"An ill wind," added Antonia.

Felicita began to weep while struggling to speak. "I pray you, Holy Mother. I am so frightened!"

Too frightened to speak sensibly, the woman babbled of creatures with human bodies and animal heads, of a flashing wheel of gold, and of folk falling into a writhing, spitting death from the merest prick of a dart. Other servants, newly woken, brought robes and a belt and slippers and helped Antonia dress.

"Hush! Take me to the queen and her consort!"

Captain Falco appeared at the door to her suite and escorted her to Novomo's proud gate, a legacy of ancient days when the old Dariyans had founded the city as, so the story went, an outpost along the road that led north over the mountains into barbarian country. The captain said nothing, and she asked no questions, preferring to see for herself. Felicita trailed after, coughing out sobs and heaving great sighs as she fought to control her fear.

The weak always panicked. They were chaff, fated to be cast to the winds.

Folk walked abroad, calling and crying in the half light. Soldiers marched toward the walls, fastening on thick leather coats as they hurried. One dropped his spear and got kicked for his pains as he stumbled back to pick it up.

"Move! Move!"

Goats bawled from a courtyard. A horse neighed, and was answered by other nags. All over the town, dogs set up a wild clamor, howling and barking and yipping as though their ears hurt them.

Stairs set into the wall had to be climbed, and her feet ached and her back complained, but she mounted them step by step without uttering a word. Falco walked two steps behind. On the wall walk the queen leaned out, staring south. Her cloak billowed in the dawn breeze lifting out of the southeast. She was alone, but as Antonia reached the walk, she saw Lord Alexandras pacing back from the corner tower; he was too far away for her to see his face. The queen was drawn and anguished, and she clutched Antonia's hand as soon as the skopos drew near.

"What are we to do? What are we to do?"

"Hush, Your Majesty. You are overset."

"Look!"

Look!

In ancient days the Enemy whispered in the hearts of men, and men listened to these lies and found themselves so swollen with vile cravings that they bred with animals. This congress engendered monsters so grotesque in form and hideous in spirit that God flensed the Earth with a vast and terrible storm to drive the beasts forever out of the mortal world. So was it written in the Holy Verses.

How the world had fallen! What was once banished by God's pure and righteous power walked abroad again at the behest of the Enemy. The gates of the Pit had opened and disgorged foul creatures. No doubt they had crawled north out of the stinking wasteland that had once been the lush and bountiful plain of Dar.

"There are so many," said Adelheid.

The monsters waited in silence. They wore armor and carried spears and swords and shields.

Like animals, they strayed side to side, unable to hold firm ranks, but they walked on two feet in a mockery of humankind.

Alexandras swept up beside them. "I have a count obtained from a circuit of the walls. Fifteen centuries, more or less. In the old days I would call that a small force, easily beaten. If we arm every man in Novomo, we will outnumber them. They have miscalculated. They are too few."

"What are they?" Adelheid asked.

"Monsters," said Antonia. "Creatures of the Enemy. Abominations."

"They're human, wearing animal masks," said Alexandras, squinting his eye as he surveyed the besieging force. "They don't have numbers enough to hold a siege, so we should be able to send for help."

"Who will help us?" Adelheid asked.

"Folk must rally to support their skopos," said Antonia. The sight of so many warped faces—even if they were masks—nauseated her. Her throat burned.

In front of the walls sprawled the corpses of folk who had tried to flee the onslaught but had not reached the gates in time.

"If Novomo falls, they'll go on to attack others," said Alexandros, as if he had not heard her. "You must appeal to self-interest. Those who aid us, aid themselves. If they do not aid us, they are themselves fated to fall to this army."

"It's true." Adelheid's hunched shoulders straightened a little as she took heart from his considered words. "We must appoint messengers to ride as swiftly as they can."

"Immediately," said the general. He called Captain Falco, and the order was given and men sent running. "We'll send a second batch at nightfall. Meanwhile, your stewards must take control of all grain stores within the walls, and every well or cistern. A strict ration will be applied. Any who violate the law will be killed."

"Cast out," said Adelheid. "To the mercy of our enemy."

He nodded approvingly. "Yes, that is better." He gestured toward the corpses tumbled here and there in the fields around Novomo. A man lay on his back on the road. A woman had fallen on her side, trying to protect a child, who was also dead. "They seem not to be taking prisoners or slaves."

Antonia watched this interplay, knowing herself ignored and dismissed. She fumed, but the general had captured Adelheid's attention and, increasingly, the queen ignored her, who ought to be first in her thoughts. Even the child liked him!

"From what direction did they come?" she asked.

"What do the guards on the wall say?" Adelheid asked the general, not looking at Antonia.

"From the southern road, out of the twilight before dawn. The watch say they saw sparks rise on the hill, a weaving of light, for half the night."

"Impossible!" cried Antonia so forcibly that both turned to regard her with surprise. "Clouds still conceal the sky. No one can weave the crowns if they cannot see the stars."

"Why do the guards tell me this tale, then?" he asked her.

“At night any manner of wisp may be seen, sometimes illusion drawn by the eye and sometimes a phantom called up by the Enemy to lure weak-minded folk to their doom."

"Yet here they are." Alexandros waved toward the massed army still shifting and moving as ranks filed away from the road to encircle the walls. "They will mass the main part of the force here before the gates. A thinner line will be deployed to watch, and to defend against skirmishes around the rest of the town. That is what I would do."

"If none come to our aid," said Adelheid, "what can we do to defeat them?"

"I will think," he said, and the queen smiled at him, hearing confidence in his words. Even Antonia was swayed. He had seen many years of war, and although he was an Arethousan and therefore untrustworthy, he was also trapped and might be expected to fight as a cornered lion.

In the east, a strange light rose along the hills, a color like that of blood diluted until it runs pink.

Guards along the wall pointed, and a murmur swept the men standing nearby as they—as all of them—

stared at a thing they had not seen for months and had come to believe might never appear again.

"That is the sun!" cried Adelheid. "An omen, surely!"

The clouds had thinned to nothing at the eastern horizon, and the sun flashed as its rim breached the horizon. South, a haze veiled the lowlands. North, the rising hills turned from black to gray as light swept the heavens. Above, it was still cloudy, but all around, folk wept to see the sun.

Antonia blinked, reminded of the day she had walked free at long last from the prison beneath the rock of Ekatarina's Convent, where she had been held. As she grimaced, shading her eyes, it seemed her vision sharpened. It seemed she saw a golden wheel moving off the road and into place along a low rise where grapevines were trained along rail fences. It seemed a man with a human mask for a face rode alongside the turning wheel. She knew him, although in truth he was too distant for her to make out his features.

"That is Hugh of Austra," she said, finding that her voice was cold and her heart hot. "He has betrayed us."

The name was only an abstraction to Lord General Alexandras, but Adelheid wept fiercely and then, as the storm passed, set her fists on the wall and stared as if her gaze were killing arrows. No one in that army fell, but movement rippled within the distant ranks surrounding the golden wheel and a person came running out of their ranks toward the gate.

"Hold! Let them approach!" called Alexandras.

The call was repeated along the wall.

A bedraggled, frightened man stumbled up to the gates. His tunic was ripped and dirty. He had blood on his cheeks and he cradled his right arm in his left hand.

"Let me in, I pray you!" he shrieked. He was obviously a local farmer, scared out of his wits and in pain. "I beg you! They spared me only so I could bring a message."

"It's a trick," said Adelheid. "They want us to open the gates. They believe we will be merciful. Kill him."

Alexandras signaled with a hand, and a dozen archers raised their bows and sighted.

"What message?" called the captain of the watch.

"Just this." The man sobbed hoarsely, and for a moment Antonia thought he would be unable to talk, but fear goaded him. He croaked out a muddled speech. "The ones . . . the Lost Ones they call themselves, come home, they say. Ai, God! God have mercy! Let me in, I pray you!"

"The message!" called the captain.

"Just this. Ai, God!" A glance over his shoulder proved him terrified. He huddled on his knees and stretched his hands toward the soldiers half seen on the wall. "That one, they call her who wears the feathered cloak, she is the leader among them. She is mother to a field of blood. So we see! So we see!

All my kinfolk slaughtered . . ." He choked on his weeping. He collapsed forward onto his hands. To the south, past the hill on which stood the stone crown, smoke rose from a dozen conflagrations as the enemy moved out across the countryside.

"Sanglant!" muttered Adelheid. "These are his allies! His kinfolk!"

"Blood calls to blood," said Antonia. "Evil begats evil. He could never be trusted, after all."

The farmer struggled up to his knees, looking back again as though he expected the minions of the Enemy to ride down upon him. And were they not there, in truth? The Lost Ones had been banished from Earth because they were the creatures of the Enemy, and now the allies of the Enemy had collaborated in their return.

"Let me speak!" he gasped. "Let me in, I pray you. Help me!"

"Your message," repeated the captain. The archers had not shifted position. They were ready to loose.

"The feathered cloak sends this message. She wants peace between your kind and hers."

A few guardsmen snickered, but most held to silence.

"She wants peace, but she comes with a demand. Peace, between you, in exchange for one person." He trembled and coughed. He could, it seemed, barely scrounge up enough courage to go on. "The Holy Mother! She says, peace in exchange for the Holy Mother, who is a foul sorcerer and must be laid into death." He bawled and pounded fists on the ground. "Forgive me! I pray you! I am only sent to speak the words. Help me!"

"She fears the galla," said Adelheid. "But how comes she to know of them?" She turned to Antonia, and her frown was fearful and her bright eyes stricken with a kind of wildness. "How is Hugh of Austra still alive? You told me that he must be dead!"

"He can still be killed," said Antonia. "Give me a prisoner, some man who deserves death. Let me raise a galla! He is so close. He cannot avoid the Abyss, not now. Not here."

"Is this wise?" asked Alexandras. "A fearful thing, to kill a helpless man in front of the soldiers."

Adelheid nodded. "A fearful thing, indeed. The enemy will see what we are capable of. That will make them fear us!"

Below, the farmer at the gates wept and pleaded, creeping forward to pound at the closed gates.

Adelheid called one of her sergeants, and he was sent to roust a prisoner out of the dungeon. As they waited, the sun rose and slipped behind the skin of clouds running along the horizon. The light changed to a high sheen like the reflection of lamplight off pearls, something higher than the dull gray of a cloudy day but less than direct sunlight. Still, it heartened Antonia that they had been dazzled even for so short a time. Wind and time and tide must wear away the veil of clouds, just as in the end evil is ground down by the weight of God's justice.

"What would you have us do with the messenger, Your Majesty?" asked the sergeant of the watch, sent by the captain to inquire.

"Do not open the gates," Adelheid said.

Alexandras said, "Leave him below. Then we can see what these Lost Ones do. If they kill him.

If they spare him. If they ignore him. By their action, they speak to us of their nature and their plan."

The Lost Ones only waited, arrayed in ranks as they watched the walls and waited for a response.

The sergeant returned leading a wary, filthy prisoner, the worst sort of scum, a man with an unkempt beard and a rotten smell to him, unwashed, toothless, and pestered by flies and fleas. He'd scratched his arms raw in patches, and he could barely shuffle on bandy legs. With the butt of his spear, the sergeant forced him to his knees, and he whimpered, too weak to fight and too stupid to beg for mercy. But he was still living, and the living possessed the blood of life.

She always carried a knife on her. She never went anywhere without it. "Step back, and avert your gaze. All of you!"

"Yes, Holy Mother." The soldiers spoke with gratifying respect, and they moved away obediently.

Adelheid turned her back, but Alexandros only took a pair of steps to one side without looking away. No doubt he had seen worse things in the east, since the Arethousans were known to have a wicked lust for tormenting their captured enemies.

A knife is a fine and beautiful tool that can grant life or deal death with a single thrust. She knelt beside the man, whose fetid stink almost overwhelmed her until she closed her mind to it. She turned her face away and took in a deep breath of cleaner air and, turning back, shoved the blade up between his ribs.

He made a gargling sound, and sagged, but her arms were strong enough to hold him and she had breath with which to speak.

"Ahala shin ah rish amurru galla ashir ah luhish. Let this blood draw forth the creature out of the other world. Come out, galla, for I bind you with unbreakable fetters. This blood which you must taste that I have spilled, makes you mine to command. I adjure you, in the name of the holy angels whose hearts dwell in righteousness, come out, and do as I bid you."

A shadow spilled into the light as a galla shuddered into being, called away from the other side. She twisted the blade. The man bled furiously as he slumped forward, bleating in a way that grated on her nerves. She dropped him and stepped away. Behind her, a soldier retched, and another began to cry in terror. The galla's darkness took on substance as it drank from the gushing stream of blood.

"I adjure you, galla, you will do as I command. Kill the man called Hugh of Austra."

A ripple ran through that towering darkness as her will took hold. It slipped through the stone battlements as through air. The air around it stank of the forge, and its voice rang like the blacksmith's hammer on steel.

Hugh of Austra.

It descended through the air in the manner of a feather floating free, coming to earth on the road only a few paces from the gate. The farmer panicked. Bolting, he scrambling to the right to escape it, yet the wind on which it scudded pushed it straight into his path. It glided over him, through him. The voice of bells swallowed his scream. Where it passed, bones clattered to the ground. A clamor rose from the enemy, howls of alarm, the beating of drums as against an evil curse, the blast of moaning horns that died away. There was Hugh, who did not move and who could not escape.

Glory to God on highest, who brings punishment down on those who simmer evil in their hearts!

"No one is safe from such sorcery," said Alexandros.

"No one," she agreed. "The galla cannot be harmed, only banished. They are implacable."

"You are the only sorcerer who knows how to raise them," he added.

She did not answer. Out from the ranks stepped a creature with the body of a woman, the head of a fox, and a bow that reached from head to knee. Even the Enemy desires beauty, and this creature had beauty in her form and her stance as she sighted and loosed. The arrow gleamed as it sped toward its target. Antonia cursed under her breath.

The galla did not veer to avoid the missile. Indeed, it seemed to shift to meet it. Where the arrow pierced, a void of pure black snapped open, and the galla sizzled and vanished, popped right out of existence, as if it had never touched this world.

"Fletched with the feather of a griffin," said Adelheid angrily. "He has outwitted you, Holy Mother."

"Griffin feathers are not easily come by. In time, he will use up his entire store, or become careless and wait too long to let his arrow fly. It is only a matter of time."

"So am I thinking," agreed General Lord Alexandres, looking at her and her bloody knife. "Only a matter of time."

5

WITH Liutgard and five centuries of cavalry, their best men, Sanglant pressed at speed toward Kassel, leaving the rest of the army and the baggage train to travel as swiftly as they could. At midday one day midway through the month of Quadrii, they met scouts, a band of men loyal to the duchess who had fled the town and were camping in the woods and spying on the eastern road.

Their leader, called Adalbert, boasted a pair of gruesome scars on his face, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He wept, seeing Duchess Liutgard appear before him, and kissed her ducal ring as he swore fealty.

"Here is your regnant, come to drive the usurpers out of Fesse," Liutgard said, stepping aside to reveal Wendar's banner and Sanglant, who was still mounted.

They knelt and bowed their heads.

"You have served your lady well," said Sanglant, nodding to her to go on. He could see that she wanted no lengthy obeisance but rather swift news.

"What can you tell us?" she asked them.

"The usurpers hold the town, but no more territory than that. Even so, my lady, they only have troops enough to garrison the palace tower, although they keep a watch along the town wall and a guard at the gates. Many townsfolk have fled. Those who remain inside send news to us by way of peddlers and whores."

"What do these tell you?"

"The usurpers expect Duke Conrad and his army to relieve them. I don't know if it's true, but I do know they sent messengers west. We killed one man ourselves a fortnight ago."

"What of my daughter?"

"You know of the sad fate of your heir."

"So I have heard," she said grimly. "She stands within the comfort of the Chamber of Light, beyond our reach. What of Ermengard?"

He wiped away tears. "Still held hostage, my lady duchess. Many with her, who refused to run when they saw she was taken."

"Why does Conrad want Kassel?" Liutgard asked.

"He's casting a deeper net," said Sanglant. "Tallia is granddaughter of the Younger Arnulf. She also has claim to Varre twice over. Sabella seeks the throne so long denied her. If necessary, she'll take it through her daughter's body—and her daughter is now wed to Conrad."

"Henry should have killed Sabella after the first revolt!" said Liutgard. "He was too lenient!"

"Wendish do not murder their kinfolk, not even in the pursuit of power," said Sanglant mildly. "We are not Salians, Liutgard. Thank God."

Her smile was tight. "I will not hesitate to kill Sabella—or any who plotted the downfall of my house. If Ermengard is harmed—!"

"We must pray she is not." He turned to the waiting soldiers. "Is it best if we continue on this road, or is there a better vantage from which to spy out the land around Kassel?"

"We'll guide you, Your Majesty. My lady duchess. Best if you see what they've done, meaning to starve us out."

A trail branched off the main road. On this hunter's path they pressed through woodland single file.

They were tremendously vulnerable, strung out in such a line and with the open vistas of beech forest offering little concealment, but Sanglant trusted to his instincts, and his instincts told him that the old and cunning Sergeant Adalbert could be trusted. At length the sergeant asked king and duchess to dismount and led them via a footpath to a clearing that opened up on a steep hillside where rain and wind had caused a massive slide. Broken trees had tumbled to the base of the steep hill, caught there all in heaps and splintered piles like so much wrack. The hillside had a slick, unstable look beyond the last rank of standing trees.

"Careful, not down there, past this line. That's where the ground gave way. But from here, if you hold fast to these trees as an anchor, you'll be safe."

"God have mercy." Liutgard had a hand hooked around the bole of a young ash and her feet fixed in the dirt. At the base of the slide, trees of every age and size had smashed into each other, some splintering and the biggest ones crushing the smaller beneath.

"See here, now" said the sergeant. "There is Kassel. Even from this distance, you can see what damage the autumn storm did her."

The town of Kassel lay at the foot of the low, isolated hill—more a bulge in the landscape—on which the palace and tower had been erected. The town was laid out in a square with two avenues set perpendicular to each other, dividing the habitation into four even quarters. An old wall, reasonably kept up, surrounded it, but it was obvious from this height that the town had long ago been larger and more densely populated. There was room within those old walls for vegetable gardens and an orchard as well as some pasture for cows, and although in the main part of the town houses clustered one up against the next near the inner gate that admitted folk to the palace hill, along the outer spaces many houses boasted a big fenced-in garden. Old paths and house foundations marked abandoned homes. Middens grew where once folk had lived up against the town wall. There were signs—hard to discern from this distance—that many halls and houses had lost roofs or had their walls smashed by falling timber. The only sign of scaffolding and repair lay along the town wall and up on the tower rise, where a steeply-pitched roof gaped, half covered by canvas.

"Did the damage from the autumn storm spread so far?" Liutgard demanded. "Did they not plant the fields this spring?"

The fields beyond Kassel's walls should have been green with early summer crops, but they had the reddish-brown stain of highland clay exposed to rain and wind.

"They did, my lady, rye and barley, as is customary. Even a few oats. But those men from Varre did trample the fields. See, there." He waved a hand but he could have been waving at anything. "We heard that they confiscated the grain stores and even burned some, but that last I just can't believe."

Sanglant's gaze had drifted back to the palace and tower on the hill. From this height, he could discern the footprints of more ancient structures where the newer buildings of the wooden palace and stone donjon overlapped the mark of ancient walls. Long ago a Dariyan outpost had stood here and before that a yet more ancient holding constructed with huge stones set in place, so the legend told, by daimones of the upper air. The Dariyans had worked with dressed stone blocks, so Heribert had instructed him, and it was easy to imagine a workforce of men hauling such manageable material up an incline. But massive stones could as easily have flown as been hauled, even on rollers; the story of the daimones building them with magic made as much sense as any other.

"Hoping for a miracle, some folk hung out the feast day streamers when first day of summer dawned," said the old sergeant.

"I can't make them out from here," said Liutgard. She looked at Sanglant. "How do we win back my city?"

He surveyed the valley of Kassel. On the east the steep rise of hills made a natural barrier, which had been breached in Dariyan times with a massive ramp constructed of rubble and faced with stone.

"There the Hellweg emerges from the forest," he said, pointing to a scar in the forest cover where the ridge edge dipped lowest. "We'll be easily visible as we descend the ramp. There is no other reasonable route down into the valley. So if we ride straight in, they will certainly know in advance that we are coming. Sergeant, how many men hold the palace?"

"Perhaps a hundred."

"Even with the men we have, we'll be hard put to take the tower in a frontal attack," said Liutgard.

"It's built to withstand a siege."

"Yet if we wait for the rest of the Varren army to come up, we'll find ourselves caught between the enemy at the heart of the town and that which surrounds us from without. I do not like to think of setting a siege only to be besieged myself. Is there some other way into the tower, Sergeant? A river gate? A crawling space where a small group of men can creep in to surprise the defenders?"

"Nay, Your Majesty. Not even a servant's gate."

Liutgard smiled thinly. "There is no traitor's gate, Cousin. My great-uncle Eberhard—the very one who gave up his claim to the throne in favor of the first Henry—had that tower built. He didn't trust his enemies."

"Or his allies, no doubt, who might wonder if he would take up arms against the new king. Well, then, we cannot sneak a contingent inside and open up the gates to let the rest of us through. Sergeant, have you any signals by which you communicate with your allies inside? Could any person be persuaded to open up the tower gates at a prearranged signal?"

The sergeant considered. "Folk in the town we can have some speech with, but there's a heavy guard at the town gate. As for those in the tower, there's none go in and out except the enemy."

Sanglant frowned. "If only we had Eagle's Sight, we could arrange our attack as we did at Walburg.

Well, never mind it now. That avenue is closed to us. Can you smuggle in a score of men to assault the town gate and open it to us?"

"One or two at a time. It would take several days to manage it without being caught. But if we're caught, the enemy will know aught is afoot."

“And we haven't several days. So be it. I'm of a mind to try a parley."

"What of Ermengard?" asked the duchess. "I would gladly ransom myself for her."

"They'll not take you. If I hold Ermengard, I can sacrifice you and set your daughter in place with a regent. If they hold Ermengard, they hold your heir. I think they would rather have her than you, Liutgard.

Still, it might be worth offering, to see what manner of men hold the tower."

They returned to the troop and continued down the trail, returning at length to the main route of the Hellweg lower down. When at length the road broke free of the forest, they had a breathtaking view of the valley and the immense ramp down which they must ride. A sentry standing watch on the high tower walk would easily spot the banners of Fesse, Wendar, and the black dragon on the height. He nodded at Fulk, and the captain commanded the soldiers forward, down into the valley. The ramp was amazingly solid, although its slopes had, over the years, grown a carpet of low ground cover and fragile grasses.

"We'll need to protect our flanks and rear so we aren't surprised by Conrad's army," said the king, and once they reached the base, Sergeant Adalbert guided them south toward the banks of the river where a tangle of scrub brush and coppices of ash grew alongside the watercourse. They rode over a trampled field dusty from lack of rain. Red dirt coated the legs of the horses.

From the town, a horn sounded three times. Sanglant sent scouts back to get a closer look. Their route dipped into a hollow, and they turned and rode west in this cover until one of the men appeared on the rise, waving one arm frantically but not riding down to them. Sanglant spurred his mount forward, with Captain Fulk, Hathui, and a brace of soldiers behind him.

"What news?" he called.

But as soon as he surmounted the rise, he saw what the scout had seen. He turned, gesturing toward Liutgard, and Captain Fulk raised the horn to his lips and sounded the advance.

A party of about a hundred riders exploded from Kassel's lower gate and galloped away across fields until they reached the west-wending road. They vanished, riding toward Varre. It was too far to catch them without the risk of falling into an ambush or meeting Conrad on the road where numbers would give the Varren army the advantage.

Liutgard rode up beside Sanglant. Her face was flushed and her expression fierce. "Kassel is ours!"

she cried. "Taken without a fight!"

Sanglant frowned. "Hathui! Find Rufus—he's with us, is he not? Send him—send two Eagles, by different routes, and Sergeant Adalbert will provide guides for each one, in case they must take to the forest trails. Give them each a spare horse. They'll ride back to the main army. Tell them this: that we are settled into the tower of Kassel and will guard the town against imminent attack. They must proceed in haste, and with provisions sufficient for a siege, gathering anything they can along the route. It may also be that they will interrupt a siege laid in upon us by Conrad and Sabella. Go!"

"Your Majesty!" She rode away, calling for her Eagles.

"Fetch Lord Wichman," he said to Benedict.

"What are you thinking, Your Majesty?" asked Fulk.

Liutgard stared at the city, straining like a hound against the leash, eager to ride in to her home.

"We'll send Wichman and fifty riders north into the forest. It's fairly open beech wood there, is it not?" The sergeant nodded. "Well enough. He's accustomed to harassing the enemy. Let him wait in reserve. He can prowl the western road to ambush small parties and messengers. We'll give him some signal if we need him to attack in force once Conrad and Sabella arrive."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Can we not go, Sanglant!" demanded Liutgard. "I want to see my daughter."

Yet, after all, when they rode into a town ravaged by storm and parched by the enemy's raid, with a grateful population swarming onto the streets to greet them with hosannas and hallelujas, they found the tower deserted and Lady Ermengard gone. The enemy had taken her. She was Conrad's hostage now.

6

AT dusk, Captain Falco came to the chapel where, for most of the day, the skopos had led prayers to soothe the terrified schola. He accompanied her through the palace to the queen's chambers. Folk labored like ants anxious to put in their stores of food. Barrels brought up out of the town were being rolled into the lady's storehouse. Old men sharpened stakes in a courtyard, and a constant din floated up from the distant blacksmith's quarter. A pair of guards kept watch beside the cisterns while a trio of youths spilled water from full buckets into the waiting reservoir and, empty buckets dangling, trudged away to get more.

"This way, Holy Mother," said the captain.

In the outer chamber reserved for Adelheid's use, Lady Lavinia was speaking to a pair of stewards.

Seeing Antonia, she bent and kissed the hand offered to her.

"Forgive me, Holy Mother," she said. "I must depart in haste. Certain matters have come up, as we prepare for this siege. They could attack at any moment."

"Is there news?" Antonia asked her. "Did the man we sent to offer a parley, did he return?"

Without answering, Lavinia nodded toward the closed doors that, when open, offered passage into the queen's innermost chamber. She excused herself again and hurried away. In the corner, Mathilda sat alone on a couch clutching a doll. She had her eyes closed, although she was not asleep. Her lips moved as she murmured under her breath, but Antonia could not hear her words.

Almost Antonia went to her, to soothe her and offer a prayer to strengthen her. Captain Falco opened the door and stood aside to allow her to enter. He closed the door behind her without following her inside.

In the inner chamber, Antonia found herself alone with Adelheid and Alexandros. A barred window looked over a garden of cypress hedges and sleepy lavender. Alexandras stood in profile, staring into the deepening twilight as Adelheid paced. He seemed preoccupied; indeed, he did not even acknowledge Antonia's entrance.

"You are come, Holy Mother," the queen said, her voice dull.

"Has the messenger returned?" Antonia asked. "What news of our offer for parley?"

Adelheid glanced at Alexandras, but his gaze did not shift from whatever he was staring at out in that garden. A faint whiff of burning incense caught at her before trailing away, lost in a sharper scent of anxiety and fear.

"Refused," she said in a low voice. "They sent the man back with an arrow in his heart, dumped him outside our gates. They will not negotiate."

"They are shrewd, these Ashioi." Alexandras spoke without looking toward either woman. He mused in the manner of a man speaking to himself, hoping that a passing angel might overhear him and stop to give him advice. "They know the woods and the land. I believe that the messengers we sent out at dawn may not have made it past their guard. We cannot expect relief to come quickly if at all."

"They haven't the strength to sustain an attack on us, surely," said Antonia. "I saw no siege engines.

We are well set up with provisions and water."

"It remains in our interest to end this with parley, not blows." His fingers were hooked into his belt, perfectly still, all of him still.

Only Adelheid paced, and her restlessness began to irritate Antonia, who walked over to the side table and picked up an apple, the last one resting in a polished bowl. The fruit was withered, out of last harvest's store, but when she bit into it, the flavor remained sweet.

"Their demands are unconscionable in the eyes of God. What do you suggest, Alexandros? Since they will not negotiate?"

Five paces brought him to the side table, next to her. She had forgotten how fast a determined man moved. She did not like that bulky presence next to her, so she slid around the corner of the narrow table and shielded herself with her back to the wall.

"It is only a matter of time," he said, following her.

His right hand snapped forward, and his fingers closed around her throat. "Understand this, Holy Mother. I trust swords, and I have good reason not to trust the women who bind sorcery. I will not allow my life to hang from this thread of your goodwill. You may take my life with any change of the wind."

His fingers tightened. She released the apple, and heard its soft flesh splatter on the floor. With her left hand she grasped his forearm and pushed her nails into his flesh, but his grip did not waver. With her right, she groped for her eating knife and wiggled it out of its sheath, and struck for his side.

He twisted, caught her hand, and bent it back until the bones cracked in her wrist. The knife fell, ringing like a high bell where it hit cold floor. The pain blinded her, white hot and as sharp as steel, and at first she could not react, but she could hear with uncanny keenness as Adelheid began to murmur a prayer under her breath.

"God, make us strong. God, be a swift sword. Let

justice fall heavily upon the wicked."

He let her wrist fall and she heard the hiss of steel leaving its scabbard. Her sight flashed back. His long hunting dagger poised above her. Lamplight burnished its dark blade.

"In God's name, I command you—!" she gasped. "I am Holy Mother. This is—!"

"This is prudence," he remarked.

The dagger fell. It punctured the flesh between her breasts and rasped along bone until the point scraped against the stone wall behind her. Blood spilled along her skin. So much pain! She tried to tighten her grip on his arm, but it was too much effort. She was so weary, and wished only to lie down.

Adelheid's pretty voice caressed her with prayers.

"We will not turn away from You. Grant us Your help.

Preserve our life."

How had Alexandras corrupted her?

In the same manner the other men had, first Henry, then Hugh, and now this one-eyed, goat-footed, bristly monstrosity who called himself a lord although he was no more than a peasant's brat who had pulled himself to the top of a heap of dead men.

Brave words and brilliant eyes cozen a weak-willed woman. Adelheid had always been susceptible!

A pounding at the door shattered the prayer into a thousand shards. A voice shouted, loud enough to be heard through the thick door. "Your Majesty! My lord general! They attack!"

"Adelheid," he said.

"Oh, God," the queen said.

"She might have turned on us at any time."

"She is more powerful than we are. This is the only way to protect ourselves. There is much in the world we do not like that we must suffer because it is the only way to achieve the ends we seek."

Blood warmed Antonia. Her hearing remained keen and focused. These were Hugh's words, pouring from Adelheid's treacherous mouth. She tried to speak, to chastise the queen, but nothing came out.

"We give them her body," agreed Alexandras, "and they leave."

Antonia still had eyes. Adelheid glided away toward the door, but too quickly her form receded into a darkening distance, out of sight although she was almost close enough to spit on.

"Tell Captain Falco," he said to Adelheid, "to send this message. We meet their demand. Hurry! Of this act, speak to no person."

"She will betray you!" Antonia croaked, her voice nothing more than a whisper, but he heard her.

He flinched. "She holds power over you, knowing you murder me. This she will use when she finds a new man to support her."

He grinned, the hateful creature. His breath stank of onions, sweetened by a touch of mint. "You are dead, old woman. What passes in the land of the living is out of your hands."

But he was wrong. He was so wrong.

He turned half away from her, not paying attention to her as he listened and looked toward Adelheid at the door.

She was failing fast, but she found her voice.

"Ahala shin ah rish amurru galla ashir ah luhish."

Her voice gurgled, and blood sputtered from her lips. Her voice was almost without sound, too broken for him to hear, but the galla did not hear with ears of flesh.

"Let my blood draw forth the creature . . . out of the other world. Come out, galla, for I bind you with unbreakable fetters. This blood which you must taste . . . makes you mine to command. I adjure you, in the name of the holy angels whose hearts dwell in righteousness, come out, and do as I bid you."

He thought her already dead. He twisted the blade free with a casual turn and released her, stepping away. Her body slid to the marble floor, a restful place but cold.

I adjure you. No words passed her lips, but the galla heard. Avenge me.

A shadow loomed over her. Adelheid screamed, and Alexandros swore furiously and scrambled away from the killing touch of its black form. In the far distance, a door slammed open and shouts and the clatter of footsteps fell away.

As the tendrils of that darkness snaked forward, she felt these limbs seize on her blood. She felt its suck, draining her life as it filled the emptiness within. It had neither personality nor substance as she understood them; not fish or fowl, not male or female, not thinking and yet neither was it a dumb beast. It desired to fill itself with her because it had no real existence in this world, which to it was nothing but agony. Its wordless, soundless howl of pain consumed her.

Its killing caress also sharpened her mind and her heart.

The desire for revenge is a mortal failing. She must do God's work, here at the end. Adelheid is weak, but her child will rule after her; neither is a worthy target. Alexandras acts out of fear, because he is a treacherous Arethousan, corrupted by the false church and thereby willing to strike at the most holy skopos. The worst sort of criminal.

But he is still human.

Now that she has seen them, she knows that the abominations threaten God's order more than any other. Anne was right, after all. They were banished from Earth once. God cannot want them here, because they are a perversion. It is the Ashioi who must be harmed. They must be stopped, before anything else.

Hugh has joined them, but even Hugh is no more than a parasite, like the galla, sucking away the power that resides in others. The leader in the "feathered cloak" has no name that she knows. But there is one who does. One she tried to harm before, who might yet possess griffin arrows.

She must try.

God's work comes before all else, even before trifling thoughts of revenge. She herself is nothing compared to God's glory and God's justice.

"I adjure you."

She reached deep into the gash that opened into the other world, a place of terrible winds and unrelenting darkness. More came, a dozen, a score, crowding, eager for the blood. Her own blood—the most righteous—was sweetest to them.

I adjure you. Kill the man. The one. Who is called.

Sanglant.

X

A WELL-LAID TRAP

1

THEY used an old ruse, but it worked. With rope loosely bound around her hands, Liath walked with the young Ashioi woman called Sharp Edge in front and the four guards—Dog, Spotted Leopard, Buzzard, and Falcon—behind.

Secha wove the gate; she and Eldest Uncle would remain behind. The other seven crossed through sparks and the bright blue light of the aetherical gateway to another place. As her feet found earth again and the blue aether surrounding them faded to air, Liath glanced immediately toward the sky, but a dawn haze hid the heavens.

"What's this?" A dozen mask warriors approached. The perimeter was held by double ranks of bold soldiers.

"Two prisoners for Feather Cloak," said Sharp Edge tartly. She sauntered past with a sly smile.

Every male there watched her go, amazed by the sway of her hips and the ripple of braid falling in a line down her half-naked back to brush the low-slung band of her skirt. She had a shocking amount of skin exposed, but the Ashioi were not, on the whole, a modest people.

Liath followed, head bowed but eyes lifted, and Anna walked behind her, frightened enough that Liath heard her panting. When they came safely past the outer line of the guard and started down the path that led to the base of the hill, Liath raised her head to survey the landscape. A town, ringed with a stone wall, nestled where the higher foothills broke into a rolling plain. All seemed quiet, but the gates were closed and there was no traffic in and out. A wide road, no doubt paved in the time of the Dariyan Empire, cut northward into the hills toward distant peaks, most shrouded in cloud. North beyond the reaches of Karrone and Wayland lay Wendar and Varre, closer now. She breathed in, wondering if she could discern any least change in the air, some hint of northern spice. They had in one "stride" crossed a vast region of land, all of Dalmiaka and much of eastern Aosta. Except for highland trees, the landscape was brown and gold, little different than the sere countryside of Ashioi country. It smelled of dust more than anything.

The Ashioi walked in Aosta, a land their half-breed descendants had once ruled. The Ashioi army led by Feather Cloak had laid in a siege around Novomo. They did not have quite enough soldiers to encircle the town, and no doubt the paths leading northward remained poorly guarded. But they were here, and Blessing was with them.

The small company tramped down to the main road and turned toward the town. A sparse woodland covered the slopes of nearby hills. Vineyards and olive trees ringed the town, among them small hamlets and long fields striped by sprouting grain. No one moved in field or village.

Anna moaned. "They've burned all those houses." She wept with fear. "Do you think they've killed everyone? They hate us."

"Maybe so," said Liath, "but 'they' do not all think alike, Anna. Some will help us. Some will wish to kill us. Do not despair. Consider Blessing, who will need your help."

"She won't come with us, my lady. She's training to be a soldier."

Sharp Edge, hearing their speech, dropped back to walk beside Liath. "Bright One, do you think your daughter will follow us? It's said that Zuangua, who is a bold leader and a very handsome man, I might add, has taken her under his wing."

"So I hear."

"She may not want to leave him. Then it will all be for nothing, if Feather Cloak takes you and kills you. I do not want to lose you. Without you, I will never have a chance to learn properly. The Pale Sun Dog hoards his knowledge. He'll never teach us everything he knows. He'll never trust us."

"It is a risk," Liath admitted. "But if I allow my daughter to remain with your people, then she will always be at war with her father's kin. She must not be allowed to be brought up by those who will always counsel war with humankind. If Secha were Feather Cloak, I might think differently."

"It is hard to imagine there can be peace with the Impatient One sitting on the Eagle Seat and Zuangua the Handsome—her own uncle!—as her chief councillor and war leader among the masks,"

admitted Sharp Edge. "But I am willing to try to get your daughter back. I will help you, and you will teach me. I don't see how I can get what I want any other way!"

Liath chuckled, although her mood was grim. "In this way, we are alike."

"Hush now!" said Dog Mask, who with Falcon Mask led the way. "See, there are human guardsmen standing along the walls of the town. But our own camp does not stir. I see sentries, but no flights of warriors ready to strike."

"There!" said Sharp Edge. "The war party is holding a convocation, there on that hill. Do you see their banners? Nay, stop here!"

They halted where the curve and height of the road gave them a good vantage. The camp spread across lower ground. Individual folk were easily visible among tents slung low along the earth. A procession led by Feather Cloak's spinning gold wheel broke free of the assembly and marched toward the gate, halting just beyond bowshot of the walls.

"There is Blessing," whispered Anna.

Liath scanned the folk in that procession. It was difficult for her to distinguish individuals at this distance, although Feather Cloak's vivid costume was remarkable from any distance. With a jolt that made her shudder, she saw Hugh's golden head. He was tallest, surrounded by a dozen tense mask warriors. He turned, staring back her way as if he knew she was there. A pair of masks broke away from his escort and trotted to Feather Cloak. They gave her a message, it seemed, and after a brief exchange they retreated at a run toward the main camp.

Where was Blessing? Belatedly, Liath saw a slender girl standing beside the proud warrior Zuangua. Yes, indeed, it would be difficult to drag Blessing from her place beside such an impressive uncle, there at the front of the lines. Blessing was old enough in body to be allowed conditional entry into the adult world, and young enough in mind to have no true understanding of its dangers and consequences.

"Above the gate!" said Dog Mask. "Look!"

Within Novomo, many people had gathered along the parapets and in the watchtowers set on either side of the gate, but there was no hostile movement, no shouting or cursing, only a sense of anticipation as they stared at the waiting Ashioi. A large sack was lifted onto the battlements. Wrapped in rope, it was lowered to the ground outside the gates. When the sack reached earth, the rope was released and tossed after it.

A trio of mask warriors dashed forward, grasped the sack, and hauled it back to the procession, whose ranks opened to receive it. Liath and the others could see nothing of what transpired, only that Hugh's golden head disappeared as if he had dropped down to examine the contents of the sack.

After a bit he reappeared.

"What would the Pale Dogs be throwing out of the city," asked Sharp Edge, "that Feather Cloak would be willing to receive?"

"It's hard to imagine."

The golden wheel, lifted by the standard-bearer, spun lazily as the procession split asunder, re-formed, and retired back toward camp. A conch shell blew a five-note pattern, repeated twice. At this signal, first a single tent, and then four, and then a score sagged and sank and were folded and rolled as the army began the business of lifting the siege.

"It's a body," said Sharp Edge, staring at the crumpled heap revealed on the ground by the retreat of the procession. They had abandoned the corpse. "The Pale Dogs gave a body to Feather Cloak. She must have gotten what she came for."

"The body of the sorcerer who sent the galla," said Liath softly. "Is there any person left who knows that secret?"

"You do not know how to call these creatures?"

"I do not. Perhaps Hugh of Austra knows."

"It would be good to kill such a man," remarked Sharp Edge. "I would do it myself." She grinned.

Liath laughed, not meaning to. The young woman was close to her in age, stubborn, fixed, blunt, and an unrepentant tease, comfortable in making males uncomfortable. As their gazes met, she felt an intense feeling of kinship similar to that she felt for Sorgatani.

"What must we do?" asked Sharp Edge. "My people are leaving. Should we follow them back to our country?"

"No. I must journey north, and I mean to take my daughter with me.

"What is your plan?"

"I'm not sure."

"We'll want shelter soon," said Dog Mask, always alert, his dark gaze sweeping in all directions.

"Look how those clouds are coming down from the north."

"Storm clouds." Liath noted how swiftly the front was moving in, and how black its face was, and how high the dark clouds had piled one upon the next over the hills.

"Too late," said Sharp Edge. "A bundle of masks comes to intercept us."

A score of masks, mostly birds and cats, charged her group at a full run, ready to cut her off if she tried to escape.

"Now what will you do?" Sharp Edge asked. The four mask warriors looked expectantly at her.

"I will negotiate. And hope they possess no poisoned arrows."

They met beside the golden wheel, which spun in the brisk wind blowing down off the foothills.

The clouds had not quite broken over the hills, but they would at any moment like a flood let loose.

The air was charged; the hair on her arms tingled, and her eyes smarted.

There were many witnesses, but the only ones who mattered were Feather Cloak, Hugh, Zuangua, and Blessing. Her own attendants stood back ten paces, waiting for the signal they had agreed on.

"I did not send for you," Feather Cloak said, eyes narrowed with displeasure. "How and why are you come?"

"She escaped," said Hugh in a low voice.

"Impossible. No one can escape the Heart-of-the-World's-Beginning. Who freed you?"

"I freed myself. Give me my daughter and safe passage, and I will tell you how I did it."

"I won't go," said Blessing. "I don't want to go. I'm training to be a warrior!"

"Hush!" said Zuangua.

She snapped her mouth shut.

Feather Cloak shrugged mockingly. "I cannot force the child to go with you. You have fallen into a trap of your own making, Bright One." She glanced at Sharp Edge and the four mask warriors who accompanied Liath. "Those who aided you will be punished."

"Liathano is mine," said Hugh. "So you promised."

"Mine to give you when I am ready," retorted Feather Cloak, "and I am not ready." She beckoned.

Two-score mask warriors closed in to trap them within the ring made by their bodies. "Guard these."

"This was not our agreement," said Hugh in an even lower voice, almost a whisper. He had hidden his hands in the folds of his robe, and the cloth shifted and rippled over them.

"The sorcerer who raised the galla is dead."

"So she is," he agreed, glancing toward Novomo's walls. Wind raced through the air and whipped his hair back. "She is no longer a threat."

"You are right to say so," said Feather Cloak. "I have been too cautious, too kind. No more. I will tolerate no more human sorcerers who can threaten me. Enough!" She raised both arms, tilted her palms to face the heavens. "Masks! Kill them!"

A shock passed through those mask warriors close enough to hear, like an intake of breath. Even Liath was too surprised to react immediately.

"Too late," said Hugh into this pause. "My trap is already sprung."

The storm front crashed down like waves breaking. The wind hit. Within the encampment, the gale uprooted stakes and sent the cloth of the shelters into a frenzy, blowing, curling, or torn loose to ripple away south. Thunder boomed, although Liath saw no flash of lightning. This was no natural storm.

"Get down!" she cried.

Her companions dropped flat.

She leaped toward Blessing. Lightning blinded her, striking so close that her skin seemed to rip off her body. She flew away from the strike, blasted sideways by its power, and smacked hard onto the earth. She blacked out.

Startled back into consciousness, her scalp buzzed.

Thunder roared. Without meaning to, she clapped her arms over her head, shut her eyes, and prayed. Even with her eyes shut, a second lightning strike flashed through her eyelids to leave streaks in her vision. The crack and boom that came after deafened her. When she wiped her running nose, she opened her eyes to see blood on her hand.

"Oh, God." She pushed up to hands and knees and with a curse struggled to her feet because she had to find Blessing. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious.

The Ashioi camp had dissolved into chaos as mask warriors raced to capture tents and gear blown to pieces by the wind, as others staggered for help because they were injured. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision of the jagged streaks etched into her sight. Her gaze tracked aimlessly over hillside and distant wall and jumbled field until with an effort she focused on what lay immediately around her.

The golden wheel burned. Smoke poured heavenward. All around her, the ground was scorched. A dozen bodies—two score—more— sprawled on the ground. They were charred husks, twisted and gnarled in grotesque figures, so blackened that their clothing and even their features had been burned off.

The stench made her retch.

"Bright One!" Sharp Edge called at her ear, her voice like a whisper although it seemed clear from the stretch of her lips and the tightening of her eyes that she was shouting.

A shadow approached out of the north. A cloudburst raced toward them across the open ground, hammering into the dirt.

The rain struck.

Her companions pressed up beside her and spoke words, but she could not hear them over the pounding rain and the echo of thunder in her ears. She pushed into the ranks of the stunned onlookers.

Amazingly, Zuangua had survived. He was kneeling. Rain streamed down his body. Leaning on a spear, he cradled his left hand against his chest. His fingers were curled into a claw; streaks of weeping skin scored that arm. His neck was red and raw.

Seeing her movement, he looked up. As calmly as if he were greeting a long-expected friend, he shouted in a strong voice that penetrated her deafness. "So it happened in ancient days, when the Horse witch called lightning and struck down her captors, the blood knives. I saw it happen that day, as it happened this day. Is this your work, Li'at'dano?"

"It is not." She would have grabbed him to shake him, but she could see any touch would overset his tenuous balance. "I am no weather worker. Are you all such fools to let a man like Hugh of Austra walk as your ally?"

"She was."

The body lying at his feet was blackened and distorted, the feathered cloak reduced to wisps of bright green and gold mixing into the sodden earth. Her throat burned, and her stomach rose, and she turned away, catching a hand against her stomach. Behind her, she heard one of her companions retching. Anna bawled.

"Where is my daughter?"

"Not among the dead. The Pale Sun Dog has taken her."

The rain lashed them. She sucked in air, but it tasted of ash and roasted flesh. She spat, but the flavor coated her tongue. She tried to catch rain in her mouth, but that only made the taste run down her throat, and she could not bear to swallow the ashes of the dead. There were at least a dozen dead and twice as many wounded. More, a hundred at least, stumbling, vomiting, mouths opening and closing with no sound she could hear, and one screaming in pain like a wounded rabbit, but the sound existed a hundred leagues from her, audible only because it was so high and so ghastly.

It was strange to discover that nothing could surprise her, not after that bolt called from the sky. She had always known Hugh capable of anything, limited only by the scope of his knowledge. While she walked the spheres, many years had passed on Earth; he had possessed Bernard's book, and other resources besides. He had studied with Anne and the Seven Sleepers. The laws of inheritance and custom had denied him power in the world of regnant and noble. Yet it wasn't true he had no power. He had reached for, and grasped, the only power available to him.

She touched the astrolabe tied to her belt. It was protected by a leather cover, slick beneath her fingers. Even clouds—even daylight— would not stop him from weaving the crown.

"Hai!" She turned her back on Zuangua. Buzzard Mask was vomiting, but hearing her voice he sat back, wiping his mouth although he still gagged and shuddered. She shouted. "Sharp Edge! All of you!

We've been outmaneuvered. We'll run for the crown and catch him there."

"Wait!" Zuangua called.

She turned back. "Speak quickly."

His niece's twisted corpse held his gaze. "So briefly she came into her power. Now it is stripped from her and she returns to the earth which births us. Who will walk as Feather Cloak?" His smile was a challenge. "Will you, Bright One?"

"Don't mock me! Go to Secha, who led your people in exile. She is not a fool."

His expression and his smile were twisted because of the way his left side had been singed. Blisters were already forming along his arm and his cheek. "Secha has aided you. So has my brother. Some still listen to their words, but not many."

"Nay, better yet, send an envoy to Sanglant. Let there be peace between Ashioi and humankind."

He flicked his fingers in a sign of dismissal, as though casting away the evil eye. "I have had enough of humankind! Sanglant has made his bed among his father's people. We know where his heart lies. This one, the Pale Dog, he will betray you as he has betrayed all others."

"Yes."

"He wishes to be the last sorcerer known among humankind."

"Of course."

"He wants you to follow him. That's why he took your daughter."

"I know."

"Don't you fear him?"

"Not anymore. Enough! I am leaving. There is nothing more you can say to me."

"Let me go with you to avenge my niece." He stood and took a wavering step, followed by a stronger second and third. "A hundred mask warriors, scouts, trackers. He'll not expect you to come with a war party."

She had no time to argue. Sharp Edge and the others were ready to go. 'Agreed. But if you cannot keep up, we'll leave you. And know this, your enemy is only Hugh of Austra. My countryfolk—Wendish and Varren—are not to be harmed."

"A truce only. Not an alliance."

"A truce only." She turned to her companions. "Quickly!"

She and her retinue broke into a run. Every step hurt, jarring up through her feet. Her entire body ached and burned, but she ran. Behind, his warriors fell in at the heels of her party, footsteps rumbling along the earth. They raced up the road, and with Zuangua behind them the Ashioi army fell away and did not challenge their passage.

The rain slackened, fading to a gentler, steadier shower. The storm had outpaced them.

Lightning crackled above the hilltop among the stones, a half dozen furious strikes. While they were still too far away to interfere, she saw the archway of blue light blossom above the stones, threads pulling north. They ran panting up the long slope of the hill toward the crown, feet slipping along the chalk track. Mask warriors lay stunned or dead as rain washed along their bodies, red with blood and black with ash. Here, too, he had used lightning to clear his path. The smell of their dying was awful.

Even so, they came too late. As she sprinted out ahead of her companions to reach the weaving ground, the archway collapsed into a shower of sparks that not even the hissing rain could douse.

She stood there, panting, soaked through and furious, as the rest gathered around her. The smothering cloak cast over her hearing had begun to ease.

"He has escaped us!" cried Zuangua.

Sharp Edge said, "I watched, Bright One. I marked the angles, as well as I could."

Liath looked at her, and together—recklessly—they grinned. "I, too." She unhooked and lifted the astrolabe. "Like Hugh, we don't need clear skies, or night. Who is with me? I mean to leap now, or risk losing him."

Zuangua laughed through gritted teeth. How he kept his feet with those injuries she could not imagine. He was a very stubborn man. "We'll follow into the maw of death's grinning skull, if need be."

With her shuttle, Sharp Edge traced a pattern onto the sodden ground. The others stepped back, forming into disciplined ranks, as Liath began to weave.

2

IVAR had fallen asleep leaning against a fallen log when a boot prodded him awake. A second kick jolted him. The damp had soaked through to his rump. As he stood, cloth stuck to his skin, slowly peeling. Groaning, he brushed dirt off his calves and shook chaff off his fingers.

"Get on!" said Jonas, who possessed the boot. "We're moving. You walk ahead of me."

He trudged after the others, although the silent Quman guardsman—that horror!—brought up the rear, an implacable barrier. Even the Eagle seemed more fit than Ivar; the old man strode at the front, wary yet confident, as they pushed along a hunter's trail that unwound parallel to a merry brook tumbling over rocks and decaying branches drenched in moss. They kept to the brushy verge, since they walked through a predominantly beech forest and therefore had little enough cover should any soul spot them from afar. Birds chittered. A roly-poly brown animal scuttled away through leaves, and a moment later a splash sounded from the water.

Ai, God, he was so weary, but he kept one foot moving and then the next. The healer walked right in front of him. She carried a number of charms hung here and there, at her neck, her wrists, and sewn into the ankle of the weird leggings she wore which seemed woven and fitted all from a single piece of cloth. Some were beads and some polished wood, but others had a ghastly off-white color like beads carved from bone, and these cackled softly in time to her footsteps. He shuddered. Ahead of her went the cleric, so thin it was amazing he had the strength to walk, and before him Lord Berthold crowded up behind the Eagle. The green wood spread on all sides, a lacework of trees, shadows, and delicate light woven among the sedges hugging the ground.

"Are we near to Kassel yet?" asked Berthold.

"By nightfall we'll walk in through the gates, if they're open to us," said the Eagle.

"Think you we outpaced the Eika army?"

"I don't know. The road swings in a broad curve south around the deep forest and across a ford. Our route was shorter. We've kept up a strong pace. Perhaps. If Lady Fortune, and God, smile upon us."

"I have sores on my feet," said Jonas. Ivar glanced back at him, and in truth he was limping—favoring first one foot and then the other, like a man dancing on coals. "We should have kept the horses."

"Hush!" said Wolfhere.

They were all nervous and they were all tired, so when the crack exploded out in the far wood, they dropped like stones. It could have been a branch snapping off a tree, or a staff striking wood. A man's voice carried over an unknown distance. A horse blew, closer by.

"Into the bushes," said Wolfhere.

All rolled and scrambled into the tangle beside the stream. Twigs scraped across Ivar's face, and his right hand sank up to the wrist in a sink of mud. The rustling of their movement ceased, and they hid in silence. Leaves brushing at his face made his skin itch. Pray God, let these not be stinging nettles!

He heard a sneeze, but it did not come from any one of their party. Hoofbeats sounded, the creaks and coughs and jangle of a troop of horsemen passing near by, coming up from behind but not, it seemed, on the trail they were following. He dared not move his head. His hood had slipped, and the flash of red might draw the attention of any observant scout. Water seeped in around his sunken hand. A bird chirruped beside the flowing water. They did not move, and at length the noise of the troop faded.

Wolfhere shifted out of the brush, rose, and spoke. "We'll have to change direction. We can't risk running into them."

"Who were they?" asked Berthold. "My view was blocked by these damned branches."

"I did not have a good view, but in any case I saw no banner. Given that they're riding from the west, I must assume they are Conrad's men."

"Should we cross the stream and head south?" asked Berthold.

"That will bring us closer to the main road. We might be caught between their main force and this scouting group. I think we must press north and see if we can swing around in a circle and avoid them that way."

The mud sucked and slurped as Ivar pulled his hand free. He crawled backward, stood, and wiped his hand on his tunic, which was already so caked with dust and dried mud that he shed it in flakes as he walked. He itched, but no blisters had broken out, so God had shown him this small mercy at least, that he had not hidden among the nettles.

They cut north off the path and trudged through the sparse field layer, spacing themselves a body's length apart so they might hide more easily behind the boles of trees should they spot armed men. It was a warm afternoon, with no wind, but not hot. Ivar had forgotten what it meant to be hot, just as he had begun to forget the nature of the sun in its glory, bright and fierce and blinding, like the angels. The servants of God—sun and moon and stars—were steadfast, never failing in their duty; he must serve likewise. He walked, and because he was tired, he fixed his gaze on his feet so he could keep from tripping over some small obstacle, a crumbling branch, a splintered stump, or a growth of sedge, now in flower. Everything was blooming late. It was hard to remember what he meant to do. Warn the noble commanders about the Eika attack, save Constance, find Hanna. He no longer particularly cared to what woman or man he gave his message. He just wanted a wash to ease the ache in his feet.

"Hush! Halt!" The Eagle raised a hand.

They staggered to a halt in their broken line. The old man looked east, and so did they all, hearing what he heard: the clash of arms, a man's high shout, and a great deal of crashing and cracking as men fought through the underbrush in the distance. Despite the open vista of beech forest, the rise and fall of the land hid the skirmish, but its ring and clamor sang clearly enough.

"Follow me!"

Wolfhere set off at a brisk walk north by northwest, heading away from the skirmish. They pushed through the low field layer easily, moving at a steady jog, and although Ivar thought he would probably die as his thighs ached and trembled and his lungs burned, he refused to fall behind and be seen as less of a man than the others. Even the foreign woman loped as easily as a panther, never tiring.

Jonas tripped, and the Quman soldier—the others called him Odei, but Ivar could not bear to think of him as a human being with a name—swung down to help him up. All heads turned back to watch.

Shapes moved in the distance as one flank of the melee whipped into view: A trio of mounted riders lashed their horses as half a dozen others pursued them.

Wolfhere swore. Ivar dropped to the ground and scrambled on hands and knees toward Wolfhere as the others hid in whatever cover they could find. Only the cleric stood, staring not at the fighting but at the treetops as though he were gazing toward an angel hidden within the trembling flash of leaves.

"Heribert!" Wolfhere grappled the cleric's legs, and they tumbled down together, but it was too late.

The blow hit from an unexpected direction.

From the west came the pounding of footsteps and men panting as they closed in. "There! There!"

they called. "Grab them! Give it up! Lay down your arms, and you'll be given quarter."

The riders had vanished into the wood, but as Ivar pushed up to kneel he found their party surrounded by a score of infantry, men whose tabards were blazoned with the stallion of Wayland and whose faces were streaked with dirt, as though they had tried to hide themselves in the forest cover by appearing as shadows and light. Each one carried a spear. All had bows and short swords. They were impressively armed.

"Move! Move!" said their leader. "We've been on your trail since yesterday. My lord duke wants a word with you."

"Damn," said Wolfhere as he rose. He looked around once as if he had a notion to cast magic into the air and confound their captors so that he and Berthold and the rest could escape. But he couldn't possibly do that.

"I've twisted my ankle," said Jonas sourly

Wolfhere sighed, shoulders sagging. He glanced at Berthold, and the young lord shook his head slightly. The other two—Odei and Berda—looked at Berthold, and the young lord lifted both hands, palms out and open, to show that it was, alas, time to surrender.

Conrad and Sabella had reached Kassel before them, but there was no sign of the Eika. The Varren tents circled two thirds of the valley, which was anchored to the north on a wide slope so steep that a recent avalanche had torn through the trees. In the broad valley, men chopped and hauled and hammered and dug siege works. Work was particularly busy along the eastern edge.

Ivar tried to estimate the number of Varren troops but could not. Beside him, Wolfhere spoke in a low voice to Berthold.

"More than ten centuries, my lord, but less than twenty. Yet see what banners rise above the citadel!" Behind Kassel's walls flew the Wendish banner, with eagle, lion, and dragon, and the Eagle of Fesse, together with a black dragon banner Ivar had never seen before. "Duchess Liutgard has returned.

It must be true. Prince Sanglant has declared himself king."

"It was always Henry's wish, or at least so my father told me," said Berthold. "Although it was never to be spoken of. I think that's why Father wanted Waltharia to marry Sanglant. He had a good idea that she had a chance to become queen, and make his grandchildren royal."

"He meant her to rule both Wendar and Varre and the marchland?" Wolfhere asked.

"Nay. I think my father meant the margrave's ring to pass to me." When Berthold grinned at the old Eagle, Ivar sulked, wishing the youth liked him better. His cheerful nature and bold determina-tion gave him the charisma usually only found in an older man. Yet Berthold ought to have passed as many years on Earth as Ivar had; it was only magic that had stolen so much time from both of them.

"Here, now," said the sergeant in charge of the men who had captured them. "Be quiet. Begging your pardon, my lord."

Men turned to stare as their bedraggled company crossed fields and were herded into the outer reaches of the encampment. Two tents rose above the rest. One was striped red and gold and flew the banner of Arconia's guivre, while the other boasted pure gold cloth blazoned all around its sides with the stallion of Wayland, bold and strong. To the ground before these tents they were brought, and made to wait in the lengthening shadows while the sergeant went inside and came out again.

"My lord duke is out hunting," he said. In the distance they heard a chorus of cheers, and he looked up and in that instant his face opened to reveal all the loyalty and love he gave to his duke. "Well, here he comes. Get down now."

Berthold did not kneel, and so none of the others did, not even Ivar.

The procession arrived, two-score men in mail and helmets, with swords and spears tucked and ready.

"We gave that bastard a scare!" said the dark man Ivar recognized as the duke. He was laughing until he saw the prisoners, shorn of their weapons and strange to look on.

"Good God!" He tossed his helm to one of his attendants, swung down, and crossed to stand before the prisoners, surveying them with a sly smile. A trio of whippets loped up to lick his hands.

"Good lord! You are Villam's son, the one that was lost. Can it be? What sorcery has restored you to the land of the living?"

"I was never dead," said Berthold stoutly. "In truth, Cousin, I think I might have slept under a stone crown for many years. What sorcery bound me I cannot say. This man, Lord Jonas, is the only one who survived of the six who accompanied me. I pray you, do you mean to make me your prisoner in this rough way? Surely we are kinsman!"

Conrad laughed. "Come inside, then, Cousin! I'll have drink and food brought. If you've been asleep for years, you must have developed a powerful thirst! Yet these others ..." He stared for the longest time at Berda, shook his head, squinted at Odei, noted Brother Heribert, nodded at Wolfhere with the casual mark of a man acknowledging a servant he recognizes, and finally settled on Ivar.

"Pull off that hood."

Grimly, Ivar obeyed.

“Ah, indeed, the rufus boy from the North Mark. You keep flitting in and out of my path. What is your name again?"

"Ivar, son of Count Harl of the North Mark and Countess Herlinda."

"Yes. Lord Berthold, you travel with a strange and puzzling retinue. A banished Eagle, a Quman barbarian, this . . . female person, whose origins I cannot account for, a cleric, and Lord Ivar who was last known to be dead. I am wondering how so many people who might long have been thought to be dead are walking on Earth like so many spirits roaming restlessly abroad at the Hallowing Tide."

"We are not dead, my lord," said Wolfhere. "I have news of your daughter, Lady Elene."

Like a hound catching a scent, Conrad went rigid. He dismounted, cast his reins to a groom, and trod right up to the Eagle until his height and breadth and stature overwhelmed the old man. The Eagle did not back down.

"She is dead," said Conrad. "So my mother promised me. Damn her."

"She is dead," agreed Wolfhere in a calm voice. He stood in the most relaxed posture imaginable, although Conrad loomed over him. "But not through your mother's agency. Duchess Meriam sheltered her from the backlash of the great weaving, and sent her home in my company. You may ask Lord Berthold, who will vouch that Elene came safely as far as Novomo, in Aosta. There, it is true, I failed her. It was Hugh of Austra who murdered her, when she was sleeping and helpless, and for no better reason than that he wanted no apprentice of Meriam's to challenge his knowledge of the magical arts."

Conrad was silent and still for so long that Ivar began to think he had gone into a trance, lost to the world, as grieving folk sometimes did. One of the dogs whined, tail arching down and ears flat as it caught its master's mood. Nearby, a man sawed at wood; a hammer pounded. Dirt cast from a shovel spattered on earth. A voice cursed, and a pair of men led a quartet of milk goats past on leashes, serenaded by goatish complaints. On their heels came another group of riders, who gave way as a silver-haired woman dismounted and strode over to Conrad.

"What is this I hear? Prisoners? Who are these?" She saw the old Eagle, recognized him, and laughed. "My father's faithful wolf, come back to bite—yet who means he to snap at? Is this Villam's brat? I thought him dead and lost!" She looked at the others, but when she examined Ivar, he saw her frown and, with a shrug, dismiss him. Thank God she hadn't recognized him!

"Come inside." Without further speech, Conrad plunged into his tent.

Ivar was herded inside with the others but forced to stand to one side along the canvas wall with a line of armed men so close behind him that the hilt of a sword pressed into one buttock. Conrad's tent was furnished with a pair of couches—difficult to transport—and a dozen chairs set on the ground scuffed to dirt. A girl sat on the single carpet, and its blue colors were far more brilliant than her scruffy clothing, which looked very like a servant's calf-length linen smock covered by a milite's well-worn tabard, belted but nevertheless so big on her that it hung in great awkward folds about her shoulders and hips. Seeing Lady Sabella, she rose and scuttled sideways to the chair where Conrad sat down. He noted her and put out an arm, and she melted into its shelter. From this fatherly refuge she stood as bravely as she could.

"She is a weapon," said Sabella.

"So have you said a dozen times since she fell into our hands," said Conrad easily, without shifting.

"Liutgard will want her back. This is now her heir, since it appears that the elder girl really is dead."

Conrad's right eye shuttered slightly, his mouth winced, and then he recovered. "I'll not use Lady Ermengard as a pawn. I'll assign men to escort her back to Autun for the time being. She can be fostered with Berry."

"You're sentimental and a fool, Conrad. Once this girl is dead, Liutgard has no living heirs.

Queen Conradina's line will vanish once and for all time if Liutgard does not hereafter remarry and reproduce. Then Fesse is thrown into disorder."

That his tone remained calm made the duke seem suddenly quite dangerous. "I won't allow this girl to be murdered. If I must, I'll send her to Bederbor."

"Best not," said Ivar, prodded by a sudden sympathy for the frightened girl. She could not be more than thirteen or fifteen. "The road west is no longer safe."

That got their attention, although he hadn't meant to do so quite so dramatically.

Sabella swung round to glare at him. He squirmed, but he dared not move. "What do you mean?" she demanded. Then she peered at him as if she were shortsighted. "Don't I know you? You look familiar."

He saw by her expression that she could not place him. Conrad laughed.

"Don't you know this rufus bird? He flocked with that prettily plumaged creature you kept in your cage but which escaped you."

"Have done, Conrad! Do not mock me!"

He grinned.

A horn blared outside, and men shouted. Conrad jumped to his feet and set the girl aside as the entry was swept open and a captain strode in accompanied by a travel-worn scout. The man's left arm was bandaged, and the bandage stained with dried blood.

"My lord duke. My lady." The scout knelt. "Riders coming out of the east. They fly the banner of Saony."

"Rotrudis is dead," said Sabella.

Conrad nodded. "These must be her daughters, riding in support of Sanglant."

The scout continued. "They are a half day—if not less—from Kassel. If they camp at dusk on the road, then they'll reach here by midday tomorrow."

"What numbers?" asked Conrad.

"I could gain no good estimate, my lord. I had no opportunity to get around their flank. The woodland road restricted my view. But a good number."

" 'A good number' can signify a score, or two thousand," said Sabella with a sneer. "Can you give no better idea than that?"

"I beg your pardon, my lady. I sent other men into the woods to spy out their numbers, but none of them have returned. Lady Theophanu will have her own scouts."

"An unknown number bide inside Kassel," said Conrad. "Our army caught between. Do we break the siege and retreat?"

"No," said Sabella, "we make our stand. We have good defenses. The north is impassable. The eastern hills are steep, and we control the ramp and, thus, the Hellweg. The south and west are ours.

Our position is stronger than his."

He nodded. "It's true, especially now that we've received word from Mother Scholastica that she will put no impediment in our path."

"Should we defeat Sanglant," returned Sabella scornfully. "My aunt risks nothing."

"Perhaps not." He laughed. "The well-being of the souls of every person living in Wendar and Varre must be her first concern. In this manner, the displeasure of the church aids our cause."

"Why does that amuse you, Conrad?"

"Because my blessed mother began her life as an infidel."

“And departed it as a God-fearing woman of unimpeachable reputation."

"Well," he said tightly, "let's not speak of my mother. Our position is strong, and despite everything I must suppose we may even outnumber him."

"Think you so?"

"If Sanglant does not trust Mother Scholastica, and I doubt he does, he will have left behind a contingent to support his claim where rivals may hope to discredit him at her court."

"Think you so?" asked Sabella.

"I am sure of it. She is a strategist, just as I am. She'll have made sure to let him know she can't be trusted. In any case, he can't have ridden so far and so quickly with a large army. And if he has marched all the way north from Aosta, and with soldiers who spent three years in the south with Henry, he'll have lost many of his veterans—not just those who died, but those milites who demand to return home at once to care for their farms and estates."

"Then it seems our victory is assured."

"Perhaps not. Here, in Kassel, we will be forced to protect ourselves against a double siege.

Because once this new force arrives, they will strike us behind while the others attack from the front.

Despite superior numbers, we'll be hard-pressed to hold them off."

"Now you seem to be arguing that we cannot win."

"Not at all. Sanglant cannot hold forever. Once the nobles see him impotent in the face of opposition, their support will waver. They want no bastard to rule them. He'll have to give up."

"Yes, that will work," agreed Sabella. "Sanglant cannot defeat us once church and nobles both come over to our side."

"That's right. In the end, he will lose." Conrad nodded, then looked at Ivar. "What did you mean, that the road west is no longer safe? Do you mean Lord Wichman's men, out harrying us in the north?

We skirmished with them today, the bastards."

Wolfhere said nothing. Lord Berthold glanced at each of his attendants; no other words passed between them. It was a conspiracy of silence, an unspoken agreement to support Sanglant over the Varren usurpers.

Ivar thought abruptly of Hanna. She would follow King Henry's wishes, wouldn't she?

"That's right," he said. "That's how we were caught, falling into the flanks of the melee."

"Three-score men will not harm us. I'm more worried about Sanglant's reserve coming out of the east in unknown numbers. Here, now. Captain! Take these men away and place them under guard.

Give them drink and food. Keep them safe."

Their guards escorted them past men busy hauling dirt and sawing wood and raising a hasty palisade along the encampment. Not one said a word more until they were prodded into an old byre standing in a farmstead now abandoned and in disrepair. They kicked aside the remains of filthy straw to find the good honest dirt beneath and, tucked away in one corner, a desiccated nest that was the last resting place of a family of dead mice, seven of them exactly, like their own sorry company. Bread, cheese, and ale were brought to the gate. Guardsmen paced outside, talking in low voices about what was known and what was only rumored. A man sang a hymn, joined by a second voice. It was getting dark, the light melting into the long summer twilight.

"Here, Brother Heribert, you must eat." Wolfhere guided the cleric through his meal patiently. A bite, chew, swallow. A sip of ale. A bite, chew, swallow. "You must keep up your strength."

"We are close now," said the cleric. "Why do we not go on?" "We are prisoners, Brother. We are set in a cage, here." "A cage," the cleric repeated thoughtfully, or stupidly. Ivar could not tell which.

He leaned to speak to Berthold. "What is wrong with him?" "Brother Heribert? He's never been the same—well, so the others said who knew him—after we came out of the earth up in the Alfar Mountains. He was buried in a slide of earth, but we dug him out. He vanished from Novomo after Hugh of Austra murdered Lady Elene. I thought perhaps he had run off with Hugh the Bastard, but we found him much later, at St. Barnaria's rest house, up on the pass as we crossed north. He was starving, for he never knew to eat, so I suppose some evil humor has disordered his mind. I wish I knew how he escaped, the night Hugh of Austra murdered Elene, and kidnapped the brat. But he won't—or can't—tell us."

Wolfhere squatted beside them, nodding toward the oblivious Heribert, who was now counting and recounting the dead mice. Jonas grabbed the nest out of his hands and tossed it into another corner.

Heribert made no protest but merely turned his gaze to stare at the weathered and cracking boards, as if he could see the wind itself as it brushed through the gaps in the byre's walls.

"Poor creature," the Eagle said. "He was a loyal companion to Sanglant."

"So are we, are we not?" Ivar hesitated and glanced around but none of their guards stood within earshot. "None of us said anything. Now Conrad and Sabella will not know until too late that the Eika are coming."

"They have scouts and spies and outriders, all on alert," said Berthold. "Listen, Wolfhere. How can we get news of the Eika to Sanglant? Or to his reserve army? They will be walking into the Eika trap as well."

"If I had not lost my Eagle's Sight . . . well, that is gone." "There is one other thing." Berthold pressed an open hand over his tunic, patted his chest. "The writ of excommunication I carry here. If it's true that Mother Scholastica no longer supports Sanglant, then this will bolster Conrad and Sabella's claim."

"By their words, it seems if they may already know."

"Yet if they don't? What must we do, Wolfhere? Once they know, once the news gets out . . .

maybe, after all, I should burn it!"

"Rash words!"

"Do you think that woman is the rightful skopos? That God have anointed her? I do not!"

"I pray you, Lord Berthold! Do not imperil your soul!"

"I don't care! I know what she is, and I don't care. I don't fear her. I hate her! I hate all of them, all the Aostans who imprisoned us and let Elene die! Let them all rot! Let them all fall into the Pit!"

"My lord Berthold! I pray you!"

His attendants gathered around him to soothe him as he raved, speaking of the one called Elene, letting his grief and anger fall as tears. The cleric watched with an expression of dumb curiosity. The Eagle sighed. But Ivar rose, and paced, and halted at last before the Eagle.

"You carry a writ of excommunication? From the skopos in Darre?"

"A new skopos. The elder—Anne—she who came before—" A speck of dirt had gotten into Wolfhere's eye and he had to cry a few tears and rub with a finger to pry it out. "Holy Mother Anne is dead. This new one was biscop of Mainni in the days before, called Antonia. She was sent south to stand trial before the skopos—that would be Holy Mother Clementia, in those days—on the charge of malefic sorcery."

"What does the writ say?"

"All of Wendar and Varre will be placed under anathema if Sanglant is anointed and crowned as regnant."

"Why?"

"Because he is a bastard," said Wolfhere in a calm voice, "and because his mother's people are heathens and savages, their blood not fit to rule a godly people like the Wendish. Because some say he killed Henry—that he is a patricide."

"Surely if Conrad and Sabella had this writ, they would want word of it to reach Sanglant? You heard what they said about Mother Scholastica. She has turned against the prince. If one of us was able to convince them to let us carry it there, then we could warn Sanglant about the Eika. Otherwise, you might as well burn it. Then no one will know."

"No use," said Berthold wearily. "Other messengers will have been sent. Clerics. Presbyters. Soon the news will reach Mother Scholastica and all the biscops and church elders. Maybe you're right, and it already has. It still seems to me that it's best that Sanglant find out sooner rather than later. Even if it means he must give up the throne to Lady Sabella or Duke Conrad."

"He'll have to give up the throne," said Ivar. "He can't be so stubborn as to cast the entire country into—"

Wolfhere laughed in a way that made Ivar flinch. "A stubborner man I have never met."

"Either way," persisted Ivar, "if he knows now, he'll be able to offer Conrad and Sabella a truce, so together they can fight the Eika."

"Fairly spoken words," agreed Wolfhere. "Let me scout, see what weaknesses this camp has."

"Do you mean to speak to Conrad and Sabella?" asked Berthold.

"No. The rest of you stay here until I return. Be ready to move at the least signal. Fly east or north, if you must run. Do not let Conrad or Sabella intimidate you, should they happen to call for you before I am come back. If the Eika attack, seek Kassel's walls and pray that friendly hands let you in."

Berthold nodded, but Ivar rose in protest.

"At least one of us must come with you."

"None of you can walk out of here without being captured. Not as I can. Lord Berthold, I pray you. Let me take the writ. It is possible I will break through. I can deliver it to Sanglant."

"That will make him love you more!" said Berthold with a laugh as he drew a length of carefully wrapped cloth out of his tunic and gave it to Wolfhere.

"Go to the gate and make some noise. Draw the attention of the guards, but not so much that they come inside. Sing, or joke with them. Ask for more ale."

"Jonas, with me," said Berthold. "Odei, finish off the rest of that wine sack."

Odei grinned, and guzzled.

They crowded up to the gate, hanging over the rail as Berthold called in a cheerful voice. "I beg you, friends! A little more wine, if you will! We've been walking days with nothing but stream water to drink, and you know what that does to a man! My companions are perishing of thirst. And if you have an accommodating woman in camp, we wouldn't mind a taste of that sweet wine as well."

"Oh, God," murmured Ivar, and just then he realized that Wolfhere was gone.

"Are we all going now?" asked Brother Heribert, rising to his knees.

Ivar dove forward and grasped the man before he could ruin their plan. "Nay, nay, Brother.

Hold tight. We're to hold tight here. That's our work."

"Got a redheaded woman?" Jonas was asking, loud enough that any man within a hundred paces could hear him. "I hear they spit fire, hot in the bed, but I admit I've never tried one myself."

An older man's voice answered, close at hand. "Look at your face, lad! I'd wager you've never bedded a lass in your short life!" He and his fellows chortled with laughter as Jonas protested heatedly.

"But he is close. I must go with the other man, with the wolf. Why did he not wait for me?"

Ivar tightened his hands over the cleric's slender wrists. They were as small as a child's. The man was so thin it was a miracle he could walk, and that weird, intense gaze gave Ivar the shudders. In the dusk, the cleric's blue eyes seemed almost to burn on a wick flaring deep within.

"If we go, we'll be captured and put in a worse cage. We must wait here until it is our time to act. Lady Sabella is holding us prisoner."

"Who is Lady Sabella?"

"She is the lady who spoke to us, and to Duke Conrad. The noblewoman. Henry's half sister. She is Prince Sanglant's enemy."

"I must find the one I love. I must find the one called Sanglant. How can I reach him? He is close! The other one, the wolf, he is going there, to him."

"Only Lady Sabella can release us."

"Ah!" Heribert's mouth opened as though he were surprised.

A cold breeze snaked through Ivar's hair. Heribert's weight collapsed in his arms, and he fell backward.

"God! God!" he cried, half caught and panicking before he twisted the man in his grasp and laid him down on the earth.

"Ivar! We'll pray in a moment!" That was Berthold, who turned back to the guards. "Nay, never mind him. He's a frater, you know, a novice monk, and the fight today made him piss his pants. Any little thing sets him to shrieking!"

They all laughed, but Ivar still held Brother Heribert's cooling wrist in his own warm hand.

Something was very wrong. His heart hammered, and he could not catch his breath, but after all, that pounding was only the sound of men still at work in the twilight as they readied their siege works.

Unexpectedly the steppe woman knelt beside him and bent over the limp body. She pressed her face up against that pale mouth; she sniffed at his eyes, his throat, and his loins. She placed one hand on his abdomen and another at his breastbone and for a while sat in perfect stillness and with eyes closed as the jawing of Lord Berthold and his new friends went on and on. So close, Ivar noticed her musky scent, which was not the complicated spice he associated with women.

She opened her eyes and sat back. "He is dead."

Ivar choked. "Dead? Just like that?"

"No breath. The spirit—what word, it was taught me by the old shaman of the wolf clan—no spirit animates this body. The spirit run away. Heribert is dead."

That wind came up again, curling around Ivar's neck. The frater jerked, shuddered, and sat upright so quickly that his head slammed into Ivar's chin.

Ivar screamed. By the gate, Berthold and Jonas broke into loud gales of laughter, slapping each other on the back.

Heribert shook his head, as a man shakes water out of his ears after swimming. "He said to wait here until he returns."

Berda scooted away and made signs, as against the evil eye. "Bad magic," she breathed in her heavy voice. "This is very bad."

Ivar tasted blood on his tongue where he had bit himself. The cleric looked at him as if he smelled the iron tang of that blood, but turned away to search, in the corner, for the nest of dead mice.

3

THE road from Quedlinhame to Kassel was broad and smooth and in normal times it was heavily traveled. Hanna had ridden it several times, and she recognized any number of landmarks over the next days as they marched. What she did not see was any traffic on the road. In the summer, merchants and pilgrims at the least should have been traveling the Hellweg.

So it was with some surprise that in the middle of one morning, after many days of travel through empty or abandoned lands, they spotted outriders down a long straight stretch, waiting for them.

"Those are Saony scouts, Theophanu's soldiers," said Brother Fortunatus, who had eyesight as keen as an archer's.

The captain of their armed troop, riding beside him, agreed. "That's Saony's mark, all right. They've seen us."

He called out an alert to his men, and they slowed to a cautious walk as swords and spears were readied.

The outriders proved equally cautious. Two turned and rode away at a gallop, vanishing into the forest shadow, while a single man rode toward them at a trot. He halted just out of arrow shot and under the overarching spread of an old oak whose stout branches sheltered half the road. A wise position, shielding him somewhat from loosed arrow or cast spear. Here, to the east of Kassel, the forest boasted ancient oak and holm amid thick underbrush, with only a few of the slender beech which dominated farther west.

"To which regnant do you hold allegiance?" he called across the gap.

Hanna looked at the cleric and the abbess who led them, and beyond them to Princess Sapientia, who was holding a green leaf in her hand and staring at its flicker as the wind tried to tug it out of her grasp. The Lions marched as the rear guard, protecting the wagons and Mother Obligatia; she couldn't see them over the riders who formed the abbess' guard and the dozen monastics who followed on mules.

"Let me go," she said. Before either woman could answer—indeed, in the last several days, they had barely spoken to each other—she rode away from her company and over to the scout, who waited for her with a look of relief.

"I'm an Eagle," she said, and he said, "So you are," marking her badge and cloak.

"I'm called Hanna."

"Peter, after the disciple," he said as if it were all one name and commonly spoken that way.

"Well met, then, Peter. You're out of Saony."

"With Theophanu, duke of Saony," he said. "Marching west."

"We are come from Quedlinhame, and from farther away yet than that, but it's a complicated story."

"Those are the best kind, told in winter around the hearth fire."

"With all the wild beasts held at bay by stout doors."

A grin flickered. He nodded toward the distant company. "Those are church folk."

"Yes, all come to join King Sanglant at Kassel."

He nodded. "You'll be meeting him with some difficulty, then. We are stuck here, just at the edge of the valley. Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad have set a siege around Kassel, and we must siege them in our turn and hope to coordinate our attack with those holed up inside the town."

"Where is the king? Wasn't Duchess Liutgard with him?"

"They are inside Kassel. With five hundred men."

"Ah."

"I've sent my scouts back to let our lady know your troop is coming, so we wouldn't be surprised.

You've a score or more fighting men there."

"And twoscore Lions, marching in the rear guard."

He gave her a heartfelt grin. "Well met, indeed, Eagle. I'll lead your party in."

"Let me follow the other scouts," she said, "and you return with our company."

He began to object, but she rode off quickly so she could not be stopped. She had to get to Theophanu first, before Mother Scholastica could drop this sword—called Sapientia—into Theophanu's lap without warning. Hanna did not understand how the currents swirled in this river, but like all the rest of the old company come so far out of the south, she placed her faith in Sister Rosvita. It was obvious that Rosvita and Scholastica were at odds.

The other riders had bolted so fast that she saw only their hoof-prints, but no other sign. She rode through quiet forest, noises fading away around her, and wondered how far she had to go and where Duke Conrad and Lady Sabella's scouts might roam. A few birds chirped; it was a relief to hear them. If there was game abroad, it was drowsing in the early afternoon warmth, such as it was. She had yet to be warm enough to take off her cloak, and she had begun to think she never would be. But it was warm enough that she pushed down her hood and let the cool breeze brush along her hair.

She shivered, but not because of the wind. Something was watching. She felt the pressure of other eyes. Scanning the foliage, she saw nothing. But with a second look, she saw a flash of white. And there it was.

A creature stared at her from the cover of a screen of high bushes.

It had hair as pale white as her own, skin the color of iron and eyes as black as those of a crow, slick and sharp as it waited to scavenge.

It saw her, seeing it. They shared that look, and she went cold and then hot. Fear choked her, and yet for some reason she kept to that steady walk as if to change pace would be to jolt her held breath into a scream.

The road curved. She lost sight of the veil of leaves behind which it hid.

Why did it not kill me?

Losing her courage, she urged her mount into a gallop, easy to do, since the horse caught her fear and ran. After a bit, when she still hadn't caught up to the scouts, she thought of how the breeze was blowing out of the north, allowing it to smell her while she—and her horse—could not smell it.

She knew what it was. She had seen its kind in her dreams.

She rode another league at least through the empty forest, knowing that she neared the valley of Kassel because of the husbanding of trees, the coppices, and the clearings hewn where stands of big trees had been taken down. A pair of crab apple trees grew to either side of an old cottage, long since abandoned and with its roof fallen in. Noble white bloomed in patches where a meadow cut a furrow through the trees. Bluebells carpeted the forest off into the shadows.

"Hey!"

She rode up to a roadblock constructed out of lumber and the remains of a shattered wagon and a few extra broken wheels. A dozen stout milites stood on guard.

"I'm an Eagle, riding in the regnant's service," she announced breathlessly, wondering if she had sucked in any air at all over the last part of the journey. She was dizzy. The soldiers guarding the road looked at her with surprise.

"Where's Peter and the rest of them?" they asked.

"Peter's escorting my company on the road. The others came before me. Didn't they reach here?"

They had not.

"Oh, God." The burning hit her stomach. Her hands shook. "There's another scout out there, in the woods."

"What do you mean?" asked their spokesman, a husky blond fellow. "One of Conrad's people, got around us to spy?"

"Does Duke Conrad hire Eika among his army now?"

"What are you talking about? Eika? You mean those ones we heard stories of, raiding along the northern coast?"

"I saw one, as clear as I see you," she said, seeing that he and his compatriots were skeptical,

"about a league back."

The others grinned, thinking she was pulling their leg.

"She saw it 'bright as day,' " said one, "so that means she saw no thing."

But their leader frowned. He was young to be in charge, but he had a clever face and a suspicious gaze. "Either you mean it, or you're having a game with us. Either way, I don't like what I'm hearing."

"Take me to see Princess Theophanu, I pray you. You may have my weapons as surety. I am an Eagle riding in the regnant's service. I have news for Princess Theophanu and King Sanglant that they must hear, and hear soon."

"You'll not be riding through to Kassel today," remarked the wit.

His leader elbowed him. "Shut up! Well, then, give your weapons to me, and I'll escort you back.

Listen, you slow-witted hounds. I'd tell you to keep your wits about you, but I think you've none to gather. Be ready for anything. Expect the worst. Come on, Eagle."

The others hunkered down, glancing nervously along the road and into the forest; its vistas were wider here, as beech took hold. She led her horse around the barrier, handed sword and staff and bow to her escort, mounted, and followed him west along the road.

"I'm called Johan," he said after a while.

"I'm Hanna," she said and, without meaning to, she giggled.

"What's so funny?"

"I joined the Eagles to get out of marrying a man named Johan, that's all."

He considered her a moment, and offered her weapons back. "If I didn't before, I believe you now," he said cryptically.

She nodded, and almost giggled again, strung so tight she knew she was about to laugh madly or burst into tears.

Soon they reached a second barrier. She smelled smoke ahead and heard the thunk of ax blows and the ring of hammers. A short distance after, the camp came into view. Theophanu had taken the high ground just before the hills sloped abruptly down into the valley surrounding Kassel. There had once been a hamlet here, a dozen buildings strung along the road. Men dug ditches to break up gentle slopes where riders might strike. Fences made of sharpened poles snaked along the contours of the ground to create a barrier between storehouses. At the high point in the village, a group of people clustered by a narrow break in the trees that offered a view of the besieged town.

Guards paced before the old longhouse that would once have housed the most well-to-do family. When Johan brought her to the door, these guards indicated the distant gathering. She dismounted and walked out to the promontory, with four soldiers as escort. Johan rode back to his post.

Eagles rarely waited. When the nobles and captains saw her, they moved aside to let her approach Princess Theophanu. The princess wore over her tunic a tabard marked with the red eagle of Saony. Her hair was braided tightly and pinned up, and the cloak she wore, whipped by the wind up on this height, fluttered against her knees. Hanna had forgotten how tall Theophanu was, almost as tall as many of the men; she was her father's daughter, well built and handsome.

“An Eagle," she said, looking Hanna over with narrowed eyes. "Who has sent you?"

"Sister Rosvita, Your Highness."

Around her, folk murmured to hear the cleric named, but if Theophanu was surprised, she concealed her emotion. "She rode south with Henry long since, and was lost. It was said that she died in the city of Darre. Yet I see you reached the south, as I commanded you. How long ago was that? Two years? Three? Yet now you have returned to us."

"Would you have me speak to all those assembled here, or with more privacy, Your Highness?"

Hanna asked.

Theophanu smiled thinly. "Your news must be shocking. Best you speak before all assembled here. Have you a message for me?"

"No, Your Highness. I must tell you what I know and what I have seen, and what and who Rosvita brings with her, for that company rides several leagues behind me. It is a long tale to tell.

First, I must tell you that not two leagues from this camp I glimpsed an Eika scout in the forest."

"Triple the guard," said Theophanu to one of her captains. "Command all to arm. Get these trees down, as we spoke of. Send two hundred men to escort Sister Rosvita's party in to safety. As for the rest, let this company retire to the hall. It seems you have traveled a long way to reach us, and I expect you will welcome a place to sit and a flask of ale to drink."

The hall was crowded with crudely-built benches, by which means it had been turned into a meeting house and chapel. It was not long abandoned, or not abandoned at all; possibly the large family living here had simply been told to leave.

Hanna was given a stool to sit on and wine to drink. Only after Hanna had slaked her thirst did the princess ask for silence. From outside, Hanna heard axes thwacking into wood.

"Tell me first, and in a few words, what is most important. Then I'll hear your tale at length."

"This, then, Your Highness. Sister Rosvita was taken prisoner in Darre because she witnessed the murder of Helmut Villam at the hand of Hugh of Austra."

"Ah!" Theophanu sighed, with a grimace, but waved her hand to show Hanna must go on.

"I have heard the Eagle, Hathui, survived her journey and joined the company of Prince Sanglant."

"She did. So it happens that all she reported is true?"

"Hathui would never lie." But as she said the words, she remembered how she had doubted, and she was ashamed.

"Henry trusted her above all others. Her, and Villam, and Sister Rosvita. Go on."

"When I reached Darre, I found King Henry altered. He was captive to his queen and to Hugh of Austra. Those among the schola loyal to Rosvita joined with me in fellowship. In the aftermath of a terrible earthquake, we helped Rosvita escape the dungeon. We fled north. Reaching the convent of St.

Ekatarina, we took refuge, but we were pursued there by Lord Hugh. Then—" Long had they discussed this, but Rosvita had insisted on the truth. "Sister Rosvita and Mother Obligatia—she is the abbess who presided over St. Ekatarina— together they wove a crown. By this means we escaped. We came into the east, and found ourselves pursued by soldiers from the army of the skopos."

"Holy Mother Anne?"

"Yes. These we fled, fearing for our lives—"

Many around her broke into speech, hearing the skopos maligned in such a manner, but Theophanu hushed them sternly. "Nay, let the Eagle speak. These accusations we have heard before, from my brother Sanglant, from the Eagle Hathui, and from Duchess Liutgard and Duke Burchard. Holy Mother Anne was party to the plot by which King Henry was infested with a daimone, made into a puppet so those who controlled him could speak words through his mouth." She said it so coolly—as if it were only an interesting story she related to entertain the crowd—that it was only as Hanna looked around at the people crowded into the hall and saw how their posture and their gestures and their expressions turned angry, that the Eagle knew Henry's death was truly mourned. She dared hope that the indignity thrust on him would be avenged.

"Go on, Hanna." It was the first time the princess had used her name.

"Yes, Your Highness. We fled the army of the skopos, because she had come into the east in order to weave a spell into the crowns, to set herself against the coming cataclysm. We escaped her, but were captured by Arethousans. For many months we lived as their prisoners. In time we were brought to the camp of certain Arethousan lords, Lady Eudokia and Lord Alexandres. They were marching in rebellion against their emperor. It was there, my lady, that we found your sister Sapientia."

Alive?" The word was little more than a whisper.

"Married to King Geza of Ungria, who was now their ally."

Theophanu laughed, then recovered so quickly that the lapse might never have happened.

Around her, her company chattered, and the lady lifted a hand to ask them to quiet. "She has gone over to the enemy."

Hanna let them chew on this statement for a while, all talking at once. Such an interpretation discredited Sapientia. Best not to protest, or make excuses. Or remind them that Sanglant had abandoned his sister in the camp of a worse enemy, the Pechanek Quman. Even if he had not meant her to come to grief, his actions had ruined her. It would be best for Sanglant if his court did not know the entire truth.

Instead, thinking of how much she had hated Bulkezu and how furious she had been to see Sanglant keep him alive because it was expedient, she sipped at a second cup of wine until all the amazed speculation ceased and they waited for her to go on.

"King Geza had pledged to take the throne of Wendar and Varre in Sapientia's name, Your Highness," Hanna said.

Theophanu nodded. "Of course. And his child by her on the throne after she was dead. Go on."

“After the great tempest destroyed their camp, both armies fled. King Geza abandoned Sapientia, divorced her, and left her in the ruins of the camp."

"Did he so?" the lady said without any trace of spite or glee. She might have been wood, untested by fire or flood, her face polished clean of emotion. Yet her court had fallen into a horrible, fascinated silence, hanging on every word. "What then?"

"We found her, for we had been abandoned as well." She paused, and decided to skip her own ordeal, her second captivity among the Arethousans, although the memory of the ruins of that great city haunted her. "We walked north, and stumbled in our turn upon a company under the command of Lady Bertha of Austra."

"So she lived!"

"You know the tale?"

"We heard it. It was thought she was dead."

"She is dead now, alas, murdered by a poisoned arrow loosed out of the night. But that comes later in the tale, my lady. Bertha died in Avaria, not in the south where we all thought we would die."

"Go on."

"We joined together—clerics and soldiers—and traveled north as well as we could. We did well, gathering goats and chickens to feed us and a few dogs to keep watch. We thought we had come home safely, but after we reached Wendar, we were set upon twice by masked warriors, creatures like nothing we have seen before. Liath said they are Ashioi."

Now Theophanu was piqued, but Hanna could not tell if she were overjoyed, or furious. "Liath?

You have seen Liathano? She is with you?"

"The king will reward you well for returning her to him," said a captain among the company, and there was nervous laughter.

She could not get the words out. Better to change the subject. "Princess Sapientia rides with us, but she is much changed."

Theophanu shifted ground easily. " 'Changed?' I pray you, speak bluntly."

"It's as if she does not even know her own name."

"She's lost her wits," said her sister. "Is that what you mean?"

Hanna nodded, so uncomfortable that she downed the remainder of the cup of wine, just to do something.

Theophanu looked neither pleased nor sorrowing. She merely nodded, as if hearing that the laundry had been taken down because it was dry. "What of Liathano?"

"Lost," said Hanna, and choked.

There was a dead, awful silence, and a voice came out of the crowd and said, in the manner of a man who is hard of hearing and must have each comment repeated, "Is she dead?"

"Lost," Hanna repeated, more strongly. "Mother Scholastica comes on the road with us, riding with Princess Sapientia."

"Henry's sister, supporting Henry's eldest legitimate child." Theophanu nodded. "Well, that does not surprise me, that my aunt would choose to champion her long after the rest of us have accepted that she is unfit to rule. Is that all?"

"Not by any measure is that all. It is not sure which faction Mother Scholastica supports."

“Are you suggesting that my aunt supports Conrad?"

Hanna found herself hoarse, and coughing did not ease her.

"Bring the Eagle more wine," said Theophanu, but her voice was as cold as the winter wind, not warm and sympathetic. Not as Prince Sanglant would have been, treating each least servant under his rule as though that individual was, for a moment, the most important person in the world. Theophanu was all business. In that, she reminded Hanna of Lady Eudokia.

"I will sit here until you have told it all, Eagle. Conrad and Sabella stand before us, and my aunt creeps up behind. What other knives wait to stab us, I cannot yet see. I must know what to expect before my Aunt Scholastica rides in with God—and Sapientia—to wield over us as a whip. I must hear it all. From the beginning. Take your time."

Hanna had not gotten further than recounting the earthquake in Darre when the door opened and a messenger ran in, a young man with cheeks flushed and eyes flared in genuine fear. A captain strode at his heels. Seeing them, Theophanu stood as the lad dropped to his knees before her.

"What news?" she demanded.

For a moment Hanna thought she sounded alarmed.

The messenger began to cough, and the captain laid a comforting hand on the lad's shoulder and spoke instead.

"Grave news, Your Highness. This young fellow was sent to ride to Mother Scholastica's company, as you ordered."

"Yet here he is."

The lad found his voice. "The road is blocked," he said faintly. He shuddered, bit a lip, and steadied himself. "Your Highness," he said more clearly. The captain stepped back. "I pray you, I bring ill news.

We can't reach the company you speak of because the road is blocked."

"Blocked by what?" she asked.

He groaned and covered his eyes.

"Go on," said the captain. "You must speak, because you were the one who saw it."

“An army, Your Highness."

A murmur of alarm passed through the court, but Theophanu called for quiet. "Have Conrad and Sabella flanked us? We've seen no movement in their encampment."

"This army isn't human, Your Highness. They're the northlanders, what were once used to raid the northern coast years back. It's an army of Eika, Your Highness."

"We saw no sign of Eika on the road."

He shook his head. "I know not where they came from, my lady. We are cut off utterly from the east."

Theophanu looked at her captains and her companions, who had fallen into stunned silence. "They have come out of the west, or out of the north, and if that is so, then they have circled most of the valley of Kassel. We are caught between them, and Conrad. Captain, to arms. See to our eastern defenses—if we have any. We must find some way to alert Sanglant, so he is ready when we sound our advance."

4

AFTER the rider named Peter joined them, they marched for about a league through quiet forestlands before a horn called the alarm from the rear guard. Rosvita heard shouts as a soldier galloped up along the road.

"Holy Mother! Sister! I pray you, fall back to the line of wagons at once!"

Rosvita swung her mount around immediately, but Mother Scholastica stared stubbornly at the flushed and frightened messenger. "What news? Why this alert?"

"Armed men, trailing us on the road!"

"Have they identified themselves?"

"I think they mean to do so." Trembling, Brother Fortunatus pointed west.

A score of beasts stepped out of the trees and onto the shaded road. In form they bore a remarkable resemblance to humankind, with bone-white hair, two arms and two legs and a human-shaped torso, and facial features that from a distance might be mistaken for those of a man, but they were not men. Many bared their teeth, which had a sharp splendor like to that of dogs. They made no other threatening move, although their silence seemed threatening enough.

"Ai, God!" cried their escort, Peter.

"This can't be Conrad's army," said Mother Scholastica indignantly.

"Pull back to the wagons," said Sister Rosvita in a quiet voice to the riders surrounding her, who were mostly clerics of her own party or those church folk attending the royal abbess.

"Look in the trees!" exclaimed Fortunatus.

The pallor of their hair gave them away, ranks and ranks of them ranged in the forest, all standing as still as if they were statues—and so they might have been, sheeted in tin or copper or gold.

"I believe we are surrounded." In the face of disaster, Rosvita found that she felt perfectly calm. "I pray you, Mother Scholastica, fall back to the wagons. I will remain here. Fortunatus, please find Sergeant Ingo or Sergeant Aronvald. We'd best discuss our options while we still have time to talk."

They waited in a chilling silence, Rosvita out in front with Peter remaining bravely beside her while Mother Scholastica led the others back to the wagons.

"If your wagons are all strung out along the road," remarked Peter with the even voice of a man who sees he can't escape death, "they'll offer little safety."

"We must rely on God to protect us," said Rosvita. "Why do you suppose they have not yet attacked?"

"What are they?" he asked her. "I've never seen men like them, if they're men."

"They are called Eika."

"I've heard tales of such beasts. But you never know whether to believe them."

"They're real enough. King Henry fought a battle against them at Gent and drove them out of the city. For a few years, the north coast was peaceful."

"Licking their wounds and making ready to invade again."

"So it appears."

Wind conversed in the leaves and branches, but the Eika did not speak or move.

Fortunatus came up from the wagons with Sergeant Ingo.

"Lord have mercy." The sergeant surveyed the blocked road, then spat.

"So we must pray," said Rosvita. "Have they attacked the rear guard or the wagons?"

"Nay, they stand as if stone, on all sides," said Ingo. "Some among us Lions fought Eika in earlier years, Sister. I will tell you that we never saw the like of this behavior. They were always silent, but their terrible dogs would yammer and attack, and they themselves would leap straight into battle like starving wolves. I wonder."

"You wonder what?"

"I wonder what intelligence controls them."

On the road ahead the Eika soldiers stepped aside. Two individuals came forward. One was an Eika warrior, noticeably more slender and shorter than many of his fellows. Around his hips was slung a girdle of surpassing beauty, gold-wire lacework studded with pearls and gems. Loops and spirals, a garish display, were painted on his chest. He bared his teeth, seeing the four who waited in the van; jewels winked, drilled into the incisors. He carried a gruesome standard, like a crossed spar on which hung streamers of bone and frayed ribbon and the same sort of trophies chosen by a flash-eyed crow to decorate its gaudy nest.

The individual holding a parley flag stepped forward to address them. He was a young man, born of humankind, with black hair, swarthy skin, and dressed in the manner of a foreigner.

"I come before you as an envoy," he said in serviceable Wendish and in the most polite and respectful of tones, "to ask if there are any mothers among you, deacons of your holy church. If there are, the emperor Stronghand invites them to speak before him. He gives safe passage to all holy women sworn to walk within the Circle of Unity. You will wish to confer with your party to choose a suitable envoy."

"That's one of the Hessi," murmured Fortunatus. "I saw them in Autun. They had a merchant house there, a daughter branch out of Medemelacha."

"Aren't they some manner of heretic?" asked Ingo in a low voice.

"Nay," whispered Rosvita, "they are unbelievers but not truly heathens. They pray to God, so it's said, but they don't recognize the Translatus of the blessed Daisan."

"Sounds like an infidel to me," muttered Ingo.

"They write in a cipher," said Fortunatus, "a secret language that no one outside their tribe is allowed to learn."

"Did you try?" she asked him with a smile as the envoys waited.

His grin was swift, if brief. "So I did, but nothing came of it. What will you tell these two?"

"I'll get more information. Yet we'll have little choice. We can't fight them."

"So we can!" declared Ingo stoutly, before making a scene of coughing, as he realized that he had spoken in a loud voice.

Peter rubbed his naked throat.

"Stay here." Rosvita took three steps forward. 'Are your people slaves to the Eika now?" she asked boldly.

The youth's grin was as swift and subtle as Fortunatus'. "I am not a slave to any man, or any Eika master. Nor are my people ruled by one regnant, as yours are. What my mothers choose for my house may not necessarily be chosen by another house."

"How comes it you speak of an emperor? Taillefer is dead, and King Henry's imperial crown lost in the south after the cataclysm."

"If you wish to know, come and see," said the youth with that same charming, reckless grin, daring her.

He reminded her of the best of her clerics. Those she loved best she had liked most quickly, knowing it a flaw to make a judgment in haste but succumbing nevertheless to that impulse. She liked him, and that would only make worse the choice she knew she had to make. Maybe it was a sin—surely it was—but in war you use the weapons you have. These Eika would slaughter Henry's faithful Lions, and Sanglant's hope to restore Henry's kingdom to peace.

She stepped back. "Ingo," she murmured, "go swiftly with Peter. Let every person in our company know they must drop to the ground and cover their face at once."

He blanched, but he nodded.

Fortunatus touched her sleeve. "I will stay with you, Sister."

"It will be dangerous," she said without looking at him, seeking instead to be sure that Ingo understood her meaning. The Lion nodded. She offered him her ring. He kissed it, then walked rapidly toward the wagons and his soldiers. Peter followed him.

She turned back to the interpreter.

"I pray you, a moment of patience." She regretted the lie, because he was a quicksilver lad with a bright expression and clever eyes. "I have sent the soldiers to summon the most holy abbess who commands our company."

The envoy glanced at the standard-bearer. They exchanged a look, and it seemed to her a subtle request for permission from the Eika. So much for not having a master. That gesture decided her. He might be a fine and graceful young man, but he was the enemy.

God enjoined mercy, but her heart must be hard.

There whispered through the ranks of the Eika a lazy wind that she perceived as she saw their bone-white hair lifted by that breeze, as she heard their handsome ornaments tinkling where the wind shifted through. That chime provided a most peculiar and delicate counterpoint to their forbidding silence and closed countenances.

The Hessi youth examined her with interest. He had a light gaze that leaped here and there as though he could not keep his attention on any one thing, and yet she mistrusted it; where he looked, he looked hard.

The wind sighed a second time, and changed direction to blow up behind their backs. The hair on the back of her neck grew stiff. Her skin tingled.

"Keep your eyes forward," she whispered to Fortunatus.

He was pale. His hand touched hers, and a spark bit them where skin brushed. He winced. She heard a sound like a resigned murmur, the whisper of doubt, people falling, dropping as they shielded their eyes.

So also do the dead fall, when struck in the heart.

She kept her gaze fixed on the young envoy. If she called death, then she must face what she wrought.

Behind, from the company, she heard a shout as bright as ecstasy, cut short. A shriek answered that interrupted cry, a sob—then it, too, died abruptly. A cart's wheels ground along the road as it rolled closer.

In a moment, the Eika would begin to fall.

The envoy's eyes widened, and his expression underwent a remarkable change. He had seen something on the road, behind Rosvita. He cocked his head sideways, as if this shift in angle might answer a question.

In the dead silence, the standard-bearer laughed, a strange, and strangely frightening because very human, sound.

He spoke, in perfect Wendish.

"My shamans sensed a locus of magic in your train, so I came myself to see what it might be. It is not what I expected."

She heard the feather brush of footsteps beneath the sound made by the passage of the cart.

Fortunatus gulped audibly. He was sweating and trembling—she could smell his fear—but he kept his gaze focused forward.

Not one Eika or man allied with the Eika had fallen.

The cart scraped to a halt behind them.

Rosvita had heard Sorgatani's voice before—Hanna had taught the shaman Wendish—but she had heard it only through the veil of shutters. To hear it in the open air made it seem entirely different, more ominous because it sounded all the more pure and innocent, although such a creature could never be innocent.

"I come at your command, Sister Rosvita," said Sorgatani. "Breschius drives the wagon. But it is gone wrong. A pair of people in our ranks falls because they forget to hide their eyes. But the enemy—they stand untouched."

The standard-bearer walked forward. "What manner of sorcery invests you?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

"How are you protected?" demanded Rosvita.

"That is my secret. What is it you expect to happen to my army?"

"Who are you?" she asked him, angered that she had imperiled her soul and to no purpose!

How had they failed?

Behind her, Sorgatani began to weep.

"What do you fear, holy one?" he asked.

Only when Sorgatani answered did Rosvita realize he had not addressed the question to her.

The Kerayit shaman spoke with a trembling voice. "Among your people, I am free. All others, they die, to see me. Even here, when they forget to hide their eyes."

"Ah. If that bothers you, then join me, holy one. You cannot hurt anyone in my army. And I do believe that you are a powerful weapon, one I would be happy to wield."

Almost, Rosvita turned to see Sorgatani's expression, to see if this offer tempted, to see if this foreign woman would leap to shift alliances. Fortunatus clamped a hand over her wrist, reminding her— God help her—that to look was to die.

As someone had already died!

"We should have treated her better," whispered Fortunatus with the merest breath of ironic bitterness.

"I have already pledged my aid to the Wendish," said Sorgatani.

He nodded, a very human gesture of acknowledgment. Strange that he could look on the shaman, as they could not. "No man can serve two masters. This, I respect. You will be my prisoner, and honorably treated. I do not war upon the mothers in any case. Those who guard them will be spared if they lay down their arms."

"Sister Rosvita commands us," said Sorgatani. "It must be her decision."

Shamed, Rosvita replied more sharply than she intended. "I pray you, Sorgatani, go inside."

Slippers squeezed dirt as the young woman turned away. The door scraped open, and clapped shut.

"She is hidden." A halt in Breschius' tone made her look, and she had a fancy that he brushed a tear away from his cheek.

The one holding the banner, who had watched all this without comment, spoke lightly. "She could kill all of you, yet she obeys you. That interests me. Who holds her allegiance?"

Fortunatus let go of her wrist.

"We ride to support King Sanglant."

He nodded. "You are surrounded and your soldiers outnumbered. We can kill them and take you prisoner in any case, but I am curious about this shaman woman. That is why I offer mercy."

"How can we know you will keep your word?"

He bared his teeth in a grimace that imitated a grin but was more like a hound warning that it is prepared to bite. "You are in no position to refuse, but I understand that you remain suspicious. I speak in good faith, remembering your Circle."

With his free hand, he lifted one of the loops away from the pattern decorating his chest, and she realized that he wore a simple wood Circle of Unity around his neck, tied on a leather cord.

Fortunatus sucked in his breath.

She rocked back on her heels, seized with hope. "Do you stand in the Light?"

"I respect the mothers who guide you. On their honor, the honor of your church of Unity, on the honor of the one you know as Constance of Wendar and the holy deacon Ursuline who guards her charges at Rikin Fjord, I swear this oath, that I will not raise arms against those who do not raise arms against me."

"Who are you?" Rosvita demanded.

He shrugged, a casual, too-human gesture, so much so that she was beginning to see him as scarcely different than the young Hessi man standing so trustingly beside him, than the score of human men scattered back through the ranks. He and his brothers had a human cast of face; they had a human form except for the claws, and the metallic tone of their skin, and the bone-white hair. The old legends told that the Eika were born when the blood of humankind and dragons mixed in ancient days.

Maybe the old legends were true.

"I am who I say I am: Stronghand, emperor of my Eika brothers and of the lands of Alba and certain territories along the western coast of Salia and Varre."

Spoken with such an assurance of might and power!

She must speak to protect those she was responsible for. "You must see, Lord Stronghand, that I cannot ask the brave and faithful soldiers who march with me to lay down their arms and leave themselves defenseless."

"They are too few to harm me. Let them set a camp, a perimeter, here in the forest. My soldiers will set a guard over them but not come near. That will content me."

"What of the rest of us?"

"Naturally I must take a few as hostages to ensure that my guards will not be molested. The rest of your party can remain with your Lions. They are good soldiers, those Lions. I have seen them in action."

On this road in the forest with trees all around and no sign of bird life, with only a trace of wind in the branches, Rosvita wondered briefly if she had wandered into a dream as vivid as those she had on occasion suffered when traveling between the crowns. In a moment, no more, she would hear Brother Fortunatus' voice saying "I pray you, Sister, wake up."

But Fortunatus remained silent.

The Eika lord shifted from one foot to the other as he tilted his head, seeming to hear a sound hidden from her.

The hand grasping the pole of his standard uncurled. The pole began to roll off his opening fingers, and he unaware of its movement.

Almost, she called out to warn him, but she remained silent.

The hills just north of Kassel are rugged, their heights shorn by the tempest of last autumn that cut through the wealth of pine and beech. Dead trees scatter the ground like sticks. Low-lying shrubs grow in these clearings now that they have more light. Sometimes vistas open where forest once blocked the view.

This long ridgeline slopes sharply to both west and east away into rolling ground, polite hills easy to travel through, where the forest thrives. To the south it dips into the broad valley beyond the El River, the place where the town of Kassel rose a century ago on the ruins of a Dariyan outpost. The town's main gates face the south because it is protected to the north by that rough country where Alain walks on a deer trail.

He is alone in the forest, all but his faithful companions, the two hounds and the guivre, which follows him rather like a dog but a great deal more noisily. The creature's wingspan has made a tent over him at night, to shelter him from drizzle, and its vicious beak has torn into the only pack of wolves that dared attack them in the wild woods where animals roam.

That was days ago. Now he has almost reached his destination.

The first drops of rain spatter through leaves like a shower of pebbles. Above, the sky grows dark, and the forest floor grows dim. The few birds— he is always thankful to hear birds call—

fall silent.

Ahead, the track opens into a meadow where a stream winds through tall grass and purple and blue flowers. He halts at the verge. Wind whips the grass, but he is untouched. Rage whines.

Sorrow gives a single bark. Both sit, made uneasy by the weather.

Mist pours heavenward out of the stream. Rain lances through the meadow, so cold and hard that it stings his cheek like slivers of ice blown on a gale. It rains sideways as the rising wind howls. He cannot see the trees on the far side of the clearing.

This is no natural storm.

Even as he thinks this, light pierces the wall of mist. The rain ceases between one breath and the next. Above, clouds part as easily as if they have been sliced in two to reveal a sun so brilliant that he shades his eyes from its glare. Raindrops glisten on petals. Grass sparkles. The stream burbles. Out of the mist rising off those waters emerges a rider.

The horse is as white as untouched snow, almost blinding. The woman has seen many battles.

Scars mar her face and hands. Her boots drip mud, as though she has only recently slogged through a rain-swept battlefield. The rings of her mail shirt are coated with rust except for those places where irregular patches of new rings have been linked and hammered closed to fill ragged gaps.

She reins in her warhorse beside him. Her long sword, sheathed in leather, sways in front of his eyes. A battered round shield hangs by her knee.

Her gaze is at once distant and utterly piercing. But he is no longer afraid to look her in the eye.

"What must I pay you, to ride to war?" she asks him.

He cannot tell if she recognizes him.

"I have dealt death and suffered death," he tells her. "I am no longer your servant."

As the clouds part, the light of the sun shifts until it strikes her, and her armor gleams as though new-made, shining and glorious as she is shining and glorious. She draws her sword.

Its length blazes as though forged by sorcery. He weeps, because she is beautiful.

"All serve me," she says. "The trumpets of war are sounding. Arms will be joined soon.

Friends and foes will perish. Do you abandon them to their fate? Hear!"

Out of the heavens a ringing sound floats, almost too faint to identify except that he knows it as the clash of sword and shield. On the wind drifts a rumble like thunder, quickly lost.

"Ride with me, Alain, son of Rose. Choose, and your choice shall win the day. You may make Sanglant emperor by the might of your arm. Stronghand is your brother by blood. Will you answer his prayer? What of the husband of the woman you loved once? Give him victory, and raise her to glory— or ruin him to ruin her. What of the offer made to you, to become consort in your own right? Choose, and you can be king, consort of a queen regnant. You are nothing, a whore's son raised by a humble family. I offer you glory. Come with me now, and your likeness, the memory of your exploits, will be painted on the walls of churches so that humble folk will sing of your victories and clerics will praise your deeds. You will be one of the great princes ever after."

The ground shakes with an undulating ripple. The guivre drags itself up beside him, and it stretches its wings to their full span, hissing at the lady.

"I no longer belong to you," he says.

"You march toward war. Even if it is peace that you seek, you must use the sword to achieve it. Fail me, and you fail those you wish to save."

"So you believe." He whistles. Rage and Sorrow come to attention behind him, ready to move.

She laughs, a bright sound that rings up into the heavens to join that clamor heard from afar. "Challenge me, if you will. Now you will see my power."

The fog takes her. Between one breath and the next, it swallows her, leaving him on the narrow deer trail hemmed in by scraping branches and damp leaves. The meadow has vanished, the rain has stopped, but the black clouds and the rising wind remain.

Almost, Stronghand dropped his battle standard, woven by the shamans of the Eika tribes so its magic shields from the touch of sorcery all who walk under the shield of his power. Its limits had been tested today, and it had protected them from a terrible threat. The thought roused him. His chin jerked sideways as he started like an animal waking from a doze and grabbed the tumbling standard before it could strike the ground.

"She is coming!" His voice cracked. His attendants shifted from watchful alertness to coiled readiness as a man standing casually rolls to the balls of his feet, preparing to sprint. "Swiftly! Now we move!"

His gaze caught on the cleric. "Stand by your agreement, and I will stand by mine. Yeshu, see that the shaman and her attendant come with us. Bring also this holy mother who speaks for the company."

He strode into the ranks of his army, which swallowed him. As quickly as water washes off rocks on an outgoing wave, his soldiers dispersed west down the Hellweg or into the forest. The plan was long since set into motion. The noise of their passage crackled, and as if by sorcery a wind rose out of the north to trouble the woodland. Branches cracked and fell. The clouds—what he could see of them above the treetops—had turned a sullen gray color, presaging rain.

Battle was coming, and so was Alain. Yet another scent teased his nostrils, a touch of the forge. It puzzled him, because although a lingering taste of sorcery shifted on the wind, that distant presence was not in itself magical.

A scout jogged into view from the west and fell into step beside him. "Lord Stronghand. All is ready as you have commanded on the western flank. A report has come in that a patrol to the north has fallen into a skirmish with a party of outriders, and retreated. Sharptongue of Moels Tribe has sent up another troop to push into that region, to make sure our eastern flank is not attacked unawares."

"Good. What of Duke Conrad and Lady Sabella's army?"

"Taking up arms. There is movement in Kassel. It seems the battle is about to start between the besieged and their enemy. It seems the princess on the eastern slope has been alerted to our presence."

"Good."

"Further orders, Lord Stronghand?"

He considered his troops in their thousands, a mixed Eika and human force raised from the northern tribes and the eager Alban recruits, the largest army to march through these lands since the armies of the Dariyan Empire. He considered his lines of communication and supply, stretched thin, and his imperfect knowledge of the disputes that had destabilized the Wendish and Varren realms. He considered Alain, and the last words of the WiseMothers, now forever lost to their children.

Repay this debt.

He nodded, a human gesture, but in these days he sensed in himself a fine balance between the cold ruthlessness of dragons, the hidden strength of stone, and the quicksilver emotion that rules humankind.

Once, long ago, the part of him that derived from human ancestry had lain quiescent, barely acknowledged, but his chance encounter with Alain Henrisson had changed him and, in the long run, altered him utterly.

"No," he said to the waiting scout who, like all the Eika, had the patience of stone. 'All is going as I have planned."

"Up on the cart, most honored one," said the Hessi youth sweetly as he walked up to Rosvita and Fortunatus without the least sign of nervousness. Of course, he had a hundred silent Eika soldiers guarding his back. He had no need to feel anxious. "There is room for you to ride with the driver, I think, holy one."

The color of the sky was changing, in accordance with her mood. The once light haze of clouds was darkening quickly as a storm blew in.

"Brother Fortunatus! You must go back to the main party and tell them what happened. Let the Lions remain watchful, but on no account unless they hear word from me or from King Sanglant himself are they to attack a superior force."

He grasped her hands. "I would not leave you, Sister!"

"Haste," said the Hessi interpreter kindly, but he smiled wryly to show he must enforce his orders. "I will go with the good brother, back to your company. I have a message to give them."

With a flash of his old smile, Fortunatus released Rosvita's hands. He had tears in his eyes, but he faced the youth with a cheerful expression that did not blind Rosvita to his true feeling. "Will you teach me the letters of your secret cipher?"

The lad laughed outright, the most pleasing sound Rosvita had heard all day, something to make the heavens a little brighter, although the storm boiled ever closer, sweeping down from the north.

"It is forbidden, yet there is one letter I might teach you. That which came first of all sounds on the day of Creation."

He drew Fortunatus away, walking toward the rest of the company. From deep in the ranks, back by the wagons, a wailing rose toward the heavens, shouts of dismay and grief.

"What happened?" asked Rosvita in a low voice. "Did someone die?"

Breschius shrugged. "It's possible. But I was walking in front of Princess Sorgatani. I saw nothing of what might have happened behind me."

She took a step in the direction of the cries, but the Eika soldiers closed in around her and the wagon. The horses shied, fearful of that faint dry smell like stone baking under a hot sun. Breschius spoke softly to them, and they laid back their ears and began to walk with heads tossing anxiously.

Ai, God. She had called forth Sorgatani to vanquish the Eika, but instead some of her own people had died—and for nothing. They had accomplished nothing except to become prisoners of an invading army.

"Sister!"

Breschius tossed her a pair of old apples, quite wrinkled.

Busy hands keep the mind from straying to unproductive thoughts. What she had done could not be undone. She must keep her wits sharp for the road ahead. She caught up to the horses and walked alongside to coax the pair through the front ranks and onward along the Hellweg as they walked into the unknown heart of the Eika army.

5

"SOMETHING, but I don't know what." It was midday. Sanglant paced on Archer's Tower, the highest on the walls of Kassel, and surveyed the valley. Conrad and Sabella had used their ground wisely, not bothering with a complete encirclement, since the steep slopes to the northeast of the town were too unstable for anyone to negotiate even on foot.

"What manner of something?" Liutgard brushed hair out of her eyes with a forearm. She had stood up here most of the day and the wind had torn all that time at her tightly braided hair, culling wisps that fluttered with each gust in greater numbers. She glanced to the north. "A storm coming?"

"A whisper like the ranks of the dead approaching," he said, and she looked at him, puzzled, and only then did he realize he had spoken his thought aloud. "A taste like the eve of battle."

"Is that what makes you restless as a prowling dog? Not just those dark clouds? Will we fight Conrad today?"

"He's sent no herald, made no attempt to parley."

"Sent no word of my daughter," said Liutgard bitterly.

"It makes me wonder what his intentions are. But, in truth, there is another scent on the wind, and I'm not sure what it is."

"Where is Theophanu?"

"Close. See, there." He pointed to the southeast. "That color on the ridgeline. There."

She squinted, then shrugged. "I don't see it. Only the trees along the hills."

"My archer Lewenhardt caught sight of it yesterday. I wouldn't have noticed it myself, but his eyes are sharp. I believe that is her banner, set up to alert us."

"Too far for us to see." She stared and stared, shook herself with a measure of impatience and frustration, and shifted her gaze back to the encampment draped in a semicircle about the valley of Kassel, one which girdled all roads and tracks.

"That's as close as she can come, with Conrad and Sabella in her path. If we could coordinate our attack, we could strike from two sides. At this juncture, neither army has an advantage. If I judge correctly, Conrad and Sabella have numbers about equal to our own."

"The margraves should have marched with us."

"Yes, I suppose they should have. Gerberga will wait it out in Austra and come to claim what she can from whichever is left standing."

"Gerberga can go rot! It was Waltharia I was thinking about."

"She sent three centuries of men, all she could spare. Think how many she lost—her own husband—when she sent a troop south with me."

Liutgard did not appear so much aged by the long campaign but hardened, made mirthless. She had laughed more, once upon a time, and she had been wont to cast quotes into her banter—she could read—lively lines from the poets or homilies out of the mouths of the church mothers. "I , too, lost many milites in Henry's wars, Cousin! Yet I stand beside you. Even Burchard went home."

"To die."

She snorted. "I've come to think that dying is the coward's choice."

He shook his head. "I have been sorely wounded many times. Perhaps it's true that being dead brings peace, but the dying itself is not so easy. I pray you, Liutgard, remember that I value your loyalty."

"Surely you do!"

"You have never faltered."

"Only in my heart."

"Well, then, listen to me. When the time comes to strike, you must remain behind the walls. Until your daughter is recovered, you must remain safe—"

"In case I am killed, and she is dead after all, and the inheritance thereby left in confusion? No. I will ride, just as you will. I want revenge."

"I need a strong captain to hold these walls!"

She gestured toward Fulk. "There he is."

"Hai!" A sentry shouted. "See there, Your Majesty."

Guards clattered to attention along Kassel's wall walk.

"There!" cried Liutgard, pointing.

The clouds split as suddenly as if they had been sliced asunder. Sunlight lanced over the valley, sharpening every detail of Conrad's camp. That light illuminated the southeastern ridgeline. A gash in the wall of trees opened as first one, then a pair, and then a dozen trees toppled. Banners made tiny by distance flowed like water as they rippled back and forth.

"That's her signal!" cried Sanglant. He turned to Captain Fulk. "Set Lewenhardt here to watch and listen. We arm. Spread the word by mouth alone. Let no trumpet or bell sound the alarm until the gates are opened."

"What of Wichman?" Liutgard asked. "Do you think he and his company are lost?"

"Always." He grinned. "We shall not count on them. But I will expect them, nevertheless."

As they moved to the stair to descend the tower and prepare for battle, a tingling in the middle of his back gave him pause, like the misgivings of a man new to war who imagines the ax blow that will bring his death. Stopping in mid-stride, he canted his head, lifted his chin, and tasted the air. "That is the smell of Eika."

"Eika?" cried Fulk.

"Can Sabella have made an alliance with those creatures?" demanded Liutgard. "Better to hold within our walls than ride into such an ambush."

"Conrad would not risk the entire kingdom with such a reckless alliance. This is only more reason to ride, and ride soon. At worst, we can guide Theophanu and her army into the safety of the walls. Be on alert." He shook his head. "Theirs is not the only scent that rides the wind today."

Before the gate they readied their arms. Horses were watered and barding was strapped tight.

Sibold handed him his dragon helm. When he fixed it over his head, a murmur rose from the watching crowd. He adjusted his mail so it lapped over his belt, loosened his sword in its scabbard, then twisted his lance, checking for any warp or crack. It seemed only moments since the whispered "to arms" had summoned the battle-ready force to the gate, yet after all an interminable time dragged past as they waited for Theophanu's signal.

What if he was wrong? Perhaps her army was already overwhelmed, or she had changed her mind, choosing not to support him. The outcome of this day turned on the fealty of his sister.

The sound rose faintly, but clear, a long low horn call resounding across the valley, followed by three rising notes. Men strained at the ropes as they opened the gates. Within the walls, a horn lifted its voice in alarm, three blats. The city's dogs barked a rousing reply. In the citadel, a bell took up the call, mingling with shouts and the high-pitched wails of the lesser horns.

Sanglant put spur to Fest. The gelding pressed eagerly onto the field. The sun stood high over all, barricaded on all sides by a glowering wall of dark clouds. The valley lay in brightness, and the forest beyond, in shadow.

Answering trumpets came from the siege works, which were well constructed against a charge.

Pickets of stout, sharpened poles and half-dug trenches guarded the bulwarks, with Sabella's and Conrad's banners stationed deep within. There were but two flaws. They had anchored their right flank upon the steep northern slopes but had not yet set defenses there, perhaps thinking the slope itself sufficient to reject a charge. Some trenches were partially excavated to their rear, but nothing was complete. The other flaw in Conrad's defense was, of course, that he had to defend from both front and behind.

A hundred strides off, Sanglant wheeled his force to the left and made for the slope. Some archers loosed arrows in vain. Others crawled through their own defenses so they might close the range against the riders that charged across their front. Even as they did so, infantry advanced at double time out of the gates of Kassel, shields held high and their own archers behind, letting fly as they closed the range.

The Varren archers who had come out before the lines scrambled back to their defenses. A few fell.

Where the Varren line gave way to hill, Sanglant leaped the farthest and most shallow trench. A pair of archers rose to meet him. He thrust the first through the right eye even as that man tried to nock a new arrow. The other man stumbled as he staggered back. As Sanglant passed, lifting his arm and twisting up to free the lance, he kicked the second archer in the throat. He reset his lance, but it was hard work. The chase, the thunder of hooves around him as his troop smashed into the Varren flank, the first screams, that sharp stone scent that gave him flashes of vision of Bloodheart's hall in Gent, all these roused the fury that drove him in battle. He sucked it down. He was regnant. He was captain. The one who led. He pushed on as his riders scythed the ground behind him. They must push forward, no respite for those in front and no time to slay those left behind. To his right, he glimpsed Liutgard's cavalry pressing the line on either side of Kassel's milites as they pushed and pushed. They had to cut through the lines and reach the Hellweg at the base of the ramp so that any of Theophanu's troops who were riding in from the Hellweg would have a clear descent into the fray.

Wind churned the heavens. A battlement of black clouds rose in a ring around them. Waiting outside the hall, Hanna shuddered as a cold rain drove over her, but a moment later the shower ceased and only the towering thunderheads warned of the looming storm. The sun shone above the valley of Kassel, yet nowhere else.

"Sorcery!" the Saony guards whispered.

She wiped rain from her eyes. Theophanu's army was in tumult, units trotting out in all directions.

The main force of infantry moved toward the ridge slope where, moments before, ax-men had toppled a dozen trees. Six men waved cloth banners where the view opened, trying to alert those trapped with Kassel. Their faces were caught in the sun, but their backs were still in shadow.

"Eagle!" Theophanu emerged from the hall, armed and fit for battle. A captain walked beside her, carrying her helmet. "Eagle, make ready. Kinship demands we warn Conrad and Sabella of the Eika. We must join to negotiate against a greater threat. You'll be brought a fresh horse."

“And ride into the battle, Your Highness?"

"If need be. You will ride along the Hellweg and gain herald's entry into Conrad's camp where they've set a barrier across the road, at the top of the ramp. If you cannot reach Conrad or Sabella, then ride to Kassel's gates. I will rally my forces at the gates of the town if they refuse to listen to reason."

Hanna could scarcely breathe, thinking of the Eika scout she had seen in the forest. Why had he let her pass? Would the Varren troops recognize and respect her Eagle's badge and cloak? But she nodded, shucking her doubts and fears aside because that was what an Eagle had to do. "I am ready."

A horse was led up and the reins given to her. She mounted. It was a short ride to the Hellweg, and the descent of the road along a shallower rise briefly gave her a clear view back the way she had come.

From the top of the hill, where the banner flapped in the morning air, the trumpeter called and Theophanu's advance began. Lines of infantry descended the hillsides, breaking and re-forming around trees and outcrops of rock. Most of the cavalry led their horses down the slope, though Theophanu and her commanders rode, standing above the rest.