Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  “We’re going to Novomo?” She felt wooly-headed. “But that’s where the army went. They’ll capture us.”

  “Maybe not, Anna. I have allies now, among the Ashioi.”

  “How can you have allies, my lady? Do they mean to join Prince Sanglant’s army, if he is king now in Wendar, as I heard? Yet, if they do so, won’t they be traitors to their own kind?”

  The lady had already turned her head to look toward a sight Anna could not see. She replied, but her thoughts seemed already half a league away. “Not that kind of ally. We do not deal in land and gold but in something more precious to us. Something I have that they want, and that I am willing to share.”

  “What is that, my lady?”

  Seen in profile, she grinned fiercely, and the dim room seemed suddenly brighter. “The secrets of the mathematici.”

  2

  DIE EICHE was a huge oak tree with a massive trunk and a canopy of branches so wide and thick that grass did not grow beneath it. The crossroads was not precisely a village except for the straggle of houses built here because of a decent strip of arable land and the chance to house travelers in exchange for coin or goods. This hamlet, too, had been abandoned, but a large company had camped here recently. The interiors had been ransacked, and boards pried out of walls to throw onto campfires. Several animals had been killed, skinned, and eaten; their remains were scattered. Ortulfus weighed a scapula in his hands. With a finger, he traced the marks of a knife where it had scraped the bone. A single fresh grave stood in the shadow of the surrounding forest, beside a crop of young oak sprouting where there was no shade to kill them.

  The company rested, exhausted more by fear than by the slow pace. Father Ortulfus sent monks with buckets to the nearby stream. A pair of lads offered to lead the horses to drink as Ivar and Baldwin examined the roads from this safe distance. The broader path, most traveled, struck southeast along the route made by the stream, while a grassier way pushed straight east into the trees.

  “We must ride the fastest route,” said Baldwin. “Don’t you think that’s what Biscop Constance would want us to do?”

  Ivar studied Father Ortulfus, who was still examining the scapula. “Have you horses at Hersford, Father? Ours are spent, although rest will improve them. If we could give you ours in exchange for fresh mounts, we could make better time.”

  “Some horse met a sorry fate in the stewpot,” said Ortulfus, tossing the charred scapula back into a fire pit. Its impact sent up a sputter of ash and soot. “We have donkeys, oxen, a pair of mules, but no riding mounts. I’m sorry.”

  “Have you a smith, then? It would help them to be reshod.”

  “That we do. Brother Adso came to us from Alba two years ago, fleeing the Eika invasion. He has a touch of the old magic in him when it comes to farriery.”

  A child coughed wetly. An old woman crooned to a restless baby. A trio of girls ventured as close to the three men as, they dared, staring longingly at the handsome cleric, who seemed oblivious to their presence. The brothers came back with buckets three quarters full and began ladling out water to the parched company.

  Baldwin leaned against Ivar and bent his mouth to his friend’s ear. “I’ll just go to the horses now. They’re staring at me.”

  Without looking back, he crossed the road and walked over to the stream to supervise the lads, who seemed to know what they were about and needed no actual supervision.

  It came without warning, except perhaps for a catching of breath within the woodland, as though all creeping and crawling ceased among the creatures who lived and died there. Of birds, he heard no sound. Nothing, and then the slap of feet, pat put pat put, someone loping in an easy rhythm.

  Both of the dogs, lying on the ground, came to their feet and barked, as startled as everyone else.

  It burst out of the forest and jolted to a halt, surveying their ragged company from a safe distance. It had a round shield painted with yellow-and-red dragons twined and twisting each around the others. It had ice-white hair pulled back in a ruthless braid, no strand left free, and its skin gleamed as though molten gold had coated its figure. It wore no tunic or jerkin, only a painted cloth tied around its hips. It held a spear in its right hand, and this weapon thumped once, twice, thrice, four times onto the ground, like the abbreviated knock of a woodpecker.

  Then it turned and ran back the way it had come.

  The villagers erupted, leaping up, shouting, crying, some running into the forest and others pressing children toward the grassy path that led through the trees to the monastery, still a half day’s walk away according to the abbot.

  “God have mercy,” said Father Ortulfus, staring after the vanished creature. He was pale and, in truth, he was angry. “After all this, can we not be spared? These poor suffering innocents?” He turned on Ivar. “They have followed you!”

  Ivar choked. His gaze was caught by Baldwin at the stream, turning to look at them because he was puzzled at the commotion. From across the road and a little upstream, Baldwin had not seen the Eika scout but only the turmoil that spun out from its appearance. He lifted a hand to query Ivar.

  “Forgive me,” said Ortulfus, grasping Ivar’s wrist. “I spoke in anger. This calamity is not your doing.”

  “I pray you, Father, there is nothing to forgive. Do what you must. We’ll hide in the forest and hope they do not see us. I would offer to draw them off, but we must reach Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad before they do.”

  Ortulfus sketched a strange pattern at his chest. “In the name of the Mother and Son,” he murmured, “be blessed as you go on your way.”

  Ivar stared at him, hearing the phrase, but shook himself. “Truth rises with the phoenix,” he responded.

  Ortulfus nodded sharply. “So we have ourselves seen,” he said cryptically. He strode after his flock, scooped up a bawling child who was reaching after something left on the ground, and shouted at his monks to scatter with their charges through the forest. “Each one of you take some into your keeping and go by diverse routes toward home. Hurry!”

  They fled. Ivar ran to the stream and sent the two confused lads on their way after the others.

  “What do we do?” asked Baldwin.

  “Hide, and fall behind.” They splashed across the stream and led the horses into the woods. “I don’t know how big a force is coming. We can’t outrun them. If it’s a scouting expedition, we can travel along whichever road they do not take.”

  Baldwin scratched at his beard again. “I hate this hair. I wish we had time to shave.”

  “If they have Autun to ransack, why march this way?” When Baldwin did not reply, Ivar muttered on to himself, furious that their luck just could not change for the better. “Why send scouts so far? It’s days and days of walking … and for what? Can’t they just leave us alone? They don’t want us reaching the lady! That’s it! They know we’re ahead of them, and they’re after us!”

  “Do you really think that’s likely?” Baldwin asked in a calm voice that, like cold water, doused Ivar’s fit of anger. “You and I are nothing. Not really.”

  Not really.

  They kicked through a thicket of bramble and plunged into a tangle of saplings. Beech woods with their open vistas were a bad place to hide; the great oak in the clearing seemed out of place, an ancient survivor from an earlier time.

  “There’s a good thick coppice,” said Ivar, pointing up the gentle slope to a wall of flourishing ash and hawthorn. “Thank God for the woodsmen! That’s what my. father always used to say. I wonder if he’s still alive. Ai, God. Gero would be count in his place.” The thought struck him to silence and, it seemed, dried up his tears as well. Or maybe it was the rumbling of thunder out of the west. “We must stop, or they’ll see us moving.”

  They hid as best they could, hoping that leaves and distance and stillness would conceal them. That first scout loped again out into the clearing and halted, like a stone statue, to examine the deserted landscape. Or perhaps it was a different Eika, one carrying
a similar shield. Ivar could not tell the difference between them, except that maybe this one’s skin was more bronze than gold. More came, a pair, a foursome, a dozen. This advance group trotted past the oak tree and took the wide road that led to the southeast, the main way to Kassel and the duchy of Fesse. Yet the rumble grew louder.

  Out of the trees a child came running with frantic steps. Father Ortulfus burst out of cover, chasing it. It stooped to grab a scrap of cloth, a doll, most likely, and as it turned to run back to the forest, it cast a glance westward down the road, took a pair of steps, looked back again, and went rigid.

  Ortulfus reached it, clapped a hand over its mouth, and swung the child over his shoulder as he shifted course to run back into the safety of the wood.

  Baldwin took a step after them, but Ivar grabbed his arm. “No!” he whispered.

  Baldwin shook him off, and seemed ready to run after the abbot, but then the horses shied at nothing and he had to turn back. Together they calmed the restive animals.

  Together, they looked up as the steady rumble turned into an identifiable thunder of a mass of people marching. The first ranks trotted into the clearing. They jogged five abreast, each one armed with some kind of girdle about the hips—leather or shimmering metal—and a shield and weapon, spears, axes, bows, and a few swords. Dogs accompanied them, monstrous iron-gray beasts with saliva dribbling down their muzzles. Seeing Ortulfus and the child, they broke forward ravenously.

  The ten Eika soldiers who ran in the lead broke into a sprint and raced out to encircle to abbot and his tiny charge, beating back the dogs. One stabbed a dog clean through, and where it twitched and howled on the ground, the other dogs converged, snarling and ripping.

  “I can’t look!” moaned Baldwin. “I should have gone after them!”

  “Hush! You want those dogs to hear us?” Thank God the wind was blowing into their faces. At least their scent would not give them away. “They won’t stop for your pretty face!”

  The second ranks kept coming along the road, and more and yet more, too many to count unless he numbered each rank—two rows of soldiers—as a pair of hands.

  “Ten pairs of hands make a hundred,” Ivar muttered. “Of hundreds: One…. Two…. Three…. Four…. Five.”

  The army went on forever, and the horses didn’t like it. Something about the smell or sound unnerved them. Baldwin kept up a steady, gentling murmur to keep them quiet and in one place as Ivar counted. The Eika pace seemed to swallow the ground; they moved without faltering along the road to Kassel, a new rank marching into view as the forward groups moved out of sight. With their horses pushed to the limit, Ivar and Baldwin could not possibly hope to overtake this army, even by ruining their mounts.

  All this time, Father Ortulfus stood within a ring of Eika, held the silent child, and waited. The soldiers around him had also ceased moving. They also were waiting.

  Banners streamed. Rippling strips of cloth in bright yellows and stark reds and heavenly blues marked the core of the army. A column of wagons rolled into view, pulled not by horses but by Eika and other creatures, ones who were like the Eika in walking on two feet and having hands and familiar-seeming faces but with blond and brown and black hair.

  “Look!” whispered Baldwin, nudging Ivar. “Prisoners! Slaves!”

  Humankind.

  But they weren’t slaves. They wore no chains. They carried arms and armor. They wore leather jerkins or mail coats. Those who were not taking their turn at pulling the wagons marched freely within the ranks. He’d seen a few of them scattered in the forward portion of the army but only now realized what they were: human men marching with the Eika. Allies, not enemies. Traitors.

  Baldwin grabbed his arm. “God help us! They have her!”

  Most of the wagons carried supplies, and Ivar would have missed the person Baldwin indicated because she was surrounded by a heavy guard of brawny Eika crowded together so tightly that they obscured the people seated in the bed of that wagon. He saw their faces in flashes, living faces drawn taut with fear and exhaustion: frail Sigfrid, steadfast Ermanrich, the glowering Sister Eligia, and brave Hathumod, who was seated, strangely enough, beside the driver. She seemed to be chatting amiably with the tall youth, who was clad in a boiled leather jerkin and no helm and who, despite having no horses to drive, was somehow in charge of this wagon. Biscop Constance sat beside Sister Eligia, in the bed of the wagon. She gripped the side and stared intently into the clearing. She had caught sight of Father Ortulfus amid his captors.

  A commotion stirred within the ranks of soldiers encircling the abbot. The child squirted out between the legs of one of the soldiers and, grasping its rag doll, sprinted for the trees. A pair of dogs scrambled after it, but their masters whistled sharply and both, wisely, turned back as the Eika soldiers laughed as the child stumbled, fell, and scrabbled forward in a panic. They let it go, but Father Ortulfus was tugged forward and slung unceremoniously into the wagon without the army slackening its pace. He fell on top of Ermanrich, and Sigfrid went down as well as limbs thrashed and bodies righted themselves. Hathumod turned to stare, mouth agape. Father Ortulfus managed to get to his knees. He bowed over the biscop’s hand and kissed her ring. Ivar was too far away to hear speech or see their faces closely, but the reunion of the biscop and the young man who had once served in her schola in Autun made him cry. As Ivar wiped away tears, Baldwin muttered under his breath.

  “What of the sergeant and the others? Are they all dead?”

  The army plunged onward. Of the sergeant and his company, they saw no sign.

  “I thought the Eika took no person as prisoner,” added Baldwin, “but only killed every soul they met.”

  “Even the Eika might think twice before killing a holy biscop. Hush, now. Until they’re gone.”

  It seemed forever until the main force marched past and vanished down the road. No horses accompanied this army, only the dogs. They waited longer afterward as several parties of outliers trotted past. Ivar held his breath as dogs swarmed this way and that in the clearing, following the many scents, but in the end they were brought up short by the stream and by the command of their masters, who moved fast in the wake of the main army.

  For a long while it was silent. At length, a crow landed on the ground beyond the oak, scratched at the ground, and abruptly took wing and fluttered away.

  “Let’s go!” said Baldwin.

  Ivar put a finger to his lips just as a pair of loping scouts came into view, sniffed the air exactly as dogs would, and moved on.

  They waited. Again the crow returned and this time, as it searched in the grass, a second and third joined it.

  Ivar said, “we’ll go to Hersford. There must be a woodsman’s path out of Hersford that will take us cross-country.”

  Baldwin, like the horses, was eager to move. He got the reins in hand and coaxed the horses out of the coppice. They crossed the clearing quickly. The crows cawed at them and flapped a short distance away, but did not consider these two weary travelers a threat. The grassy path led them into the forest. Ivar recalled no landmarks. He and the others had been marched quickly along this route those few years back; he’d even forgotten the oak at the crossroads, although such a majestic tree must surely be memorable.

  They had not walked for long before folk crept out of the forest to follow them, who were armed and who traveled with purpose. In time, a pair of monks emerged with more of the ragged party, and one of them was the very Prior Ratbold who had escorted Ivar and his friends as prisoners to Autun. When Ivar told him of the fate of Father Ortulfus, he met the news with a strange equanimity.

  “He’ll be safe,” the prior said, making the sign of the phoenix. “So was it promised to us.”

  Baldwin nodded.

  Ivar wished he possessed such faith, but he did not. He was relieved to see the palisade surrounding Hersford Monastery, rather more formidable a structure than it had been when he was led away from the institution. He tried to recall how long ago it had been, but the
march into the east, the lost years beneath the crown, and the captivity in Queen’s Grave wove into a confounding tapestry. Two years? Four years? It all blurred together.

  So much had changed, except the pleasant collection of buildings that met his eye once he passed through the gate: the cloister and chapel ringed by the inner fence, the layman’s barracks, a byre for the milk cow, the henhouse and beehives, the lush ranks of the orchard and the orderly gardens fenced with wire to keep out rabbits. Folk had set up tents around the fruit trees. A dozen men and women were digging up new ground to expand the gardens. A herd of sheep grazed beyond the vegetable garden, tended by a score of children. It was an eerie sight to observe those somber shepherds, so quiet they were, unlike lively children who might be expected to romp a little and play. A dog roamed at the edge of the herd, and it gazed at the newcomers for a measure and, apparently recognizing the monks, went back to its guard.

  Ivar grabbed the prior’s sleeve.

  “Prior Ratbold, I beg you. We need the services of your smith. Provisions, if you have them. We must leave at dawn tomorrow. Is there a path through the woods that might allow us to reach Kassel before that army does?”

  Ratbold looked at him and, most oddly, smiled. Ivar moved a half step away because the expression made him so uneasy. This was not the scolding, irritable man who had herded them to Autun and made sure to express his disgust with their heresy every league of the way.

  “We were wrong about the lion,” Ratbold said.

  Ivar shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I told you there was a lion!” said Baldwin.

  “Oh. Ah.” Ivar knew his face was red. He could feel the heat. “Yes, the lion.”