Child of Flame

“Those Quman are bad,” she announced.

“Yes, they’d like to break into the city and burn everything.”

“But Dada won’t let them. Dada will kill them all and make them go away.”

Because Zacharias didn’t reply at once, strangled by that plaguey fear, Matto strode forward indignantly. “Of course he will! There isn’t anyone who can stand against the prince.”

“Of course, lad,” said Zacharias weakly as he gazed down on the distant army, their pale tents like dead maggots littering the ground.

Blessing wriggled out of his grasp and set out to climb the wall with Matto hovering behind her to make sure she didn’t fall until at last, disgusted, she glared at him to make him move back a step.

“Let her take a few falls, Matto,” said Anna as she watched the determined child struggling with a toehold in the wall. “She’ll learn better that way.”

Zacharias chuckled. “Where did you learn such wisdom, child?”

Anna shut her mouth tight. She hadn’t trusted him since the day she learned that he refused to pray to God.

With a sigh, he turned away. The rain had stopped and a dense humidity settled in, almost thick enough to lick out of the air. Twilight closed in and restlessness seized him though he hadn’t anywhere to go. He just had to be patient. He’d survived seven years as a slave of the Quman. Certainly he could survive one night of waiting and wondering. He could survive Wolfhere’s damnable secretiveness.

He ducked back under the awning just as a cocky young soldier, windblown and rather dirty, entered from the other side to approach captain and prince.

Sanglant sat up with sudden alertness, setting down his cup. “Sibold. I’m glad to see you back safely. What’s your report?”

Sibold had a rakish grin and a knife scar under his left ear, just the kind of reckless young man who would volunteer to ride out closer to the Quman lines to reconnoiter. He sauntered forward. “My lord prince. The ditches were well pleased to hide me, hating the Quman as they do. There are three banners flying in the Quman force. The siege is placed before the main gate, but there are two smaller camps, one southwest by the Floyer shore and the other north and east past the ferry. I saw four scouting parties, none above seven men.”

Sanglant glanced at Wolfhere, who was still intent on his game with Heribert. “An Eagle’s sight is as keen as rumor has it.”

“Even if princes do not always trust it,” murmured Wolfhere without looking up from the board.

The prince smiled but made no answer. He slipped a ring off his finger and handed it to the young soldier. “You risked your life to bring us that report. It will serve me well.”

“Your Highness.” With a sly grin, Sibold backed away before swaggering out into the misting rain, no doubt to boast to his companions and show off his prize.

Sanglant picked up the dice still scattered on the carpet. “We’ll attack in the morning.”

Now his noble companions roused.

“But my lord prince,” objected Lord Hrodik, “all the Quman soldiers are mounted. Three hundred of them! We have only one hundred and thirty, even if they are all horsemen.”

Sanglant grinned. “Therefore they will not be at too great a disadvantage.” The prince took his dragon helmet from the sergeant who had been polishing it and turned it in his hands, examining the fearsome gleam of the dragon ornamentation from every angle before he balanced it on one leg. “Do you have a better plan, Hrodik?”

Thus challenged, the young lord fell all over himself apologizing and finally Zacharias could stand his whining and awkward flattery no longer. He slipped away to the corner given him to sleep where, rolling himself up in his cloak, he dozed off.

Only to wake, later, feeling Heribert’s warmth at his back. The pad of a sentry’s footsteps drifted to him on the breeze. Fear, like a breath of cold night air, had already gotten its claws into him. What if the Quman overran their camp? What if Prince Sanglant lost the battle sure to come in the morning? Would it be better to end his life by his own hand, or would that merely damn him forever? Had he the courage to throw himself in the path of a Quman arrow or spear? Or would they drag him away and make him a slave again?

He shuddered, thinking of the mark on his shoulder. What if they captured him and, seeing the rake of the snow leopard’s claw on his shoulder, returned him to Bulkezu?

Death would be better. If he only had the courage to embrace it.

The night was hazy, the stars half hidden. The camp lay silent, shrouded in mist. A fire burned in front of the prince’s awning, and two men sat there without speaking as the flames leaped and crackled: Wolfhere with his back to Zacharias, and a second person, fainter than the Eagle, sitting opposite Wolfhere. But that second person was no man; it was a woman, all bent with age, so thin she seemed without substance, like a shadow.