Chapter 13

Sarette blocked Corec’s strike, then dashed away before he could close in. They were both wielding wooden staves for their sparring session, but if they’d been using their normal weapons, her staff-spear didn’t have a crossguard, and his sword blade could have slid along the shaft and hit her hand. She wore gloves made of a light chain mesh for protection, but she wouldn’t have wanted to test them against a blade as heavy as the one Corec typically carried.

“Good,” he said. “Do you want to grab your spear and practice taking down someone in heavy armor?”

“For armor with enough metal in it, I’d normally just charge my weapon and shock them,” Sarette said, retrieving her staff-spear from where it stood leaning against the stable wall.

Corec grabbed his helmet from a nearby bench and put it on. “Let’s wait on that until Treya gets here, and just focus on using the weapon by itself. They taught you how to use the hook on the back, right?”

Including the blade, Sarette’s staff-spear stood six and a half feet tall—nearly a foot taller than she herself was. The blade was a foot and a half long, affixed to the side of the spear, with the last six inches tapering to a point beyond the end of the shaft. Opposite the blade was a hook that curved backward.

“Some,” she said. “The High Guard practice with it, but the stormrunners don’t use it much because we move around too quickly, and have other ways of dealing with armor.”

He stood facing her, gripping his wooden staff as if it was a greatsword, his feet braced for an attack. “If you’re too tired to cast any more spells, how would you take me down?”

Sarette looked him over, considering the question. Even with a fake weapon, Corec was imposing, especially with the helmet hiding his face. People who could afford the kind of armor he wore usually had others to do their fighting for them.

“If you were mounted, I could hook it around your ankle and pull you from your horse,” she said.

Corec nodded. “If Rusol sends the knights after us, they’ll likely try to mount a charge. Knock one from his horse and he’ll hit the ground hard. You should have a few seconds to move in before he recovers.”

“They’re your friends, aren’t they?” Sarette asked. She knew he’d trained with the Knights of Pallisur, but he hadn’t told her much about his past, or anything else personal. He didn’t seem to know how to act around her. It was clear he still felt guilty about casting the warden bonding spell on the others, but Sarette was the only one who’d actually asked for it. That put her in a different category than the rest of the group.

She wasn’t sure how to act around him, either. Wardens were tales out of legends in Snow Crown, but Corec seemed too normal for the old stories to apply.

“A few,” he said. “Some of the boys I trained with. And, the last I heard, my uncle is still with the Order. But I don’t think we’ll have to fight the knights, not if we can prove Rusol is using magic. The Order may not like me anymore, but they’re not going to attack one mage on the orders of another. They’re loyal to Pallisur first, before the royal family. Still, we need to be ready for them. So, you knocked me off my horse, but I got up before you could deal with me. What do you do next?”

“Knock you down again?”

He shrugged. “Give it a try.”

She swung the blade end of her staff-spear down toward his foot and attempted to lodge the hook around the back of his ankle. He changed his stance and batted her weapon away with his own.

“Try here,” he suggested, holding his arm up and patting underneath at a gap in the plate armor where his chain shirt showed through.

She snagged the hook against the edge of the plate below his underarm, but when she tried to pull on it, he wrapped his arm around her spear and yanked it away from her. With his other hand, he tapped her on the shoulder with his staff.

“Most people wearing plate armor will be heavier and stronger than you,” he said. “You can still knock them down if you catch them by surprise, but if they’re aware of you, they can brace themselves ... and they can defend themselves. It would help if you wore a helmet.”

“The Heights are so cold in the winter, nobody wears helmets. Not ones made out of metal, anyway.”

“We’re not in the Heights anymore.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. She wasn’t ready to mention the other reason—a helmet would cut down on her peripheral vision too much. She’d only mentioned flying the storms to Treya, and she wasn’t sure the other woman realized that it involved actual flying. Now that her dream was so close, she couldn’t bring herself to tell everyone what she was waiting for. She didn’t want to see their pity if she failed.

“Are you ready to try again?” he asked, handing back her spear.

“How would you do it?” Sarette asked. A sword, even a large one, didn’t seem particularly useful against plate armor. A hammer or bill would work better.

“That depends. If I was sparring in front of my teachers back when I was with the knights, I’d grab my sword like this,” he said, sliding his left hand two-thirds of the way along where the blade would be, “and try to stab into the gaps. Neck, knees, underarms. But in an actual fight, unless the fellow was a lot bigger than me, I’d probably just knock him over and pull his helmet off. If the helmet won’t come off, I’d stab him through the eye slits with my knife.”

“What should I do?”

“If they’re distracted and you think you can knock them off balance, use the hook. If they’re ready for you, and wearing heavier armor, don’t try to face them directly. Use the tip of your blade like a halberd’s spike. Aim for the gaps, then dodge out of the way.”

Sarette nodded. Stormrunners depended on flight for combat, and even the ground-fighting style she’d learned during her training was still highly mobile, intended to take advantage of the same skills she would later need for stormrunning. The High Guard taught techniques for going head-to-head with heavily armored opponents, but Sarette had never attended the High Guard’s military academy.

A voice came from behind her. “Are you ready for me?”

She turned to find that Treya had joined them.

Corec said, “If you’re ready, we are.”

Sarette bit her lower lip, then tightened a coat strap that didn’t need to be tightened. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked him.

“We tried it with fire and it worked,” Corec said. Then he shrugged. “Mostly.” He rubbed at the singed hair behind his right ear.

Treya winced. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it was good practice. We needed to know.” To Sarette, he said, “But you can control how strong it is, right?”

“Somewhat, yes.”

“Then make it as weak as possible for this first try.”

“What if you took off your breastplate? We could prop it up and practice against that instead.”

“I can only cast the protection spell on a person,” Treya said. “It won’t work on just his armor.”

Sarette sighed and nodded, then rapped the butt of her staff-spear against the ground, charging it. Blue and white light flickered over the weapon.

Corec cocked his head in Treya’s direction. She touched his shoulder, then stepped back. “It’s done,” she said.

He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled noisily. “All right. Let’s try it.” He pointed to Sarette.

She grasped her weapon in both hands and tentatively thrust toward his chest. Just before the blade made contact, the lightning magic it carried discharged into the air around him, shimmering across the surface of a rounded barrier. The blade continued on, tapping against his breastplate.

“It worked,” Treya said, sounding relieved.

Corec nodded. “It blocked the magic but let the spear through. I thought it might stop them both as long as Sarette’s spell was active.”

“No, the barrier only blocks the lightning itself,” Treya said. “It should work against regular lightning, too, not just magic. Though it probably won’t be strong enough to block an entire lightning strike.”

“Really?” Corec asked. “Your fire barrier stayed up for five or ten seconds after Shavala started.”

“I think the two spells work differently. If you swing your hand through a campfire quickly enough, you’ll feel the heat, but you won’t burn yourself. Burning takes time. Lightning happens all at once, but in that instant, it’s much stronger than fire. Shavala’s flame drained the fire protection spell over time, but if Sarette hit you with something as strong as real lightning, it would drain it all at once.”

“Well, let’s not do that just yet. But I think we can try again—a little stronger this time.”

Leena was in a spare room at the inn, inventorying the supplies that the others were bringing back, then crossing them off the master list. Waiting for the next delivery, she started separating out twelve piles by weight and size, to be distributed across the pack saddles for the twelve mules. There would be saddlebags on the horses too, but those would mostly be filled with personal items, with only a little room for excess supplies. She’d never had to organize a load for a pack mule before, but it seemed simple enough and Boktar had given her some tips.

She hadn’t anticipated remaining with the group this long. She’d expected to part ways as soon as they arrived in port, but ever since reaching Nysa, her Seeking had told her she needed to go roughly east, in the exact same direction as the road leading to Lato. Perhaps that was why the magic had paired her up with these people. Maybe they were going to the place where she needed to be.

There was the sound of light footsteps coming down the stairs, and then Ellerie stood in the doorway.

“Leena, would you saddle a horse and ride out to find Boktar and Corec? Let them know we only need six more horses, not seven. Josip has his own. Take Razai—she knows where they went, and I’d be more comfortable if you had some protection.”

Leena looked down uncertainly. “I don’t know how to ride.”