by Kate Elliott
“For God’s sake, my lord and lady,” Hanna cried, “he can understand every word you say!”
She had never known anyone to move that fast.
He hit her so hard across the face that she actually blacked out. Of the gap between the pain of the blow and the ground smashing into her shoulder, she remembered nothing. Acid burned in her throat. Lights danced in her vision. She couldn’t feel her legs. Distantly, she heard Boso’s wretched coughs as he heaved up again, and again.
“I would not try that, Duke Conrad,” said Bulkezu pleasantly. “I’m protected from harm by a cloak of my brother’s weaving. But I won’t hesitate to signal if there’s any trouble. I can have Prince Ekkehard’s head delivered to you,” he snapped his fingers, “like that, if you wish it. Perhaps you’ve noticed my companion on the march, who grants me her strength. Don’t you recognize Judith of Austra?”
Hanna still couldn’t make any of her limbs work, but her hearing had sharpened.
“Oh, my God,” said Conrad. “For God’s sake, Milo,” he said in a low voice, “take my daughter back to the fort. At once.” After a stifled protest, footsteps moved hastily away.
“I would grieve at my brother’s death,” said Theophanu smoothly, as if nothing untoward had happened, as if she and Conrad hadn’t betrayed their secrets, as if Bulkezu hadn’t walked them through the oldest trick in the ancient tales. As if Wendish quarreling weren’t the greatest weakness of all, just as Bulkezu had said. “As I mourn for Margrave Judith. But alas, Prince Bulkezu, just so we understand each other, he is only King Henry’s third child.”
“His fourth, surely, or did one of the elder two die?”
Sensation returned to her fingers. She got her bound hands under her and pushed herself up. Her head spun, and she almost threw up as she got to her knees. Conrad and Theophanu became four, and then eight, and slowly receded back into two.
“I believe we have told you more than enough,” said Theophanu, “without receiving anything in return. Give me the Eagle. She’s of no possible use to you.”
“How can you know what is of use to me?” He called an order in his own language. Her right eye was already swelling shut, and the whole right side of her face throbbed agonizingly. Dust kicked into her face as she coughed out spittle colored by blood. Hands grabbed her and jerked her roughly to her feet. The fast movement was too much. She threw up, but the man holding her had no mercy. He simply dragged her away as she vomited. The world darkened as she fought unconsciousness.
Was that Theophanu, asking in that passionless voice to have the Eagle returned? All she could distinguish as the light hazed over and she gasped for air was Bulkezu’s hated voice answering.
“Five thousand pounds of silver and one thousand of gold, and I’ll ride past Barenberg with my army and leave it and the lands around it untouched.”
She passed out.
She woke at the touch of hands pressing a poultice against her throbbing cheek. The cool mash reeked of mustard, and it stung. She opened one eye. Struggled a moment, panicking, until she realized the other eye was swollen shut, not gouged out.
Cherbu sat next to her, humming under his breath. He held a cup to her lips. Warm liquid steamed up her nose. The smell soothed her headache. Sipping, she got a bit of the broth down without feeling queasy, was even able to lever herself up and swallow the rest. The light in the small tent had splintered into dozens of colors. It took her a moment to realize that she was lying inside the shaman’s patchwork tent, on a sheepskin. The ground lurched violently under her, and the patchwork ceiling swayed as they began to move.
Cherbu slipped out through the tent flap and leaped down. She caught sight of mounted men, a tree lurching past, and the sun shining through leaves before the tent flap slapped back into place. The wagon jolted on; despite the jerky motion, she fell into a fitful doze, starting awake whenever she was flung to one side or the other because of a hole or bump. At intervals Cherbu returned to change her poultice or give her a fresh infusion of broth. Strangely, despite the uncomfortable journey, she felt increasingly better as the day wore on and could even eventually crack open her right eye.
She felt, in truth, mildly optimistic when the wagon lumbered to a halt and she heard the familiar noises of folk moving about setting up camp. She peeled the poultice off her face before gingerly climbing out of the back of the wagon. She needed to pee, and wanted to get a look around.
Her legs and arms worked. Her face still hurt, but she could actually open and shut her eye and squinch up her cheek without much pain. She found enough privacy around at the front of the wagon to do her business, then surveyed the situation, the placement of the army, herds, and captives in a broad clearing surrounded by forest.
Maybe there was a chance they had forgotten about her.
Maybe not.
There came Cherbu with a cup of steaming broth. She drank it gratefully. Hunger stirred; her belly growled softly. Cherbu beckoned, and she followed him to the round tent surmounted by the Pechanek banner. Bulkezu strolled out to meet her with a smirk on his face, a cold light in his gaze, and, amazingly, Boso at his side.
The interpreter looked much improved, remarkably so, since she had last seen him throwing up during the parley, but perhaps it was only glee over her impending punishment. “Be afraid, woman. His Dreadfulness has had enough of your disobedience and disrespectful words.”
Was it actually possible that Boso hadn’t realized what had happened at the parlay? Didn’t he know that Bulkezu could understand him? Or was she the fool, thinking all along that Boso hadn’t known? She staggered, head swimming, and fought to keep her balance, to keep her dignity.
“His patience is at an end because you’ve made him very angry.”
A cold fear crept into her gut as the silence dragged out. A few slaves stopped to stare, but Bulkezu’s guards chased them away. He wasn’t one for the big public gesture, not like the Wendish nobles, who raised up and threw down their favorites in the middle of court so that everyone could see. He was a man who kept his grudges personal.
Boso actually sniggered; so aroused was he by the expectation of her imminent downfall that he forgot to be sarcastic. “You can keep your clothes and your Eagle’s cloak, so no one forgets who you are. But all other protections Prince Bulkezu withdraws.”
She found her voice, hoarse as it was. “You mean he’s going to hand me over to Princess Theophanu?”
Boso guffawed, giggling helplessly. Bulkezu’s expression didn’t change. Four guards came forward. If she fought, they’d see how desperately frightened she was. Hadn’t Sorgatani’s luck protected her? Wouldn’t the Kerayit shaman watch over her? She looked toward Cherbu, but he had already wandered away into the trees.
Had she really believed in any savior but Bulkezu’s whim, which had now turned cold?
“You thought yourself better than the rest,” said Boso.
“No more than did you,” she murmured, but she could barely get the words out. It hurt to talk. The impassive guards moved in around her, lances raised. She took a step back, flushed and perspiring as the sun slid out from behind the clouds and beat down upon her.
They advanced, and she retreated, step by step, until she realized that they were driving her, as they would drive a cow or a ewe, back to the miserable crowd of prisoners scattered like so many wilting flowers through the clearing. No longer was she Bulkezu’s honored hostage, his model prisoner. She was just one more hapless captive left to stagger along in the wake of the army, one short step in front of the lances of the rear guard.
Most of the captives had collapsed in the grass, trying to cover their heads against the glare of the sun. Few had survived the night of the slaughter, and perhaps because of that, the plague had not surfaced again in the train of Bulkezu’s army. He had raced ahead, leaving the plague behind, but he still took prisoners and he still dragged them along for his amusement, for his assaults, for whatever sick reason he had, if he had reasons at all beyond laying waste.
A few, those not yet so weakened by their ordeal that they noticed nothing beyond the next sip of gruel, raised themselves up to watch as Hanna was pressed back into their midst.
More than anything, she noticed the stink of so many unwashed bodies, open sores, pools of diarrhea and urine and vomit spreading from those too sick to crawl away from their own sickness, all of it a sink of despair. Flies buzzed everywhere, feasting on infected eyes and filth-encrusted hands. Surely plague was hiding here, waiting to burst out again as it had that awful night.
Ai, God, if truth be told, she was more afraid of the plague than she was of Bulkezu.
A man sporting a black-and-blue eye and drooping folds of flesh at his chin heaved himself up from the ground and spat at her. “Whore! I see you got what you deserved at long last. I hope you got pleasure of what that demon gave you, while he was giving, because you’ll get no such pleasure here.”
His comrade, a tall man dressed in rags, lurched forward to grab for her. “I’d like a taste of his leavings!” He got a hand on her shoulder.
She ducked, by some miracle found a stout stick in the grass, and whacked him across the face. He was a lot bigger than she was, but she’d been eating and he hadn’t. Staggering, he stumbled back and sat down hard. Pain stabbed through her cheek, but she dared show no weakness.
Yet no one laughed, or protested, or reacted at all. Most of them were too ill and exhausted even to care, even to hate. The Quman guards moved off, leaving her standing in the midst of the pack with a pounding headache and a swollen face.
“I am also a prisoner, a commoner from Wendar, just as you are. A King’s Eagle, taken captive in the east—”
Even a starving man can feed on hate, if he’s nothing left to him.
“Whore and traitor,” said one of the women listlessly. She had a bundle of dirty rags clutched to her chest, but it was only when she shifted that Hanna saw she held a sickly child, eyes crusted shut with dried pus. Flies crawled over the child’s pallid face, but neither it nor its mother had enough strength to brush them away.
In the distance a river ran noisily. She smelled water, although the trees hid it from view. Most of the prisoners were looking at her now. Good Wendish folk, just like her.
The tall man coughed and braced himself on his hands as he caught his breath. When he grinned, she saw that all of his front teeth were missing. “You’ll have to sleep sometime.”
She spoke to the others. “Don’t you see? The more we quarrel among ourselves, the easier his victories come.”
No one answered. After a bit, the tall man and his companion dragged themselves off to the edge of the group. As for the rest, they were too weary, too hungry, and too apathetic to do anything but lie back down on the ground and close their eyes.
The Quman guards did not stop her as she gathered grass and, after several abortive attempts, wove a shallow basket and lined it with leaves. They shadowed her as she made her way through a narrow patch of woodland to the river’s shore and knelt in the shallows. Upstream she saw only forest, but far downstream she saw a line of smoke rising into the sky.
Had Bulkezu taken Theophanu’s bribe and ridden on, bypassing Barenberg? There had been no battle today, and this river looked broad enough to be the mighty Veser, flowing north toward the Amber Sea.
The basket held water well enough that she could carry it around to those folk too exhausted, or too afraid of the Quman, to walk to the river themselves. Best to start with the weak ones. They hadn’t the strength to spit at her and were usually grateful for the water.
When she brought it to the mother with the sick child, she met suspicion first.
“What do you want with me, whore?” asked the woman, shrinking away. “Haven’t I been punished enough by the beast?”
“I’m a prisoner like you,” Hanna repeated. “It’s true I’ve been treated better, and fed, and allowed to ride. But that’s not because I’m the prince’s whore—”
“The Wendish prince?” The woman’s spirit flared as anger gave her strength. “Some say it’s the king’s son himself who rides with the beast. Is it true?”
This was hardly the way to convince these poor souls that she wasn’t a traitor, too, but Hanna saw no reason to lie to them about his identity. “Yes, it’s Ekkehard, son of Henry.”
The woman spat. Perhaps she’d been passed over by the Quman soldiers because of the wart on her nose and lice-ridden hair, or perhaps she’d simply been raped and discarded during the attack on whatever doomed village she had once lived in.
“A royal son like that would be better dead than a traitor.” But she accepted a sip of water. The child, too, drank, but he couldn’t open his eyes. His whimpers tore at Hanna’s heart.
“Here. I’ll soak a corner of my cloak in water and maybe we can clean his face.”
“If you wish,” said the woman in a dull voice, “but he’ll die anyway. My poor baby. Nothing can save us now. If the beast and his men don’t kill us, then hunger will. Or the plague. I heard there’s plague everywhere south of us now. So maybe it is God’s mercy on us for living a Godly life.”
“How can you say so?” demanded Hanna, aghast.
“Better to die of hunger or have your throat slit than to die of the plague. Have you seen what they look like after? I heard it from my cousin. She’d seen it, one man, two years back. He died outside her village and they let the dogs eat him. None of them touched him, not even the deacon. She said you shake and turn gray, and dying people scream that they’re being eaten alive from inside, there’s so much pain. Then the demon inside you spits you all out, through your mouth and nose and eyes, through your skin and your asshole, all blood and snot and shit and every stinking thing that it’s eaten out of you and chewed with its poison—”
“That’s enough!” said Hanna sharply. People had crept close to listen and some had begun to moan in fear. “No use catching your death standing out waiting for the snow when there’s nothing you can do to stop it whether it comes or not. That’s what my mother always says.”
“Is your mother still alive?” asked one of the prisoners.
“I pray she is. She’s in North Mark—”
“Ah,” said a thin old man with a spark of curiosity left in his expression. “That would explain your accent and that light hair. How’d you come to be a King’s Eagle?”
“The same way any do, I suppose. They were looking, and I was available.”
This earned her a few chuckles as she continued to wipe the child’s face, trying to moisten the crust around his eyes enough so that she could wipe it off without hurting him.
“What got you captured, then?” demanded the mother.
About fifty people had clustered close to watch and listen. The two men who had assaulted her sidled in as well, staring with a bitter, unsparing hatred, as if she were responsible for everything they had suffered and lost.
“I was riding from the east last winter. I left Handelburg at the order of Princess Sapientia, she who is heir to King Henry, to bring word to him of the Quman invasion. I was caught out in a snowstorm, in a forest, and was myself captured by the Quman.”
“You’ve been with the beast all this time?”
She didn’t see who had asked that question. “So I have,” she admitted, wetting the corner of her cloak in water again, trying to squeeze the caked gunk off it.
The tall man pressed forward. He’d found a stick, too, although he used it to support his weight. “And you didn’t whore with the beast all that time? How then are you so clean and fat, Eagle? Where did you get that ring?”
Quicker than she’d thought possible, he struck. His first blow glanced off the side of her head. She fell hard as the mother screamed, and the jolt when she caught herself on her arms sent pain stabbing into her injured eye. Head stinging like fire, she groped for and found her stick and brought it up just in time to catch his next blow on wood. Her stick shattered, and she scrambled backward, crablike, as his stick thwacked down
in the grass first to her right and then to her left.
He raised it again. Fury knotted in her stomach. She threw herself forward and slammed into him, knocking him down. They wrestled. A thistle prickled on her back, and she flipped him over and jammed him face down into it. He shrieked, shuddered, and fell still.
Thank God for all that fighting with her elder brother Thancmar. Thank God her adversary had been so weakened by hunger. Breathing hard, she grabbed his unbroken stick and rose, staring down his trembling companion. Beyond, the Quman guards watched impassively, arms crossed.
Her face throbbed.
What had happened to Bulkezu’s promise to the owl’s master to see that she came to no harm? Blood leaked from her temple where the stick had caught her, and her ear throbbed painfully.
“I’m a King’s Eagle, damn you,” she said harshly, “and I received this ring from King Henry’s own hand in recognition of my service to him. What you do to me is as if you were doing it to the king himself.”
“Where’s the king, then?” Tall Man’s comrade confronted her. Now that he stood, she could see by the way his tunic hung on him how much flesh he’d lost. “Why hasn’t the king come to aid us?”
His words were echoed by other prisoners, many more of whom slunk closer to see what the commotion was all about. “Where is the king while we’re suffering here?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. But she had a good idea where he might be, and she didn’t want to tell these people that particular story. The crown of Emperor Taillefer would seem a sorry treasure to them who had lost everything, had watched their homes burned, their fields trampled, their daughters and sisters being raped, and their townsfolk slaughtered. “I don’t know. But I know this, my friends. We’ll all die if the strongest among us don’t help the weakest.”
“Easy for you to say, eating like a queen and sleeping between the beast’s silks. Maybe he threw you out now, but that doesn’t change what you were before.”