Mordraud, Book One (60 page)

And
he already knew that if he did it, he’d never find that peace again.

“
Hold me tighter.”

Mordraud
lowered his eyes towards her.

Deanna
was enveloped in fire.

“
Why are you looking at me like that?”

Fl
ames were devouring her flesh, and her lovely dark hair. They licked out from the orbits of her molten eyes like red-hot tongues. Even her body was burning. Mordraud struggled to wriggle free, he did all he could to escape that grip, but his strength failed him. Deanna was slowly reeling him towards her. What little remained of her face was grinning. When she leant her breasts against his chest, Mordraud finally managed to scream.

“
DEANNA! DEANNA!”

Mordraud
flailed his arms about, and found himself wrapped in heavy rough and stinking blankets. The light had vanished, the sweet sounds had vanished and the large comfortable bed had vanished.

In their place merely
moans and wheezes of pain, the ubiquitous greyness of the winter, and an uncomfortable and bony camp-bed.

“
Wh... where am I?!”

Nobody answered
. The huge tent was shrouded in a silence broken only by the whimpering of the wounded and the ailing. The infirmary. It was hard for him to separate out reality from dream. He could still smell Deanna, her skin. The flames.

He tentat
ively touched his chest with a hand. All he could feel was intense pain, and withered suppurating skin.

“
The flashes... The Lance... Adraman!” Mordraud remembered it all, at last. “Adraman?! Where are you?”

He didn
’t shout, so as not to wake all the other dozing soldiers. Someone, on the other side of the large tent, replied in a whisper.

“
Mordraud?! You’re awake! Are you okay?”

It was
Adraman’s voice. Mordraud wondered for a moment if he’d been heard as he cried out Deanna’s name in despair, and desperately hoped not. Or perhaps he hoped he had – he wasn’t very sure.

“
Hold on... I’ll come over to you.”

“
Are you mad?! Stay where you are, you have to rest! They’ve left you in a pretty bad state, my boy. It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

Mordraud
naturally didn’t heed him. There was no question of staying stretched out flat, waiting for who knew what. Tottering steps took him down the narrow aisle that opened up between the camp-beds, to reach Adraman. He had a broken leg but was alive and in good health. Mordraud was again assailed by doubts. Was he happy, or would he have preferred a different outcome?

Deanna
at his side, in the big soft bed. Mordraud banished the enticing image and sat at Adraman’s side. He’d never go that low. Not with him.

“
You never listen, do you? You have to rest. They struck resonance with your internal organs, and you go strolling around... You really are unbelievable.”

Adraman
told him what had happened after the battle. The young man had fought between life and death for four days, and the healers had reached the conclusion that he wouldn’t make it.

“
Even if he were to wake up, he’d be a zombie,” was the judgement from the most expert among them. But he’d surprised them all. He was barely breathing, could hardly stand, and struggled to keep his eyes open due to the pain in his chest – but he was alive.

“
And you, how are you feeling?” he asked Adraman. The horseman was a little crumpled, but he was infinitely better than the last time Mordraud had seen him. Beneath a horse, buried in the snow, half-dead from the freeze.

“
I’m fine, but this damned leg is really bothering me. It itches below the splinting. And I’ve got a stinking cold.”

“
So you’re not spilling tears over me?!” Mordraud replied scornfully. Adraman’s eyes were moist and puffy.

“
Who do you take me for? I’m not some little tart. Go back to bed if you were expecting some fond caresses, you dolt!”

“
I’d never take the liberty...” Mordraud answered. “But let’s get back to serious business... How’s the fighting going? Any news?”

A glum expression
possessed Adraman, as he sank down into the broad pillow. “Bad. Rumours are rife that some allies want to back out. They’re all terrified of this frigging winter, that the wretched Gods are to blame! Eldain no longer knows what action to take... and he seems rather weary, preoccupied... It’s not like him. I’ve never seen him in such trouble.”

Mordraud
nodded without speaking. That trick of nature was crumbling up years and years of sacrifices, battles and ideals. And if Adraman was worried about Eldain, then the situation had deteriorated so much as to be almost irremediable.

Almost
.

Mordraud
realised he had an idea that had never surfaced. Perhaps he’d unwittingly meditated on it as he lay unconscious on his lurid bed. As if the Lance’s chant had created a resonance with something inside him, a link he still hadn’t fully sealed. He wasn’t sure how to make it feasible.

But
he had an idea.

“
All this is a curse set by Cambria, wouldn’t you say? Their chanters have shaped it.”

“
And so? Even if it were, we lack chanters skilled enough to challenge it in any case.”

That was precisely the point. He
’d never considered it before, because he’d failed to see him as useful. Because he was too young, and had been studying for such a short time. And mainly because he was his brother – and Mordraud didn’t want to get him involved in the war.

Gwern.
The only hope that made sense to his eyes.

“
Where’s Eldain?”

Adraman
shook his head and grumbled. “He was supposed to speak with the army captains this evening. And I bet my spit against a diamond that Ice will make the most of the opportunity to announce the eastern allies’ withdrawal.”

“
Then we need to hurry. Come on!” Mordraud seized Adraman by the shoulders and pulled his weight up off the bed. “I’ll explain on the way.”

“
But where is it you want to go?! Put me down! You can barely stand up, and I’m in a similar state! We’re pitiful!”

“
Yeah, yeah... We’ll talk about it later. But let’s get a move on just now, come on!”

Mordraud
began staggering ahead, trailing with him Adraman, who had to hop on his one fairly good leg to keep up.

“
You’re crazy, my boy,” Adraman commented indignantly. “You’re a wretched, foolish lunatic.”

“
I know, don’t worry,” returned Mordraud, pulling back the edge of the curtain door leading outside. The chill was horrific. His body shuddered, on the verge of deserting him. But Mordraud desperately drew on all his will and managed to hold out. There was no time to lose.

He had a winter to sweep
away.

***

Deanna took the parchment closed up with the Eld seal, broke it, and approached the window of her private sitting room. They’d run out of candles a good while ago, and just a glance at the courtyard smothered by snow was enough to remind her they’d have to go without for quite some time more. And the same was true for everything else, now.

The food was down to the last scraps
, and only thanks to the reserves Adrina had wisely stocked the cellars with could Deanna afford the luxury of dining decently.

“
Why did you put all this stuff aside?” Deanna had inquired when she observed every sort of pickle, preserve and cured meat on the table. “I do believe my husband never gave you instructions to do so.”

“
The master was aware I had my stores, and he always left me free to decide how to run and organise the supplies,” the elderly housekeeper had replied. “You young ladies don’t have the grit of the women of my times. Did you know when I was a girl Eld’s lands were hit by food shortages lasting for years? We even ate rats, cats and dogs... the few that were left. You can never be sure of anything, young madam... One should always be provident.”

Things were
proceeding much worse in the rest of town. Whole neighbourhoods were cut off by the snow, and however much the old men and the women used their shovels to free the streets, the vegetable patches and the doorways, they were helpless against the arrival of yet another ice storm. Rumours, very nasty rumours, were going around about what was happening at the Rampart. And other even worse ones on what state the villages out towards the east were in. The elderly and the children left to starve to death in an attempt to save at least the strongest and most able-bodied. Citizens who boiled and chewed tree bark as a way to fill their stomachs. Revolts for bread, or for a handful of mouldy wheat. The villas of rich merchants pillaged, and their occupants wiped out. People who vanished and hadn’t returned home by sunrise.

A sun that also barely ever rose
.

It was mid—
morning, but it seemed like sunset. The sky was veiled, as ever, in grey and black clouds laden with cold. A thick sharp fog lingered over the ground like decomposition fumes on hillocks. The fire was lit, but it heated and illuminated too little. The waxy table legs didn’t burn at all well. Deanna strained her eyes and made an effort to decipher the neat and tiny handwriting that unfurled on the yellowed parchment. The wool shawl around her shoulders wasn’t enough to keep the draughts out, so she took a blanket off the armchair. It smelt of damp and mustiness, but it was nevertheless comforting. It felt like a human embrace – something Deanna was craving and missing dreadfully.

Mordraud
and Adraman had only stopped by home once in recent months, a few weeks earlier, and they’d had dinner together. She certainly hadn’t passed up her chance, and had found a quiet spot to be alone with Mordraud for just a few minutes, before gloomily going back to her husband in his room. It had unquestionably been a very demanding evening. The men had set off the next morning, together, to return to the front, despite the relentless snow and a wind as chill as death. The truce had never come that year.

Nobody would ever have expected
the winter not to make rightful way for the spring. It was unthinkable, impossible even to imagine. An age-old process that anyone would have taken for granted. The festivities to celebrate the arrival of the warm season were arranged in the fiefdom, the peasants were awaiting the moment they could return to their fields, the children tingled at the idea of being able to play outside in the open air once again until late. But the snow simply didn’t stop falling. Adraman set off for the front with the new recruits, among general puzzlement. And from that day on, everything grew bizarre.

The plants didn
’t sprout their new shoots. The animals failed to produce litters or young. The fields rotted under the weight of marble-like ice. The trees shrivelled and died. People’s mouths were watering at the prospects of fruit, vegetables, the scented air and sunshine till evening. They had to swallow it all down reluctantly. That big freeze was increasingly taking on the guise of a divine curse, a punishment for what Eldain and his supporters had been pursuing for years. Cambria had the Gods’ backing, so it seemed. The Alliance was lucky religion held little sway in those areas. Otherwise, things would already have floundered a long time ago.

Deanna
managed to read a few lines in the dim light provided by the window, but didn’t grasp the meaning straight away. It was already rather challenging to live in those conditions – she would have found it hard to bear more bad news.

“I’ve been injured in battle. One leg’s broken, but it’s not life-threatening. I’m writing so you won’t be overly worried, since I haven’t been home for some time and won’t be returning for months to come. Mordraud’s been wounded too. He’s not in very good shape, but he’s young and I trust that he will recover.

I miss you
.

All my love
”

Deanna finished reading it and remained motionless for a moment. Perhaps she hadn’t understood properly. She read again. And again, until her head hurt. The light grew ever weaker and greyer.

Mordraud’s been wounded too.

He
’s not in very good shape.

I trust that
...

Deanna scrunched the letter up in her hands, squashed it, then tore it up into a thousand pieces. She was neither furious nor worried. She wasn’t sure how she should be feeling.

Relieved about
her husband? Anxious about her lover?

I
t was too much, to be able to decide. So she chose to feel nothing, while the tiny ink-smeared pieces fell to the floor like sleet. While she tossed them around the room and she watched as she made them dance like tiny ballerinas.

Only once her
destruction was complete did Deanna recognise that her heart had made the decision for her.