Theron Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 7 of 5

The boots stopped above the cave. Theron gripped the ice blade and faced the tunnel. One man could hold that narrow mouth for a while. But soldiers crowded the far end, shields up, spears ready. He could not cut through them all. The forge-well still glowed behind him. The ore deposit lay untouched below. He had the blade and no way out. His fox slipped from the shadows. The beast's ore-flecked coat caught the forge light. It pressed its nose at the cave wall, where cold air leaked through a seam in the stone. Theron ran his hand along the gap. A second passage, choked with ice. Too thin to crawl through. He could not dig it fast enough. The soldiers started down the tunnel. A hiss filled the cave. Frost spread across the ice blade in his hand. The patterns deepened, and the air near the seam went colder. Then the ice in the gap cracked and lifted. A small shape squeezed through—wings like frozen glass, a serpent's body, horns no longer than his thumb. The winter dragon fairy. It had followed the cold the blade threw off. It settled on his wrist and stared at the blocked passage. Theron understood. The blade and the creature shared the same cold. He pressed the flat of the steel to the frozen seam. The fairy breathed along the ice. The crack widened, grew tall enough for a man. The soldiers rounded the last bend, spears down. Theron did not wait. He drove the ice blade into the lead man's shield. The steel bit clean through wood and iron. The soldier fell back. The others crowded, but the tunnel pinched them to two at a time. He parried a spear, cut the shaft, and shoved the body into the next man. Then he backed toward the widened seam. The fox went first. Theron followed, turning sideways through the gap. The winter dragon fairy darted ahead. Behind him a soldier thrust a spear through the opening. The point grazed his arm. He breathed out, pressed the blade's edge to the ice above, and the fairy breathed once more. The seam groaned and collapsed. Snow and stone sealed the passage. The shouting went muffled, then stopped. Theron stood in a black crawlspace, chest heaving, blood on his sleeve. The blade still glowed faint in his grip. He had escaped. But the sealed passage led up, away from the forge, into bare rock he did not know. His fox trotted ahead, and the fairy's wings threw pale light on the walls. The soldiers now knew the cave. They would ring the frozen river and wait. He had his weapon at last. Reaching the tyrant meant crossing open ice, with every road watched, and no safe ground behind him.