The Hidden Stars

by Madeline Howard

  And even if it was dawn, surely her cousin could not mean his weary and disheartened troops to make such an early start, not after traveling through most of the night.

  Still the noises around her went on: a soft clink of metal against metal as men armed themselves; a horse shaking its head and blowing out an explosion of breath; a rattle of pots and pans.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain, Winloki sat up and rubbed a sleeve across her eyes. Her head ached; she had that faint feeling of nausea which comes of arduous days and nearly sleepless nights, of rising far too early and unrested. The sky directly overhead was still black, but over to the east it had turned a dirty ashen grey, the color of soiled linen. In the high grass all around the camp, birds twittered their early-morning hymn. As much as she might wish it otherwise, the dawn had come.

  She pushed back a tangle of red-gold hair with a trembling hand and rose stiffly from her cold bed on the ground. Awkward and half-blind, with her hair tumbling back into her eyes, she stumbled over a tussock of grass and lost her footing, but Haakon was there to catch hold of her elbow.

  “It was a cruel hard night for you and the other healers, Princess,” he said sympathetically.

  “Infinitely harder and crueler for our wounded and dying.”

  Yet for all Winloki’s efforts to put on a good face, she had to admit that she was drained mentally and emotionally as well as physically. First there had been that long, wearisome, interminable retreat ending in the cold small hours, as Kivik sought to evade a battle with superior enemy numbers; then an equally exhausting and harrowing period when she and her fellow healers tried to settle their patients for what remained of the night, doing all in their power (it was pitifully little by then) to make them easy and comfortable after the jolting torture of the long wagon ride.

  She ran her fingers through the worst of the snarls, trying to bring a little order to her appearance. She asked herself, How did we ever come to be hunted and harried like foxes in our own land? And how did there ever come to be so many of them, those barbarians who had never all down through the years managed to muster more than a few ragtag companies of raiders and horse thieves, wholly dependent on surprise attacks and a speedy departure to save their own skins?

  Winloki felt a choking lump of hatred and loathing rise in her throat. She drew in a long, difficult breath, put all her will into banishing anger and confusion. A healer needed a quiet heart, a serenity of mind, lest she pass on her own tumultuous emotions to her patients, who had troubles enough of their own. But oh, some days it was a struggle, one she could by no means always win.

  And what, she wondered glumly, has become of the army we came here to meet, the thousands of mounted troops led by Hialli and the other marshals?

  They could not just disappear, not such a vast number of them—could they? Surely they had to be somewhere in this wide, ravaged land, trying just as hard to find Kivik as he and his scouts were trying to find them.

  She ran a coated tongue over dry lips, gratefully accepted the leather flask that Arvi offered her, and took a mouthful of water before passing it on. All the faces around her wore the same grey mask of dust and dried sweat; she supposed that her own looked much the same. Knowing that the water in the barrels they carried in the wagons was running low, she gathered some dew from the grass, and made a halfhearted attempt to scrub at her face with a corner of Aija’s brown wool cloak. If she only succeeded in smearing the dirt, in rubbing some color back into her pale cheeks, still she felt a little fresher, and that heartened her.

  From the camp adjacent to that of the healers and the wagon drivers, there rose a clamor of bawling, indignant livestock and squalling, hungry children. In these last five days, Kivik’s army had met up with many parties of refugees fleeing before the advance of the Eisenlonders. Women of all ages, young children, men who were too old or infirm for battle, they had gathered up all their portable property in oxcarts and hay wagons, saddlebags or packs, setting out for what they hoped would be safer country, perhaps driving a cow, or two goats, or a half-dozen sheep before them.

  Some were traveling west toward the Herzenmark, others north to the mountains. Most continued on the way they were going, but no few had placed themselves under Kivik’s protection and attached themselves to the army.

  At a sudden pounding of hooves on the road, Winloki turned just in time to see two scouts riding into camp on lathered horses. They vaulted from their saddles to the ground, threw themselves panting at their prince’s feet. Though Winloki strained her ears to listen, all she could hear at this distance was a low murmur of voices. She saw one of the men make a wide gesture, motioning toward the east, and by the grim line of Kivik’s jaw, the bleak look he exchanged with Skerry, she knew that the news could not be good.

  No sooner had the scouts finished their report than it passed from mouth to mouth across the camp: “An army of Eisenlonders, immense past counting, already on the move and heading this way.”

  Kivik began to shout orders; everyone swung into action at once. Winloki gathered up her bedroll and her other things, stowed them in the nearest wagon. Then she climbed over the side into the straw-covered wagon bed and moved among the wounded men: tightening a bandage stained with fresh blood here, speaking a word of comfort to a man sweating and tossing in a high fever there. She felt a clammy hand fumble for hers in the straw, and turned her attention to a boy who had lost both of his legs.

  Of all the youths and men she had tried to help, his condition was by far the most hopeless. Others like him usually died, but for some reason he clung fiercely to life. Not more than fifteen or sixteen, if even so old as that, he had called out for his mother again and again while the healers worked over him, until one of them granted him the mercy of sleep. Now, after two days dreaming, he finally showed signs of waking, fluttering his eyelids and grunting with pain.

  He is going to die whatever happens to the rest of us, Winloki told herself drearily, touching the bone ring lightly to his damp forehead and watching the lines in his face relax. But at least he need not suffer so much.

  Haakon came trotting up on Lif, leading Winloki’s mare on a long rein behind him. She nodded her thanks, scrambled from the wagon to the saddle, and took up the reins. With a sinking sensation, she realized there would be no breakfast, just another long ride on an empty stomach. But far better that than risk a battle when they were so woefully outnumbered.

  All the time she was working with the wounded men, others had been busy loading up gear, hitching draft horses to the wagons. Now the drivers climbed to their seats; there was a low groan from the injured men as the wheels began to roll, and the wagons lurched over the bumpy ground.

  Winloki urged her mare to the middle of the road, and Haakon and her other guards fell into position around her. Behind them came a straggling train of carts and farm wagons, and finally those who tramped along on foot driving their unruly livestock before them.

  The next few hours passed in a blur of sweaty exhaustion. A pale ghost of the sun rose in a hazy sky, and there was not so much as a breath of wind. Winloki’s hands grew cramped on the reins; her eyes burned in the smoky, diffuse light. The men rode in silence, too tired for speech, and the wagon drivers sat hunched forward in their seats.

  A little before noon, they passed what must once have been a fair orchard, reduced to blackened smoldering stumps. Beyond the devastation of the orchard stood the smoking skeleton of a great house and stockade. There was an odor of charred meat on the air, and as the wagons rumbled by a cloud of ravens rose up, crying out in their hard, discordant voices. Kivik sent out a party of men to search for survivors among the rubble, to burn or bury any bodies they might find.

  Those men caught up with the army a while later and rode past the wagons stark-faced with grief and anger. They had found none but the dead, bones picked nearly clean by the ravens and other scavengers: bodies of men, women, cattle, and children.

  Hearing of this, Winloki felt the blood drain from her
heart. What manner of men, what kind of monsters are we fighting, that they murder children and leave them for the carrion eaters?

  At last Kivik called for a stop to rest and water the horses. Handing the reins back over to Haakon, Winloki slid down from the saddle, stretched her aching muscles, and eased herself to a seat on a sun-warmed boulder beside the road. Too ill and exhausted to think about food or drink, she closed her eyes against the glare of the sky.

  She opened them reluctantly a short while later, when someone offered her a flat loaf of buckwheat bread, a drink from an earthenware flask. A trickle of warm liquid across her tongue was hardly sufficient to relieve her thirst; the bread was dry, sour, and a labor to chew. Still, she made an effort, forced herself to eat and drink, in order to keep up her strength.

  Long before she was ready to get back into the saddle, it was time to move again.

  For Kivik, it often seemed, there was no rest by night or by day. Whether he was riding in the vanguard, as then, with the sun blazing down on his armor, or sitting up late taking counsel with his captains, there were always so many matters large and small that required his personal and immediate attention that sometimes it was hard for him to keep it all straight in his head.

  Of course he must listen to the reports of the scouts and make the best use that he could of whatever information they had to offer. He had to determine when and how often to release the hawks that bore his brief dispatches back to Lückenbörg, though he could expect no reply, so long as his army remained on the move. He had to try and outguess, outflank, and outstrategize his enemies; above all, he had to find ways to avoid them until after his belated reunion with his father’s marshals.

  Tugging off one of his gauntlets, he passed a hand over his brow, where the light brown hair was plastered with sweat. He had a slight headache, but whether that was the sun, the small amount of sleep he allowed himself, or the ever-present sense that he was on the verge of some monstrous mistake, he did not know. Probably it was all those things, with an empty stomach thrown in for good measure.

  Naturally, as a king’s son should, he had studied the tactics of war, even though, until the present conflict, there had been no real wars in the northlands for more than a century, just isolated skirmishes, the occasional clash with mounted outlaws or bandits. Still, he had applied himself to his lessons: on the movements of mass armies; the proper disposition of archers, foot soldiers, and cavalry; the science of fortification. He had memorized stirring accounts of famous battles. Now it appeared that these studies were not only insufficient, but grossly misleading.

  For war, as he was learning, was neither so rational and mathematical as his tutors would have it, nor so noble and glorious as the sagas portrayed. Without exception, both these sources of information had glossed things over: the filth and the muck, the noise and the stench; the slow, frustrating marches and the grinding exhaustion; the blundering stupidity of two or more armies rambling the countryside more or less blind to each other’s whereabouts, until opposing forces happened to stumble across each other and engage in battle; above all the sheer brutality and the bloody waste.

  Scouts could only tell you so much, the study of tactics could only take you so far—after that, it was dumb luck and endurance and maybe being too bullheaded stubborn to know when you were beaten.

  In the beginning, Kivik reflected, he and his countrymen had been pig-ignorant, as naive as young boys playing at war with pointed sticks. It was true they had grown wiser during the last half year—experience had proved a stern and exacting teacher—still, the Eisenlonders seemed to understand these things much better than they did.

  But why and how? Kivik asked himself, as he had asked so many times before. Whence this greater sophistication in tactics, coupled with an unwonted savagery?

  A man could drive himself mad with questions like that. As he could also go mad brooding on his own mistakes and miscalculations, because for every one of those mistakes men died, some of them quite horribly, few of them quickly and cleanly.

  Then there were the smaller things, where if he fell short the misery of those in his care was thereby increased—not only for his fighting men and wounded, but for the healers and the camp followers, this ragged train of homeless wanderers he had somehow acquired. Latrines had to be dug, water and forage had to be found for the horses—every time he chose a place to camp he must take these into account—disputes had to be settled among the three camps. Most of all, and most importantly, he had to find a way to keep everyone adequately provisioned.

  The road they were following narrowed, and what had been a snail’s pace slowed even further as the horsemen in the vanguard sorted themselves out. Kivik watched from the side of the road, swatting at a fly that buzzed around his head.

  One thing at least his lessons had been good for, he reminded himself. “Live off the land as much as you can,” he had been taught, “and save the supplies that you carry with you for the times when you can’t.”

  The Eisenlonders burned orchards and trampled over cornfields and gardens, but it was too much trouble for them to destroy all the root crops, so sometimes, when his army came to a burnt-out farmstead, Kivik detailed men to dig for turnips, parsnips, onions, carrots—whatever they could find. When they stopped in the shade of a woodland to breathe the horses, he sent some of the women in among the trees to gather nuts, berries, and mushrooms.

  At this time of year the cows, the nannies, and the ewes were all in milk, and most of the hens were still laying. The refugees shared their milk and eggs with the army, and Kivik made certain they received bread and dried beans in return.

  Such ordinary, practical things had become his cares, because lives depended on them—depended on him, all of these people trusting to him for no better reason than because he was their prince, King Ristil’s second eldest son—a young man brought up to weapons and horses, music and poetry, the oral history of his people, the manners of the court, the higher policies of kings and princes—sometimes he broke out into a cold sweat under his armor and padding, terrified by his own inadequacy.

  Fortunately, he had Skerry and his captains and his scouts to advise him: Skerry with his rational mind, his steady disposition, and the scouts with their knowledge of everyday things. Yet always he was the one who must balance one thing against another and make the final decision.

  And whenever that time came, he had to choose right. Kivik, the impulsive, the hasty, the hotheaded, the thoughtless—he had to choose right. Because he must not fail those who depended on him. He would not.

  An ominous and oppressive feeling descended on Winloki, a heaviness she could neither wholly understand nor shake off. Even when the warhorses began to prance and shake their heads, even when the plodding draft animals lifted their heavy hooves a little higher, as plain a sign as anyone might wish for that they scented water—yes, even when the rush and gurgle of a stream running swift over stones not far away made it a certainty—the formless oppression remained.

  They camped that night within sight and sound of the stream, where they were able to replenish their flasks, bottles, skins, and water barrels; and everyone drank until they could drink no more. Flowing from a source high in the mountains, the water was far too chill for real bathing; even so, Winloki did a more thorough job of washing than she had been able to do in days.

  When she climbed into one of the wagons to settle the men for the night, she found that the boy who had lost his legs was cold as clay. Nor could she, for all her desperate and prolonged efforts, bring him to life again.

  “A mercy,” said Thrya, eldest among the healers. But remembering how the youth had lingered on, how he fought so hard to live, Winloki was suddenly not so sure. Perhaps even maimed he had cared more for life than some who were whole.

  The next afternoon, they were surprised by a force of Eisenlonders.

  Winloki’s guards instantly surrounded her, hurrying her off the road and up a slight incline. The carts and wagons and those who travel
ed on foot followed. There were too many to make a protective circle of wagons, but the wagoners did throw up a crude barricade and hoped it would not be tested.

  Kivik took up a horn from one of the standard-bearers and blew a challenging blast; his men unfurled their ragged banners. From the ranks of the enemy came a braying of horns, and both sides advanced.

  As before, the melee was so fierce, the confusion so great, it was impossible for Winloki to tell who had the advantage. For a long time it was all just the clash of iron, the squall of angry horses, a flash of armored bodies falling to the ground. Arrows flew hissing through the air. Under a rain of blows from swords and axes, shields splintered and flew apart, blood spattered in all directions.

  And just as it had been in every battle before, shadows swarmed on the field, though only Winloki could see them. For her, they were becoming more and more distinct. This time they had taken on the forms of little misshapen men and women, with thin wiry bodies and enormous splayed feet. Some had heads like birds or beasts. Some had lumpen features and pallid skin. All reeked of malevolence.

  She asked herself, Is it they who are changing, so much, so quickly—or is it my Sight that grows keener and keener?

  On another part of the field, all of the horses began to plunge and rear, lashing out with hooves and teeth, striking anyone, friend or foe, who came in their way. Turning her head to see what maddened them so, Winloki set eyes for the very first time on those most terrible of skinchangers: the Varjolükka, the Shadow-Beasts, the Man-Bears. Great shaggy ursine creatures they were, with bloodstained muzzles and powerful arms that could snatch up a man and crush him to death before he had time to cry out or attempt to defend himself.

  It was impossible for Kivik’s horsemen to charge in among the werebeasts. Where the Varjolükka went the horses would not go; they panicked and fought the reins until their riders finally had to dismount and fight the creatures on foot.