Crown of Stars

Page 7

Bertha grunted an answer, too angry to agree but too wise to object. Hanna fumed, but she, too, said nothing as the soldiers fell back into marching order and they moved on. The villagers gathered on top of the roadblock, staring, until the fork in the road was lost behind the trees and the contour of the road.
“How could you?” demanded Hanna at last. “They owe us shelter. …” She sputtered, too angry to continue.
Rosvita paced alongside them. The entire cavalcade moved slowly enough to accommodate the wagons, which seemed always to be half mired in muck, but in truth Rosvita had not weakened on this journey. She had grown wiry, strong enough to walk all day without flagging. She often commented, with surprise, how much better her aching back felt, although she slept on the ground most nights.
“I know that look in a man’s eye, Eagle,” she said now. “This is not a battle worth fighting.”
“What can have made them so desperate?”
Bertha snorted, half laughing. “War between neighboring lords. The Quman barbarians. Plague. The great storm. What else may have afflicted them I cannot tell.”
“I am puzzled,” said Rosvita, “by what he meant by men with animal faces. Why he turned against us when Lady Bertha mentioned Prince Sanglant. It makes no sense.”
“Any man may shake his fist at the regnant when he suffers, and love the king when he prospers,” said Bertha dismissively. “Yet I wonder. We have seen few enough folk in these last weeks when we ought to have seen more. Seven abandoned villages. Children hiding in the woods without their parents. Freshly dug graves. Solitary corpses. This is not just famine at work.”
“What, then?” asked Rosvita.
Bertha shrugged. Hanna, too, had no answers.
II
ARROWS IN THE DARK
1
IN the end they camped along the damp road. The next day when they rode into the ruins of Augensburg, Lady Bertha insisted they set up camp where they had at least some shelter against the unrelenting mizzle that Hanna could not quite bring herself to call rain.
In some ways, theirs was an impressive procession, with fifteen horses, three wagons, one noblewoman, eleven ragged clerics, fourteen stolid soldiers, one sequestered Kerayit shaman and her slave, the goats, the clucking chickens, and the steadfast dogs. Many had died after the battle with Holy Mother Anne’s forces: all of the Kerayit guardsmen, Sorgatani’s two slaves, and sixteen of Bertha’s war band. But since that day in Arethousa when Hanna had joined them, they had, miraculously, lost no one else and had sustained only one permanent injury, to a soldier whose right foot had been crushed when the smaller wagon had slipped sideways down an incline at the side of a mountain path while he walked alongside.
Two men scouted for the water supply while Sergeant Aronvald set up a perimeter around the remains of the stone chapel attached to the palace. The wagon wheels were braced against rocks and the horses taken out to graze, water, and roll. Soldiers tossed tiles out of the ruins of the chapel to make room for sleeping while some of the clerics rigged up canvas to shelter the apse where the altar had once stood. Brother Breschius emerged from the Kerayit cart. Carrying two covered bronze buckets, one riding light and the other heavier, he walked toward the rear of the palace compound where kitchens once stood.
Lady Bertha paused beside her. “Will you come with me, Eagle? Sister Rosvita and I mean to look through the ruins of the town to see if there’s anything we can scavenge.” A trio of soldiers loitered behind her, chafing their hands to warm them.
“I’ll walk through the palace ruins,” said Hanna. “If I may.”
“A good idea. No telling where the rats are hiding. Come!” The last was addressed to her retainers. They left.
After rubbing down her horse and turning it out with the others, Hanna walked through the ruins of the palace. Fallen pillars striped the ground. She traced corridors and rooms reduced to outlines on the ground. A strange feeling crawled along her skin, like fire that warmed but did not burn. She had walked here with Bulkezu and his brother Cherbu. In this place Cherbu had discovered the name of the woman whose sorcery had consumed the vast building.
“Liathano,” she said softly. She shut her eyes and listened, but all she heard was the hiss of a light rain on the ruins and the grass and the rattle of wind in the distant trees. This was a dead place.
“What happened to the town?” asked Brother Fortunatus, coming up beside her.
She coughed and jumped.
“I beg your pardon!” he said, chuckling a little as he touched fingers to her elbow. “I did not mean to startle you.” She offered him a false grin, but he narrowed his eyes. “What ails you, Hanna? Ghosts?”