Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 47

The Angel of War.

In place of eyes she wore shining mirrors. Her mouth was huge and fierce, as red as poppies. Her black hair was as tangled as a bramble bush, and from it peeped two hideous horns, each one tipped with a stain of blood. For armor she wore masks, a hundred or a thousand or more covering her ma.s.sive body. On each shoulder she wore a mask with mirror eyes. On each elbow there hung another such face, a mask with mirror eyes, and on her knees there hung masks as well, faces glittering and shining with every least movement she made; even her abdomen and back bore faces, each one frozen in a leer or a grimace. With mirrors hanging upon every part of her body, it looked as if she could see in all directions.

She bore a spear and a sword, but not a shield. The masks-the mirroring eyes-were her shield.

Where the Angel of War walked, the ground came alive. Snow shuddered. What Liath had thought were rocks and boulders uncurled into living beings. She walked not on an empty plain but on a battlefield that stretched impossibly far in every direction, a plain of corpses, the detritus of war.

They didn't look very dead now. They were rising out of the snow, and they were all armed.

The easiest choice was to run.

But she had only taken two halting steps backward before she knew that running was no choice. The dead were everywhere, too many to count.

Thunder crashed. Jedu loomed, filling the sky. The angel's face bore that grimace of uncontrolled rage that turns a beautiful face hideous. Thousands of huge mirrored eyes stared at Liath, yet their gaze did not perceive her. In each glittering, faceted eye she saw, not herself but a death on the field of battle, the killing thrust, the mortal wound, the last breath and bubble of blood. There were more than enough suffering dead to fill the vast plain.

Out of the field of moldering bones and broken weapons, misty figures appeared, insubstantial at first but solidifying like wax sculpted into forms. To her left a phalanx of a hundred warriors moved into position, each man armed with a lancelike spear twice as long as any she had ever seen. She recognized these warriors from tapestries and frescoes, with their hammered breastplates and crested helmets: the soldiers who carried the banner of the old Dariyan Empire. Other groups of fighters cohered on the plain around her. Some of these cohorts she recognized, Aoi, Quman, or Eika. Others she knew only from stories or dreams, centaurs, men mounted on camels or huge elephants, a wild hunter leading his mastiffs, guivres and griffins rising in flight. Sounds issued forth, orders in a thousand languages, the cries of the beasts, the clamor of armies in motion.

In the sphere of Jedu, war was never finished.

Moving slowly at first, the armies began to advance. The phalanx at her left shuffled closer step by step, their hedge of sarissas leveled at her-nay, not at her but rather at a line of elephants formed up to her right. A clear trumpet belled the advance. The ground shook under that weight as the elephants advanced toward the phalanx, and toward Liath.

AITOWS, darts, and slender javelins filled the sky as a thousand conflicts unfolded. A stone from a sling struck a glancing blow on her thigh. She fell to her knees, blood streaming down her leg. The elephants rumbled forward, and the men in the phalanx braced themselves against that charge.

One of the ma.s.sive gray beasts lumbered forward directly toward Liath, trampling everything that came under its broad feet. Recoiling, she shot an arrow as it came into range. The shaft slipped between two armored plates protecting its throat and disappeared, buried deep. The creature bellowed in pain; its screams echoing along the line of elephants as they responded to its death cries. It collapsed to its knees after three more steps. Two men spilled from the carriage on top, one rolling clear while the other was caught under the ramp of the beast as it pitched to one side and ! let out a weak, and'final, trumpet. , Then the rest of the elephants pa.s.sed her position and crashed i into the spears. The phalanx dissolved as the ma.s.sive forms shattered spear and bone. Elephants, skewered through limb and neck, went berserk, tossing and stomping on their riders, on their j foes, on anything they could reach. Blood spilled on the snow. Behind the elephants, soldiers advanced, carrying great axes; their job was to finish off the shattered phalanx. She could not tell if they saw her at all, but she dared not wait to find out. Rising to her feet, she shot any creature that seemed to approach in her direction. They weren't real, after all. She wasn't really killing them because they were already dead. She was only protecting herself.

She fired ten times, and ten men fell dead or dying.

Jedu's expression warped, rage turning to s.a.d.i.s.tic joy. Liath reached to her quiver for another arrow. Only two remained.

Ai, Lady. These warriors were as much victims of Jedu's wrath as she was. She could remain here, trapped in the agony of war, or she could seek the gate that led to the sphere of Mok. With an effort, as the battle raged around her, she remembered her wings. She called fire and, with her wings burning at her back, lifted above the fray. Arrows that flashed toward her burst into flame, their ashes raining onto the carnage below.

Men screamed. Horses fell, kicking. The killing went on and on and on.

Let there be an end to it.

She nocked arrow to bow and drew Seeker of Hearts one more time, aiming true at Jedu's grimacing face.

Loosed the arrow. That blissful smile of joy melted from the angel's hideous and beautiful face to be drowned once again by an expression of rage. Her maw opened, exposing teeth like a thousand daggers; in that dark cavern, the arrow was lost at once.

Heart pounding, wings hissing at her back as she beat hard to stay aloft, Liath reached back for her final arrow. Her fingers touched silken coverts, the gold feather given to her by Eldest Uncle, which she had used to fletch her last arrow.

Before she could pull it free of the quiver, Jedu gave a cry, shrill and piercing, that caused every creature on the plain to shudder to a halt. Liath tumbled backward on the wind of that cry, fighting to control her flight, as the angel's words boomed out over the battlefield.

"Die a million deaths. Suffer for all eternity. No one, Daughter of Fire, enters Jedu unbidden. No flesh escapes my bite."

Then Jedu heaved out her chest, and sucked in.

With all her might Liath fought to fly higher, but she was drawn in despite her struggles. The mirror eyes grew huge and in their depths she saw the slain, and the slayer.

Ai, G.o.d. Some she knew. There a guivre, killed by Alain. There an Eika chief, falling under Lavastine's sword. There a Quman soldier, being drowned by Ivar. There Ironhead's pretty concubine, driving a spike through the sleeping king's head.

A lord outfitted in mail and helmet tumbled from his horse, dismounted by a spear thrust. The man who unhorsed him was no luckier; the impact of his own blow overbalanced him and he was thrown from his horse to land hard on the ground, losing his helmet, while a skirmish raged around him, made misty by the slant of light obscuring the mirrored eye into which she stared in horror.

It was Sanglant, except he was so young, scarcely more than a boy.

The stinking aroma of a charnel house dizzied her as the angel's mouth opened wider, to swallow her whole.

She twisted, reaching for Sanglant, spinning herself into the mirrored eye, into the grasp of her lover.

She landed on a soft cushion of long green gra.s.s. The blinding sunlight stung her eyes, but at least it was warm here. Yet she hadn't escaped Jedu's rage. Her horse, leaping over her, galloped off, and the din of battle still filled her ears.

She was not herself. She lay in a man's body, a lord of Hesbaye, nephew of the countess, risen in rebellion because his mother's portion had gone to his aunt at her death instead of to him. So inconsequential did King Henry think him and his rebellion that the king had sent his half-breed whelp against him, a child not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age, untried and unfit even with an older, wiser captain riding in attendance.

How was it, then, that the brat had unhorsed him?

A body slammed against him, pressing him into the gra.s.s. Ai, Lady, it was Sanglant, helmet lost and black hair streaming. He was so young, lithe, lean as a reed, not yet filled out with a man's height and breadth. Yet he still felt firm and rea.s.suring, lying against her.

"Sanglant!" she whispered, having no breath to shout." It's me. It's Liath!"

He slipped his arm across her chest, a broad knife clenched in his fist as he brought it to her throat. In a quick motion, the merest sting, the blade bit deep and her words choked and drowned in blood as she struggled to tell him. Her life gushed from her neck. She clawed toward her throat, anything to stop the blood, but he pinned her arms under his weight. Gasping, she looked into his green eyes, but all she saw was the rage of Jedu. Rays of sun melted holes in her vision; murky stains blotted out Sanglant's face. The world narrowed, sound faded, and all washed black.

The clash of arms and the jerk of her horse woke her as if from sleep. On her left side the begh, with his fearsome griffin feathers gleaming from the wings fastened to his armor and his iron visor making a mask of his face, urged their line forward. His standard billowed in a stiff wind, the rake of the snow leopard's claw that marked the proud warriors of the Pechanek clan. They charged and she, like her chief, lowered her lance. The banner of the Dragons amidst a ma.s.s of mounted Wendish and Ungrian soldiers surged forward to meet them.

The King's Dragon led the charge. Sanglant, older now, drove straight for her chieftain, his ax raised. With a deft shift of his point, the griffin rider slid his spear around Sanglant's shield and caught the prince just where his coif gapped to expose his throat.

The young prince fell back across the rump of his warhorse but still, somehow, managed to drag himself back up. He clung to the saddle, blood from the wound pouring down over his Dragon tabard, as the steed charged through the crowd and broke to the rear of the Quman charge. Behind, his Dragons raised a cry of alarm and fury.

Liath fought her horse back through the chaos to catch up to Sanglant. His helm had fallen askew and he was as pale as if all his blood had drained out through that horrible wound. He lay like a dead man over the withers of the horse. Tears streamed from her eyes as she called out to him and brought her mount up alongside his. He convulsed once, like a man spitting out his death, and heaved himself up to strike with the speed of a snake.

A crushing force came down on her head and for a moment she could actually see along either side of the ax blade protruding from her forehead, but all she really saw was the desperate look in her lover's eyes. Red seeped into her vision. She slid limply from the saddle.

Slipping in the blood and stink of one of her fellows, she scrabbled to gain purchase on the stone floor. The man creature had one hundred small wounds, one hundred rivulets seeping blood. The scent of his blood made her wild with hunger. She thrust aside the others, biting at their flanks so that they gave way, and trod on his chest, pinning him.

A glimmer of sentience sparked in her tiny mind. Was this man creature part of her pack? But hunger ate at her belly and he smelled so sweet. She lunged for the kill.

He was too fast for her. He caught her under the throat and like a dog bit down on her windpipe. Thrashing, fighting, she felt the wind crushed out of her, the air choked, the rich smell of blood and death fading, dulling, until the world was cold iron and for an instant she remembered the waters of her birth softly lapping around her and then even that sensation fled.

And she was fleeing Gent with the other RockChildren, running behind Isa's banner, but a figure that stank of captivity rode her down and with the strength brought about by madness clove her head from her shoulders.

And she had no body, not here where the perfume of flesh and blood made her thirst, an aching, ragged, raw pain. She had not wanted to come here. Torn from the halls of iron, she swayed in the hot blast of wind and sighed the name of the one she sought." Sanglant." His blood would release her to return to her home. That alone she knew. But as she advanced with her sister galla, tasting his blood on the wind, he attacked, piercing her with the stinging tip of a griffin's feather. The sorcery that bound her to the halls of earth burned and snapped, and she was flung into agony.

And she shrank back in terror as the mounted man charged through her motley companions, cutting them down like reeds. She cried out, begging for mercy, as her last arrow spun uselessly to the ground.

Ai, Lord, why had she left her mother's house? She'd been a fool to argue with her brother, and a bigger fool to let anger drive her away, and the biggest fool yet to allow Drogo to convince her that there was wealth to be made and supper to be had by picking on hapless travelers. But she'd been desperate by then, and too proud to go home. She'd been so hungry, and Drogo had offered her bread if she'd join his miserable pack of bandits.

Sage and fern halted her backward stumble." Mercy!" she cried. Then he was on her, death in his eyes.

Sanglant.

His sword came down, and pain obliterated everything else." Nay, Welf!" cried Ekkehard, stopping him with the point of his lance." You'll not desert me now."

She wept in her young man's body. She had never known fear could hurt so much." I'll never desert you, my lord prince. You know that. But it isn't right that we fight on the side of the Quman against our own countryfolk. It's treason."

Ekkehard flushed." We've dirtied our hands too much to ever go back. Better to die in battle than hanging from the gallows."

They waited as the gold banners flown by their foes advanced. Frithuric and Manegold waited with stolid patience, but he could see, she could see, the despair in their eyes. How had they all been so stupid? How had they let Bulkezu seduce them? It was a good thing his mother wasn't here to see him now, the son who had dishonored the family name.

Drums and a horn call signaled the charge. Welf pressed forward as their horses broke from walk to trot to gallop, a roll like thunder filling his ears. He pushed his horse past the prince, so that he took the brunt of the impact. A lance struck him right over the heart. As he fell, he heard a cry of grief and anger, and a man's hoa.r.s.e voice shouted Ekkehard's name in surprise. Ai, Lord, it was Prince Sanglant!

The ground slammed into him, and the last thing he saw was the hooves of his horse, coming down on his head.

If she remained still, her feathers would blend into the silvery gra.s.s and only the keenest eye could observe her. Sanglant was intent on her mate, a silver-hued griffin asleep on the sunning stone.

The prince's spear was poised as he prepared to strike. His eyes calculated his next move, as did hers. She would not let him kill her mate.

She pounced, he spun to meet her, but the advantage was hers. The shaft of his spear shattered under her attack, and her weight bore him to the ground. Her mate awoke at the noise, hearing her shriek of triumph. Calling shrilly, he shook himself free of sleep and leaped forward to a.s.sist with the kill.

Her claws pressed the prince's shoulders to the ground. But he hadn't given up. His knee jabbed hard into her belly, but she would not free him. She could not let him kill again.

Slewing her great head to one side to get a better look at him, she recognized at his throat a scar taken long ago, half hidden now by a braided gold torque. She had thought him dead, once before, and had died for her mistake. She screamed fury. The Angel of War danced at the edge of her vision. Razor sharp, her beak would cleave flesh easier than any sword could. She would not die at his hands again. And again. And again.

A growl rose in his throat as he tensed to fight her off. He yanked an arm free and grabbed desperately for her throat, ignoring the blood leaking from a dozen cuts scored along his fingers as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers. She struck at his vulnerable eyes.

The last thing she heard was his scream as she fell free of the mirrors, spinning and tumbling in the blast furnace that was the wind of war.

Ai, G.o.d, she had killed Sanglant. She groped at her throat, thinking to find a bruise where he had tried in that last instant to choke her. Instead, her gold torque was missing. Gone.

With a scream of fury, she lifted heavenward on her wings of flame, beating for a sliver of light, like the moon's crescent, that drifted far above her. The world below had gone white as a blizzard of snow and wrath obliterated the plain, the dead and those who killed them, all vanished beneath a mantle of white. A broken spear rolled over the icy waste, caught by the wind's cold hand.

Mirrors winked like flashes of lightning half hidden by storm clouds. A wild laughter boomed like thunder, fading into the distance.

"Now you are bitten. Who has won, and who has lost?"

"I have escaped you," cried Liath triumphantly as she neared the silvery boundary and saw a gap splitting open in the gleaming sh.e.l.l that marked the sphere of Mok.

But Jedu's laughter had already lodged in her heart. And she could still feel blood, and life, spilling from her unmarked throat.

XV.

BULICEZLJ and his army cut a swath of misery and destruction through the southern portion of the dukedom of Avaria before turning north as summer waned, but Hanna never saw Prince Ekkehard weep for his father's ravaged kingdom until the day the vanguard of Bulkezu's marauding army came across the ruins of the palace of Augensburg. As the abandoned palace came into view, populated now only by weeds, insects, and a pair of red-deer that sprang away into the forest, the young prince began to cry silently, tears streaming down his cheeks. Had he been there that day when Liath had sent the palace up in flames, desperate to escape Hugh?

Hanna could not now recall. She only remembered the terrible flames and the blasting heat that had scorched her skin when she had dragged Liath away from the inferno. Where were Folquin, Leo, Stephen, and her good friend Ingo now? Had they survived the winter in Handelburg? Would she in the end find herself facing them across the field of battle? Would any Wendish army ever confront Bulkezu, or would he simply march across the length and breadth of the land sowing desolation and terror for as long as he wished?

Bulkezu called a halt. His soldiers and slaves busied themselves setting up camp for the night and turning the horses and livestock out to graze on the lush gra.s.s. The site had been entirely abandoned. The forest had encroached upon the open s.p.a.ce cleared around the palace grounds. It was a beautiful place, calni and j peaceful if only because this one afternoon, at least, there would be no killing.

Hanna had seen enough killing to last her ten lifetimes. Each death was a scar cut into her heart, untold wounds that never really < healed,="" only="" scabbed="" over="" with="">

"Sit here, my lord prince." Lord Welf steered Ekkehard to a camp chair, swiftly set up by one of their concubines, a blonde girl with the look of a cornered rabbit. As Ekkehard let the girl wipe the tears from his face with a sc.r.a.p of linen, various slaves erected one of the round Quman tents behind him, deploying an awning to spare him from the afternoon sun. It was a hot day. Hanna sat in the shade of a tree, savoring the tickle of gra.s.s against her wrists as she leaned back. Her ever-present guards waited as patiently as stone to either side, not so close that they pressed in on her but not so far that they couldn't drag her down within ten steps if she made a run for it. One of them chewed on a stalk of. gra.s.s as he surveyed the birds flitting among the trees. The other two stood there as stupidly as sheep, an easy illusion to cling to until one looked into their eyes.

Bulkezu came whistling cheerfully out of his tent, the first to be erected, leading the prettiest of his concubines, a plump young woman with waist-length black hair almost as luxuriously thick as Bulkezu's own. This was Agnetha, whom Bulkezu had picked out from the crowd of prisoners that awful twilight when plague had flowered in the mob. She was one of the few to survive that terrible night and she had, amazingly, saved a dozen of her kinsfolk from the slaughter. Bulkezu brought her to Ekkehard and indicated that she should kneel before the young prince. Hanna rose hastily and strode over.

Boso strutted up, as self-important as a rooster." His Glorious-ness cannot bear to see you snivel and whine like a sick child, Your Highness. Therefore, to raise your spirits, and your c.o.c.k, he's giving you one of his well-used c.u.n.ts."

Hanna had long since grown accustomed to Boso's coa.r.s.e and arrogant way of speaking, but she often wondered what exactly Bulkezu did say to his interpreter and how much the Wendish man was twisting his master's words. As Hanna slid in behind Lord Frithuric, poor Agnetha caught sight of her but could do no more than look at her beseechingly. The young woman was too wise to protest, or even speak or cry, as she was handed from one man's tender mercies over to the other's.

However phrased, the offer dried up Ekkehard's tears. He was well supplied with women, of course, but Agnetha bore about her a certain cachet beyond the perfumes she wore because she was the best-looking woman currently with the army, and Bulkezu's besides. It was a grand gift to Ekkehard's mind, and he almost fell over himself thanking Bulkezu while the young woman knelt silently at his feet, trying hard to show no expression at all.

As Ekkehard nattered on, and Boso translated, Bulkezu began to look bored. A discreet hand signal, and quickly enough horses were brought for the Quman prince, his bodyguard, and Hanna. Even Boso was left behind as the small party mounted and rode up to the hilltop to investigate the ruined palace.

Hanna saw no signs of rebuilding. The fire's destruction had been so complete that there wasn't anything left to salvage. Two years of rain and wind had washed the mantle of ashes off the hill, but blackened spars still stood in tribute to the sprawling palace that had once taken up half the height. The walls of the stone chapel were more or less intact, scored with the marks of fire. The shattered gla.s.s windows gaped vacantly and the roof had fallen in. Roof tiles littered the nave. Bulkezu poked through heaps of tiles with a spear but found nothing of interest except a bronze belt buckle, warped from the intense heat, that had once been fashioned in the shape of a springing deer.

He laughed softly." Would that I had such power." He glanced up, caught by Hanna's silence, and peered at her with an unnerving stare." Do you know how this came about?" He gestured broadly, encompa.s.sing the hilltop ruin.

She pressed her lips tightly together.

He smiled." A broken lamp, oil spilled, or sorcery?"

At times like this, a fit of reckless fury would overtake her, a wish to slam her fist into that handsome face and gallop onward to freedom. But he had too many guards, more carefully placed since her last attempt to escape, for her to try again.

He enjoyed her anger. He fed on it, and it made him laugh. Although, of course, almost anything could make him laugh.

"Sorcery," he replied with satisfaction, as though she had answered him.

Maybe she had.

He whistled sharply. After a bit his shaman, Cherbu, trotted up on a piebald mare whose blotched coat bore a vague resemblance to the patchwork cloak and trousers worn by its rider. The two men exchanged a few words, after which the shaman dismounted, got down on his hands and knees, and proceeded to sniff like a dog, following an unseen trail through the ruins. Bulkezu followed him on horseback, singing in that irritating nasal tone the Quman used for their favorite songs to entertain himself as he waited. Hanna recognized a song he had once translated for her: "Has anyone suffered so much misfortune as I have?

Who pities the orphan, or the little bird that falls from its abandoned nest?

It would be better to be dead than motherless.

But fate has already played this song.

If my mother rose from her sickbed and kissed me now, it still wouldn 't bring me any joy."

He paused. The shaman had vanished. Hanna looked around wildly, but she saw no trace of Cherbu or his patchwork cloak among the fallen beams and barren ground. The noises from camp, below them, seemed suddenly faint, shrouded. A cloud had covered the sun, granting respite from its glare, yet a thin line of light slithered through the wreckage like a snake.

An owl hooted. White flashed off to one side, and Hanna turned in time to see a huge owl settle onto the highest wall of the burned chapel.

"I'm here," she whispered, wondering if will alone, chiseled to a point and flung outward on a thought, would be enough to alert the owl to her presence among the Quman.

It raised its wings once, like a salute.

One of the guards drew, aiming an arrow at the huge bird, but Bulkezu spoke three soft words.

A billowing cloud of ash blew up from the ruins, making Hanna's eyes sting. She blinked rapidly, shielded her eyes with a hand, and when she dared look again, the owl was gone. The shaman, coated with a white layer of ash over his patchwork clothing, stood in the midst of the ruined barracks where five Lions had died.

"There," said Bulkezu." That's where the fire started. He can taste it, you know."