Crown of Stars (Page 167)

The horse is as white as untouched snow, almost blinding. The woman has seen many battles. Scars mar her face and hands. Her boots drip mud, as though she has only recently slogged through a rain-swept battlefield. The rings of her mail shirt are coated with rust except for those places where irregular patches of new rings have been linked and hammered closed to fill ragged gaps.

She reins in her warhorse beside him. Her long sword, sheathed in leather, sways in front of his eyes. A battered round shield hangs by her knee.

Her gaze is at once distant and utterly piercing. But he is no longer afraid to look her in the eye.

“What must I pay you, to ride to war?” she asks him.

He cannot tell if she recognizes him.

“I have dealt death and suffered death,” he tells her. “I am no longer your servant.”

As the clouds part, the light of the sun shifts until it strikes her, and her armor gleams as though new-made, shining and glorious as she is shining and glorious. She draws her sword. Its length blazes as though forged by sorcery. He weeps, because she is beautiful.

“All serve me,” she says. “The trumpets of war are sounding. Arms will be Joined soon. Friends and foes will perish. Do you abandon them to their fate? Hear!”

Out of the heavens a ringing sound floats, almost too faint to identify except that he knows it as the clash of sword and shield. On the wind drifts a rumble like thunder, quickly lost.

“Ride with me, Alain, son of Rose. Choose, and your choice shall win the day. You may make Sanglant emperor by the might of your arm. Stronghand is your brother by blood. Will you answer his prayer? What of the husband of the woman you loved once? Give him victory, and raise her to glory—or ruin him to ruin her. What of the offer made to you, to become consort in your own right? Choose, and you can be king, consort of a queen regnant. You are nothing, a whore’s son raised by a humble family. I offer you glory. Come with me now, and your likeness, the memory of your exploits, will be painted on the walls of churches so that humble folk will sing of your victories and clerics will praise your deeds. You will be one of the great princes ever after.”

The ground shakes with an undulating ripple. The guivre drags itself up beside him, and it stretches its wings to their full span, hissing at the lady.

“I no longer belong to you,” he says.

“You march toward war. Even if it is peace that you seek, you must use the sword to achieve it. Fail me, and you fail those you wish to save.”

“So you believe.” He whistles. Rage and Sorrow come to attention behind him, ready to move.

She laughs, a bright sound that rings up into the heavens to join that clamor heard from afar. “Challenge me, if you will. Now you will see my power.”

The fog takes her. Between one breath and the next, it swallows her, leaving him on the narrow deer trail hemmed in by scraping branches and damp leaves. The meadow has vanished, the rain has stopped, but the black clouds and the rising wind remain.

Almost, Stronghand dropped his battle standard, woven by the shamans of the Eika tribes so its magic shields from the touch of sorcery all who walk under the shield of his power. Its limits had been tested today, and it had protected them from a terrible threat. The thought roused him. His chin jerked sideways as he started like an animal waking from a doze and grabbed the tumbling standard before it could strike the ground.

“She is coming!” His voice cracked. His attendants shifted from watchful alertness to coiled readiness as a man standing casually rolls to the balls of his feet, preparing to sprint. “Swiftly! Now we move!”

His gaze caught on the cleric. “Stand by your agreement, and I will stand by mine. Yeshu, see that the shaman and her attendant come with us. Bring also this holy mother who speaks for the company.”

He strode into the ranks of his army, which swallowed him. As quickly as water washes off rocks on an outgoing wave, his soldiers dispersed west down the Hellweg or into the forest. The plan was long since set into motion. The noise of their passage crackled, and as if by sorcery a wind rose out of the north to trouble the woodland. Branches cracked and fell. The clouds—what he could see of them above the treetops—had turned a sullen gray color, presaging rain.

Battle was coming, and so was Alain. Yet another scent teased his nostrils, a touch of the forge. It puzzled him, because although a lingering taste of sorcery shifted on the wind, that distant presence was not in itself magical.

A scout jogged into view from the west and fell into step beside him. “Lord Stronghand. All is ready as you have commanded on the western flank. A report has come in that a patrol to the north has fallen into a skirmish with a party of outriders, and retreated. Sharptongue of Moels Tribe has sent up another troop to push into that region, to make sure our eastern flank is not attacked unawares.”