He would have wept at their loyalty, but he had no tears.
Bloodheart was still howling in rage, shouting at his priest, calling the Eika to silence, to stillness, so that they could hunt for the hideous creature that had escaped from the shattered chest. The mob stilled, broke, and parted.
In this way, abandoned for more important prey, Sanglant was left alone. Pain washed like water over him, the flood tide swelling to its height as black hazed his vision and he struggled to remain conscious, then ebbing to reveal every point of scalding pain in his body.
He heard the breath of the dogs, those panting out their last breaths and those few which still remained upright. The last six stood around him in a protective circle to face their common enemy. Surrounded by this fortification of dogs, he lay there breathing shallowly and waited for the blinding pain to end.
5
HE could not quite manage to open his eyes. But he knew he was surrounded by bodies strewn about him like so much refuse. Some few of the dogs were still alive, and they growled when any movement sifted near him. It was so hard to wake up and perhaps better not to. Perhaps it was better to slide unresisting into oblivion.
Ai, Lady. Would he be admitted to the Chamber of Light? Or was he, because of his mother’s blood, condemned to wander the world forever as a bodiless shade?
In the distance or in a dream, he heard the flutelike voices of the Eika speaking in Wendish, two voices accompanied by the mocking, harsh counterpoint of Eika calling and crying out in their own rough tongue. Some few of the words he now knew. In his dream he recognized more than he ever had before, but that was the nature of dreams, was it not?
“I have seen this army in my dreams.” This in fluent Wendish.
“No better than dog, why dare you speak so before the great one?” This in the Eika speech.
“My dreams are more honest than your boasting, brother! Do not toss aside the gifts the WiseMothers give you just because they are not made of iron or gold.”
“How can I believe your dreams are true dreams, weak one?” This from Bloodheart.
“I am stronger than I look, and my dreams are not just true dreams, they are the waking life of one of the humankind. He marches with this army, and as he marches, I march with him, seeing through his eyes.”
One of the dogs nudged him, testing for life, and he gasped so loud the echo of it split his skull with pain, but no sound came out of his mouth. Blackness fell. For an endless time he drowned in a black haze of unrelenting pain that spun and sparkled like the knife which had been driven countless times into his body. Finally the darkness lightened to an early morning gray. Glints of light burst here and there in the limitless mist.
The veil parted.
The woman appears young and is certainly beautiful. She wears a fringed skirt sewn of leather so thin and supple that it moves around her with her movements like a second skin. A double stripe of red paint runs from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. Her hair has a pale cast, though her complexion is as bronze-dark as his own; drawn back from her face, it is bound behind her head with painted leather strips nested with beads, trailing a long elegant green plume. A wreath of gold and turquoise and jade bead necklaces drapes down her chest almost to her waist. She wears no shirt or cloak, only the necklaces, concealing and revealing her breasts as she shifts.
But for all her beauty and fine grace, she works patiently toward a brutal goal: with a curved bone tool, she is shaving stout lengths of wood into spear hafts. Obsidian points lie on a reed mat nearby with rope heaped beside them.
Does he make a noise? She looks up as if she has heard him and in that instant as a sudden lance of sun cuts down through trees to pierce across her shoulders, flashing on her necklaces, she sees him.
“Sharatanga protect me!” she exclaims. “The child!” She flinches away from the sight, drops wood haft and bone tool, and gropes for the stone points lying on the mat.
“It is not yet time for him to die,” she mutters to herself, although he can hear every word clearly in a language he ought not to know yet understands perfectly. Grabbing one of the thin blades, she lifts it and raises it high above her and cries in a clear, strong voice. “Take this offering, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband. Give life back into his limbs.”
She drags the blade across her palm. Blood wells, dripping down the length of the cut to spill into the air and she shakes the hand out, blood spitting toward him. Behind her, a voice calls a sudden frantic question. A touch of moisture spatters his lips, dissolving there, and as the harsh taste spreads to the back of his throat, the veil closes in a swirling pattern of grays and sparkling stars.
“I know you,” he whispers.
But his voice was lost in the snuffling of dogs, and the touch of familiarity drifted away on the last tendril of mist. Stillness hung like the weight of stone in the vast nave of the cathedral.
Terror hit with sudden force. Had he died? Had he seen, beyond the veil of the living, one of his own kinfolk or only a soulless shade caught forever in the memory of life?
He had always thought his mother’s curse protected him from death. Ai, Lord, it wasn’t true. It had never been true. He had only been lucky.
If this could be called luck.
He strained, listening, but heard nothing except the dogs. Had everyone gone away? Had they deserted the city, leaving to raid downriver into the heart of Wendar? How long had he lain here, dying and living again?
The footsteps that neared him came as soft as a breeze sliding through dead leaves scattered on the forest floor.
Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.
He twitched but could not move his hands. His dogs growled, menacing their visitor. The smell of rancid meat hit him hard, gagging him, and he swallowed convulsively. He heard the damp slap of meat thrown to the floor and suddenly all the dogs skittered off, nails scraping the floor, and they fought over the remains. The footsteps eased closer. He lay there, paralyzed and unprotected, working his throat as if the movement would spread to his numb hands and allow him to defend himself.