Crown of Stars

A paltry, doomed retinue.

Two soldiers had dismounted to walk at the heads of the cart horses. Hathumod stared white-faced at him.

“Brother Ivar!” said Constance reprovingly, but then she saw the dead man tumbled in the undergrowth, and she turned her gaze away. Her face was pale, and her expression grim.

Baldwin did not move.

“I told you to ride!” shouted the sergeant. “Move!”

Ivar mounted and slapped Johannes’ horse on the rump with his reins. “Let’s go!”

The two riders pushed on, leaving the rest of the party behind. After a while, as the wind and their path twisted up a hillside, they heard shouting far behind. The sound faded at once; maybe he had only imagined it. Around them, there was nothing to see but trees, a tangled prospect of holm and oak most likely cut back a generation ago and now grown thick with young trees and vigorous undergrowth. He halted, turning in the saddle to listen, as Johannes kept riding toward a half seen switchback. Hooves drummed behind. Someone was coming up fast.

“Come on! Come on, my lord!” cried the lad. He was so scared that he sounded indignant.

And why not? Why shouldn’t the poor young soldier be aggrieved at fate? Why must it always be so difficult?

“Ai, God!” Johannes squeaked with fear, slapping a hand against his throat as at a wasp. “Ayee! Ayee! It burns!”

Ivar’s mount startled, kicking, and turned a complete circle as Ivar fought to keep his seat and get hold of the trailing lead to his spare. All this passed in an instant. He lifted his gaze to see Johannes, about thirty paces ahead now, topple from his saddle and tumble gracelessly onto the hard path.

Above, a creature stepped out from the shadows onto the road. It had a shapely woman’s body but the head of a snarling dog. Ivar was shaking so hard he could not calm his horses, and Johannes’ pair bolted, one downslope too fast for him to grab, and the other only four steps when it stopped short as Johannes’ weight dragged it to a halt. One leg had caught in the reins, but the young soldier lay there so limp it was apparent he was unconscious, or dead.

Below, a rider with an extra horse burst into view. A gust of wind wailed along the slope, bringing the distant taint of smoke up from along the river. The dog-woman cast back her head—he could see the curve of her smooth, humanlike throat—and sniffed, then yelped words that meant nothing to him and leaped back into the cover of the trees.

Below, the rider snagged the loose mare that had gotten away.

“Ai, God!” Baldwin cried, pounding up. “What was that?”

“Shades!” Ivar croaked. “Shadows. Evil things! What are you doing here?”

Baldwin gulped but could not answer. Ivar swung off his horse and handed the reins of his pair to Baldwin before dashing up the path to kneel beside Johannes. With an effort, he got the leg free, but shook his head.

“Dead. Broke his neck, I suppose.” He lifted a dart off the path. “Just a scratch.” He tossed it aside and dragged the corpse into a thicket of lush honeysuckle.

Out of the empty woods a horn call rose, shrill and insistent. He grabbed Johannes’ horse, mounted, and started riding. Baldwin pressed up behind him and, as they came to the switchback, they halted in order to tie the spare mounts one behind the next.

“There’s a break just there,” said Ivar. They tied the horses to a tree and pushed through the underbrush to a rocky outcropping that rode above the treetops. The wind roared off an escarpment, which plunged the height of five or six men, the face giving a vista of forest into the south, but they stared west, back the way they had come. They saw a haze on the horizon, and obscuring trees. Below, it was possible to see the last clearing through which they had passed, with its pair of lichen-stained boulders and its open space grown with green grass. Here came a score of Eika jogging in tight formation, pushing up from the lowlands. Light winked above them: a shower of arrows raining out of the woods. These fell among the Eika, and perhaps some struck, but the dragon-men did not slacken their pace at all, and none fell to the attack. Animal-headed creatures darted out into the clearing and threw flashing javelins and darted away again into the shelter of the trees.

“Best go,” said Baldwin, tugging on Ivar’s arm.

“God have mercy,” he said.

They traveled that day at a bruising pace, speaking little. One of the spare mounts threw a shoe and began to limp, so they let it go. When it seemed they would blow the horses if they did not stop, they rested near a stream where there was also some grazing, but they pushed on soon after until it grew too dark to travel without light.