Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

II

ARROWS IN THE DARK

1

IN the end they camped along the damp road. The next day when they rode into the ruins of Augensburg, Lady Bertha insisted they set up camp where they had at least some shelter against the unrelenting mizzle that Hanna could not quite bring herself to call rain.

In some ways, theirs was an impressive procession, with fifteen horses, three wagons, one noblewoman, eleven ragged clerics, fourteen stolid soldiers, one sequestered Kerayit shaman and her slave, the goats, the clucking chickens, and the steadfast dogs. Many had died after the battle with Holy Mother Anne’s forces: all of the Kerayit guardsmen, Sorgatani’s two slaves, and sixteen of Bertha’s war band. But since that day in Arethousa when Hanna had joined them, they had, miraculously, lost no one else and had sustained only one permanent injury, to a soldier whose right foot had been crushed when the smaller wagon had slipped sideways down an incline at the side of a mountain path while he walked alongside.

Two men scouted for the water supply while Sergeant Aronvald set up a perimeter around the remains of the stone chapel attached to the palace. The wagon wheels were braced against rocks and the horses taken out to graze, water, and roll. Soldiers tossed tiles out of the ruins of the chapel to make room for sleeping while some of the clerics rigged up canvas to shelter the apse where the altar had once stood. Brother Breschius emerged from the Kerayit cart. Carrying two covered bronze buckets, one riding light and the other heavier, he walked toward the rear of the palace compound where kitchens once stood.

Lady Bertha paused beside her. “Will you come with me, Eagle? Sister Rosvita and I mean to look through the ruins of the town to see if there’s anything we can scavenge.” A trio of soldiers loitered behind her, chafing their hands to warm them.

“I’ll walk through the palace ruins,” said Hanna. “If I may.”

“A good idea. No telling where the rats are hiding. Come!” The last was addressed to her retainers. They left.

After rubbing down her horse and turning it out with the others, Hanna walked through the ruins of the palace. Fallen pillars striped the ground. She traced corridors and rooms reduced to outlines on the ground. A strange feeling crawled along her skin, like fire that warmed but did not burn. She had walked here with Bulkezu and his brother Cherbu. In this place Cherbu had discovered the name of the woman whose sorcery had consumed the vast building.

“Liathano,” she said softly. She shut her eyes and listened, but all she heard was the hiss of a light rain on the ruins and the grass and the rattle of wind in the distant trees. This was a dead place.

“What happened to the town?” asked Brother Fortunatus, coming up beside her.

She coughed and jumped.

“I beg your pardon!” he said, chuckling a little as he touched fingers to her elbow. “I did not mean to startle you.” She offered him a false grin, but he narrowed his eyes. “What ails you, Hanna? Ghosts?”

From this vantage point they could see most of the town below, a skeletal presence rising in the midst of deserted fields and the outraged wreck of a substantial orchard. A number of trees had fallen, most likely torn down by the storm. Dusk-drawn mist drifted along the broken palisade.

“Not ghosts, but memories. Ghosts enough, I suppose, if memories haunt us.” She swallowed and found even that trifling movement caught and choked her.

“Memories are the worst ghosts of all.” His hand curled around her elbow, and the gesture gave her courage.

“Years ago. The Quman army rode through this place when I was their captive. There are no good memories for me here.”

“I’m sorry. Did they burn the town?”

Meadow grass and fescue had swept over the ruins, grown everywhere they could take root. Hawthorn and twining canes of raspberry had found a foothold as well. Nettles thrust up where the last stains of ash mottled the earth. Soon The Fat One would overtake what the princes had built and cover it in flowers, although only a few dusky violets bloomed now.

“It’s late in the season for violets,” she said, pointing to a spray of delicate petals.

He cocked his head, considered her, then followed where she led. “It’s the cloud cover. I fear we’ll face a late growing season. And a short one.”

“I forgot about the town,” she added. “I don’t know what happened to the town. After the palace burned, it was still standing. The flames never touched the town. We took shelter there that night, all of us in the king’s progress. King Henry stayed in the hall of a prosperous merchant, slept in the man’s own bed. How can that all be gone? Where did it go? Did Bulkezu burn it down? I don’t remember.”

An odd spark of color caught her eye and she knelt and swept aside chaff and dirt and ash and the detritus of years of abandonment to uncover a brass belt buckle shaped in the form of a lion.

“Look here! I wonder if it belonged to one of the Lions who died in the fire.” She looked up. Fortunatus was smiling sadly down at her. He had gotten leaner, cutting his face into sharper planes, but somehow more kind. If Bertha was the goad that drove them and Rosvita the sustenance that gave them heart to keep going, then Fortunatus was the arm that steadied Rosvita whenever she faltered.

“Liath burned down the palace,” she said, although he asked nothing. “Hugh attacked her. He meant to rape her. She was so scared. She called fire. She never meant to. Her fear burned down the entire palace. She killed a dozen or more people.”

“I know, Hanna,” he said gently. “I was here when it happened.”

“Ai, God, of course. Of course. I forgot. I came late. We came over the hill, the Lions and I. We saw the smoke. That was: Ingo, Folquin, Leo, and young Stephen, who wasn’t a Lion yet but he wanted to become one. …” Once started, she could not stop herself, not even when the story wound into that terrible captivity among the Quman. She babbled on for a time while Fortunatus waited and nodded and listened and murmured the occasional meaningless word to show that it mattered to him that these memories overwhelmed her.

In time as the drizzle melted away to become a gauze of mist ghosting up from low-lying ground, the rain of words abated.

“I’m sorry,” she said.