The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“We can’t wait!” whispered Baldwin, but Ermanrich had already surveyed the situation.

“Nay,” he said. “The princess’ forces have drawn off those who were climbing the fort before. They won’t pursue us right now.”

Baldwin was shaking. “But they might be swarming up the other side of the hill. They’ll drop down on us from above.”

“Then we’ll be dead,” said Ivar. “I thought you said you’d rather be dead than go to Margrave Judith’s bed again. You might just get your wish!”

“But I don’t want to die!” wailed Baldwin. Ermanrich slapped him, and he sniffled, wiping his nose, and then, as if nothing had happened, he jumped forward, grabbed the silent Lion’s leg, and helped tug him down from the rampart.

They moved on around the hill, sliding in wet ground until their knees and hands dropped mud. The mist turned to drizzle and steadied into rain as they by turns tugged and pushed the unconscious Lion through the moss and the mud while his wounded fellow staggered behind. As they rounded the southwestern turn of the hill fort, they saw the ford lying dim below them in the ragged glow of a full moon now and then veiled by cloud. Somehow, although it still rained where they crouched, the ford lay full in the moonlight, and Ivar could see that the front of rain quite simply ceased about twenty paces in front of a semicircle of Lions whose locked shields made a barrier behind which horsemen and infantry forded the river to the safety of the north shore. As though they were the gates of a refuge, the shields opened to admit stragglers who came pelting in alone or in small, beleaguered groups, and then closed again to meet the erratic charges of the furious Quman, who could not break the strong shield wall. Across the river, the army wound away into the woodland in remarkably good formation. The baggage train was long gone, but a single small wagon more like a little house on wheels sat beside the shore, and for an instant Ivar thought he saw its beaded window shiver and sway as someone pressed aside the hanging to look out.

At a stone’s toss from the wagon, he saw a pale-haired figure in an Eagle’s cloak standing beside her horse. Hanna was safe across the river.

Off to the east, thunder still rolled, distant now, as if the storm had passed them by. Below, they could see the Quman pressing Sapientia’s troops backward toward the ford.

“We’ll never make it,” said Ermanrich. “We’re cut off.”

“Nay, lads” said the old Lion. “Don’t wait for us. If you run for it—”

“Can’t run—” gasped Baldwin.

“Are you hurt?” demanded Ivar.

“No. Just—can’t run anymore.”

“Look there,” said Ermanrich. “There’s a bit of a fosse up ahead. We’ll hide there and then make a run for the ford in the middle of the night.”

“The Quman will post a guard,” said Baldwin. “They’ll kill anyone they find. We’ll never make it.”

“Now here’s a lad who believes in God’s grace,” said the old Lion with a rattling laugh.

“It’s true,” added Baldwin philosophically, “that death will free me from my wife.”

“At least Sigfrid and Hathumod are safe,” said Ermanrich. “And we might be as well, if we don’t despair. That’s a sin, you know.”

Ivar knew it was a sin, but his hand was really hurting now and he just wanted to lie down and rest. But he pressed on with the others toward a ditch lush with reeds and bushes, sheltered from the river by the steep, almost clifflike slope of the hill and by two stark ramparts, their faces slick with mud and, curiously, shale. Hauling the unconscious Lion gave him something to concentrate on as first Ermanrich and then the old Lion slid into the shelter of the ditch. Ivar and Baldwin shoved the unconscious man over the lip, and he tumbled down into a hand’s height of water. Ermanrich quickly got his face free of water, although even the rough jostling hadn’t woken him. Maybe he was already dead.

Behind them, up at the height of the hill, a thin light began to glow.

“Ai, God!” whispered Baldwin. “Look! It’s the Quman, coming with torches to search us out!” He flung himself down into the ditch, and Ivar slipped and slid in his wake, so utterly filthy by now that another layer of mud seemed to make no difference. The rain had slackened and the clouds on this side of the hill had pressed southward, leaving them with the waxy light of a full moon and that eerie, lambent glow from the crown of the hill.

Bounded on one side by the earthen dike, the ditch had become a pool because of the steep precipice on its other side where a stream of water coursed down the cliff face. The falling water had exposed two boulders capped by a lintel stone embedded in the hillside, which were mostly hidden by a thick layer of moss, now shredded and hanging in wet tendrils over the great stones as water trickled through.

Ivar cupped his hands and drank, and the cold water cleared his head for the first time since he had lost his fingers.

“This must have been the spring or cistern for the old fort,” he said as he traced an ornate carving still visible beneath the moss on one of the stones: a human figure wearing the antlers of a stag. He pushed away the hanging moss. “Look!” Baldwin slithered up beside him. A tunnel lanced away into darkness, into the hill. Without waiting, Ivar slipped behind the green curtain. It was narrowly cut, but he could squeeze through. Inside lay black as black, and water lapped at his knees, but it seemed safe enough. “Baldwin!”

Ripples stirred at his knees, and then Baldwin brushed up beside him. “Ivar? Is that you, Ivar?”

“Of course it’s me! I heard a rumor that the Quman fear water. Maybe we can hide here, unless it gets too deep.” He probed ahead with one foot but the unseen bed of the pool seemed solid enough, a few pebbles that rolled under his boots, nothing more. No chasms. He plunged his arm into the black water and found a stone to toss ahead. The plop rang hollowly, then faded. He heard a drip drip drip—and a sudden scuffling, like rats.

“What was that?” hissed Baldwin, grabbing Ivar’s arm at the elbow.

“Ow, you’re pinching me!”

Then they heard it, a wordless groan like the voice of the dead, an incomprehensible babble.

“Oh, God.” Ivar clutched Baldwin in turn. “It’s a barrow. We’ve walked into a burial pit and now we’ll be cursed!”