Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

“We should have treated her better,” whispered Fortunatus with the merest breath of ironic bitterness.

  “I have already pledged my aid to the Wendish,” said Sorgatani.

  He nodded, a very human gesture of acknowledgment. Strange that he could look on the shaman, as they could not. “No man can serve two masters. This, I respect. You will be my prisoner, and honorably treated. I do not war upon the mothers in any case. Those who guard them will be spared if they lay down their arms.”

  “Sister Rosvita commands us,” said Sorgatani. “It must be her decision.”

  Shamed, Rosvita replied more sharply than she intended. “I pray you, Sorgatani, go inside.”

  Slippers squeezed dirt as the young woman turned away. The door scraped open, and clapped shut.

  “She is hidden.” A halt in Breschius’ tone made her look, and she had a fancy that he brushed a tear away from his cheek.

  The one holding the banner, who had watched all this without comment, spoke lightly. “She could kill all of you, yet she obeys you. That interests me. Who holds her allegiance?”

  Fortunatus let go of her wrist.

  “We ride to support King Sanglant.”

  He nodded. “You are surrounded and your soldiers outnumbered. We can kill them and take you prisoner in any case, but I am curious about this shaman woman. That is why I offer mercy.”

  “How can we know you will keep your word?”

  He bared his teeth in a grimace that imitated a grin but was more like a hound warning that it is prepared to bite. “You are in no position to refuse, but I understand that you remain suspicious. I speak in good faith, remembering your Circle.”

  With his free hand, he lifted one of the loops away from the pattern decorating his chest, and she realized that he wore a simple wood Circle of Unity around his neck, tied on a leather cord.

  Fortunatus sucked in his breath.

  She rocked back on her heels, seized with hope. “Do you stand in the Light?”

  “I respect the mothers who guide you. On their honor, the honor of your church of Unity, on the honor of the one you know as Constance of Wendar and the holy deacon Ursuline who guards her charges at Rikin Fjord, I swear this oath, that I will not raise arms against those who do not raise arms against me.”

  “Who are you?” Rosvita demanded.

  He shrugged, a casual, too-human gesture, so much so that she was beginning to see him as scarcely different than the young Hessi man standing so trustingly beside him, than the score of human men scattered back through the ranks. He and his brothers had a human cast of face; they had a human form except for the claws, and the metallic tone of their skin, and the bone-white hair. The old legends told that the Eika were born when the blood of humankind and dragons mixed in ancient days.

  Maybe the old legends were true.

  “I am who I say I am: Stronghand, emperor of my Eika brothers and of the lands of Alba and certain territories along the western coast of Salia and Varre.”

  Spoken with such an assurance of might and power!

  She must speak to protect those she was responsible for. “You must see, Lord Stronghand, that I cannot ask the brave and faithful soldiers who march with me to lay down their arms and leave themselves defenseless.”

  “They are too few to harm me. Let them set a camp, a perimeter, here in the forest. My soldiers will set a guard over them but not come near. That will content me.”

  “What of the rest of us?”

  “Naturally I must take a few as hostages to ensure that my guards will not be molested. The rest of your party can remain with your Lions. They are good soldiers, those Lions. I have seen them in action.”

  On this road in the forest with trees all around and no sign of bird life, with only a trace of wind in the branches, Rosvita wondered briefly if she had wandered into a dream as vivid as those she had on occasion suffered when traveling between the crowns. In a moment, no more, she would hear Brother Fortunatus’ voice saying “I pray you, Sister, wake up.”

  But Fortunatus remained silent.

  The Eika lord shifted from one foot to the other as he tilted his head, seeming to hear a sound hidden from her.

  The hand grasping the pole of his standard uncurled. The pole began to roll off his opening fingers, and he unaware of its movement.

  Almost, she called out to warn him, but she remained silent.

  The hills just north of Kassel are rugged, their heights shorn by the tempest of last autumn that cut through the wealth of pine and beech. Dead trees scatter the ground like sticks. Low-lying shrubs grow in these clearings now that they have more light. Sometimes vistas open where forest once blocked the view.

  This long ridgeline slopes sharply to both west and east away into rolling ground, polite hills easy to travel through, where the forest thrives. To the south it dips into the broad valley beyond the El River, the place where the town of Kassel rose a century ago on the ruins of a Dariyan outpost. The town’s main gates face the south because it is protected to the north by that rough country where Alain walks on a deer trail.

  He is alone in the forest, all but his faithful companions, the two hounds and the guivre, which follows him rather like a dog but a great deal more noisily. The creature’s wingspan has made a tent over him at night, to shelter him from drizzle, and its vicious beak has torn into the only pack of wolves that dared attack them in the wild woods where animals roam.

  That was days ago. Now he has almost reached his destination.

  The first drops of rain spatter through leaves like a shower of pebbles. Above, the sky grows dark, and the forest floor grows dim. The few birds—he is always thankful to hear birds call—fall silent.

  Ahead, the track opens into a meadow where a stream winds through tall grass and purple and blue flowers. He halts at the verge. Wind whips the grass, but he is untouched. Rage whines. Sorrow gives a single bark. Both sit, made uneasy by the weather.

  Mist pours heavenward out of the stream. Rain lances through the meadow, so cold and hard that it stings his cheek like slivers of ice blown on a gale. It rains sideways as the rising wind howls. He cannot see the trees on the far side of the clearing.

  This is no natural storm.

  Even as he thinks this, light pierces the wall of mist. The rain ceases between one breath and the next. Above, clouds part as easily as if they have been sliced in two to reveal a sun so brilliant that he shades his eyes from its glare. Raindrops glisten on petals. Grass sparkles. The stream burbles. Out of the mist rising off those waters emerges a rider.

  The horse is as white as untouched snow, almost blinding. The woman has seen many battles. Scars mar her face and hands. Her boots drip mud, as though she has only recently slogged through a rain-swept battlefield. The rings of her mail shirt are coated with rust except for those places where irregular patches of new rings have been linked and hammered closed to fill ragged gaps.

  She reins in her warhorse beside him. Her long sword, sheathed in leather, sways in front of his eyes. A battered round shield hangs by her knee.

  Her gaze is at once distant and utterly piercing. But he is no longer afraid to look her in the eye.

  “What must I pay you, to ride to war?” she asks him.

  He cannot tell if she recognizes him.

  “I have dealt death and suffered death,” he tells her. “I am no longer your servant.”

  As the clouds part, the light of the sun shifts until it strikes her, and her armor gleams as though new-made, shining and glorious as she is shining and glorious. She draws her sword. Its length blazes as though forged by sorcery. He weeps, because she is beautiful.

  “All serve me,” she says. “The trumpets of war are sounding. Arms will be Joined soon. Friends and foes will perish. Do you abandon them to their fate? Hear!”

  Out of the heavens a ringing sound floats, almost too faint to identify except that he knows it as the clash of sword and shield. On the wind drifts a rumble like thunder, quickly lost.

  “Ri
de with me, Alain, son of Rose. Choose, and your choice shall win the day. You may make Sanglant emperor by the might of your arm. Stronghand is your brother by blood. Will you answer his prayer? What of the husband of the woman you loved once? Give him victory, and raise her to glory—or ruin him to ruin her. What of the offer made to you, to become consort in your own right? Choose, and you can be king, consort of a queen regnant. You are nothing, a whore’s son raised by a humble family. I offer you glory. Come with me now, and your likeness, the memory of your exploits, will be painted on the walls of churches so that humble folk will sing of your victories and clerics will praise your deeds. You will be one of the great princes ever after.”

  The ground shakes with an undulating ripple. The guivre drags itself up beside him, and it stretches its wings to their full span, hissing at the lady.

  “I no longer belong to you,” he says.

  “You march toward war. Even if it is peace that you seek, you must use the sword to achieve it. Fail me, and you fail those you wish to save.”

  “So you believe.” He whistles. Rage and Sorrow come to attention behind him, ready to move.

  She laughs, a bright sound that rings up into the heavens to join that clamor heard from afar. “Challenge me, if you will. Now you will see my power.”

  The fog takes her. Between one breath and the next, it swallows her, leaving him on the narrow deer trail hemmed in by scraping branches and damp leaves. The meadow has vanished, the rain has stopped, but the black clouds and the rising wind remain.

  Almost, Stronghand dropped his battle standard, woven by the shamans of the Eika tribes so its magic shields from the touch of sorcery all who walk under the shield of his power. Its limits had been tested today, and it had protected them from a terrible threat. The thought roused him. His chin jerked sideways as he started like an animal waking from a doze and grabbed the tumbling standard before it could strike the ground.

  “She is coming!” His voice cracked. His attendants shifted from watchful alertness to coiled readiness as a man standing casually rolls to the balls of his feet, preparing to sprint. “Swiftly! Now we move!”

  His gaze caught on the cleric. “Stand by your agreement, and I will stand by mine. Yeshu, see that the shaman and her attendant come with us. Bring also this holy mother who speaks for the company.”

  He strode into the ranks of his army, which swallowed him. As quickly as water washes off rocks on an outgoing wave, his soldiers dispersed west down the Hellweg or into the forest. The plan was long since set into motion. The noise of their passage crackled, and as if by sorcery a wind rose out of the north to trouble the woodland. Branches cracked and fell. The clouds—what he could see of them above the treetops—had turned a sullen gray color, presaging rain.

  Battle was coming, and so was Alain. Yet another scent teased his nostrils, a touch of the forge. It puzzled him, because although a lingering taste of sorcery shifted on the wind, that distant presence was not in itself magical.

  A scout jogged into view from the west and fell into step beside him. “Lord Stronghand. All is ready as you have commanded on the western flank. A report has come in that a patrol to the north has fallen into a skirmish with a party of outriders, and retreated. Sharptongue of Moels Tribe has sent up another troop to push into that region, to make sure our eastern flank is not attacked unawares.”

  “Good. What of Duke Conrad and Lady Sabella’s army?”

  “Taking up arms. There is movement in Kassel. It seems the battle is about to start between the besieged and their enemy. It seems the princess on the eastern slope has been alerted to our presence.”

  “Good.”

  “Further orders, Lord Stronghand?”

  He considered his troops in their thousands, a mixed Eika and human force raised from the northern tribes and the eager Alban recruits, the largest army to march through these lands since the armies of the Dariyan Empire. He considered his lines of communication and supply, stretched thin, and his imperfect knowledge of the disputes that had destabilized the Wendish and Varren realms. He considered Alain, and the last words of the WiseMothers, now forever lost to their children.

  Repay this debt.

  He nodded, a human gesture, but in these days he sensed in himself a fine balance between the cold ruthlessness of dragons, the hidden strength of stone, and the quicksilver emotion that rules humankind. Once, long ago, the part of him that derived from human ancestry had lain quiescent, barely acknowledged, but his chance encounter with Alain Henrisson had changed him and, in the long run, altered him utterly.

  “No,” he said to the waiting scout who, like all the Eika, had the patience of stone. “All is going as I have planned.”

  “Up on the cart, most honored one,” said the Hessi youth sweetly as he walked up to Rosvita and Fortunatus without the least sign of nervousness. Of course, he had a hundred silent Eika soldiers guarding his back. He had no need to feel anxious. “There is room for you to ride with the driver, I think, holy one.”

  The color of the sky was changing, in accordance with her mood. The once light haze of clouds was darkening quickly as a storm blew in.

  “Brother Fortunatus! You must go back to the main party and tell them what happened. Let the Lions remain watchful, but on no account unless they hear word from me or from King Sanglant himself are they to attack a superior force.”

  He grasped her hands. “I would not leave you, Sister!”

  “Haste,” said the Hessi interpreter kindly, but he smiled wryly to show he must enforce his orders. “I will go with the good brother, back to your company. I have a message to give them.”

  With a flash of his old smile, Fortunatus released Rosvita’s hands. He had tears in his eyes, but he faced the youth with a cheerful expression that did not blind Rosvita to his true feeling. “Will you teach me the letters of your secret cipher?”

  The lad laughed outright, the most pleasing sound Rosvita had heard all day, something to make the heavens a little brighter, although the storm boiled ever closer, sweeping down from the north. “It is forbidden, yet there is one letter I might teach you. That which came first of all sounds on the day of Creation.”

  He drew Fortunatus away, walking toward the rest of the company. From deep in the ranks, back by the wagons, a wailing rose toward the heavens, shouts of dismay and grief.

  “What happened?” asked Rosvita in a low voice. “Did someone die?”

  Breschius shrugged. “It’s possible. But I was walking in front of Princess Sorgatani. I saw nothing of what might have happened behind me.”

  She took a step in the direction of the cries, but the Eika soldiers closed in around her and the wagon. The horses shied, fearful of that faint dry smell like stone baking under a hot sun. Breschius spoke softly to them, and they laid back their ears and began to walk with heads tossing anxiously.

  Ai, God. She had called forth Sorgatani to vanquish the Eika, but instead some of her own people had died—and for nothing. They had accomplished nothing except to become prisoners of an invading army.

  “Sister!”

  Breschius tossed her a pair of old apples, quite wrinkled.

  Busy hands keep the mind from straying to unproductive thoughts. What she had done could not be undone. She must keep her wits sharp for the road ahead. She caught up to the horses and walked alongside to coax the pair through the front ranks and onward along the Hellweg as they walked into the unknown heart of the Eika army.

  5

  “SOMETHING, but I don’t know what.” It was midday. Sanglant paced on Archer’s Tower, the highest on the walls of Kassel, and surveyed the valley. Conrad and Sabella had used their ground wisely, not bothering with a complete encirclement, since the steep slopes to the northeast of the town were too unstable for anyone to negotiate even on foot.

  “What manner of something?” Liutgard brushed hair out of her eyes with a forearm. She had stood up here most of the day and the wind had torn all that time at her tightly braided hair, cul
ling wisps that fluttered with each gust in greater numbers. She glanced to the north. “A storm coming?”

  “A whisper like the ranks of the dead approaching,” he said, and she looked at him, puzzled, and only then did he realize he had spoken his thought aloud. “A taste like the eve of battle.”

  “Is that what makes you restless as a prowling dog? Not just those dark clouds? Will we fight Conrad today?”

  “He’s sent no herald, made no attempt to parley.”

  “Sent no word of my daughter,” said Liutgard bitterly.

  “It makes me wonder what his intentions are. But, in truth, there is another scent on the wind, and I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Where is Theophanu?”

  “Close. See, there.” He pointed to the southeast. “That color on the ridgeline. There.”

  She squinted, then shrugged. “I don’t see it. Only the trees along the hills.”

  “My archer Lewenhardt caught sight of it yesterday. I wouldn’t have noticed it myself, but his eyes are sharp. I believe that is her banner, set up to alert us.”

  “Too far for us to see.” She stared and stared, shook herself with a measure of impatience and frustration, and shifted her gaze back to the encampment draped in a semicircle about the valley of Kassel, one which girdled all roads and tracks.

  “That’s as close as she can come, with Conrad and Sabella in her path. If we could coordinate our attack, we could strike from two sides. At this juncture, neither army has an advantage. If I judge correctly, Conrad and Sabella have numbers about equal to our own.”

  “The margraves should have marched with us.”

  “Yes, I suppose they should have. Gerberga will wait it out in Austra and come to claim what she can from whichever is left standing.”

  “Gerberga can go rot! It was Waltharia I was thinking about.”

  “She sent three centuries of men, all she could spare. Think how many she lost—her own husband—when she sent a troop south with me.”

  Liutgard did not appear so much aged by the long campaign but hardened, made mirthless. She had laughed more, once upon a time, and she had been wont to cast quotes into her banter—she could read—lively lines from the poets or homilies out of the mouths of the church mothers. “I, too, lost many milites in Henry’s wars, Cousin! Yet I stand beside you. Even Burchard went home.”