Page 310 of Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

One breath caught in a gasp of exhalation as, beside Wolfhere, a cleric fell to his knees with gaze lifted heavenward and mouth open. Light spun in the air, like the flash of a mirror catching the sunlight, but when she blinked to protect her eyes, it winked and vanished. The cleric crumpled to the ground.

The crash of men meeting resounded. One horse stumbled, but came up with rider still on its back, while the other horse staggered and fell, tumbling its rider onto the ground. Men cried out in fear, while others shouted “huz-zah!” or called frantic commands.

The young lord crawled whimpering back to his fellows, off the road. “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here. We’re right in the middle of the worst of it, and we have no weapons! We’d be better hiding in the byre!”

Wolfhere knelt beside the fallen cleric and shook what appeared to be little more than skin and bones wrapped in tattered robes.

“What’s happened to him?” Hanna knelt beside him.

“He’s dead.” Wolfhere grabbed the body by the ankles and dragged him off the road.

“What are you doing?” cried Hanna. She was stuck there, standing and staring first at Wolfhere, whose behavior made no sense and then at the appalling sight of Sanglant alone on the road, unhorsed, with only a shield and sword and no more than a score of riders to protect him against hundreds of mounted riders armed with spears and lances under the command of Conrad the Black.

Maybe if she could reach the duke before he struck the killing blow.

She took a step, and a second. A hand closed on her ankle and tugged her so hard she felt flat and barely caught herself on her hands before her face smacked into stone. The impact jarred up through her wrists and arms.

She shouted in pain. “What are you doing? Let me go help him.”

“I cannot,” Wolfhere said, his grip like iron chains. “I swore an oath long ago. Now, at last, I must pray it is fulfilled.”

Stronghand’s men cut a path through the barricade wide enough to allow the Eika army to pass through four abreast, and wide enough to admit the little wagon that bore the Kerayit shaman in whose body was woven a spell that killed. Stronghand pressed through the van and, together with Last Son, paused where level road hit the impressive ramp that carried the road down into the valley.

“Easy pickings,” said Last Son. “Look there!”

A person dressed in stiff skirts bounded onto the road and ran right toward them. Halfway down the long ramp, the white-haired Eagle, who had been allowed to pass by his troops unharmed only a short while ago, hesitated out in plain sight where she was a target for every arrow and anxious spear. Five other men scrambled up the rim where the ramped road gave way into a sloping side.

But Last Son was pointing to the far west, not at the people below. “I see the signals, from the forest’s edge.”

Light flashed where his troops caught sunlight on the faces of obsidian mirrors.

“Do you see her?” Stronghand had not looked west. He surveyed the sprawling battle, spreading in the valley as some units retreated and others advanced but in no order whatsoever. Here, the Wendish flourished; there, they collapsed. Among them, fighting in one place at the hand of the Wendish and in another place appearing on the side of the Varren levies, rode a woman who wore no distinguishing tabard, only plain mail, a battered shield, and a serviceable sword. He knew who she was all the same. No man could stand before her, who dealt death on all sides: the Lady of Battles, beloved of humankind.

“What are you looking at?” asked Last Son.

“Never mind,” said Stronghand. “Our work will be done for us, as they slaughter their own kind. Hold the men back on all flanks. I’ll hold to my word, that we will raise arms only against those who raise arms against us. Bring the Kerayit wagon forward.”

Last Son gave him the standard before trotting off through the vanguard. Other Eika moved up alongside Stronghand, some silent, some laughing to see the carnage, some bored because they weren’t fighting, and one sniffing at the air and rubbing at an ear as at a change in weather.

There was a change, a cold wind blowing out of the east and a hard hot iron scent, mingled with a dull boom that shuddered away and rose again and again. Rain pattered in the trees. Wind moaned and rattled as the storm strained against the unnatural leash holding it in: The power of his staff battled the storm, keeping it at bay.

There! Difficult to distinguish because of the shouts and screams and clangor of arms rising out of the valley, a shriek lifted from deep in the rear ranks of his army only to sigh away, buried under the din.

The human creature running up the ramp reached him. Showing no fear, it halted before him and spoke in the Wendish tongue.

“She is here. The holy one is with you. I am of her tribe. Let me join her.”

He laughed. “What manner of animal are you?” he asked, because this one was like no other human he had met. It was dressed in the clothing and gold and bead baubles and headdress customarily worn by women and it moved with a woman’s mannerisms, as he had learned to recognize them, but it smelled like a man.

“I am called Berda. Let me go to the holy one, lord.”

Its lack of fear intrigued him. And he found loyalty commendable.

He signaled safe passage with a lift of his hand. The creature called Berda darted into the Eika army.

A duel between chiefs had broken out on the road below, where it leveled out, but its outcome did not interest him. His nose stung. An itch tickled his eyes. He shrugged uneasily, not liking the taste of the air.

He lifted his standard, testing the wind. An old magic licked his skin, quickly evaporating. This was not sorcery, then, but something natural. Perhaps after all it was only the tension of the storm that, lowering over them, could not break. No, they were safe from magic, as they had been since the day he bound the old sorcerer’s magic into his staff.

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