Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

They waited as the gold banners flown by their foes advanced. Frithuric and Manegold waited with stolid patience, but he could see, she could see, the despair in their eyes. How had they all been so stupid? How had they let Bulkezu seduce them? It was a good thing his mother wasn’t here to see him now, the son who had dishonored the family name.

Drums and a horn call signaled the charge. Welf pressed forward as their horses broke from walk to trot to gallop, a roll like thunder filling his ears. He pushed his horse past the prince, so that he took the brunt of the impact. A lance struck him right over the heart. As he fell, he heard a cry of grief and anger, and a man’s hoarse voice shouted Ekkehard’s name in surprise.

Ai, Lord, it was Prince Sanglant!

The ground slammed into him, and the last thing he saw was the hooves of his horse, coming down on his head.

If she remained still, her feathers would blend into the silvery grass and only the keenest eye could observe her. Sanglant was intent on her mate, a silver-hued griffin asleep on the sunning stone.

The prince’s spear was poised as he prepared to strike. His eyes calculated his next move, as did hers. She would not let him kill her mate.

She pounced, he spun to meet her, but the advantage was hers. The shaft of his spear shattered under her attack, and her weight bore him to the ground. Her mate awoke at the noise, hearing her shriek of triumph. Calling shrilly, he shook himself free of sleep and leaped forward to assist with the kill.

Her claws pressed the prince’s shoulders to the ground. But he hadn’t given up. His knee jabbed hard into her belly, but she would not free him. She could not let him kill again.

Slewing her great head to one side to get a better look at him, she recognized at his throat a scar taken long ago, half hidden now by a braided gold torque. She had thought him dead, once before, and had died for her mistake. She screamed fury. The Angel of War danced at the edge of her vision. Razor sharp, her beak would cleave flesh easier than any sword could.

She would not die at his hands again. And again.

And again.

A growl rose in his throat as he tensed to fight her off. He yanked an arm free and grabbed desperately for her throat, ignoring the blood leaking from a dozen cuts scored along his fingers as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers. She struck at his vulnerable eyes.

The last thing she heard was his scream as she fell free of the mirrors, spinning and tumbling in the blast furnace that was the wind of war.

Ai, God, she had killed Sanglant. She groped at her throat, thinking to find a bruise where he had tried in that last instant to choke her. Instead, her gold torque was missing. Gone.

With a scream of fury, she lifted heavenward on her wings of flame, beating for a sliver of light, like the moon’s crescent, that drifted far above her. The world below had gone white as a blizzard of snow and wrath obliterated the plain, the dead and those who killed them, all vanished beneath a mantle of white. A broken spear rolled over the icy waste, caught by the wind’s cold hand.

Mirrors winked like flashes of lightning half hidden by storm clouds. A wild laughter boomed like thunder, fading into the distance.

“Now you are bitten. Who has won, and who has lost?”

“I have escaped you,” cried Liath triumphantly as she neared the silvery boundary and saw a gap splitting open in the gleaming shell that marked the sphere of Mok.

But Jedu’s laughter had already lodged in her heart. And she could still feel blood, and life, spilling from her unmarked throat.

XV

EAGLE’S SIGHT

1

BULKEZU and his army cut a swath of misery and destruction through the southern portion of the dukedom of Avaria before turning north as summer waned, but Hanna never saw Prince Ekkehard weep for his father’s ravaged kingdom until the day the vanguard of Bulkezu’s marauding army came across the ruins of the palace of Augensburg. As the abandoned palace came into view, populated now only by weeds, insects, and a pair of red deer that sprang away into the forest, the young prince began to cry silently, tears streaming down his cheeks. Had he been there that day when Liath had sent the palace up in flames, desperate to escape Hugh?

Hanna could not now recall. She only remembered the terrible flames and the blasting heat that had scorched her skin when she had dragged Liath away from the inferno. Where were Folquin, Leo, Stephen, and her good friend Ingo now? Had they survived the winter in Handelburg? Would she in the end find herself facing them across the field of battle? Would any Wendish army ever confront Bulkezu, or would he simply march across the length and breadth of the land sowing desolation and terror for as long as he wished?