Crimson Spring Ch3

CRIMSON SPRING

BY JEAN LOWE CARLSON

A KINGSMEN CHRONICLES PREQUEL NOVELLA

CHAPTER THREE

Sunshine seared Elohl’s eyes from the glinting of wet ice. Runnels of water slicked down the frozen waterfall, sheer obsidian cliffs snarling like fangs a hundred lengths to either side. Elohl’s leather gloves were useless upon his iceaxes, and he cursed as he bit them off and tucked them into a pouch on his climbing harness. Dipping fingertips into his pitch-purse, he set tacky fingers to the wooden handles of his iceaxes before unclipping from his rest-bolts in the thick ice. 

Ready to get the team moving from their break halfway up the three-hundred-foot falls, Elohl shouted down, “Heave, ready!”

Clipped into the line below and taking their rest upon obsidian crags that jutted out from the icy waterfall, his team returned, “Heave on!”

Ihbram, clipped in to a ledge five feet below, met Elohl’s gaze, before Elohl looked up to sight their final ascent. From their rest-ledges, Elohl’s team were only a twenty-minute climb from the top. But the sun’s glare off the west-facing cascades of ice and volcanic obsidian was murderous. Even with a grey silk cloth wrapped over his forehead and over his nose to cut the light, the sightline was impossible. 

And this section of falls, permanently in the midday sunshine, was the section that killed. 

With a deep breath, Elohl put his trust in his wyrria. Breathing his sensate sphere wide, he let it feel the wall of ice for him. Sliding his hands up, chunking in one iceax and then the other, Elohl was led by sensation as his clawed feet pushed his body up in easy diagonals. 

Smoothness rippled through him, leading his left hand to a solid span of ice. A jagged feeling assaulted him when he thought about moving right – a snapping sensation like ice breaking and bones being crushed. Electricity shot through him and he kept his leftward course, the ice deep and white without bubbles or glassy hints of thaw.

Elohl’s team made their way up his route, managing their reserves with the steady breaths of practiced Brigadiers. They knew that to follow their Lead Hand’s route was safety. Far below, Third-Lieutenant Lugo den’Mhessua’s team watched, then clipped in. Elohl had a brief glance of lion-maned den’Mhessua; he heard the man’s sharper-hawk whistle to muster his team. And then they, too, were climbing.

Elohl could feel them on the wall. Echoes of a hundred men passed through the ice and into his hands, deep into his body. His wyrric gift knew that everyone ascended his set route – Elohl could see it in his mind like a trail of ants inching up a stalk of grass. The spring sun was hot, and Elohl shook back his face wrap, baring his brush-cut curls. Their blue-black color shone in the light, his Kingsman heritage plain as his men watched him like a beacon in the sunshine.

A splintering sensation suddenly tore through Elohl’s gut and legs. Not from his ice, but from below and to the right, where five of den’Mhessua’s team had picked off-course. Elohl slammed three bolts in fast with his bolt-driver to a sheet of ice with a solid feel like the roots of the mountains. His hands had already clipped in a spare length of rope and secured his harness as he tossed the lines through a pulley, roaring for Ihbram to catch the tail-end for counterweight.

Ihbram caught the line just in time. Ever-watchful, he’d already set his own bolts and had clipped in, his hands free to catch Elohl’s line and haul fast. Screams came from below, as the ice to the right cracked with a thundering retort. Echoing in the obsidian cliffs, Elohl could hear nothing for a moment, see nothing – as an entire thirty-foot span sluiced off from the lateral falls with a roaring glitter. 

But Elohl and Ihbram were braced upon the lifeline. And the slack snapped upon the pulley as men seized Elohl’s line from below. As the thundering subsided to a deadly shattering of icicles at the base of the falls, Elohl glanced down. 

But he already knew – everyone had been saved. 

“Den’Karnak!” 

“Den’Huit!”

“Den’Lithou!”

Echoes of den’Mhessua’s team counting off wafted up. Whoops of joy came from the rest of the men, cusses of relief. Those that swung in midair were hauled in by their fellows, none of which had been torn from the falls by the weight of their comrades. Den’Mhessua’s sharper-hawk whistle came in two short bursts – his signal to climb on. Feeling slack in the lifeline, Elohl unclipped the pulley and affixed it to his harness, then coiled up the rope before freeing his harness from the ice. 

“Heave, ready!” He shouted back over his shoulder.

“Heave on!” Was returned.

They gained the lip of the falls in another five minutes. The rest of the climbing was smooth, as Elohl followed his instinct. When the broad vale of white glacier and jagged obsidian greeted them at last, and all hundred Brigadiers had collapsed upon the cliffs, Ihbram stalked over and clapped Elohl’s shoulder.

“Nicely done, Lead Hand.” 

Den’Mhessua heaved himself up and over the edge of the cliff with a roar and unclipped. A brawny fellow made for cold weather, his ruddy cheeks were flushed, his blue eyes bright as he marched up and slapped Elohl’s back like a bear.

“Aeon’s tits, boy! That was a wild ride!” Everyone was boy to the veteran Brigadier with his iron-blonde lion’s mane and bushy blonde beard. “I’m going to have words with den’Karnak, fucking runt, choosing his own route over yours! Almost lost me half my main crew! Rotten spring ice. Fast hauling, boy, I’ll tell you that! Den’Karnak!” He roared. “Where are you, boy? Get your Halsos-blighted ass over here!”

“Easy on him, Lugo!” Ihbram laughed, his eyes shining as he clapped den’Mhessua’s broad shoulder. “Leave the kid able to fight today, huh?”

“Not bloody likely.” Den’Mhessua grumped with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m going to tan his hide. Be right back.”

“Be back in five.” Elohl’s iron-gray gaze was steady as he regarded his Third-Lieutenant. “We need to discuss the battle.”

Den’Mhessua was instantly alert. He gave Elohl a swift nod and a lazy two-fingered Brigadier salute before striding away. Den’Mhessua’s booming voice berating the poor lad came from the edge of the hasty camp.

But Elohl had other concerns.

Beneath his boots, Elohl could feel deep fathoms of spring meltwater. Moving to a jagged table of obsidian that thrust up from the glacial ice, Elohl spread his sensate sphere wide, surveying hidden danger beneath the ice field. All around the obsidian, stalwart as a boulder in the ocean, the underside of the ice was ready to move. Though the snow and ice beneath Elohl’s boots seemed solid, it was actually full of holes, down where the river had begun to gather once more. Trapped beneath the ice, under the entire valley, the dammed-up river waited beneath the glacial crust – the slide and burble of spring’s eternal danger lurking deep underneath the Devil’s Vale.

Ready to be unleashed.

Climbing up to the spar’s vantage, Elohl scanned the long bowl of the valley, and Ihbram climbed up next to him. Pulling an ivory pipe from his gear, Ihbram stuffed in herbs and lit it with a phosphor match. He offered it and Elohl accepted with a nod, pulling sweet, warming smoke into his lungs. Vitality filled him from the stimulating heatherwort and tabbacine that the High Brigade smoked. It shook off his fatigue and sharpened his eyesight, and Elohl used the mild high to throw his sensate sphere out like a lance, biting the edges of the league-long vale.

Until he found his enemy.

“There.” Elohl gestured to the far northeast rim. The Valenghian forces were hunkering behind snow-blinds, hastily built up to reflect the western sun, and were all but invisible to the casual glance. But Elohl’s wyrria could feel the Valenghian fighters hiding in wait, watching the Brigadiers’ every move.

“What are they camped-in for?” Ihbram murmured, shading his eyes.

Elohl weighed the situation with his gray eyes narrowed. But before he could speculate, the Valenghians suddenly showed themselves. Stepping out from behind their snow-blinds, rank upon rank of red jerkins suddenly filled the narrow valley – like a seeping blood-stain upon all that white. Elohl’s gut dropped through his boots with a wash of horror. The Valenghian forces were three times what the watch-flares had indicated. Not two hundred but more than five hundred men stood in loose ranks a half-league distant.

And Elohl suddenly understood that the Valenghians weren’t here for a battle.

They were here for a massacre.

“Clip in.” The words shocked Elohl in how fast they came. But Elohl knew his sudden, desperate plan was their best recourse as soon as the words issued from his mouth. Far off, the Valenghians began to assemble in a slow, coordinated line.

“Clip in?” Ihbram turned shocked eyes to Elohl. “Harness our men to each other while we fight? What in Halsos—?”

But Elohl was already throwing bolts into the obsidian spar with his bolt-driver, and his hands clipped steel rings into them fast. All his lengths of silk rope were unclipped from his harness, and Elohl doled them out fast as he shouted for his Third-Lieutenant. The man jogged up, a florid cuss filling his mouth as he climbed the spar and saw what awaited them. 

“Lead Hand!” Den’Mhessua’s voice was a shocked as Ihbram’s. “How in Halsos—”

“Do as I say, Lugo.” Elohl’s baritone was even, a glacial calm filling him, a readiness for battle as he stared his Third-Lieutenant down with flint-gray eyes. “Get everyone to clip in, fast, quiet. Line them up for our defense right in front of this spar. Tell them all to drive bolts into whatever purchase they can find in this stone, and set their lines to full slack.”

Lugo gave him a look like he’d gone insane, but he knew better than to question Elohl’s instincts. He leapt down from the spar and began to quietly muster the men. The Brigadiers were fast and efficient – in no time, they were all clipped in to Elohl’s lines, ropes hidden behind them as they faced the oncoming mass of Red Valor with weapons out and ready snarls.

Elohl thumbed a silver box of phosphor matches from this climbing harness and pressed it into Ihbram’s hand – followed by the leather purse of saltpeter avalanche concussives. Elohl nodded to one of the sharpest peaks along the valley’s rim, where heavy snows had gathered in thick ridges from the swirling winds. “Climb that northeastern ridge, up that exposed goat-track. Detonate every avalanche concussive we have in that v-crag, where the snow is heaviest.”

Ihbram glanced to the peak, then turned back, his eyes incredulous. “But it’ll trigger an avalanche, right down into the valley! Elohl—”

Elohl gave Ihbram a hard glance, cutting with command. “Climb fast. Light the concussives. You’re the only one I know who can do this, Ihbram, besides me. Don’t fail.”

Ihbram blinked, but he didn’t gainsay his commander. Seizing the satchel of concussives, he launched from the spar with a lithe movement. And was off through the snow with quick, light steps so fast that he practically ran up the snowy incline.

Copyright 2018 Dragonlight Publishing LLC. No portion of this text may be copied or distributed without written permission of the author.

LOOK FOR CHAPTER FOUR NEXT WEEK IN YOUR INBOX!

THE KINGSMEN CHRONICLES

EPIC FANTASY ADVENTURE WITH HEART

Discover the #1 Amazon Bestselling and award-winning epic fantasy series – available in ebook and print.