Part 52 (1/2)
About fifty people had cl.u.s.tered close to watch and listen. The two men who had a.s.saulted her sidled in as well, staring with a bitter, unsparing hatred, as if she were responsible for everything they had suffered and lost.
”I was riding from the east last winter. I left Handelburg at the order of Princess Sapientia, she who is heir to King Henry, to bring word to him of the Quman invasion. I was caught out in a snowstorm, in a forest, and was myself captured by the Quman.”
”You've been with the beast all this time?”
She didn't see who had asked that question.” So I have,” she admitted, wetting the corner of her cloak in water again, trying to squeeze the caked gunk off it.
The tall man pressed forward. He'd found a stick, too, although he used it to support his weight.” And you didn't wh.o.r.e with the beast all that time? How then are you so clean and fat, Eagle? Where did you get that ring?”
Quicker than she'd thought possible, he struck. His first blow glanced off the side of her head. She fell hard as the mother screamed, and the jolt when she caught herself on her arms sent pain stabbing into her injured eye. Head stinging like fire, she groped for and found her stick and brought it up just in time to catch his next blow on wood. Her stick shattered, and she scrambled backward, crablike, as his stick thwacked down in the gra.s.s first to her right and then to her left.
He raised it again. Fury knotted in her stomach. She threw herself forward and slammed into him, knocking him down. They wrestled. A thistle p.r.i.c.kled on her back, and she flipped him over and jammed him face down into it. He shrieked, shuddered, and fell still.
Thank G.o.d for all that fighting with her elder brother Thancmar. Thank G.o.d her adversary had been so weakened by hunger. Breathing hard, she grabbed his unbroken stick and rose, staring down his trembling companion. Beyond, the Quman guards watched impa.s.sively, arms crossed.
Her face throbbed.
What had happened to Bulkezu's promise to the owl's master to see that she came to no harm? Blood leaked from her temple where the stick had caught her, and her ear throbbed painfully.
”I'm a King's Eagle, d.a.m.n you,” she said harshly, ”and I received this ring from King Henry's own hand in recognition of my service to him. What you do to me is as if you were doing it to the king himself.”
”Where's the king, then?” Tall Man's comrade confronted her. Now that he stood, she could see by the way his tunic hung on him hew much flesh he'd lost.” Why hasn't the king come to aid us?”
His words were echoed by other prisoners, many more of whom slunk closer to see what the commotion was all about.” Where is the king while we're suffering here?”
”I don't know,” she admitted. But she had a good idea where he might be, and she didn't want to tell these people that particular story. The crown of Emperor Taillefer would seem a sorry treasure to them who had lost everything, had watched their homes burned, their fields trampled, their daughters and sisters being raped, and their townsfolk slaughtered.” I don't know. But I know this, my friends. We'll all die if the strongest among us don't help the weakest.”
”Easy for you to say, eating like a queen and sleeping between the beast's silks. Maybe he threw you out now, but that doesn't change what you were before.”
She pointed the stick at him and let the end press against his sternum, pus.h.i.+ng hard enough that he skipped back a half step. No one laughed, or even spoke. They had fallen silent.” It's true I ate the food he gave me, and ate better than any of you have. But I never slept between his silks. He never raped me.” She let the stick fall to her side, keeping it ready for a fast strike, and turned so they could all see her Eagle's badge.” He didn't dare touch me.” She hesitated. A complicated kind of hope and cynicism warred in their expressions. What did these folk know of Kerayit women and shamans who had the body of a woman joined with that of a mare? ”He didn't dare touch me because he didn't dare insult King Henry. For what he does to me it's as if he does it to the king himself. He knows in the end that the king will have revenge. For me. For all of us.”
As would she, by G.o.d.
At that instant, she knew what she had to do. Bulkezu had forgotten one thing when he'd thrown her out of his tent.
”But the king needs our help. And I need yours.”
The guards did not stop her as she gathered firewood at the fringe of the forest, although maybe they thought she was crazy for thinking of building a fire on such a hot day, especially when she had nothing to eat. Twilight closed over them as she laid sticks for a fire. Wool thread teased off the sleeve of her tunic made a bowstring and a supple branch the tiny bow, wood sc.r.a.ps and dry leaves the tinder, and a notched wedge of wood a cup for her hand. With the bowstring looped around a stick, she drilled the end of that stick into the tinder until friction woke heat, heat smoke, and smoke fire.
Flames licked up through the kindling. Prisoners gathered around, as many as could stand doing so in order to block the view of the Quman guards, and the old man began telling a story.
”Here we begin by telling the tale of Sigisfrid, who won the gold of the Hevelli. He was born out of a she-wolf and a warrior- Hanna sat cross-legged by the fire, letting the tale drift past her, riding the flow of the words. Under Bulkezu's constant watch, she dared not use her Eagle's sight. But here, among the prisoners, she was free.
”See nothing, not even the flames,” Wolfhere had told her.” It is the stillness that lies at the heart of all things that links us.”
”Liath,” she whispered. The fire wavered, and for a moment she saw faint shadows of men clothed in armor, she heard the clash of arms, but the vision faded into the snap of flame. Liath remained hidden from her. Was she dead?
Was everyone she cared for dead?
”Ai, G.o.d,” she whispered, ”can I not find you, Ivar? Where have you gone?”
A new log made the fire flare with blue streaks of heat, hot and bright. Were there women moving in the flames? Queens walked under a grave mound, one young, one old, and one as golden as the sun, but they held out empty hands and by the hard flint gleam in their eyes she knew them for the old G.o.ds, the Huntress, the Fat One, and the Toothless Hag who cuts the thread of life.
Ivar was lost to her.
For a while she sat mired in grief while some other hand fed the flame and the fire burned merrily on, twisting and popping.
She is the owl, gliding over the treetops, searching for the one she has lost. The streaming wind carries her far to the east, to the land where the gra.s.s grows as high as a man. Two griffins stalk at the edge of sand, closing in on their prey.
Tents s.h.i.+mmer in the distance, but it is the woman wandering on the sh.o.r.e of the desert who catches her eye. Here, among the Bwr-folk, Sorgatani has no need of veils or concealment. As she walks, she speaks pa.s.sionately to her companion.
Hanna has never before seen the Bwr shaman so clearly: her glossy gray mare's coat and the creamy color of her woman's skin. Her face and upper body are striped with green-and-gold paint. Pointed ears, tufted with coa.r.s.e black hair, peek out through her unbound hair which falls like silver water all the way to the place where her torso slips easily from a woman's hips into a mare's shoulders. She holds a bow in her hands, the horn curve carved with the semblance of pale dragons.
”Why can we not attack?” Sorgatani is saying fiercely, hands gesturing wildly.” He spits on us by holding her prisoner.”
”She had a chance to come to you,” replies her companion.” Now she suffers the fate she chose.”
”Is there noway to rescue her? Is our magic of so little use?”
”Do not forget that magic protects him as well.” She shakes her head as might a cleric surveying the ruins of her once magnificent church.” We are not what we were. Our numbers are much diminished because of the plague. Now is our time of greatest weakness, so we must use caution. We dare not reveal ourselves too soon. But do not fear-” She glances up, her gaze sharp as an arrow.” Who watches ? ”
In that moment it took her to inhale a gasp and let it out again, Hanna sees Wolfhere, brow furrowed, staring at her through the flames.
He is gone as though a hand wiped him clean off a slate. Lamps b.u.m, brighter points of light within the leaping fire.
A familiar voice is speaking. She had heard it so often that it takes her several breaths to get over her surprise that, after all these months, she is listening to Prince Bayan.” If it is true Bulkezu rides north along the Veser, then what prevents him from swinging wide, around this city, and going on his merry way, as Prince Sanglant says? Bulkezu can leave a force of small size camped outside the walls, and with this force he can trick d.u.c.h.ess Rotrudis so she will believe he sets a siege at her gates. Then, if she so believes, she will not harry him until for her and for Saony it is too late.”
Hazy figures too indistinct to see clearly s.h.i.+ft within the fire. She can make out none of their faces, but the man who speaks next she recognizes immediately as Sanglant.” And he can do as much damage as he likes. Or he could strike west before he even reaches Osterburg and go for Ka.s.sel or the Rhowne heartlands near Autun. The best we could hope for in that case would be that he drives all the way to the western sea and spends his fury laying waste to ^alia.”
” What do you think we should do, Prince Sanglant? ” How have they all come together? How many have gathered? For surely that voice belongs to Captain Thiadbold, of the Lions. Seated figures obscure him, a host of grim warriors holding a council of war. Lamplight shoots blinding lances across her vision, so that all she can do is hear.
”I say we march hard and try to reach Osterburg before he does.”
His words fade as a hand catches her shoulder and draws her backward. Briefly, so briefly, she sees a black-haired child asleep on a bed of furs, and it seems as though aflame b.u.ms at the child's heart, blue-white and almost a living thing, nvisting and hissing.
”Liath,” she whispered, starting out of her trance as the hissing rose in pitch. She fell back and caught herself on her hands.
Cherbu sat on the other side of the fire, whistling death onto the fire. Flames curled and died, subsiding into red coals. Ash settled. A cool wind stirred the forest. Far away, a wolf howled despairingly.
”So.” Bulkezu crouched behind her, his hand gripping her shoulder. This time, he wasn't going to let go until he got what he wanted.” Where is she?”
The prisoners had all slunk away or pretended to sleep. She could scarcely blame them for abandoning her to those whom they had no power to resist. No doubt they were happy to have escaped punishment. The night guards stood farther back, half hidden by darkness. That she could see them at all was because of the waxing quarter moon, riding high over the treetops.
A scarecrow danced under the nearest tree, dangling from a rope. Nay, not a scarecrow but a man. She recognized him by his clothing: Boso, hanged by the neck.
An owl hooted, but although she glanced past the swaying corpse, she saw no sign of the bird. Maybe that sound was only a lingering hallucination from the vision seen through fire.
Maybe hope woven together with fear made you see those half truths that made living bearable, when otherwise you would only lie down and die.
Bulkezu spoke again, and this time his hand tightened on her shoulder. His breath, sweetened by mint, tickled the side of her face that he had bruised.” Where is Liathano, the sorcerer who can raise such a fire that it consumes an entire palace?”