Free Fimbulwinter (Daniel Black) by E. William Brown Page A

tribes, just like human barbarians.
    You saw what one frost giant and his pet wolves did to us, sir. There’s no way
    we can fight a whole squad of his buddies at once.”
    “Or a frost drake,” one of the men put in. “Some of them are supposed to
    have those too.”
    Rolf nodded. “Yeah. If we keep on like we have been we’re all going to
    die. We’ve got to drop the dead weight and make straight for Lanrest. It’s only
    twenty-five miles, we can be there by midmorning tomorrow if we make a
    forced march of it.”
    I frowned. “So you’re just abandoning the civilians?”
    He shrugged. “No way they can keep up. If we bring them they’ll just end
    up strung out all down the road like a big monster buffet. That’d be like a giant
    sign behind us pointing out where we are. But it looked like you and your girls
    can keep up, so you’re welcome to come with us.”
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    I was so shocked I just stared at him for a moment. Apparently Captain
    Rain really had been the only thing holding this unit together.
    “Shall I go tell Avilla to skip the wolf steaks, master?” Cerise asked
    quietly.
    My gaze flicked automatically to Avilla, as I realized that’s what she was
    doing with the wolf corpse. Then it fell to the hopeless mass of peasants, and
    the handful of soldiers left to guard them.
    “No,” I said firmly. “These cowards can abandon their comrades and
    their honor if they want, but we aren’t going to. Show me to the wounded.”
    A growl of anger went up from the mob of deserters, and hands went to
    weapons. I called up a force bubble, and let it bleed a haze of shimmering blue
    sparkles into the frigid air.
    “Try it. There won’t be enough left of you to bury.”
    Rolf raised his hand. “Easy, boys! We didn’t come over here to pick a
    fight with no wizard. If he wants to be a damned fool and die that’s his
    business. Let’s move.”
    I waited until they were well out of reach, and then spun and stalked
    towards the survivors. Cerise trotted along behind me.
    “Are you sure that was the right move, Daniel?” She asked quietly. “I’d
    feel kind of bad about leaving these people, but I don’t want to die for them
    either. It’s not like we owe them anything.”
    “They’re human beings,” I said shortly. “I’m not leaving anyone to die as
    long as I have a choice about it. Avilla! Can you make enough of that for
    everyone?”
    The pretty blonde started at my call, and smiled down at me. “If that’s
    what you want, master. There’s certainly more meat on these beasts than we
    can hope to eat. But it will take time.”
    Something in the sky behind her caught my attention. There were dark
    clouds rolling down from the north, much closer than the ones we’d seen
    yesterday. It was far too cold for rain, so that meant more snow. Possibly even
    a blizzard. Lovely.
    “That’s fine,” I told her after a moment. “I’ll need an hour or two to
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    stabilize the wounded before we can move, and we won’t be going very far.”
    She nodded, and returned to butchering the giant beast.
    I found Sergeant Thomas talking quietly with the men that were left, which
    was something of a relief. Trying to organize this group by myself would have
    been quite a challenge.
    “Sergeant,” I nodded. “Glad to see you made it.”
    He took in my appearance, and shook his head. “You look like hell, sir
    wizard. I take it you’re staying, then?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, I can’t see abandoning all these people. How bad is it?”
    He lowered his voice a bit. “We’re pretty fucked, sir. We lost a lot of
    men in that battle, either dead or run off into the woods. We’ve only eight men
    fit to fight, there’s thirty or so refugees left that didn’t die or run off, and those
    felwolves scattered all the animals. We’ve got a dozen wounded too bad to
    walk on their own, and no way to pull the only wagon that isn’t smashed. Even
    if we leave them behind the rest of this bunch’ll be lucky to make five