Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (42 page)

They were almost at the bridge, but more and yet more Eika scrambled up, even up and over the stone braces, and formed a thick, living wall.

Dogs poured through their ranks, breaking through the line to spring at the Dragons and the Eagles in their midst. They were horrid beasts, slavering, mad with rage and utterly fearless.

One lunged, barreling against Manfred's horse, thenheading straight for
her.
In that instant, she saw its eyes. They were the color of burning yellow.

Too close to shoot. It sprang.

The prince turned halfway round in his saddle and struck it down, across the back, with a single stroke. It crumpled, and her horse jumped to clear its body. That fast. Too fast.

Eika swarmed everywhere, closing, tightening the noose.

With loud cries a new sally of Dragons hit the line of Eika from behind, riding down on them from out of the gates. Eika fell and were trampled or were carried off by the weight of the charge. The Dragons, still in formation, broke ranks, splitting to either side as the Eagles and their escort pounded through. Stone drummed beneath the horses' hooves; then a shift, a slight jarring drop, and they clattered over the metal-trimmed drawbridge. They rode into the shelter of the walls.

The rain stopped, started again as they came out from under the guardhouse into the open space that fronted the gates. The remains of market stalls
—some half burned, others in disarray, but all empty—stood in haphazard lines in the great square.

Behind a great keening and wailing arose. Together with the sudden pounding of hooves and a great chorus of shouts, it deafened Liath. She heard no commands, only saw the prince peel away from the escort and ride back out through the gates. Dragons raced through, four abreast, coming back within the walls, and with a winding of gears the gates began to close.

She battled her way through to a vantage point: On the bridge the last dozen Dragons fought a rearguard action to retreat as the Eika hounded them. One soldier had been thrown over a horse. Another lay limp over his mount's neck. But beyond, on the stone and timber span, in the trampled field, she saw no gold tabard, no soldier left lying in the field. The dogs had begun to rip into the Eika dead.

Many of the Dragons were already racing up the stairs to the parapet; the city militiamen rained arrows down onto the bridge from above. The gates swung closed behind the last rider: the prince. He kicked his mount forward just as spears, aimed at his back, darkened the air. The gates slammed shut to a chorus of howls and the peppering smacks of spears hitting harmlessly against the metal-plated gates. A new grinding sounded: the men of Gent were drawing up the drawbridge.

The prince's horse stumbled, dropped, and threw him, stumbled again, and went down, kicking hard, trying to get up. He jumped to his feet, pulled off his helm and tossed it to the ground with an astonishing lack of regard for its rich decoration. He grabbed the horse's bridle and yanked its head down onto the ground. Then, while he cursed loud and long, four of his men ran forward to examine the horse. A spear protruded from its belly, sunk deep. Blood spilled onto the packed earth, mixing with rain. The horse thrashed feebly, then stilled, its side rising and falling in shallow breaths. From outside, Liath heard the last howls and frustrated wails of the Eika as they finally retreated. The men stationed along the parapet jeered after them.

The prince's hand fell to his belt. He drew a knife and cut the horse's throat. Its blood poured onto his feet, staining his boots red, but still he knelt there, silent now. His black hair was plastered down on his skull from the rain. He had strange smooth skin, bronze-colored, and a striking face that betrayed by its lineaments that his mother was truly not of human kin.

Strangest of all, he had no beard nor any trace of beard.

He looked up, sought, and found with his gaze a man dressed in a rich tunic, head shielded from the rain by a capacious scarlet cloak held like a canopy over him by four servants.

"Butcher it and salt it," the prince said, standing up and turning his back on the dead animal. He had a hoarse tenor; it carried with the authority of a man who expects obedience. "Or so I suggest, my lord mayor."

"Eat
horse
meat?" The man could not seem to find a place to rest his eyes: on the prince, on the dead horse, on the Dragons calmly drawing the spear from the body, on the last gush of blood and entrails.

"It will seem like a delicacy come winter, if the Eika lay in a true siege." The prince saw Wolfhere, gestured to him, and stalked away. A Dragon grabbed the prince's helm from the mud and hurried after him.

Wolfhere quickly handed his horse's reins to Manfred and, without comment, followed.

JLLA. Jtl dismounted and huddled close to Manfred, shaking from the aftermath of battle as the rush of energy left her.

"I've never seen a man without a beard before," she whispered. "I mean, except a churchman, of course."

Manfred ran a finger along his own close-cropped beard. "Eika don't have beards."

She laughed nervously. Her hands trembled and she thought her heart would never stop racing. "I didn't notice. Did Hanna and Hathui escape, do you think?"

He shrugged.

"What do we do now?"

They took the horses to the barracks where the Dragons had stabled their own horses, rubbed them down, and gave them oats; the activity calmed her. She slung her bedroll and saddlebags over her shoulder and followed Manfred up steep stairs that led to the long attic room above the stables where the Dragons had settled in. Fresh straw covered the plank floor, and bedrolls lay neatly lined up along the walls. The smell of horse and stall was pervasive but not overpowering. Men lounged at their ease, dicing, carving wood, oiling or polishing their gear, making small talk. They glanced at the two Eagles, curious, but made no attempt to speak to them.

Was one of these men her kinsman? She tried to examine their faces surreptitiously, looking for some resemblance to Da.

Manfred led her to the far end of the long, low room. There, shutters opened to admit the gloomy light of afternoon. The rain was coming down harder now, but it was already stuffy inside the loft, sticky like summer heat. The prince and Wolfhere sat on bales of hay, facing each other across a table. The prince had a chess set carved of ivory laid out in front of him, eight squares wide, eight across. He toyed with the pieces as he and Wolfhere spoke, picking them up, setting them down in new places: the eight Lions, the Castles, Eagles, and Dragons and
—protected by the others—the Biscop and
Regnant.

Behind the prince, the only woman besides Liath in the loft sat with the prince's helmet on her lap. She polished the helmet with a rag. She wore the tabard of the Dragons, and her arms were muscular, her jaw scarred by many small white lines, and her nose looked as if it had been broken and healed wrong.

Manfred hunkered down onto his haunches, prepared for a long wait. Liath knelt beside him. Now and again a cooling mist of water touched her face from the rain outside. Straw tickled her hands. Her nose itched.

"I judge the city can withstand a siege. But my Dragons alone cannot lift the siege, not with the numbers of Eika who have invested Gent. We have no news from Count Hildegard, whether she or her brother Lord Dietrich mean to lead an army to aid us. And you say now the king will not bring an army."

"I don't know what King Henry intends, Prince Sanglant. But he may not be able to bring an army here, even if he wishes to."

The prince picked up a Dragon and placed it between two Castles, as if trapping it there. This close, Liath could study the line of his jaw. He had either just shaved or else he did not grow a beard. But then how could he truly be called a man?

"I have heard these rumors, that Lady Sabella means to gather adherents and ride against King Henry. But she swore before the Biscop of Mainni eight years ago never to trouble the king with her false claims again."

"So she did," agreed Wolfhere, "but the Biscop of Mainni is rumored to be among her counselors now. And all three dukes of Varre as well as five counts from Varre have refused to appear before King Henry on his progress."

"This is certainly grave news, but what am I to tell the people of Gent? Given enough time, the Eika army outside will burn and batter down Gent's bridges, and when they have done that, they will have free passage up the Veser whether we will it or no. If they sail far enough up the Veser, then it will scarcely matter what the Lady Sabella demands, since the heart of Wendar itself will be at risk."

"You would counsel your father to consider this the greater threat? But always in other years, Prince Sanglant, the Eika have raided and left, content with whatever gold and slaves they could carry away in their ships."

The prince glanced out the window, although only rain and the timbered roof of the mayor's palace were visible. Distantly, Liath heard drums. "This is not 'other years.' This is not a raid. Already the envoy for the Eika general has refused Mayor Werner's offer of ten chests of gold and one hundred slaves as payment for them to leave."

Wolfhere chuckled suddenly. "I hear two things in your words I can scarcely credit. One is that a man sits as mayor in a city. The other is that the Eika have a general. They are bandits, nothing more, with perhaps a captain to lead each ship, if we can even dignify their packs with such a word. More like the strongest beast

who keeps the others obedient by threat of claw and teeth."

Sanglant turned his head to look directly at Liath. She squirmed, horribly uncomfortable; his eyes were so bright and his features so strange and sharp. He examined her with obvious curiosity for so long that she felt the stares of his men, behind her, on her back, as if they, too, wanted to know what interested their captain. For so long that Wolfhere finally glanced over to see what the prince was looking at.

What crossed Wolfhere's expression Liath had never expected to see: He was angry.

Sanglant smiled slowly at her, perhaps with invitation. When he smiled, he had a sudden bright charm, so powerful she felt herself blush. Beside her, Manfred muttered something inaudible under his breath. Sanglant grunted, almost laughing, as if in response. Then, with a shrug and a stretch of his shoulders, he looked back at Wolfhere. The older man's expression was now entirely bland.

"Mayor Werner is an interesting man, overly fond of his family's riches. Is it not said Our Lord judges the worth of his earthly sons by the measure of their generosity to their companions and to the poor? So King Henry would say. Werner's mother was mayor of the town before him, and he was her only surviving son. And, it is said, always her favorite, though certainly the staff of authority should have gone to one of her daughters, his half sisters." He said these words with a trace of bitterness, and yet he also seemed to be laughing at himself. "So far the people of Gent have found no reason to be displeased with his stewardship and thus throw him out in favor of a woman whose authority is, as you say, more likely to receive Our Lady's Blessing. As for the other
—-" He put out a hand, and the woman handed him his helmet, now bright, the gold face of the dragon like cold fire burning on the hard surface of iron. As he spoke, serious now, he ran his hands over the helmet, tracing the delicate gold work with long, dark fingers.

"There is an intelligence out there which directs these Eika. I have felt it. It knows of me just as I know of it, and we are bent, each of us, on the other's destruction."

"A human man, do you think?"

"I think not. And who better than I to know, my friend. Is that not right?"

Wolfhere bowed his head in acknowledgment.

"But whether it is an Eika unlike in mind and craft to the others, or some different creature entirely, I cannot say. I have fought King Henry's wars for eight years now, since I came of age and was given my Dragons to be captain of. As is my birthright, the child born to prove the man worthy of the throne of Wendar." His tone was as cold as a stinging winter's wind. "But the others were ordinary wars, raids by the Quman horsemen, Duke Conrad's rebellion, Lady Sabella's revolt, which I saw the end of."

"Her first
revolt," said Wolfhere quietly.

"Rumors do not a revolt make," said Sanglant, equally quietly, then raised a hand to forestall Wolfhere's comment. "But I trust your judgment in these matters, Wolfhere, if you say she is again fomenting rebellion against the king. You have served the throne of Wendar faithfully. Or so I have always heard."

"As have you," said Wolfhere, baring his teeth. "Or so I have always heard."

There was a hiss, an intake of breath, from those of the Dragons close enough to hear the comment. But Sanglant smiled his charming smile, tossed the chess piece carved into the likeness of a King's Dragon up toward the rafters, then grabbed it out of the air as it fell. The movement made the helm roll off his lap, and the scar-jawed woman caught it before it struck the floor.

The prince opened his hand and displayed the chess piece. Its ivory gleam, oiled from much handling, set off the bronze tone of his skin.
Half human,
Liath thought, and then was ashamed of herself: Was she not also different from the rest, with her skin always burned so

brown? But at least slaves who worked all day in the fields were burned as brown as she was at summer's end, if they were not burned to blisters. And Da had told her of people living in lands far to the south, where the sun was hotter and brighter, who had skin burned darker even than hers. Was it then better to be fully human but a slave or a heathen, rather than a half-human prince who could never be fully trusted?