Riv ducked, spun away, set her feet.
Kol followed her, their battle resuming, a blur of blows. He landed a few of his own strikes, though with less power than Riv, just letting her know that he could. She shrugged them off, attacking like a force of nature, swirling around Kol, sweat stinging her eyes.
Dimly, Riv became aware of a circle forming around them: Ben-Elim, white-feathered wings and mail shirts bright in the winter sun. She ignored them, continued to batter, spin and hack at Kol, surrendering totally to the emotion that was coursing through her, allowing her anger to have free rein, like a stallion galloping freely, and for a while her anger led her and she allowed her body to follow blindly.
Eventually the red mist began to fade, and she saw an opening against Kol, swung low, her blade catching him in the ankles, and then he was falling, Riv ready to step in and put her blade to his throat, but he did not end up on the ground, instead with a pulse of his wings he was rising, turning in the air, suddenly behind her as she stepped forwards, off balance. His sword blade pressed against her throat, his other hand about her waist, body pressed tight against her back.
‘I win,’ he whispered in her ear, so close Riv wasn’t sure if it was the touch of his breath or lips upon her neck. Whichever one it was it made her skin gooseflesh, a shudder of warmth rippling through her body. Then Kol was stepping away, leaving her standing there, breathing heavily, heart thumping in her head like a drum.
She became aware of the Ben-Elim ringed around her, fifty, sixty of them, maybe more, recognized many of them as those that Kol had taken with him on the mission to Oriens. They all stared at her, their bodies and wings blotting out the rest of the field.
A figure pushed through them, smaller, dark-haired. Aphra.
Riv took a step towards her sister, felt dizzy, a sequence of pains shuddering through her body. In her belly, lower, but overwhelming them all a sudden pain stabbing in her back, between her shoulder blades, as if Kol had pierced her with his sword. She grunted, and then she was falling, the ground rushing up to meet her.
Voices, blurred, as if heard through water.
‘. . . so worried about her, I cannot think,’ someone said.
Aphra?
‘She has her blood, is becoming a woman, and she has a fever. She will recover.’
‘It’s not just a fever, Mam, is it? What about her back?!’
Water, Riv said, or tried to, unsure whether the word actually left her lips.
She was lying face-down, the pillow beneath her face wet, which was uncomfortable. She tasted salt.
My own sweat, she realized, which was strange, as she was so cold.
Freezing! Why don’t they put a blanket on me? She tried to move, to speak, but didn’t think even a finger or toe twitched. A pain, deep in her belly, feeling like her insides were falling out, and her back . . .
Dear Elyon, the pain.
Perhaps she gasped, for there was a hand upon her back, a wet cloth, feeling like heaven.
‘What’s happening to her?’ Aphra said, and Riv felt a tugging sensation across her back, like when she had sat out too long in the sun and a few days later was peeling strips of sunburned skin from her shoulders and arms.
Footsteps, a shadow, Riv’s eye open a crack. Her mam stood before her. Behind her a stone wall, not her barrack room.
Where am I?
‘I don’t know,’ her mam said. A silence. ‘We may have to get her out of Drassil.’
And then sleep was pressing in upon her again, Riv fighting it, but her mam and sister’s voices faded . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DREM
Drem woke with a start. A beam of daylight pierced a gap in the wall of the barn where he’d slept, motes of dust floating in the sunlight. A goat was nibbling at his breeches.
‘Off,’ he breathed, pushing it away.
Outside there were the sounds of splintering ice, the crunch of snow. Voices, whispered.
Drem’s eyes snapped open, fully awake now, and he eased himself up to a sitting position, clamping back the groan that wanted to escape his mouth.
They’re here.
He gripped his spear and levered himself stiffly to his feet, picked up his bundle of weapons and crept to the barn door.
Figures were in his yard, wrapped in fur, heads close together, whispering, the glint of steel in their hands. Other shadows moved at the edges of the yard, creeping around the sides of his cabin. Someone’s back shifted along the barn door, pressed against the crack he was peering through, cutting off his vision.
Counted eighteen. Heard more. That’s not good.
He thought about tiptoeing out the back of the barn, hiding, fleeing. He recognized the fear jolting through him that prompted these thoughts, thrusting them to the foremost of his mind. The logical voice in his mind managed to see them for what they were. A knee-jerk reaction. One that he would not listen to.
He’d made his decision. To stay and fight. If he’d run for Dun Seren, they would have caught up with him in the Wild, and he’d have less chance there than he had here. He thought of his da, closed his eyes a moment, breathed in long and deep, then blew it out slowly.
The figure moved away from the door and he saw Wispy Beard, head freshly shaved, though he hadn’t done a very good job of it, clumps of red stubble catching the sun. He signalled with a hand motion, sent three men towards the front door of Drem’s cabin, others spreading loosely through the yard.
Wispy’s in charge, then. No Burg or Kadoshim. That part of my gamble’s paid off. Just wish he hadn’t brought so many with him.
A scream rang out, distant, from the back of the cabin.
Drem smiled.
Nails and old knife blades frozen into the window frames.
A splintering crunch, yells, changing to thuds and screams. Much closer than the first ones, and higher pitched, communicating a much greater degree of pain.
Drem peered through the crack in the barn door, saw the three men Wispy had sent to his front door had disappeared, a great big hole in front of the steps to his cabin porch.
Hardest elk pit I’ve ever dug. And the first one I’ve set spears into.
All the men in the yard were alert now, anxious, weapons gripped tight, staring at Drem’s cabin. Two men climbed over the railings to either side of the steps. The crunch of the snow that Drem had decided to leave thick on the porch. A different type of crunch as one of the men trod on a bear trap, iron jaws snapping shut, shredding flesh and breaking bone.
Another ear-splitting shriek.
The last man at the door, kicking it open. Wood splintering.
The creak of rope, and then the man in the doorway was flying through the air, a wooden post the size of a tree trunk swinging in the open door.