“Now what say you, brother?” cried the soldier. “Do they walk forward offering the gold feather of peace? Do they send emissaries with tribute? No, they strike like wolves in the night.” He struck. Alain dodged aside as the prince caught himself and jerked back for another try.
“Hold your point!” cried the Seeker. “These are the Horse folk come for their witch. This one, he does not belong here.”
“Then we shall be rid of him.” The soldier struck again. Alain knocked the point aside with his staff and leaped back toward the wall as the prince pressed his attack.
“Brother! Behind you!”
Two massive creatures scrambled up the lower slope. One, lithe and swift, closed faster than the other. The lamp held in the Seeker’s hand flared as the leading centaur burst into the herb garden, trampling waist-high lavender. The soldier spun to meet her.
Ai, God. Like the Holy One, she was beautiful. Long black hair blown back revealed full breasts, each glimmering in the pale light like a perfect moon. As with her hind legs she jumped, she raised high in her hands a club bristling with spikes. She bore down on the prince. He held his ground and thrust, catching her between those breasts. Her momentum pushed the spear point out her back as he scrambled backward to the low wall ringing the ledge. The club came down too late across the haft of the spear, splintering it as her body collided with her killer. They both tumbled over the retaining wall, vanishing from sight.
The second centaur let loose a piercing scream as she arrived too late to do anything but avenge her companion. She charged the Seeker, who danced this way and that, at some advantage because he could dodge more swiftly than she could turn her bulky body, until at last his enemy cornered him near Alain. She hadn’t the lithe beauty of her dead companion; broad shouldered and barrel-chested, breasts almost lost in her muscular arms and chest, she reared up, fore-hooves striking and club lifted for the killing blow.
Alain thrust his staff up, catching the club at the apex of its arc. She twisted, her fore-hooves knocking Alain hard to the ground, and reared again, ready to strike him, but he pushed his staff between her rear legs and with the weight of his body twisted it around. The wood did not break. She tumbled back onto her flank. He leaped to force his weight down onto her heaving shoulder, pressing his staff against her neck.
“We must save the Holy One!” he cried.
“I am Sos’ka.” She twisted her head around to catch sight of the Seeker, standing stock-still against the wall. “Bar’ha and I were sent up here to find the one called Alain. Why do you fight me, if you are that one?”
The Seeker had pulled his knife, but he did not advance. Amazingly, he hadn’t lost his grip on the oil lamp. Alain eased up on his staff and rose. Sos’ka regained her club and righted herself, getting her four legs under her and with some difficulty staggering upright. When she saw the Seeker, hatred swept clean her expression. She lifted the club and danced toward him.
Alain stepped between them. “No. No more killing.”
She shook her head, making a noise more like a whinny than a word. Where her black hair had been bound back, her ears, pointed and tufted, showed through. She examined Alain briefly with eyes slit vertically, their color impossible to make out in the night. “Come,” she said at last, with only a final, swift glance at the Seeker, who had not moved.
Maybe this young prince, so uncannily like the other, would not die today. Maybe his brother had or was soon to become a shade, caught forever in the shadows of the world.
“Quickly.” Sos’ka grabbed Alain with a burly arm and helped him mount awkwardly onto her back. He righted himself, clamping his staff under his arm as she turned, cleared the wall easily, then half slipped, half cantered down the slope. He had to grasp her mane, which ran all the way down her spine to her withers, to stay on her back. Although she was as surefooted as a goat, the ride was rough.
He glanced back to see the Seeker bending to pick an object from the ground. It gleamed, sweetly gold, almost as bright in the night as the oil lamp. As Alain slapped his hand over his tunic, feeling for the phoenix feather, he saw the soldier prince push himself away from the body of the dead centaur just below the ledge. At once, the Seeker jumped forward to help his brother to safety.
“Beware!” Sos’ka cried, and he held on for dear life as she jumped a ditch and landed hard on the other side.
He felt at his chest again, but the phoenix feather was gone, lost in the struggle. It was too late to go back now. The battle rose out of the darkness before them.
Alain held tight to Sos’ka as she cleared the worst of the rugged ground and galloped wide around the fighting that had erupted in the encampment. Pavilions burned, fire illuminating the scene with a sickly glow. Cursed Ones fell, and centaurs stumbled, cut down. Screams cut the air. The horrible scent of charred flesh stung at his nose and made him choke. Torches ringed the fort. Flaming arrows made arcs of light across the night sky.
“To the southeast road,” he yelled, almost coughing out the words. She cried out, a whinnying call, and about four dozen centaurs split away from the attack to follow her, half of them carrying torches. They pounded onto the road, hooves striking sparks on stone, and broke into a gallop. The stonework, the fruit of the Cursed Ones’ fabled engineering, made the road so even and smooth that they could move swiftly and without much fear of stumbling. Even so, he could tell from their fury that no obstacle, even night, would come between them and the one they sought, not now that they were so close.
The high priest’s party had made good time and, truly, looked to be making better time still, since the men had all broken into a steady soldier’s trot. Their rear guard shouted the warning, and half the troop—perhaps three dozen—stopped to meet the threat. They fanned out into a line, spears lowered, as the rest of the troop hastened on. The blood-knife banner bobbed away into the night shadows, a pair of torches casting light onto the sigil. The two wagons, with the Holy One tied between them, lumbered on.
The centaur charge hit the line of spearmen like a storm surge, flattening them. Four centaurs fell, but the rest poured past even as those soldiers who weren’t writhing on the ground cast their spears after them. One centaur lurched forward, wounded in the thigh, and collapsed. Alain had to look away as a group of soldiers leaped on her, stabbing.
Seeing that their pursuit hadn’t slowed, the rest of the troop pulled up to face the centaurs. Sos’ka’s coat was slick with sweat. Froth bubbled at her mouth as she shrieked in battle frenzy and charged for this new line. Alain tightened his knees along her withers, desperate to stay on, and couched his staff like a lance. The Cursed Ones formed their final line, spears ready, swords poised.
As they broke over the line Alain slapped a spear’s thrust away and struck the soldier across the face, knocking him hard to the ground. Sos’ka’s club swiped close by Alain’s head as she swung it down onto the helmet of a Cursed One. The force of the blow shuddered through her body as her club, crushed the man’s skull. The dying soldier’s sword drew a shallow cut across her shoulder and down Alain’s thigh as the man fell beneath her hooves.
They broke past the line and, with some effort, she slowed, danced sideways, and turned to meet a new press of soldiers. Her club struck wildly in grand arcs from side to side. Half the time Alain had to duck her swings, but he thrust his staff toward one face, then another, hitting them hard to keep them off-balance. She reared as a soldier cut at her legs, and Alain slid from her back. Amazingly he landed on his feet and had enough balance to jump forward, catching the soldier’s sword against his staff. With the sword still embedded in the wood, he shoved the flat of the blade into the face of its owner, stunning the soldier. Wrenching his staff free, he struck a blow that sent the man to the ground.
The wagons had lurched to a stop as the drivers fought to control their panicking horses. The high priest, with his rainbow headdress thrown carelessly to one side, leaped out of the back of the lead wagon and, ugly obsidian knife in hand, ran forward
to Li’at’-dano. The centaur shaman was still trussed, trapped and helpless as she threw back her head and neighed. The Cursed Ones fought furiously to keep her rescuers away. All they had to do was hold long enough for the priest to murder her. No matter how hard Alain pushed, for every one he knocked aside, another leaped forward to take that one’s place.
The priest cried out. “May He-Who-Burns take this offering!” He struck.
The centaurs cried out in fear and helpless fury.
Light ripped down from the heavens. The burning flash was followed by an explosive clap that threw every person to the ground.
Then it was silent, for the space of two breaths, or two hundred breaths, impossible to tell because his skin tingled so sharply that the sensation obliterated all his other senses. Blood trickled from one ear as his sight returned, and he pushed up to his knees. His hair had come alive, twisting like the living hair of the merfolk.
Only the Holy One still stood upright, unable to collapse because of the ropes binding her. Her flesh was burned and her black hair, mane, and coat singed. The priest had been thrown twenty paces away, his burned and contorted corpse smoking. Fire danced along the hem of his cloak and died. The obsidian knife lay at the centaur shaman’s feet, melted into a puddle of steaming glass.
Alain staggered to his feet just as the drivers fell from the wagons, clothes burned off their bodies, and stumbled away toward the safety of the woods. One of the horses, caught in the traces, tried to rise, but could not. Alain kicked down a nearby soldier who tried to stand. He made it, barely, to Li’at’dano. As he cut the ropes, she collapsed gracefully to the ground. Centaurs struggled up, their manes and hair standing straight up like that of frightened cats. Sos’ka was not among the standing.
The Cursed Ones were slower to rise. Some crawled away. Other were killed by those centaurs who recovered first, but Alain could do nothing to help them, any of them. All he could do was help the shaman to rise. This close, he saw the horrible bruises across her torso, the marks of a whip, and the mangled stump of one ear, its tip cut clean off.
At last, Sos’ka appeared at his side, singed but living. “In the wagon,” she said. It was not easy to get Li’at’dano in, and a tight fit besides to place a centaur’s body in a bed meant for carrying two-legged creatures and their cargo. When they had done, other centaurs had already unfastened the stunned horses and harnessed themselves in their place.
“What did she do?” Alain asked, leaning on the wagon to catch his breath. His hair was finally beginning to settle. A huge scar marked the center of the road.
“Li’at’dano wields the weather magic,” said Sos’ka. “She called lightning.”
A new herd of centaurs galloped up, wielding torches like clubs as they scattered or killed the rest of the Cursed Ones. Only now could Alain hear the distant clash of battle by the fort, fading as wind rose up out the dark, a rushing in the nearby trees. He heard barking, coming closer.
Sos’ka whistled, and a centaur with burnt-butter-colored skin and a glossy gray coat trotted up. She carried a bow, with a quiver of arrows slung over her back. “He’ll need to ride if he’s to come with us,” said Sos’ka.
“He is not,” said Gray Coat. “His companions come now, on the backs of Ni’at’s foals. They must return to their own herd with this news.”
“Let him come before me.” The Holy One’s voice was soft, labored, yet it still sang sweetly. He turned to look. The shaman lifted her head, seeking; she seemed blind, although her eyes were open.
“Here I am,” he said, reaching out to touch her questing hand.
“Yes.” She caught hold of his fingers, her grip uncomfortably strong. “You are here. What is it that you wish to ask me?”
How did she know? “Are you the one called Liathano?” He stumbled over the pronunciation, trying it again. “Li’at’dano.”
“I am called Li’at’dano.” A thin smile teased her swollen lips. “But there is one who will be given my name in the time yet to come.”
“Ai, God.” Her words shuddered through him like the tolling of a bell. He glanced around at the centaurs looming and pacing, impatient to go, to get their rescued shaman to a place of safety where she could heal. But he still had so many questions. “Where am I, truly?”
“You are here.”
“Where was I before? Where was I when I was alive?”
“You are alive now.”
“Alive where?” The words caught on his tongue, all tangled and heavy. He could barely speak. “Alive when?”
A dozen centaurs pounded up, Agalleos and Maklos clinging to the backs of two roan mare women. Agalleos looked grim. Maklos seemed, as he dismounted, to be flirting with the pretty creature he had just ridden in on. Torches shifted and bobbed in the darkness as more gathered, retreating from the battle at the fort.
And he remembered: the soldier prince hadn’t died. He wasn’t a shade. He remained as alive, at this moment, as Alain was. “Ai, God. I’m not in the afterlife, am I?”
“No,” she said sadly, “you are not. I found you only because the one you call Liathano dragged you off the path that leads to the Other Side.”
“You mean I was truly dying.” Bitterness took hold of him as he blurted out his next words. “I served the Lady of Battles as she bid me. I died on that battlefield.”
“You did not die only because the fire’s child dragged you off the path. I saw you in the crossroads between worlds and lives, in the place where all that was and that is and that will be touches. There I got hold of you, and I brought you here. To this time. To Adica.” Pain creased her features, but she managed to speak. “Who needs you.”
Ai, God. Adica!
Rage and Sorrow swarmed him then, bounding up fearlessly through the herd of gathering centaurs, leaping over the corpses of the dead, and jumping up to lick his face.
“Down! Down!” he said, almost laughing. Almost crying.
Gray Coat lifted a conch shell to her lips and blew. She bent forward to touch, respectfully, one of the hooves of the shaman. “We must go. Our rear guard cannot hold off the Cursed Ones forever. You must be well away before they march out in force.”
“Yes,” agreed Li’at’dano. “I fell for their traps once. Not again.” She laid her head down and, with a ragged breath, closed her eyes.
Alain lifted his hands from the wagon’s side just as it lurched forward, pulled by two strong centaur women. Torches lined the roads, and an eerie whistling rose from the assembled centaurs as the wagon passed through their ranks.
“Come,” said Agalleos, taking Alain by the arm. “We must go with them.”
“But we have to go back to get Adica!”
“The road back is closed to us now. The Cursed Ones will roam everywhere because of this. It isn’t safe.”
“But—”
Sos’ka trotted up. “Here is my cousin,” she said, indicating a husky centaur who bore a remarkable resemblance to Sos’ka: shoulders the width of Beor’s and muscular arms. Like all the others, she went naked, not a scrap of clothing. “She will carry you for the first part of the road.”
“Come,” said Agalleos.
Rage and Sorrow nosed against him, licking his hands. In the distance, a shout raised from Spider’s Fort. Already the mass of centaurs had fallen in to follow the wagon, torches fading into the distance as they picked up speed.
Alone, he could not make his way back to Shu-Sha’s camp through unknown country now surely buzzing with agitated soldiers on the lookout for creeping enemies. In a way, it seemed like losing the phoenix feather was a terrible omen. Anger and fear warred within him, until he remembered the Holy One’s whispered words about Adica: “Who needs you.”
No matter what came next, he would find a way back to her.
XVII
POISON
1
AFTER twenty days marching west, the armies moving in parallel columns under separate commanders, they began to get sporadic and possibly exaggerated reports of a lar
ge Quman force moving north along the Veser River, closing in on Osterburg. Just as they were. The thought of facing Bulkezu again made Zacharias so sick that he could scarcely bring himself to eat.
Rumors flew violently among the troops, often accompanied by fistfights. Who would command, when the battle came that everyone was hoping for? Henry had said that he meant Princess Sapientia to be his heir, her soldiers argued; but he never anointed her, Sanglant’s loyal followers retorted. They had heard the king offer Aosta and its crown to Sanglant. Didn’t that count for anything? Not if he’d refused it, the answer went. He was still a bastard, after all, even if he was a great fighter and leader.
No one could answer that objection satisfactorily: he was still a bastard, after all.
It was rumored that Princess Sapientia was pregnant. When at last the call came down through the ranks that there would be a trial by combat to determine who had the right to command, everyone knew that she would therefore choose her husband as her champion. The church sometimes used such trials to determine which person God ordained as victor when an irreconcilable dispute was brought before a biscop. Only one could win, and that one would win the right to command the combined armies, now almost three thousand mounted warriors, a huge force with more lordly and monastic retinues joining up every day as they marched west, gathering strength and resolve.
The road in this region of Saony was more a wagon track, but at least the local residents at the villages and estates had heard rumors of the atrocities committed by the Quman army to the south and were, for that reason, only somewhat reluctant to give over stores of their newly harvested grain to the army.
They set camp early that night where three grassy meadows cut a swath of open ground through woodland. Sheep and cattle grazed, watched over by shepherds. The commanders ordered half the beasts taken from the herds to feed the army and sent the rest on their way to discourage hungry soldiers from stealing what they wished under cover of night.