Child of Flame (Page 260)

“Ai, God,” said Ekkehard when they halted at last on a ridgeline from which they could overlook the Veser River. “That’s the fort of Barenberg. We’re in my aunt Rotrudis’ duchy now.”

His companions regarded the distant fort in silence. The river wound north through ripening fields and orchards. This was rich country, indeed.

“I can’t fight her,” whispered Ekkehard, glancing toward Bulkezu, who had ridden up to the edge of the ridge. A steep slope cut away beneath the Quman begh. The wind sang sweetly in his griffin wings. Because he wore his helm, Hanna could not see his expression behind the visor, only that mask of iron.

“Whose banner flies from the tower?” asked Benedict.

Ekkehard made a choking noise as his face drained of color. Bulkezu reined his horse around and returned to them.

“Two banners,” Hanna said as hope sparked. “The regent’s silk, and Wayland’s hawk. We seem to have met up with Princess Theophanu and Duke Conrad, Your Highness.”

2

EVEN with an Eagle’s sight to aid him, Sanglant and his troops spent three weeks following the meandering trail of Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia as it wound through the marchlands of Olsatia, Austra, and Eastfall. He met up at last with their army at a slave auction in the ruins of the fortress of Machteburg. Easy enough to tell that Bulkezu’s army had been here two months before: the mostly rotted bodies of unarmed prisoners lay in heaps along the outer wall where they’d fallen, killed by their own terrified countrymen deceived into believing that the mob of captives was the vanguard of the Quman assault.

Sanglant tracked Bayan down where he prowled the burned-out ruins, poking with a spear through the ashes of the central tower. The Ungrian prince looked no worse for wear, as bluff and fit as ever, with a becoming twinkle in his eye as he looked up to see Sanglant approaching him. He pressed through his retinue and hurried over.

“My friend!” Bayan clapped Sanglant heartily on the shoulder before enveloping him in a crushing hug. He kissed him on either cheek, as a kinsman, and finally let him go. “Alas that we meet in such troubled times.”

“Troubled enough, it’s true.”

“What is this frowning face, my brother? I know this look of a man who is not sporting in the bed enough.”

Sanglant laughed. “Is that the trouble you complain of? I thought you meant this war against the Quman.”

But Bayan was not to be thrown off the scent. “How can this be? You look whole in all parts. Do the women not find you handsome any longer?”

The question made Sanglant unaccountably irritable. “Nay, I’m troubled more than enough by women. It was easier to travel in the duchies. I felt safe at night in monastic guesthouses, sung to sleep by the chaste music of God. Out here in the marchlands I’m tormented every night by yet another sweet lass asking prettily for my prince’s seed to honor her family.”

“Not two sweet lasses every night? From me you get no pity if you send them away without a taste. Five pretty Salavii slave girls I bought at the market in Handelburg this past winter. I must send them to work in the kitchens. Nor can I mention ever my beloved snow woman, whom I sent to her death for the sake of peace in my bed.” He sighed, eyeing Sanglant with a rueful expression. “Are you not traveling with this wife you married against your father’s wishes?”

As with any wound, the pain did dull after a time, even if the ache of mingled grief, hope, and anger would never go away completely. The late summer heat cast a haze over the dead fortress. Luckily, they had arrived weeks after the worst of the stench had faded, although now and again a tickle of putrefaction teased Sanglant’s nostrils, some bubble of gas released from deep within the mound of corpses.

“It might be best to bury the dead,” he replied curtly.

Bayan had a way of quirking up his right eyebrow when he wished to ask an unwanted question, but refrained. “Now we hear report of plague in Avaria. We need none of that here to add to our distress. Already have I men at work digging graves enough to take all these poor innocent corpses. Maybe it is not right to call a corpse innocent, with maggots and flies crawling in its belly.”

“Your Wendish is much improved.”

“Your disposition is not. What happened to your wife?”

Sanglant took the spear out of Bayan’s hand impatiently, stabbing at a gleam caught among the ashes, but all he came up with was yet another skull. He crouched to fish it out of the debris. It had come loose from its body. The lower jaw had been smashed in, probably by falling stone. A few shreds of flesh still adhered to the dome of the skull, trailing patches of reddish hair, but otherwise weather and insects had picked it clean.