Kushiel’s Dart

"Phèdre." His voice startled me, and I realized the extent of my nerves' fraying. I met his sober look. "If…when…they catch us, I want you to do something. Whatever I say, whatever I do, play along with it. Here, I want to show you something." Rising, he went to our packs, and came back with Trygve’s shield. It was a simple round buckler, hide-covered, with a steel disk at the center and straps to go over one’s arm. I’d wondered why he hadn’t discarded it, when he fought better without one.

Under the Skaldic night skies, he showed me how to wield it, slipping my arm into the straps and covering my body.

"If you have a chance," he said quietly, "any chance, to get away, take it. You know enough to survive on your own, while the supplies hold out. But if you don’t…use the shield. And I will do what I can."

"Protect and serve," I whispered, gazing up at him, silhouetted against the starry night. He nodded, tears in his eyes, glimmering in the dark. I felt a pain in my heart I had never felt before. "Ah, Joscelin…"

"Go to sleep." He murmured it, turning away. "I’ll take the first watch."

On the fourth day, it snowed.

It was the sort of weather that played with us as a cat will play with a mouse between its paws, battering us with whipping wind and a flurry of whiteness, then drawing back to allow us enough of a respite to press forward, sometimes huddled over our mounts' necks, sometimes wading through snow waist-deep, until the next blast came, swiping at us with wintry claws.

I fell into a cold dream, numb and frozen, huddled in the saddle or stumbling in Joscelin’s trail, only his curses and exhortations keeping me moving. I don’t know how long we traveled that way. Time becomes meaningless, measured out in lengths of endless staggering in a frigid daze, broken only by brief moments of lucidity when the snows broke and the landscape lay visible before us, showing our markers.

There is a sound the wind makes when it gusts, a high keening sound, as it bends around rock and tree. I grew so used to it, I scarce noticed when it changed, no longer rising and falling but rising steadily, rising and rising.

"Joscelin!"

The wind tore the word from my lips, but he caught it, turning back, a strange and hoary figure under the wolf-pelt. I pointed back along our trail with one mittened hand.

"They’re coming."

He threw his head back in alarm, gaze sweeping our surroundings. There was nothing for the eye to see, nothing but swirling snow. "How many?"

"I can’t tell." I made myself be still, straining to hear the distant yells over the keening wind. "Six. Maybe eight."

His face was grim. "Ride!"

We rode, then, blindly, the way one flees in a nightmare. I hunched in the saddle and clung to my pony’s neck, the air gasping in my lungs like knives as my mount struggled gamely in Joscelin’s wake, plunging and churning the snow. I could hear them now, clearly, a bloodthirsty Skaldic war-chant that rose above the wind and battered our ears like raven’s wings, urging us onward, onward, into the madness of flight.

It was too much, and we had too little left to give. I heard the sound of howling Skaldi pursuers string out, half their number circling around our forefront. I rode, floundering, alongside Joscelin and shook my head at him as we burst into a clearing, near a promontory of rock. His horse was nigh done in, and I could feel my pony’s sturdy sides heaving under me.

Joscelin drew up his horse, then, a serene calm settling over his wind-burned features. "We will make a stand, Phèdre," he said to me, very clearly. I remember that so well. He nodded at the promontory, dismounting and handing me Trygve’s shield. "Take this, and guard yourself as best you may."

I obeyed, getting down from my exhausted mount and settling the shield on my arm, my back against the rock. Our horses stood without moving, heads low, trembling as the lather turned to ice on their coats. Shield-armed and settled, I stood watching while Joscelin drew his sword and walked out into the middle of the clearing to meet them, a lonely figure half-lost in the swirling snows.

I’d been right; there were seven of them. Volunteers, Selig’s best, the fastest riders, the most skilled trackers. It was something, that it had taken them four days to catch us. The howling had stopped when we ceased to flee, and they rode silently out of the snows, dark and ominous. Seven. They halted before Joscelin, ranged in a semicircle. He stood alone, his sword hilt at shoulder-height, the blade angled across his body in the Cassiline defensive pose.

And then he threw it down, and clasped his hands in the air above his head.

"In Selig’s name," he cried in passable Skaldic, "I surrender!"

I heard laughter, then a gust of wind came, and snow-devils obscured my vision. When it died, I saw four had dismounted and approached him on foot, swords drawn, and one battle-axe among them. Two riders hung back.

The third rode toward me.