Ivar pressed his horse forward through the throng and fetched up at Baldwin's side. "Baldwin," he said in a low voice, "Prince Ekkehard is right. It's death to us to remain behind."

"I'd rather be dead than return to her bed," muttered Baldwin, pouting a little. But even when he pouted, he did it beautifully.

"Anything could happen," said Ivar. "We're armed, and we're all at war. We haven't met up with Margrave Judith yet, it's true, and things might go ill if she discovers us. But after what I've just seen, I'm not leaving this army!"

For the first time, Ekkehard nodded at him in approval. Baldwin, still pouting, sighed heavily and shrugged, to show that he gave in. "But we'll regret it," he said ominously. "You'll see."

Hanna hung back in the rearguard as the army marched out. She had never expected to see Ivar again, and yet here he was, with Prince Ekkehard instead of Margrave Judith.

This whole day seemed tainted. She shivered, although it wasn't really cold despite the intermittent drizzle. The baggage train lurched down the road that arrowed east into woodland, and just behind the baggage wagons walked those last stubborn dozen souls, the camp followers, and their two laden carts, which they took turns pulling. Half of the first cohort marched in good order at the rear, and for once they did not let the camp followers straggle behind. She saw Alain in that final rank, but he didn't notice her. He was watching the woods, and she wondered if he had struck a blow in the fight or if he, like most of the Lions, had simply witnessed that brief skirmish. He was a lord, wasn't he? Had been a lord, at least, and she had heard much of his victory at Gent when, with a small force, he'd held a lightly fortified hill against a swarm of Eika. He knew how to fight already. No wonder King Henry had offered him service in the Lions, although in truth she was surprised that the king hadn't offered to fit him out more nobly, perhaps even to offer him service in the Dragons. But Henry's mind was closed to her. She couldn't understand why he did what he did. Meanwhile, they still had uncounted days to march before they met up with Sapientia. Did more Quman roam these woodlands, waiting to strike at any passing retinue? Her back prickled, and she swung her horse into step with the rear guard so that she would not be the last person in line.

As they came to a bend in the road that cut off their view of the village, she glanced back, and perhaps it was only the darkening clouds or perhaps it was a shadow over her eyes, sowing fear and doubt and premonition.

Carts and wagons emerged from the palisade, laden with hastily packed clothing and chests and barrels, overflowing with crates of chickens and baskets of turnips. The villagers had panicked. As the Lions marched east on the trail of Margrave Judith and the host of Princess Sapientia, Hanna stared as the villagers began their flight westward toward the fortress of Machteburg, all strung out with their crying, clinging children and such weapons as villagers had: pitchforks, spears, shovels. They only paused to spit on the corpses of the dead Quman.

She rode toward them, shouting: "Stay in your village. You'll be attacked on your way west. Don't go."

But they wouldn't listen.

She had already lost sight of the rearguard in the forest. She had her own duty. She'd done what she could here.

She turned her horse and rode east down the now-empty road. The drizzle only made it worse because every drip, every snap of a water-logged branch, made her start round, ready for those dozen Quman who had escaped to come whistling down on her and cut her to pieces. Cut her head off and blacken it and burn it until it became one of those horrible little shriveled heads. She'd noticed that the raiders they'd met didn't carry heads at their belts. Didn't that mean they were young men who hadn't made their first kill yet? Wouldn't that make them more dangerous, because they were desperate to prove themselves?

She heard a shout, and abruptly relaxed as she came round a corner to see a dozen Lions waiting on the road, her old comrades Ingo, Folquin, Stephen, and Leo among them.

Ingo had a good grip on his spear and shield, so he used a lift of his chin to indicate the road behind her. "Alain noticed you'd fallen behind. Did you see aught?"

"Only those poor fool villagers. They're running west to Machteburg."

"Ai, God," said Ingo. "No doubt they'll run right into those raiders. Poor souls. But we can't wait for them. Come, lads." They turned to follow the army.

As Hanna made her way up through their ranks, knowing that she ought to ride in the vanguard, she overheard Alain speaking to Folquin.

"Poor souls," he said softly. "I pray that God protect them until this war is over and peace returns."

They camped that night within sight of the Salavii village. A rough palisade protected the village, which boasted more houses than that of the Wendish settlement, but while the Wendish built longhouses, the Salavii favored smaller, rounder homes with curved roofs whose low eaves made storage shelters around each house. They looked poorer, hadn't as much livestock but seemed overflowing with little black-haired, pale-complected children who stared at the soldiers and had to be dragged inside the log palisade by their more cautious older siblings.

The deacon came to greet them. She had bare feet, was as-toundingly filthy, had lost her two front teeth, and needed a cane despite her youth, but was otherwise cheerful. "What do you recommend, Eagle?" she asked after she had made an awkward courtesy to Prince Ekkehard and Lord Dietrich. She had come from the west and had no discernible accent. Two Salavii men trailed behind her, one young and one quite old.

"Your Wendish neighbors have fled," said Hanna. "I would recommend you take these folk to the other village, which is better fortified."

"They won't want to go," she explained. "They don't trust the Wendish settlers."

"If they trust you, then you must persuade them, Deacon. We fought a Quman raiding party hours ago. There will be others. Brace for it here if you will, or find stronger shelter if there are other fortified settlements nearby. War may yet be averted, but it is better to be ready for anything."

"Wise words, Eagle. I will do what I can."

The rain slackened finally. She sought out Prince Ekkehard's tent, looking for Ivar, and found him at prayer with the others. The frailest of their number led them, a thin-faced and very young man with a persuasively sweet voice. Every word seemed fraught with a deeper meaning, one she couldn't understand, but she understood that it made her terribly uncomfortable.

"We pray you, Lady, watch over us as you watched over Your Son—"

The words thrilled through her with a kind of horror. But she waited stubbornly until they finished, and Ivar, seeing her, rose and came out to speak with her.

She was so disturbed that it came in a flood. "You're still involved in that heresy. And you've corrupted Prince Ekkehard. Why aren't you with Margrave Judith? Or in a monastery? Don't you understand what a dangerous path you're treading?"

"It isn't a heresy, Hanna." He had changed. He rested a hand lightly on her arm and spoke with the same persuasive fervor as had his frail friend, although his voice hadn't the same music in it. "It's truth. You didn't see the miracle of the phoenix. If you had, you'd not wonder why Prince Ekkehard prays with us now when he only tolerated us before."

"What kind of miracle?" she asked, although she did not like to do so: this new Ivar made her nervous. Once, like a climbing rose, he had grown luxuriantly and with spontaneity. Now, he seemed like a vine trained to a fretwork that some other person had constructed.

"A miracle of healing—" Then he caught sight of the ring, and his expression changed again. "But what's this? Has some great lord seduced you with the wealth of worldly goods?"

"The king gave me this as a reward for my service!" she retorted, furious.

"How dare you accuse me—

"It's what Liath did!" he cried. Then, perhaps hearing that name, Margrave Judith's pretty husband called to him, and Ivar hesitated only a moment before walking away with a curt farewell. Had they grown so far apart? Was their old closeness so quickly ripped into nothing? She walked away, agitated and disturbed, nor did the warm night promise anything better. No matter where she lay down her blanket, dampness seeped through as soon as she settled her weight onto it. She didn't sleep well, and when she lay awake, she twisted the emerald ring round and round on her finger.

At dawn, as they made ready to leave, the deacon came to them again with her two Salavii companions.

"There's been word," she said, translating as the old man spoke in a harsh, impenetrable language. "An army has been sighted east of here carrying the Wendish banner. These people will retreat to an old hill fort north of here. There they'll hope to weather the storm. But he'll lend you the boy to guide you to the other army, if you'll swear by God and to my satisfaction that you'll not harm the lad and that you'll release him as soon as you've met the scouts of the other army. As I said," she added when the old man was done talking, "they don't trust the Wendish."

The deal was done, and certain objects changed hands: the young man came to stand nervously beside Hanna's horse, and Captain Thiadbold saw fit to reward the old Salavii man for these services with a good wool tunic, linen leggings, and a pair of boots—they had belonged to the Lion who died of dysentery, and no one wanted to wear them because of the agony in which he'd died.

The Salavii lad was skittish. He would not accept food or drink from them, nor did he speak a single word for the rest of the day as he led them first east, then south down a narrower track, and then northeast along a broad but shallow stream running through woodland and meadows. In late afternoon they were challenged by half a dozen mounted scouts, and by the time Hanna had established that they had, indeed, met up with Princess Sapientia's army, the lad was gone, vanished into the ash and aspen that lined the stream, which she now saw was only a tributary of a larger river.

At the confluence of stream and river, where the river itself curled around a small hill, Bayan had set up camp with his usual keen eye and cunning. To the north lay denser forest, mostly oak and pine, and to the west and south scattered woodland and grass. To the east, hills rose in a steep escarpment, and the rise which Bayan had chosen seemed like the last straggler, or first scout, of that army of hills. Some ancient people had built a structure on this hill, worn now into low earthen ramparts that crowned the height. It reminded her of a fort gone to ruin, the kind of place where people and livestock could defend themselves against an enemy. There might have been some tumbled stones there as well, but from this distance, and angle, it was hard to make out.

Bayan—for she'd no doubt that Bayan had overseen the placement of the encampment—had pitched the royal pavilion on the hill itself where one rampart, like a curling finger, gave it shelter. The wagon in which his mother traveled rested about ten strides away, hard up against a curve in the rampart. Was the Kerayit princess still with the old woman? Or were Hanna's dreams true dreams?

Now she would find out.

The rest of the encampment straggled down from that central point in rings, each ring of tents protected by fresh ditches, none particularly deep but enough to break up a cavalry charge. Riding at the van, she could see the doubled sentries as well as restless scouts roaming in pairs and half dozens on horseback. Woodland covered the western vista; to the east, woods followed the river's valley where it cut a wide pass into the hills. The camp was ready for war.

On high alert, men napped in their armor with their spears lying as close beside them as might lovers. Many of the horses remained saddled, and the rest were being groomed or watered. To the northwest, riders oversaw the foraging of perhaps forty or fifty horses in the open woodland.

Half the camp came out to welcome them. Hanna wasn't sure she'd ever seen so many soldiers assembled in one place before, except at the battle of the Elmark Valley, near the town of Kas-sel, when Henry had defeated Sabella.

Princess Sapientia's banner stirred in the breeze. There were other banners as well at tents and pavilions only somewhat less grand than that of the princess, but she only recognized one of them: the leaping panther of Margrave Judith.

As they came into camp, the army split into factions according to a complicated and confusing maneuver which she couldn't follow, but in the end she approached the royal pavilion in the company of Prince Ekkehard, Lord Dietrich, who led the cavalry sent by King Henry, and Captain Thiadbold, representing the Lions.

The princess sat at her ease beneath the awning of her pavilion, eating a plum as she watched her husband roll dice with a young Wendish nobleman and a flamboyantly dressed Ungrian who boasted mustachios so long that he had tied them back behind his neck to keep them out of the way of his game.

Brother Breschius stood quietly in attendance, and it was tie who delicately interrupted the game, although by this time Sapientia had risen, seeing Ekkehard or, perhaps, Hanna. Maybe it wouldn't be such a joyous reunion.

Bayan hadn't forgotten her. He leaped up enthusiastically. "The snow woman to us returns!"

"You have come from my father," said Sapientia, more coolly, glancing at her husband with the sudden pinched mouth common to those who distrust their intimates. "And who is this? Ekkehard?"

"Sister! Aren't you glad to see me?" He dismounted and came forward, not waiting for permission. She embraced him in a sisterly fashion, kissing him on either cheek. He was taller than Sapientia, but she had gotten a little stouter in the past months, broader in the shoulders, and set against his youthful slimness she looked quite able to out arm wrestle him, should they set to it.

"God help us, little Cousin," said the young nobleman who had been playing at dice with Bayan, "I thought for sure you'd be eaten alive by the Quman."

"No thanks to you, Wichman!" retorted Ekkehard, and for a moment they looked ready to come to blows, but Bayan stepped neatly between them.

"God have blessed us," he exclaimed. "New troops to us come. With this number, we can meet the Quman."

Tallies were quickly made, but Sapientia's humor did not improve. "Two hundreds of Lions? Thirty heavy cavalry and no more than two score inexperienced light? And Ekkehard with twelve untried boys and a few servants?

Is this all my father could spare. Eagle? Didn't you tell him how urgent our situation is here?"

"I relayed your message faithfully, Your Highness," said Hanna.

"Come now, wife," said Bayan, interceding. "The lioness must not upon the Eagle pounce who is the messenger only." He seemed amused by his own wordplay and laughed heartily. "Also the margrave's forces we have, and so this is more than what before we had, is it not?"

"So it is," agreed Sapientia grudgingly as he caressed her shoulder. "But where is my father? I thought he would understand how grave our situation is and ride here himself. Where is he, Eagle?"

"Riding south to Aosta, Your Highness."

"Aosta! Always Aosta!" She flung the plum, which narrowly missed striking one of her attendants and instead rolled off into the dirt. "Why is he wasting his substance in Aosta when the real threat is here? He hasn't—" She broke off. But a moment of stillness exhausted her resources. "There hasn't been word of Sanglant, has there?"

Hesitation is always fatal.

"I knew it!" cried Sapientia in cold triumph. "Tell me what you've heard—!"

"I know nothing official, Your Highness. But it has come to the king's attention—" She had no chance to finish. Her cautious recital was interrupted by the arrival of Margrave Judith with a retinue of servants and companions at her back. The margrave was, manifestly, in a cold anger.

"Is it true that Prince Ekkehard has arrived among us? By God, so it is.

Where is he?"

"Ekkehard is here," said Sapientia, although it was obvious to everyone else that Judith knew exactly where Ekkehard was.

To give him credit, he did not shrink away from her. "He wants a divorce,"

he said as calmly as any lad of fifteen or so years could to a furious, formidable, and armed woman old enough to be his grandmother.

Someone in her crowd of followers tittered and was hushed.

"A divorce is within my right to obtain, not his. He has no grounds for divorce, nor has his family power enough to abrogate our agreement. Nor can the marriage be annulled since I recall quite vividly that it was consummated. So the marriage remains binding. Where is he?"

Ekkehard was not a king's son for nothing. "I swore that I would protect him. If I give him up to you, then I cannot count myself an honorable man."

"You are not even a man, Prince Ekkehard. You are only a very foolish boy."

"You can't talk to me like that!"

"Of course I can. I am sure your father feels affection for you, but you are only the third of his three healthy, and adult, children. Princess Sapientia is all but crowned as his heir. You are not necessary to your father's rule. I am. And I want my husband back."

The one called Wichman broke into snorting laughter. "Ai, Lord! Now you're reaping what you've sowed, little Cousin. Which one of those delightful boys is the missing bridegroom? Nay, it all comes clear now, it must be the angel. Not one of the others would have been missed, ugly little rats. Although I fear that Baldwin can scarcely be called an angel now since who knows how many have shared his favors."

Margrave Judith was generous with her anger. "I recall, Lord Wichman, that your reckless behavior caused problems at Gent. Do not forget that your mother and I are old friends. Pray do not forget either that while a king's third son may be of minor utility to him, a duchess' superfluous sons are even less valuable than that."

"Come now, Cousins," said Bayan. He set a deceptively light hand on Wichman's shoulder, more like that of a doting uncle, but steered him nevertheless away from Margrave Judith. "Arguing among ourselves we must not." He swore in his own language and said something hurriedly to Brother Breschius.

"Prince Bayan reminds us that this is not the time to argue," said Breschius with the amiable smile of the accomplished courtier. "We have a war to fight, and none of us knows when it may come to a fight—"

Perhaps God had a sense of humor, except, of course, that war was only amusing in the odd detail, never in the naked face of battle.

"Make way!" guards shouted, and scouts rode up in that instant.

"Prince Bayan! Your Highness!" Two men flung themselves to their knees before their commander. "News of Prince Bulkezu! His outriders have been sighted not an hour's ride east of here, coming down along the river valley."

"Ale for these men," said Bayan.

The news spread from the royal pavilion as though carried by a plague of flies, lighting everywhere. Hanna could almost see it wash through the camp as men bolted up from their naps or huddled in groups or hastily threw saddles over their mounts. Bayan remained calm.

"Where do we fight them?" asked Judith. "Surely we won't retreat again!"

cried Sapientia. Bayan took his time. He asked many and more detailed questions while the army made ready below. He interviewed the two scouts thoroughly, and when a second pair came galloping up, he had ale brought for them as well. They had seen the van of the Quman army, a terrible, whistling many-headed beast swarming over the ground along the northern bank of the river. One of their number had fallen to Quman arrows, and they had themselves been slightly wounded and only barely escaped capture. "We must hold our ground here," he said at last, speaking in Ungrian and letting Breschius translate.

He could not afford to be misunderstood. "This hill fort gives us strength. But, in addition, if their numbers are overwhelming, we can hold the ground to the northwest and retreat that way, across the river. They will hesitate because they are superstitious about crossing water. Also, this summit will give my mother the sight necessary to aid us."

Everyone glanced nervously toward the small wagon. Two slaves waited, cross-legged, beside the steps, one a pale handsome man with an iron bracelet closed tightly on his left arm and the other a very tall, lean man whose skin had the blue-black color of ink. Not even Liath had skin so dark. Did the Kerayit princess wait inside? Hanna caught Brother Breschius' eye then, and he smiled encouragingly at her, but at this moment he could say nothing.

Bayan made a sharp gesture and the guards leaped to attention as one among their number blew into a ram's horn.

The call to arms blazed, and all activity in the camp came to a halt as everyone paused to look up at the hill, toward the royal pavilion. Bayan took Sapientia's hand and they stepped forward so that they could be seen by most of the army. A great shout rose up, and then every man and woman there made ready for battle.

The call to arms came unexpectedly, because it was late afternoon, only a few hours until dark. In al the great poems battle was joined at dawn, with the first glint of the rising sun splintering off the spears or swords of the enemy as they closed.

But this wasn't a poem.

Ekkehard's boys huddled together at the base of the hill, lead-erless, confused, unsure what to do, while Prince Ekkehard himself still remained at the royal pavilion.

"I say we bolt north, while everyone is confused," Baldwin was muttering.

"No one will notice we're gone. Then we can cut back west to that village."

Ivar checked his saddle girth for the third time. "God Above, Baldwin! It would be dishonorable to desert Prince Ekkehard now. They'll call us cowards."

"What do I care what they call us?" demanded Baldwin. His spear lay on the ground, rolling as he caught a foot on it and almost tripped. "I just want to get out of here before she finds me!"

"How will we escape alone? We'll more likely just get ourselves killed, and if we're dead, we can't preach the True Word."

"Why should God honor us with Her Truth if we act like base cowards?"

said Sigfrid. He looked so frail and ridiculous with a spear clutched in both hands.

He wasn't strong enough to wear a mail coat, so he rode unarmored.

"Just so!" said Ivar. "We have to stay, Baldwin. At least until the battle is over. Then I'll do whatever you say."

Baldwin's expression worked its way through about ten emotions, each of them equally pleasant to look upon. Ivar felt a sudden, stabbing moment of pity for him, doomed by his beautiful face to be nothing more than a mirror in which other people would see their own desires and dreams.

"Ivar! Sigfrid! Baldwin! Look who I found! It's a miracle!"

Ermanrich stumbled out of the confusion of soldiers forming into units or running off on unknowable errands, of a troop of cavalry riding out past them and wagons pulling back to the river's edge where, in pairs, they were being hauled over to the far shore. Weaving like a drunken man, he seemed oblivious to the army making ready for battle. He was clutching the wrist of a very filthy young woman who, like him, was weeping what were apparently tears of joy.

"It's Hathumod!" Ermanrich cried, and it was a good thing he identified her, for otherwise Ivar would never have recognized Ermanrich's robust cousin in this thin, ragged woman. She looked more like a beggar, even had a red sore under one nostril and untrimmed, dirty fingernails.

"Lady Hathumod!" Sigfrid looked astonished. "You were sent away from Quedlinhame with Lady Tallia. Is she here as well, the holy one who revealed the truth to us all?"

"Oh, God," cried Baldwin, grabbing Ivar's arm so hard that Ivar yelped.

"It's her. It's her."

Suddenly, armed and glorious, Margrave Judith descended the hill at the head of her cavalry, a massive force boasting more than one hundred and fifty heavily armored riding men. To her left, her captain carried the margrave's helm tucked under one arm, and her banner bearer rode at her right hand, banner haft braced on his boot and the banner unfurling as they rode to the plain where battle would be joined.

Baldwin shrank behind Ivar, but it was already too late. Perhaps she had discovered their position by asking where Ekkehard's party rested. Perhaps she could simply smell him, the panther who has fed once upon the flesh of a delicate yearling buck and means to finish him off.

"Ai, Lady!" cried Ermanrich. "Milo's still holding the prince's banner up! You idiot! We were supposed to be hiding."

But it was already too late. Maybe they had been foolish to think they could escape her.

She lifted a hand, and her entire host clattered to a halt behind her as she turned her panther's gaze on her prey. Baldwin fell to his knees with hands clasped at his chest and gaze lifted to the heavens as though he entreated God to bring down such a storm of wrath as would protect him from her notice.

The great ram's horn blared again, sharp and urgent.

"The Quman! To arms! To arms!"

Cries and shouts burst like thunder all through camp and, distantly, Ivar heard a faint, fine whistling noise that sent shudders through his body. He hadn't imagined the sound of their wings could carry so far.

"You will be punished for your disobedience, Baldwin," said Margrave Judith, her mouth set in a satisfied line. "Do not think you will escape me." But she took her helmet out of her captain's hands and settled it on her head. With that, her banner raised high to stream behind, she and her cavalry moved forward toward the battleground.

Ekkehard's boys were mounting, making ready to ride out.

Ermanrich grabbed Sigfrid, whose frail figure and slight body made him seem like a boy even among such a company of very young men. "Sigfrid." He found Hathumod's hand and tightened her grip around Sigfrid's frail wrist. "Go with my cousin. She knows where the baggage train is. You have to stay there."

Then he surveyed the others belligerently. "He's just not fit for combat. You all know it's true! He wasn't made for this kind of war. Go on, Sigfrid!" He gave both Sigfrid and the sniveling Hathu-mod a shove. "Go on!" They hurried off. He wiped away tears as he swung up onto his own horse, grunted at the strain of hitting the saddle hard and, belatedly, grabbed the spear and shield he'd forgotten on the ground, which a groom handed up to him. "Go with God, young lords," said the groom, who like many of the other servants was falling back to the baggage train.

To their relief, Prince Ekkehard rode up to the company, mounted on a bay gelding. He looked bright and lively, wearing chain mail and a polished conical helm with a bronze nasal. He had unsheathed his sword and waved it enthusiastically. "We are to take up a position on the right flank, along the north bank of the river."

Ivar stood in his stirrups, trying to get a view of the line. The Wendish cavalry stretched across the plain in front of the hill. The Lions formed a line midway up the hill; they were flanked by other infantry. According to Ekkehard, Bayan's and Sapientia's heavy horse waited in reserve hidden between the hill and the river, while more lightly-armed horsemen guarded the northern flank of the hill, keeping the ford clear. Bay an himself stood with Sapientia at the top of the hill, visible to most of the army. As Ivar settled back into his saddle, both Bayan's and Sapientia's banners were lifted high, once, twice, and the third time held there, upraised.

Ivar felt a cool breeze pass through his hair, and it grew in strength until he had to shelter his eyes with a hand in order to keep looking up at the hill. It was a northwest wind, blowing hard toward the southeast, where the Quman approached. On the wings of that wind, the banner of Prince Bayan leaped as if it had suddenly sprung to life, and crisply snapped, so loud that Ivar thought he could hear it whip-sharp even from this distance. Through the gray clouds, a single wide ray of light shone down upon that banner and its simple device, a two-headed eagle, and upon the prince, standing in full battle gear while a groom held the reins of his horse.

All up and down the line men murmured as the column of light shone, trembled, and faded as a cloud covered the sun. Surely they had just seen a divine omen. God marched with them. Ekkehard chivvied his companions up through the loosely-spaced line of light cavalry so that they could reach the front. As Ivar came to the first rank of men armed in light mail hauberks, spears, and shields, he heard Baldwin gasp beside him. The Quman line ran like a sinewy fence over the nearest hill and down into the river valley. The contours of the land were accentuated by the long line of horsemen, which covered at least three of the visible hills.

There was only one banner in the entire Quman host, and it sagged dark and still on the center hill, a black round of cloth marked by three white slashes.

The Quman waited a full two bow shots from the Wendish host. They made no move. The entire host simply sat there on their horses, their wings still. How many birds had died to make so many wings?

As Ivar scanned their line, he began to see a pattern to it. Their heavy cavalry massed in the center and left, with light troops on their right. The lighter troops had lances fixed upright along their high-backed saddles, and they held their bows at ready. The heavy troops held lance and shield. All of the riders had wings and several, spread randomly among the host, had wings that glinted as brightly as if the sun were upon them, yet no sunlight fell in the east. The Quman army was shrouded by low-hanging, dark clouds.

"There!" said Baldwin, pointing. Beside the sagging banner waited one rider without wings. Because of this, he didn't have the spreading breadth of the other riders, but even at this distance his presence and his posture left no doubt in Ivar's mind that this wingless rider was the fearsome Prince Bulkezu.

"What happened to his wings?" muttered Milo. His spear, with Ekkehard's battle banner affixed just below the lugs, dipped as he shifted in the saddle. No one answered.

Both armies waited, soldiers staring across the gap in a disconcerting silence. Their nervous mounts snorted, flicking ears, stamping hooves. Horn blasts rang out at intervals, two sharp blasts that reminded the Wendish forces to hold.

Yet after every blast a flood of obscenities flowed from Lord Wichman's mouth. He waited impatiently with his band just to the left of Ekkehard's position.

"He thinks he knows so much," said Ekkehard. "But Prince Bayan knows better. If he sends this line to the attack, then we'd be wrapped around by the Quman flanks and they could cut us off from the ford, and from our stoutly defended hill."

"Will we sit out here until sunset?" Ivar demanded. The hour was late, and with the heavy cloud cover dusk would come sooner than usual. "I can't believe the Quman would attack a defended hill at night."

"Then we can sneak across the river and fight another day," muttered Baldwin.

"Nay," said Ekkehard boldly. "God have given us a sign. This day will not end without a battle, and God will show Their Hand by choosing a victor."

"Look there!" cried Ermanrich, who rode to the right of Milo. In unison, three Quman riders rode forward from their line, one from each flank and one from the center. Each rider carried three spears. When they had crossed a third of the distance between the armies, each man planted a spear in the ground.

Red pennants hung limply from these planted spears.

Halfway between the armies, the riders each thrust a second spear into the ground. Still they cantered forward. Soldiers shifted restlessly in the Wendish line, but at that moment, as if Prince Bayan sensed their disquiet, the horns rang out again, the two sharp blasts ordering the hold.

But not everyone was listening. Lord Wichman broke free of the line and galloped toward the nearest rider, who still bore his third spear. The Quman man, in answer, lowered his lance to the charge while his two distant companions brought up their horses a sling's throw away from the Wendish line and planted their third lances hard into the ground, like an insult.

Wichman and his Quman opponent met at a charge. A shout rose up from the Wendish host just as wild ululations rang from the Quman. The Quman's spear glanced from Wichman's shield, while his own spearpoint, wavering, missed the rider's head. But the haft of Wichman's spear, striking the rider's faceplate, staggered the Quman. He flipped off the right side of his horse, with his right leg still caught in the stirrup and his wings dragging and disintegrating in the dirt, the wood frame splintering and feathers flying everywhere.

The Quman pony continued to run as Wichman wheeled about and gave chase. The Quman warrior lost both helm and spear as he was dragged through the grass toward the Wendish line, his arms flailing as he struggled to get hold of his saddle. Wichman shrieked in frustration as the Wendish line, where Margrave Judith's banner flew, parted to admit the spooked pony. A cry of triumph erupted as the line quickly closed again. Moments later, the head of the hapless rider decorated a lance. Wichman's oath could be heard all along the line, and at once a roar of laughter erupted from the Wendish line as every man there relaxed, sure now that a great victory was at hand.

Wichman turned his horse to face the Quman host, as if contemplating pursuit of the other two riders, who were returning to their own side, but at that moment, beside the Quman commander, pennants rose and fell in a complicated scheme and the enemy line advanced smoothly and with an unnatural silence, no battle cries, nothing but the steady sound of hooves.

As they reached the first red lance, a hail of arrows rained on the left flank of the Wendish. Horses screamed, but from his position on the far right, Ivar couldn't see how much damage was done there. The Quman continued at a trot, and at the second red pennant a new flight of arrows fell into the Wendish forces even as the Quman riders made the transition to a canter, gaining power and speed. Yet as the Quman line approached the third lance, the sky above them suddenly turned as black as smoke, and a stab of white light struck amidst the Quman archers. A resounding clap of thunder boomed, and for several breaths Ivar could hear nothing, no screams, no horns, no hooves even as he watched the Quman line reach the third lance at a gallop. Another thick hail of arrows blackened the air before falling furiously into the Wendish ranks. The first thing Ivar heard as the ringing in his ears faded was the horrible whistle of a thousand streaming wings.

Horns rang out from the old ring fort where Bayan and Sapi-entia watched the unfolding battle, staccato blasts that signaled the charge. The Wendish cavalry jolted forward, gaining speed, to meet the oncoming assault. Ivar lowered his spear as he gained momentum, got his weight forward, tucked his spear under his arm. The Quman line loomed close ahead, but because of the looseness of their lines, he faced no enemy. To his left, a Quman rider bore down on Baldwin; to his right, another winged rider fixed his lance toward Milo.

Ivar had hardly any time to think, much less choose. He struck to his left.

The Quman rider batted Ivar's spear thrust aside with his own square shield just as Baldwin caught him high in the chest with the point of his own spear. One of them went flying, and Ivar wheeled around to his right just as Milo's riderless horse collided with him. Staggered, Ivar kicked his horse back toward the safety of his own line even though all lay in chaos around him, lines hopelessly mixed together. On the ground in front of him Milo lay dead, a shattered lance protruding from his open mouth.

For too long the gruesome sight of Milo held his gaze. He felt the sword strike more than saw it, parried it with his spear, felt the blow catch and hang there, and then, oddly, his spear fell from his hand. He hadn't lost his grip, and as he panicked, driving forward to try to reach the clot of riders massing around Ekkehard, he saw blood oozing from the stumps where two of his fingers had been only moments before.

It was an oddly unaffecting sight. He grabbed for his long knife, the only weapon left to him, and was pleased to note that his hand still functioned. The Quman with the sword had vanished into the melee. Ivar closed on another Quman rider from behind and, unable to reach the rider through the wooden contraption that was the frame of his wings, he drove his knife deep into the ribs of the pony. He twisted the knife hard around and yanked it free as he passed, and then he was beyond it, using his shield to slam a Quman rider to his left, trying to get by.

There, to his right, the banner of Ekkehard wavered in the hands of one of the escorts from Machteburg. The prince himself struck wildly around with his long sword as three Quman drove down on him. The wing feathers of one of the riders shone like metal, a hard, unpleasant glitter as though he wore at his back a hundred steel knives. Wielding an ax, Baldwin joined Ekkehard, striking down a Quman as he did. But the metal-winged Quman hit Baldwin at a charge, his lance shattering on the jaw of Baldwin's mount. The horse stumbled and fell; Baldwin vanished. The rider, barely slowing, drew his sword, and with two Quman flanking him he made for Ekkehard. "To the prince!" cried the standard-bearer. Ivar kicked his mount forward into the fray. He blindsided one of the flank riders, a stunning crash that sent both men and both horses to the ground.

Ivar groped for his knife, lost in the trampled grass. A blow struck him in the side of his helm, and he parried, caught the arm instinctively as a gloved fist trimmed with metal knuckles swung at him again. With al his weight, he drove the man's elbow to the ground, held the wrist down while wrenching the arm over, driving the man's shoulder into the churned grass and then, with another twist, straining the arm until it cracked.

The Quman rider's metal faceplate muffled his scream. Ivar hooked his fingers into the eyeholes of the mask and tried to twist the head around, but instead the man's helmet gave way and slipped free, throwing Ivar off-balance.

Pushing off with his unbroken arm, the Quman rolled free. He was young, younger than Ivar, and his face was perfect, as pretty as that of a maiden. Long silken black hair tumbled down over his shoulders. With his left hand, the Quman drew a knife and lunged at Ivar. Without thinking, Ivar struck him across the face with the helmet, knocking him back, and then again Ivar struck, and again and again, and with each blow those beautiful youthful features were scarred and mangled until that face was merely a red smear in the mud.

Breathing raggedly, Ivar looked desperately around for help. Ekkehard's banner lay on the churned grass; like a shroud, it covered the man who had borne it, a silent corpse among so many others. But Prince Ekkehard still rode.

Two of his men defended the prince against the attack of the metal-winged Quman rider, who cut them down like so many sheep and pressed for the kil .

Ekkehard drove in wildly, cutting around to the man's side, but the wings turned his sword and themselves cut his mail to ribbons. He fell back, wounded, and the winged rider pulled his horse around, ready to deliver the deathblow.

Ivar rose from his knees to run to Ekkehard's aid, but he was too far away.

His legs weighed like logs. He would never reach Ekkehard in time.

A roar like a lion bellowing rang from behind the Quman warrior. Wichman charged the rider. They clashed, Wichman raining blow after blow with his heavy sword. The Quman parried and struck in answer, and the two circled and traded blows, neither gaining the advantage. Ivar could hear Wichman's half-crazed laughter, a true berserker's fit.

"Watch out!"

Ivar dove to the shelter of the dead man he'd just killed as a sword cut over his head. Baldwin appeared, ax in hand. "Here." Baldwin thrust a spear into his crippled hand.

"The Prince is down," cried Ivar, but they couldn't aid Ekke-hard; they could only aid themselves. The rider who had just passed them wheeled and turned, coming back. Ivar thrust ineffectually at him as he dodged aside. Baldwin nicked the horse's rump with the ax. The man pulled up some distance away from them and turned again, but as Baldwin and Ivar set for him, he calmly sheathed his sword and, without taking his eyes from them, reached behind his back and drew a strung bow. Another lightly armed rider drew up beside him and, seeing the sport at hand, nocked an arrow. Behind him, a third closed in to join his comrades.

"Run!"

Had he cried out, or had Baldwin? They bolted for the hill. He waited for arrows to pierce his back. Shot like a wounded boar! It wasn't the way he had expected to die.

The sky exploded again with a blinding flash, and the air shook with thunder. Stinging rain lashed the ground. Horses reared in fright, although the soldiers focused on battle—those who weren't thrown or already lying dead or wounded—continued on heedless of the weather. Ivar risked a backward glance, and of the men who had meant to shoot him, he saw one rider thrown and the other two struggling to control their mounts.

With a gasp of thanksgiving, he and Baldwin reached the hill and scrambled up onto a curling rampart of earth where two Lions stood, steadfast and still untouched by the battle. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

"Well done, young lords, you carried yourselves well out there," said one of the Lions jovially as he helped Ivar up the muddied slope.

"But Prince Ekkehard has fallen." Baldwin was weeping. "We left him out there!"

"Nay, nay, fear not, you've not broken your oaths. One of Lord Wichman's men pulled the young prince from the battle. I think he yet lives."

Their blithe words infuriated Ivar. He felt dizzy, and sick, and hopeless.

"Why do you just stand here watching?" he cried "Why haven't you marched onto the field to bring us victory?"

The older of them snorted. "The battle will come to us soon enough, alas.

But if we left this hill, we would be more like to wheat among a harvest of horsemen."

"And where would fancy young nobles like you have to run when their horses are lost and their comrades dead, if not for our station here on this hill?"

asked the other, and though the words were spoken in a merry tone, they stung as badly as did his wounded hand.

An arrow struck earth between the Lions. "Go on now, lads," said the elder.

"There's a ford on the other side. If you hurry, you can get there in time."

Arrows peppered the ground around them as a group of Quman riders closed on the hill but held back, reluctant to attempt a mounted assault up those steep banks.

Halfway up the hill, shielding themselves behind yet another low rampart, Ivar and Baldwin stopped to look back. The mounted archers had closed to within a dozen paces of the slope and were shooting arrows at the two Lions, who slowly skidded up the hill on their behinds, covering their bodies with their large shields. Both seemed wounded in their legs; he hadn't noticed that before.

Arrows glanced off their helms and stuck in the woven front of their shields, dangling and bouncing with each movement.

A horseman urged his horse up the slope, but it slipped onto its side, and rider and horse washed down the slope in a slide of mud. Far over to the left, where the slope was less steep, a knot of Lions had formed into a square of shields that bristled with spears. In tight formation, they slowly retreated toward the top of the hill. Now and again a rash rider drove toward them to strike a blow, but always their spears drove the attacker off. As Ivar watched, a rider was hooked and dragged behind the shields. His corpse appeared a moment later, left behind as the wall of shields steadily backed up the hill.

Baldwin was panting, holding his side. "There's too many of them," he said hoarsely.

It was true enough. The Quman gathered at the base of the hill fort like a swelling tide. Only when the metal-winged Quman rode in among them did they begin to disperse, riding away toward the river.

"They're going for the ford." Baldwin had gone very pale, and he could barely speak through his labored breathing. "We'll be cut off."

"Then we'd better hurry if we want to escape." Ivar's hand throbbed, and he stared at it absently as Baldwin rose to a half crouch. Blood oozed from the severed flesh. He really should bind it, but he couldn't think of what to use to stop the bleeding.

"Come on, Ivar!" Baldwin's voice cracked with fear. "Let's go that way."

They lost all sight of the battlefield as they moved around the west side of the hill where the cold, muddy ramparts made a maze of their path.

"God be praised! My friends!" Ermanrich slid out from a screen of brush, causing Baldwin to yelp. Ivar merely staggered. "What are you laggards doing hiding up here?"

"Ermanrich!" They pounded each other on the back, wept a few tears, and then started all around, looking for the enemy. The clash of arms still rang ominously, muted now and again by the rumble of distant thunder.

"What happened to you?" Baldwin demanded. "I never saw you again after the first charge."

"My shield was cut in two. I lost my spear. When my horse was struck out from under me, I decided perhaps God hadn't meant for me to be a warrior. So I ran." "Very brave, dear Ermanrich," said Ivar. "I see I called it quits two fingers ahead of you. Let me see that." Ermanrich's tunic was shredded and he easily ripped off a strip of wool and bound Ivar's hand tightly. "It's swelling. Does it hurt?"

Ivar shook his head, feeling more and more numb. "Yes. No. Little darts of pain up my fingers—I mean, where my fingers were. Nothing else. And it aches."

They kept moving and as they came around the narrow end of the hill they saw a large force of Quman moving round just inside the river's bend. About fifty heavy horse riding under Princess Sapientia's banner moved south to meet them.

The weight of her lead riders simply pressed the Quman toward the river as though they were herding cattle, and yet every one of those lightly armored Quman riders chose to face sword and shield rather than try to swim to safety.

The weight of the melee was all to Sapientia's advantage. Killing as they went, the heavy cavalry drove the Quman back along the river's bank until the metal-winged warrior appeared again, rallying his troops into a counter charge.

The two massed lines of horse clashed on the narrow strip of flood plain, but already twilight dimmed the scene as sword and armor and shield clanged like the echo of some great smithy. A horn call rang, one short, one long. Then it repeated.

"That's the call to retreat!" cried Baldwin. "Ai, God! We're going to be abandoned here! The Quman will walk up this hill tonight and cut us down one by one!"

Ermanrich tugged him on, and they ran from rampart to rampart, those strange curling earthworks that wrapped the slope more like decoration than fortification. As dusk lowered, Ivar saw Sapientia escorted from the field by her husband as fully half her company fought on, screening her retreat.

"Young lords, give me a hand, I pray you." The voice was low, almost lost under the din of battle and the growing peals of thunder. In the shadow of an earthen mound, the Lion who had shielded their first retreat lay with blood running from a dozen shallow wounds. He had a hand closed over the boiled-leather jacket of his comrade and was trying to tug him down from the exposed rim of the earthen dike—he and his comrade had evidently retreated by another route, only to intersect them here. A misting rain began to fall.

"We can't wait!" whispered Baldwin, but Ermanrich had already surveyed the situation.

"Nay," he said. "The princess' forces have drawn off those who were climbing the fort before. They won't pursue us right now."

Baldwin was shaking. "But they might be swarming up the other side of the hill. They'll drop down on us from above."

"Then we'll be dead," said Ivar. "I thought you said you'd rather be dead than go to Margrave Judith's bed again. You might just get your wish!"

"But I don't want to die!" wailed Baldwin. Ermanrich slapped him, and he sniffled, wiping his nose, and then, as if nothing had happened, he jumped forward, grabbed the silent Lion's leg, and helped tug him down from the rampart.

They moved on around the hill, sliding in wet ground until their knees and hands dropped mud. The mist turned to drizzle and steadied into rain as they by turns tugged and pushed the unconscious Lion through the moss and the mud while his wounded fellow staggered behind. As they rounded the southwestern turn of the hill fort, they saw the ford lying dim below them in the ragged glow of a full moon now and then veiled by cloud. Somehow, although it still rained where they crouched, the ford lay full in the moonlight, and Ivar could see that the front of rain quite simply ceased about twenty paces in front of a semicircle of Lions whose locked shields made a barrier behind which horsemen and infantry forded the river to the safety of the north shore. As though they were the gates of a refuge, the shields opened to admit stragglers who came pelting in alone or in small, beleaguered groups, and then closed again to meet the erratic charges of the furious Quman, who could not break the strong shield wall.

Across the river, the army wound away into the woodland in remarkably good formation. The baggage train was long gone, but a single small wagon more like a little house on wheels sat beside the shore, and for an instant Ivar thought he saw its beaded window shiver and sway as someone pressed aside the hanging to look out.

At a stone's toss from the wagon, he saw a pale-haired figure in an Eagle's cloak standing beside her horse. Hanna was safe across the river.

Off to the east, thunder stil rolled, distant now, as if the storm had passed them by. Below, they could see the Quman pressing Sapientia's troops backward toward the ford.

"We'll never make it," said Ermanrich. "We're cut off."

"Nay, lads" said the old Lion. "Don't wait for us. If you run for it—"

"Can't run—" gasped Baldwin.

"Are you hurt?" demanded Ivar.

"No. Just—can't run anymore."

"Look there," said Ermanrich. "There's a bit of a fosse up ahead. We'll hide there and then make a run for the ford in the middle of the night."

"The Quman will post a guard," said Baldwin. "They'll kill anyone they find.

We'll never make it."

"Now here's a lad who believes in God's grace," said the old Lion with a rattling laugh.

"It's true," added Baldwin philosophically, "that death will free me from my wife."

"At least Sigfrid and Hathumod are safe," said Ermanrich. "And we might be as well, if we don't despair. That's a sin, you know."

Ivar knew it was a sin, but his hand was really hurting now and he just wanted to lie down and rest. But he pressed on with the others toward a ditch lush with reeds and bushes, sheltered from the river by the steep, almost clifflike slope of the hill and by two stark ramparts, their faces slick with mud and, curiously, shale. Hauling the unconscious Lion gave him something to concentrate on as first Ermanrich and then the old Lion slid into the shelter of the ditch. Ivar and Baldwin shoved the unconscious man over the lip, and he tumbled down into a hand's height of water. Ermanrich quickly got his face free of water, although even the rough jostling hadn't woken him. Maybe he was already dead.

Behind them, up at the height of the hill, a thin light began to glow.

"Ai, God!" whispered Baldwin. "Look! It's the Quman, coming with torches to search us out!" He flung himself down into the ditch, and Ivar slipped and slid in his wake, so utterly filthy by now that another layer of mud seemed to make no difference. The rain had slackened and the clouds on this side of the hill had pressed southward, leaving them with the waxy light of a full moon and that eerie, lambent glow from the crown of the hill.

Bounded on one side by the earthen dike, the ditch had become a pool because of the steep precipice on its other side where a stream of water coursed down the cliff face. The falling water had exposed two boulders capped by a lintel stone embedded in the hillside, which were mostly hidden by a thick layer of moss, now shredded and hanging in wet tendrils over the great stones as water trickled through.

Ivar cupped his hands and drank, and the cold water cleared his head for the first time since he had lost his fingers.

"This must have been the spring or cistern for the old fort," he said as he traced an ornate carving still visible beneath the moss on one of the stones: a human figure wearing the antlers of a stag. He pushed away the hanging moss.

"Look!" Baldwin slithered up beside him. A tunnel lanced away into darkness, into the hill. Without waiting, Ivar slipped behind the green curtain. It was narrowly cut, but he could squeeze through. Inside lay black as black, and water lapped at his knees, but it seemed safe enough. "Baldwin!"

Ripples stirred at his knees, and then Baldwin brushed up beside him.

"Ivar? Is that you, Ivar?"

"Of course it's me! I heard a rumor that the Quman fear water. Maybe we can hide here, unless it gets too deep." He probed ahead with one foot but the unseen bed of the pool seemed solid enough, a few pebbles that rolled under his boots, nothing more. No chasms. He plunged his arm into the black water and found a stone to toss ahead. The plop rang hollowly, then faded. He heard a drip drip drip—and a sudden scuffling, like rats.

"What was that?" hissed Baldwin, grabbing Ivar's arm at the elbow.

"Ow, you're pinching me!"

Then they heard it, a wordless groan like the voice of the dead, an incomprehensible babble.

"Oh, God." Ivar clutched Baldwin in turn. "It's a barrow. We've walked into a burial pit and now we'll be cursed!"

"Iss i-it you?" The voice was unfamiliar, high and light and oddly distorted by the stone and the dripping water. "Iss i-it Er-manrich-ch'ss friendss?"

"L-Lady Hathumod?" stammered Baldwin.

"Ai, t-thank the Lady!" They couldn't see her, but her voice was clear, if faint, blurred by stone and echoes. "Poor Ssigfrid wass wounded in the arm and we got losst, and—and I prayed to God to show me a ssign. And then we fell in here. But it'ss dry here, and I think the tunnel goess farther into the hill, but I was too afraid to go o-on."

"Now what do we do?" muttered Baldwin.

Because of the cold shock of the water, he could think again. His hand throbbed like fire, but he knew what they had to do, even if it meant the risk of awakening the ghost of some ancient, shrouded queen.

"Let's get the others, and then we'll go as deep as we can into the hill. The Quman will never dare follow us through this water. After a day or two they'll go away, and we can come out."

"Just like that?" asked Baldwin, disbelieving or awestruck.

"Just like that," promised Ivar.

THE fleet gathered north of Hakonin, in the bay known as Vashinga, and from there they sailed north around the promontory of Skagin and on past the Kefrey Islands, known also as the Goat Brothers. A few ships put in for provisions where various small villages of fisherfolk nestled in the inlets, and there they fetched up barrels of dried herring and slaughtered what goats they could catch.

But Stronghand kept his gaze on sterner prey. His scouts brought him news of Nokvi's fleet, and when they sailed into the great bay of Kjalmarsfjord, they found their enemy anchored in the gray-green waters. A reef complicated their approach, and furthermore Nokvi had positioned his ships between two small rocky islands called Little Goat and Big Serpent.

No matter. Nokvi only had seventy-four ships in his fleet. He still believed that the magic of the Alban tree sorcerers would bring him victory.

From the afterdeck of his ship, Stronghand surveyed his own fleet spread like wings out to either side: fully ninety-eight long-ships and a score of attendant skiffs for fishing the wounded out of the water. In their wake ran the rippling currents that marked the host of the merfolk, come to feed. Their backs skimmed the surface, glittering, graceful curves that vanished into the deeps as they sounded. A wind had come up from the south, chopping the waters into white froth. It blew hot and damp, and in the south clouds rolled up over the headland.

All along the line of his fleet, sails were furled. Oars chopped at the sea as they formed into battle array: the ships of Hakonin and Jatharin on the northern wing, those of Vitningsey and the Ringarin in the southern wing. Stronghand placed himself with the Rikin ships in the center, with Namms Dale ships to his left and his newest allies, Skuma, Raufirit, and Isa to his right where he could keep an eye on them.

He ordered the masts laid down. Hide drums beat a rhythm for the stroke, and the fleet rowed forward.

"Stronghand." Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter gestured toward the sky at their backs. Rain-laden clouds followed them, and streaks of gray mist tied the clouds to the sea. "It is ill fortune to attack under a dark sky."

"That is the work of the tree sorcerers. It will hinder us less than it will hinder the chieftain they seek to aid. Their magic is nothing more than a shadow beneath the midday sun."

His ship cut the water deep, prow dipping low at each swell. His craftsmen had hammered iron plates at the stem of his ship and bearded the prow with iron spikes. As the storm closed, a strong wind came up from the south, pressing them toward Nokvi's line. At the center of his fleet Nokvi had ordered his warriors to lash together groups of ships into greater platforms, little islands for fighting. His lighter ships he had spread to his flanks, for mobility, and at his rear bobbed a few rounder boats with unfurled sails and uncanny masts, still green and bearing leaves. In these vessels, the Alban tree sorcerers would watch the battle and ply their trade.

But it would avail them nothing. Indeed, he has already seen Nokvi's downfall in the magic Nokvi relies upon for aid.

As the fleets closed, Stronghand hoisted his standard, and the Hakonin ships and the Vitningsey ships swung in to strike Nokvi's flanks. At once, fighting surged fiercely from deck to deck, and as it spread, he raised his standard again for the second flank attack to commence, more ships swinging even wider to grind hulls against their enemy and sweep the ships clean. His center he held steady, shipmen gently backing their oars to hold their distance just beyond an arrow's flight. But he could hear Nokvi's men calling out taunts and insults. Yet neither did Nokvi order the advance; he had already readied his ships, oars pulled in, hawsers tight. He waited for the storm. At his back, Stronghand felt the wind rise. On the left flank, one of Isa's ships ground up upon the reef, and a Vitningsey ship drifted aimlessly toward Big Serpent island, cleared of its crew.

But some of Nokvi's ships were floundering, too; one had caught fire, and another had but a dozen men defending the afterdeck.

The wind blew with greater strength now. The deck rocked gently under him, a reminder of the sea's power. Hakonin's ships had driven hard into Nokvi's flank.

Stronghand signaled, and the cauldrons were readied as his warriors rose with a great shout, eager to plunge into the fight. Black streams of smoke rose from the center of Nokvi's fleet; he, too, planned to use fire. Cables snaked out from ship to ship, lashing together those which would strike head-on into Nokvi's center. His own dragon-prowed ship he kept just to the rear of the foremost Rikin platform, three ships abreast.

To the north and south, Nokvi's ships were floundering under the weight of superior numbers, many floating without a crew, empty but for corpses. Of his own fleet, one of Raufirit's ships had capsized and a Ringarin ship lay in flames.

The wind at their backs grew to a gale. Seawater slapped the side, and foam sprayed his face. He lifted his standard for the final time as the first sheets of rain lashed down over them.

His fleet closed. Shields locked, men braced themselves. As the two fleets neared, Nokvi's warriors swarmed to the fore of their ships. The strongest of them loosed their arrows, but wind had reached such a pitch by now that not one flight came close to Rikin's platforms before the arrows were spun harmlessly into the water. His own warriors shot flight after flight, as steady as the rain. Missiles struck across the length of the enemy ships, passing well over the wall of shields that ran back from each stem.

The heavy clouds swept in, and the day darkened as the first of the great platforms ground together, and the real fighting began in the middle of a violent storm. Yet it affected his own men less than Nokvi's. It was Nokvi's men who had to fight facing into the storm. Their vision was battered by the squall. They could barely stand up against the screaming wind while his own ships drove again and again hard against the wooden wal s of their enemy and his soldiers cast stones across the gap, as plentiful as hail.

The cauldrons of pitch swung wildly, spilled smoke and hot pitch down shields and into the sea, where it sizzled and died. In this wind, fire gained him little. But it gained Nokvi less. He saw Nokvi at last, standing on the raised afterdeck of his ship, a brawny RockChild with a golden cast of skin, pure as the skeins of a SwiftDaughter's woven skirts. He wore a multicolored girdle of silver, gold, copper, and tin, a magnificent pattern that echoed the intertwined circles painted onto his chest. Was it possible that he had taken the gods of the humans as well as their magic?

Stronghand touched the wooden Circle that rested against his chest, drew his finger around it in the remembered gesture. It is well to know your enemy, even to learn from him, but foolish to believe that he is right. With such an admission, you have only seeded the ground for your own destruction. As Nokvi had done, all unknowing.

Now, at last, Stronghand gave Namms Dale's chieftain, Grim-stroke, the longed-for signal. To Grimstroke he had offered the privilege of revenge.

They laid their ships broadside. Spikes cracked the boards of Nokvi's ship, and all along the line ships crashed, but the creaks and groans of wood strained to their utmost was soon covered by the cries of the RockChildren who leaped the gap and set about themselves. Grimstroke pressed forward with the strongest of his men, those who had been absent when Nokvi and his Mo-erin brothers attacked Namms Dale and burned alive the war leader and his followers in their own hall. Fury was a great goad. Grimstroke flowered with it, such that none could stand before him. He used a wooden club lined with stone blades, and as it fell first at his right and then at his left, he crushed shield and helm, arm and skull.

But when Nokvi saw Grimstroke clearing the deck as he plowed forward, striking to each side, he himself leaped forward with his spear. As Grimstroke raised his club to strike again, Nokvi struck a handsome blow, swift and sure: he caught Namms Dale's chieftain in the throat. But as he fell, Grimstroke swung one last time, with his dying strength, and his club caught Nokvi's right hand at the wrist and severed it with such force that hand and spear flew over the railing and into the sea. Then, with a gush of blood, Grimstroke ceased to move.

All but the rear of Nokvi's ship had been cleared. Running forward from the afterdeck, Stronghand saw in the battle all round him that victory was at hand.

Other ships fought on, but they would yield or run as soon as they saw their leader fallen. He let his warriors clear the way before him. He had no illusions about his prowess in battle; he was not a great warrior, nor had he ever wanted to be.

He wanted to be king over all the RockChildren. Not even Bloodheart had gained that much power.

"Kil them all but Nokvi," he cried, and his good strong Rikin brothers made quick work of the last of Nokvi's fine Moerin host until only Nokvi stood, lashing out with a dagger while spears prodded him back.

Stepping up between his troops, Stronghand thrust with his spear at Nokvi's chest with all his might. The thrust pinned Nokvi's good arm to the rudder, and he roared furiously, helplessly, as Stronghand took an ax from one of his brothers and cut off Nokvi's other hand.

His warriors cheered, and from the afterdeck he saw the battle die, as the wind died.

He wrenched the spear out of the rudder, and swiftly, with the haft, upended the spitting and flailing Nokvi until he lay helpless, bent backward over the railing. The sea boiled at the aft of the ship where the merfolk gathered, slick backs churning the bloody waters.

"Let none of the clans stand against me," he cried, "or they shall serve me as Moerin's chief serves me today!"

He flipped Nokvi over the side.

Yet as Nokvi struggled against the grip of the merfolk, and as abruptly sank, as the wind died and the rain let up so abruptly that he knew no natural weather could account for it, he sprang to the stern of the ship and clambered as high as he could, searching for the boats of the Alban tree sorcerers. A fog shrouded the northern entrance to the bay, as though the clouds that had swept up from the south had passed over the battle only to sink into the ocean. He saw a glimpse of a green, flowering mast vanishing into the mist.

Had the Alban tree sorcerers betrayed Nokvi as a way to destroy Nokvi, or had they only deserted him when it became obvious he would lose?

He ran back to his own ship, which rested on the waves free of the hawsers that bound the other ships together, and with Tenth Son of the Fifth Litter steering he set himself to the oars with his brothers as they chased the Alban boats into the fog.

Truly, they had speed and strength that would allow them to catch the Alban boats, but despite his standard fixed at the stem of the ship just below the dragon's prow, they were lost almost at once in the dense fog. He left the oars to stand at the stem so he could peer into the mist that fell silent around them JmenTh lf th ^ K d Cft Ea"h entirdy- Yet he cou'd smell the remains of battle. He smelled a colony of petrels on an offshore cliff, and heard the shrill cries of a ffock <J

fulmars the merf ,/ Sf ^^^ shiPS to feed on the scraps left by beat the water- ™e sea sou^d

-i-i He leaned forward into the fog. Was that a flash of light? Was that movement? Mist streamed against his face, chilling and moist, and it became so oddly silent that he thought he could hear the clash of another battle down such a distance that he knew he was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming of Alain, even as he felt the sea foam spit on his hands and the clammy touch of fog curl around his throat.

The Lions stay on the hill. Below, Prince Bayan has arrayed the cavalry to face the winged Quman riders, a host so numerous that they seem more like a flood overtaking the eastern hills. Like a .flood, they charge into the Wendish and Ungrian line. He thinks he has never heard anything as horrible as the sound of their wings. Nothing, at least, since Tallia repudiated him.

Below, battle is joined on the flanks. A bolt of lightning strikes in the midst of the Quman archers, but after a swirl of confusion, they right themselves and fight on.

He can only wait and watch: soon the wounded and unhorsed cavalry will seek safety among the Lions, and although he stands in safety now, he knows it is illusion: safety is ephemeral. Lady Fortune only waits to spin her wheel. He wonders at his own bitterness.

"There!" cries Folquin. "There's their standard, but is that their commander? Why does the rest of their host proudly wear wings and yet he wears none?" "Pride," suggests Ingo.

"Humility?" Stephen is youngest among them, still hesitant to speak his mind.

Leo laughs. "Nay, princes are not humble, Stephen. Haven't you learned that yet?"

Then they look at him, and he sees by their expression that they are remembering what he once was. They are remembering the argument he fiad with. Captain Thiadbold when the cap-torn ordered him to chain his hounds to the baggage train so that they wouldn't follow him into the battle; they are remem->ering, perhaps, the moment during that argument that he forgot himself and acted like a count, not a common Lion whose mother was a whore and whose fate lay in the hands of the king Ihe hounds went with the baggage wagons. "Look," he says now. The clouds race in out of the east like seagulls flocking to shore before a storm. "There 'II be rain soon. " "God help them," says Ingo. They know what rain will do to a field churned by horses.

Alain can see no pattern to the battle, only movement boiling in eddies and tides that swell and ebb across the shifting line of melee. Banners jerk from one spot to another, like a boat in choppy seas. Sometimes they fall Sometimes they rise again in another man's hands.

Folquin gasps and points again. "He's moving. " Prince Bulkezu's standard raises high. A howl rises with it, the first voiced sound he has heard from the Quman, who ride silent into war and into death except for their wings. As the wingless prince rides into the battle, horns ring out from the Wendish side.

Prince Bulkezu leads his charge at the center of the Wendish line, straight at the banner ofAustra and Olsatia. Margrave Judith and her troops lurch forward to meet the enemy charge. So numerous are they that Alain feels the rumble of hooves shuddering the earth itself. Or perhaps that is only the distant roll of thunder as black clouds sweep in over the hills and the eastern horizon is sheeted in rain.

The heavily armored Wendish horse press eagerly through the Quman fine, and soon enough the Lions roar with triumph as Margrave Judith, her banner bobbing beside her, bears down on the Quman standard. Wind lifts her banner until it streams out in glory. The Quman standard only bells outward, hooked to its poles at all four corners. The wingless prince is driven back, and back, by the force of their press, and around Alain the Lions break into a fervent hymn as if their voices will spur their comrades on.

"Blessed are God, who trained our hands for war."

But they are only another sound lost in the din of battle. The margrave's lance glances off the head of the wingless prince, spinning his helm, and as Judith closes, throwing away her lance, he knocks his helm free and a rush of black hair tumbles loose down his shoulders. Her sword strikes true, down on his unprotected head.

But the blow never lands.

A rider plunges forward between them on a horse as white as untouched snow. A battered round shield catches the blow, and its wielder simply shifts and counters with a single smooth blow that takes off Judith's head from her shoulders.

The Austran banner falls next, cut in two, to be trampled into the ground.

The wingless prince, freed of his helmet and with his hair so shining a black that it seems a silken banner in its own right, sets to work with his sword.

And she rides at his right hand, as she once rode at Alain's. All along, Alain believed the Lady of Battles would appear again to him. He had not feared standing to battle because he knew she would be there, as she always had been before.

And she is there. But this time, she rides at the right hand of the enemy.

Has she forsaken him? Was it all a lie? Is that her rose, burning at his chest, or only fear in a panicking heart?

The Wendish center collapses utterly as Judith's followers flee the field.

Alone on the hill, the Lions are left exposed. "Come, friends!" cries Captain Thiadbold, moving along the line. "We'll pull back toward the ford in good order.

Keep your shields in position. Cavalry can't break us as long as we keep our shield wall strong."

As the battle dissolves into a hundred melees, the wingless prince leads a charge against the Lions stationed on the hill. Bulkezu swings to the left first, along the southwest flank of the hill fort, but finding it too steep for horses he circles back. The main force of Lions has already reached the summit and started down the northern side of the hill, out of sight. The first cohort stands the rear guard, and Alain keeps step with his comrades as they retreat up the hill after their fellows. The slope below them has a shallow enough pitch that riders can press upward, even with dirt ground to mud by boots and this morning's rain.

Yet the ramparts slow their passage. The Lions, on foot, have the advantage here. Nevertheless, he is fiercely glad that Rage and Sorrow are not with him.

Here, he cannot protect them. They make it to the hilltop. Weather and time have worn the ramparts down to hummocks. In the center of the central ring of earth lies a jumble of fallen stones, and Thiadbold pulls the last cohort into the stones just as Qurnan riders find their way through the maze of ramparts and burst onto the summit. Spear thrusts thunk on shields. Swords chip at metal rims. But the wall holds.

They retreat through the stones. Alain sees nothing but riders pressing before him. He simply hangs on. His only prayer now is that he hold his place in line, that he not slip at the wrong moment, that his is not the shield that offers the first, and killing, gap. The others strike when a strike is offered. He can only grip his shield and pray. He is useless, but he strives to do his part as best he can so as not to break faith with his comrades.

He has already broken an oath to the family who raised him. He has already lied to a dying man and, by breaking trust with him, lost the very thing that man had given him in trust. He has already lost the only woman he has ever loved.

At least here and now, he can serve the Lady of Battles as he once swore to do.

Then he sees her, a woman of middle, age in a coat of mail patched with newer rings of iron. Her sword is nothing fancy, only hard, good metal, made for killing. She wears no helm because she needs no helm.

The Lady of Battles has come to him at last. But she is still fighting for the other side. "Hold your line!" cries Thiadbold, striking with his hooked spear at the Quman just to the right of the Lady. With an effortless swing, she drives his spear away from the warrior beside her. Yet still no Quman sword or spear can shatter the shield wall.

She sees Alain.

She raises her sword and then it falls, cleaving his shield into two parts that hang together by only splinters of wood. The shield wall is breached. Now everyone will die. But not if he sacrifices himself.

He plunges forward so that they can close ranks behind him.

Faintly, he hears his name called, but they are not fools. Thiadbold's voice rings out again: "Close the gap! Hold your line!"

For a moment, he knows triumph. Then she stabs him through,just below the ribs. His mail parts like butter before her sword.

Blood seeps through his tabard as he collapses, stunned, and falls.

"But I swore to serve you, " he whispers, astonished, because he really never thought that this of all things would happen to him. He never thought that he would be the one to die on the battlefield.

"So you have." Her voice, low and deep as a church bell, rings in his head.

"Many serve me by dealing death. The rest serve me by suffering death. This is the heart of war."

She rides on as the battle flows forward, abandoning him.

A hoof crushes his left hand as a Quman warrior rides over him; he is kicked in the cheek by the trailing leg of another horse. His helmet, strap severed, rolls off.

The tide of battle passes over him. A man moans in agony nearby. Rain spits gently on his exposed cheek. Everything seems much darker now, and for a while he thinks his vision is fading, but then he realizes that the sun is setting; it really is getting darker. A fire has been lit under his ribs, and he thinks maybe it will burn him clean out from the inside. He understands now why it is easy for some men to lie down and die. But he still hears that poor man crying in agony.

Reaching, he drags himself over the wings of a fallen Quman rider. He slides over the bloodied body and falls, facedown, in the mud, but with a grunt he pushes up again to his hands and knees, and the misting rain washes his vision clear. There, eye-to-eye, face-to-face, he stares at a dead Lion. He knows the man, but he can't remember his name. It doesn't really seem to matter now because what is a body without a soul? What animated the dead man once is now fled. As his own soul soon will fly. Yet he crawls on because he just can't bear to hear that other man suffering.

He finds a Quman rider writhing on the ground with little swipes and pumps of his limbs, al he can manage as he whimpers, poor soul. A deep cut through his abdomen has spilled his intestines over the ground, and he has been trampled as well.

Ai, God, why does suffering plague humankind? When will it end?

Distantly, he hears the ring of battle, lost over the northern slope of the hill fort. Isn 't this the heart of war?

The Quman sees him, then, sees him staring. Their gazes meet. Maybe on the field of battle every soldier shares an understanding. A dagger lies between them. The man moans words. It is a plea, surely. It is a prayer.

Alain grasps the dagger and with al his strength lunges forward to cut the unresisting man's throat so that he can have a merciful death, if this can be called mercy. Then he falls back,exhausted.

Now he has dealt death. Now he will suffer death. In this way, he has served the Lady of Battles. He gropes at his chest but hasn 't the strength to pull out the little pouch that hides the rose. He hasn't anything anymore, nothing that counts, no family, no comrades, no promises that bind him. He is alone now in death as he came alone into life, torn out of a dying woman. The misting rain turns heavier, soaking the ground. Dusk veils them, but the moon has risen. Yet how can he see the moon when clouds cover the sky? In the tumble of fallen stones, a pale light glows steadily brighter.

Probably he should just lie down now and accept death, but something nags him, pushing him onward. He struggles toward the source of the light. He thinks that when he fought up here before that the stones all lay fallen in, torn down by human hands long ago or simply by the tidal forces of time and weather. Yet one stone stands now at the center of the ruin. It casts a faint bluish light, a ripple like water up and down its length. When he reaches it, he claws his way up its rough surface, bracing, himself so that he can stand and see.

Below, the last knot of Lions has made it to the ford. He recognizes Thiadbold's red hair; somehow the captain has lost his helm. Prince Bayan and his cavalry cross the river. Farther to the north, Alain sees the army retreating in good order. At the ford, where some fifty Lions, all that remains of the first cohort, hold their position, the Quman close in.

Upriver, a lower wave crests the bank and slides out onto the plain like a probing finger. Prince Bayan calls out, and the Lions retreat step by step into the shallow ford: There is rash and sentimental Folquin, quiet Stephen, brawny Leo, and fair-minded Ingo. The boldest of the Quman riders press their horses to the shore and even fonvard a few steps into the water.

The river is rising. A swell of water spills into the Quman line, scattering their horses, and they pull back superstitiously as the Lions retreat in good order across the current and, at last, make it safely to the far shore. As soon as their unit clears the water, a flood roars downstream, borne out of the eastern hills.

The river becomes impassable. He thinks maybe he sees creatures in the waves, spinning and twirling as they ride the foam, but he knows any visions he has now can't be trusted.

Pain stabs in his body. He coughs, and an agony like ripping claws tears through his chest. A warm liquid trickles down his lips, and he tastes blood. The world is silent except for the gurgle of his own breathing and the distant roar of the flooding river.

Then, distinctly, he hears a bark. The blue fire flickering along the stone caresses his back. Oddly, it soothes him and sharpens his hearing. He hears another bark, and they tumble up against him, tails beating his body until the pain of their whip-hard tails slapping against him makes his head spin, but he is already spinning. Sorrow licks his hands and Rage leaps right up, a huge paw on either side of his slumped shoulders, and licks his face with that wonderful slobbery tongue.

And he weeps, because he doesn't want to leave them.

It isn't fair to leave them here alone in the world.

Light flares. Cold fire smothers him, and with a sickening wrench he feels the ground jerked one way while he falls the other. . . .

Gone.

Just like that, the link had shattered.

Sunlight glared down on the water. Stronghand had to shade his eyes in order to see. To his left, a little island swarmed with a raucous colony of petrels.

Water slapped the ship as they hit the swells off the open sea, rounding the cape that protected the inner bay leading into Kjalmarsfjord. The Alban boats had vanished onto the empty sea.

Still, the tree sorcerers hadn't truly escaped him. Once he had mopped up the last minor resistance among the clans and brought all the tribes and chieftains to acclaim his kingship, he would strike farther afield. All the RockChildren would follow him then, and none among humankind would be able to stop them.

In the ship, his men roared in triumph, and he heard a distant echo from the inlet behind them, where his allies and tribe brothers celebrated.

Today he had won a great victory.

Yet all he felt was grief.

DEFEAT tasted oddly sweet. Anne had found them out, and yet for the first time in two years he stood whole, ready for battle, sword raised and a good sturdy horse at his back. For the first time, he saw more than potential in the woman he had married; he saw power manifest. She was more than incomprehensible calculations and annoying, repetitive questions and late night sojourns under the silent stars during which she sometimes seemed more interested in measuring the altitudes of stars than in, well, measuring him. She had earned the sword of power which is true sorcery, something you could use.

If they could just get out of this together— Anne swung her staff away from the unraveling archway of light and pointed it, like an empress' scepter, at Liath.

When she spoke, it was with the tone of a regnant, with equal parts severity and mercy. "Liathano, I know you think that I killed your father, but I swear this to be true, you were not conceived of a carnal bond between Bernard and myself.

Such a bloodline would be too weak for the path before you." Liath, struggling stubbornly to reweave the patterns and angles of starlight within the stones, faltered as Anne went on. "Your family is not what you believe it is. Your enmity toward me is misplaced. Bernard had no right to steal you. He took what was not his to shape. Surely you see that destiny is upon us. Time is short. Let us not waste it bickering when our combined powers are all that can save this world from ruin."

From a distance he heard the faint, frantic bleating of a goat, a sound that faded into the stuttering grunts of a dying animal. Bells rang, far off at first and then closer, yet they sounded no more loudly in his ears. Three steps in front of him, Liath swung wildly with the arrowshaft as shadows poured like water down over them from the stone circle, tangling the last shimmering lines of her spell like a dark wind that shatters a dew-laden spi-derweb.

"We're leaving Verna," said Liath.

"That I cannot allow. Verna is where you must weave your part when the day comes. Here lies the center of it all. Can you not understand, child?" In the midst of the shadows Anne stood, radiant not because she shone with any brilliance of her own but merely because the shadows sliding past her were so utterly black that their blackness limned her form.

Liath cursed under her breath as the sparking, fading lines of her spell tangled, like beheaded snakes, into knots perceptible now only because of the trail of mist left by their threads writhing against the unearthly blackness that swelled everywhere, consuming the heavens and the Earth. But her voice, in reply, was strong. "I am leaving with my husband and child."

"Ai, God!" continued Anne. "I tried to aid you, to prevent this ill conception, this child. Don't you see, Liathano? Prince Sanglant has used you in a most devious way. He tried to kill you by getting a child on you, and look how close he came to succeeding! Only your strength saved you. You are deceived in him. He does not truly love you. He only wants you and the child to gain victory for his own people. When you are free from his influence, you will finally see clearly your duty to God and humankind."

"I don't believe you." Liath took one step toward Anne but seemed to fetch up against an unseen resistance, like a wall of air. Slowly, as against a heavy weight, she lifted her right hand, probing with the shaft; she narrowed her eyes.

The gold feather gleamed.

The hem of Anne's robes caught on fire. Startled, Anne took a step back.

Air swirled around her until it became a whirlwind, and the fire snuffed out.

"You remain under his spell," said Anne harshly. "So I am left with no choice. 'Nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.' Let God forgive us for trafficking with such evil creatures, but our cause is just." She raised both arms. "Let the galla come and consume him and the child."

Bells tolled at his back, a throb that shuddered up through his feet. The stench of the forge boiled up the hill. The bitter scent made his skin tingle, as after the strike of lightning.

The goat tied to Resuelto's saddle, or its kid, made a sound so horrible that he actually shuddered, whipping around to brace for an attack. Blessing wailed as though something had bitten her.

They were surrounded.

These weren't Anne's captive daimones, feathery creatures formed out of air and water. Blessing's wails turned to infant howls of pain and he felt a stinging, nasty burn pouring over his shoulders and a stab like razor-edged tusks goring his neck.

He lunged toward Anne, thrusting with his sword.

Shadows closed before and behind him, great columns of darkness shuddering and swaying in an unseen wind. They pressed against him, bodiless demons smothering him in their handless grasp. Their voice was the muttering of bells, and they whispered his name.

"Sanglant. Come to us, and you will find peace."

With all his might he pushed his shoulder hard into a shadow, thrusting the sword farther in, but the creature did not yield. Where his arm lay against it, a thousand needles of ice penetrated armor and flesh. Blood rose in pinpricks on his exposed hand, and he felt the warmth of drawn blood sting all along the length of his arm. He recoiled, only to press backward into a burning cold that impaled his back. Blessing screamed, the terror of a tiny child who can only know pain but nothing of its cause. He struck wildly to either side, to free himself, but his sword cut harmlessly through streaming shadow. He twisted, trying to keep his daughter out of their grip.

But he was surrounded. Their huge forms towered over him, bending until he could no longer see the sky. The air swelled with stinging heat until he could barely breathe. Their touch scoured his head until he licked blood from his lips.

Blood dribbling from gashes in his scalp and face trickled into his eyes, obscuring his vision. Mail did not protect him. Their bodiless touch reached right through his armor and rent his flesh. Blessing screamed and screamed.

"Call them off," cried Liath from somewhere a long way away. He could see her because even through the black substance of their bodies, she shone. The shaft, cast aside, shone as well: the gold feather burned against the blackness and gave him light to see by. She had drawn her bow. She nocked an arrow, brushed a finger over the point—and the haft began to burn, flames licking up and down the length of it. She drew, sighted, and held there one instant as the galla swirled around

her but did not close on her. He could no longer see Anne for blackness, but Liath could. Liath could hear Blessing's screams. She loosed the arrow.

Blazing, it flew. And stopped, dead in the air, held aloft by the galla or by Anne's daimones, he could not know. Distantly, although truly it could be no more than a few paces from him, he heard Resuelto bolt and clatter away into the trees.

"I'll never aid you!" cried Liath. "Let them go free."

"I will let them go free when you pledge your service to the Seven Sleepers," said Anne coolly.

He heard it as a lie and knew Anne would never allow him to live. But he had no breath in his lungs to tell Liath so. Ai, God, were the creatures even now tearing Blessing to pieces on his back?

How had he come to be on his knees? He tried to lift his sword, to beat them off, but he no longer had any strength in his arms, and his vision was blurring.

Blessing's screams continued unabated, a horrible counterpoint to the knell that throbbed in his ears and obliterated every other sensation until his head boomed with their voices, or maybe that was only his own dying pulse plangent in his ears.

"With us you will find peace, Sanglant."

The air hissed and spun around him. An arrow buried itself in the ground between his hands, and suddenly, winking free of darkness, he saw unshrouded sky above and twinkling stars. A second arrow struck the ground just beyond his left hand, spitting dirt, and another galla vanished, winked out with a sizzle.

These weren't Liath's arrows. With that odd narrow concentration given to a man in battle, he saw them clearly: shafts of an unknown wood and fletched with a metal hard feather that he knew at once, with a shiver of misgiving. A griffin's feather.

A third arrow struck off to his right, and he could see its trail, a faint smear of blue cutting through the fell creatures that attacked him. A fourth arrow skittered over the ground, sparks glittering in its wake. It had a slick stone point, ragged and deadly.

A dull blue haze streamed from the center of the stone circle, like steam boiling out of a kettle. He saw through it to another place: a massive rampart, huge marble walls, and an ebony gate already half open. A woman emerged from that gate with bow drawn, and she had only taken one step before she shot again. He ducked instinctively, but the arrow flew over his head and he heard the sizzle of another galla banished from the sphere of Earth.

In her wake he smelled the heavy scent of the sea, could even feel the salty sea air on his lips; in her wake, a man leading a laden pony stumbled out into the stone circle. Arrows sang from her bow, and with each shaft sparks sprayed and glittered in the air and galla flicked out of existence.

He got to his feet and was rewarded by a sudden indignant squall from Blessing; she still lived. But already Anne's voice rang through the darkness.

Surprised by an unexpected enemy, she was not yet defeated. Like a general, she mustered her forces and called up reserves—or perhaps her reserves had only just arrived, called down from the higher spheres. Those who served her at Verna had the delicacy of air and the fluidity of water. These who came at her command at the height of battle had a harsher aspect: human-shaped yet faceless, with wings as pale as glass. They, too, had a voice of bells, a throbbing bass vibrato that made the air ring. They streamed like a wild wind and flung themselves at Anne's enemy with the howling breath of a gale. Their tenuous bodies dissolved to become the tempest.

Into such a wind, the woman could not shoot. But the man at her back grabbed an arrow out of the quiver and, holding it up by the point, he swung it in a circle around himself so that the griffin fletching tracked blue sparks in an arc.

Galla swarmed up around him; Blessing wailed again, and as he fought to move forward, to get out from under them, he saw what damage the griffin feathers did: they harmed the daimones not at all, but in some way they severed the bond that Anne had used to bind her servants to Earth. One by one, daimones darted away into the heavens, to vanish into the night sky. Freed from Anne.

That was what these intruders were here for: to free him from Anne.

He recognized the woman now; he had seen her in his dreams. Wind still battered her, but she, too, had taken an arrow and with it in her hand, head thrust into the wind and her hair streaming back like a banner behind her, she cut a way toward him. With each swipe more daimones tumbled free of the cord that bound them to Anne's spells. It seemed to him that many of Anne's servants flung themselves willingly into the whirlwind -and in defeat—they sought libof their fellows as if in attack- o___„

erty.

He sheathed his sword and scrabbled for the arrows that had struck earth beside him. The griffin fletching cut into his palms, but he heeded it not. Let it not be said that he did not fight until his last breath. With stone-tipped arrows as his only weapon, he laid about himself furiously. The galla drew back, yet they did not flee. Could such creatures even know fear? Did cutting their earthly form cause them pain? Sundered, would their spirits drift endlessly like that of a fallen warrior who has lost his faith? They throbbed and swarmed around him, held back by the threat of griffin's feathers, nothing more than that. It took all his will not to lunge into them, only to hold them at bay. He could not expose Blessing to their touch again.

A pale form slid into the circle he had drawn around himself, the length of his reach with the arrows. He began to lash out; caught himself as he recognized her fluid figure. It was Jerna, writhing, her aetherical mouth twisting and distorting as she tried to communicate with him even as another force seemed to drag her away.

He struck, then, into her pale torso. A silver ribbon shredded into filaments and vanished, and at once Jerna flung herself on him. She coiled, all soothing coolness, over his shoulders and around the crying baby. Blessing's sobs hiccuped to a stop, and for a moment, with the galla still hanging back, he had the unexpected leisure to survey the battlefield. For a moment.

Anne stood by one of the stones, staff raised; daimones crowded her, their light forms throwing her stern figure into relief. He couldn't see Liath, only a cloak of utter darkness where she had stood, as if the galla had consumed her entire being. Off to his right, Resuelto had halted at the trees, whose branches whipped and slashed in the gale. The galla had only retreated out of range of the griffin feathers. That stench of forge iron was the scent of blood taken from a thousand thousand victims; they were hunters, and they had not given up on their prey.

Distantly, he heard the thunder of an avalanche. Then the storm howled in, out of nowhere. The tempest drove him to his knees as the galla shuddered under those impossibly strong winds. The gale raged in his face until he could hear nothing and feel nothing but its scream. He could not even lift his head.

The winds blew dirt into his gritted teeth, choked him with clots of dirt from the ground itself as though under Anne's command the daimones meant to strip the Earth down to its bones. Not even the galla could advance into the maelstrom.

"Liath!" he cried, but he couldn't hear his own voice above the screaming wind. And she called fire.

Fire blossomed like wings over Liath's head. The host of galla who had enveloped her were obliterated in the blaze, and he saw her in that instant: caught in the blaze, bow raised and drawn down on Anne, her expression so focused that she seemed unaware of anything else in the world. She seemed unaware that her fire had caught in the stones, leaped the gap as a great forest fire leaps from tree to tree like the hand of God. The blue haze that outlined those shrouded and half-seen marble walls, that traced the contours of the ebony gate through which the intruders had reached them, ignited into a scorching white blast of heat that singed his hair although he knelt many paces away. "Sharatanga protect us!" The voice sounded unexpectedly loud, at his ear.

A strong hand grabbed his arm and tugged him up. He looked into eyes as sharply green as emeralds: like his daughter's eyes. Like his own eyes. "What manner of creature is she? Run, Son! Run! She is calling them through! No one can survive where they walk!"

High above, the stars themselves seemed to uncoil whips of light, like fiery arms reaching out. The bowl of the sky itself seemed to bulge downward, as if something were trying to get through. And then it found the gateway that had already been opened.

It flowered out of the ebony gate, a spirit with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. It had a form, of a kind, vast and terrible. Where its feet touched the earth, streams of fire raced away, igniting the grass. Where its gaze touched the great crowns of trees, the lush summer foliage simply whoofed into sheets of fire, like a sequence of torches set alight, and birds burst from the woods in a flurry of wings and flocked in panic toward the cliffs.

Impossibly, others crowded behind it, pressing out through the gateway into the tiny valley that seemed far too small to hold them all. The air became torrid, blushed with a golden haze rising off their coruscating bodies. The swarming galla simply flicked out of existence as if sucked away into a neighboring room. In their terror, the mules kicked over the corral gate and bolted.

Below, the timber hall burst into flame. He had a moment to grieve for Heribert's fine creation before he heard screams, livestock panicking, the wails of the airy servants stil caught by Anne's bonds. The sheds kindled. Cattle and goats and pigs scattered into the darkness. Two human figures stumbled after them. Incredibly, the tower went up in flames. Even the stone burned, and as he watched, two figures flung themselves from its confines, clutching their precious books to their chests. The luster of this incandescent fire shone even onto the towering cliffs around them, until he realized with horror that this was no reflection of the conflagration but only a continuation of it. Even the mountains burned.

"Run, Son!" She yanked him on, but he dragged her to a halt. Standing, he was a good head taller. Her pony shoved against him, and reflexively he caught hold of its halter to hold it in place. Of her human servant there was no sign.

"Liath!" he cried, because he couldn't see her in the face of their brilliance.

He drew in air to call out again, but the heat of it scalded his lungs and he could not utter one word.

As they pressed forward, they cast from side to side, searching, and he realized that, here on Earth, they were blind. But they were not mute.

Their voice struck like a thunderclap. "Where is the child?" Then they found her.

Their wings unfurled in pitiless splendor as they launched themselves toward the heavens. The sound of their wings reverberated off the high mountain walls, a great, booming flood's roar, and the night brightened until it shone with the heat of the noontide sun. He had to shut his eyes, had to shield them with a hand because even through his eyelids the light burned. Then faded.

He opened his eyes to devastation. Fires smoldered and embers gleamed.

Blackened trees cracked and shattered, branches dissolving into ash. He groped at his back, found Blessing's beloved mat of curly hair. She stirred at his touch. A little hand closed on his finger, and she babbled something. Ai, God. Still alive.

Jerna's sweet breath tickled his hand, soothing his skin. As he stood there, catching his breath, he saw dawn's light rime the eastern slopes. Somehow, the night had passed them by.

"Sanglant." The hand that closed on his hand was still cool, slightly moist, as though she was coated with a sheen of water. Her voice was a stranger's voice and yet entirely familiar. Was this truly his mother, who stood before him dressed in nothing but a ragged skin skirt and bold painted patterns marking her otherwise naked skin? "I did not know they had made such an ancient and dangerous enemy. Let us go."

He let go of the pony's halter and staggered forward, slipping on ash. Even the ground had been parched and blackened. Alone of all things in this valley, the stone circle stood untouched. Of the marble walls and ebony gate he saw no sign. A single figure lay crumpled at the base of one of the stones: Anne.

Liath was gone.

Maybe he had known from the first instant he had seen them breach the gate and emerge into this world, which could not contain them. He had sensed it before, but now he finally, truly, understood what essence lived inside Liath, like a second being trapped within her skin.

Fire.

"Sanglant, we must go."

He looked at her bleakly. "Where do you intend to take me?" he demanded. "Why should I trust you? How do I know you didn't bring those creatures through to attack us and steal my wife?"

She sized him up rather like a lady examines a stallion she will buy as long as its temperament proves suitable. "I beg your pardon, Son. There should be affection between us, but there is none."

"You abandoned me." He hadn't known he was so bitter. He hadn't known until this moment how much he resented her for what she had done.

But she took no offense at his anger. "I abandoned you because I had to.

Because you had to build the bridge between our kind and humankind."

"A bridge, or a sword?"

"What can you mean?"

"Isn't it your intention to conquer humankind once you return to Earth from your refuge?"

She cocked her head to one side, regarding him quizzically. "This I do not understand. Not by our own will did we leave Earth."

With a great sighing gasp, the timber hall collapsed in on itself. Ash and smoke poured up from its rubble into the sky, teased and torn by daimones as they fluttered round the ruined valley. Were they free, making sport of their old prison, or were these the ones not yet unbound from Anne's spell? Anne herself, lying by the stone, groaned and stirred. Below, a hound barked, and he saw its black shape come loping up the hill.

"Her I do not wish to battle again," said his mother. She flicked soot from her mouth, spat, and scented the air, almost like a dog might. "My servant is of no more use to me."

"Is he dead? Should we bury him?" But he, too, watched Anne suspiciously, and in truth, a good captain knows that at times one must retreat in good order even when it means leaving the dead behind.

"Let us go," she repeated, as if in echo of his own thought. "Time grows short. Can you take me to Henri? Although she spoke understandable Wendish, she still said his father's name in the Salian way, with an unvoiced "h" and a short, garbled "ri".

He whistled, and good Resuelto, miraculously unharmed although a trifle singed, trotted nervously over to him, the poor goat hobbling in his wake. He untangled her back legs from the leadline, although she bleated most accusingly and tried to chew on his arm. Her kid was gone, consumed by the galla. "I know a path out of the valley that should be open now, unless you want to leave the way you entered. Through the stones."

"Where they did walk, the old paths will be twisted by their fire into a new maze." Hoisting her spear, she shook it, and the bells tied to its base tinkled merrily. "That gate is closed to us."

"Ai, Lady," he murmured as he took Resuelto's reins and soothed the agitated horse, then offered the reins to her.

"Nay, I walk. I lead this small horse." Cautiously, she touched Blessing on the head. Jerna slid away, twining onto Resuelto's neck. "So fecund is the human blood," she murmured, as if to herself. Then she turned and gestured toward the woodland. The air still had a smoky color, almost purplish with dawn. Small animals skittered through the ashy remains, and as they started up the path, leading the two horses, he saw tiny animals digging out from the debris, frantic squirrels and bewildered mice, chittering or silent as was their nature.

"Who is she, the woman they took?" his mother asked.

But he could only shake his head, too choked with rage and sorrow to speak.

SHE could not see. She could not hear. Yet she was neither deaf nor blind, only drowning in a wash of such brilliance and overwhelming sound that it had all become a flood, one note, one tone, one absence of color that was pure light.

She wasn't sure she was actually breathing, or that there was any air, and yet she wasn't dead either. Oddly enough, she also wasn't afraid. For the first time in years, she understood that there was nothing to fear. The grain of her bow lay comfortably against her palm, gripped tight. The tip of her sheathed short sword, Lu-cian's friend, grazed her thigh. Her quiver of arrows weighed on her back even as a shift in her position caused the leather straps to press against her collarbone, shifting the gold torque that lay heavily at her throat. A stray curl of hair tickled an ear.

Blue winked.

An instant or a thousand years later she saw it again: the blue flash of the lapis lazuli ring that Alain had given her. Somewhere, where her hand flailed at the tip of her nose or a hundred leagues away from the rest of her body, the ring found purchase and sparked color, a thread her vision could follow.

They were rising. She had a direction now. Her wings beat steadily in time with the others, the sound of their wings as variegated as the voice of a great river. But she didn't have wings. They were carrying her. They had lifted her with them as they sprang to the heavens.

They had named her ''child.'"

In the seven-gated city of memory, in the tower of her heart, at the center of her being, rested a chamber set with five doors. Four faced the cardinal directions, north, east, south, and west. Da had taught her all this, the secrets of memory. With his tutoring, she had constructed the room in her mind. But the fifth door, set impossibly in the center of the room, he had built; through the keyhole she could see only fire, which he had locked away even from her. Now she knew why. Whose child was she?

Above her, blue flickered again, and as she reached with one hand to touch the other, she saw not the lapis lazuli ring but a tenuous curtain roiling the air, rimmed by blue-white flame whose outline had the same contours as she had seen on Earth. Was this another gateway? Was only one of many passages from one sphere to the next, from one plane of existence to another?

How was she to pass through, if she could not walk or ride? They said,

"Fly, child." And let her go. But she didn't have any wings.

She plunged. The air was suddenly too thin to breathe. Flailing, she managed only not to drop her precious bow. And for that moment, as she fell, she saw the world laid out below her, a dense black carpet of earth with only the barest pale limning of receding sunlight far to the west where ocean surged restlessly at the edge of her vision. Yet against the vast carpet of land, far below, seven crowns gleamed, seven crowns with seven blazing points each, a central crown and six surrounding it, flung far from that center as though the central crown marked the axle and the other six glittering points along a wheel's rim.

She recognized it at once: it was Emperor Taillefer's crown of stars writ large across the breadth of the land, encompassing many kingdoms and uncounted leagues. It was the great wheel, the true crown of stars. The ancient map she had seen at Verna made sense now: seven crowns in seven locations. Was this wheel the loom by which the Aoi had woven their immense and cataclysmic working two thousand seven hundred years ago?

At that moment, sucking in air that didn't give her enough substance to breathe, she also realized that she was going to die. Then the glorious creatures blazed around her again. "She is too heavy to cross into the higher spheres." "She is not all of the same substance as are we."

"She has no wings."

They gathered her into them, and at their touch she knew an intense joy unlike anything she had ever experienced. They blazed with pure fire, fierce and bright, and the door that Da had locked against her was consumed in that flame.

As it opened, she saw for the first time into her innermost heart, the core of her being: Fire.

Not as fierce as theirs, truly, but of the same substance, impossibly intermingled with her human flesh. Whose child was she?

They reached the shimmering curtain of light, and she passed through it as through a waterfall, waves of light pouring down over her. Yet she was no longer rising. She seemed caught in the eddy, and they had begun to fade as if they flew on and she remained behind.

"Wait!" she cried. But they had already moved beyond her reach, wings thrumming as one voice caught on the smooth shell where a higher sphere overlapped a lower: "Follow us."

There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds that blow far above the sphere of the Moon, and now and again their gaze falls like the strike of lightning to the Earth below, where it sears anything it touches. Their bodies are the breath of the Sun coalesced into mind and will.

She cannot follow them, and her heart breaks. Yet as the light of their passing faded, she began to search around herself, found herself walking through endless twisting halls that, scoured and scalded by their passage, glowed with a faint blue luminescence. She was inside the vision made by fire, which is the crossroads between the worlds. She had to find her way home.

But she didn't even know where home was. There! A boy slept with six companions, heads pillowed on stone, bodies resting on a rich hoard of treasure.

There! Misshapen creatures crawled through tunnels, trapped there by the element of earth that coursed through their blood.

There! A dying man slumped against , two great hounds nudging him and licking him as though these attendons would bring him back to life. He stirred, and she recognized him with horror and grief: It was Alain.

She leaped for him, but she misjudged the currents in this place. They swept her into the stone, through the gateway, and she could only grab for him as she passed by. Her hand caught on a mailed shoulder—

He sees a woman clothed in cold fire, and her fiery touch hauls him ruthlessly sideways until he falls free and slams into the ground. He lies there for an interminable time, in a stupor, so washed in pain that he is blind. Then the tongues lick him again, driving him, always driving him to live.

Weeping, he staggers up, not truly able to stand because the wound has pierced so deep, but their great shoulders give him support. He still stands in the hill fort, but even numbed by pain he sees that he is no longer where he once was. It is absolutely silent. No bodies litter the ground, dashed and broken. No horns ring, nor do men cry out in pain, nor does the flooding river's roar overpower the rumbling of distant thunder. The sun rises in the east to reveal a clear and pleasant day.

Impressive ramparts twine down the hill, some of them freshly dug. Where a low mist kisses the low-lying ground still half in shadow below, he sees a river winding through a sparse woodland of pine and beech, only the river does not follow the same course as the river he crossed this morning. It is a different river in the same place. Yet why, then, does the hill fort look so new? Why, at the crown of the hill fan, do all seven stones stand upright where moments ago they all lay fallen in a lichen-swamped heap?

No blue-fire stone burns in the middle of the circle. Instead, within the ring of stones he sees a sward, hacked down so that grass bobs raggedly at various heights. Cowslip and yellow dew-cup give scattered color to the grass. Pale purple-white flax flowers ring the squat upright stones. Mist veils the farthest reaches of the hilltop and twines around the more distant of the standing stones.

On a low, flat stone situated in the center of the circle stands a huge bronze cauldron incised with birds: herons and ducks, ravens and cranes. From its rim hang rings, each one linked to a second ring, from which dangles a bronze leaf. He can smell that the cauldron is filled with water. The pure scent of it teases his lips and nostrils. Truly he no longer has any reason to live. He doesn't even know where he is anymore. It would be better just to lie down and die peacefully here, to lay aside his anger at the injustice of his fortune, lay aside his grief at what he's lost and what he failed to do. Yet his legs move anyway.

With a hand on either hound to support his weight, he staggers forward toward the cauldron because he has an idea that one sip of that water will heal him, even though he wants to die because the pain is so bad, both the physical pain and the pain of anger and grief. Yet those same feet keep taking their stumbling, weak steps because he can't even despair enough to fall down and die. He wonders if it is possible to love life too well.

Yet why would the world be so beautiful if it wasn 't meant to be lived in and loved?

It seems to him that a woman moves toward him. As she emerges from the mist in the gap between two stones he sees that she isn 't truly a woman at all. She has long black hair that falls to her waist and a complexion the creamy rich color of polished antlers. Her eyes don't look right; the pupils are sharp, not round, and her ears aren 't round either, they pull into a point tufted with dark hair. Where her waist slopes to her hips, her body changes to become a mare's body, sleek and black like her hair.

She is the most beautiful creature he has ever seen. She comes to a halt before the cauldron, dips her hands in, and lifts them. Water trickles down between her fingers.

"Do you want to live?" Her voice is a melody. "If you want to live, you must give me everything you carry with you. Then you may taste the water of life."

He wants to live. But it is so hard to give up what he has carried for so long.

Yet his hands move anyway because he thirsts for that water. The promise of water is like an infusion ofwoundwort and poppy, giving him strength to cast aside his belt and boots, to struggle out of his mail coat and tabard. The entire left side of his wool tunic is soaked in blood, but he peels it off and discards it with his leggings so that he kneels naked now beside the cauldron while the hounds lick the seeping blood off his side. Pain and the agony of thirst have numbed him, he can barely feel their tongues or the terrible aching pressure under his ribs.

"Yet you have not given me everything," she says, and he sees that it is so.

He hasn 't given her the pouch. It hangs at his neck as heavy as lead. It is so hard to lift his arms, to dip his head, to pull it free. The pouch gapes open, string unwound, and the rose, wilting now, falls beside the stained nail onto the ground.

"Yet you have not given me everything, " she says. "Two things you carry with you yet."

He knows the last burdens he carries, but they are not objects he can pass from hand to hand. "How can I give them to you ?" he asks, gasping as blood leaks from his wound faster than Rage and Sorrow can lick it clean. Blood trickles from his lower lip, bubbling in time to his breathing. "How can I give you the oath my foster father made, that I forswore? How can I give you the lie I spoke to Lavastine because I wanted him to die at peace?"

"Now they are mine," she says. She sidesteps in the graceful way of horses.

Where she stood, he sees a young woman kneeling in an attitude of intent meditation, so still that she surely must have been there all along even though it is manifestly impossible for two creatures to inhabit the same space at the same time. The young woman does not seem to see him or even hear the conversation, and she is dressed quite strangely, in a tightly-fitted cowskin bodice with sleeves cut to the elbows and an embroidered neck, and a string skirt whose corded lengths reveal her thighs. Copper armbands incised with the heads of deer bind her wrists, and a gorgeous broad bronze waistband ornamented with linked, spirals and hatched, hammered edges covers her midriff. She wears a necklace of amber beads and a gold headdress decorated with finely incised spirals and two curling, gold antlers. In one hand she holds a polished obsidian mirror fixed to a handle of wood carved in the shape of a stag.

Her expression is pensive, but it is the contrast between eyes drowned in sadness and a generous mouth that seems ready to smile given the least provocation that makes her handsome.

Then the centaur woman moves between him and the cauldron, so he can no longer see her. He can barely cant his neck back to look up into her face. A bubble of blood swells and pops in his nose as his lungs draw sustenance out of his heart. His vision fades, comes into focus again, and he sways. Her body looms, not because she is as big as the warhorses that carry Wendish lords into battle but because he realizes now that she is not mortal in the same way he is.

She holds out her cupped hands and brings them to his lips. He sucks, and the water slides down his throat like nectar.

Like nectar, it spreads its essence quickly. He no longer feels any pain in his ribs, and the shock of healing is so profound that he falls forward in a daze.

Oddly, he feels the prick of the rose on his right cheek, where his skin presses into the earth. The hounds nose him, then settle down contentedly on either side of his prone body. He is so tired.

But he is alive.

Then he hears movement, and a moment later a woman's voice gasps out surprise and a hand touches his naked back with the kind of stroke reserved for a lover.

"Here is the husband I have promised you, Adica," says the centaur-woman. "He comes from the world beyond. "

"Did he come from the land of the dead?" This new voice, eminently human and close by his ear, is low, a little ragged, not musical but rather the voice of a woman who is courageous enough to walk open-eyed into the arms of death.

"Truly it was to the land of the dead that he was walking. But now he is here."

Her hand rests pleasingly on the curve of his right shoulder, as if she is about to turn him over to see what he looks like. But when she speaks, her voice breaks a little on the words. "Will he stay with me until my death, Holy One?"

"He will stay with you until your death."

—and then she had lost him and tumbled free, landing hard on her knees with the wind knocked out of her lungs. Her bow lay beside her on the sandy ground. Branches rattled in a dry wind, and a gold feather drifted down through the air to catch in her hand. Coughing, she got to her feet.

"Well," said the old Aoi sorcerer, letting the half-twined rope fall to the ground as he stood. "This time you have surprised me."

"I didn't expect to come here," she admitted. She had to lean with hands braced on her thighs, catching her breath. Catching the sobs that shook her. She wanted to weep, but that was one of the lessons that Da had taught her, that she'd learned so well that it had become habit: "If you're crying, you can't hear them coming up behind you."

Ai, God. There was nothing she could do for Alain. But she had to be strong enough to find Sanglant and Blessing; she had to be strong enough to come to their aid. She rose, letting her breath out with a shudder, tucked the feather away, and brushed dirt from the knees of her leggings and from her palms. She checked herself reflexively for her possessions: bow, quiver, sword, dagger, cloak, Alain's ring, the torque Sanglant had given her. Of Blessing she had nothing but the link of shared blood.

"I meant to leave Verna," she continued, still stunned by the departure of the creatures who had meant to take her with them. "But I didn't know I'd end up here."

"Yet you are here."

"I am here," she agreed, "But—" But still she hesitated.

"You are still bound to the other world," he said, not dismayed, not irritated, not cheerful. Simply stating what was true.

"I am still bound to the other world." Without thinking, she set her hand against the blue-white fire of the stone, and she looked inside.

He leans back against the rock face and lets the glorious heat of the sun warm him. They came clear of the valley an hour or so after dawn and, with the birds singing around him and his mother walking beside him, he understands he is free for now of Sister Anne and her threats and her war. Yet how can he be free from that war knowing what he has learned, that his mother's people mean to return to Earth from whatever place they have been hiding, or exiled? True, his mother desires to go to Henry. But what will she tell him? And what will he say to his father? Whose story can he believe? On whose side will he muster?

He opens his eyes. Resuelto and the pony crop at what grass they can find upon the hillside. Below, smoke curls up from the cookhouse of the hostel below, and he sees robed figures hastening about. The monks are agitated today. Even the bees are agitated, swarming around flowers but not landing to sip nectar.

His mother crouches to one side of the path, spearpoint driven into the ground by her feet. With her forearms braced on her knees, she intently watches Jerna, who is suckling Blessing. The sight clearly fascinates her, although he isn

't sure why it ought to. Before he begged her to clothe herself in Liath 's spare tunic, it was obvious that the women of the Lost Ones are built no differently than human women in certain regards.

Ai, God. Where is Liath now? He listens, but he cannot hear her.

He dreams that she calls to him across the gulf of the heavens.

"Sanglant, " she says. "Beloved. "

Blessing pulls her head back from Jerna's breast and babbles, batting at the air as if to grab something only she can see. But he sees and hears nothing.

"You are weeping, child," the old man said as he rested a companionable hand on her shoulder.

"So I am," she agreed. But this time she let the tears fall.

"Truly, there is more to you than even I first saw." He regarded with a frown as light flickered along its length and began to die. "I can only see through the gateways using the power of blood. Yet you can simply look, and thereby see."

Startled, she turned on him. "I thought you were a great sorcerer. Can't you teach me everything I need to know?"

He smiled at her and walked away, but he was only going to sit on his bench of rock. He picked up the rope and began to twist the strands against his thigh.

"In the end, only one person can teach you everything you need to know, and that is your own self. If you wish to learn with me, you must be patient.

Now." He gestured toward . "You must make your choice—there, or here. The gateway is closing."

The flames flickered lower until they rippled like a sheen of water trembling along the surface of the stone.

She was still weeping, gentle tears that slid down her cheeks. "Ai, Lady!

What must I do? How can I leave them?"

Yet she had known all along that it might come to this. She could never regret the choice she had made before and, knowing what she had known then, she would make the same choice again: to return to Sanglant.

But she knew a lot more now.

Now she knew who her enemies were. This decision had been made when Anne had tried to set her against Sanglant, when Anne had proved herself willing to let her own granddaughter die. This decision had been made when Brother Marcus had told them that Hugh had worked the sorcery of the crowns. This decision had been made when Anne had admitted that she had herself bound and commanded the daimone that had murdered Da. This decision had been made in that first glorious instant when they had emerged through the gate and called her "child."

"I'm no use to him or to anyone until I master my own power," she said softly. "They thought I should have wings, and if that's true, then I have to find them—or find out what they meant and what they are."

She crossed to the old sorcerer, set down her weapons, and sat at his feet.

Without a word, he handed her strands of flax and, saying nothing more, resumed twisting flax fiber into rope against his thigh. She waited for a moment, expecting him—like Severus—to begin lecturing her. But he did not. He simply twisted flax into rope, humming a little under his breath.

Behind her, flickered, faded, and the last glint of blue fire died into the stone until it was only a dark pillar, mute and as solid as rock. Slowly, clumsily, and with many false starts, she began to twist the slender, single strands into a stronger cord.