But that was all over now. He had run before they took away his tongue, which truly mattered more to him than the other.
Water eddied along the bank. A hawk’s piercing cry made him start. He had rested long enough. Cautiously he eased free of the brush, forded the stream, and fell into the steady lope that he used to cover ground. He was so tired. But west lay the land out of which he had walked in pride so many years ago that he had lost count, five or seven or nine. He meant to return there, or die. He would not remain a Quman slave any longer.
Dusk came, but the waxing moon gave him enough light to see by as he walked on, a shadow among shadows on the colorless plain. Stars wheeled above, and he kept to a westerly course by keeping the pole star to his right.
Very late, a spark of light wavering on the gloomy landscape caught his attention. He cursed under his breath. Had the war band caught and passed him, and did they now wait as a spider waits for the fly to land? But that was not proud Bulkezu’s way. Bulkezu was honorable in the way of his people—if that could be called honor—but he was also like a bull when it came to problems: he had no subtlety at all. Strength and prowess had always served him well enough.
No, this was someone—or something—else.
He circled in, creeping, until in the gray predawn light he saw the hulking shapes of standing stones at the height of a rise, alone out here on the plain as though a giant had once stridden by and placed them there carelessly, a trifle now forgotten. His own people called such stone circles “crowns,” and this fire shone from within the crown. He knew then it was no Quman campsite—they were far too superstitious to venture into such a haunted place.
He crept closer on his hands and knees. Grass pricked his hands. The moon set as the first faint wash of light spread along the eastern horizon. The fire blazed higher and yet higher until his eyes stung from its glare. When he came to the nearest stone, he hid behind its bulk and peeked around.
That harsh glare was no campfire.
Within the ring of stones stood a smaller upright stone, no taller or thicker than a man. And it burned.
Stone could not burn.
He would have prayed, but the Quman had taken his faith together with so much else.
A woman crouched beside the burning stone. She had the well-rounded curves of a creature that eats as much as it wants, and the sleek power of a predator, muscular and quick. Her hair the same color as the height of flame that cast a net of fire into the empty air. Her skin, too, wore a golden-bronze gilding, a sheen of flame, and she wore necklaces that glittered and sparked under the light of that unearthly fire.
Witchfire.
She swayed, rocking from heel to heel as she chanted in a low voice.
The stone flared so brightly that his eyes teared, but he could not look away. He saw through the burning stone as through a gateway; saw another country, heard it, a place more shadow than real, as faint as the spirit world his ancient grandmother had told tales about but with the sudden gleam of color, bright feathers, white shells, a trail of dun-colored earth, a sharp whistle like that of a bird. Then the vision vanished and some stone snuffed out as though a blanket of earth thrown on the fire had smothered it.
Stone and fire both were utterly gone.
A moment later the lick and spit of everyday flame flowered into life. The woman tended a common campfire, fed it with dried dung and twigs. As soon as it burned briskly, she made a clucking sound with her tongue, stood, and turned to face him.
Ai, Lord! She wore leather sandals, bound by straps that wound up her calves, and a supple skirt sewn of pale leather that had been sliced off raggedly at knee-length. And nothing else, unless one could count as clothing her wealth of necklaces. Made of gold and beads, they draped thickly enough that they almost covered her breasts—until she shifted. A witch, indeed.
She did not look human. In her right hand she had a spear tipped with a stone point.
“Come,” she said in the Wendish tongue.
It had been so long since he had heard the language of his own people that at first he did not recognize what he had heard.
“Come,” she repeated. “Do you understand this tongue?” Then she tried again, speaking a word he did not know.
His knees ached as he straightened up. He shuffled forward slowly, ready to bolt, but she only watched him. A double stripe of red paint like a savage’s tattoo ran from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. She wore no curved felt hat on her head, as Quman women did, nor did she cover her hair with a shawl, as Wendish women were accustomed to do. Only leather strips decorated with beads bound her hair back from her face. A single bright feather trailed down behind, half hidden. The plume shone with such a pure, uncanny green that it seemed to be feathered with slivers from an emerald.
“Come forward,” she repeated in Wendish. “What are you?”
“I am a man,” he said hoarsely, then wondered bitterly if he could name himself such now.
“You are of the Wendish kin.”
“I am of the Wendish kin.” He was shocked to find how hard it was to speak out loud the language he had been forbidden to speak among the Quman. “I am called—” He broke off. “Dog,” “worm,” “slave-girl,” and “piece-of-dung,” were the names given him among the Quman, and there had been little difference in meaning between the four. But he had escaped the Quman. “I—I was once called by the name Zacharias, son of Elseva and Volusianus.”
“What are you to be called now?”
He blinked. “My name has not changed.”
“All names change, as all things change. But I have seen among the human kin that you are blind to this truth.”
To the east, the first rim of sun pierced the horizon, and he had to shade his eyes. “What are you?” he whispered.
Wind had risen with the dawning of day.
But it was not wind. It sang in the air like the whirring of wings and the sound of it tore the breath out of his chest. He tried to make a noise, to warn her, but the cry lodged in his throat. She watched him, unblinking. She was alone, as good as unarmed with only a spear to protect her; he knew with what disrespect the Quman treated women who were not their own kin.
“Run!” he croaked, to make her understand.
He spun, slammed up against stone and swayed there, stunned. The towering stone block hid him from view. He could still flee, yet wasn’t it too late once you could hear their wings spinning and humming in the air? Like the griffins who stalked the deep grass, the Quman warriors took their prey with lightning swiftness and no warning but for that bodiless humming vibrating in the air, the sound of their passage.
He had learned to mark their number by the sound: at least a dozen, not more than twenty. And singing above the rest ran the liquid iron thrum of true griffin wings.
He began, horribly, to weep with fear. The Quman had said, “like a woman”; his own people would say, “like a coward and unbeliever,” one afflicted with weakness. But he was so tired, and he was weak. If he had been strong he would have embraced martyrdom for the greater glory of God, but he was too afraid. He had chosen weakness and life. That was why They had forsaken him.
She shifted to gaze east through the portal made by standing stones and lintel. He was so shocked by her lack of fear that he turned—and saw.
They rode with their wings scattering the light behind them and the whir of their feathers drowning even the pound of their horses’ hooves. Their wings streamed and spun and hummed and vibrated, lancing above their heads and then curving in over their helmets, which were painted white. Their armor had a dull gleam, strips of metal sewn onto leather coats, and on a standard fixed to a spear they bore the mark of the Pechanek clan: the rake of a snow leopard’s claw. The Quman had many tribes. This one he knew well, to his sorrow.
At the fore rode a rider whose wings shone with the hard iron fletching of griffin feathers. Like the others he wore a metal visor shaped and forced into the likeness of
a face, blank and intimidating, but Zacharias did not need to see his face to know who it was.
Bulkezu.
The name struck at his heart like a deathblow.
A band of fifteen riders approached the ring of stones, slowing now, the hum of their wings abating. From a prudent distance they examined the stone circle and split up to scout its perimeter and assess the stone portals, the lay of the ground, and the strength of its defenders. The horses shied at first, made skittish by the great hulking stones or by the shadow of night that still lingered inside the ring, but taking courage from their masters, they settled and agreed to move in closer.
The woman braced herself at the eastern portal with her spear in one hand and the other tucked at her hip. She showed no fear as she waited. The riders called out to each other. Their words were torn away on a wind Zacharias could not feel on his skin—audible but so distant that he could make out no meaning to what they shouted to each other, as though the sound came to him through water.
At once the whirring began again as all the riders kicked into a gallop and charged, some from the left, some from the right, some from the other side of the circle. Wings hummed; hooves pounded; otherwise they came silently except for the creak and slap of their armored coats against the wooden saddles.
Beyond the woman and the eastern portal, with the rising sun bright in his eyes, Zacharias saw Bulkezu as iron wings and iron face and gleaming strips of iron armor. The two feathers stuck on either side of his helmet flashed white and brown. The griffin feathers fletched in the curving wooden wings that were fastened to his back shone with a deadly iron gleam. Where the ground leveled off he galloped toward the waiting woman, and lowered his spear.
Zacharias hissed out a breath, but he did not act. He already knew he was a coward, a weakling. He could not stand boldly against the man who had first mocked him, then violated him, and then wielded the knife.
He could not stand boldly—but he watched, at first numb and then with a surge of fierce longing for the woman who waited without flinching. With an imperceptible movement she lifted her fingers from her hip. From within her uncurling hand mist swirled into being, spread, and engulfed the world beyond. Only the air within the stone circle remained untouched, tinted with a vague blue haze. An unearthly fog swallowed the world beyond the stones.
All sound dissolved into that dampening fog, the whir and hum of spinning feathers, the approach of the horses, the distant skirl of wind through grass….
Kate Elliott, Prince of Dogs
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