The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 112

“Surely she will think it strange that Sister Anne has vanished.” Amabilia frowned at the letter. “According to Princess Theophanu, Sister Anne witnessed the whole as well, the fever and the ligatura they found. Where do you suppose Sister Anne could have gone?”

“I do not know,” said Rosvita, but in her heart she feared the worst.

3

THEY came upon the first signs of habitation in midmorning: a hunter’s trap, a lean-to built of branches with a roof woven out of vines, and a ten-day-old campfire. At midday they found the first dead body at the edge of a clearing newly hacked from beech forest. It was a male dressed in Wendish clothing. His head was cut off at the neck.

“Quman raiders.” Zacharias knelt beside the bloody corpse, touched his wooden Circle, and began reflexively to speak the prayer for the dead. But he broke off. They were just words, weren’t they? They didn’t mean anything. “We should bury it,” he added, looking up in time to see his companion pick up the ax that had fallen from the dead man’s hands. She studied it, grunted, and tied it to the horse, then strode on. He scrambled up, grabbed the horse’s reins, and hurried after her. “Shouldn’t we bury it?” he demanded, panting, as he came up beside her.

She shrugged. “His people will find him.”

“But his spirit will roam if we don’t lay it to rest properly. That’s what my grandmother always said.” Yet she had been a pagan, and the church of the Unities had put an end to the old ways.

“Human spirits haven’t the strength to harm me. How can we bury them all?”

“All?”

“Don’t you smell the smoke?” she asked, surprised.

He smelled nothing. Not then. Not yet. They walked on through beech forest, following a trail. A day ago they had reached hill country, leaving the grasslands behind, and although he had felt the anger of his Quman master like a spear point pressing against his shoulder blades, they had seen no sign of Quman. He began to believe he had truly escaped them.

When they came to the village, he knew that, again, he was mistaken.

The stench of burning hung over the tiny village like a shroud. The half-built palisade had given little protection to the brave souls who had sought to cut farmland out of the eastern wilderness. The huts still smoldered. A dog lay covered with flies. Some of the corpses had heads. The rest did not.

“They’re riding before us.” Fear curdled in his gut.

She merely shook her spear. The jingling bell died away into the silence but not before he heard a scuff from the shell of one of the scorched longhouses. “Some remain.”

“Quman?” His voice caught on the word and splintered. He knew in an instant he would start to weep.

“Nay, the horsefolk are gone. We go as well.”

“Shouldn’t we give them a decent burial?”

“It will take too long. Stay if you must. They belong to your kin, not mine.” But she didn’t leave immediately. A row of open-sided sheds had been left untouched. Their roofs sheltered craftsmen’s tools and paraphernalia: a woodworker and a stone knapper had once worked here, together with a leatherworker. Cured skins lay draped over crude sawhorses next to a dozen or more skins strung on frames to cure. She hefted tools, tested their balance, took a few, but it was the leather she found most interesting. She rolled it in her fingers, spat on it, tested its strength over her knee. Finally she took three skins and rolled them up, then scavenged in the half-burned bakehouse and returned with several blackened loaves and two leather bottles filled with cider. He stared, as stunned as an idiot. Wasn’t it wrong to take what wasn’t theirs? Yet the dead had no need of food. She tied skins, tools, and provisions on behind the horse’s saddle without a word, then turned and raised her spear as her gaze fastened on something behind him.

That noise wasn’t the wind. It was whispering.

He turned.

“Frater!” Four women, two adolescent boys, and an old man crowded together at the door of the burned longhouse. About a half dozen children huddled behind them. One woman held a baby in her arms. “Ai, God! Good frater! God have sent you to us in our time of need!” A woman stepped forward, arms outstretched as for a blessing. “We thought you was the raiders, come back. That woman with you—” She broke off as her gaze took in the terrible scene, a dozen men of various ages, one young and one very old woman lying dead on bloody ground. “She wears their coat.”

“She’s not Quman.” He was amazed at how hoarse his voice sounded. The words still did not come easily, and this village woman spoke with a thick dialect, a migrant from a different region than his own kinfolk.