu huffed out a long breath. It didn’t matter. She had failed in her search for airions, but even that really didn’t matter. She’d a new goal: to make sure that Joden reached Keir and Xylara safely.

She returned to the fire, to find the stones almost hot enough for cooking. She didn’t want to wait, brushing off the embers and placing strips of the meat on the rock. The sizzle made her mouth water.

The pile of blankets erupted, as Joden stiffened and went into convulsions.

Amyu froze.

Joden’s arm worked free, knocking over the pot of water, setting the coals to sizzling.

Amyu moved then, to push him back from the flames, to try to restrain his body as it shivered and jerked under her hands.

It may have only been a few breaths, but it felt like an eternity before he relaxed, sighed and seemed to slip back into sleep. His breathing was normal now. Amyu’s was not.

After a long moment Amyu covered him up again with the blanket, then set about rebuilding the fire, refilling the pot and setting the bones back to boil after cleaning off the worst of the dirt.

Her hands did the work routinely. But her thoughts raged.

They might kill him if she took him back.

How many times has she seen it? Theas escorting the old, the sick, the feeble away from camp, returning alone? Or taking the mis-born babies out into the wide, wide grasses, returning with empty arms and grieving eyes?

And as her time had come and gone with no babes of her own body, she’d known her failure to the Plains, and her duty. Only the intervention of the Warprize had prevented her from going to the snows.

A fierce need to protect him rose suddenly in Amyu’s chest. She nodded to herself as she placed the pot on the far side of the fire from the sleeping Joden. She’d take him to the Warprize, and Master Eln. They’d not let any kill Joden outright.

And should any warrior bar her way, she’d buy the time he’d need.

As good a way to lose her life as any.





Chapter Thirteen


“There is power in death,” Hail Storm said.

He spoke to the young warriors seated before him using a formal teaching tone. He kept his voice low so as not to be overheard by the theas hovering just out of earshot. The theas had agreed to treat his words as if he were under the bells.

They had met well away from Antas’s main camp and the surrounding thea camps. The less that knew of this, the better.

Antas had ordered the theas to bring the young ones to Hail Storm to be tested. But none of them were pleased, and they expressed it with crossed arms and frowns as they watched. Suspicious, as always.

The young ones before him listened with the wide eyes of youth being told secrets.

Children on the verge of adulthood, who had not yet been through the Rites of Ascension, but were eager to be out from under the control of the theas. Old enough to go to war. Young enough to be shaped to his hand and his will.

Hail Storm sat before them, using a thick cloak to cover his arm, to appear wise and noble and remote as a warrior-priest should. These children had seen the glow of the power of the Plains. They had the potential for power, and certainly, the innocence he required.

No real problem to introduce them to the ways of blood magic. Except for their overprotective theas.

Hail Storm wasn’t stupid enough to challenge theas. Antas may have decided to risk it, but Antas was a fool. Theas were terrors in defense of their charges, and Hail Storm would not risk their wrath.