Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

The horn rang out again. Armed adults sallied out from the village, yelling defiantly. Beor led them; Alain recognized him by his height and his shoulders, and by the bronze spear he carried. A half dozen split off from the main group to hurry toward the birthing house, among them Weiwara’s husband and Urtan.

“Go!” said Alain, because it was a word he knew, and because help was coming. “I go get baby.”

Kel shrieked with glee and shoved the infant into Tosti’s arms. He grabbed the dead woman’s bronze spear from the ground. “I go!” He struck his own chest with a closed fist, and then Alain’s. “We go!”

There wasn’t time to argue. The ones they sought had already gotten a head start, and Alain wasn’t going to let that baby be stolen, not when God had welcomed him to this village by granting it the blessing of living twins on the day he had arrived.

He grabbed the shield off the corpse and ran for the forest as the sun split the horizon behind them. Adica called after him, but the clamor of battle drowned out her voice. They hit the shadow of the trees, and he raised a hand for silence as he and Kel and the hounds came to a halt. They heard the headlong flight of the other two as cracks and rustles in the forest ahead. Rage bounded away, so they followed her trail as she pelted through the trees.

Alain saw the two Aoi when he burst out of the woods at the border of the burial field. Sorrow and Rage loped after them, big bodies closing the gap. They hit the man limping behind without losing momentum and he tumbled to the ground beneath them. Kel reached him first. Before Alain could shout for mercy, Kel stuck him through the back. As the bronze leaf-blade parted the man’s skin, Kel screamed in triumph.

The sound shook Alain to his bones, made bile rise in his throat. He had known for a long time that he couldn’t serve the Lady of Battles by killing. But he could save the child.

The hounds matched him stride for stride as he ran after the third warrior, the one who carried the crying infant under his arm. The warrior cut left, and then right, as if expecting to dodge arrows. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Alain and the hounds and that made him run harder, although he seemed to be grinning like a madman, caught in an ecstasy of flight and fury. But Alain knew fury, too, rising in his heart, goaded by the memory of a tiny body coming to life beneath his hands.

By now they had moved well away from the river, but a stream cut down from a hill on the eastern side of the burial field. When the other man tried to head up the stream, he found himself boxed in by the hillside and by a cliff down which a cataract fell, not more than twice a man’s height but too rugged to climb without both hands.

The warrior was no fool. He kept hold of the baby and brandished his spear threateningly as he sprang back to put the rock wall behind him. The baby hiccupped in infant despair, exhausted by its own screaming, and fell silent. Far behind, Kel shouted Alain’s name.

He threw down shield and staff as Sorrow and Rage stalked forward on either side of him. “Give me the child, or strike me down, I care not which you choose.”

The warrior’s eyes widened in fear or anger, flaring white, all that could be seen of his face behind the grinning dog mask he wore.

Alain took another step forward, showing his empty hands but keeping his gaze fixed on his opponent. “Just give me back the child. I want nothing else from you.”

The warrior shied nervously, keeping his spear raised, and he made a testing thrust toward Alain, who did not step back but instead came forward once again.

“As you see, I do not fear dying, because I am already dead. Nothing you can do to me frightens me. I pray you, give me the child.”

Maybe it was Kel, shouting as he came up from behind. Maybe it was the silent hounds. Maybe the warrior had simply had enough.

He set down the child, turned, and scrambled as well as he could up the cliff face. Alain sprang forward to grab the infant just as the warrior lost hold of his spear and it sailed down to land in the cataract with a splash. The haft spun, rode the cascade, and lodged up between two rocks as water roared over it. With an oath, the man vanished over the lip. Pebbles spattered down the cliff face, then all trace of him ceased.

Kel whooped as he came up behind Alain. The baby whimpered, more a croak than a cry. Kel waded out to fetch the spear and offered it to Alain.

“Nay, I won’t take it!” Alain snapped. Kel flinched back, looking shaken. “Here,” said Alain more gently, giving him the man’s shield. With a hand free again, he took up his oak staff.

They went swiftly back, but cautiously, skirting the corpse sprawled in the burial field and taking a deer trail through the forest, not knowing what they might find at the village or if they would need to fight when they got there. Luckily, the newborn fell into an exhausted sleep.

Easing out from the forest cover, they saw the village with the first slant of morning sun streaming across it and figures moving like ants, in haste, scurrying here and there. As they watched, trying to understand what they saw, a cloud covered the sun and the light changed. Thunder rumbled softly. Rain shaded the southeastern hills.

“Beor!” said Kel softly, pointing.

Alain saw Beor walking down through the earthworks with a spear in his hand, his posture taut with battle anger. At least fifteen adults accompanied him, all armed, some limping. Smoke striped the sky, rising from the village, but it had the cloudy vigor of a newly doused fire. A few corpses lay evident, some clad in bronze and one, alas, the body of a villager. It seemed strange that these people would strike with such determined ferocity and swiftness only to retreat again, like a thunderstorm opening up overhead with fury and noise that, as suddenly, blows through to leave fresh puddles and cracked or fallen branches in its wake.

Halfway between the river path and the birthing house, Alain saw a lump on the ground. Fear caught in his throat. He ran, only to find, as he feared, Adica’s leather bundle bulging open on the ground right where she’d dropped it when she first ran for Weiwara’s house. It seemed wrong that rain should fall on the gold antlers. As he wrapped up the bundle, he found her polished mirror lying beneath.

Adica never went any where without her mirror. At that moment, the same choking helplessness gripped him that had strangled hope on the night when Lavastine had been trapped by Bloodheart’s revenge behind a locked door.

Voices called from the village. He slung the bundle over his shoulder and rose just as Kel hurried up with a scared look on his face.

“No. No,” he repeated, over and over, pointing to the bundle. Alain ignored him and hurried on. He had to find Adica.

Weiwara had been taken to the council house and settled upon furs there together with the other wounded folk, not more than six, although six was too many. When Alain gave the lost infant into her arms, she burst into tears. Both Urtan and Tosti were among the wounded. Urtan had taken a blow to the head and he lay unconscious, with his young daughter Urta moistening his mouth with a damp cloth. Tosti drifted in and out of awareness, moaning; he had two nasty wounds in his right shoulder and left hip. Kel dropped down beside him, keening, scratching his chest until it bled.

Mother Orla shuffled in, leaning heavily on her walking stick as she surveyed the injured. She called for her daughter, Agda, who brought potions and poultices. Exhaustion swept Alain, but as he tried to make his way to the door, to find Adica, Mother Orla stopped him, her expression grim. He heard voices outside, but it was Beor who entered, not Adica.

The moment Beor saw Alain, he spat on the floor. It took Mother Orla herself, raising her walking stick, to restrain him from charging through the crowd and attacking. The hounds, waiting outside, barked threateningly.