Child of Flame (Page 224)

The night guard trotted up, but Bulkezu gave a curt command, and they made no move to follow the fleeing children.

Tears of elation wet Hanna’s lips. “You missed!”

He laughed, that damned half-giggling guffaw. Sobering, he drew another arrow from his quiver and twisted it between his fingers. The wind whistled through his wings; she smelled a faint scent, like putrefaction, wafting toward them from camp.

“I never miss.” His expression darkened. “Twice only, and they will suffer for it, when I have them in my hands again.”

“Who could have defeated you, Prince Bulkezu?” She was too angry, at herself, at fate, at his arrogance, to watch her tongue, to curb her sarcasm, even if she knew it wasn’t wise.

“Once, that Ashioi witch. Once, that smart-mouthed priest.”

“You tolerate insults from Boso all the time. You can understand every word he says.”

“Boso is a fool. A dog would make a more worthy lord. It amuses me to wait and let him spin a little longer. Now Zach’rias was a clever man. He made war on me with his tongue. I should have cut off his tongue instead of his penis. I didn’t understand him well enough to know which would hurt him worse. My arrow missed its mark.” He shifted in the saddle, lifting an arm to brush a finger along one of the griffin feathers bound into his wooden wings. The touch raised blood on his skin, but the wind wicked it away. A thin rain of snow spilled from a tree branch, a shower of white that melted where it touched the sodden, spring ground.

“But they only made me stronger, when they thought to humble me. Now I’m the only man born into the tribes who has killed two griffins, not just one.” He did not smile. Nor did he laugh.

“You didn’t wear those wings when you fought against Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia.”

A spark of mischief and cruelty lit his expression. “I wanted Bayan to know that even wingless I could defeat him and his noble allies.” He laughed for such a long time that Hanna began to think something had gotten stuck in his throat. The shrunken head rolled along his thigh, staring accusingly at Hanna. “I’d never killed a lady lord in battle before,” he continued at last, “so I thought it best to put my old guardian away and dedicate a new one.” He laughed a little again, trailing off into giggles as he stroked the hair on his shrunken head and lifted it. “Do you know her?”

Bile stung in Hanna’s throat. For a moment she thought she would vomit. Or ought to. No wonder the head, all twisted, blackened, warped, and nasty as it had become, looked familiar. She knew who had died in that battle.

“Judith,” she whispered, “Margrave of Olsatia and Austra.”

Another of the night guard rode up to deliver a report. Bulkezu listened intently, eyes crinkling as he concentrated. He had already forgotten the head. Slowly his expression changed. The only thing worse than his smiles and laughter were his frowns, and he frowned now as night fell and a warm breeze brought the fetid smell of camp to her nostrils, choking her. She could not bear to look at Bulkezu, not with Margrave Judith’s head dangling there.

One of the guards lit a torch. Back at the army, more torches blazed into life like visible echoes of the one snapping brightly next to her.

Out of the night, screaming rose like a tide.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, horrified. It sounded as if the Quman had turned on their helpless prisoners and begun killing them.

“What is the name for this thing that has crept into the ranks of the prisoners, this thing we must drive out lest it infect my troops?” He mused aloud, absently fingering the point of the arrow as he cocked his head to one side, listening to the distant slaughter. Snow dusted his black hair as a last shower rained from the pine tree under which he sheltered. “First the demons slip invisibly into the body. Then the body turns gray and shakes. Then the noxious humors explode out of the mouth and the nose and the ears and the asshole, all the snot and blood and shit and spittle bursting forth. Zach’rias taught me the name for this thing.”

She already knew. A cold worm of fear writhed in her heart, numbing her. She had thought the shadow elves the only thing more terrifying than the Quman. But she was wrong.

He nodded to himself, remembering the word.

“Plague.”

Back in the camp, the killing went on.

3

THEY came down out of the Alfar Mountains into a summer so golden that it seemed to Rosvita that the sun itself had been poured over the landscape. In the north, the light was never this rich and expressive.

When they stopped to water the horses and oxen at midday, Fortunatus took off his boots and dabbled his toes where the cold mountain water frothed and spilled over exposed rocks.