Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

Aronvald twisted. “Hanna!”

An arrow thudded into the ground a body’s length from her. Another shivered in the earth behind the sergeant, who grabbed his sword and rose.

“Ai, God!” said a calm voice from the wall. “Sergeant, I’m hit. In the shoulder.”

“Come down,” said the sergeant in a voice just as calm. Dead men walk because they have no need to run, already knowing their fate. Thiadbold stared heavenward, his left hand lying at an impossible angle to his body.

Hanna got a foot to move at last, followed by the other. As in a dream, she saw an arrow circling spinning streaking out of the darkness from over the wall, lit by the hellish yellow of the flames as it found its target: it scraped hard across Thiadbold’s remaining arm just above the elbow.

Aronvald, mute, raised his sword a second time.

“I would rather die than lose the other one, too,” said the captain, his voice as even as if he were discussing the weather. “Get to cover, I pray you. Hanna, if you’ll help me up.”

He had, after all, been watching her this whole time; in this dim writhing light it had been impossible to tell. The roof of the weaving shed roared as the flames rushed skyward. The harsh smoke burned in her nostrils as—at last—she found her legs and dashed forward. Her eyes stung from the smoke pouring off the roof and along the beams and posts of the building. She grabbed Thiadbold under her arms and heaved him up as Aronvald ran to the wall and got there in time to catch a man collapsing down a ladder in convulsions.

That eerie cry wailed out of the forest as Hanna lugged Thiadbold along. His remaining hand clutched her shoulder. He could move his feet; he was still in shock. Blood pumped lazily from the stump of his arm. She got him up onto the porch. There was a pallet inside, one of several. She laid him down, and he grunted—with pain, perhaps, or with fear, or simply with relief. She didn’t know and couldn’t tell.

Sister Acella knelt beside him. “Sister! A length of stout cord, quickly! This belt hasn’t stemmed the flow of blood. Get the coals hotter. I want a lotion of betony—”

“We’ve none left, Sister.”

“Then dead nettle. Bay, if we have it. Best yet, feverwort. I know there is a small stock remaining.” She did not look up as she spoke. The younger nun hurried to do her bidding.

Smoke streamed down from the roof. Hanna coughed. She was weeping from the stink of it.

“Go, Hanna,” said Sister Rosvita, coming up beside her. “If there’s aught else you can do.”

Out into the terrible rain of arrows.

Hanna shuddered, and yet how was she safer here if more burning arrows lit the thatch of this hall? She hadn’t delivered her message to Ingo about flaming arrows and Thiadbold’s plan. From outside, she heard another bout of screaming, echoed by a second drawn-out wail, that hideous cry emanating from the forest. Under the eaves, clerics huddled in silence, their faces pale as they stared at her. She hated them for hiding here, but only for an instant. There was nothing they could do. They didn’t wield weapons; they wielded pens and prayers, and, by the murmuring, she guessed they were praying as fiercely as they could.

Thiadbold had his eyes closed. Perhaps he had passed out. Convulsions would begin in moments, and in truth she just could not bear to see him die although she hated herself for her cowardice.

“Let me watch him.” Rosvita crouched beside Thiadbold as Sister Acella got the cord she wanted and set to tying a better tourniquet.

Hanna retreated like the coward she was. She went onto the porch to see fire consuming the weaving shed and flames spurting along one corner of a hut, not quite catching, not quite dying. A ladder had been thrown up against the eaves at the far end of the hall and there stood Ruoda handing a bucket of water to Fortunatus, to throw atop the smoldering roof. They were just as exposed as she was, except they had nothing with which to defend themselves.

Ashamed, she ran for the front gate. No arrows struck around her. She came to the shelter of the wall, those stones shaped and settled one atop the other higher than a tall man could reach. The wall had a slight inward incline, being broader at the base than at its top.

“Hanna!” Ingo gestured to three bodies lying on the ground. “As you said. Only a scratch and they died.”

His whisper sounded to her like a shout. It had gone so silent around them that she did not even hear wind rattling in the branches, only the hiss and crackle of the fire. The heat of the blazing weaving shed pressed against them. Suddenly, thunder cracked the silence. Rain pattered, turning between one breath and the next into a downpour that took them so by surprise that no one moved, only got drenched until the deluge ceased as abruptly as it had started.