Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“Perhaps, my lord prince,” said Hanna reluctantly, “in the future you and your followers might be more cautious in your amorous trysts. In a marchland village such as this, the blacksmith is an honored member of the community and not to be insulted in such a grave way.”

“You haven’t the right to say that kind of thing to me!” replied Ekkehard indignantly.

“I ride as the king’s representative, my lord prince. The villagers were generous with their hospitality. I am sure King Henry would think it unwise to repay their generosity in such a way that they throw us out.”

“How will King Henry ever know if there’s no one to report to him?” demanded Lord Thiemo, laying a hand on his sword hilt.

“It’s treason to kill a King’s Eagle,” said Lord Dietrich’s elder cousin.

“So it is,” snapped Ekkehard. “Leave her be.”

“How is being a traitor worse than being a heretic?” asked Lothar, genuinely puzzled.

Ekkehard had no answer to such a difficult question. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I promised Prince Bayan I’d see the Eagle safely to the seat of the Villams, and so I will. After that, she’s on her own to return to the king.”

But Hanna noted how Lord Dietrich’s cousins fell a little behind, talking intently to each other where the others could not hear them.

A warm sun rapidly turned the snow to heavy slush, and Hanna pitied the men who had to walk at the front to make a way for the horses. The weather remained changeable, freezing at night, sometimes warm and sometimes cold with a froth of snow during the daytime. One horse slipped and broke a leg, and although they ate well of its flesh over the next few days, the poor man who’d been thrown in the accident and hit his head finally lost consciousness completely and died of a seizure. One of the soldiers who did most of the trail breaking lost the use of his feet to frostbite, and when the infection began to stink, he begged them to kill him, but Ekkehard hadn’t the guts for it. Instead, they abandoned him in a hamlet in the care of an old woman who claimed to know herbcraft. Hanna smelled the stink of witchcraft in that place, but there was nothing she could do to countermand Ekkehard’s orders. She could hear the man’s screaming for leagues afterward, long after they had marched out of earshot.

That night, Lord Dietrich’s cousins and seven men deserted.

In the morning, Ekkehard would have upbraided the sentries, except it was the very men who’d been on watch who had left. They followed the trail made by the others, bold prints across virgin snow, but as the day wore on, bitterly cold, one of the foot soldiers fell gravely ill and had to be carried by his comrades. They fell farther and farther behind.

Here in the marchlands, forest ranged everywhere, woodland cut frequently by meadows, marsh, and higher heath lands. They took refuge that night within the remains of a deserted village. Most of the buildings had fallen in or been demolished but one had half a roof intact. Thatch scavenged from the outbuildings made decent sleeping pallets, and there was plenty of wood for a fire.

Ekkehard paced impatiently at the limit of the fire’s light as the rest of them listened to the sick man struggle to breathe. Lord Lothar, too, was ill; his breath rattled in and out as he huddled miserably by the fire. Hanna stood with one foot up on the ruined foundations, watching the land.

The stars shimmered beyond a veil of night haze, strangely luminous. Snow-shrouded trees lay in perfect stillness. The moon’s light etched shadows across the abandoned village and once or twice she thought she saw the shade of one of the lost inhabitants scurrying across the common yard on an errand, but it was first an owl and a second time simply a phantasm glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. The snow lay untouched except where their own feet had churned it. A sentry, stationed in the ruins of a pithouse right on the edge of the forest, coughed. Behind her the horses, crowded in with the men for warmth, stamped restlessly.

She stroked her hands down her braid. A cold suspicion was growing in her that Bayan had sent them all out here knowing they might well die. Was he more ambitious than he seemed? Did he mean to eliminate any possible threat to Sapientia’s crown? Was it actually possible that Bayan could flirt as outrageously as he had with her and then send her out on such a dangerous journey? After all, the Quman could be anywhere, although surely they wouldn’t ride abroad in this weather. Only a fool would march cross-country at the mercy of winter—a fool, or an Eagle sent about the regnant’s business.

But, of course, Bayan hadn’t made her an Eagle. She’d accepted the position, knowing its dangers. Any person who rode long distances was at risk, and if anything her Eagle’s cloak and badge gave her a measure of security most travelers never knew.