Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  But Last Son was pointing to the far west, not at the people below. “I see the signals, from the forest’s edge.”

  Light flashed where his troops caught sunlight on the faces of obsidian mirrors.

  “Do you see her?” Stronghand had not looked west. He surveyed the sprawling battle, spreading in the valley as some units retreated and others advanced but in no order whatsoever. Here, the Wendish flourished; there, they collapsed. Among them, fighting in one place at the hand of the Wendish and in another place appearing on the side of the Varren levies, rode a woman who wore no distinguishing tabard, only plain mail, a battered shield, and a serviceable sword. He knew who she was all the same. No man could stand before her, who dealt death on all sides: the Lady of Battles, beloved of humankind.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Last Son.

  “Never mind,” said Stronghand. “Our work will be done for us, as they slaughter their own kind. Hold the men back on all flanks. I’ll hold to my word, that we will raise arms only against those who raise arms against us. Bring the Kerayit wagon forward.”

  Last Son gave him the standard before trotting off through the vanguard. Other Eika moved up alongside Stronghand, some silent, some laughing to see the carnage, some bored because they weren’t fighting, and one sniffing at the air and rubbing at an ear as at a change in weather.

  There was a change, a cold wind blowing out of the east and a hard hot iron scent, mingled with a dull boom that shuddered away and rose again and again. Rain pattered in the trees. Wind moaned and rattled as the storm strained against the unnatural leash holding it in: The power of his staff battled the storm, keeping it at bay.

  There! Difficult to distinguish because of the shouts and screams and clangor of arms rising out of the valley, a shriek lifted from deep in the rear ranks of his army only to sigh away, buried under the din.

  The human creature running up the ramp reached him. Showing no fear, it halted before him and spoke in the Wendish tongue.

  “She is here. The holy one is with you. I am of her tribe. Let me join her.”

  He laughed. “What manner of animal are you?” he asked, because this one was like no other human he had met. It was dressed in the clothing and gold and bead baubles and headdress customarily worn by women and it moved with a woman’s mannerisms, as he had learned to recognize them, but it smelled like a man.

  “I am called Berda. Let me go to the holy one, lord.”

  Its lack of fear intrigued him. And he found loyalty commendable.

  He signaled safe passage with a lift of his hand. The creature called Berda darted into the Eika army.

  A duel between chiefs had broken out on the road below, where it leveled out, but its outcome did not interest him. His nose stung. An itch tickled his eyes. He shrugged uneasily, not liking the taste of the air.

  He lifted his standard, testing the wind. An old magic licked his skin, quickly evaporating. This was not sorcery, then, but something natural. Perhaps after all it was only the tension of the storm that, lowering over them, could not break. No, they were safe from magic, as they had been since the day he bound the old sorcerer’s magic into his staff.

  He held his position, as still as stone, waiting for the tide.

  The thumping feet of the Eika deafened Rosvita as the wagon rolled along, nestled within their ranks. They were like the ocean, stretching in every direction as far as she could see: a pair of them ducking past the bole of an ancient oak; a line of twenty to either side on the road; heads dipping in and out of sight in the woods; a sea of backs moving in disciplined order ahead of her.

  How strange it was to see human soldiers marching with them, most with the golden-blond hair common to the Alban race. Conrad the Black’s first wife had been a woman as fair as she was haughty, but her vexatious tongue had charmed Conrad and her milky-white skin, next to his dusky complexion, had caused a stir at court when she first arrived. They were a handsome couple, admired by all even though he had angered the Alban queen by stealing the princess away from her motherland.

  Strange how the mind wandered, when it was trapped. A powerful wind raged at their back, heard as fury in the forest reaches. Rain sprayed them, but just when she expected to get hit by a squall, it faded off most uncannily. She shivered, although she wasn’t cold. The horses felt it, too, or perhaps it was only the presence of the Eika—that unnatural smell like the flavor of stones baking in the sun—that unnerved them.

  Through the door set into the cabin of the wagon, Sorgatani spoke, and although Rosvita tried to pity the Kerayit shaman, she feared her pitiless sorcery far more. I am not so openhearted.

  “Hear you what comes?” piped the high voice. The accent rasped on the syllables. “Beware! We must run! Speak to Breschius.”

  All Rosvita heard was the tramp of a thousand and more marching feet, some slapping the roadbed and others trampling in the forest growth where branches scraped and leaf litter squeaked moistly underfoot.

  Ahead, a vista opened where the hills gave way. The troops parted to let them through as they rolled past a crude barricade of old wagons meant to block the road but now shoved aside or chopped to pieces. Ahead, she saw the Eika standard, held by the one who called himself Stronghand. He seemed almost lost among the hulking bodies of his soldiers, who had crowded up to survey whatever scene unfolded in the valley below. What she heard—the clash of shield, the ring of sword and spear, the hissing of arrows, the cries of men and horses as they were cut down—told her the story of a battle raging beyond.

  But after all, Rosvita did also hear a faint sound that rang eerily like the tolling of sonorous bells. Something moved in the forest off to the right. A rabbit shrieked in death.

  Or was that a rabbit?

  The smell of the forge swelled around them. Pitiful screams trembled in the air, each cut short. Breschius tripped, caught himself by the reins, and swung around to stare, with mouth agape and eyes squinted, back down along the road where they had come. The cart horses flicked their ears and jolted unevenly forward.

  “Ai, God!” he cried, stumbling alongside. “Do you hear them, Sister?”

  The tolling of bells had a voice. The voice spoke a name. Sanglant.

  “What is that?” Rosvita demanded.

  “We must run! Those are galla!”

  “Lord and Lady bless us!” She clutched the seat. A stinging wind blew up from behind. Now, too late, she heard the screams of men dying close at hand. Fear prickled her neck. She broke into a sweat.

  Breschius wailed. “Ancient and most terrible!” he cried. “We have no weapon that can harm them!”

  The horses kicked in their traces and tried to bolt, but the harness held them. Around them, Eika turned to face the threat coming up from behind. At first she saw nothing, as they saw nothing from which one should run, nothing that one could fight.

  Pillars of blackness swayed within the trees, swarmed along the road. They were towers of darkness moving in daylight, ribbons torn from the darkest storm and ripping through the ranks of the living. Most of the human soldiers panicked, dropping to the ground or pushing to get out of the ranks so they could run, but the Eika met the threat with a steadfast courage she had to admire. They held their ground as the galla engulfed first this man, and then another. Some leaped against the foe only to vanish within. Others danced at the edge, only to find themselves taken from behind by another of the creatures. None fled as any sane man would. Soldiers were flayed to the bone, although the remnant left of each Eika so consumed was not white bone at all but the color and texture of stone. A few cried out warnings to their brothers. Most died in silence.

  “Rosvita!” cried Breschius. “Run! I cannot leave the princess, but you can save yourself.”

  The galla sailed through the forest and skimmed the roadbed. The throbbing of bells deafened her. She was too frightened and bewildered to move except to clap her hands over her ears. The gesture made no difference. This sound was not carried on the air but through the bone
s of the earth.

  Sanglant.

  The wagon rolled to the highest point of the road, just where it turned into the long incline down a massive man-made ramp. Here Lord Stronghand stood, staring with a most human expression on his face as the galla swept down on them: he was purely astonished, gripping his standard and shaking it at them as though to drive them away. An Eika soldier leaped, and shoved him off the ramp. They tumbled away down a steep verge with pebbles and small rocks skittering away in ragged trails.

  “Fast! Fast! Evil demons come!” As out of nowhere, a Kerayit woman appeared on the road, shouting as she grabbed the reins of the horses out of Breschius’ hand. “The holy one must be saved! Fast! Fast!”

  She hauled, pulling them forward, yelling in a language whose words were meaningless to Rosvita but which might mean something to Breschius or Sorgatani. Breschius collapsed to his knees, giving way as the foreign woman swung up into the driver’s seat. As the wagon passed him, Rosvita reached to grab him. He raised his hand to hers, and she grasped it, but his fingers slipped out of her hand as the newcomer whipped the horses ruthlessly into a run.

  “Hei! Hei!” she called in a husky voice. “Make way!”

  They left Breschius behind.

  Rosvita yelped in fear as the wagon hit the incline. The weight of the wagon pressed it forward into the hindquarters of the beasts. The horses opened into a panicked gallop. A few people stood at the side of the ramp, heads slewing sideways as they stared upward in horror at the wagon careening down. Farther below, horsemen blocked the road, but they reined aside to get out of the way. There was one person in the middle of the road, staggering as though drunk.

  The foreigner struggled with the reins, desperately trying to turn them aside from the man fixed in their path, but the horses had opened into a wild gallop and did not—could not—respond.

  Rosvita shut her eyes. She whispered a prayer, asking forgiveness for her cowardice, and pitched herself off the side.

  When she hit, her breath was knocked out of her as shoulder and hip took the impact. Pain stabbed. She rolled, hit the rim, and tumbled over the verge, coming to rest in a knob of grass grown in among the rocky in-fill.

  Ai, God, she hurt as she crawled up the side and lay gasping. Breschius appeared on the ramp far above, calling after them. One moment she saw his familiar face, a good man who had served God faithfully and with joy his whole life long; the blackness devoured him as the galla glided through the space his body inhabited.

  She shouted his name, too late, and because she was a coward, she scuttled back from the road as a dozen or more galla flowed down the slope, all fixed on one object.

  Below, men scattered. All men but one.

  When the wagon out of control and the horses in a blind panic hit the plane where the incline leveled out, the wagon bounced. An axle shattered. A wheel came loose.

  The entire assemblage slammed right into the man wearing the dragon helm who stood in the center of the road. His body crumpled beneath hooves. The wagon lurched over him, then overturned and skidded with a grinding roar to one side as the horses screamed and, tangled in their harness, were jerked after it. The driver was thrown free and hit hard, lying still. One horse struggled to rise but fell back on a broken leg. The other did not move at all.

  The man’s body lay on its back on the ground, helm torn free, black hair fallen over the dark face. There is something about a body that is dead that tells the eye even at a distance. Once the soul is fled, the flesh is nothing but meat.

  Never had any held breath lasted as long. It seemed to Rosvita that she had gone utterly deaf, or that all the noises of the world had been smothered.

  All but one. A grizzled hand closed on her arm. Pain jarred her shoulder, and she gasped and gritted her teeth.

  “Good Lord. Can it be you, Sister Rosvita?”

  Her vision was blurred, but she knew that voice. “Wolfhere?”

  “Quickly, we must move back. We are not safe here. Crawl this way, out of the galla’s path.”

  “What has happened?” she asked weakly as he dragged her off the ramp.

  She was bleeding, scratched, battered, and addled, with a headache building inside her head like the pressure of a storm about to break. But she was too terrified to mind those small inconveniences. The breath of the forge sank into her as the galla passed. Their presence stung her skin like the touch of fire. They sang in their deep bell voices, but in that tune sounded only one word over and over. Yet the tone in their voices had changed. She heard no statement but a question, as a child cries for its lost mother.

  Sanglant?

  Wolfhere flung himself down beside her and ducked his head to keep out of sight. “It did not play out as I intended,” he remarked, not really seeming to speak to her but rather to himself as might a man accustomed to traveling a long road with only his own company to keep him occupied. “I cast a desperate throw, not sure it would work. Yet it seems I have succeeded at long last. He has been well protected by the geas his mother wove into his body.”

  “What do you mean?” she rasped, staring in horror as the galla swept down toward the body, as soldiers scrambled out of their way. Even those most loyal to their captain and king were too terrified to stand their ground. “What did you intend?”

  His voice came to her from a distance, as if muffled by wool, but it was nevertheless astoundingly cool, collected, and at peace.

  “Sanglant’s death. Just as King Arnulf commanded.”

  XI

  AN UNNATURAL MEASURE OF LUCK

  1

  THE irrigation ditch was not more than an elbow deep and barely shoulders’ width. Its bed was slick and slimy, but Ivar dug in anyway, swallowing water that tasted of dirt and the foul leavings of night soil. The thunder of hooves, closing in on his position, shook through the ground.

  The two forces hit right above him. The crack of the impact clapped louder than any storm. Hooves pounded around him as horses were yanked sideways or backward, as men pressed the enemy. Water slopped over his head. He scrambled for purchase on the slippery sides, gulping water, coughing, trying to get out from under. When a broken spear clattered onto his back, he dragged himself out of the ditch and scrambled for the line of fruit trees. Cutting zigs and zags through the seething push and pull of the skirmish, he got free of it, only to stumble over a dying man. He wrenched the man’s shield off his arm and ducked under it as he sprinted for the nearest tree. A line of riders broke off from the melee as a whip uncoils. He flung himself flat as they galloped over him. A hoof grazed his head, the merest clip, like the brush of the Lady’s Hand. A mercy. A blessing.

  He crawled like a worm through the weeds, with the shield held over his back. One blow in passing shivered it, but it did not shatter. Dirt ground into his elbows. He tasted a coating of weeds as pollen shaken loose by the skirmish dusted his mouth. The line of trees loomed before him, and he stumbled under their cover, such as it was. He huddled against the thickest trunk he could find. A small green apple, early lost from the branches, got under his thigh, digging a painful knot. Scant shelter this proved. The trees were too far apart to provide cover. But it was the only shelter he had against the melee crashing around him. He peeked over the rim of the shield.

  Wichman of Saony he recognized at once. No one else fought with such reckless disregard for life and limb. The lord yowled and cackled as if it was the greatest sport in the world as he drove a dozen of his riders in a wide sweep through a field and cut around to try to catch the flank of the guivre’s company where the banner of Arconia flew. This path took him right between the trees, his company the weft pushing through the warp of the row of trees. He rode full out, ducking under low hanging branches, bellowing like a madman.

  “For the phoenix! For the phoenix!”

  Sabella rode with her troops, although she lagged behind to let the front rank meet the charge between ditch and trees. An Arconian captain leaned forward to gain a clean shot at Wichman’s head. Lord Wichman�
��s lance caught the man high on the shoulder at the base of the neck and came out through his back with a spray of gore. Their horses collided. Wichman flew over the top of both horses and the other man’s slack body, and landed on his back not ten paces from Ivar. His helmet flew off and rolled along the ground. Arconian riders whooped, and pursued him.

  Unsteadily, Wichman rose by sliding with his back against the tree as he reached for his sword. But another soldier’s lance struck him in the right shoulder, pierced armor and flesh, and pinned him to the tree.

  The melee dissolved into chaos, spinning out to all sides as the fighting broke into knots of frantic battering and pressing. Only at this center did a weird lull descend.

  Ivar caught his breath—two breaths—as his gaze was drawn outward over the field of battle; he could see everything, all the way to the walls of Kassel. The fighting was spread across these fields with no purpose or pattern he could discern, a jumble of motion punctuated by the ring of arms, the cries of the wounded, and the obstacles created by the now ruined siege works. Only the huge ramped road that led up the eastern slope into the forest stood clear, an easy landmark to spot from any distance.

  Strangely, the only significant motion on that portion of the road was that of a runaway wagon flying down the ramp toward lower ground. A fence of men scattered on the high ridgeline, pouring away from the road. Thunder growled as the solid drumbeat that had shaken the air stuttered into an erratic hammer. Bells tolled. This deep throbbing so frightened him that he pushed up to his feet, meaning to bolt for the western woods. That resonance burned like fire along his skin.

  Twenty men or more wearing Arconian tabards drew up before the trees. A single rider dismounted and pushed back her helm. Lady Sabella’s face was streaked with sweat, and she was clearly straining, red in the cheeks and white with fatigue about the eyes.

  “So, Wichman.” She hefted a wicked-looking mace as she walked toward the helpless lord. “This will put a stop to your rebellion. You’re a pig of a man.”