The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

There was more to this hunter than could be seen and smelled on his skin. He had captured her mate and proved his dominance over him. For her to kill the hunter now would be an affront to the dance of the males, who owned as their birthright the measure of their dance, each of them competing with the others for right of place.

So.

She could abandon her mate, or she could follow the hunter and the daimone-creature, who claimed the hunter as mate just as she had many seasons ago claimed hers.

Wind rippled in the grass, singing softly in her feathers. The aetherical tides waxed and waned in every season, but the threads that bound the world were digging new channels; this she sensed. The world was in flux.

With her nest destroyed there could be no hatchlings this year. It would take an entire season to restore the nesting grounds, and she did not want to abandon her mate. Perhaps it was better to abandon the old ways for one season, to strike out into new territory, to follow the paths made by the thrumming lines of force as they wove into new patterns.

For as long as her mate remained a captive, she would follow the hunter.

Why not?

XXII

A NEW SHIP

1

“THEY know we are here,” said Stronghand to his assembled chieftains and councillors in the hall at Weorod, where Lord Ediki sat on the lord’s seat and presided over the servants and slaves who brought meat and drink around to each member of the gathering. “Yesterday, according to our allies, two Alban ships brought reinforcements to the island.”

Rain drummed on the roof. Under the eaves at each side of the hall, children and dogs huddled, watching. Some had been slaves, others the children of those who ruled here before, but Ediki had commanded that each one be given opportunity to prove themselves no matter their birth. It was the way of the Eika, their new masters, so Lord Ediki proclaimed, as well as the ancient way followed by his ancestors.

“We have no ships on this shore,” said Dogkiller. “How can we invade across the waters? It would be death to wade.”

“We must scout the waterways that empty into the sea,” said Flint. “Then our ships can sail in and attack from the north.”

“Scouts we will have and in plenty,” agreed Stronghand, surveying his company as he waited for Yeshu to finish translating into Alban. He himself spoke first in his own language and then in Wendish, but although he understood Alba well, he still stumbled over speaking it. “Manda, headwoman of the Eel tribe, has put fourteen boats and twenty-four skilled guides at our disposal. I need volunteers to search north.”

ilted her head back and through a blur of tears gazed at the beauty of the sky so shot through with stars that it seemed to hold as much light as darkness.

He was silent. He did not move except to release her wrists.

“I could have abandoned the world below to its fate. I could have left all this behind. Forever. Anne and her sleepers, Henry and his wars, everyone and all of it. Hanna and Ivar. You and the baby. I could have joined my mother’s kinfolk and cast off this flesh. But I had to know. I couldn’t leave you behind because I’ve never really known you. I don’t know if I can want you as much as you want me. I don’t even know how much that is. But I have to try. That’s why I came back.”

The stars burned in the night sky. Did her kinfolk journey there, so high above? They had not mourned her leaving; the span of a human lifetime meant little to them. They had simply looked into her heart and let her go.

She cupped his face in her hands. “Look into my heart, Sanglant.”

“Ai, God,” he murmured, like a man who has received his deathblow, but he gazed at her face, searching.

Poised there, she waited as the wind rustled in the grass and a nightjar churred. In the distance an owl hooted.

“Fire,” he whispered hoarsely, as though stricken by wonder; but then, his voice always sounded like that. “Fire is the heart of you.”

He reared up, almost dislodging her from his lap, and crushed her in an embrace so tight that for a moment she could not breathe. “I am not waiting any longer,” he added, half laughing and all out of breath, so vibrantly alive and awake and aware that his presence swallowed everything else, the heavens, the world, sound, and light.

Well. Everything except the grass tickling the sole of her left foot.

But when she kissed him, when he kissed her, that distraction, too, vanished.

4

EXCEPT for the presence of the daimone-woman, she could have made easy work of the hunter now sprawled, sleeping, on the grass, vulnerable and alone away from his tribe. Yet she had killed him once already, hadn’t she? Hadn’t that stab been enough to kill an elk or a bear?

He had recovered because of the magic woven into his bones.

There was more to this hunter than could be seen and smelled on his skin. He had captured her mate and proved his dominance over him. For her to kill the hunter now would be an affront to the dance of the males, who owned as their birthright the measure of their dance, each of them competing with the others for right of place.