The campfire crackled between them. Smoke drifted across the trampled earth, and the air smelled of blood. Beside the leader, the white tiger’s heavy breathing was loud enough for Owen to hear from where he stood.
The surviving bandits had pulled back behind their leader. Hugh was still at Owen’s side, and across the clearing, Agnes stood in front of the shelter with the Ashcombe sister and her maid behind her.
The leader looked over the bodies of his men and the weapons scattered around the fire.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "And what do you want?"
He was enormous. He towered over every one of his men, his arms thick with muscle and his neck nearly as wide as his head. His short hair was going grey. A deep scar ran diagonally across his face, and his left eye was milky white and plainly useless. The other one moved constantly, from Owen to Hugh to the soldiers and back. His armor was battered, and every bit of skin Owen could see seemed to carry a scar of some kind.
"We’re soldiers of House Ferrers," Hugh said. "We’ve come for the women your men took from the Ashcombe carriage."
The leader’s good eye flicked toward Agnes and the captives, then to the crest on Owen’s clothes. He didn’t look frightened. He looked irritated, like a man whose subordinates had let something reach his door that never should have.
"Ferrers," he said. "And which one of you is the Ferrers?"
"Owen Ferrers," Owen said.
The man grunted. "Garrick Holt. These are my men." He glanced at the bodies around the fire. "Were."
He rolled his thick neck slowly. "I don’t care whose son you are, boy, or how many soldiers you brought with you. You walked into my camp and killed my people. You’re not walking out."
He held out his hand, and an enormous double-headed battleaxe appeared in it.
Ice spread over the metal edges almost at once. Cold vapor rose from the blade in thin curls, and frost crept across the ground beneath his boots.
Owen felt the temperature drop. The air around Garrick had gone noticeably colder, even from several paces away. He tightened his grip on his longsword.
Agnes stepped closer to him, keeping her eyes on the tiger.
"Young Master," she said quietly. "Let me take the tiger."
Owen looked from her to the animal. It was massive, nearly as tall at the shoulder as Garrick was at the chest.
"If that thing gets in while you and Hugh are fighting him, it’ll be much worse," Agnes said. "I can deal with it. Concentrate on the man."
Garrick laughed, a rough sound from deep in his chest.
"You hear that, Wraith?" he said, without taking his eye off Owen. "The maid wants to play with you." He lifted the axe. "Tear her apart. I’ll take care of these two."
The tiger lowered its massive body to the ground.
Grrrrrr...
Then it launched itself across the clearing.
Agnes met the tiger’s charge and immediately began giving ground, drawing it away from the shelter and the captives toward an open stretch between the tents. Behind her, the nearest Ferrers soldiers moved in to take the two women toward the edge of the clearing where they had come in.
Owen didn’t get to see any more than that, because Garrick was already coming.
The central fire burned at their backs. The remaining bandits had scattered toward the shelters, and the other Ferrers soldiers were pressing them back, leaving the space around the fire to Owen, Hugh and Garrick.
Garrick opened with a huge overhead swing.
Owen got Steel onto his longsword just in time.
CLANG!
The blade held. Everything behind it didn’t. The force of the blow came straight down through his arms and drove him back across the dirt, and the cold radiating from the ice-covered axe numbed his hands even through the impact. His shoulders screamed.
Garrick drew the axe back for a second blow, and Hugh came in from the side, forcing him to turn.
Clang!
Garrick met Hugh’s sword with the haft and shoved him back. Ice had thickened along the axe heads now, heavy and jagged, and when it struck, it hit with more than just weight. Hugh’s blade frosted over where they had touched.
Owen shook the numbness from his fingers and went back in.
He sent fire along his blade and changed to the arming sword to get inside the axe’s reach while Hugh drew Garrick’s attention. Garrick saw the change and stepped back to open the distance again. When Owen changed to the longsword to follow him, Garrick adjusted again.
He had fought long enough to read what a change in reach meant, Owen realized. Changing swords still gave him an advantage, but not the kind it had against the bandits.
Then Garrick drove his axe straight down into the ground.
Crrrrk!
Ice raced outward from the blade across the trampled earth.
Owen was in the middle of repositioning, and his boots went out from under him on the frozen ground. He caught himself, but not quickly enough. Garrick’s axe was already coming around.
Owen got his sword up and Steel across it. The blade took most of the blow. The rest drove into his side and ribs.
"Ghh—!"
He felt something open across his side, shallow but burning cold, and pain flared through his ribs.
Hugh threw himself between them before Garrick could follow up. The axe crashed into his blade, and Owen heard him grunt as the impact drove his sword back into his forearm.
"Hngh!"
Owen scrambled back onto clean ground. Every breath pulled at his ribs now.
He couldn’t overpower this man, he realized. Garrick was far stronger than him. But that axe was heavy, and every big swing took time to recover from. That was where he needed to be.
Across the clearing, Owen caught a glimpse of Agnes.
The tiger’s paws tore long grooves through the earth with every lunge, and when its claws struck her blade, they rang like metal.
Clang! Clang!
Agnes turned its first attacks aside and kept moving, trying to get around its huge body. Then Owen saw her find her opening. She drove her sword in.
The tiger dissolved.
Its whole body came apart into pale vapor, and Agnes’s blade passed straight through the space where it had been. Before she could recover, the vapor swept around to her flank and the tiger reformed out of it, already striking.
Rrraaagh!
Its claws raked across her shoulder. Agnes staggered and twisted away from its jaws just in time, and used her sword to drive it back before it could finish her.
Owen’s stomach dropped. A moment ago, she had looked as though she had that fight under control. The tiger had moved faster than he could follow.
He couldn’t go to her. If he left Hugh alone with Garrick now, Hugh would die. He forced his attention back to the axe in front of him.
The fight around the fire wore on, and Owen saw Hugh start to adjust.
Garrick was enormously strong, but every time he threw one of his heaviest swings, the axe was committed to that direction for a moment afterward. Hugh began watching for it. He pressed Garrick hard on one side, forcing him into another heavy swing, then slipped around the axe’s path and closed the distance.
Owen saw Garrick realize that Hugh’s sword was about to reach him.
"Wraith!" Garrick roared.
Across the clearing, the tiger broke away from Agnes and dissolved into vapor.
Whoosh!
The pale vapor streaked across the clearing faster than anything Owen had ever seen move, and the tiger reformed right beside its master just as Hugh committed to his attack. One huge paw swatted Hugh’s sword aside.
CRACK!
The force of it knocked Hugh off balance and turned what should have been a clean strike into nothing.
Owen saw the tiger fixed on Hugh, and Garrick’s other side standing open.
He changed to the rapier and drove in.