The Enemy in Snowmelt Season: A Stisele of Imlen Short Story

By Sarah Avery

When a flood traps a young officer of shameful birth with an enemy sergeant not long off the farm, they must decide how far to trust one another if either is to survive until they can be rescued--but whose army will find them first?Despite, or perhaps because of, her meddlesome dead parents, Stisele of Imlen has made it to the age of nineteen and the rank of lieutenant in her foster father's army. Rushing through a north country forest to bring him a secret diplomatic message, she gets caught in the might of her own people's watercalling magic and trapped atop the ruins of an ancient broken bridge. An enemy sergeant escapes the floodwaters by climbing to the same sheltering height, and what begins as a battle of wits becomes a fragile, uneasy truce. Stisele's ghosts give her an advantage, but Gallirrim's glimpses of a future that shifts from moment to moment are the smallest manifestation of his people's power. More dangerous than either soldier is to the other--more dangerous even than the raging floodwaters are to them both--is the risk that if rescue comes, it will come from the wrong side.

A sequel to The Imlen Brat, by the author of the Mythopoeic Award winning Tales from Rugosa Coven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Avery
• Release date: Sep 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780997414011

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Published in 2021 by

Sarah Avery

Copyright © 2016 Sarah Avery

The right of Sarah Avery to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN (epub) 978-0-9974140-1-1

ISBN (kindle) 978-0-9974140-0-4

Cover Design and Interior Layout by designforwriters.com

Contents

The Enemy in Snowmelt Season

Acknowledgements

The Enemy in Snowmelt Season

From the top of the rise, Stisele finally saw a landmark she recognized. Bare winter trees covered rolling hills in every direction, but there, down in the next hollow to the south, ran a ruined road. With any luck, it was the same one the Royal Cartographic Office had added to its latest map. She had longed to see the world, had fought for the chance. Never had she imagined how much of the world consisted of bare winter trees. On the whole, she preferred fighting over being lost in the woods. Well, she said to the ghosts of her parents, if it takes us to the broken bridge, we’ll know where we are.

Flash and Blur—Stisele still thought of them by the nicknames she’d given them as a child—kept a careful distance from her horse. The little globes of warm golden light that were their forms inspected the underbrush for tracks. Fair enough, said Flash in his usual spectral buzz. We seem to be out of the locals’ hunting grounds. Best not to get run off twice in one day.

Stisele nodded. I think they avoid the old roads. I’m more worried we’ll run into Miaaran scouts.

Blur said, I’d worry more still about the bear sleeping under that tree. We’re late enough to wake him.

So the young lieutenant made her careful way to the road, keeping an eye on the hollow tree. The horse was well trained to the scouting work of a royal dragoon—Stisele had borrowed the mare from the dragoons of Seventh Company for her diplomatic mission to the local people. Everyone called them Forest Wall Ghosts, but Stisele knew a thing or two about ghosts, and the hidden people of this forest were something else. Not that she’d been able