Child of Flame

This was too much for Blessing. She trotted over on her short legs and crouched down to get a good look, biting her lip fretfully. “Can I try? Can I?”

“Here, you hold the handle like this—”

Zacharias wiped raindrops from his forehead and sat down beside Heribert, who was playing chess with Wolfhere. “I can’t take a turn around the camp without coming in to find she’s grown another finger’s span,” he said, examining the little girl uneasily. She had lost her infant roundness. Her face had gotten leaner, making her blue-green eyes stand out even more than they had before. Wisps of black hair curled everywhere around her face where it escaped from her braid.

Heribert glanced at him. “It’s not her doing.”

“Nor did I say it was. But you must admit it’s uncanny to see a child grow so quickly. It isn’t natural. She must age a week for every day that passes.”

“I thought it might stop once the daimone left us,” murmured Heribert, looking round to see if the prince was listening, but Sanglant appeared to be deep in conversation with Captain Fulk. “But God know it hasn’t. Lord bless us. She was born on the seventh day of Avril, on the feast day of St. Radegundis. One year and three months ago. Yet she looks like any well-grown three-year-old.”

“It’s your move,” said Wolfhere patiently.

“Do you know, Eagle,” said Zacharias irritably, “I think I particularly dislike that smirking little smile you wear on your face all the time. You know a lot more than you are telling us.”

“So I do, but in the matter of the child I know as little as you do.”

“Spoken contemptuously!”

“Hush, now,” said Heribert. “No need to quarrel. If I’ve made peace of a kind with Wolfhere, so can you.”

“I’m not meaning to quarrel,” replied Zacharias, angry at himself for letting his envy of Wolfhere’s knowledge get the better of him. “I just don’t like secrets. You know well enough, Wolfhere, that I’d be your pupil in whatever you cared to teach me, if you had a mind to. But you’ve made clear it that you won’t teach me or anyone else. Except the absent Liath who, I swear to you, I’m beginning to quite dislike even though I’ve never met her.”

“You jealous bastard,” said Heribert with a laugh.

“It’s still your move,” said Wolfhere.

“I’ll go.” Zacharias ducked back outside, stepping over ropes staked down to hold the awning in place. Summer twilight painted the western forest, shrouded by low-lying clouds, in haze. Wind murmured through the trees, a counterpoint to the patter of rain. A mist had come up from the river, wreathing both cathedral tower and fortress tower in white. Beyond the palisade and ditch lay trampled fields, all that golden grain leveled by a malicious heart that reveled in destruction. A few abandoned hovels, homes of fisherfolk or tanners, stuck out as blackened hulks. Even the orchards had been hacked down, although intact gardens and orchards flourished within the safety of the walls.

The main force of the Quman army lay in wait by the front gates, but smaller encampments were scattered along the valley in a pattern Zacharias could not read. He wasn’t a strategist. He’d never trained for war. Perhaps Bulkezu was only hiding in his personal tent, waiting to ambush him—

Nay, no use letting his thoughts tend in that direction. Fear crippled you. He had to beat it out of himself. That was the only way to defeat Bulkezu.

He had other angers he could nurse, to keep his mind off his fear of the Quman.

Why was Wolfhere so stubborn? What use were secrets? Knowledge only mattered if it was shared; people ought to be allowed to learn rather than be kept in ignorance. The thought of that old man sitting on everything he knew, the way a dragon might hoard gold, rankled.

“Out here,” said the empress’ voice, and Blessing appeared with her nursemaid and young Matto, her constant attendants. She had a little wooden sword in her left hand and was waving it about enthusiastically. “Now we fight! Now we fight, Matto.” When she saw Zacharias and the vista that lay beyond the low wall, she darted over to the wall, jumped several times trying to get a good look over it, and tested toeholds at the base of the wall before returning to Zacharias. “Lift me up!”

He hoisted her up in his arms and there she clung, hands on his shoulders, staring out with her eyes wide as she struggled to actually stand up on his arms to get an extra hand’s breadth of height to see. “What’s that?”

“That is Margrave Helmut Villam’s city, called Walburg. Can you see that banner on the tower? That means his heir is in residence. All the people in the town have been besieged by the Quman army.”