Crown of Stars

Page 15

Afterward, as they saddled and harnessed the horses, as they wedged their supplies into place and made ready to leave, Hanna saw how they looked at the painted cart in their midst.
They feared her, who had saved them.
“Eagle.” Rosvita beckoned her over, and they walked apart, shying away from a dead man masked behind a lizard’s snout. Fortunatus stood rear guard.
“What is it?” asked Hanna, although she already knew by the way their eyes shifted toward the cart and away again.
“I thought …” Rosvita sighed, frowned, touched her forehead as if her fingertips might coax out words. “Lady Bertha and I discussed, yesterday, that it might be time to send you ahead as Eagles ride, to carry news of our coming.”
“Where meant you to send me?”
She shook her head. “It no longer matters. Yesterday I did not know. What she is.”
“She is no Daisanite,” said Fortunatus. “She does not believe in God.”
Their expressions chilled Hanna. Anything might happen if Sorgatani were left alone among those who could not speak to her, those who could never look into her face.
“Trust her,” she said, hating the way her voice quavered, the way it betrayed her desperation and sudden fear. “I pray you. She saved us.”
“What if she turns on us?” asked Rosvita, not with anger or bitterness or suspicion but as a leader must ask, seeking information. “She is not our kind.”
“Trust her, and she will trust you. Distrust her, and she will distrust you.”
“Is that all of your advice, Eagle?”
“There is nothing else to say.”
“She is a terrible weapon. A curse.” The gray light of morning softened the lines on Rosvita’s face. The journey had aged her, yet she was not bowed. She led them now that Bertha was dead. She would hold firm.
“Terrible, yes,” said Hanna, thinking of Bulkezu and his Quman hordes, of lizard-snouted creatures shooting poisoned arrows at her out of the dark, of griffins and centaurs. Thinking of Hugh. “But it is better we hold such a weapon, is it not? Better that we do, than that our enemies do.”
Fortunatus looked at Rosvita, and she at him. Perhaps he raised an eyebrow so imperceptibly that Hanna could not quite mark it. Perhaps it was a slight movement of his lips. These two were intimate in the same manner as family fit hand in glove. Hanna knew they were communicating although she could not hear what it was they said.
“Yes,” replied Rosvita to the words he had not spoken. “Mother Rothgard is famous for her knowledge of sorcery. It might be we should consult her. To protect ourselves.”
“To protect her!” protested Hanna.
Fortunatus closed his eyes, looking pained and weary.
“So it might also be argued,” agreed Rosvita. “Alas it has come to this, that it is good for us that we grasp such a poisoned arrow to our heart.”
“She is what the Horse people and her own mothers made her. She is a good person!”
They looked at her. They doubted. They did not believe.
Maybe, in her heart, she did not believe either, but she remembered Sorgatani’s tears.
“God ask us to remember compassion, do They not, Sister?”
“They do. Why do you say so?”
“Think of her, then, no older than I am. Think of her imprisoned in that cart for all of her life except when she might wander in woodland or grassland where no one unsuspecting can stumble across her. Think of her, and feel compassion. Then you will trust her.”
Fortunatus batted a fly away from his face, his mouth twisted, his gaze fixed on the dirt.
“What of this other whisper?” Hanna demanded, sensing that to press forward might distract them from Sorgatani. “Some of the soldiers are saying that the raiders must have been in league with Prince Sanglant.”
“As easy to say they were seeking Sanglant so they could kill him,” said Rosvita. “These are fears speaking. I do not believe it. Do you?”
Do I? Hanna could not speak to refute it, or admit it. Rosvita smiled sadly and seemed ready to speak, but she paused, cocked her head, and listened.
There came an unspeakably faint rattle, like buckets clanging together. The dogs barked. Sergeant Aronvald shouted a warning. The men, made furious by exhaustion and grief, grabbed their weapons and cursed.
In silence, except for the dogs barking and wagging their tails, they waited.
Like a miracle, there came walking Laurent and Tomas up the road with buckets swinging They started as they came closer, seeing the wagons laden and ready to leave.