Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Never argue with Lady Fortune, her mother would say.

Nervous every time a branch creaked or cracked under the weight of snow, she returned to the others. They were eager to be gone from the scene of carnage.

“Didn’t they kill even one?” demanded Lord Frithuric. “I thought Lord Dietrich’s cousins were strong fighters.”

“Maybe they were taken unawares,” said Hanna, which shut them up.

Maybe she had ridden under worse conditions in her time as an Eagle, but she couldn’t think of any. The silence became excruciating. Little arguments flared up over nothing, tempers goaded into flame by anxiety. They slogged on and on and on along the path that led them deeper into the forest, far past the woodland fringes where they had traveled thus far, on into the old uncut heart, a vast tract of trees and silence. They saw no living creatures except themselves. The path was their only landmark. They waded knee-deep through snow along a narrow track bounded by trees. Except for a detour here and there to cut around an escarpment or dip down to a ford in a stream, the path took a fairly straight course through the old forest. Luckily for their feet, the streams had all frozen over, making every crossing easy.

The worst part of the whole long, cold, nerve-racking, miserable day was that it got dark so early, leaving them caught in twilight deep in the forest without shelter.

Fortunately, the old sergeant, Gotfrid, knew woodcraft. He spotted a dense stand of fir trees off to the right of the path. In their center, under overhanging branches, they discovered a living cathedral blanketed with needles and almost free of snow. The air lay close and quiet underneath the overarching branches. In an odd way, Hanna felt protected here, as though they had stumbled upon an ancient refuge. Eighteen people and the eight horses could all crowd in, as long as two men were posted as sentries at the fringes to peer out into the darkening forest. Clouds hung low, seeming to brush the tops of trees, and snow skirled down, spinning and drifting.

“It’s really beautiful,” she murmured to old Gotfrid. She had come up beside his sentry post to survey their situation. “Or would be, anyway, if we had a fire and mead.”

“And no Quman lurking like wolves to feed on us,” he agreed. He was a good man, stable, shrewd, and steady, who had spent most of his adult life as a Lion.

“There’s something I don’t understand, though, Gotfrid.” She glanced back to make sure the others couldn’t hear them. Several ranks of trees, each taller and broader than the last, separated them from the hidden center. “Why would a practical man like you throw away everything for a heresy?”

He chuckled, taking no offense at the question, as she’d guessed he wouldn’t. He was old enough to have white in his hair and a few age spots on his face. “You’re thinking that those young lords might be taking to a heresy just because they’re young and rash and fools, aren’t you? That’s because you’re a practical young woman, as I’ve seen.” He spoke the words approvingly, and it was a measure of the respect she’d gained for him on this desperate journey that she smiled, pleased with the compliment. “But it isn’t a whim, friend.” He faltered, growing suddenly serious.

Snow fell softly throughout the vista beyond, a mantle of white over everything. It was almost too dark to see.

“Have you ever seen a rose?” he asked finally.

“Truly, I have seen one or two in my time. I saw the king’s rose garden at Autun.”

“Well, then.” He hesitated again. She studied him. He wasn’t handsome or ugly but rather comfortably in between, with the broad shoulders and thick arms of a soldier. He was, perhaps, the same age as the king but rather more weathered by the hardships of life in the infantry, and if he stumbled with his words it was because he’d had a soldier’s education, not a cleric’s. “Think of a rose blooming all of a sudden in your heart.” He gestured toward the silent forest, all chill and white, a sea of winter. “Think of a rose blooming there, in the snow, where you’d never think to see it. Wouldn’t that be a miracle? Wouldn’t you know that you’d stumbled upon a little sliver of God’s truth?”

“I suppose so.”

He spoke so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him. “A holy one walks among us. But we mustn’t speak of it, because God hasn’t chosen to make Her messenger known yet. But the rose bloomed in my heart, Eagle. I have no better way to explain it, how I knew it was truth when I heard the preaching about the Sacrifice and Redemption. The rose bloomed, and I’d rather die than turn my back now. I’d rather die.”

There wasn’t a breath of wind.

“Those seem ill-chosen words, friend, considering our situation,” said Hanna finally, not unkindly.

“We’ve had poor luck, haven’t we? God is testing us.”

“So They are.” The cold seeped down into her bones. She chafed her hands to warm them. “But Lord Dietrich was stricken down and died when he professed the heresy.”

“I think he was poisoned by the biscop.” Gotfrid spoke these words so calmly that Hanna expected the sky to fall, but it did not. All she heard was the muffled noises of their party, hidden among the firs: a low mutter of conversation, the sting of smoke in her nostrils from a fire, the stamp and restless whickering of the horses. Twice she heard Lord Lothar’s hacking cough.

“That’s a bold charge,” she said at last.

“You think so, too,” he said grimly, “or else you’d leap to her defense. I think she poisoned him because she saw he wouldn’t back down. He was the strongest of us in faith. She hoped to frighten the rest of us into recanting.” He leaned toward her, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. “Don’t think there weren’t others among the crowd who had heard and believed. They hold the truth in their hearts as well.”

“But hadn’t the courage to step forward.”

“Well,” he said generously, “not everyone is ready to die, if it comes to that. Someone has to survive to spread the truth, don’t they?”

She chuckled, finding it amusing that they could debate matters of heresy while running for their lives through this vale of ice. “I like living, and I wouldn’t mind a nice hot cup of spiced wine right now.”

“Well, lass, truly, so would we all.”

But back in their refuge, there wasn’t anything but stale bread. She did manage to sleep curled up in her cloak until one of the soldiers woke her for a turn at watch. Within the shelter of the trees, with so many bodies crowded together, it had actually gotten not warm, of course, but bearable. As she pushed her way out through the stinging branches, she felt all the warmth sucked away by a raw cold so profound that for a moment she thought it might seize her heart. She came to the edge of the thick stand of trees and at once floundered into a thigh-high drift of new snow, all powdery soft. Snow slipped down her leggings to freeze her ankles and toes. She staggered back into the shelter of the firs and tried to make sense of the scene before her.

She heard it, and felt it, more than saw it, because it was still too dark to see. She tasted that flavor the air has when snow falls thick and fast and the clouds weigh so heavily that one knows a blizzard is on the way. Flakes settled on her nose, and cheeks, and eyelids, and melted away.