The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  They went to the feast, where Bayan entertained Lady Udalfreda and her noble companions with charming and somewhat indecent tales of his adventures as a very young man among the Sazdakh warrior women who, he claimed, could not count themselves as women or warriors until they had captured and bedded a young virgin and then cut off his penis as a trophy. Hanna couldn’t touch a bite, although Brother Breschius kindly made sure that she drank a little wine to settle her stomach.

  In a way, she was relieved when two scouts came in all dust-blown and wild-eyed with a report of a Quman army headed their way.

  The Ungrian warriors slept, ate, and entertained in their armor. They were mounted and ready to ride so quickly that they made the good Wendish soldiers in Sapientia’s train look like rank, newcomers, awkward and fumbling. Even the colorfully painted wagon of Bayan’s mother rolled into line and waited there like a silent complaint long before Princess Sapientia finished arming, and mounted.

  “Prince Bayan’s mother will ride with us?” demanded Hanna. Breschius nodded toward the wagon, his gaze alert. With its closed shutters and curtained door, it resembled a little house on wheels, and it would have looked rather quaint except for the clean white bones hanging from the eaves like charms, although they were, mercifully, not human but animal bones. At the peak of the roof a small wheel decorated with ribbons turned in the wind, fluttering red and yellow and white and blue as it spun. “The shamans of the Kerayit tribe do not carry their luck in their bodies as the rest of us do. Their luck is born into another person, someone born on the same day at the same time. It is said that Bayan’s mother’s luck was born into the child who later became Bayan’s father, a prince of the Ungrian people, which is the only reason she agreed to marry him. But he died on the day Prince Bayan was born, so by their way of thinking her luck passed from father into son. That’s why she must stay close by Prince Bayan, to watch over him.” He smiled as if laughing at himself. “But she is in no real danger. Not even the Quman would harm a Kerayit princess, for they know what fate awaits the clan of he who touches a Kerayit shaman without her consent. You will see. She is useful.”

  They rode out at last, and Hanna was grateful to leave the stone tower behind. The chill autumn air and the dense odor of grass and brittle scrub brush drove the last vestiges of that terrible stink out of her nostrils. But an image of the hideous shrunken head seemed to ride with her, burned into her mind’s eye.

  They forded the river, running low here after summer’s heat and autumn drought. The cold water on her calves made her breath come in gasps. Sapientia rode just ahead of her, beside Bayan, and the princess laughed merrily as they came splashing up the shoreline, more like a noble lady riding to the hunt than to a battle. Behind, the oxen drawing the wagon forged stolidly into the water, led forward by two of the handsome male slaves. And it was very strange, and most certainly a trick of the light running over the water, because it seemed to Hanna that the river receded somewhat, that the waves made of themselves a slight depression around the wheels of the wagon so that no water lapped into the bed. Behind the wagon marched the Wendish infantry; without horses, they were soaked to the hips, joking and laughing at those among them who showed any sign of sensitivity to the cold.

  Soon everyone had crossed, and their army—perhaps two hundred soldiers in all—made ready to move on. Hills rose from the valley floor about half a league north of them. They turned east to follow the river. Clouds moved in from the east as the wind picked up. The Wendish soldiers began singing a robust hymn.

  A sudden shrilling call rang down the line and, with it, that tensing of line and body that presages battle. The Ungrians shifted position, flanks spreading out, Bayan moving to take up the center as he called out orders to his men in his strong baritone. About half the Ungrian riders broke off from the main group and swung away into the hills. The Wendish infantry fell back to form a square on a rise.

  A strange whirring sound grew in the air, building in strength. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once: eerie, troubling, like the sensation of a spider crawling up one’s back. Hanna’s horse shifted restlessly under her; she reined it hard back to its place beside Brother Breschius where they waited behind Sapientia and Bayan, and leveled her spear. Bayan’s solders began to keen, like a sick wolf’s howl, but even that noise was better than the awful disembodied whirring. She squinted eastward, trying to make out the source. Clouds darkened the eastern horizon. In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolled away into the hills. Even above the dust kicked up by the army, she could smell rain.

  Abruptly Prince Bayan turned around, saw her and Breschius, and snapped an order at them. Sapientia objected. Husband and wife exchanged perhaps four tense sentences, Sapientia all white fire and Bayan utterly focused and without any patience.

  Abruptly, Sapientia gave in. She turned. “Go!” she called to Hanna, “You and the frater. Go, and observe all that occurs!”

  Riders made way for them as they rode back through the line.

  “What is that awful sound?” cried Hanna above the din of thrumming and howling.

  Breschius smiled but did not reply as the outer line of foot soldiers parted to let them through into the center of the infantry square. Here, beside the painted wagon, Hanna turned her horse just as the Wendish soldiers let out a great shout of alarm and surprise, which the Ungrians answered with a howl of glee as they charged.

  She saw the Quman, then, beyond the Ungrian line, advancing along the river plain with dark clouds scudding in their wake. They weren’t human after all. They didn’t have faces, and they had wings. Feathers streamed and pulsed, shuddering in the air, flickering shadow and light in the huge wings that curved forward over their heads. Beneath helmets, their flat, metal faces shone with dull menace as the westering sun broke through the cloud cover and lit the Wendish and Ungrian army with a mellow glow. The Quman warriors made no sound except for the spinning and singing of their wings as they rode.

  The Ungrians charged, all disorganized in uneven lines like a pack of starving dogs gone mad at the sight of fresh meat. Their shrieks and whoops almost drowned out the thunder of hooves and the whir of wings. Even from a distance Hanna had no trouble seeing Sapientia waiting impatiently beneath her banner. The princess began to move out after the Ungrians, but Bayan stopped her by resting the length of his spear across her chest as he waited and watched his own men ride rashly and without order at the enemy.

  “They’ll be picked apart!” cried Hanna, suddenly wondering what would become of the Wendish after their allies foolishly threw away their strength in this manner. Breschius smiled with the calm of a man who has long since made peace with God and no longer fears death.

  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 hor
ror 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.

  “You are safe beside the wagon,” said Breschius. “When we return to camp, you must stay close to me.”

  “What do you think might happen?”

  He shrugged.

  But her mother hadn’t raised a fool. Her heart had stopped pounding so hard, and she could think more clearly. “That wasn’t really a battle,” she said finally. “It was more like slaughtering pigs there at the end.”

  “That wasn’t an army. I have seen a Quman army and it is a fearsome sight, my child. That was a raiding party. Those were young, restless men sent out in advance of a real army to gather glory to themselves, or act as a warning flag to those behind them if they do not return. You saw how they fought. They were foolish enough that they couldn’t see before their noses a trick as old as these hills. I think it likely they had no older, wiser head who could prevail when they got the killing fever in them.”

  “The way Prince Bayan intervened to stop Princess Sapientia from getting herself killed.”

  He glanced at her, but she couldn’t read his expression in the dim light. A lit lantern had been hung from each corner of the wagon, and these lanterns swayed seductively as their party splashed back over the river and climbed the opposite shore. Oddly, the river ran more shallow now; Hanna’s boots barely brushed the water on this crossing. Ahead, in the torchlit camp, she could already hear singing, cursing, and half-wild laughter. Around her, men drank heavily from the leather pouches tied to their saddles, some kind of potent brew. Its fermented scent permeated the air as they cried out and howled to each other, sang snatches of song, or danced in lines to the twanging accompaniment of odd-looking lutes. They were overexcited, flushed with easy killing, and ready to get into trouble.

  “My grandmother once told me that to kill is only half the act,” she said finally.

  “A wise woman, your grandmother,” replied Breschius. “What did she say is the other half of the act?”

  She smiled nervously under the cover of night. “Ah, well. My grandmother still worshiped the old gods. She said that if you take blood, you owe blood, but that most people forget the old law when they kill in war or in anger. But then that blood still stains their hands and curdles in their hearts.”

  “Indeed. When you sunder spirit from body, there is energy left over. If it is not contained by means of prayer or forgiveness or even an act of creation or a gift of commencement, then the Enemy may creep into the heart of the one who did the killing. That is why many terrible acts accompany war, and why those who have partaken in battle should always be cleansed by prayer afterward.”

  “Will you lead a prayer here, tonight?”

  “For those who choose to attend. But, alas, my master and most of the others still live in their bodies in the old ways, even while with their tongues they praise God in Unity. Prince Bayan will consummate his marriage and in this way cleanse himself, although the church does not approve of such ancient methods. But do not stray far from Princess Sapientia’s tent tonight. Her presence in camp may not be enough to protect you from any insult offered your person by one of these young men who are drunk on both wine and blood.”

  “I will be cautious,” she promised. They came then to the royal pavilion. Bayan and Sapientia still stood outside, toasting their followers, but it quickly became apparent that Bayan had only waited for his mother. Her wagon rolled to a stop about twenty paces from the pavilion, and at once he deserted his guests to go to the wagon. He waited, head bowed, as four steps were unrolled from the tiny door. The three old, wrinkled handmaidens who attended the Kerayit princess clambered down the steps, carrying with them the usual trays and leavings of food and a covered chamberpot. Then an astoundingly beautiful young woman emerged through the bead curtain, which shimmered and danced behind her as she descended the steps. She had creamy skin a shade darker than Liath’s, sensuous lips, broad cheekbones, bold eyes, and hair like black silk. Her gown might have been spun of sunlight. She wore laced at her waist at least a dozen gold chains, and a profusion of gold necklaces draped from her neck. A gold ring pierced one nostril, and she wore three gold earrings in each ear, shaped as dangling bones. Every finger bore a ring, each one studded with precious gems.

  “Who is that?” Hanna whispered, amazed. In the days since
the wedding feast, she had never seen nor even suspected the existence of this woman. She had only ever seen the three old handmaidens come and go from the wagon.

  “I do not know her name,” said Breschius softly. “She, too, is a princess of the first degree among the Kerayit peoples. She is the apprentice to the old woman. She hasn’t found her luck yet, which is why she can still appear before people who are not her blood kin.”

  Prince Bayan climbed the stairs and ducked into the wagon. Sapientia tried to follow him, but the young Kerayit woman set an arm across the threshold. For an instant, Sapientia began to protest, but the other woman simply stared her down, not threatening, just flatly negating, and at last Sapientia made a show of deciding to step back to the pavilion to wait. The Kerayit princess watched her go under heavy-lidded eyes, like a modest woman watching her beloved.

  Ai, Lady. There was something about her … something familiar in the way Liath had always seemed familiar to Hanna, some kind of inchoate power she could not name but which Liath had held like a captive eagle inside her, waiting only to be freed—

  Breschius hissed as the Kerayit woman swept her gaze over the assembly. He began to tremble. Hanna could feel his apprehension, he who had stood straight at the battle without a trace of fear. Every soul there, even to the drunkest, rowdiest young soldier, quieted in deference to her measuring eye; she possessed the imperious indifference of the sun, which never questions its own brilliance because it simply is.

  In the silence, Hanna thought for an instant that she could hear the murmuring of Bayan’s voice and, in reply, the cricket-like whisper of another person. Then she met the gaze of the young princess, and the woman’s beautiful almond eyes widened in surprise as she stared at Hanna. Fair hair, pale eyes; Hanna knew how different she looked out here on the frontier. Few of the Wendish soldiers were as startlingly light as she was and, anyway, they were even more dust-covered from battle.