PROLOGUE (33 page)

Smoke billowed in from outside, but she could not, dared not, look again out through the arrow slit. A hugely pregnant woman came up the ladder, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead. With a grunt, she heaved her ungainly bulk up over the lip, got to hands and knees, then with a shove from foot and hand got herself up. She stationed herself with a bow by one of the slits. The man whose place she took scrambled down, disappearing below.

Soon, other women and one adolescent boy had stationed themselves by the arrow slits, each with a bow. The boy played nervously with an arrow, rolling it through his fingers. More people clambered up the ladder and cowered, some weeping, some stunned, against the walls and then along the floor until there was scarcely room for anyone to move. And yet more tried to come up, and more yet. Such a noise swelled up from this mass of terror-stricken people and from the battle raging outside that Anna could only hunker down, clap hands over ears, and pray. The sting of burning timber and thatch made her eyes burn, and the fear made her heart thud hard in her chest. Her breath came in gasps.

"Come, child," said a woman's brusque voice. Anna looked up into the heat-seared face, blackened with soot, of Mistress Gisela's niece. Dozens of tiny burns and charred holes from flying embers pitted her clothing. "Hand me arrows as I shoot."

"Who are you shooting at?" she breathed. Horror rose in her throat until it choked the breath out of her and she thought she would fall and faint.

But the woman only took careful aim and loosed the arrow and, without thinking, Anna handed her another. She nocked and aimed and shot while screams pierced above the clamor of battle and fire roared and dogs howled and a horn blared long and high and distantly a man's voice shouted: "Form up to my left! Form up to my left!"

One by one Anna handed her the arrows, and as each one was nocked and loosed, the young woman's expression wavered not at all from blank concentration. Only once did she grunt with satisfaction, and once she whimpered, suddenly made afraid by some sight in the yard beyond. But she gulped down her fear as everyone had to, or die through being helpless. That was the way of war.

One by one, Anna handed up the arrows until they were all gone.

IN the end the Eika retreated, but by that time Steleshame lay in shambles, a quarter of the palisade wall burning or battered down, the longhouse in flames and the outbuildings in ruins. Only the newly built hall still stood, though it was scorched. Some of the roof tiles had fallen in where the smoke hole opened and both doors had been wrenched off their hinges.

It was a miracle anything at all had survived. Of the Dragons there remained no sign, but everyone agreed they, like the flying dragon, had arisen from the Eika enchanter's magic, a false vision used to strike fear into their hearts and render them incapable of fighting.

It had not worked, not this time.

"That is the weakness of illusion," Master Helvidius said when the people hiding in the stone keep ventured out to the horrible scene opening before them in the yard. "Once you know it is illusion, it is easier to combat."

Anna held little Helen tightly on her hip as she picked her way through the rubble to the gate. She kept her eyes fixed on her feet, so she wouldn't have to see the dead bodies. There were a lot of dead, human and Eika alike. If she didn't look, then maybe it would be as if they weren't there.

Soldiers staggered through the gates, leading wounded horses, carrying their dead or injured comrades. Some of their number wandered the killing field, sticking Eika through the throat to make sure they would not rise again. A sudden shout rose from their midst as a figure armed in mail, his tabard rent and bloody, shoved himself up from the ground where he had been pinned down by a dead Eika.

It was Lord Wichman himself, by a miracle unharmed except for the battering his mail and helmet had taken. But he had not gotten far before he dropped to his knees and wept over the body of his young cousin, Henry, who had fallen by the gates. Mistress Gisela appeared beside him. Roused by her appearance, the lord rose and began directing the soldiers as they methodically looted the Eika corpses of weapons, shields, and whatever fine mail armor the creatures wore round their hips, mostly silver and gold wrought into delicate patterns.

Anna spied a knife lying in a pool of muck and blood. She knelt quickly, grabbed it, and tucked it into her leggings. Its blade pinched her calf, but she went on.

Beyond, both smithy and tannery burned. A few men had begun to cast dirt onto the fires.

"Here, now, child," said a soldier, coming up beside her. "Get back inside. You don't know how far the Eika have run. They might come back any moment."

"Were those truly Dragons? All dead and rotting?"

"Nay. They were Eika. They only looked like Dragons until they got close. Then we saw through the enchantment."

"Did we win?"

He snorted, waving a hand to indicate the destruction. "If this can be called winning. Ai, Lord, I don't know that we beat them. Rather, they got what they wanted and left."

"But what did they want?" she demanded. "My brother
—" She faltered when she saw the flames that raged round the row of small huts abutting the tannery fence. She began to snivel and Helen, catching her fear, started to cry.

"They drove off the livestock." The soldier grimaced as he raised his left arm, and she saw a gash running up the boiled leather coat he wore, a slash running from waist to armpit. Underneath a thin stream of blood seeped through his quilted shirt, but he seemed otherwise unharmed except for a cut on his lip and a purpling bruise along his jaw. "I saw them myself. I'd guess they were raiding for cattle and slaves more than to kill my good Lord Henry, namesake of the king, bless them both." He drew the Circle of Unity at his breast and sighed deeply. "Come, child, go on in."

"But my brother worked at the tannery
—

He clucked softly and shook his head, then surveyed the scene. The old camp looked as if it had been flattened by a whirlwind. A single chicken scratched diligently beside a hovel. Two dogs cowered under the shelter of a single straggly bush. "Thank God the refugees had already left.

Come, then, we'll go down and see, but mind you, child, you'll go up again when I tell you."

By the time they got down to the stream the tannery fire was under control, though still burning. She saw a body, charred and blackened, over by the puering pit, but it was too large to be Matthias. This body alone remained; of the other inhabitants of the tannery, none could be found.

"There's nothing here, child," said the soldier. "Go on back where it's safe. I'll ask about. You say his name is Matthias?"

She nodded, unable to speak. Helen sucked her thumb vigorously.

With this weight on her, the walk back up the rise to the wrecked palisade seemed forbidding and it exhausted her. Helvidius found her sobbing just inside the gate, and he took her into the hall just as a cold drizzle began to fall.

He brought her heavily watered cider and made her drink, then fussed over Helen, complaining all the while. "The livestock stolen! Food stores trampled or spoiled or burned! What will we do? How will we get through the winter without even enough shelter for those left? What will we do? Without fodder, the young lord will ride back to his home, and then who will protect us? We should have gone with the others."

But by the hearth Mistress Gisela had called a council. A stout woman, she gripped an ax in one hand as if she had forgotten she held it. Blood stained her left shoulder, though it did not appear to be her own. Beyond, in the farthest corner of the hall, the pregnant woman who had been shooting from the keep leaned against the wall, panting, then got down on her hands and knees as several elderly women clustered around her. A boy carried in a pot of steaming water, and Gisela's niece hurried forward with a length of miraculously clean cloth.

"Lord Wichman! I beg you," Gisela was saying, "if there is not enough fodder for those of your horses which remain..."

But the young lord had a wild light in his eyes. With his helmet off and tucked under one arm, he warmed his free hand over the fire while a man-at-arms wiped the blood from his sword. He had a fine down of beard along his chin, as fair as his pale hair. "Did you see the dragon?" he demanded. "Was it a real thing, or another enchantment?"

Master Helvidius hobbled forward, Helen dragging on his robes. "My lord, if I may speak
—

But the young lord went on, heedless. "Nay, Mistress, I won't let the Eika drive me away! Are there no old wise-folk here, who can braid a few spells of protection into being? Give us those, Mistress, and we'll raid as the Eika do, like a pack of dogs harrying their heels!"

"But we've lost full half our livestock, or more! And I hear now from those who escaped into the trees that a good half of my laborers were herded away to be slaves!"

"Or eaten by the dogs!" said a sergeant.

Mistress Gisela set down the ax and looked about for support. "Is Mayor Werner not here? He will advise as I do. How can I support my own people and yours as well, Lord Wichman?"

"The mayor is dead, Mistress," said Wichman. "Or had you not heard that news yet? How can you
not
support me? I am all that stands between you and another Eika raid. And let that be an end to it!" He handed his helmet to the sergeant, stomped his boots hard to shake dirt off them, and sat on a bench, beckoning to Gisela's niece to serve him drink.

Anna began to shake. All of a sudden the cold struck her, and she could not stop trembling. Helvidius limped over and threw a bloodied cape, trimmed with fabulous gold braid embroidery, over her shoulders. "Here," he said. "Him as owned this before won't be wanting it now."

She began to cry. Matthias was gone.

In the far corner, the pregnant woman's grunting breaths, coming in bursts, transmuted into a sudden hiss of relief. The thin wail of a newborn baby pierced the noise and chaos of the hall.

"It's a boy!" someone shouted, and at once Lord Wichman was applied to for his permission that the woman might name her son Henry in honor of his dead cousin.

Ai, Lady. Matthias was gone.

He did not appear that day or the next among the dead pulled from fallen buildings nor among the living who crept out one by one from their hiding places. Amid such disaster, one boy's loss made little difference.

BISCOP Antonia had a high regard for her own importance. Granddaughter of Queen Theodora (now deceased) of Karrone, youngest child of Duchess Ermoldia (now deceased) of Aquilegia, daughter of two fathers, Prince Pepin (now deceased) of Karrone who had sired her and Lord Gunther (now deceased) of Brixia who had raised her, most favored cleric of King Arnulf (now deceased), she had been ordained twenty years ago as biscop of Mainni when the previous biscop had suddenly died. Antonia did not like to be kept waiting.

She was being kept waiting now, and in the most unsightly hovel, a small shepherd's cottage with a bare plank floor, unwashed walls, no carpet, and one narrow bench. On that bench she sat while Heribert stood by the single window and peered out between the cracks in the barred shutters. There was not even a fire in the hearth, and it was bitterly cold. Heribert shivered, thin shoulders shaking under an ermine-lined cloak and two thick wool tunics.

"Come away from the window," she said.

He hesitated, and she frowned. "It's growing late," he said. "Rain has started falling again. It looks as if it's more ice than rain. If someone means to come, then they must do so soon or we will be left here in this Lady-forsaken place to face nightfall."

"Heribert!"

"Yes, Your Grace." Nervously, he touched the holy relics hanging in a pouch at his neck and backed away from the shutters.

The roof was, thank the Lord, sound enough. No rain leaked through to drip on the uneven plank floor. A single lantern that hung from a hook by the hearth gave light to the single room. Antonia had not failed to notice that it had burned for hours now with no change in the level of oil. So, she supposed, their mysterious confederate meant to put them on notice that she
—or he—had arts of magic at her disposal. Someone not to be trifled with.

As they are trifling with me!

Antonia did not like to be trifled with. Only disobedience in those sworn to obey her annoyed her more. She glanced at Heribert, watched him pace back and forth before the cold hearth, now rubbing his arms. He sneezed and wiped his nose, and she hoped he was not getting sick. This frustration also nagged at her: Some of the magi knew arts by which a sorcerer could bring heat or cold. These were not arts she had mastered or even discovered the secrets of. The irritating thing about hidden words was that they were hidden, and difficult to dig out of whatever cave or ciphered manuscript or reluctant, stubborn mind she found them in.