The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 170

A curtain made of beads rustled as an ancient, yellowing hand pressed a few strands aside, peering out. Hanna glanced there, surprised, but she saw only deeper shadow within. She heard a hiss, soft words in an alien language, and then a single puff of white was blown out from between two strands of amber beads. A feather of goose down drifted lazily to earth.

“Ho, there!” cried one of the infantrymen. “They come!”

The Quman charged in good order toward the attacking Ungrians, closing the gap.

The mad Ungrians suddenly wheeled around and shot so many arrows into the Quman ranks that the whistle of arrow flight hummed in tandem with the whirring wings. The eastern sky darkened with rain as the Ungrians fled back toward the Wendish line all in disorder, some lagging, some way out in front. The entire center around Bayan swayed, shifted, and began to disintegrate. Bayan cried out something unintelligible from this distance as the Wendish line, too, fell back, retreating toward the infantry square. Only Sapientia tried to pull her cohort forward, shouting to her men, trying to rally them.

Again, Bayan intervened ruthlessly by placing his spear between her and her sword, and suddenly the entire center collapsed and all of them fled back in a complete rout.

Beside Hanna, Breschius grunted.

Hanna stared in horror at the debacle. She couldn’t speak. On the plain behind the Quman army, rain pounded the ground to mud, and yet where she stood, where Bayan’s soldiers fled in disorder, the sun still shone and it was dry. The plain ran with movement like ants whose nest has been trampled. An Ungrian soldier, lagging behind, went down with an arrow in his back, and his body vanished beneath a score of hooves and whistling, winged riders.

At that moment, she knew she was going to die. The knowledge burst within her like a flower opening, a transforming beauty imbued with the fleeting perfume of mortality and the revelation of God’s eternal presence.

The strong Quman line began to dissolve as some of the young warriors couldn’t contain their impatience and broke forward. As they split away from the rest, she saw them clearly for the first time: not winged creatures at all but only men wearing wings strapped to their back in imitation of birds. Even the flat, metal faces were only part of their helmets.

And then, of course, the Ungrian flank that had ridden away into the hills thundered in to hit the Quman flank, which was now all strung out in pursuit of the retreating banners. A shrill hooting cry rang out along the retreating Ungrian line and as tautly as if they were all pulled by the same string, they wheeled around again and in almost perfect formation charged back at the Quman center.

“Haililili!” cried Hanna exultantly, in echo of her mistress. She watched as Sapientia’s banner followed and then caught up to Bayan’s, as together prince and princess plunged into the fighting. Caught between two hammers, the Quman didn’t have a chance. Those who finally broke and tried to flee got caught in the soggy ground farther east along the river plain.

Bayan withdrew from the melee back to his mother’s wagon and, from that vantage, he surveyed the scene with a frown, not troubled, merely measuring. He did not seem to notice Hanna, but he called Brother Breschius to attend him. At intervals one or two of his men would ride up and speak to him, or hand him a scrap of cloth, or a knife, or a broken feather, or, once, a trampled face mask broken off from a helmet. Each item he examined with care and then he would resume watching as the Wendish and Ungrian armies set upon their enemy.

They killed until it was too dark to see.

At last, lanterns were brought from camp. Sapientia emerged from the slaughter with her face bright with excitement and her sword dripping blood. A lantern hung from her banner pole, lighting the banner that now rippled in a wind blowing from the west.

“Haililili!” she crowed, saluting her husband. “A victory! We have brought them to battle and defeated them soundly!”

Bayan lifted his own sword in answer. It, too, was stained with drying blood. “I have killed my man!” he cried. “Now, I bed my woman!”

Sapientia laughed ecstatically. She had a kind of thrumming energy about her, like the charge in the air just after lightning strikes. Indeed, as the entire army gathered around the lantern-lit rise, Hanna felt the tension rising within them, more dangerous, perhaps, than that which had come before the battle.

With banners flying ahead and torches surrounding them, Bayan and Sapientia moved down through the army and back toward camp. Hanna made to follow them, but Breschius stopped her.

“Touch the wagon,” he said sternly. “Do so!”

Hesitantly, she touched the corner of the wagon. It felt like plain wood to her, nothing magicked about it. A moment later, it jolted forward, following Bayan, and she obediently followed in its wake with Breschius beside her. The army rode in formation alongside, and she felt now that many of the men in the Ungrian army watched her, stared at her, ogled her. The Wendish soldiers no doubt did so as well, but to them she was a King’s Eagle. They knew her oaths, and they understood that she had the king’s protection.