Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  Abruptly, Heribert struck at the ground with his staff, then called over a soldier. With a spear’s haft and a shovel, they dug and levered and, that suddenly, got a stone lifted. A cloud of moisture billowed up.

  “Sorcery!” murmured one of the soldiers.

  “A miracle!” said a second.

  Heribert returned in time to hear this comment. “Nay, there’s no sorcery or miracles involved,” he said, somewhat disgustedly. “All Dariyan forts were built to the same plan. One cistern always lies in the central square, marked by a woman dressed in a skirt hung all around with lightning bolts and carrying a water lily. Usually, in forts that were inhabited for a lengthy period, an entire network of rain spouts and channels leads rainwater into that central cistern, and—”

  Because he seemed ready to go on indefinitely, caught up by his passion, Sanglant interrupted him. “Let me taste the water first.”

  A rope and bucket were found. When a soldier brought him the half-full bucket, Sanglant dipped a hand in the cool water, sipped, and let the taste of it wash over him. No taint of poison or foulness burned him. The water smelled fresh, and had been covered for so long and so tightly that no animal had fallen in to poison it. “I judge it safe to use, Captain.”‘

  “Truly, that will save us labor, Brother,” said Fulk, eyeing Heribert with new respect. Captain and cleric went aside, and Heribert began pointing out to him certain features of the fort. Zacharias left camp to wash himself in privacy. Blessing stirred and woke from her nap, and Sanglant unwound her from the sling as the soldiers built up a good fire and brought out their equipment for mending torn cloaks and tunics. The cooks roasted the six deer they’d shot in the course of their march that day.

  In this manner, they settled down for the night. Sanglant fed Blessing a paste made of pulses and goat’s milk, sweetened with honey that the soldier Sibold had stolen from a bee’s nest two days ago, although the poor man still had swollen fingers, the price he’d paid for this prize.

  “Da da!” Blessing said in her emphatic way. “Da ma ba! Wa! Ge! Ge!” She wriggled out of his lap and grabbed his fingers, wanting to walk. In the past ten days she’d gotten so steady on her legs that she could now run, and did, whenever he wasn’t holding on to her or she wasn’t in her sling. She was so used to the soldiers that she would run, screaming with excitement, to any one of them, as her father chased her, and hide behind their legs. This had become part of the nightly ritual of the war band. Once she had exhausted them in this way, she presided, from her father’s lap, over the singing that followed dinner. Every man there knew a dozen tunes or twenty or a hundred. Blessing babbled along enthusiastically, and although she couldn’t quite clap her hands together to keep time, she waved them vigorously.

  When she finally slumped into her father’s chest, eyes half closed, he called Brother Zacharias over to him and questioned him closely about Bulkezu and the Quman. The frater had managed to wash the worst of the dirt off him, although his clothing still stank. He had the accent of a man born and bred in the east among the free farmers, those who had settled in the marchlands in exchange for land of their own and the protection of the king. Of the Quman, Zacharias had a slave’s knowledge, incomplete and sketchy, but he noticed details and he knew how to talk.

  “Maybe it’s best we ride east,” said Sanglant finally as Fulk and Heribert listened. “Sapientia will not like this news of our father’s marriage to Queen Adelheid.”

  “It’s a long road to the east,” observed Heribert.

  “All roads are long roads.” Blessing had fallen asleep on his chest. He bundled her up in the sling, off the ground so no crawling creature could bite her. The others rolled themselves up in their blankets. From farther off he heard sentries pacing on their rounds, their footfalls light on packed earth. He could not sleep. His hand still smarted from the prick of the thistle.

  Jerna’s aetherical form fluttered down beside him, rippling like water. She curled herself as a veil of protection around the sleeping bundle that was Blessing. Perhaps, like an amulet, she did protect the baby. Blessing had not taken sick for even one day since Jerna began suckling her, nor was the baby troubled by fly or mosquito bites like the rest of them. Hot sun did not make her dusky skin break out in a rash, nor did she seem to mind the cold. She was growing so fast that every man there knew it was uncanny and abnormal, although none spoke a word out loud.

  Maybe he was a fool for letting an abomination nurse her. Perhaps it wasn’t wise. But what else could he have done? He had made the only choice open to him.

  So be it.

  3

  AS King Henry’s army lurched and toiled up the pass, Rosvita found herself for the fifth time that day at a standstill behind a wagon. This one had gotten stuck where its wheels had broken through an icy crust to bog down in mud beneath.

  Fortunatus reined his mule up beside hers, and sighed. “Do you think it was wise of King Henry to cross the mountains this late in the year?”

  “Speak no ill of the king, I pray you, Brother. He marches at God’s bidding. You see, the sun still shines.”

  So it did, however bleak and wan its light seemed against a backdrop of dark clouds, cold mountainside, and a cutting wind. Soldiers and servants hurried forward with planks and sticks to coax the wagon out of its mire. Soon a dozen of them had gathered around the stricken wagon, arguing with each other in the tone of men who have had their endurance tested to the limit.

  “Shall I speak to them, Sister?”

  “Nay, let them be unless it comes to a fistfight. But you may take the reins of my mule, if you please.” As she had done the other times they had halted in this manner, she dismounted from her mule to give a few words of comfort to a wagon’s load of soldiers so stricken with the flux that they were too weak to walk.

  “Let us pray, friends,” she said as she approached the wagon, although in truth most of the soldiers were too delirious with fever to hear her words. The wagon stank of their illness, for these were the poor souls who no longer had the strength to hoist themselves off the wagon and stagger off the path before voiding their bowels.

  It took her perhaps four steps to walk from her mule to the wagon. Only for that long did she turn her back to the pass up which the army struggled.

  The wagon driver had a cloth tied over most of his face to mask the stench of sickness, but even so, she saw his eyes widen in terror as he looked past her. She heard it first as a rumble, a crackling thrumming roar that obliterated distant shrieks and warning calls.

  “Sister!” cried Fortunatus. “Ai, God, we are overtaken!”

  She turned back. She hadn’t turned away for longer than it would take to count to ten, but in that brief span the sun had vanished under a curtain of white descending off the mountains. For an instant, the sight so disoriented her that she imagined them overwhelmed by a deluge of white flower petals.

  The blizzard hit without warning. She had time only to grab at the wagon’s side, to brace herself. Fortunatus flung himself down from his mount and yanked on the reins of her mule. Then the storm swallowed him, and smashed into her.

  She could not even hear the moans of the ill soldiers. Wind lashed her and snow blasted her. Pebbles caught up by the wind peppered her back as though a giant was hurling them against its enemies. She groped her way along the wagon until she shouldered up against the protecting bulk of the oxen. Luckily, she wore gloves, but even so her fingers stiffened where they clutched at wood and harness. She had to keep her back to the wind in order to breathe.

  For an endless time, as the warmth ebbed out of her, she just held on.

  By the time the wind slackened enough that she dared look up, snow drifted knee-deep around her legs and her feet had gone numb. Through the furious snow she could barely make out shapes staggering along the road. They were no longer marching south, up the pass toward Aosta. Now they fled north, down the pass, back the way they had come.

  “Ai, God!” swore the driver, shouting to be heard above
the screaming wind. “I’ve got to turn around now or the wheels’ll be stuck in the snow!”

  She waved down a trio of soldiers retreating with their backs to the storm. With their help they wrenched the wagon around, although it was a tricky business on the narrow road, with the land falling away steeply on one side and rising precipitously on the other. There was nothing she could do to help the wagon ahead of them, still stuck in the mud.

  “Sister!” Fortunatus had miraculously kept hold of both mules, although he had been forced very close to the edge. He laboriously tied the reins of the mules to the back of the wagon, his fingers clumsy with cold. By walking beside and clinging onto their mules, they followed the wagon back down the pass.

  The storm made white of the world. Shapes stumbled past them, and sometimes they passed knots of soldiers stopped to help a fallen comrade. The wagon ground down the old road with fresh snow squeaking under its wheels. The wind pressed them along as though it were glad to be rid of them. She stumbled on rocks and found she’d drifted off the road. Fortunatus hauled her back, and with her lips set tight and her energy flagging, she hung onto her stirrup and concentrated on taking one step at a time.

  Faintly, above the howl of the wind, horns signaled the passage of the king.

  Soon enough, the king’s party overtook them. Henry had by sheer strength of will managed to stay mounted on his sturdy warhorse. Queen Adelheid rode bravely beside him, swathed in a fur cloak coated with so much snow that she looked dusted with ice. As he passed, he shouted encouragement to the soldiers staggering along.

  Despite the storm, he recognized Rosvita and hailed her. “Sister Rosvita! Need you a wagon?”

  “Nay, Your Majesty. These ill soldiers need it more than I.”

  He nodded. “We’ll come soon enough to the hostel where we quartered last night.”

  He moved on, vanishing quickly into the streaming snow. After an interminable while in which she only knew she was walking because her legs moved, they came to a thrusting ridge that cut off the worst of the wind. Snow still swirled all around them, soft and abundant as it blanketed the ground.

  The hostel had a main hall, crudely built but adequate enough for a sizable party of merchants, stables enough for some forty beasts, and a half dozen outbuildings and sheds. But it couldn’t house a king’s army. Last night they had staked out their camp under the open sky in balmy autumn weather, with not a finger of snow on the ground, confident that the weather would hold for the five days it would take them to pass over the summit and begin their descent into Aosta.

  The wagon driver was barely able to maneuver his team in beside a dozen others, crowded together just off the road. Hunching his shoulders against the cold, he swung down from the seat. A Lion hurried up and helped him cover the oxen’s backs with a blanket. Then, with some of his fellows, he hunkered down in the lee of the wagon. There was nowhere else for the servants to go. Soldiers and clerics moved among the sick, helping those who could still walk into the stables. Of the dozen men languishing in the back of the wagon, three were already dead. She murmured a brief prayer over them through lips stiff with cold.

  “Alas,” murmured Fortunatus where he huddled beside her. “I fear none of these sick men can survive the cold.”

  “If God will it, these poor souls will survive. If not, they’ll gain a just reward.”

  “Truly, so shall it be,” echoed Fortunatus.

  When all was said and done, there was nothing she could do. “Come,” she said to Fortunatus. “Let us attend the king.”

  Henry and his nobles had taken refuge in the hall. The press of bodies made the place warm, although there were only two fires going in the hearths built into either end of the structure. Smoke raked her throat raw. So many people had crushed into the hall to escape from the storm that it was difficult to make her way to the king.

  Henry had given pride of place in front of each of the hearths to certain captains and nobles who had taken sick with the flux and to a few common soldiers known to him, Lions or members of his personal guard. With a ring of advisers he stood in the center of the hall holding court, discussing their desperate situation together with the wizened nun who was mother of the order who ran the hostel. As he drank ale straight out of a pitcher, he listened to the old woman, whose words were translated by a second nun.

  “Nay, Your Majesty, when a storm comes sudden-like this time of year, it’s not likely it’ll clear up soon. When it does in a day or three, you’ll find the snow too deep to cross.”

  Helmut Villam stood beside the king. He looked exhausted, worn through by the struggle to get out of the storm. Just a week ago he had shone with youth at the betrothal feast celebrated for him and his bride, young Leoba. Now he looked as old as he was, a full sixty years, as though the youthful vigor that had always before animated him had been sucked out of him by the bitter cold.

  “But there was so little snow here this morning,” he protested. “Surely if we wait this out, we can make one more attempt to cross the pass before winter descends in earnest.”

  “That you may,” agreed the nun. “That you may. But I’ve served in these parts for well on thirty years, my lord. I know these storms. You’ll not get across now until late spring. If you try, it’ll go hard on your army, Your Majesty.”

  Henry took another quaff of ale as he considered these tidings. Abruptly Rosvita’s feet began to hurt so horribly, as though a thousand tiny knives were cutting into her soles, that she staggered and would have fallen had Fortunatus not caught her.

  Henry saw her. He sent one of his Lions to open up a stool for her to sit on. Ale was brought, and she drank gratefully. For a while, as the murmur and flow of disparate conversations swirled around her as thickly as the snow had done outside, she sat with her head bowed, catching her breath and gritting her teeth as pain flared and subsided in her feet.

  After a while, a servant unwrapped her leggings and uncovered her feet. Her toes felt frozen through. Fortunatus knelt before her and chafed her feet between his hands until tears ran down her cheeks.

  Through the haze of pain, she heard Henry speaking.

  “Nay, we can’t risk it. The season is late. To be defeated by the mountains is no dishonor to us. We can’t stay here since there isn’t shelter enough for everyone. We must retreat to Bederbor and live off Conrad’s bounty for the winter.”

  “He’ll give that grudgingly,” remarked Villam.

  “So he will,” agreed Henry. “We’ll make good use of his hospitality to remind him of the loyalty that is due to his regnant. But this way we can keep the army strong. When the passes clear next year, we’ll march south and catch Ironhead unawares. Yet surely, Helmut, you’ll be glad of one more winter in the north. We’ll send for your bride, and she can keep your bed warm!”

  Laughter followed this sally, and the mood in the hall lightened considerably. Such was the king’s power.

  Her feet prickled mightily, as though stung by a hundred bees. “I pray you, Brother, that is enough!”

  Fortunatus regarded her with a grim smile. “Better than losing your toes, Sister, is it not? Can you ride?”

  She flexed her feet and found that although they still hurt, she could move them and even set her weight upon them without undue pain.

  “This is ill news,” she said to him, “that we must wait until next year to march to Aosta. Where is the queen?”

  Henry had moved away toward the door to direct his captains to start an orderly retreat toward Bederbor. Rosvita got to her feet and tested them gingerly, but found them sound enough. Through the milling crowd she caught sight of Adelheid in a corner, sitting on one of the beds built in under the rafters. She was vomiting into a basin held by a servingwoman.

  “Your Majesty!” Rosvita hastened forward, alarmed. Just in this way did the flux first afflict its victims. But as she reached Adelheid’s side, the young queen straightened up with a wan smile and allowed a servant to wipe her face.

  “Nay, it’s nothing
dangerous.” The queen reached out to grasp Rosvita’s hands. Adelheid’s hands were warm despite the cruel storm raging outside which she had so recently escaped. Her grip had unusual strength, and her eyes held a gleam of triumph as she glanced past Rosvita toward her husband, whose head could be seen above the others in the crowd. “I believe that I am pregnant.”

  4

  ONE ruined Dariyan fort looked much like any other. Sanglant led his men north through Wayland following the ancient trail of the Dariyan invasion, laid down hundreds of years ago. The forts had lasted far longer than the empire.

  This night, as every night, after he made sure Blessing slept, he walked the perimeter to greet each soldier standing sentry on first watch. A jest exchanged with Sibold, a comment on the weather by Everwin, an astute observation about the landscape from Wracwulf, and he moved on. By the time he returned to the campfire, both Zacharias and Heribert were asleep, rolled up tightly in their cloaks under cover of a half fallen roof. Heribert had shoved aside broken tiles to make space for Sanglant, but the prince was, as usual, too restless to sleep. He sat brooding by the fire.

  A quiet wind brushed all the clouds away. Under the clear sky cold crept in, chasing away the dregs of summer. The bitter stars reminded him of Liath, for she would have loved a night such as this, so clear and cold that the stars seemed twice as bright and a hundred times more numerous than usual. The three jewels, Diamond, Citrine, and Sapphire, burned overhead as the Queen drove the Guivre down into the western horizon. The River of Souls streamed across the zenith. Did Liath walk there now? Could she see him? But when he spoke her name softly onto the breeze, he heard no answer.

  They kept their secrets well.

  After a while the waning moon rose to wash the sky with silver light. He heard them before the sentries did: a muffled yip, softly signaling, and the brush of fur against dry leaves, perhaps a tail dragged along a bush. He jumped up to his feet just as Jerna unwound herself from Blessing’s sling and shot away into the air. With sword in hand, he followed the aery daimones’ form, a shimmering streak against the night sky, to the fort’s wall, which stood chest-high. Wracwulf greeted him briefly, alert enough to notice how Sanglant’s gaze ranged over the forest cover. The soldier, too, turned to survey the woodland.