Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

They all laughed, but Ivar still held Brother Heribert’s cooling wrist in his own warm hand. Something was very wrong. His heart hammered, and he could not catch his breath, but after all, that pounding was only the sound of men still at work in the twilight as they readied their siege works.

Unexpectedly, the steppe woman knelt beside him and bent over the limp body. She pressed her face up against that pale mouth; she sniffed at his eyes, his throat, and his loins. She placed one hand on his abdomen and another at his breastbone and for a while sat in perfect stillness and with eyes closed as the jawing of Lord Berthold and his new friends went on and on. So close, Ivar noticed her musky scent, which was not the complicated spice he associated with women.

She opened her eyes and sat back. “He is dead.”

Ivar choked. “Dead? Just like that?”

“No breath. The spirit—what word, it was taught me by the old shaman of the wolf clan—no spirit animates this body. The spirit run away. Heri-bert is dead.”

That wind came up again, curling around Ivar’s neck. The frater jerked, shuddered, and sat upright so quickly that his head slammed into Ivar’s chin.

Ivar screamed. By the gate, Berthold and Jonas broke into loud gales of laughter, slapping each other on the back.

Heribert shook his head, as a man shakes water out of his ears after swimming. “He said to wait here until he returns.”

Berda scooted away and made signs, as against the evil eye. “Bad magic,” she breathed in her heavy voice. “This is very bad.”

Ivar tasted blood on his tongue where he had bit himself. The cleric looked at him as if he smelled the iron tang of that blood, but turned away to search, in the corner, for the nest of dead mice.

3

THE road from Quedlinhame to Kassel was broad and smooth and in normal times it was heavily traveled. Hanna had ridden it several times, and she recognized any number of landmarks over the next days as they marched. What she did not see was any traffic on the road. In the summer, merchants and pilgrims at the least should have been traveling the Hellweg.

So it was with some surprise that in the middle of one morning, after many days of travel through empty or abandoned lands, they spotted outriders down a long straight stretch, waiting for them.

“Those are Saony scouts, Theophanu’s soldiers,” said Brother Fortunatus, who had eyesight as keen as an archer’s.

The captain of their armed troop, riding beside him, agreed. “That’s Saony’s mark, all right. They’ve seen us.”

He called out an alert to his men, and they slowed to a cautious walk as swords and spears were readied.

The outriders proved equally cautious. Two turned and rode away at a gallop, vanishing into the forest shadow, while a single man rode toward them at a trot. He halted just out of arrow shot and under the overarching spread of an old oak whose stout branches sheltered half the road. A wise position, shielding him somewhat from loosed arrow or cast spear. Here, to the east of Kassel, the forest boasted ancient oak and holm amid thick underbrush, with only a few of the slender beech which dominated farther west.

“To which regnant do you hold allegiance?” he called across the gap.

Hanna looked at the cleric and the abbess who led them, and beyond them to Princess Sapientia, who was holding a green leaf in her hand and staring at its flicker as the wind tried to tug it out of her grasp. The Lions marched as the rear guard, protecting the wagons and Mother Obligatia; she couldn’t see them over the riders who formed the abbess’ guard and the dozen monastics who followed on mules.

“Let me go,” she said. Before either woman could answer—indeed, in the last several days, they had barely spoken to each other—she rode away from her company and over to the scout, who waited for her with a look of relief.

“I’m an Eagle,” she said, and he said, “So you are,” marking her badge and cloak.

“I’m called Hanna.”

“Peter, after the disciple,” he said as if it were all one name and commonly spoken that way.

“Well met, then, Peter. You’re out of Saony.”

“With Theophanu, duke of Saony,” he said. “Marching west.”

“We are come from Quedlinhame, and from farther away yet than that, but it’s a complicated story.”

“Those are the best kind, told in winter around the hearth fire.”

“With all the wild beasts held at bay by stout doors.”

A grin flickered. He nodded toward the distant company. “Those are church folk.”

“Yes, all come to join King Sanglant at Kassel.”