Child of Flame

Bulkezu laughed. The sound echoed weirdly, muffled by his helm. He gestured, and the interpreter hurried forward, eager to serve. He had stolen a new tunic off a corpse about ten days ago and had recently gotten hold of a silver chain out of the ruins of a burned church. The finery made him vain. Hanna hadn’t known his name before, but now that he had a half-dozen prisoners to use as slaves, he had begun to style himself “Lord Boso.” Sometimes, if Bulkezu was in a magnanimous mood, Boso got to pick a fresh woman from among the newly-captured prisoners rather than accept the leavings after the Quman had done with them.

Bulkezu pulled off his helm. He spoke, and Boso translated.

“His Munificence feels a strong mercy weighing upon his heart. Be glad you do not face his wrath. Because of his good humor this day, he will allow the Eagle to choose ten from your number. The rest will become prisoners. It will become their good fortune to be allowed to serve their Quman masters.”

Was this mercy? Hanna felt sick. The townsfolk stared at her, seeming not to understand his words. Already Quman warriors walked among the three hundred or so captives, testing the soundness of limbs, pinching the arms of the young women to see how pleasingly fat they were, prodding the few men who remained, those who hadn’t been killed in the first assault or the final desperate fighting. Some men made good slaves; some did not, because they would always struggle. Bulkezu and his men knew how to tell the difference.

“What will happen to those left behind, the ones I choose?” she asked.

Bulkezu kept a stony face until Boso translated her words. His reply was swift and certain. “His Bounteousness gives his word that they will be allowed to stay behind, unmolested. Let the Eagle choose.”

The reputation of the Kerayit shamans had protected her for this long. Bulkezu had not laid a hand on her, but perhaps he meant to win her regard using different methods, mercy and persuasion, if you called this mercy. She regarded him suspiciously, but he only smiled, looking ready as always to burst out laughing.

She made the mistake of looking again at the townsfolk. They were beaten, they were lost, but a few had managed to understand Boso’s words. No matter how they struggled to keep their expressions blank, she saw hope flower in their eyes, she saw hatred burn for the choice she would be allowed to have over them.

The girl with the torn sleeve hissed. “Slave! Traitor!”

She wasn’t talking to Boso.

The townsfolk all looked at Hanna; in their hearts they knew what she was, if she rode among the Quman. Fire hissed from the town, an echo of the girl’s accusation. Boso whispered to Bulkezu, and the prince snapped a command. The girl was dragged forward, thrown down to her knees before him. She began to snivel and cry. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He drew his sword.

“I choose her,” said Hanna hastily. “I am a prisoner, too. I have no choice, I didn’t ask to travel with them.” These words she spoke to the watching townsfolk, but they didn’t believe her. They hated her now anyway, whatever they believed of her, because she had the power of life and death over them, the power to choose who would remain free and who would become a slave. It was a cruel game to play with them, and with her. Hope is often cruel.

But if she didn’t choose, then they would all suffer as Bulkezu’s slaves.

He laughed as she chose them—the defiant girl, the young couple with the two small children, a man with the burly arms of a smith, a woman who reminded her of her mother and the teenage girl clinging to her side—because by the time there were only two choices left to make they were all begging and pleading to be chosen themselves, or thrusting their innocent children forward in the hope of saving them from the Quman yoke. So many.

Cold wind stung her cheeks, bringing tears. The Quman warriors shoved the desperate townsfolk back, away from Hanna.

Children wept. The boy with the cut cheek shuddered as his sister gripped him tightly, but no sound escaped him. The steward curled up and moaning into the dirt began to claw the ground as though he meant, like a mole, to dig himself in to safety. He was missing three fingers. His blood had spattered the front of his linen tunic.

“Two more,” cried Lord Boso cheerfully. The townsfolk’s fear excited him. His eyes ranged over the women who were left, measuring them, his own nasty gaze lit with greedy desire.

The Quman watched without expression, all except Bulkezu, who found the scene amusing. She hated him for his laughter. She hated him all the more because it would have been easier to hate him if he had been ugly, but even when he laughed, even when he reveled in her pain and in his captives’s despair, when his laughter revealed a pitiless and ugly heart, none of that darkness marked his handsome face.