The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

Stronghand lunged just as the queen made ready to flee. She parried him and swung a blow with her sword, but he dodged, ducked inside her reach, batted her shield out of the way, and cut off her head. The wolf’s head rolled sideways and came to rest with its muzzle leering at the sky. Her heart’s blood gushed onto the earth from her severed neck.

“Go!” he called to First Son, who was waiting for the command. A score of soldiers trotted off through the chaos toward the stone crown.

Tenth Son slogged over to him through the sea of dead to give him the standard. “Not as good as Bloodheart’s illusions,” he commented. “The colors were too bright. But the poisonous spray was a nice touch. Do such creatures kill with venom?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen such a beast before.” All around them the killing went on as the remains of the battle swept toward and then ringed the Alban encampment. At the water’s edge, the boldest dogs turned and loped back into the fray. “Come with me.”

The remaining Alban soldiers stood back to back in a tight shield wall that enclosed the central camp and the huge white tent that had sheltered the queen and her lineage. Two women wearing bands of gold around their foreheads stood under a white awning, one very elderly and the other so young she was still a girl. She wore armor but no helmet and did not look strong enough to heft the sword that she held in her left hand. Children cowered at the entrance to the tent, towheaded lads and lasses wearing the garb of noble kinfolk in stark contrast to the two score or more crudely garbed slaves huddled up against the walls of the tent. Caught, as Ursuline the deacon had once said eloquently, “between the Enemy and the hindmost.” They alone were unarmed. Every adult in camp, not just the soldiers, had some kind of weapon in hand, shovels, picks, pitchforks, sharpened stakes, and many a makeshift club. Even the remnants of the tree sorcerers, young and old alike, held their leafy staves as if they were spears and not the staffs through which they wielded their magic. They knew their magic had failed them.

Stronghand beckoned to a trio of soldiers. “Lift me on a shield.”

He set his feet at either side of the round shield, swayed as the soldiers hoisted him, and caught a fragile balance. His own warriors pulled back from the front line, and even the Albans fell silent, weapons at the ready, as they stared up at him. One archer shot at him, but he shifted sideways so the arrow grazed his left shoulder, the merest prick against his copper skin. The others held their fire.

“For some among you,” he shouted, “there can be no mercy today. But those among you who are slaves, hear me. Cast aside your servitude and join us. Let the slave become the master, and the master become the slave. If you join us, you will live and be given land and the chance to start again. If you remain, then you will die with those who have ruled you.”

The girl queen lifted her sword to point at the heavens. Was it fear or fury that transfigured her youthful face? “Kill them!” she shrieked.

Her armed countryfolk, all but the soldiers, turned as one mass and butchered the hapless slaves.

Stronghand leaped off the shield. “No mercy!”

The Eika surged forward.

No mercy they showed, not this day when Alain had been shown no mercy. Black anger scalded his heart, and he himself killed the queens and the screaming, terrified children.

When all the Albans were dead, he sat in the queen’s gilded chair and surveyed the islands while his soldiers assembled before him. Most of the corpses lay twisted on the ground, although he had ordered his men to string up the bodies of the tree sorcerers from the masts of their ships. The dogs fed eagerly. Tents lay trampled; piles of bodies marked episodes of fierce fighting; a few horses and sheep had been killed, and one of the ships had caught fire and now smoldered as his men heaved buckets of water over the smoking deck. The slaughter had an especially pungent smell because so many had died in such a small area.

A lone hound, lean and gray, nosed through the wreckage and paused to lap at a pool of blood, ears down and body cowering. A trio of Eika dogs caught its scent and raced toward it, and it bolted, yipping. The chase vanished from his view but ended in a spate of frantic barking and a squeal of pain, cut short.

It was a bloody field, truly, but all battlefields were in the end. Humankind might glorify war or twist themselves into knots to justify their conflicts as necessary and right, but he knew better. They were a means to an end, one choice made instead of another—effective, brutal, and if fought on the right battlefield with the right timing, decisive.

He had done what he needed to do to get what he wanted.