Crown of Stars (Page 163)

“We saw no sign of Eika on the road.”

He shook his head. “I know not where they came from, my lady. We are cut off utterly from the east.”

Theophanu looked at her captains and her companions, who had fallen into stunned silence. “They have come out of the west, or out of the north, and if that is so, then they have circled most of the valley of Kassel. We are caught between them, and Conrad. Captain, to arms. See to our eastern defenses—if we have any. We must find some way to alert Sanglant, so he is ready when we sound our advance.”

4

AFTER the rider named Peter joined them, they marched for about a league through quiet forestlands before a horn called the alarm from the rear guard. Rosvita heard shouts as a soldier galloped up along the road.

“Holy Mother! Sister! I pray you, fall back to the line of wagons at once!”

Rosvita swung her mount around immediately, but Mother Scholastica stared stubbornly at the flushed and frightened messenger. “What news? Why this alert?”

“Armed men, trailing us on the road!”

“Have they identified themselves?”

“I think they mean to do so.” Trembling, Brother Fortunatus pointed west.

A score of beasts stepped out of the trees and onto the shaded road. In form they bore a remarkable resemblance to humankind, with bone-white hair, two arms and two legs and a human-shaped torso, and facial features that from a distance might be mistaken for those of a man, but they were not men. Many bared their teeth, which had a sharp splendor like to that of dogs. They made no other threatening move, although their silence seemed threatening enough.

“Ai, God!” cried their escort, Peter.

“This can’t be Conrad’s army,” said Mother Scholastica indignantly.

“Pull back to the wagons,” said Sister Rosvita in a quiet voice to the riders surrounding her, who were mostly clerics of her own party or those church folk attending the royal abbess.

“Look in the trees!” exclaimed Fortunatus.

The pallor of their hair gave them away, ranks and ranks of them ranged in the forest, all standing as still as if they were statues—and so they might have been, sheeted in tin or copper or gold.

“I believe we are surrounded.” In the face of disaster, Rosvita found that she felt perfectly calm. “I pray you, Mother Scholastica, fall back to the wagons. I will remain here. Fortunatus, please find Sergeant Ingo or Sergeant Aronvald. We’d best discuss our options while we still have time to talk.”

They waited in a chilling silence, Rosvita out in front with Peter remaining bravely beside her while Mother Scholastica led the others back to the wagons.

“If your wagons are all strung out along the road,” remarked Peter with the even voice of a man who sees he can’t escape death, “they’ll offer little safety.”

“We must rely on God to protect us,” said Rosvita. “Why do you suppose they have not yet attacked?”

“What are they?” he asked her. “I’ve never seen men like them, if they’re men.”

“They are called Eika.”

“I’ve heard tales of such beasts. But you never know whether to believe them.”

“They’re real enough. King Henry fought a battle against them at Gent and drove them out of the city. For a few years, the north coast was peaceful.”

“Licking their wounds and making ready to invade again.”

“So it appears.”

Wind conversed in the leaves and branches, but the Eika did not speak or move. Fortunatus came up from the wagons with Sergeant Ingo.

“Lord have mercy.” The sergeant surveyed the blocked road, then spat.

“So we must pray,” said Rosvita. “Have they attacked the rear guard or the wagons?”

“Nay, they stand as if stone, on all sides,” said Ingo. “Some among us Lions fought Eika in earlier years, Sister. I will tell you that we never saw the like of this behavior. They were always silent, but their terrible dogs would yammer and attack, and they themselves would leap straight into battle like starving wolves. I wonder.”

“You wonder what?”

“I wonder what intelligence controls them.”

On the road ahead the Eika soldiers stepped aside. Two individuals came forward. One was an Eika warrior, noticeably more slender and shorter than many of his fellows. Around his hips was slung a girdle of surpassing beauty, gold-wire lacework studded with pearls and gems. Loops and spirals, a garish display, were painted on his chest. He bared his teeth, seeing the four who waited in the van; jewels winked, drilled into the incisors. He carried a gruesome standard, like a crossed spar on which hung streamers of bone and frayed ribbon and the same sort of trophies chosen by a flash-eyed crow to decorate its gaudy nest.