Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

“Hei! Hei!” she called in a husky voice. “Make way!”

They left Breschius behind.

Rosvita yelped in fear as the wagon hit the incline. The weight of the wagon pressed it forward into the hindquarters of the beasts. The horses opened into a panicked gallop. A few people stood at the side of the ramp, heads slewing sideways as they stared upward in horror at the wagon careening down. Farther below, horsemen blocked the road, but they reined aside to get out of the way. There was one person in the middle of the road, staggering as though drunk.

The foreigner struggled with the reins, desperately trying to turn them aside from the man fixed in their path, but the horses had opened into a wild gallop and did not—could not—respond.

Rosvita shut her eyes. She whispered a prayer, asking forgiveness for her cowardice, and pitched herself off the side.

When she hit, her breath was knocked out of her as shoulder and hip took the impact. Pain stabbed. She rolled, hit the rim, and tumbled over the verge, coming to rest in a knob of grass grown in among the rocky in-fill.

Ai, God, she hurt as she crawled up the side and lay gasping. Breschius appeared on the ramp far above, calling after them. One moment she saw his familiar face, a good man who had served God faithfully and with joy his whole life long; the blackness devoured him as the galla glided through the space his body inhabited.

She shouted his name, too late, and because she was a coward, she scuttled back from the road as a dozen or more galla flowed down the slope, all fixed on one object.

Below, men scattered. All men but one.

When the wagon out of control and the horses in a blind panic hit the plane where the incline leveled out, the wagon bounced. An axle shattered. A wheel came loose.

The entire assemblage slammed right into the man wearing the dragon helm who stood in the center of the road. His body crumpled beneath hooves. The wagon lurched over him, then overturned and skidded with a grinding roar to one side as the horses screamed and, tangled in their harness, were jerked after it. The driver was thrown free and hit hard, lying still. One horse struggled to rise but fell back on a broken leg. The other did not move at all.

The man’s body lay on its back on the ground, helm torn free, black hair fallen over the dark face. There is something about a body that is dead that tells the eye even at a distance. Once the soul is fled, the flesh is nothing but meat.

Never had any held breath lasted as long. It seemed to Rosvita that she had gone utterly deaf, or that all the noises of the world had been smothered.

All but one. A grizzled hand closed on her arm. Pain jarred her shoulder, and she gasped and gritted her teeth.

“Good Lord. Can it be you, Sister Rosvita?”

Her vision was blurred, but she knew that voice. “Wolfhere?”

“Quickly, we must move back. We are not safe here. Crawl this way, out of the galla’s path.”

“What has happened?” she asked weakly as he dragged her off the ramp.

She was bleeding, scratched, battered, and addled, with a headache building inside her head like the pressure of a storm about to break. But she was too terrified to mind those small inconveniences. The breath of the forge sank into her as the galla passed. Their presence stung her skin like the touch of fire. They sang in their deep bell voices, but in that tune sounded only one word over and over. Yet the tone in their voices had changed. She heard no statement but a question, as a child cries for its lost mother.

Sanglant?

Wolfhere flung himself down beside her and ducked his head to keep out of sight. “It did not play out as I intended,” he remarked, not really seeming to speak to her but rather to himself as might a man accustomed to traveling a long road with only his own company to keep him occupied. “I cast a desperate throw, not sure it would work. Yet it seems I have succeeded at long last. He has been well protected by the geas his mother wove into his body.”

“What do you mean?” she rasped, staring in horror as the galla swept down toward the body, as soldiers scrambled out of their way. Even those most loyal to their captain and king were too terrified to stand their ground. “What did you intend?”

His voice came to her from a distance, as if muffled by wool, but it was nevertheless astoundingly cool, collected, and at peace.

“Sanglant’s death. Just as King Arnulf commanded.”

XI

AN UNNATURAL MEASURE OF LUCK

1

THE irrigation ditch was not more than an elbow deep and barely shoulders’ width. Its bed was slick and slimy, but Ivar dug in anyway, swallowing water that tasted of dirt and the foul leavings of night soil. The thunder of hooves, closing in on his position, shook through the ground.