Crown Of Stars - Child Of Flame Part 40

Out of the darkness bloomed light, stunningly bright, although it was only a small torch of bundled reeds, dried and coated with pitch. Two Fingers held it aloft as they negotiated a narrow plank bridge set across a chasm. By its light Adica saw ancient forms painted on the walls: the imprint of hands, outlined in red, heavy-set horses speckled by black dots, four-legged beasts s.h.a.ggy with long hair that drooped down their flanks, a horn marked with thirteen stripes.

She smelled other humans before she heard them. Two Fingers doused the torch, and in darkness she followed Two Fingers and Alain through another narrow pa.s.sage, had to actually s.h.i.+mmy forward on her stomach for a short stretch, pus.h.i.+ng her staff before her and with her pack hooked around her ankle to drag it after.

This hole opened out suddenly. She felt the presence of others not all of them, perhaps, still among the living. She felt the touch of ancient ghosts and guardians and heard the whispering of people yet alive. A torch flared into life, but even before Adica could register the figures huddled on the floor of the cavern, she was hurled into a vision: A herd of cattlelike beasts, homed and s.h.a.ggy, thunders past. Birds explode up from their gra.s.sy hideaways, flooding the sky, and in the distance a huge beast with an impossibly long, sinuous nose and horns thrusting out on either side of its great mouth lumbers past, leading more of its kind toward an unknown destination. She sees people, walking along the edge of a pine forest. They look very like the people she knows, but they are clad in skins and they carry tools of stone and bone. They have no metal and no pots she can see. Elaborately woven baskets and beads of ivory, sh.e.l.l, or stone adorn their clothing. Deer swarm by, a powerful herd coursing across the landscape and she stood once again in the cavern, in the middle world, staring in amazement at the paintings that covered the ceiling of the cavern.

She stood alone: Alain had already followed Two Fingers to the center of the crowd where an outcropping of rock metamorphosed into two s.h.a.ggy beasts, one carved higher up on the rock. She stepped carefully along the shadowed ground in their trail, examining the people who waited around her.

Was this all that was left of Horn's tribe? There were not more than twenty, half of them children. Many had wounds, and some were unable even to sit. At the center of this pathetic group rested a pallet woven out of sticks. On it lay a figure so heavily draped in copper ornament that Adica could barely make out that she had hair and features beneath a headdress of beaten copper, a broad pectoral, armbands, bracelets and a wide waistband worked into the shape of two axheads crossing. Fine-boned hands rested on the pectoral, curved around a small, gold cup. As Adica moved closer, she smelled the powerful scent of a potion sharp with aniseed. Red ocher smeared closed eyelids, and a pattern of crescent moons marked the old woman's face.

Horn had been named for the shape of her disfigured face. To look at her from one side was to see a woman of advanced years, wrinkled but keen. To look at her from the other side was to see a face all slack and drooping, lifeless, and a hideously vacant eye that, Adica supposed, saw such sights as mortal vision could not comprehend.

She knelt beside the old woman as a girl moved aside to make room for her." Is she alive?" she asked, then saw the feather laid across the old woman's lips stir, brushed by the respiration of the spirit still.housed within that frail body.

"Badly hurt," said Laoina, translating Two Finger's words. He turned away to speak to the girl who, des^te her youth, seemed to be Horn's apprentice. Dressed in a wove Vblouse that fell as far as her knees, she, too, wore the copper oniaments common to those who had won a Hallowed One's renown. Her hair was braided with pale sh.e.l.ls and beads carved out of bone, and she wore a pectoral so heavy that her shoulders bowed under the weight of it-or maybe that was only the weight of the burden that would come to rest on her should Horn die and not be able to take her part in the great weaving.

The girl would have to take Horn's place. Alain had been wandering around at the edge of the torchlight, staring at the paintings. When Adica looked for him, she saw him tentatively reach up to place his uninjured hand over the broad palm-a grown man's palm-that had been outlined in red countless generations ago.

A faint grunt sounded beside her. The feather wafted up, blown by a puff of air, and Horn's eyes snapped open. For an instant, Adica had the wild idea that the old woman was staring directly at Alain with her vacant eye. Abruptly, her left hand let go of the gold cup balanced on her chest and, trembling, grasped Adica's wrist. Her other hand, withered and limp, rolled away from the cup which, overset, spilled its aromatic brew down over her right side. If the hot liquid burned her, she seemed not to notice.

She spoke in her own language. Laoina was quick to translate as Two Fingers hurried over to crouch on Horn's other side." Go by the silent road." Only half of her mouth truly moved when she spoke, giving her words a lisp, but Laoina had clearly spent many seasons listening by the side of the old woman and had no trouble interpreting the slurred sounds.

Two Fingers grasped her limp right hand and drew it back up to her chest. He set the fallen cup upright on the cavern floor, wiped its rim with a forefinger, and touched that moist finger tenderly to the old woman's lips.

"You are ill, cousin," he said as Laoina murmured a translation to Adica." You are not strong enough to weave the loom."

Horn licked her lips as well as she could, tasting the liquid." I am sorely hurt. I will not live long. But my apprentice died last year and this young one-" she indicated the girl with a movement of her good eye, "-knows too little."

"I will remain," said Two Fingers." My niece can take my place in my own land."

"So be it," whispered Horn. She looked at Adica." How will you weave at the loom while the Cursed Ones control our lands?"

"Adica must go on to Shu-Sha-" Two Fingers began, but Horn cut him off.

"Nay. We cannot risk her in that land." She coughed, as if so many words were a great trial to her, taxing what little strength she had. Liquid bubbled in her lungs, a deadly sound. After a pause during which all of them waited patiently, anxiously, Horn went on." She will walk the silent road with this Walking One, daugh-ter-of-my-heart Laoina. The Bent People will take her by their roads back to Queens' Grave. Laoina must go back to her home and bring to me her strongest warriors. We have too few adults left to attack the Cursed Ones ourselves. We must have a force strong enough to draw them off on the evening of the great working, so that Two Fingers can reach the loom and weave his portion. Only then will we be safe."

Horn coughed again, shaken with it, weakening perceptibly.

Alain ghosted in beside her and settled down like a hound come to rest beside its mistress. He set his good hand on Adica's shoulder and regarded the old woman with a compa.s.sionate gaze, neither too sorrowful nor too cool." May you find peace, honored one," he said.

At the sound of his voice, Horn turned her head so that the slack side faced them full on. She seemed, oddly, to be staring at Alain again with her vacant eye, as though it was the only eye that could focus on him properly. Her labored breathing made an erratic accompaniment to the other sounds in the cavern: whispering children, a light and steady snoring from off in the darkness, the insubstantial footfalls of unseen dancers and pipers caught forever in their ancient ceremony, painted upon the rock ceiling. A faint horn call seemed to resound, but surely it was only a trick of the ears or the echo of a child's sigh.

Horn spoke in an altered tone, too resonant to come from that diseased throat." You do not belong here, Wanderer," she said in the language of the Deer tribes." Go back to your own place. Your father weeps for you."

Alain's expression altered, pain and bewilderment replacing sincere sympathy." I have no home. I have no father. No mother. No kin. I came alone, with nothir.^from the place I once lived. I will not go back." He stared fiercely at Horn's slack eye before turning to Adica. The light in his expression made her heart flood with joy." Here, I have a home. I will not leave her." He clasped one of Adica's hands between his own. Even the grasp of his injured hand felt strong, now.

"Many are they who wait for you in that place," repeated Horn stubbornly." I see your crown, brighter than stars. You have wandered off the path meant for you, and you must return. This is your fate, Wanderer."

Throughout this labored speech, Alain's hand tightened on Adica's until her fingers hurt, squeezed between his. Horn's words cut deeply, slicing open the scar that had sealed over her fear of dying. Was Alain to be taken away from her? Truly, she was no longer sure she could walk with the others, knowing where their path led, if she didn't have him beside her. She had come to depend on his companions.h.i.+p; it made her last days bearable.

Alain did not quail." I will not leave her."

Adica recognized then, in his expression, the terrible pain he had suffered before. It was not only she who had found shelter in their bond. He had as well.

Horn snorted, made a whistling, throaty sound as a palsy shook her. Her apprentice rushed forward and bathed her face with what was left of the spilled potion, and this effusion calmed the old woman. When her body ceased its trembling, she lay slack, her good eye closed and the vacant eye staring unseeingly toward the ceiling as at a particular group of brightly-painted pipers dancing around an elk, coaxing it into their snares.

No one knew what to do at first. Cider was brought, along with rather fermented, withered, tasteless greens, and barley cakes that had been fried in lard and left to congeal in the recesses of the cave. Adica ate what was given her. She knew that, driven from their village and their stores, they had little enough to offer a guest.

Abruptly, Horn woke and, in her normal slurred whisper, began speaking where she had left off before Alain had knelt beside her." Laoina and the Akka warriors she brings will shelter here, with my people, until the time comes for the great working. Afterward they will be free to return to their home. Those among my people who live will build a new village so that we need never again dwell in a place poisoned by the Cursed Ones. Those who die will catch up to me on the path that leads to the Other Side. Girl, take them to the Bent People. I still hold the power of fire over them, and they owe me one last boon." She fumbled with her good hand at an armband, her fingers slipping as she tried to tug it off." Return this to the Bent People. They will do my will in this matter." Horn took in a breath, and as she let it out, spoke faint words." Let that be the end of it."

A feather floated down out of the darkness and came to rest on Horn's lips. Adica waited for her to take in another breath, for the feather to stir, but nothing happened. Her chest did not rise. Her whole body slackened. The pale wisp that was her spirit rose out of her body, taking a form like that of the big-bellied woman carved into the cavern wall, so different than the frail, elderly body she now inhabited.

A wind rose sudden and strong. The torches blew out, plunging them into darkness. The pale substance of Horn's spirit twisted as the wind spun it around.

"Hear me! Hear me!" It spoke in a new voice, deep and booming." She is taken! Come quickly, or all is lost. The Holy One has been captured by the Cursed Ones. We have not enough strength to rescue her. Come quickly, or all is lost!"

"Shu-Sha!" cried Two Fingers.

A thunderous knock resounded through the chamber. Adica leaped up just as the wispy spirit shattered into a thousand glittering lights, quickly extinguished. The young apprentice wailed out loud.

Quickly, the torches were relit, but Horn was dead, and her spirit had vanished into the darkness.

PART FOUR.

THE.

XIV.

THE flames scoured her clean. They emptied her of emotion, of her past, of all her links to any substance except fire, because she was fire. Long ago Da had constructed and then locked a door in the citadel of her palace of memory, hiding from her the truth of what she truly was. Even as the fire of the Sun consumed her, the pure fire of her innermost heart burned more brightly even than the blast of the Sun, waves of heat and golden towers of flame. The door remained in place, but now she could peer through that keyhole and understand exactly what it was she saw writhing and burning, the thing that Da had locked away from her: her secret soul, the blue-hot spark that had given her life and that permeated her substance.

am only half fanned out of humankind. She needed no words, no voice, because the fire itself was her voice. The daimones who took me at Verna are my kin.

I am fire.

Exultant, she reached easily into the blazing fire of the Sun and transformed it into wings. On these wings she rose on the updraft of an uncurling flare to the limit of the Sun.

Yet even so, to her surprise, she had not left everything behind. Maybe she could never leave everything behind. She still had her bow and quiver of arrows; she still had the gold torque, cold at her neck, that bound her to Sanglant, and the bright beacon of lapis lazuli, the ring Alain had given her. But nothing else, only the fire that suffused the physical form she called a body.

Jedu's baleful glare bathed the horizon in a b.l.o.o.d.y red, the home of the Angel of War. The gates were guarded by a pair of sullen but dreadful daimones, carrying spears carved of crystal. Skulls dangled from their belts, and their faces shone with blood l.u.s.t. She strung her bow and nocked an arrow, lit it so it burned.

They laughed, seeing how pitifully small she was. Although she was fire, they did not fear her. They were big as castles, with thighs as broad as a house and arms as stout as tree trunks.

"Pa.s.s through, pa.s.s through!" they cried mockingly, with voices that boomed and crashed." We'll watch the sport while you're hunted down and killed, Bright One."

"I thank you," she said, seeing no reason to stay and quibble with creatures who looked ready to squash her like a bug.

She pa.s.sed through the arch as their voices followed her, deep and resonant." Go as you please, Child of Flame, yet you will lose something of yourself on the path!"

She tumbled into Jedu's angry lair.

AT dawn, Bulkezu ordered the vanguard driven forward with the lash to swarm the walls of Echstatt. Maybe the hapless men, women, and children would find mercy in the Chamber of Light, since they had certainly found none at Bulkezu's hands. He used his prisoners wisely, if one called ruthlessness wisdom. By pressing the unarmed mob up against the walls first, he ensured that Echstatt's defenders used up much of their precious store of ar <> rows, javelins, and hot tar on folk who could do nothing to harm them in return.

Hanna refused to weep while Bulkezu watched her. He liked to watch her, just as he liked to make her watch each a.s.sault as his army struck deep into the heart of Wendar, having long since outflanked his pursuers. He was trying to batter her down, breach her walls, but she would not give in.

By midday the Quman breached the town's gates and the fires started. Smoke and flame curled up from houses, halls, and huts, melting the thin mantle of snow on the rooftops. Mounted on a s.h.a.ggy Quman horse, surrounded by Bulkezu's command group as they surveyed their troops from a hillside overlooking the prosperous town, Hanna saw every bitter moment as the victory unfolded. Despair tasted like ash on her tongue as the winged riders started in on their usual slaughter, cutting the fingers off folk who didn't give up their rings quickly enough, dragging adult males out into the streets and killing any who resisted.

Smoke billowed into the sky as fires raged. A dozen riders hurried out of the church as it, too, began to burn, flames licking up through the roof. Four men held corners of the embroidered altar cloth; vestments, gold fittings, silver cups, and the deacon's bloodstained stole jostled in a heap at the center. After a moment, the gla.s.s window above the altar blew out.

In a prosperous town like Echstatt there was plenty to loot beyond fodder, provisions, and the church's treasure. Bulkezu's intentions remained a mystery to her, because he seemed remarkably uninterested in loot except in so far as it pleased his troops to enrich themselves with trinkets and slaves.

Now, of course, came the worst part as the Quman herded the surviving townsfolk out of the gates and onto their ruined fields. Bulkezu gestured, and the command group moved forward. Trapped between his warriors, she had to go along with them as they rode down to examine the captives.

An old woman limped, a trail of blood marking her stumbling path. A young man hugged a baby to his chest while at his side his pretty wife, her expression caught between terror and hopeless anger, slapped her screaming toddler into silence before clutching the now-stupefied child tightly against her as tears streamed down her cheeks. Children sobbed. A girl tried vainly to hold together her torn sleeve. A chubby man in steward's robes fell to the ground and lay there moaning helplessly, face buried in the dirt.

Smoke from the burning houses clouded Hanna's vision. Tears stung her eyes. The townsfolk saw her then, an Eagle riding among the hated Quman.

An elderly man dressed in a rich man's tunic stepped forward, raising his merchant's staff." I pray you, Eagle," he cried, "intercede for us-"

A Quman struck him down. Blood pooled from the old man's temple into the depression left by the heel mark of the warrior's boot. A half-grown boy with a cut on his cheek screamed out loud, once, and an older girl who looked to be his sister clapped a hand over his mouth. There was a terrified silence. All of the townsfolk dropped their gazes and hunched their shoulders, as if by not seeing, by making themselves small, they would not be seen.

Bulkezu laughed. The sound echoed weirdly, m.u.f.fled by his helm. He gestured, and the interpreter hurried foi'ward, eager to serve. He had stolen a new tunic off a corpse about ten days ago and had recently gotten hold of a silver chain out of the ruins of a burned church. The finery made him vain. Hanna hadn't known his name before, but now that he had a half-dozen prisoners to use as slaves, he had begun to style himself "Lord Boso." Sometimes, if Bulkezu was in a magnanimous mood, Boso got to pick a fresh woman from among the newly-captured prisoners rather than accept the leavings after the Quman had done with them.

Bulkezu pulled off his helm. He spoke, and Boso translated.

"His Munificence feels a strong mercy weighing upon his heart. Be glad you do not face his wrath. Because of his good humor this day, he will allow the Eagle to choose ten from your number. The rest will become prisoners. It will become their good fortune to be allowed to serve their Quman masters."

Was this mercy? Hanna felt sick. The townsfolk stared at her, seeming not to understand his words. Already Quman warriors walked among the three hundred or so captives, testing the soundness of limbs, pinching the arms of the young women to see how pleasingly fat they were, prodding the few men who remained," those who hadn't been killed in the first a.s.sault or the final desperate fighting. Some men made good slaves; some did not, because they would always struggle. Bulkezu and his men knew how to tell the difference." What will happen to those left behind, the ones I choose?" she asked.

Bulkezu kept a stony face until Boso translated her words. His reply was swift and certain." His Bounteousness gives his word that they will be allowed to stay behind, unmolested. Let the Eagle choose."

The reputation of the Kerayit shamans had protected her for this long. Bulkezu had not laid a hand on her, but perhaps he meant to win her regard using different methods, mercy and persuasion, if you called this mercy. She regarded him suspiciously, but he only smiled, looking ready as always to burst out laughing.

She made the mistake of looking again at the townsfolk. They were beaten, they were lost, but a few had managed to understand Boso's words. No matter how they struggled to keep their expressions blank, she saw hope flower in their eyes, she saw hatred burn for the choice she would be allowed to have over them. The girl with the torn sleeve hissed." Slave! Traitor!" She wasn't talking to Boso.

The townsfolk all looked at Hanna; in their hearts they knew what she was, if she rode among the Quman. Fire hissed from the town, an echo of the girl's accusation. Boso whispered to Bulkezu, and the prince snapped a command. The girl was dragged forward, thrown down to her knees before him. She began to snivel and cry. She couldn't have been more than thirteen. He drew his sword.

"I choose her," said Hanna hastily." I am a prisoner, too. I have no choice, I didn't ask to travel with them." These words she spoke to the watching townsfolk, but they didn't believe her. They hated her now anyway, whatever they believed of her, because she had the power of life and death over them, the power to choose who would remain free and who would become a slave. It was a cruel game to play with them, and with her. Hope is often cruel.

But if she didn't choose, then they would all suffer as Bulkezu's slaves.

He laughed as she choose them-the defiant girl, the young couple with the two small children, a man with the burly arms of a smith, a woman who reminded her of her mother and the teenage girl clinging to her side-because by the time there were only two choices left to make they were all begging and pleading to be chosen themselves, or thrusting their innocent children forward in the hope of saving them from the Quman yoke. So many.

Cold wind stung her cheeks, bringing tears. The Quman warriors shoved the desperate townsfolk back, away from Hanna.

Children wept. The boy with the cut cheek shuddered as his sister gripped him tightly, but no sound escaped him. The steward curled up and moaning into the dirt began to claw the ground as though he meant, like a mole, to dig himself in to safety. He was missing three fingers. His blood had spattered the front of his linen tunic.

"Two more," cried Lord Boso cheerfully. The townsfolk's fear excited him. His eyes ranged over the women who were left, measuring them, his own nasty gaze lit with greedy desire.

The Quman watched without expression, all except Bulkezu, who found the scene amusing. She hated him for his laughter. She hated him all the more because it would have been easier to hate him if he had been ugly, but even when he laughed, even when he reveled in her pain and in his captives's despair, when his laughter revealed a pitiless and ugly heart, none of that darkness marked his handsome face.

It wasn't true after all, what the church folk sometimes preached: as inside, so outside.

Let no one know she was weeping inside. She was the King's Eagle. It was her duty to witness, to save what she could. She picked out two more girls, both about the same age as the girl with the torn sleeve. Old enough to survive if they were left on their own. Old enough to be raped and taken as concubines if they were left with the Quman.

Boso cursed at her, having had his eye on one of them. Bulkezu finally stopped chuckling. With shuttered eyes, he watched Hanna, not the chosen ten being herded back to burning Echstatt. A captain called out the advance. A horn blew. Weeping and wailing, the rest of Echstatt's survivors were goaded and lashed toward the waiting army.

<> The captives stumbled along. One toddler, falling behind, was killed where it lay sobbing, a prod for the rest. Riding with the command group, Hanna soon outdistanced them, but their cries and grief stayed with her anyway, melding soon enough into the mora.s.s of sorrow that attended the Quman army: the mob of prisoners driven along with livestock and extra horses.

Late that afternoon the scene was repeated again when the vanguard reached a village. Soldiers drove a crowd of prisoners forward to take the brunt of the initial a.s.sault. When the first flurry of arrows trailed off, the Quman troops attacked, burned the palisade and houses, and rounded up prisoners. Bulkezu brought her forward again, to grant mercy to ten.

"I won't do it," she said." You're only playing a game with me. You don't care about mercy."

Bulkezu laughed. As he spoke, Boso translated." Then I will choose, and leave ten behind for the crows."

This time a woman spat on her, calling her worse names than "slave" and "traitor", and was murdered for her disrespect. But Hanna chose ten while the others huddled in hopeless silence or stared at her accusingly.

"Mercy is a waste of time," said Bulkezu as Boso translated." People despise the ones who show them mercy."

"They feel I have betrayed them," said Hanna, "and maybe I have."

The vanguard set up camp an arrow's flight from the ruined village, upwind from the ma.s.s of the army and, more particularly, from the stinking ma.s.s of livestock and prisoners. But Bulkezu liked to survey his riches. He liked his luxuries, his silk robes, handsome gold trinkets, sweet-smelling women he did not treat badly as long as they did not resist him. Yet these were all things he could give up and leave behind without a moment's thought. What he enjoyed most of all, as far as Hanna could tell, was the misery he left in his wake.

With his night guard in attendance and Hanna perforce at his side, he rode back along the lines, weaving in and out through his troops, stopping at campfires, inspecting tents, until he reached the bloated crowd of prisoners mixed together with stolen livestock, cattle and goats and sheep bleating and lowing, chickens and ducks fluttering and squawking in cages, and every variety of donkey and horse, from scrawny a.s.ses to st.u.r.dy work ponies to an aged warhorse now ridden by four small children. Even cowed as the prisoners were by their fear of their masters, they still made noise enough to wake the dead. She could not count them all; in the last few days the numbers had swelled alarmingly as the Quman army swept into more densely inhabited areas. By now, she guessed there were twice as many prisoners as soldiers.

Winter had become spring, although here and there snow lingered on the rooftops or in the northern shadow of trees. Cold and wet made conditions wretched even for those who traveled in some comfort. For the prisoners, most barefoot and half without even a cloak to warm them, spring was deadly. Every night some lay down who would not get up again in the morning. Children too weak to cry whimpered. A man scratched the festering sores on his legs. A mother clutched an emaciated child to her breast, but she had no milk. Here and there knots of people huddled together, protecting precious stores of food gained from relatives who had by one means or another come under the protection of a man in the Quman army-a young woman to be his concubine, her mother to cook his meat and gruel or to mend his s.h.i.+rts, a boy to groom his horses or polish his armor.

While Hanna watched, a dozen soldiers rode up to look over the new captives. The guards rounded them up-easy to mark out the new ones because their look of terror hadn't yet been subsumed by numb despair-and prodded them forward. Bulkezu watched with that irritating half smile on his face. Other villages had been overrun today. Hanna saw prisoners who had not been among those she had seen taken, chief among them a pretty young woman who had just the kind of pleasingly plump figure that Quman men found attractive. Soldiers jostled each other to get close to her, to poke and pinch her, to check her teeth and test the strength of her hair; soon enough she was crying openly, so afraid that she wet herself. One man shoved another to get him out of his way. Curses flew fast and furious.

The smile vanished from Bulkezu's face as he urged his horse forward. At once, the jostling ceased and the men moved back obediently. His griffin wings hissed softly as a breeze rose. Bulkezu ruled his army with an iron hand. He did not tolerate fighting among his troops. Lord Wichman and his cronies would not have lasted a day among the Quman, no matter how great their prowess in battle.

He bent down from the saddle to touch the young woman's hair, letting it fall through his hands before lifting it up again, testing the weight and silkiness between his fingers. The young woman had wits enough to stop weeping, although maybe she was only shocked into a stupor.

Bulkezu had decided to take her for himself.

He called out orders. Then they all waited with that seemingly infinite patience the Quman had while two of the night guards rode away to the vanguard. Bulkezu whistled merrily while he waited; some of the soldiers contented themselves with other, women, dragging them away from their families while cries of grief and fear broke out among the new prisoners. The young woman stood stiffly, bolt upright, only her gaze ranging as she looked for help, for succor, for escape-hard to say.

Hanna moved forward as the night guards returned with all five of Bulkezu's current concubines, to be handed over to the men who had been fighting over the new woman. One of them-the blonde who had been found hiding in a root cellar-threw herself down before his horse, crying and pleading, trying to grab his boot and hang on. Bulkezu, laughing, kicked her in the face and signaled to a soldier to drag her away.

Hanna used the cover of this mild disturbance to ride in close to the new captive. She bent forward as she pa.s.sed, spoke quickly and in a low voice, hoping the girl had wits enough to pay attention." No flattery. No whining. No fear. Don't cry."

Then she had crossed beyond her, not daring to turn to see how the woman had reacted. The blonde was still weeping as one of the soldiers who had started the fighting over the new captive hauled her away. The old captives merely watched, too ill, too weak, or too hopeless to react. A few enterprising children, grown wise from neglect, sidled over to the families of those taken away. They knew who had access to food: the ones who pleased their masters.

After all, the Quman treated their favored slaves no worse than the prisoners treated each other.

"Men are weak who fight over women," Bulkezu said suddenly in Wendish as he rode up beside Hanna. They now sat far enough away from the prisoners that none could overhear them.

"Why do you take so many prisoners, when all they do is suffer? They gain you nothing. What you want them all for?" "I want them so Wendar suffers."

Truly, he killed them with neglect." What do you gain by burning and destroying? How does it help you, how do you enrich yourself, by ruining Wendar? Do you hope to rule here? You would have done better to offer marriage to one of the king's daughters." He spat." What man of my people would wish to marry a barbarian's get? I'll take the king's daughter as my bed-slave if I want her."