Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

She always carried a knife on her. She never went anywhere without it. “Step back, and avert your gaze. All of you!”

“Yes, Holy Mother.” The soldiers spoke with gratifying respect, and they moved away obediently.

Adelheid turned her back, but Alexandros only took a pair of steps to one side without looking away. No doubt he had seen worse things in the east, since the Arethousans were known to have a wicked lust for tormenting their captured enemies.

A knife is a fine and beautiful tool that can grant life or deal death with a single thrust. She knelt beside the man, whose fetid stink almost overwhelmed her until she closed her mind to it. She turned her face away and took in a deep breath of cleaner air and, turning back, shoved the blade up between his ribs.

He made a gurgling sound, and sagged, but her arms were strong enough to hold him and she had breath with which to speak.

“Ahala shin ah rish amurru galla ashir ah luhish. Let this blood draw forth the creature out of the other world. Come out, galla, for I bind you with unbreakable fetters. This blood which you must taste that I have spilled, makes you mine to command. I adjure you, in the name of the holy angels whose hearts dwell in righteousness, come out, and do as I bid you.”

A shadow spilled into the light as a galla shuddered into being, called away from the other side. She twisted the blade. The man bled furiously as he slumped forward, bleating in a way that grated on her nerves. She dropped him and stepped away. Behind her, a soldier retched, and another began to cry in terror. The galla’s darkness took on substance as it drank from the gushing stream of blood.

“I adjure you, galla, you will do as I command. Kill the man called Hugh of Austra.”

A ripple ran through that towering darkness as her will took hold. It slipped through the stone battlements as through air. The air around it stank of the forge, and its voice rang like the blacksmith’s hammer on steel.

Hugh of Austra.

It descended through the air in the manner of a feather floating free, coming to earth on the road only a few paces from the gate. The farmer panicked. Bolting, he scrambling to the right to escape it, yet the wind on which it scudded pushed it straight into his path. It glided over him, through him. The voice of bells swallowed his scream. Where it passed, bones clattered to the ground. A clamor rose from the enemy, howls of alarm, the beating of drums as against an evil curse, the blast of moaning horns that died away. There was Hugh, who did not move and who could not escape.

Glory to God on highest, who brings punishment down on those who simmer evil in their hearts!

“No one is safe from such sorcery,” said Alexandros.

“No one,” she agreed. “The galla cannot be harmed, only banished. They are implacable.”

“You are the only sorcerer who knows how to raise them,” he added.

She did not answer. Out from the ranks stepped a creature with the body of a woman, the head of a fox, and a bow that reached from head to knee. Even the Enemy desires beauty, and this creature had beauty in her form and her stance as she sighted and loosed. The arrow gleamed as it sped toward its target. Antonia cursed under her breath.

The galla did not veer to avoid the missile. Indeed, it seemed to shift to meet it. Where the arrow pierced, a void of pure black snapped open, and the galla sizzled and vanished, popped right out of existence, as if it had never touched this world.

“Fletched with the feather of a griffin,” said Adelheid angrily. “He has outwitted you, Holy Mother.”

“Griffin feathers are not easily come by. In time, he will use up his entire store, or become careless and wait too long to let his arrow fly. It is only a matter of time.”

“So am I thinking,” agreed General Lord Alexandros, looking at her and her bloody knife. “Only a matter of time.”

5

WITH Liutgard and five centuries of cavalry, their best men, Sanglant pressed at speed toward Kassel, leaving the rest of the army and the baggage train to travel as swiftly as they could. At midday one day midway through the month of Quadrii, they met scouts, a band of men loyal to the duchess who had fled the town and were camping in the woods and spying on the eastern road.

Their leader, called Adalbert, boasted a pair of gruesome scars on his face, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He wept, seeing Duchess Liutgard appear before him, and kissed her ducal ring as he swore fealty.

“Here is your regnant, come to drive the usurpers out of Fesse,” Liutgard said, stepping aside to reveal Wendar’s banner and Sanglant, who was still mounted.

They knelt and bowed their heads.

“You have served your lady well,” said Sanglant, nodding to her to go on. He could see that she wanted no lengthy obeisance but rather swift news.