The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

Abruptly, Sapientia gave in. She turned. “Go!” she called to Hanna, “You and the frater. Go, and observe all that occurs!”

Riders made way for them as they rode back through the line.

“What is that awful sound?” cried Hanna above the din of thrumming and howling.

Breschius smiled but did not reply as the outer line of foot soldiers parted to let them through into the center of the infantry square. Here, beside the painted wagon, Hanna turned her horse just as the Wendish soldiers let out a great shout of alarm and surprise, which the Ungrians answered with a howl of glee as they charged.

She saw the Quman, then, beyond the Ungrian line, advancing along the river plain with dark clouds scudding in their wake. They weren’t human after all. They didn’t have faces, and they had wings. Feathers streamed and pulsed, shuddering in the air, flickering shadow and light in the huge wings that curved forward over their heads. Beneath helmets, their flat, metal faces shone with dull menace as the westering sun broke through the cloud cover and lit the Wendish and Ungrian army with a mellow glow. The Quman warriors made no sound except for the spinning and singing of their wings as they rode.

The Ungrians charged, all disorganized in uneven lines like a pack of starving dogs gone mad at the sight of fresh meat. Their shrieks and whoops almost drowned out the thunder of hooves and the whir of wings. Even from a distance Hanna had no trouble seeing Sapientia waiting impatiently beneath her banner. The princess began to move out after the Ungrians, but Bayan stopped her by resting the length of his spear across her chest as he waited and watched his own men ride rashly and without order at the enemy.

“They’ll be picked apart!” cried Hanna, suddenly wondering what would become of the Wendish after their allies foolishly threw away their strength in this manner. Breschius smiled with the calm of a man who has long since made peace with God and no longer fears death.

rode out at last, and Hanna was grateful to leave the stone tower behind. The chill autumn air and the dense odor of grass and brittle scrub brush drove the last vestiges of that terrible stink out of her nostrils. But an image of the hideous shrunken head seemed to ride with her, burned into her mind’s eye.

They forded the river, running low here after summer’s heat and autumn drought. The cold water on her calves made her breath come in gasps. Sapientia rode just ahead of her, beside Bayan, and the princess laughed merrily as they came splashing up the shoreline, more like a noble lady riding to the hunt than to a battle. Behind, the oxen drawing the wagon forged stolidly into the water, led forward by two of the handsome male slaves. And it was very strange, and most certainly a trick of the light running over the water, because it seemed to Hanna that the river receded somewhat, that the waves made of themselves a slight depression around the wheels of the wagon so that no water lapped into the bed. Behind the wagon marched the Wendish infantry; without horses, they were soaked to the hips, joking and laughing at those among them who showed any sign of sensitivity to the cold.

Soon everyone had crossed, and their army—perhaps two hundred soldiers in all—made ready to move on. Hills rose from the valley floor about half a league north of them. They turned east to follow the river. Clouds moved in from the east as the wind picked up. The Wendish soldiers began singing a robust hymn.

A sudden shrilling call rang down the line and, with it, that tensing of line and body that presages battle. The Ungrians shifted position, flanks spreading out, Bayan moving to take up the center as he called out orders to his men in his strong baritone. About half the Ungrian riders broke off from the main group and swung away into the hills. The Wendish infantry fell back to form a square on a rise.

A strange whirring sound grew in the air, building in strength. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once: eerie, troubling, like the sensation of a spider crawling up one’s back. Hanna’s horse shifted restlessly under her; she reined it hard back to its place beside Brother Breschius where they waited behind Sapientia and Bayan, and leveled her spear. Bayan’s solders began to keen, like a sick wolf’s howl, but even that noise was better than the awful disembodied whirring. She squinted eastward, trying to make out the source. Clouds darkened the eastern horizon. In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolled away into the hills. Even above the dust kicked up by the army, she could smell rain.

Abruptly Prince Bayan turned around, saw her and Breschius, and snapped an order at them. Sapientia objected. Husband and wife exchanged perhaps four tense sentences, Sapientia all white fire and Bayan utterly focused and without any patience.

Abruptly, Sapientia gave in. She turned. “Go!” she called to Hanna, “You and the frater. Go, and observe all that occurs!”

Riders made way for them as they rode back through the line.

“What is that awful sound?” cried Hanna above the din of thrumming and howling.

Breschius smiled but did not reply as the outer line of foot soldiers parted to let them through into the center of the infantry square. Here, beside the painted wagon, Hanna turned her horse just as the Wendish soldiers let out a great shout of alarm and surprise, which the Ungrians answered with a howl of glee as they charged.

She saw the Quman, then, beyond the Ungrian line, advancing along the river plain with dark clouds scudding in their wake. They weren’t human after all. They didn’t have faces, and they had wings. Feathers streamed and pulsed, shuddering in the air, flickering shadow and light in the huge wings that curved forward over their heads. Beneath helmets, their flat, metal faces shone with dull menace as the westering sun broke through the cloud cover and lit the Wendish and Ungrian army with a mellow glow. The Quman warriors made no sound except for the spinning and singing of their wings as they rode.

The Ungrians charged, all disorganized in uneven lines like a pack of starving dogs gone mad at the sight of fresh meat. Their shrieks and whoops almost drowned out the thunder of hooves and the whir of wings. Even from a distance Hanna had no trouble seeing Sapientia waiting impatiently beneath her banner. The princess began to move out after the Ungrians, but Bayan stopped her by resting the length of his spear across her chest as he waited and watched his own men ride rashly and without order at the enemy.

“They’ll be picked apart!” cried Hanna, suddenly wondering what would become of the Wendish after their allies foolishly threw away their strength in this manner. Breschius smiled with the calm of a man who has long since made peace with God and no longer fears death.

A curtain made of beads rustled as an ancient, yellowing hand pressed a few strands aside, peering out. Hanna glanced there, surprised, but she saw only deeper shadow within. She heard a hiss, soft words in an alien language, and then a single puff of white was blown out from between two strands of amber beads. A feather of goose down drifted lazily to earth.

“Ho, there!” cried one of the infantrymen. “They come!”

The Quman charged in good order toward the attacking Ungrians, closing the gap.

The mad Ungrians suddenly wheeled around and shot so many arrows into the Quman ranks that the whistle of arrow flight hummed in tandem with the whirring wings. The eastern sky darkened with rain as the Ungrians fled back toward the Wendish line all in disorder, some lagging, some way out in front. The entire center around Bayan swayed, shifted, and began to disintegrate. Bayan cried out something unintelligible from this distance as the Wendish line, too, fell back, retreating toward the infantry square. Only Sapientia tried to pull her cohort forward, shouting to her men, trying to rally them.

Again, Bayan intervened ruthlessly by placing his spear between her and her sword, and suddenly the entire center collapsed and all of them fled back in a complete rout.

Beside Hanna, Breschius grunted.

Hanna stared in horror at the debacle. She couldn’t speak. On the plain behind the Quman army, rain pounded the ground to mud, and yet where she stood, where Bayan’s soldiers fled in disorder, the sun still shone and it was dry. The plain ran with movement like ants whose nest has been trampled. An Ungrian soldier, lagging behind, went down with an arrow in his back, and his body vanished beneath a score of hooves and whistling, winged riders.

At that moment, she knew she was going to die. The knowledge burst within her like a flower opening, a transforming beauty imbued with the fleeting perfume of mortality and the revelation of God’s eternal presence.

The strong Quman line began to dissolve as some of the young warriors couldn’t contain their impatience and broke forward. As they split away from the rest, she saw them clearly for the first time: not winged creatures at all but only men wearing wings strapped to their back in imitation of birds. Even the flat, metal faces were only part of their helmets.

And then, of course, the Ungrian flank that had ridden away into the hills thundered in to hit the Quman flank, which was now all strung out in pursuit of the retreating banners. A shrill hooting cry rang out along the retreating Ungrian line and as tautly as if they were all pulled by the same string, they wheeled around again and in almost perfect formation charged back at the Quman center.