Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

“Odei!” Lord Berthold spoke impatiently, seeing how folk moved around the corpse of the king not a stone’s throw from them. “Let us do her honor, who kept faith with us, but let us not stand here talking about nothing. If you have something to say, say it.”

“Have you not such kind of people among your tribes? A person born in a girl’s body with the spirit of a man. If she can take on a man’s life, then who will say she is not a man? This one, also. She holds a woman’s spirit, and lives a woman’s life, even if she wears a man’s body.”

“What are you talking about?” cried Berthold.

Wolfhere rose with a grim smile on his face. “So the riddle is solved. And the weapon unlooked for. No creature male or female can harm him. It seems I am lucky rather than clever.” He touched Hanna on the elbow. “Fare you well, Hanna. Stay strong, for the Eagles will need you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him, but his expression told her nothing and his gaze had already lifted beyond hers to reckon the movement of soldiers and nobles that churned in a massive current drawing them all to the heart of the battle: the fallen king.

“Yes, what do you mean, Odei?” demanded Lord Berthold. “Do you mean Berda is really a man? And only dressed as a woman? And we didn’t notice all this time?”

Odei’s jump from crouching to standing grabbed Hanna’s attention. Quman soldiers were notorious for being the most phlegmatic of men, immune to hardship, safe from emotion, but he was really angry. “Berda was one person, with two spirits. So it is known among our people, who respect those so favored. We must give her proper burial rites.” Seeing the stricken look on the young lord’s face, his own expression softened. “You cannot know. You see only with your outer eyes. My uncle is a shaman. He taught his nephews to look with the inner eye.”

“Wolfhere,” she said, turning back.

The old Eagle had vanished. She turned all the way around, but he was nowhere to be seen among the milling crowd, with more on their way, and the banner of Saony and that of Fesse moving purposefully in their direction. All coming here. All wanting to blame someone.

“Oh, God.” The wasp sting burned in her heart.

The axles had cracked. The wheels shattered. The driver’s seat had torn free. Worse, the wagon had fallen onto the side with the only door. She slapped the skin of felt stretched taut over the unseen scaffolding that covered the bed of the wagon.

“Sorgatani! Sorgatani! Can you hear me? It’s Hanna!”

Did the luck of a Kerayit shaman survive her death? Or was it the other way around? No person can survive without a measure of luck. She remembered the stories she had heard concerning the death of Prince Bayan and his powerful mother.

“Sorgatani!”

A feeble voice reached her. “Hanna. Here I am. But I’m caught beneath. …” The rattling cough made Hanna’s jaw tighten with fear. “I’m caught. I can’t get free.”

“Be patient! Try not to move.”

She grabbed for the first arm that came within her reach, which happened to be that of Lord Berthold, whoever he was—the name sounded familiar, but she didn’t have time to figure it out.

“My lord! A team of men, I pray you, to set this wagon upright.” When he hesitated, looking at her in confusion, she added in the tone she had learned from her mother, “Now!”

They were all addled by the cascade of events. He reeled back, beckoned to his companions, and started giving orders. The Quman youth dragged the corpse of the Kerayit woman aside so it could be readied for burial, and the other youth hailed passing soldiers and set them to work.

She trembled, running hot to cold and cold to hot. She had seen Breschius consumed by the galla. Ai, God! Who would serve Sorgatani now? She must find allies quickly if she meant to save the shaman’s life.

So many voices crowded her, men wailing, women shouting commands, the tramp of feet, and a chaos of loose horses and dogs. So many smells assailed her, but death’s perfume smote her hardest of all.

Tears veiled her sight. Mist spun out of the mountains of storm clouds that surrounded the valley, and the bright blue blaze of the sky overhead was starting to bleed to white as the cloud cover crept back in. The wind shifted west to east, and east to north, and north to south, whipping her braid in gusts that made her eyes tear. Men surrounded the wagon and got their shoulders and boots and hands around it and under where there were cracks and hollows in the roadbed to accommodate such levers as spars of wood and spans of iron.

As they shouted, heaved, and lifted, her gaze was drawn to the top of the ramp, far above. The Eika soldiers gathered at the height formed columns along either side of the road as wagons cleared the line of that foreshortened horizon and began a cautious and controlled descent.