“And Burgun?”
“Lost more like thirty percent.”
“Good. How many prisoners?”
“Five hundred surrendered with their prince’s commander, maybe fifty fled. Including this prince and the commander, three more barons, that’s five royal prisoners, and the Baron Teven is dead.”
“Send a battalion after the runners, but tell them not to pursue past the border. Now take me to Corio.”
Heavy in heart and footsteps, Hotspur followed Sennos away from her prisoner and through the battlefield. Sennos wisely remained silent, only offering her the water a soldier ran up with, and a scrap of cloth. “For your face,” he said.
Hotspur grimaced, and her third aide—the second had fallen with a harsh wound to the thigh—accepted her helmet and the gauntlets she stripped off. She took a drink before she spilled water onto the cloth and wiped blood off her eyes, cheeks, and mouth. Then she dumped the rest over the top of her head.
Around her the injured limped to the hospital, soldiers organized the bodies of the dead, and prisoners were roped together; the smell of shit and blood, bile, sweat, mud, and tears mingled in a soupy grunge that would leave its taste on her tongue for days.
Beside her, Sennos waited with his perpetual small frown. He was handsome only when grim, and otherwise too boyish of face. Thin blond hair braided tight to his head was streaked with blood, too, and a handprint marred the plate on his chest. Not his own blood, Hotspur noted. Sennos appeared unharmed. She clasped her hand onto Sennos’s shoulder. “You’re well?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
They moved on. Despite the urge to find Corio straightaway, Hotspur did not ignore any of her soldiers or support laborers on the field. Most worked hard, propping up comrades who needed injuries seen to, digging trenches for the pyres, moving bodies, guarding the long lines of common prisoners who would be negotiated for in great swathes by the Duke Mercia. Hotspur called to those few she knew by name, congratulating them or sympathizing, teasing them to get to the hospital when appropriate, and once stooped to help lift a bleeding soldier onto a stretcher. It took half of an hour to make their way across less than a quarter mile to where Corio lay.
The commander had been made comfortable, with a cloak spread over his legs and another folded beneath his head. His armor was removed and he breathed slowly, eyes closed. Hotspur knelt at his side, smelling sharp cedar oil they must’ve smeared at his lips as they fed him the medicine to numb his body.
His guts were wrapped, but black stains already leaked from the terrible stomach wound. The healer leaned toward Hotspur to murmur, “Sir can breathe, open his eyes, and even speak, but he will not live long: this sort of injury is impossible for us to sew up, or keep clean. The spear went too deep, tore across his side and belly as it pulled free. I am sorry, Lady Hotspur.”
She nodded and clasped Corio’s hand.
“He won’t feel that,” the healer said.
Taking a horrible breath, Hotspur reached up to touch Corio’s jaw. His short brown beard was mussed with sweat, blood, and pain, and his pink lips parted. He winced, lines of experience and smiles striping away from his eyes to his temples. Hotspur let tears prick her eyes and spill onto her cheeks as she blinked. There was no shame in grief.
“Corio,” she said softly, but with an edge of command.
He opened light brown eyes. “Hotspur. I didn’t see it happen.” Corio swallowed, turning his head to cough away from her. She petted hair off his sallow forehead. “You should drill a turn against stabbing spear, maybe … maybe twist and lean into it, to slide the tip off the mail or plate.”
“Ah, Corio.” Her voice stuck with tears. “Teaching me even now.”
“You’d have twisted naturally. You’d have beaten this.”
Hotspur didn’t argue; it would only insult them both. “I’ll see to Desia’s marriage, and your wife will winter with us at Annyck.”
“Thank you.”
“Hotspur!”
The cry jerked their heads to the messenger scrambling toward them. Hotspur snapped her arm up, palm out. He stopped so suddenly he nearly fell. She said softly, “Corio, I crushed the prince of Burgun. After this the barons may elect another to lead them in Celedrix’s court.”
“I hope he hated being bested by a woman.” Corio’s mouth tilted up on one side.
“Oh, he did. He punched me in the face even after he surrendered.”
Several soldiers around grumbled, one calling out, “Break his nose, Hotspur.”
Sennos said, “She knocked him to the mud then told him she understands what it’s like without balls.”
Corio laughed, his entire body going rigid.
“Shhh, hush,” Hotspur said.
“Lady Hotspur,” the messenger said, bowing, then half knelt before standing again, as if unsure how to show respect when his lady sat in blood before him.
“What?” She did not stop stroking Corio, nor look away, but her voice turned steel.
“The queen’s man, Lord Briginos, insists you bring him your prisoners, all of them, now.”
“I’ll do it when I finish.”
“Finish?”
Corio said, his voice barely rising off his tongue, “When I’m finished, she means.”
Hotspur pressed her lips together to cool her temper. Then she said, “Take your time, Uncle.”
They were not related, but it comforted her to name him such, and his eyes drifted shut in matched ease. Besides, it did the army good to know she did not raise herself above them in such moments.
A long pause of quiet settled, but for the distant business of the battlefield, crow call in the distance, soft grunts and shovels in muddy earth, and Corio’s wretched breathing.
Hotspur did not let her mind wander; she did not follow threads of strategy or think on what came next. No, she made herself present to the entire moment, to the stink and aching bruises, especially over her right hip and shield arm, to her need to relieve herself, to the grief in her heart. The wind blew from the southeast, and she understood it would rain in two days: perfect timing to dampen the last embers of their funeral pyres.
Sometimes, these past months, Hotspur understood more than she admitted to herself, when the wind blew.
Her knees burned with the effort of kneeling there, and Hotspur leaned onto her hip, her mail dragging at her, broken chest plate pinching. The weight of it grew after battle, when the spike of energy and expectation wore off bit by bit, and her body needed sustenance and rest. But she’d not unfasten the chest plate or thigh guards, nor the pauldrons chained to her shoulders like silver clamshells.
“Hotspur,” Corio whispered.
She leaned in.
“Serving … was glorious.”
Hotspur put her hand gently against his chest, then kissed his grimy forehead. “I will personally deliver your words to the queen.”
“Not … the queen.”
“Who?”
“Hotspur.”
“Yes, Corio, I’m here.”
“No …” He squeezed his eyes shut, gasped a rattling breath, then opened them again, spearing her with a feverish, intent gaze. “Glorious … to serve you.”
For a moment, she could not answer, so engulfed by her passions they closed her throat. She swallowed, frowned, and finally smiled; that smile freed her. She grasped his wrist, holding him firmly. “It was a mutual honor and glory, Corio de Or.”
His eyes drifted shut again and his head lolled in a nod.
He breathed. And again.
And then no more.
Hotspur lined his arms along his sides. She pressed her hand flat to his sternum. “Peace beneath the roots,” she murmured. They would burn his body tonight, and his spirit would return to the land.
She knelt another long moment, none bothering her or Corio, until she’d dropped five tears to the churned grass and muck. Then she sighed and stood. “Take his body to the outer tents.”
“Lady Isarna?”
called an unfamiliar voice.
Neither the healer nor the gathered soldiers reacted to the rarely spoken name, but Sennos and Hotspur knew. She set her jaw and turned to face the queen’s representative.
The man perched on the slope like a songbird among crows; no blood or mud streaked his clothing but for some splotches low on his trousers and stuck to his fine black boots. His velvet tunic was a pale blue and the sword at his belt balanced with a clear crystal counterweight that caught the sun impressively, though Hotspur was not impressed. None of the stranger’s hair was mussed, the russet strands carefully molded back with some oil to shine all the way to the perfect braided knot at his nape. Rings covered several of his fingers, no gauntlets, and though mail gleamed at his collar and under the cuffs of his tunic’s long sleeves, he wore no plate nor carried shield or dagger.
Hotspur did not disdain luxury or fine clothes on principle; she adored several of her own courtly gowns and her favorite personal possession—besides her weaponry—was a pair of the finest white fox-leather gloves trimmed with fur that Hal had given her. But this nobleman had not stepped onto the battlefield until after all was finished, obviously, and his nostrils flared constantly in distaste—not horror or grief or compassion, but distaste! He lifted a pomander to his mouth and breathed through it even as Hotspur watched.
“You are?” she inquired scornfully.
“Briginos, of Dun. The queen’s man. I congratulate you on your victory and look forward to taking the queen’s hostages for your honor.”
Dun was known for trade and good marriages, not warfare. How did this feathery fool come to be Celeda’s voice here?
“My hostages,” she said.
Briginos bowed slightly. “Of course, your, ah …” The man sidestepped around two soldiers carrying a third groaning soldier. “Ah—your hostages. Might we continue this conversation at the command tent?”
Hotspur looked at Sennos and the healer. “Take Corio.” Turning back, she said to Briginos, “I am busy on the field. If you will speak with me, speak with me here.”
The queen’s man sighed primly. “Yes, well. All right.”
A stretcher was made ready for Corio, and Hotspur crouched at his head to help lift him onto it. The smell of his injury rose when they shifted him, and Hotspur’s stomach turned sour again. She smoothed Corio’s hair, and as the soldiers and healer moved to go, she said, “Briginos, you’re in their way.”
He glanced to either side of his boots, picking carefully over a smear of blood to step onto a flat rock that pressed up through the field. Hotspur did not hide the roll of her eyes.
Corio was carried away. She and Sennos would walk the rest of the field, to either edge, then back again, before she sought food and relief, then finally Vindomata before collapsing into sleep.
“Let’s go,” she said to Sennos. Briginos came after as they headed north.
“Where have you put the Burgun prince?” Briginos asked.
“He’ll be at the command tent by the time we return to it.”
“He’s uninjured?”
“More or less.”
“Lady Isarna, I require a full accounting—he’ll survive, yes? Is he a healthy hostage or did you damage him?”
Hotspur stopped. “Of course he’s damaged. But yes, he will survive, perhaps without all his pride.”
“Some people,” Sennos said, lifting his chin, “consider it a point of pride to have been bested by Hotspur of Perseria.”
Though Briginos sniffed, Hotspur laughed. It felt good, and she recalled herself in the wake of Corio’s death. This was her element, even as the blaze of battle cooled, hardening to brilliant red embers.
Most of the injured who could be moved had been by now, so it was all death accounting by able soldiers and plenty of civilian laborers digging, separating bodies, and ushering prisoners away. Hotspur joined a line of men and women digging a trench for a few moments, as did Sennos, while Briginos watched, his pom held delicately to his pale nose. This trench was shallow but would help hold the pyres in place when they were lit at sunset. The mud and eventual rain would do the rest. They’d take ashes from these mass pyres and give a portion to the family of every fallen Aremore soldier.
Hotspur handed off the shovel she’d borrowed from the laborer, an older man in Persy green. She did not know his name, nor any of the army train who were neither soldiers nor masters of some supply chain.
Next, she and Sennos moved a Burgun soldier’s body to the line of them, situating him with his head northward. They went back for another. Hotspur snapped at Briginos to get out of her way when he backed up into the path, and the man huffed. When she’d placed the second body, Briginos stepped directly in front of her.
“Why bother? Do they need their own pyres? All these soldiers died in the same place; their blood watered the same Aremore roots.”
Hotspur tilted her head up to meet his gaze, irritated both that she was shorter than him and that he’d stepped so near to force the issue. She stared long enough to disconcert most people, then said, “We do it to win the long war. The war of hearts and minds.”
Briginos’s brow wrinkled. He glanced beyond her at the line of dead Burgunians. “They’re dead. They’ve no hearts to win.”
“Wormshit! Briginos, it’s to show Burgun itself and its people respect, by respecting their funeral practices. Must I use smaller words? Burgun does not burn bodies, they bury intact.”
“Who is going to see to that?” His voice raised in pitch, as if horrified to discover he’d be shoveling personally.
Hotspur jabbed his chest with two fingers. “It should be part of the negotiations over hostages you’re so eager to claim,” she said through her teeth.
“Such talks will be weeks in the making.”
“For the prince, perhaps, but not for the common soldiers! We need to finish that up tomorrow, so Burgun’s laborers can start the burying, for worm’s sake!”
The man shook his head, eyes drifting again past her, toward the line of the dead.
“Look at me, you useless creature,” she snapped.
“How dare you.”
“Get off my battlefield. You’re cocking everything up, and I don’t have the time or heart for it. The queen will get her hostages when I’m damn ready to give them, and it won’t be to the likes of you, but someone worthy of my time.”
Briginos lifted himself taller, but Hotspur spun and stomped away. She clenched her hand around the hilt of her sword, and a soft sensation, like the hum of a bee, tickled her nape comfortingly.
“Hotspur,” Sennos said in a rush, catching up to her.
“Don’t chide me now, Sen, just don’t.”
He fell in beside her, knowing better than to touch, and said, “There are two more dying soldiers you can see. Vasos ran here with their names and stories just now.”
Hotspur stopped, closed her eyes, reached for the hot center of her will to calm herself. The wind fluttered again, like a gasp or an interrupted secret, and Hotspur almost thought it said her name. Wolf, it seemed to whisper, as it had the day she’d claimed this tingling sword. She’d told people, her family and soldiers, she’d found the sword alone and speared into the earth. What an amazing thing it had survived however long under the elements, she said; it must be the strength of the Errigal steel.
Only one person would have believed the entire story.
A hand on her shoulder pressed Hotspur to realize she was seething. Carefully, she unclenched her jaw and snapped open her eyes.
“Yes,” she murmured, hand on her sword. “Let us go see to the dying.”
BANNA MORA
The Summer Seat of Innis Lear, midsummer
IT WAS BANNA Mora’s wedding day, and she was supposed to be praying.
Long rays of sunlight pulled across the high walls of the rose courtyard at the Summer Seat. Like most of Innis Lear, the courtyard was two things at once: from the outside it appeared isolated and dark, built of black stone blocks streaked by years of
salt spray, but inside it revealed itself to be bright and welcoming. The limewashed inner walls were painted with twisting green trees and constellations in blue, and all four corners crawled with orange and scarlet roses. The ground was tossed with pine fronds and dry lavender, and four woven rugs lay in a cross spreading out from the central well.
Wind rustled the roses, tossing a scatter of fiery petals toward Mora, where she leaned against the edge of the well to glance down into the black pit. Deep below, water glinted; a tiny, flickering sun.
She’d lived on Innis Lear for a year and more. All the seasons of the island were rebranded into her memory: harsh, plentiful, brilliant, thrilling. It was high summer now, and today was the nearest Zenith Sun to the longest day. Queen Solas had explained, We save all binding rituals for a zenith now, to make zenith suns a moment when people come together.
In an hour, Mora would be more of Innis Lear than Aremoria. Married to its prince, the future king. She would be the queen of the island after Solas.
The Blood and the Sea sat heavy on her forefinger, reminding her that this was not the crown she’d been meant to wear. But this marriage was a battle won in the greater war to reclaim Aremoria for herself—and her family. To make herself whole again, as the dragon had said.
Queen of Innis Lear and daughter of queens, she whispered in the language of trees. Recently, she’d made a breakthrough with the tree tongue, after so many months practicing: it had been the night Rowan asked her to marry him, on the very anniversary of taking her hostage, the bastard. He had fed her a strange tea that loosened her pulse, and then she sipped from a bowl of rootwaters. He’d said she would be his queen and the island agreed with him, vocal and excited, and ever since Mora could understand anything the wind and roots tried to tell her.
Rowan had said if she could not bring herself to pray today she should lower the dipper down this navel well and drink, thank the island and the roots, then spit down the long passage to return some of herself to the island. She’d suggested that to drink from the well was no more than drinking the collective spit of hundreds of years of islander gifts. Scandalized, Rowan reminded her that the island transformed its rootwaters, cleansing itself and the blood of its people. Then he kissed her and licked her teeth and said she never seemed to mind his spit.
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