Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 41

"The king's daughters have their own armies. They aren't as easy to capture as these poor, defenseless townsfolk. What honor is there for a great warrior like you in defeating people such as these?" She gestured toward the prisoners.

His wings sighed as wind brushed through them. For a moment, she thought he had not heard her, or was not listening. His night guard, silent astride their horses, waited patiently. In a way, it was as if she and Bulkezu sat alone, separated from the army, from the hapless prisoners, from his personal guard, by the same unnatural mist that had protected him from the shadow elves.

She looked around, half expecting to see his shaman, but all she saw were soldiers, their campfires and bivouac tents, and the crowd of prisoners and livestock winding away along the track as they found a place to settle down for the night. Fields stretched away on either side, delicate shoots of winter wheat trampled into the mud. Farther away lay the line of trees and undergrowth, cut back by the villagers' need for firewood and building material. Smoldering fires lit the desolate village, now deserted. The ten lucky souls she had chosen for freedom had not stayed to see if Quman mercy would hold until morning.

"They hate me in my own country," Bulkezu said at last, softly." The Pechanek elders have grown weak and cowardly. We were driven out of our pastures by the Shatai, and the southern Tarbagai is closed to us because of the Ungrians, those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, may their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es rot. Now my sister's son is the favorite of the old begh, that son of a b.i.t.c.h, and he's handsomer than me, too."

Hanna looked him over, the smooth cheeks and vivid, almond- shaped eyes, the breadth of his shoulders under armor, the lift of his chin to draw attention to his handsome profile. He had tucked his helmet under his arm, a gesture eerily reminiscent of Prince Sanglant, the better, no doubt, to display his wealth of glossy black hair." How can that be?" she said, having learned something of him in the last weeks." Is there any man handsomer than you?"

"One," he admitted." I saw him in a dream. But he had golden hair, spun from sunlight." He grinned, on the verge of laughing." Women love a handsome man. Why, women already married have risked death to creep between my furs. Why are you so hardhearted? I'll make you chief among my wives."

"I thought Quman men did not marry outside the tribes."

"Any man would be a fool not to marry a Kerayit shaman's luck if she offered herself to him."

"This one hasn't offered herself to you."

He laughed." Yes, better that you stay out of my bed. I respect you now, but I wouldn't once I'd conquered your body."

"Which do you want?" she said, irritated by his games.

"I want victory."

"Against whom?"

"Against anyone who stands in my way."

A drum rapped smartly in the distance, answered by a second. He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, listening to the message they brought. He whistled, turned aside his horse, and his night guard fell in around him. Hanna had no choice but to follow; she couldn't escape their net. Twilight washed the prisoners to gray, but the darkening light could not hide the smell of despair or the stink of diarrhea and sickness. An infant cried on and on and on. Hanna was suddenly hungry, smelling meat roasting up ahead, brought on the wind, but the appetizing scent curdled in her stomach as they rode alongside the line of prisoners, many of whom would not eat this night and had not eaten last night or the night before.

While she feasted tonight, a child would die of starvation, just as one had last night, and the night before. The Eagle's burden had never weighed as heavily as it had these last months, since her capture. She had to witness and remember, so that, in time, she could report to the king. Sometimes that was the only thing that kept her going: her determination to report to the king.

Bulkezu moved out to greet the last raiding party, come in to report. Truly, some things would be more difficult to report to King Henry than others.

Prince Ekkehard and his companions had taken to wearing princely Quman armor, cobbled together from armored coats stripped off of dead men, felt coifs, looted Wendish cloaks made rich by fur linings, supple leather gloves, painted shields, everything but the wings, which they had not earned. Everything but the shrunken heads, which not even Ekkehard had the stomach for.

They had brought loot, and news. Lord Boso was called back from the vanguard to translate as Lord Welf delivered the report." Lord Hedo's fort was stripped of soldiers and easy to take. The servants said his son marched west last autumn with fifty men to fight in Saony."

"Who is fighting in Saony?" asked Hanna." d.u.c.h.ess Rotrudis' children." With his highborn arrogance, meaty hands, and scarred lip, Welf looked remarkably like a fool to her, especially when he could barely bring himself to answer her just because she was common born. He only spoke to her because Bulkezu had a habit of whipping, and once castrating, men who treated Hanna disrespectfully: not warming the water brought for her bath, not getting out of her way fast enough as she walked through camp, daring to look her in the eye, who bore the luck of a Kerayit shaman.

The loot gained at the fort was a fine haul: gold vessels; silver drinking cups; ivory spoons; and two tapestries.

"His Contemptuousness bids you keep what you have earned," said Boso, translating for Bulkezu." For are you not brothers? Are you not honorable, in the way of all n.o.ble folk?"

How Bulkezu kept his expression blank Hanna did not understand, considering the insulting way Boso had of speaking. It was another one of his charades, the games he played incessantly with his prisoners, because even Ekkehard, for all that he now rode and fought with the army, was nothing more than a glorified hostage made much of and let range wide on a leash. Ekkehard had women, he had silks, he had meat and wine, and he had his own honor guard, which he evidently chose not to recognize for what it was: his jailers. Let him get dirty enough with raiding under Bulkezu's banner and it would be too late for him to go back to his father's hall and authority.

No doubt Bulkezu counted on it. He didn't care one whit for Ekkehard. He had just found a more amusing way to ruin him.

"I'm surprised, my lord prince," said Hanna, "that you would war on your father's people. Isn't that treason?"

Prince Ekkehard did not deign to reply, but Lord Benedict rose to the bait." Lord Hedo did not come to King Henry's aid when the king's sister. Lady Sabella, rose in revolt against him. This is his just punishment. We are doing nothing more than seeing him rewarded for his disobedience."

"Aiding an enemy as he devastates your father's lands and cripples his people scarcely seems the act of a loyal subject."

"You'll regret those words," Lord Welf said hotly, "when you don't have a prince to protect you." He nodded toward Bulkezu.

"Nay, I don't have a prince to protect me." She lifted her right hand to display the emerald ring." I'm the King's Eagle."

Ekkehard flushed, and his companions muttered among themselves, glancing toward Bulkezu, gauging his mood. Ekkehard's boys didn't like her. She didn't like them much, either, if it came to that; they were the real traitors. Yet were they any different than most of the n.o.bly born, fighting their wars across the bodies of the common folk?

Bulkezu laughed as soon as Boso translated the exchange. He moved forward to ride beside Ekkehard, treating Ekkehard to flowery compliments delivered by a sarcastic Boso; how well he acquitted himself in battle, how many women he had won for his slaves, how terrible it was that his relatives had tried to consign him t the monastery when certainly any fool could see that he was born for the glory of war. Ekkehard lapped it up like cream. He even forgot about Hanna, trailing behind, she who carried the wasp sting of conscience because she never let him forget that he had turned coat and embraced Bulkezu's cause.

A scream shattered the sleepy twilight. Deep in the crowd of weary, worn-down, lethargic prisoners, an eddy of movement spi-raled out of control like leaves picked up by a dust devil.

"Witchcraft! Demons! The Enemy has sp.a.w.ned among us!"

Panic broke like a storm. Prisoners pushed and shoved frantically, more afraid of an unseen menace in their ranks than of the dour Quman soldiers who guarded them. Terrified captives spilled across the invisible boundary into range of Quman spears. Like raindrops presaging a downpour, the first handful turned an instant j later into a hysterical flood of ragged people desperate to escape ; the horror in their midst.

Even horses accustomed to war shied at the sudden agitation. Ekkehard's nervous gelding reared, backing sideways into Bulkezu's horse. The night guard, distracted by this threat to their leader, hastened forward. Hanna saw her chance.

She kicked her horse hard and galloped for the trees. The forest gave scant cover. Pale trunks surrounded her, bare branches clattering in the breeze. She heard the singing of wings, high and light, and the pound of hooves as her captors pursued her. Ducking low, she pressed the horse through a stand of stinging pine, forded a shallow stream running in three channels along the forest floor, and skirted a ma.s.sive bramble bush. Her cloak caught once in its thorns; she tore it free, nudged her mount around its tangled verge, and found herself facing Bulkezu.

Even under the cover of the forest, with dusk lowering, there was light enough to see his expression. He laughed. But he had his bow strung and an arrow nocked, and at moments like this, with that half crazy expression on his face and something more than laughter in his eyes, she could not bring herself to trust to Sor-gatani's luck to keep her unharmed. Breathing hard, she reined up the horse and regarded him with disgust and resignation. And a sliver of fear.

He lifted the bow, aimed, and shot into the bramble, flushing out two escaped prisoners who had hoped to hide within the th.o.r.n.y refuge. Hanna recognized the adolescent girl and her half-grown brother, the one with the cut on his cheek, from Echstatt. The boy was gulping soundlessly, trying not to dissolve into hysteria, while his sister gripped his shoulders and managed a defiant glare.

Bulkezu chuckled. The movement of his shoulders made the shrunken head at his belt sway, knocking against one thigh. He pulled a second arrow out of his quiver and drew down on the boy." Run," he said softly, in Wendish.

They ran, floundering out into the darkening forest. The child tripped. With a leisurely draw, Bulkezu marked the boy's back.

Hanna kicked her horse hard, driving toward him, shouting out loud, anything to spoil his aim. But the arrow was already loosed.

It whistled, the girl screamed and tugged at her brother; the point buried itself in the bark of a slender birch tree, less than a hand's breadth from the stumbling boy. With a strangled cry, the girl dragged him onward into the trees.

The night guard trotted up, but Bulkezu gave a curt command, and they made no move to follow the fleeing children. Tears of elation wet Hanna's lips." You missed!" He laughed, that d.a.m.ned half-giggling guffaw. Sobering, he drew another arrow from his quiver and twisted it between his fingers. The wind whistled through his wings; she smelled a faint scent, like putrefaction, wafting toward them from camp.

"I never miss." His expression darkened." Twice only, and they will suffer for it, when I have them in my hands again."

"Who could have defeated you, Prince Bulkezu?" She was too angry, at herself, at fate, at his arrogance, to watch her tongue, to curb her sarcasm, even if she knew it wasn't wise.

"Once, that Ashioi witch. Once, that smart-mouthed priest." "You tolerate insults from Boso all the time. You can understand every word he says."

"Boso is a fool. A dog would make a more worthy lord. It amuses me to wait and let him spin a little longer. Now Zach'rias was a clever man. He made war on me with his'tongue. I should have cut off his tongue instead of his p.e.n.i.s. I didn't understand him well enough to know which would hurt him worse. My arrow missed its mark." He shifted in the saddle, lifting an arm to brush a finger along one of the griffin feathers bound into his wooden wings. The touch raised blood on his skin, but the wind wicked it away. A thin rain of snow spilled from a tree branch, a shower of white that melted where it touched the sodden, spring ground.

"But they only made me stronger, when they thought to humble me. Now I'm the only man born into the tribes who has killed two griffins, not just one." He did not smile. Nor did he laugh.

"You didn't wear those wings when you fought against Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia,"

A spark of mischief and cruelty lit his expression." I wanted Bayan to know that even wingless I could defeat him and his n.o.ble allies." He laughed for such a long time that Hanna began to think something had gotten stuck in his throat. The shrunken head rolled along his thigh, staring accusingly at Hanna." I'd never killed a lady lord in battle before," he continued at last, "so I thought it best to put my old guardian away and dedicate a new one." He laughed a little again, trailing off into giggles as he stroked the hair on his shrunken head and lifted it." Do you know her?"

Bile stung in Hanna's throat. For a moment she thought she would vomit. Or ought to. No wonder the head, all twisted, blackened, warped, and nasty as it had become, looked familiar. She knew who had died in that battle.

"Judith," she whispered, "Margrave of Olsatia and Austra." Another of the night guard rode up to deliver a report. Bulkezu listened intently, eyes crinkling as he concentrated. He had already forgotten the head. Slowly his expression changed. The only thing worse than his smiles and laughter were his frowns, and he frowned now as night fell and a warm breeze brought the fetid smell of camp to her nostrils, choking her. She could not bear to look at Bulkezu, not with Margrave Judith's head dangling there. One of the guards lit a torch. Back at the army, more torches blazed into life like visible echoes of the one snapping brightly next to her.

Out of the night, screaming rose like a tide.

"What's going on?" she whispered, horrified. It sounded as if the Quman had turned on their helpless prisoners and begun killing them.

"What is the name for this thing that has crept into the ranks of the prisoners, this thing we must drive out lest it infect my troops?" He mused aloud, absently fingering the point of the arrow as he c.o.c.ked his head to one side, listening to the distant slaughter. Snow dusted his black hair as a last shower rained from the pine tree under which he sheltered." First the demons slip invisibly into the body. Then the body turns gray and shakes. Then the noxious humors explode out of the mouth and the nose and the ears and the a.s.shole, all the snot and blood and s.h.i.t and spittle bursting forth. Zach'rias taught me the name for this thing."

She already knew. A cold worm of fear writhed in her heart, numbing her. She had thought the shadow elves the only thing more terrifying than the Quman. But she was wrong.

He nodded to himself, remembering the word.

"Plague."

Back in the camp, the killing went on.

THEY came down out of the Alfar Mountains into a summer so golden that it seemed to Rosvita that the sun itself had been poured over the landscape. In the north, the light was never this rich and expressive.

When they stopped to water the horses and oxen at midday, For-tunatus took off his boots and dabbled his toes where the cold mountain water frothed and spilled over exposed rocks.

"Ah!" he said delightedly as he wiggled his toes under the water." I'd forgotten how pleasant it is to have feet that are hot and dry for a change. After that tedious winter and spring, I thought I would never be comfortable again."

With relief, Rosvita dismounted from her mule and found a flat-topped boulder to sit on. From this seat-no harder, really, than her saddle-she could survey the stream where the clerics of the king's schola had gone to wet their faces, drink, and stretch. Although the king preferred that she attend him at all times, she had obtained permission to travel with the schola, the better to keep an eye on her precious books and young clerics.

Servants brought soft cheese from the wagons. She nibbled at this delicacy as she watched animals being brought up in bunches to water downstream, where a fallen log dammed enough of the current that a watering hole had been hollowed out of the earth. A hawk drifted overhead, spiraling on the winds that brushed down off the high peaks, now hidden by forest and foothills. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r drummed nearby, and she saw its white flash among pine branches.

"The months weren't wasted entirely, Brother. At last I was able to make a great deal of progress on my History of the Wendish People."

He smiled sadly, not looking up from the play of the water around his feet." So you did, Sister. I only wish Sister Amabilia were here to copy your words in a finer hand than that I possess." "Truly," she echoed, "I wish she were not lost to us. I miss her." Fortunatus sighed. He had never gained back the healthy stoutness that had made his features round and jolly; their adventures crossing the Alfar Mountains three times in the last two years had taken a lasting toll on him." Will we ever know what became of her?" he asked wistfully.

"Only if we can trust dreams. I fear they lie as often as they tell the truth."

As she finished her meal of cheese and bread, she called to her servingwoman, Aurea, and bid her bring her pouch from her pack mule. Aurea brought both pouch and travel desk, which unfolded easily to make a stout surface on which to set the History. Rosvita wiped her hands on a cloth and only then turned the unbound pages to her final entry, made three weeks ago on their last day at the palace of Zur, originally a villa built in the times of the Dariyan empresses and now a way station where a royal party could break its journey for a day or a week.

Some said that fully two hundred thousand Rederii barbarians were slain that day, either cut down by the sword or drowned in the marsh when they tried to make their retreat. After this, the young margrave Villam moved his army against the city mentioned above, but the inhabitants now feared to stand against him and therefore they laid down their arms and asked for safe pa.s.sage. In this way, the city and all its wealth and all the household furnishings fell into the possession of King Arnulf the Younger.

When the margrave and his companions returned to Saony, King Arnulf received them with grat.i.tude and praised their victory. It so happened that the king's favored Eagle returned at this time from Arethousa with the news that the king had obtained what he most desired: an Arethousan princess who would stand in marriage to his son, Henry, a most radiant and worthy young man. When the glorious Sophia arrived with her splendid retinue, the royal wedding was celebrated with largess and rejoicing.

To Henry and Sophia were born these children: a daugh ter named Sapientia, a woman of merit, justly dear to all the people, who married Bay an, Prince of the Ungrians, and also a daughter named Theophanu, wise in all matters and of a cunning disposition, as well as a son named Ekkehard, who was invested as the abbot of St. Perpetua's in Gent.

Here she had stopped. The rigors of a mountain crossing, even in the fine weather that G.o.d's favor had at last granted them after several unsuccessful earlier attempts, had not allowed her to write more. Truly, the long winter and dreary spring had been inconvenient and uncomfortable, but she had had the leisure to work because they had stopped for as many as ten days at a time at various estates and palaces. What lay before them in Aosta she did not know, but she didn't suppose that war would bring many peaceful interludes during which she might have the freedom to work without interruption. It was very difficult to work while on the move.

At times like this, she remembered why so many of her spiritual sisters, women devoted to their books, preferred to stay in the convent rather than traipse about the countryside as part of the retinue of their n.o.ble relatives.

"Sister Rosvita!"

She looked up to see the king's favored Eagle at the side of the road.

"If you will, Sister Rosvita, Brother Eudes is taken ill again, and the king requests your presence."

Fortunatus padded over barefoot and took the unbound sheets carefully off the travel desk so that Aurea could fold it up." I'll care for these, Sister," he said.

The mule was brought, and Rosvita mounted with a grimace. Her bones creaked and popped constantly these days. With Hathui as escort she rode forward along the lines, pa.s.sing knots of soldiers and stands of dismounted hors.e.m.e.n like copses of trees. The road led down a steep valley, walled here by cliffs ribboned with slender waterfalls whose spray made little rainbows in the air, quickly seen and as quickly vanished.

Carefully, they picked their way down the path until they reached a broadening in the valley where the royal party had stopped to take advantage of a pleasant meadow as a haven for their noontime rest. The king and queen waited at their leisure while servants watered the horses and brought their sovereigns ale, cheese, and bread as well as greens plucked from the hillsides. Adelheid sat on a blanket, so big-bellied in her pregnancy that she found the ground a more comfortable seat than her throne.

Henry conducted business a short way away from her, consulting with his captains and stewards and n.o.ble companions and dispensing judgment over disputes that had arisen in the train. Occasionally he would refer two quarreling parties to Adelheid, and they would hasten over to kneel before her. A steward hurried forward to Rosvita and, taking her travel desk, set it up at Henry's side. She sat on a stool, trimmed her quill, and readied her ink as Henry listened to the complaints of a wagoner who had gotten into a fight with a Lion over a chicken looted from a farmer's shed. A knife fight had ensued, and both men had been wounded.

"Yet what of the injury you inflicted upon the householder whose chicken you stole?" demanded the king." Made you any recompense to her for the loss of the chicken?"

"Nay, but. Your Majesty, she was just an Aostan woman, not of our people at all." On this point both men agreed.

"Yet were she a Wendish woman, would you have treated her so disrespectfully? Will the Aostans rally to our cause if we treat them as we would our enemies? They are not meant to suffer as our enemies but to prosper as our subjects. Let both of you make her some rest.i.tution. I will send an Eagle back to the village with this fine. As for the two of you, you will dig privies side by side for a week, so that you may learn to work together."

He dismissed them, then beckoned to a steward." Here is Sister Rosvita, Wito. Make your report."

Rosvita duly cataloged the steward's report. It had taken them three weeks to cross the mountains, moving at not more than five leagues a day. The weather had held fair, for the most part, and they had lost only twelve horses, eighteen wagons, and twenty-five soldiers, seventeen of them to an outbreak of dysentery that had luckily been confined to the rear guard.

When the steward finished, Henry's captains came forward to discuss the route, and Rosvita looked back over the hapless Brother Eudes' precise entries that in spare language told the story of the abortive attempt to cross the mountains last autumn, when the weather drove them back to the north and they spent a miser able winter moving from one palace to another pursued by sleet, snow, spoiled food, and a scarcity of ale and wine. It had been either too cold to travel or else not cold enough to freeze the ever-present mud slop that turned roads and stable yards into mires. The array had lost seventy-nine horses and forty-two cattle to foot rot alone, and ninety-four soldiers to lung fever and dysentery, mostly from that first awful outbreak. Indeed, Brother Eudes himself had barely survived that first outbreak of dysentery, and since then he had suffered several relapses, the worst after their second failed attempt to cross in the spring.

Henry sent his captains away, and for a moment peace reigned. Rosvita closed her eyes and listened to the murmur of Adelheid's n.o.ble companions and the laughter of Henry's personal retinue, most of whom had wandered down to the stream to cool their faces.

For an instant, Rosvita's hearing sharpened so intensely that she could hear Queen Adelheid speaking." Yet a wealth of sun does not bode well. I do not like the sere golden color of the gra.s.s. There should have been more rain over the winter and spring. I see too little green."

"Sister Rosvita." Henry spoke in a voice that carried only to her ears." What if it is true that his wife is the great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer? She could claim the empire."

Startled, Rosvita dropped her quill. Henry sat with his chin resting on a hand, elbow propped up on the arm of his throne. He stared into the distance, at the pine forest or perhaps at his fears and doubts. Marriage to Adelheid had lifted years from his face, but it also meant that he was even more rarely alone than during the years of his widowerhood. He rarely had opportunity these days to open his most private thoughts to her.

"The young woman has not proved herself fit to rule. Your Majesty, nor has she any retainers. A queen without a retinue can scarcely be called a queen."

"Yet according to my Eagles and other messengers, Sanglant rode east, gathering an army about him."

"The Quman lie east. Do you think he means to make allies of them?" She didn't mean the words to be sarcastic, but Henry glanced at her sharply, jolted out of his reverie.

"Nay, I do not believe any Wendish n.o.ble will make peace with the Quman. I think he means to fight them. But the Quman are not the only people in the east who have an army. It has been months since we had word of Sapientia and Prince Bayan, nor has Margrave Judith sent word nor any representative to my court."

"To what purpose would they revolt against you? How can Taillefer's lost grandchild be a threat to you? Queen Radegundis made no effort to put her son on any throne. She gave him to G.o.d's service, not to the trials of the world. Nor did his child ever make any claim to Taillefer's imperial throne, if she even survived infancy."

"But you believe a child was born to Taillefer and Radegundis' son."

"I do believe that, Your Majesty."

He frowned, regarding the trees again with an intent gaze. Rosvita realized all at once the main difference between Henry and Sanglant: Henry had the gift of stillness, and Sanglant could never be still.

"This bodes ill," he said softly." I fear Sanglant has been bewitched."

"That is a serious charge. Your Majesty, and one that Prince Sanglant has already denied."