The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Megan Lindholm

wallowed up to her feet, wondering what kind of game this was. Sven had been too rough; he should know how big he was, how strong compared to her. She regained her feet, staggering slightly.

      ‘Sven!’ she rebuked him gently. The children were laughing. He shook his head regretfully and gave a snort of laughter. He had meant it in fun, a romp in the snow. She saw that now. She smiled her forgiveness and moved toward him.

      ‘KI!’ someone screamed. She didn’t turn to look. If Sven was here before her, then who else was there in the world? Then it was Ki’s turn to scream as Vandien shouldered her aside in his rush, plunging her little sheath knife into Sven’s chest.

      Sven brushed him aside, unconcerned by him, and Ki saw the blood leap from Vandien’s face where Sven’s fingers touched him. She did not understand, but Sven was smiling still and beckoning her to come to him. She shook her ears, trying to rid them of buzzing. It only made the sore spot on her head hurt more. She was cold now, too. When Sven had playfully pushed her down, her cloak had ripped wide. The cold air seeped in. But Sven’s arms would be warm to enfold her.

      ‘Long have we waited for you, Mother!’ Lars called. His hands reached for Ki, grasped her cloak. In his eagerness, smiling, he jerked her to her knees, her cloak tearing like a rotted sack in his grip. Ki looked up at them, puzzled by their roughness. But they were smiling, ever smiling.

      Suddenly Sven and the children staggered forward. Vandien had leaped onto Sven’s back from behind. Blood masked half of his face. ‘Harpy!’ he roared as he dug his fingers into Sven’s eyes. Ki cried out in alarm, sprang up to help Sven beat the madman off.

      But Sven shook him off effortlessly. Vandien hit the snow, rolling and plowing it up with the momentum of his slide. Sven disdainfully pulled the little knife from his chest, let it drop into the snow. No blood flowed. Ki looked up into his face as it bent toward her, mouth-close for a kiss. There was a stench nearby, a terrible stench that faded even as Ki noticed it. Sven was so near, how could she think about a smell, even a smell that reminded her of …

      ‘Dead, Ki! Sven’s dead! Will you call a Harpy by his name! By the Hawk, Ki, it’s a Harpy!’

      Vandien was back, staggering wildly, belaboring Sven and the children with the buckle end of a harness strap. He was weeping and shrieking in his horror. The buckle caught Sven in the mouth, but still he smiled. On the temple, and still he smiled and reached out his strong, rounded arms to take Ki into them, to draw her close to his high blue chest and gaping turtle beak that would snip off the top of her skull.

      Ki screamed. She dropped to her knees and scrambled away from them. ‘Mama, Mama!’ called Rissa, but the voice was too high, too sugary in its betrayal, and that blue shirt of Lars’s had been a mangle of red rag wrapped about bloody meat when Ki had buried it beside the road; and Sven had never, never smelled like that, like carrion and old bones, tatters of meat on yellow bones. Haftor had said they would never give up and here it was again, a battered blue Harpy that staggered after her, his wings frozen half-outstretched by scar tissue, blind on one side of his face, the tissue on his chest and legs burned away like roasted meat in a hot fire shriveled to tendons, standing frozen against the high bird chest. The little arms clawed at Ki as the knife came to her hand, catching in her hair. She struggled free, her hair ripping out of the widow’s knots. ‘Sven!’ she roared, and for one second more she saw him, and it was hot agony to plunge that blade into his bare chest, so wide and fair before her. But then it was shriveled and blue, and Vandien was flailing the monstrous bird head like a thing gone mad, yelling wordlessly as he used the buckle to fling bright bits of blue flesh and chunks of pale bone and blood, red as a Human’s, spattering across the snow. The Harpy sank like a burning ship going down into white seas, its bird skull shattered. And still Vandien yelled, until suddenly he had to stop. The buckle fell lifeless to the snow. He stared at the bloody buckle as if it were a snake, his eyes wide with dismay. His body heaved as he panted in short, hard breaths of the cold air. The movements of his body dashed the blood from his face in spatters.

      Ki stepped back and away from it all. The Harpy did not move. But Vandien did. He shook and wept and staggered about in the snow. Blood streamed from his face. The Harpy’s talons had opened a slash that began betweeen his eyes and ran down across the bridge of his nose, to trail off down his cheek into his beard and off the corner of his jaw. His face was ruined.

      ‘Ki,’ called a voice, and she looked to where Haftor lay dying in the snow. His black eyes were wide with madness; she dared not approach, no matter how his arms reached for her beseechingly. Haftor wavered, and Ki’s mind twisted as her ears buzzed louder. She saw she had been mistaken. It was Rissa, battered and scratched, but alive and reaching for her. Somehow she had survived it all, had never been dead. ‘Rissa!’ Ki whispered. She fell on her knees by the child.

      ‘You’ve killed me, Mama,’ Rissa whimpered pathetically.

      ‘No,’ moaned Ki. She reached to touch the soft little cheek. But before she could stroke the pale skin, the child faded to blue. The Harpy’s golden eye gave a final, mocking swirl and stopped. Its little blue hands fell to its chest, empty.

      The great taloned legs of the Harpy gave a sudden jerk. Abruptly, the buzzing in Ki’s ears stopped. She saw, as if for the first time, the huge body sprawled dead on the snow, the horses spooked far up the trail, and Vandien sinking to his knees, eyes blind with pain and horror.

       EIGHT

      She rose and went to Vandien, steadied his head against her body as she gently pushed his face back together. The cut was ragged. It would not close smoothly. She took his hand in hers, forced his fingers to open to hold the torn flesh in place. She left him sitting in the snow, staring at the body. She made her way back to the mounds of snow that marked their buried supplies. She found the brown tunic he had brought along for her, tore it into strips. It made coarse bandages. But it was not the type of wound that could be bandaged tightly shut. Ki had to be content with trying to stop the bleeding. When she was finished, one of his eyes was covered by the makeshift bandage, and he could barely open his jaws to speak. It did not not matter. There was nothing to say.

      Ki’s familiar whistle and curses brought the horses back. Sigmund was steady as Ki loaded Vandien haphazardly onto his back. Vandien pulled himself up into a slump. His hands tangled in the thick mane. Ki did not bother to reload the supplies on the horses. They would pick them up with the wagon when they brought it this way.

      She went to take a final look at the Harpy. She let the crumpled blue image burn itself into her mind. There were no more Harpies stalking Ki now. And no more Sven, and no more children, a small voice in her mind whispered. Ki ignored it.

      A glint of silver caught her eyes. She squatted down by the body. She leaned forward, sucking her breath in harshly.

      It was loose on the Harpy’s skinny forearm. A twisted bolt of lightning. Ki freed it gently from the hard blue flesh. The cunningly worked silver was smooth and cold in her hands. She knew with a sick feeling that the good folk of Harper’s Ford had found their scapegoat. The silver caught the sun as it whirled out over the deep valley, sparkled once more as it tumbled endlessly down, its flight lost in the shining white of the snow below it. She let Haftor go with it. She trudged dispiritedly over to where Vandien slumped on the horse, oblivious.

      ‘We are going back to the wagon,’ she told him gently. ‘There are things in the wagon I can use to make a better bandage for you.’

      Vandien gave the barest nod. ‘I’ve never killed a sentient being before,’ he explained. Ki nodded.

      Ki mounted Sigurd, and Sigmund fell in behind her. The grip of the cold was cracking the land. Ki felt the membranes of her nose stick together with the cold, felt the skin of her face stiffen with it. It leaked into her body where the Harpy had ripped her cloak. Ki felt oddly untouched by it. Cold was, after all, only cold. It could kill you, but that was all. And there were times when dying or living did not seem to be all that different from one another.

      Last night’s