Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

Ai, God, if truth be told, she was more afraid of the plague than she was of Bulkezu.

A man sporting a black-and-blue eye and drooping folds of flesh at his chin heaved himself up from the ground and spat at her. “Whore! I see you got what you deserved at long last. I hope you got pleasure of what that demon gave you, while he was giving, because you’ll get no such pleasure here.”

His comrade, a tall man dressed in rags, lurched forward to grab for her. “I’d like a taste of his leavings!” He got a hand on her shoulder.

She ducked, by some miracle found a stout stick in the grass, and whacked him across the face. He was a lot bigger than she was, but she’d been eating and he hadn’t. Staggering, he stumbled back and sat down hard. Pain stabbed through her cheek, but she dared show no weakness.

Yet no one laughed, or protested, or reacted at all. Most of them were too ill and exhausted even to care, even to hate. The Quman guards moved off, leaving her standing in the midst of the pack with a pounding headache and a swollen face.

“I am also a prisoner, a commoner from Wendar, just as you are. A King’s Eagle, taken captive in the east—”

Even a starving man can feed on hate, if he’s nothing left to him.

“Whore and traitor,” said one of the women listlessly. She had a bundle of dirty rags clutched to her chest, but it was only when she shifted that Hanna saw she held a sickly child, eyes crusted shut with dried pus. Flies crawled over the child’s pallid face, but neither it nor its mother had enough strength to brush them away.

In the distance a river ran noisily. She smelled water, although the trees hid it from view. Most of the prisoners were looking at her now. Good Wendish folk, just like her.

The tall man coughed and braced himself on his hands as he caught his breath. When he grinned, she saw that all of his front teeth were missing. “You’ll have to sleep sometime.”

She spoke to the others. “Don’t you see? The more we quarrel among ourselves, the easier his victories come.”

No one answered. After a bit, the tall man and his companion dragged themselves off to the edge of the group. As for the rest, they were too weary, too hungry, and too apathetic to do anything but lie back down on the ground and close their eyes.

The Quman guards did not stop her as she gathered grass and, after several abortive attempts, wove a shallow basket and lined it with leaves. They shadowed her as she made her way through a narrow patch of woodland to the river’s shore and knelt in the shallows. Upstream she saw only forest, but far downstream she saw a line of smoke rising into the sky.

Had Bulkezu taken Theophanu’s bribe and ridden on, bypassing Barenberg? There had been no battle today, and this river looked broad enough to be the mighty Veser, flowing north toward the Amber Sea.

The basket held water well enough that she could carry it around to those folk too exhausted, or too afraid of the Quman, to walk to the river themselves. Best to start with the weak ones. They hadn’t the strength to spit at her and were usually grateful for the water.

When she brought it to the mother with the sick child, she met suspicion first.

“What do you want with me, whore?” asked the woman, shrinking away. “Haven’t I been punished enough by the beast?”

“I’m a prisoner like you,” Hanna repeated. “It’s true I’ve been treated better, and fed, and allowed to ride. But that’s not because I’m the prince’s whore—”

“The Wendish prince?” The woman’s spirit flared as anger gave her strength. “Some say it’s the king’s son himself who rides with the beast. Is it true?”

This was hardly the way to convince these poor souls that she wasn’t a traitor, too, but Hanna saw no reason to lie to them about his identity. “Yes, it’s Ekkehard, son of Henry.”

The woman spat. Perhaps she’d been passed over by the Quman soldiers because of the wart on her nose and lice-ridden hair, or perhaps she’d simply been raped and discarded during the attack on whatever doomed village she had once lived in.

“A royal son like that would be better dead than a traitor.” But she accepted a sip of water. The child, too, drank, but he couldn’t open his eyes. His whimpers tore at Hanna’s heart.

“Here. I’ll soak a corner of my cloak in water and maybe we can clean his face.”

“If you wish,” said the woman in a dull voice, “but he’ll die anyway. My poor baby. Nothing can save us now. If the beast and his men don’t kill us, then hunger will. Or the plague. I heard there’s plague everywhere south of us now. So maybe it is God’s mercy on us for living a Godly life.”