The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Under Bayan’s leadership! With the aid of Ungrians, who have left us.”

“I won the battle, Sapientia, however bravely Bayan fought. Bulkezu remains my prisoner.”

“Only because you betrayed me.”

“Because you are the strongest piece on the chessboard. No other has as much weight as Bulkezu, to achieve our ends. You agreed to this yourself.”

“Maybe you tell yourself I agreed to deliver myself to the Pechanek as a hostage. If you do, you are lying. You coerced me. I had no choice.”

Drink and anger brought her emotions to the surface where, like a broad path through the forest, her thoughts were easily traced: consternation, pride, frustrated anger, shame.

“But that doesn’t mean I am helpless, Brother. I am honored here as I deserve. If I were commanding the army, we would not suffer these troubles. You should have got rid of all our horses. The steppe horses are better. You’re only slowing us down by having to kill so many. What a waste of horseflesh! You’ll lose the entire army before we reach the hunting grounds!”

“We have lost five men out of eight hundred.”

“Winter isn’t over yet!”

“Where are your Wendish attendants, Sister? I have not seen Brigida or Everelda in many days, nor any of your serving women.”

She changed color, flushed face bleaching to white. Her hands trembled as she took the shallow bowl from the slave girl, swallowed a healthy draught, lowered the bowl, looked at him, lifted the bowl again, and drained it.

The slave woman leaned forward to whisper into the ear of the crone, and the old woman lifted a hand in a gesture of command. The fiddle player set his instrument vertically on its spike and sawed a drone on its string. All the Quman in the tent listened intently as, after an interminable prelude featuring only that drone, the other musician began to sing in a high-pitched, nasal voice.

Although he had made some effort to learn the rudiments of the Quman tongue, Sanglant found it difficult to pick out individual words: eyes, spear, griffin, and the ubiquitous references to death and rivers, usually together. Now and again, to break the monotony of a song whose melody did not seem to span more than five notes, the man lifted a scrap of birch bark to his lips and imitated the calls of birds.

His thoughts wandered.

When had he come to despise his poor sister? He regarded her surreptitiously through the hazy air. She had been so sweet when she was a little girl tagging after him, passionate in her likes and dislikes. Envy had soured her.

Perhaps he had hoped that the Quman would solve the problem she represented for him. She was difficult, light-minded, easily led, and, despite her name, had no head for wisdom. Bayan might have made something of her, but Bayan was dead. King Henry was ensorcelled, and no other noble in the kingdom had the authority to make a marriage for her, except Sapientia herself.

Rash vows make weak alliances, so the saying went.

Hadn’t he rashly sworn to marry Liath?

It was almost satisfying to press such needles of recrimination against himself.

Yet down that tangled path he hesitated to walk for the thousandth time. Every helpless night of longing, thinking of her, every memory of how when they were together they seemed never to speak the same language, every glimpse of the bright spark that lay at the heart of flame veiled inside her, brought home the foolish impulsiveness of what they had done.

How had they come to be so stupid?

He could not regret it.

The Salian slave woman knelt beside him. He had not noticed her cross the rugs, but now he was painfully aware of the swell of her breasts concealed beneath her felt jacket, brushing against his arm.

“This is the story of the ancestor of the Quman people.” Her expressive voice flowed counterpoint to the monotonous tune.

“Is it a lengthy tale?”

“No. It only takes five nights to tell. Listen!”

The song rose and fell like waves on a shore, but now two slaves—a girl on the women’s side and a man on the men’s side—brought around a ceramic pipe with steam bubbling in its belly; a smoky odor drifted up from its bowels. Sapientia sucked greedily at the pipe before it was transferred down the row of mothers, the fierce-eyed girl, the powerful matron, the dour crone. The Quman warriors each took their turn on the pipe reserved for the men. When Sanglant’s turn came, he inhaled cautiously. The smoke tasted sweet on his tongue, but it bit afterward deep into the lungs like a burrowing worm swollen and heavy with dreams.

He felt as if he were rising off the carpet, but it was some other part of him that, shifting, loosened from the cord binding it to the earth.

He hunted alone in the tall grass, flayed by a winter wind that had a malicious soul which hoped to devour his flesh until only his bones remained scattered on the steppe. The wind was his enemy.

In the way of dreams, he came unexpectedly upon a shoreline where he saw himself in the cold blue waters: but he wore a face not like his own, with eyes shaped like almonds, with a mustache, with short black hair crowned by a white fox-skin hat.