Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“I’m surprised, my lord prince,” said Hanna, “that you would war on your father’s people. Isn’t that treason?”

Prince Ekkehard did not deign to reply, but Lord Benedict rose to the bait. “Lord Hedo did not come to King Henry’s aid when the king’s sister, Lady Sabella, rose in revolt against him. This is his just punishment. We are doing nothing more than seeing him rewarded for his disobedience.”

“Aiding an enemy as he devastates your father’s lands and cripples his people scarcely seems the act of a loyal subject.”

“You’ll regret those words,” Lord Welf said hotly, “when you don’t have a prince to protect you.” He nodded toward Bulkezu.

“Nay, I don’t have a prince to protect me.” She lifted her right hand to display the emerald ring. “I’m the King’s Eagle.”

Ekkehard flushed, and his companions muttered among themselves, glancing toward Bulkezu, gauging his mood. Ekkehard’s boys didn’t like her. She didn’t like them much, either, if it came to that; they were the real traitors. Yet were they any different than most of the nobly born, fighting their wars across the bodies of the common folk?

Bulkezu laughed as soon as Boso translated the exchange. He moved forward to ride beside Ekkehard, treating Ekkehard to flowery compliments delivered by a sarcastic Boso; how well he acquitted himself in battle, how many women he had won for his slaves, how terrible it was that his relatives had tried to consign him to the monastery when certainly any fool could see that he was born for the glory of war. Ekkehard lapped it up like cream. He even forgot about Hanna, trailing behind, she who carried the wasp sting of conscience because she never let him forget that he had turned coat and embraced Bulkezu’s cause.

A scream shattered the sleepy twilight. Deep in the crowd of weary, worn-down, lethargic prisoners, an eddy of movement spiraled out of control like leaves picked up by a dust devil.

“Witchcraft! Demons! The Enemy has spawned among us!”

Panic broke like a storm. Prisoners pushed and shoved frantically, more afraid of an unseen menace in their ranks than of the dour Quman soldiers who guarded them. Terrified captives spilled across the invisible boundary into range of Quman spears. Like raindrops presaging a downpour, the first handful turned an instant later into a hysterical flood of ragged people desperate to escape the horror in their midst.

Even horses accustomed to war shied at the sudden agitation. Ekkehard’s nervous gelding reared, backing sideways into Bulkezu’s horse. The night guard, distracted by this threat to their leader, hastened forward.

Hanna saw her chance.

She kicked her horse hard and galloped for the trees. The forest gave scant cover. Pale trunks surrounded her, bare branches clattering in the breeze. She heard the singing of wings, high and light, and the pound of hooves as her captors pursued her. Ducking low, she pressed the horse through a stand of stinging pine, forded a shallow stream running in three channels along the forest floor, and skirted a massive bramble bush. Her cloak caught once in its thorns; she tore it free, nudged her mount around its tangled verge, and found herself facing Bulkezu.

Even under the cover of the forest, with dusk lowering, there was light enough to see his expression. He laughed. But he had his bow strung and an arrow nocked, and at moments like this, with that half crazy expression on his face and something more than laughter in his eyes, she could not bring herself to trust to Sorgatani’s luck to keep her unharmed. Breathing hard, she reined up the horse and regarded him with disgust and resignation. And a sliver of fear.

He lifted the bow, aimed, and shot into the bramble, flushing out two escaped prisoners who had hoped to hide within the thorny refuge. Hanna recognized the adolescent girl and her half-grown brother, the one with the cut on his cheek, from Echstatt. The boy was gulping soundlessly, trying not to dissolve into hysteria, while his sister gripped his shoulders and managed a defiant glare.

Bulkezu chuckled. The movement of his shoulders made the shrunken head at his belt sway, knocking against one thigh. He pulled a second arrow out of his quiver and drew down on the boy. “Run,” he said softly, in Wendish.

They ran, floundering out into the darkening forest. The child tripped. With a leisurely draw, Bulkezu marked the boy’s back.

Hanna kicked her horse hard, driving toward him, shouting out loud, anything to spoil his aim.

But the arrow was already loosed.

It whistled, the girl screamed and tugged at her brother; the point buried itself in the bark of a slender birch tree, less than a hand’s breadth from the stumbling boy. With a strangled cry, the girl dragged him onward into the trees.