Child of Flame

by Kate Elliott

  Winter had become spring, although here and there snow lingered on the rooftops or in the northern shadow of trees. Cold and wet made conditions wretched even for those who traveled in some comfort. For the prisoners, most barefoot and half without even a cloak to warm them, spring was deadly. Every night some lay down who would not get up again in the morning. Children too weak to cry whimpered. A man scratched the festering sores on his legs. A mother clutched an emaciated child to her breast, but she had no milk. Here and there knots of people huddled together, protecting precious stores of food gained from relatives who had by one means or another come under the protection of a man in the Quman army—a young woman to be his concubine, her mother to cook his meat and gruel or to mend his shirts, a boy to groom his horses or polish his armor.

  While Hanna watched, a dozen soldiers rode up to look over the new captives. The guards rounded them up—easy to mark out the new ones because their look of terror hadn’t yet been subsumed by numb despair—and prodded them forward. Bulkezu watched with that irritating half smile on his face. Other villages had been overrun today. Hanna saw prisoners who had not been among those she had seen taken, chief among them a pretty young woman who had just the kind of pleasingly plump figure that Quman men found attractive. Soldiers jostled each other to get close to her, to poke and pinch her, to check her teeth and test the strength of her hair; soon enough she was crying openly, so afraid that she wet herself. One man shoved another to get him out of his way. Curses flew fast and furious.

  The smile vanished from Bulkezu’s face as he urged his horse forward. At once, the jostling ceased and the men moved back obediently. His griffin wings hissed softly as a breeze rose. Bulkezu ruled his army with an iron hand. He did not tolerate fighting among his troops. Lord Wichman and his cronies would not have lasted a day among the Quman, no matter how great their prowess in battle.

  He bent down from the saddle to touch the young woman’s hair, letting it fall through his hands before lifting it up again, testing the weight and silkiness between his fingers. The young woman had wits enough to stop weeping, although maybe she was only shocked into a stupor.

  Bulkezu had decided to take her for himself.

  He called out orders. Then they all waited with that seemingly infinite patience the Quman had while two of the night guards rode away to the vanguard. Bulkezu whistled merrily while he waited; some of the soldiers contented themselves with other women, dragging them away from their families while cries of grief and fear broke out among the new prisoners. The young woman stood stiffly, bolt upright, only her gaze ranging as she looked for help, for succor, for escape—hard to say.

  Hanna moved forward as the night guards returned with all five of Bulkezu’s current concubines, to be handed over to the men who had been fighting over the new woman. One of them—the blonde who had been found hiding in a root cellar—threw herself down before his horse, crying and pleading, trying to grab his boot and hang on. Bulkezu, laughing, kicked her in the face and signaled to a soldier to drag her away.

  Hanna used the cover of this mild disturbance to ride in close to the new captive. She bent forward as she passed, spoke quickly and in a low voice, hoping the girl had wits enough to pay attention. “No flattery. No whining. No fear. Don’t cry.”

  Then she had crossed beyond her, not daring to turn to see how the woman had reacted. The blonde was still weeping as one of the soldiers who had started the fighting over the new captive hauled her away. The old captives merely watched, too ill, too weak, or too hopeless to react. A few enterprising children, grown wise from neglect, sidled over to the families of those taken away. They knew who had access to food: the ones who pleased their masters.

  After all, the Quman treated their favored slaves no worse than the prisoners treated each other.

  “Men are weak who fight over women,” Bulkezu said suddenly in Wendish as he rode up beside Hanna. They now sat far enough away from the prisoners that none could overhear them.

  “Why do you take so many prisoners, when all they do is suffer? They gain you nothing. What you want them all for?”

  “I want them so Wendar suffers.”

  Truly, he killed them with neglect. “What do you gain by burning and destroying? How does it help you, how do you enrich yourself, by ruining Wendar? Do you hope to rule here? You would have done better to offer marriage to one of the king’s daughters.”

  He spat. “What man of my people would wish to marry a barbarian’s get? I’ll take the king’s daughter as my bed-slave if I want her.”

  “The king’s daughters have their own armies. They aren’t as easy to capture as these poor, defenseless townsfolk. What honor is there for a great warrior like you in defeating people such as these?” She gestured toward the prisoners.

  His wings sighed as wind brushed through them. For a moment, she thought he had not heard her, or was not listening. His night guard, silent astride their horses, waited patiently. In a way, it was as if she and Bulkezu sat alone, separated from the army, from the hapless prisoners, from his personal guard, by the same unnatural mist that had protected him from the shadow elves.

  She looked around, half expecting to see his shaman, but all she saw were soldiers, their campfires and bivouac tents, and the crowd of prisoners and livestock winding away along the track as they found a place to settle down for the night. Fields stretched away on either side, delicate shoots of winter wheat trampled into the mud. Farther away lay the line of trees and undergrowth, cut back by the villagers’ need for firewood and building material. Smoldering fires lit the desolate village, now deserted. The ten lucky souls she had chosen for freedom had not stayed to see if Quman mercy would hold until morning.

  “They hate me in my own country,” Bulkezu said at last, softly. “The Pechanek elders have grown weak and cowardly. We were driven out of our pastures by the Shatai, and the southern Tarbagai is closed to us because of the Ungrians, those bastards, may their testicles rot. Now my sister’s son is the favorite of the old begh, that son of a bitch, and he’s handsomer than me, too.”

  Hanna looked him over, the smooth cheeks and vivid, almond-shaped eyes, the breadth of his shoulders under armor, the lift of his chin to draw attention to his handsome profile. He had tucked his helmet under his arm, a gesture eerily reminiscent of Prince Sanglant, the better, no doubt, to display his wealth of glossy black hair. “How can that be?” she said, having learned something of him in the last weeks. “Is there any man handsomer than you?”

  “One,” he admitted. “I saw him in a dream. But he had golden hair, spun from sunlight.” He grinned, on the verge of laughing. “Women love a handsome man. Why, women already married have risked death to creep between my furs. Why are you so hardhearted? I’ll make you chief among my wives.”

  “I thought Quman men did not marry outside the tribes.”

  “Any man would be a fool not to marry a Kerayit shaman’s luck if she offered herself to him.”

  “This one hasn’t offered herself to you.”

  He laughed. “Yes, better that you stay out of my bed. I respect you now, but I wouldn’t once I’d conquered your body.”

  “Which do you want?” she said, irritated by his games.

  “I want victory.”

  “Against whom?”

  “Against anyone who stands in my way.”

  A drum rapped smartly in the distance, answered by a second. He cocked his head to one side, listening to the message they brought. He whistled, turned aside his horse, and his night guard fell in around him. Hanna had no choice but to follow; she couldn’t escape their net. Twilight washed the prisoners to gray, but the darkening light could not hide the smell of despair or the stink of diarrhea and sickness. An infant cried on and on and on. Hanna was suddenly hungry, smelling meat roasting up ahead, brought on the wind, but the appetizing scent curdled in her stomach as they rode alongside the line of prisoners, many of whom would not eat this night and had not eaten last night or the night before.


  While she feasted tonight, a child would die of starvation, just as one had last night, and the night before. The Eagle’s burden had never weighed as heavily as it had these last months, since her capture. She had to witness and remember, so that, in time, she could report to the king. Sometimes that was the only thing that kept her going: her determination to report to the king.

  Bulkezu moved out to greet the last raiding party, come in to report. Truly, some things would be more difficult to report to King Henry than others.

  Prince Ekkehard and his companions had taken to wearing princely Quman armor, cobbled together from armored coats stripped off of dead men, felt coifs, looted Wendish cloaks made rich by fur linings, supple leather gloves, painted shields, everything but the wings, which they had not earned. Everything but the shrunken heads, which not even Ekkehard had the stomach for.

  They had brought loot, and news. Lord Boso was called back from the vanguard to translate as Lord Welf delivered the report.

  “Lord Hedo’s fort was stripped of soldiers and easy to take. The servants said his son marched west last autumn with fifty men to fight in Saony.”

  “Who is fighting in Saony?” asked Hanna.

  “Duchess Rotrudis’ children.” With his highborn arrogance, meaty hands, and scarred lip, Welf looked remarkably like a fool to her, especially when he could barely bring himself to answer her just because she was common born. He only spoke to her because Bulkezu had a habit of whipping, and once castrating, men who treated Hanna disrespectfully: not warming the water brought for her bath, not getting out of her way fast enough as she walked through camp, daring to look her in the eye, who bore the luck of a Kerayit shaman.

  The loot gained at the fort was a fine haul: gold vessels; silver drinking cups; ivory spoons; and two tapestries.

  “His Contemptuousness bids you keep what you have earned,” said Boso, translating for Bulkezu. “For are you not brothers? Are you not honorable, in the way of all noble folk?”

  How Bulkezu kept his expression blank Hanna did not understand, considering the insulting way Boso had of speaking. It was another one of his charades, the games he played incessantly with his prisoners, because even Ekkehard, for all that he now rode and fought with the army, was nothing more than a glorified hostage made much of and let range wide on a leash. Ekkehard had women, he had silks, he had meat and wine, and he had his own honor guard, which he evidently chose not to recognize for what it was: his jailers. Let him get dirty enough with raiding under Bulkezu’s banner and it would be too late for him to go back to his father’s hall and authority.

  No doubt Bulkezu counted on it. He didn’t care one whit for Ekkehard. He had just found a more amusing way to ruin him.

  “I’m surprised, my lord prince,” said Hanna, “that you would war on your father’s people. Isn’t that treason?”

  Prince Ekkehard did not deign to reply, but Lord Benedict rose to the bait. “Lord Hedo did not come to King Henry’s aid when the king’s sister, Lady Sabella, rose in revolt against him. This is his just punishment. We are doing nothing more than seeing him rewarded for his disobedience.”

  “Aiding an enemy as he devastates your father’s lands and cripples his people scarcely seems the act of a loyal subject.”

  “You’ll regret those words,” Lord Welf said hotly, “when you don’t have a prince to protect you.” He nodded toward Bulkezu.

  “Nay, I don’t have a prince to protect me.” She lifted her right hand to display the emerald ring. “I’m the King’s Eagle.”

  Ekkehard flushed, and his companions muttered among themselves, glancing toward Bulkezu, gauging his mood. Ekkehard’s boys didn’t like her. She didn’t like them much, either, if it came to that; they were the real traitors. Yet were they any different than most of the nobly born, fighting their wars across the bodies of the common folk?

  Bulkezu laughed as soon as Boso translated the exchange. He moved forward to ride beside Ekkehard, treating Ekkehard to flowery compliments delivered by a sarcastic Boso; how well he acquitted himself in battle, how many women he had won for his slaves, how terrible it was that his relatives had tried to consign him to the monastery when certainly any fool could see that he was born for the glory of war. Ekkehard lapped it up like cream. He even forgot about Hanna, trailing behind, she who carried the wasp sting of conscience because she never let him forget that he had turned coat and embraced Bulkezu’s cause.

  A scream shattered the sleepy twilight. Deep in the crowd of weary, worn-down, lethargic prisoners, an eddy of movement spiraled out of control like leaves picked up by a dust devil.

  “Witchcraft! Demons! The Enemy has spawned among us!”

  Panic broke like a storm. Prisoners pushed and shoved frantically, more afraid of an unseen menace in their ranks than of the dour Quman soldiers who guarded them. Terrified captives spilled across the invisible boundary into range of Quman spears. Like raindrops presaging a downpour, the first handful turned an instant later into a hysterical flood of ragged people desperate to escape the horror in their midst.

  Even horses accustomed to war shied at the sudden agitation. Ekkehard’s nervous gelding reared, backing sideways into Bulkezu’s horse. The night guard, distracted by this threat to their leader, hastened forward.

  Hanna saw her chance.

  She kicked her horse hard and galloped for the trees. The forest gave scant cover. Pale trunks surrounded her, bare branches clattering in the breeze. She heard the singing of wings, high and light, and the pound of hooves as her captors pursued her. Ducking low, she pressed the horse through a stand of stinging pine, forded a shallow stream running in three channels along the forest floor, and skirted a massive bramble bush. Her cloak caught once in its thorns; she tore it free, nudged her mount around its tangled verge, and found herself facing Bulkezu.

  Even under the cover of the forest, with dusk lowering, there was light enough to see his expression. He laughed. But he had his bow strung and an arrow nocked, and at moments like this, with that half crazy expression on his face and something more than laughter in his eyes, she could not bring herself to trust to Sorgatani’s luck to keep her unharmed. Breathing hard, she reined up the horse and regarded him with disgust and resignation. And a sliver of fear.

  He lifted the bow, aimed, and shot into the bramble, flushing out two escaped prisoners who had hoped to hide within the thorny refuge. Hanna recognized the adolescent girl and her half-grown brother, the one with the cut on his cheek, from Echstatt. The boy was gulping soundlessly, trying not to dissolve into hysteria, while his sister gripped his shoulders and managed a defiant glare.

  Bulkezu chuckled. The movement of his shoulders made the shrunken head at his belt sway, knocking against one thigh. He pulled a second arrow out of his quiver and drew down on the boy. “Run,” he said softly, in Wendish.

  They ran, floundering out into the darkening forest. The child tripped. With a leisurely draw, Bulkezu marked the boy’s back.

  Hanna kicked her horse hard, driving toward him, shouting out loud, anything to spoil his aim.

  But the arrow was already loosed.

  It whistled, the girl screamed and tugged at her brother; the point buried itself in the bark of a slender birch tree, less than a hand’s breadth from the stumbling boy. With a strangled cry, the girl dragged him onward into the trees.

  The night guard trotted up, but Bulkezu gave a curt command, and they made no move to follow the fleeing children.

  Tears of elation wet Hanna’s lips. “You missed!”

  He laughed, that damned half-giggling guffaw. Sobering, he drew another arrow from his quiver and twisted it between his fingers. The wind whistled through his wings; she smelled a faint scent, like putrefaction, wafting toward them from camp.

  “I never miss.” His expression darkened. “Twice only, and they will suffer for it, when I have them in my hands again.”

  “Who could have defeated you, Prince Bulkezu?” She was too angry, at herself, at fate, at his a
rrogance, to watch her tongue, to curb her sarcasm, even if she knew it wasn’t wise.

  “Once, that Ashioi witch. Once, that smart-mouthed priest.”

  “You tolerate insults from Boso all the time. You can understand every word he says.”

  “Boso is a fool. A dog would make a more worthy lord. It amuses me to wait and let him spin a little longer. Now Zach’rias was a clever man. He made war on me with his tongue. I should have cut off his tongue instead of his penis. I didn’t understand him well enough to know which would hurt him worse. My arrow missed its mark.” He shifted in the saddle, lifting an arm to brush a finger along one of the griffin feathers bound into his wooden wings. The touch raised blood on his skin, but the wind wicked it away. A thin rain of snow spilled from a tree branch, a shower of white that melted where it touched the sodden, spring ground.

  “But they only made me stronger, when they thought to humble me. Now I’m the only man born into the tribes who has killed two griffins, not just one.” He did not smile. Nor did he laugh.

  “You didn’t wear those wings when you fought against Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia.”

  A spark of mischief and cruelty lit his expression. “I wanted Bayan to know that even wingless I could defeat him and his noble allies.” He laughed for such a long time that Hanna began to think something had gotten stuck in his throat. The shrunken head rolled along his thigh, staring accusingly at Hanna. “I’d never killed a lady lord in battle before,” he continued at last, “so I thought it best to put my old guardian away and dedicate a new one.” He laughed a little again, trailing off into giggles as he stroked the hair on his shrunken head and lifted it. “Do you know her?”

  Bile stung in Hanna’s throat. For a moment she thought she would vomit. Or ought to. No wonder the head, all twisted, blackened, warped, and nasty as it had become, looked familiar. She knew who had died in that battle.