The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

And what of Blessing? What she might suffer at the Quman chieftain’s hands … he dared not think of her if he was to command effectively.

Although it was hot only in contrast to the appalling cold they had just suffered, Sanglant sweated under the blaze of an unexpectedly bright sun. He paused to catch his breath and wipe his brow. Ahead, the massed line of the centaurs came to a halt. He noticed for the first time that although they carried bows and wicked-looking spears, they wore no armor.

“God help us,” he breathed, half laughing, “can it be that they are all females? Are there no stallions among them? Nor even geldings?”

“Beware; my lord prince,” said Breschius. “One comes to meet us.”

“What of the Quman, Hathui?” He kept his gaze fixed on the silver-gray centaur now picking her way down the slope, stepping with precise neatness through pale winter grass.

“They seem truly to be running, my lord prince. I would guess that they did not expect to meet up with the ones we face now.”

“They are wise to be fearful,” commented Breschius, but his voice seemed steady enough for a man approaching, unarmed, an army that might prove foe as easily as friend. Sanglant glanced at the frater’s right arm, which ended in a stump, but although Breschius, too, was sweating, he did not seem afraid. Sanglant waited, more impressed than he cared to admit, as the centaur halted a body’s length from him, surveying him as closely as he examined her.

She was old. Strands of glossy black hid within her fine silver coat and the coarse braids of her human hair, which fell past her hips. She wore no clothing of any kind except a quiver across her back and a leather glove covering one hand and wrist. Once all her coat and her woman’s hair had been black, a fine contrast to the creamy color of her woman’s skin. Now faded green-and-gold paint striped her human torso, even her breasts, which sagged as did those of crones well past their childbearing years. It was hard to read age on her face, for she did not possess the exact lineaments of a human face but something like and yet unlike, kin to him and yet utterly different. The expression of her eyes seemed touched by ancient pain and hard-won wisdom. Like a virtuous biscop, she wore holiness like a mantle on her shoulders. She looked older than any creature, human or otherwise, he had ever seen.

He inclined his head respectfully. “I give you greetings, Holy One,” he said, using the Kerayit title which, Breschius had taught him, was used to address the most senior of their shamans.

She returned his scrutiny with her own appraisal. “I do not know you, although you have the look of my old enemy. Yet you are not the one I seek, the one I hoped for. Has he not returned?”

“I do not know what person you speak of.”

“Do you not? Is he not known in your country?”

Already she had lost him. “Who is your old enemy, Holy One?”

“Humankind once called them the Cursed Ones, but the language you speak now is different from the language you spoke when you were young.”

“I have always spoken Wendish, even as a child,” he began, but he faltered. “You are not speaking of me.” When who was young? He felt as though he teetered on the edge of an abyss whose depths he could not plumb. “How old are you, Holy One?”

She smiled, something of warmth and blessed approval in her expression. “You see keenly, you who are son of two bloods, for I smell both humankind and the blood of my old enemy in you. What are you called?”

“I am Sanglant, son of Henry, king of Wendar and Varre.”

“This ‘Henry’ is your mother? Is king among her people?”

“Henry is my father.”

Her surprise startled him. Although he could not be sure that he could interpret her expressions as though she were a human woman, she seemed taken aback at the word “father,” as though it were ill-mannered or even a little coarse to mention such a word. But she recovered quickly.

“You are bred out of a stallion of the human line, then. Who is your mother?”

“My mother no longer walks on Earth. She is one of the Aoi, the Lost Ones.”

“You have more the look of the Ashioi than of humankind. You are therefore a prince twice over in the manner of your people, for your mother must be a shaman of great power. I have seen her—or the one who must be her, since in all the time of their exile only one among them has negotiated the crossroads where worlds and time meet. She alone has set foot upon the earth they yearn for.”

“You know of their exile?”

Her smile now was less friendly, even bitter. “I helped bring it about, Prince Sanglant. Do you not know the story?”

“I know no story of the Aoi exile that includes mention of your people, Holy One. I would gladly hear your tale.”

“So you may, in time.”

A spike of anger kicked through him; he was not accustomed to being spoken to so dismissively. She seemed unaware of his annoyance, however, and continued talking.

“First I need to understand what has brought you here, in the company of those vermin who call themselves children of the griffin.”

He looked over his shoulder. The Quman had fled, leaving their tents and half their wagons, but none of their horses. The dust of their passage formed a cloud that obscured their flight, or perhaps that was only one of their shamans raising a veil to hide them.