Crown of Stars

“If Novomo falls, they’ll go on to attack others,” said Alexandros, as if he had not heard her. “You must appeal to self-interest. Those who aid us, aid themselves. If they do not aid us, they are themselves fated to fall to this army.”

“It’s true.” Adelheid’s hunched shoulders straightened a little as she took heart from his considered words. “We must appoint messengers to ride as swiftly as they can.”

“Immediately,” said the general. He called Captain Falco, and the order was given and men sent running. “We’ll send a second batch at nightfall. Meanwhile, your stewards must take control of all grain stores within the walls, and every well or cistern. A strict ration will be applied. Any who violate the law will be killed.”

“Cast out,” said Adelheid. “To the mercy of our enemy.”

He nodded approvingly. “Yes, that is better.” He gestured toward the corpses tumbled here and there in the fields around Novomo. A man lay on his back on the road.

A woman had fallen on her side, trying to protect a child, who was also dead. “They seem not to be taking prisoners or slaves.”

Antonia watched this interplay, knowing herself ignored and dismissed. She fumed, but the general had captured Adelheid’s attention and, increasingly, the queen ignored her, who ought to be first in her thoughts. Even the child liked him!

“From what direction did they come?” she asked.

“What do the guards on the wall say?” Adelheid asked the general, not looking at Antonia.

“From the southern road, out of the twilight before dawn. The watch say they saw sparks rise on the hill, a weaving of light, for half the night.”

“Impossible!” cried Antonia so forcibly that both turned to regard her with surprise. “Clouds still conceal the sky. No one can weave the crowns if they cannot see the stars.”

“Why do the guards tell me this tale, then?” he asked her.

“At night any manner of wisp may be seen, sometimes illusion drawn by the eye and sometimes a phantom called up by the Enemy to lure weak-minded folk to their doom.”

“Yet here they are.” Alexandros waved toward the massed army still shifting and moving as ranks filed away from the road to encircle the walls. “They will mass the main part of the force here before the gates. A thinner line will be deployed to watch, and to defend against skirmishes around the rest of the town. That is what I would do.”

“If none come to our aid,” said Adelheid, “what can we do to defeat them?”

“I will think,” he said, and the queen smiled at him, hearing confidence in his words. Even Antonia was swayed. He had seen many years of war, and although he was an Arethousan and therefore untrustworthy, he was also trapped and might be expected to fight as a cornered lion.

In the east, a strange light rose along the hills, a color like that of blood diluted until it runs pink. Guards along the wall pointed, and a murmur swept the men standing nearby as they—as all of them—stared at a thing they had not seen for months and had come to believe might never appear again.

“That is the sun!” cried Adelheid. “An omen, surely!”

The clouds had thinned to nothing at the eastern horizon, and the sun flashed as its rim breached the horizon. South, a haze veiled the lowlands. North, the rising hills turned from black to gray as light swept the heavens. Above, it was still cloudy, but all around, folk wept to see the sun.

Antonia blinked, reminded of the day she had walked free at long last from the prison beneath the rock of Ekatarina’s Convent, where she had been held. As she grimaced, shading her eyes, it seemed her vision sharpened. It seemed she saw a golden wheel moving off the road and into place along a low rise where grapevines were trained along rail fences. It seemed a man with a human mask for a face rode alongside the turning wheel. She knew him, although in truth he was too distant for her to make out his features.

“That is Hugh of Austra,” she said, finding that her voice was cold and her heart hot. “He has betrayed us.”

The name was only an abstraction to Lord General Alexandros, but Adelheid wept fiercely and then, as the storm passed, set her fists on the wall and stared as if her gaze were killing arrows. No one in that army fell, but movement rippled within the distant ranks surrounding the golden wheel and a person came running out of their ranks toward the gate.

“Hold! Let them approach!” called Alexandros.

The call was repeated along the wall.

A bedraggled, frightened man stumbled up to the gates. His tunic was ripped and dirty. He had blood on his cheeks and he cradled his right arm in his left hand.