The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Marcus.

Severus.

A middle-aged woman in presbyter’s robes, completely unknown to her. A stranger.

An arrogant young man wearing the robes of an abbot. His face looks vaguely familiar with a family resemblance to Duchess Rotrudis.

Where is Anne?

Why can’t I see Blessing?

She hears the surge and suck of a sea as waters rise and fall against rock close by.

She stepped through.

“At them again!” Bertha’s voice rang out above the clash and clamor of arms.

Liath stumbled out of the circle and into madness. In the light of the waning sun it seemed that beyond the stones on all but one side stood a forest, tightly packed and denuded of branches, ringing them in like a rank of men with a tightly linked shield wall. Scattered in no particular pattern on three sides were tents and a profusion of campfires. Torches glared. Men, most on foot, charged back and forth, shouting, and because she was staring at them in shock and amazement, she did not watch her feet. She tripped and fell forward over a dead man who had been killed by an arrow in his throat. Blood eddied into the dirt. Two more dead faces grimaced at her, one by each of her outflung hands. The first she recognized as one of Lady Bertha’s soldiers; the other wore a tabard sewn with a gold Circle of Unity on a black field: the sigil of the guardsmen who protected the skopos.

Now she understood what she saw. They had come through the crown into the middle of an armed, fortified encampment set up to protect the stone circle.

“To me, to me!” Bertha’s voice sang above the din. Again she drove her small force against a knot of footmen who had formed up but were not yet ready to receive a charge. They scattered, some falling, but some taking horse or rider down with strokes at a horse’s legs or clever thrusts to the rider’s exposed rib cage. There wasn’t enough room for Lady Bertha to swing her cavalry around and get the full weight of their horses behind them. More infantry surged up from behind to attack them. Arrows whistled out of the twilight. They were surrounded.

Ai, God. She struggled to her feet and readied her bow, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. She drew, shot, and took down a valiant sergeant who had just then gripped the stirrup of Bertha’s charger. A second man fell, mortally wounded, with her second shot.

“Push that way!” cried Bertha. “There! Where the stockade is unfinished!”

Had the Austran lady already lost half her men? Liath fell in behind Kerayit guardsmen as they pushed to make a path for Sorgatani’s wagon to the breach in the wall. Breschius ran at the back, a dagger glinting in his hand. She couldn’t see Gnat and Mosquito. She grabbed a pair of arrows off the ground and shot, and Lady Bertha got her surviving soldiers pulled in around her and threw them forward to support the retreat.

Gnat and Mosquito appeared out of the stones and sprinted for the wagon, bent low, dodging arrows and spear thrusts with astonishing agility.

“Here!” she cried as she leaped over bodies and fell in with the others. She looked around for a spare horse, but too many soldiers pressed forward against them. She hadn’t time to do more than grab arrows off the ground, to duck away from a sword blow that swept past her head. She shot a man in the gut not a body’s length from her, and he jerked backward, screaming, carrying two of his fellows with him as he flailed.

Yet as they closed on the south end of the camp, toppling tents and cutting down stray soldiers, they seemed as one to realize that in fact the stockade was finished. It ringed the camp. The sound of water grew, but the open ground did not expose the side of a steep hill but rather became the edge of a cliff that plunged far down to the sea below. The stockade finished at either end with a pile of stone and earth; beyond that, only air. They were trapped. No one could climb down that cliff.

The Kerayit guards reached the stockade first, and one hacked in vain at green logs as his fellows formed up around Sorgatani’s wagon and Lady Bertha called on her soldiers to dismount and make a shield wall. Arrows fell among them, some chipping up the dirt; a few thudded into the logs. She felt one whoosh past her cheek; another found its mark, and a man shrieked. A horse bucked and spilled its riders.

They were trapped.

She reached out and called fire. First the canvas of tents burst into flame, then, brushed by billowing, roaring canvas, a hapless soldier who had boldly stepped forward to urge his men to advance caught fire. He spun screaming as flames wrapped his body.

She had no time to regret his death. She reached into the green logs of the encircling palisade. Fire slumbered deep within. She pricked it, and again, harder, until flame exploded up from a dozen logs in the stockade right where the Kerayit soldier stood chopping at the wood. The fire blackened and consumed him in an instant; he didn’t even have a chance to scream. The other guards dragged the wagon back one turn of the wheels, but they understood what she meant to do. They braved the heat, waiting for their chance as the logs burned from inside out.

Fire was the only thing that would keep them alive. The enemy had fallen back away from the burning tents, and now with her party clumped next to the blazing wood, easily seen, the archers set arrow to string and began to shoot at will.

She set her will to the bows the archers held, one by one, and yet for each man who cast his bow aside when flame licked along the curve, the next might find his arm ablaze, his tabard streaming with fire. Their screams burned her, yet she could not flinch.

Wasn’t this war?

Didn’t men die just as horribly stuck deep in the guts by spears or their heads sliced open by swords?

She was too slow. She could not stop every archer, not quickly enough. Arrows peppered the ground. Lady Bertha’s soldiers hid behind their shields, but the horses were easy targets and their enemy happy to cause havoc among them by shooting for their bellies. The poor beasts kicked and screamed and half a dozen bolted for the enemy line. It was not the battle but the fire that panicked them. She still held her own bow, but where she aimed, she called fire. A flight of arrows burst into flame above and rained ash down over their party.

he understood what she saw. They had come through the crown into the middle of an armed, fortified encampment set up to protect the stone circle.

“To me, to me!” Bertha’s voice sang above the din. Again she drove her small force against a knot of footmen who had formed up but were not yet ready to receive a charge. They scattered, some falling, but some taking horse or rider down with strokes at a horse’s legs or clever thrusts to the rider’s exposed rib cage. There wasn’t enough room for Lady Bertha to swing her cavalry around and get the full weight of their horses behind them. More infantry surged up from behind to attack them. Arrows whistled out of the twilight. They were surrounded.

Ai, God. She struggled to her feet and readied her bow, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. She drew, shot, and took down a valiant sergeant who had just then gripped the stirrup of Bertha’s charger. A second man fell, mortally wounded, with her second shot.