Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

“Boso is a fool. A dog would make a more worthy lord. It amuses me to wait and let him spin a little longer. Now Zach’rias was a clever man. He made war on me with his tongue. I should have cut off his tongue instead of his penis. I didn’t understand him well enough to know which would hurt him worse. My arrow missed its mark.” He shifted in the saddle, lifting an arm to brush a finger along one of the griffin feathers bound into his wooden wings. The touch raised blood on his skin, but the wind wicked it away. A thin rain of snow spilled from a tree branch, a shower of white that melted where it touched the sodden, spring ground.

“But they only made me stronger, when they thought to humble me. Now I’m the only man born into the tribes who has killed two griffins, not just one.” He did not smile. Nor did he laugh.

“You didn’t wear those wings when you fought against Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia.”

A spark of mischief and cruelty lit his expression. “I wanted Bayan to know that even wingless I could defeat him and his noble allies.” He laughed for such a long time that Hanna began to think something had gotten stuck in his throat. The shrunken head rolled along his thigh, staring accusingly at Hanna. “I’d never killed a lady lord in battle before,” he continued at last, “so I thought it best to put my old guardian away and dedicate a new one.” He laughed a little again, trailing off into giggles as he stroked the hair on his shrunken head and lifted it. “Do you know her?”

Bile stung in Hanna’s throat. For a moment she thought she would vomit. Or ought to. No wonder the head, all twisted, blackened, warped, and nasty as it had become, looked familiar. She knew who had died in that battle.

“Judith,” she whispered, “Margrave of Olsatia and Austra.”

Another of the night guard rode up to deliver a report. Bulkezu listened intently, eyes crinkling as he concentrated. He had already forgotten the head. Slowly his expression changed. The only thing worse than his smiles and laughter were his frowns, and he frowned now as night fell and a warm breeze brought the fetid smell of camp to her nostrils, choking her. She could not bear to look at Bulkezu, not with Margrave Judith’s head dangling there.

One of the guards lit a torch. Back at the army, more torches blazed into life like visible echoes of the one snapping brightly next to her.

Out of the night, screaming rose like a tide.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, horrified. It sounded as if the Quman had turned on their helpless prisoners and begun killing them.

“What is the name for this thing that has crept into the ranks of the prisoners, this thing we must drive out lest it infect my troops?” He mused aloud, absently fingering the point of the arrow as he cocked his head to one side, listening to the distant slaughter. Snow dusted his black hair as a last shower rained from the pine tree under which he sheltered. “First the demons slip invisibly into the body. Then the body turns gray and shakes. Then the noxious humors explode out of the mouth and the nose and the ears and the asshole, all the snot and blood and shit and spittle bursting forth. Zach’rias taught me the name for this thing.”

She already knew. A cold worm of fear writhed in her heart, numbing her. She had thought the shadow elves the only thing more terrifying than the Quman. But she was wrong.

He nodded to himself, remembering the word.

“Plague.”

Back in the camp, the killing went on.

3

THEY came down out of the Alfar Mountains into a summer so golden that it seemed to Rosvita that the sun itself had been poured over the landscape. In the north, the light was never this rich and expressive.

When they stopped to water the horses and oxen at midday, Fortunatus took off his boots and dabbled his toes where the cold mountain water frothed and spilled over exposed rocks.

“Ah!” he said delightedly as he wiggled his toes under the water. “I’d forgotten how pleasant it is to have feet that are hot and dry for a change. After that tedious winter and spring, I thought I would never be comfortable again.”

With relief, Rosvita dismounted from her mule and found a flat-topped boulder to sit on. From this seat—no harder, really, than her saddle—she could survey the stream where the clerics of the king’s schola had gone to wet their faces, drink, and stretch. Although the king preferred that she attend him at all times, she had obtained permission to travel with the schola, the better to keep an eye on her precious books and young clerics.

Servants brought soft cheese from the wagons. She nibbled at this delicacy as she watched animals being brought up in bunches to water downstream, where a fallen log dammed enough of the current that a watering hole had been hollowed out of the earth. A hawk drifted overhead, spiraling on the winds that brushed down off the high peaks, now hidden by forest and foothills. A woodpecker drummed nearby, and she saw its white flash among pine branches.

“The months weren’t wasted entirely, Brother. At last I was able to make a great deal of progress on my History of the Wendish People.”

He smiled sadly, not looking up from the play of the water around his feet. “So you did, Sister. I only wish Sister Amabilia were here to copy your words in a finer hand than that I possess.”

“Truly,” she echoed, “I wish she were not lost to us. I miss her.”

Fortunatus sighed. He had never gained back the healthy stoutness that had made his features round and jolly; their adventures crossing the Alfar Mountains three times in the last two years had taken a lasting toll on him. “Will we ever know what became of her?” he asked wistfully.

“Only if we can trust dreams. I fear they lie as often as they tell the truth.”

As she finished her meal of cheese and bread, she called to her servingwoman, Aurea, and bid her bring her pouch from her pack mule. Aurea brought both pouch and travel desk, which unfolded easily to make a stout surface on which to set the History. Rosvita wiped her hands on a cloth and only then turned the unbound pages to her final entry, made three weeks ago on their last day at the palace of Zur, originally a villa built in the times of the Dariyan empresses and now a way station where a royal party could break its journey for a day or a week.

Some said that fully two hundred thousand Rederii barbarians were slain that day, either cut down by the sword or drowned in the marsh when they tried to make their retreat. After this, the young margrave Villam moved his army against the city mentioned above, but the inhabitants now feared to stand against him and therefore they laid down their arms and asked for safe passage. In this way, the city and all its wealth and all the household furnishings fell into the possession of King Arnulf the Younger.

When the margrave and his companions returned to Saony, King Arnulf received them with gratitude and praised their victory. It so happened that the king’s favored Eagle returned at this time from Arethousa with the news that the king had obtained what he most desired: an Arethousan princess who would stand in marriage to his son, Henry, a most radiant and worthy young man. When the glorious Sophia arrived with her splendid retinue, the royal wedding was celebrated with largess and rejoicing.

To Henry and Sophia were born these children: a daughter named Sapientia, a woman of merit, justly dear to all the people, who married Bayan, Prince of the Ungrians, and also a daughter named Theophanu, wise in all matters and of a cunning disposition, as well as a son named Ekkehard, who was invested as the abbot of St. Perpetua’s in Gent.