Crown of Stars (Page 128)

“If they have Autun to ransack, why march this way?” When Baldwin did not reply, Ivar muttered on to himself, furious that their luck just could not change for the better. “Why send scouts so far? It’s days and days of walking … and for what? Can’t they just leave us alone? They don’t want us reaching the lady! That’s it! They know we’re ahead of them, and they’re after us!”

“Do you really think that’s likely?” Baldwin asked in a calm voice that, like cold water, doused Ivar’s fit of anger. “You and I are nothing. Not really.”

Not really.

They kicked through a thicket of bramble and plunged into a tangle of saplings. Beech woods with their open vistas were a bad place to hide; the great oak in the clearing seemed out of place, an ancient survivor from an earlier time.

“There’s a good thick coppice,” said Ivar, pointing up the gentle slope to a wall of flourishing ash and hawthorn. “Thank God for the woodsmen! That’s what my. father always used to say. I wonder if he’s still alive. Ai, God. Gero would be count in his place.” The thought struck him to silence and, it seemed, dried up his tears as well. Or maybe it was the rumbling of thunder out of the west. “We must stop, or they’ll see us moving.”

They hid as best they could, hoping that leaves and distance and stillness would conceal them. That first scout loped again out into the clearing and halted, like a stone statue, to examine the deserted landscape. Or perhaps it was a different Eika, one carrying a similar shield. Ivar could not tell the difference between them, except that maybe this one’s skin was more bronze than gold. More came, a pair, a foursome, a dozen. This advance group trotted past the oak tree and took the wide road that led to the southeast, the main way to Kassel and the duchy of Fesse. Yet the rumble grew louder.

Out of the trees a child came running with frantic steps. Father Ortulfus burst out of cover, chasing it. It stooped to grab a scrap of cloth, a doll, most likely, and as it turned to run back to the forest, it cast a glance westward down the road, took a pair of steps, looked back again, and went rigid.

Ortulfus reached it, clapped a hand over its mouth, and swung the child over his shoulder as he shifted course to run back into the safety of the wood.

Baldwin took a step after them, but Ivar grabbed his arm. “No!” he whispered.

Baldwin shook him off, and seemed ready to run after the abbot, but then the horses shied at nothing and he had to turn back. Together they calmed the restive animals.

Together, they looked up as the steady rumble turned into an identifiable thunder of a mass of people marching. The first ranks trotted into the clearing. They jogged five abreast, each one armed with some kind of girdle about the hips—leather or shimmering metal—and a shield and weapon, spears, axes, bows, and a few swords. Dogs accompanied them, monstrous iron-gray beasts with saliva dribbling down their muzzles. Seeing Ortulfus and the child, they broke forward ravenously.

The ten Eika soldiers who ran in the lead broke into a sprint and raced out to encircle to abbot and his tiny charge, beating back the dogs. One stabbed a dog clean through, and where it twitched and howled on the ground, the other dogs converged, snarling and ripping.

“I can’t look!” moaned Baldwin. “I should have gone after them!”

“Hush! You want those dogs to hear us?” Thank God the wind was blowing into their faces. At least their scent would not give them away. “They won’t stop for your pretty face!”

The second ranks kept coming along the road, and more and yet more, too many to count unless he numbered each rank—two rows of soldiers—as a pair of hands.

“Ten pairs of hands make a hundred,” Ivar muttered. “Of hundreds: One…. Two…. Three…. Four…. Five.”

The army went on forever, and the horses didn’t like it. Something about the smell or sound unnerved them. Baldwin kept up a steady, gentling murmur to keep them quiet and in one place as Ivar counted. The Eika pace seemed to swallow the ground; they moved without faltering along the road to Kassel, a new rank marching into view as the forward groups moved out of sight. With their horses pushed to the limit, Ivar and Baldwin could not possibly hope to overtake this army, even by ruining their mounts.

All this time, Father Ortulfus stood within a ring of Eika, held the silent child, and waited. The soldiers around him had also ceased moving. They also were waiting.

Banners streamed. Rippling strips of cloth in bright yellows and stark reds and heavenly blues marked the core of the army. A column of wagons rolled into view, pulled not by horses but by Eika and other creatures, ones who were like the Eika in walking on two feet and having hands and familiar-seeming faces but with blond and brown and black hair.