“He wants you to follow him. That’s why he took your daughter.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you fear him?”
“Not anymore. Enough! I am leaving. There is nothing more you can say to me.”
“Let me go with you to avenge my niece.” He stood and took a wavering step, followed by a stronger second and third. “A hundred mask warriors, scouts, trackers. He’ll not expect you to come with a war party.”
She had no time to argue. Sharp Edge and the others were ready to go. “Agreed. But if you cannot keep up, we’ll leave you. And know this, your enemy is only Hugh of Austra. My countryfolk—Wendish and Varren—are not to be harmed.”
“A truce only. Not an alliance.”
“A truce only.” She turned to her companions. “Quickly!”
She and her retinue broke into a run. Every step hurt, jarring up through her feet. Her entire body ached and burned, but she ran. Behind, his warriors fell in at the heels of her party, footsteps rumbling along the earth. They raced up the road, and with Zuangua behind them the Ashioi army fell away and did not challenge their passage.
The rain slackened, fading to a gentler, steadier shower. The storm had outpaced them. Lightning crackled above the hilltop among the stones, a half dozen furious strikes. While they were still too far away to interfere, she saw the archway of blue light blossom above the stones, threads pulling north. They ran panting up the long slope of the hill toward the crown, feet slipping along the chalk track. Mask warriors lay stunned or dead as rain washed along their bodies, red with blood and black with ash. Here, too, he had used lightning to clear his path. The smell of their dying was awful.
Even so, they came too late. As she sprinted out ahead of her companions to reach the weaving ground, the archway collapsed into a shower of sparks that not even the hissing rain could douse.
She stood there, panting, soaked through and furious, as the rest gathered around her. The smothering cloak cast over her hearing had begun to ease.
“He has escaped us!” cried Zuangua.
Sharp Edge said, “I watched, Bright One. I marked the angles, as well as I could.”
Liath looked at her, and together—recklessly—they grinned. “I, too.” She unhooked and lifted the astrolabe. “Like Hugh, we don’t need clear skies, or night. Who is with me? I mean to leap now, or risk losing him.”
Zuangua laughed through gritted teeth. How he kept his feet with those injuries she could not imagine. He was a very stubborn man. “We’ll follow into the maw of death’s grinning skull, if need be.”
With her shuttle, Sharp Edge traced a pattern onto the sodden ground. The others stepped back, forming into disciplined ranks, as Liath began to weave.
2
IVAR had fallen asleep leaning against a fallen log when a boot prodded him awake. A second kick jolted him. The damp had soaked through to his rump. As he stood, cloth stuck to his skin, slowly peeling. Groaning, he brushed dirt off his calves and shook chaff off his fingers.
“Get on!” said Jonas, who possessed the boot. “We’re moving. You walk ahead of me.”
He trudged after the others, although the silent Quman guardsman—that horror!—brought up the rear, an implacable barrier. Even the Eagle seemed more fit than Ivar; the old man strode at the front, wary yet confident, as they pushed along a hunter’s trail that unwound parallel to a merry brook tumbling over rocks and decaying branches drenched in moss. They kept to the brushy verge, since they walked through a predominantly beech forest and therefore had little enough cover should any soul spot them from afar. Birds chittered. A roly-poly brown animal scuttled away through leaves, and a moment later a splash sounded from the water.
Ai, God, he was so weary, but he kept one foot moving and then the next. The healer walked right in front of him. She carried a number of charms hung here and there, at her neck, her wrists, and sewn into the ankle of the weird leggings she wore which seemed woven and fitted all from a single piece of cloth. Some were beads and some polished wood, but others had a ghastly off-white color like beads carved from bone, and these cackled softly in time to her footsteps. He shuddered. Ahead of her went the cleric, so thin it was amazing he had the strength to walk, and before him Lord Berthold crowded up behind the Eagle. The green wood spread on all sides, a lacework of trees, shadows, and delicate light woven among the sedges hugging the ground.
“Are we near to Kassel yet?” asked Berthold.
“By nightfall we’ll walk in through the gates, if they’re open to us,” said the Eagle.
“Think you we outpaced the Eika army?”
“I don’t know. The road swings in a broad curve south around the deep forest and across a ford. Our route was shorter. We’ve kept up a strong pace. Perhaps. If Lady Fortune, and God, smile upon us.”
“I have sores on my feet,” said Jonas. Ivar glanced back at him, and in truth he was limping—favoring first one foot and then the other, like a man dancing on coals. “We should have kept the horses.”
“Hush!” said Wolfhere.
They were all nervous and they were all tired, so when the crack exploded out in the far wood, they dropped like stones. It could have been a branch snapping off a tree, or a staff striking wood. A man’s voice carried over an unknown distance. A horse blew, closer by.
“Into the bushes,” said Wolfhere.