by Kate Elliott
“It is not.” She would have grabbed him to shake him, but she could see any touch would overset his tenuous balance. “I am no weather worker. Are you all such fools to let a man like Hugh of Austra walk as your ally?”
“She was.”
The body lying at his feet was blackened and distorted, the feathered cloak reduced to wisps of bright green and gold mixing into the sodden earth. Her throat burned, and her stomach rose, and she turned away, catching a hand against her stomach. Behind her, she heard one of her companions retching. Anna bawled.
“Where is my daughter?”
“Not among the dead. The Pale Sun Dog has taken her.”
The rain lashed them. She sucked in air, but it tasted of ash and roasted flesh. She spat, but the flavor coated her tongue. She tried to catch rain in her mouth, but that only made the taste run down her throat, and she could not bear to swallow the ashes of the dead. There were at least a dozen dead and twice as many wounded. More, a hundred at least, stumbling, vomiting, mouths opening and closing with no sound she could hear, and one screaming in pain like a wounded rabbit, but the sound existed a hundred leagues from her, audible only because it was so high and so ghastly.
It was strange to discover that nothing could surprise her, not after that bolt called from the sky. She had always known Hugh capable of anything, limited only by the scope of his knowledge. While she walked the spheres, many years had passed on Earth; he had possessed Bernard’s book, and other resources besides. He had studied with Anne and the Seven Sleepers. The laws of inheritance and custom had denied him power in the world of regnant and noble. Yet it wasn’t true he had no power. He had reached for, and grasped, the only power available to him.
She touched the astrolabe tied to her belt. It was protected by a leather cover, slick beneath her fingers. Even clouds—even daylight—would not stop him from weaving the crown.
“Hai!” She turned her back on Zuangua. Buzzard Mask was vomiting, but hearing her voice he sat back, wiping his mouth although he still gagged and shuddered. She shouted. “Sharp Edge! All of you! We’ve been outmaneuvered. We’ll run for the crown and catch him there.”
“Wait!” Zuangua called.
She turned back. “Speak quickly.”
His niece’s twisted corpse held his gaze. “So briefly she came into her power. Now it is stripped from her and she returns to the earth which births us. Who will walk as Feather Cloak?” His smile was a challenge. “Will you, Bright One?”
“Don’t mock me! Go to Secha, who led your people in exile. She is not a fool.”
His expression and his smile were twisted because of the way his left side had been singed. Blisters were already forming along his arm and his cheek. “Secha has aided you. So has my brother. Some still listen to their words, but not many.”
“Nay, better yet, send an envoy to Sanglant. Let there be peace between Ashioi and humankind.”
He flicked his fingers in a sign of dismissal, as though casting away the evil eye. “I have had enough of humankind! Sanglant has made his bed among his father’s people. We know where his heart lies. This one, the Pale Dog, he will betray you as he has betrayed all others.”
“Yes.”
“He wishes to be the last sorcerer known among humankind.”
“Of course.”
“He wants you to follow him. That’s why he took your daughter.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you fear him?”
“Not anymore. Enough! I am leaving. There is nothing more you can say to me.”
“Let me go with you to avenge my niece.” He stood and took a wavering step, followed by a stronger second and third. “A hundred mask warriors, scouts, trackers. He’ll not expect you to come with a war party.”
She had no time to argue. Sharp Edge and the others were ready to go. “Agreed. But if you cannot keep up, we’ll leave you. And know this, your enemy is only Hugh of Austra. My countryfolk—Wendish and Varren—are not to be harmed.”
“A truce only. Not an alliance.”
“A truce only.” She turned to her companions. “Quickly!”
She and her retinue broke into a run. Every step hurt, jarring up through her feet. Her entire body ached and burned, but she ran. Behind, his warriors fell in at the heels of her party, footsteps rumbling along the earth. They raced up the road, and with Zuangua behind them the Ashioi army fell away and did not challenge their passage.
The rain slackened, fading to a gentler, steadier shower. The storm had outpaced them. Lightning crackled above the hilltop among the stones, a half dozen furious strikes. While they were still too far away to interfere, she saw the archway of blue light blossom above the stones, threads pulling north. They ran panting up the long slope of the hill toward the crown, feet slipping along the chalk track. Mask warriors lay stunned or dead as rain washed along their bodies, red with blood and black with ash. Here, too, he had used lightning to clear his path. The smell of their dying was awful.
Even so, they came too late. As she sprinted out ahead of her companions to reach the weaving ground, the archway collapsed into a shower of sparks that not even the hissing rain could douse.
She stood there, panting, soaked through and furious, as the rest gathered around her. The smothering cloak cast over her hearing had begun to ease.
“He has escaped us!” cried Zuangua.
Sharp Edge said, “I watched, Bright One. I marked the angles, as well as I could.”
Liath looked at her, and together—recklessly—they grinned. “I, too.” She unhooked and lifted the astrolabe. “Like Hugh, we don’t need clear skies, or night. Who is with me? I mean to leap now, or risk losing him.”
Zuangua laughed through gritted teeth. How he kept his feet with those injuries she could not imagine. He was a very stubborn man. “We’ll follow into the maw of death’s grinning skull, if need be.”
With her shuttle, Sharp Edge traced a pattern onto the sodden ground. The others stepped back, forming into disciplined ranks, as Liath began to weave.
2
IVAR had fallen asleep leaning against a fallen log when a boot prodded him awake. A second kick jolted him. The damp had soaked through to his rump. As he stood, cloth stuck to his skin, slowly peeling. Groaning, he brushed dirt off his calves and shook chaff off his fingers.
“Get on!” said Jonas, who possessed the boot. “We’re moving. You walk ahead of me.”
He trudged after the others, although the silent Quman guardsman—that horror!—brought up the rear, an implacable barrier. Even the Eagle seemed more fit than Ivar; the old man strode at the front, wary yet confident, as they pushed along a hunter’s trail that unwound parallel to a merry brook tumbling over rocks and decaying branches drenched in moss. They kept to the brushy verge, since they walked through a predominantly beech forest and therefore had little enough cover should any soul spot them from afar. Birds chittered. A roly-poly brown animal scuttled away through leaves, and a moment later a splash sounded from the water.
Ai, God, he was so weary, but he kept one foot moving and then the next. The healer walked right in front of him. She carried a number of charms hung here and there, at her neck, her wrists, and sewn into the ankle of the weird leggings she wore which seemed woven and fitted all from a single piece of cloth. Some were beads and some polished wood, but others had a ghastly off-white color like beads carved from bone, and these cackled softly in time to her footsteps. He shuddered. Ahead of her went the cleric, so thin it was amazing he had the strength to walk, and before him Lord Berthold crowded up behind the Eagle. The green wood spread on all sides, a lacework of trees, shadows, and delicate light woven among the sedges hugging the ground.
“Are we near to Kassel yet?” asked Berthold.
“By nightfall we’ll walk in through the gates, if they’re open to us,” said the Eagle.
“Think you we outpaced the Eika army?”
“I don’t know. The road swings in a broad curve south around the deep fo
rest and across a ford. Our route was shorter. We’ve kept up a strong pace. Perhaps. If Lady Fortune, and God, smile upon us.”
“I have sores on my feet,” said Jonas. Ivar glanced back at him, and in truth he was limping—favoring first one foot and then the other, like a man dancing on coals. “We should have kept the horses.”
“Hush!” said Wolfhere.
They were all nervous and they were all tired, so when the crack exploded out in the far wood, they dropped like stones. It could have been a branch snapping off a tree, or a staff striking wood. A man’s voice carried over an unknown distance. A horse blew, closer by.
“Into the bushes,” said Wolfhere.
All rolled and scrambled into the tangle beside the stream. Twigs scraped across Ivar’s face, and his right hand sank up to the wrist in a sink of mud. The rustling of their movement ceased, and they hid in silence. Leaves brushing at his face made his skin itch. Pray God, let these not be stinging nettles!
He heard a sneeze, but it did not come from any one of their party. Hoofbeats sounded, the creaks and coughs and jangle of a troop of horsemen passing near by, coming up from behind but not, it seemed, on the trail they were following. He dared not move his head. His hood had slipped, and the flash of red might draw the attention of any observant scout. Water seeped in around his sunken hand. A bird chirruped beside the flowing water. They did not move, and at length the noise of the troop faded.
Wolfhere shifted out of the brush, rose, and spoke. “We’ll have to change direction. We can’t risk running into them.”
“Who were they?” asked Berthold. “My view was blocked by these damned branches.”
“I did not have a good view, but in any case I saw no banner. Given that they’re riding from the west, I must assume they are Conrad’s men.”
“Should we cross the stream and head south?” asked Berthold.
“That will bring us closer to the main road. We might be caught between their main force and this scouting group. I think we must press north and see if we can swing around in a circle and avoid them that way.”
The mud sucked and slurped as Ivar pulled his hand free. He crawled backward, stood, and wiped his hand on his tunic, which was already so caked with dust and dried mud that he shed it in flakes as he walked. He itched, but no blisters had broken out, so God had shown him this small mercy at least, that he had not hidden among the nettles.
They cut north off the path and trudged through the sparse field layer, spacing themselves a body’s length apart so they might hide more easily behind the boles of trees should they spot armed men. It was a warm afternoon, with no wind, but not hot. Ivar had forgotten what it meant to be hot, just as he had begun to forget the nature of the sun in its glory, bright and fierce and blinding, like the angels. The servants of God—sun and moon and stars—were steadfast, never failing in their duty; he must serve likewise. He walked, and because he was tired, he fixed his gaze on his feet so he could keep from tripping over some small obstacle, a crumbling branch, a splintered stump, or a growth of sedge, now in flower. Everything was blooming late. It was hard to remember what he meant to do. Warn the noble commanders about the Eika attack, save Constance, find Hanna. He no longer particularly cared to what woman or man he gave his message. He just wanted a wash to ease the ache in his feet.
“Hush! Halt!” The Eagle raised a hand.
They staggered to a halt in their broken line. The old man looked east, and so did they all, hearing what he heard: the clash of arms, a man’s high shout, and a great deal of crashing and cracking as men fought through the underbrush in the distance. Despite the open vista of beech forest, the rise and fall of the land hid the skirmish, but its ring and clamor sang clearly enough.
“Follow me!”
Wolfhere set off at a brisk walk north by northwest, heading away from the skirmish. They pushed through the low field layer easily, moving at a steady jog, and although Ivar thought he would probably die as his thighs ached and trembled and his lungs burned, he refused to fall behind and be seen as less of a man than the others. Even the foreign woman loped as easily as a panther, never tiring.
Jonas tripped, and the Quman soldier—the others called him Odei, but Ivar could not bear to think of him as a human being with a name—swung down to help him up. All heads turned back to watch. Shapes moved in the distance as one flank of the melee whipped into view: A trio of mounted riders lashed their horses as half a dozen others pursued them.
Wolfhere swore. Ivar dropped to the ground and scrambled on hands and knees toward Wolfhere as the others hid in whatever cover they could find. Only the cleric stood, staring not at the fighting but at the treetops as though he were gazing toward an angel hidden within the trembling flash of leaves.
“Heribert!” Wolfhere grappled the cleric’s legs, and they tumbled down together, but it was too late. The blow hit from an unexpected direction.
From the west came the pounding of footsteps and men panting as they closed in. “There! There!” they called. “Grab them! Give it up! Lay down your arms, and you’ll be given quarter.”
The riders had vanished into the wood, but as Ivar pushed up to kneel he found their party surrounded by a score of infantry, men whose tabards were blazoned with the stallion of Wayland and whose faces were streaked with dirt, as though they had tried to hide themselves in the forest cover by appearing as shadows and light. Each one carried a spear. All had bows and short swords. They were impressively armed.
“Move! Move!” said their leader. “We’ve been on your trail since yesterday. My lord duke wants a word with you.”
“Damn,” said Wolfhere as he rose. He looked around once as if he had a notion to cast magic into the air and confound their captors so that he and Berthold and the rest could escape. But he couldn’t possibly do that.
“I’ve twisted my ankle,” said Jonas sourly.
Wolfhere sighed, shoulders sagging. He glanced at Berthold, and the young lord shook his head slightly. The other two—Odei and Berda—looked at Berthold, and the young lord lifted both hands, palms out and open, to show that it was, alas, time to surrender.
Conrad and Sabella had reached Kassel before them, but there was no sign of the Eika. The Varren tents circled two thirds of the valley, which was anchored to the north on a wide slope so steep that a recent avalanche had torn through the trees. In the broad valley, men chopped and hauled and hammered and dug siege works. Work was particularly busy along the eastern edge.
Ivar tried to estimate the number of Varren troops but could not. Beside him, Wolfhere spoke in a low voice to Berthold.
“More than ten centuries, my lord, but less than twenty. Yet see what banners rise above the citadel!” Behind Kassel’s walls flew the Wendish banner, with eagle, lion, and dragon, and the Eagle of Fesse, together with a black dragon banner Ivar had never seen before. “Duchess Liutgard has returned. It must be true. Prince Sanglant has declared himself king.”
“It was always Henry’s wish, or at least so my father told me,” said Berthold. “Although it was never to be spoken of. I think that’s why Father wanted Waltharia to marry Sanglant. He had a good idea that she had a chance to become queen, and make his grandchildren royal.”
“He meant her to rule both Wendar and Varre and the marchland?” Wolfhere asked.
“Nay. I think my father meant the margrave’s ring to pass to me.” When Berthold grinned at the old Eagle, Ivar sulked, wishing the youth liked him better. His cheerful nature and bold determination gave him the charisma usually only found in an older man. Yet Berthold ought to have passed as many years on Earth as Ivar had; it was only magic that had stolen so much time from both of them.
“Here, now,” said the sergeant in charge of the men who had captured them. “Be quiet. Begging your pardon, my lord.”
Men turned to stare as their bedraggled company crossed fields and were herded into the outer reaches of the encampment. Two tents rose above the rest. One was striped red and gold and flew the b
anner of Arconia’s guivre, while the other boasted pure gold cloth blazoned all around its sides with the stallion of Wayland, bold and strong. To the ground before these tents they were brought, and made to wait in the lengthening shadows while the sergeant went inside and came out again.
“My lord duke is out hunting,” he said. In the distance they heard a chorus of cheers, and he looked up and in that instant his face opened to reveal all the loyalty and love he gave to his duke. “Well, here he comes. Get down now.”
Berthold did not kneel, and so none of the others did, not even Ivar.
The procession arrived, two-score men in mail and helmets, with swords and spears tucked and ready.
“We gave that bastard a scare!” said the dark man Ivar recognized as the duke. He was laughing until he saw the prisoners, shorn of their weapons and strange to look on.
“Good God!” He tossed his helm to one of his attendants, swung down, and crossed to stand before the prisoners, surveying them with a sly smile. A trio of whippets loped up to lick his hands. “Good lord! You are Villam’s son, the one that was lost. Can it be? What sorcery has restored you to the land of the living?”
“I was never dead,” said Berthold stoutly. “In truth, Cousin, I think I might have slept under a stone crown for many years. What sorcery bound me I cannot say. This man, Lord Jonas, is the only one who survived of the six who accompanied me. I pray you, do you mean to make me your prisoner in this rough way? Surely we are kinsman!”
Conrad laughed. “Come inside, then, Cousin! I’ll have drink and food brought. If you’ve been asleep for years, you must have developed a powerful thirst! Yet these others …” He stared for the longest time at Berda, shook his head, squinted at Odei, noted Brother Heribert, nodded at Wolfhere with the casual mark of a man acknowledging a servant he recognizes, and finally settled on Ivar. “Pull off that hood.”
Grimly, Ivar obeyed.
“Ah, indeed, the rufus boy from the North Mark. You keep flitting in and out of my path. What is your name again?”
