Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (103 page)

Gold feathers as delicate as anything crafted in the finest goldsmith's hall and that pale viscous blood drifted in a spreading smear from the bank. The steaming blood stung, burning his skin where it flowed over and around him, and he scrambled and scraped over pebbles and slimy stones and heaved himself out on the grassy bank just as a shout rose from the men.

They had themselves become the beast, howling over their defeated prey.

Sigfrid ran up beside Ivar, dropping to his knees. He was weeping, signing frantically: "No! No!"

But it was too late.

The glorious creature was dead.

Ivar staggered up and tottered over to the ravening crowd of celebrating young men, and of a miracle Wichman's cronies made way for him. They didn't even tease him or pinch him as they would otherwise have done as he pushed through them to the side of the beast. In death, it only looked grotesque, not sublime. It was just a monstrous dead thing with shining feathers and dull, lifeless eyes.

Baldwin was helping Prince Ekkehard to stand.

"Damned fool idiot," Wichman was shrieking as Ekkehard tried to move his arms. "I
told
you to stay back. No charging in like a glory-mad fool. Just get out of my way next time!"

Blood leaked through chain mail, and the prince swayed a little as Baldwin held him up and his other young companions clustered around, with their bodies widening the distance between him and his massive cousin. Then he saw Ivar.

"I owe you my life," said Ekkehard irritably. "What reward do you want in return?"

"Burn it," said Ivar. Sigfrid had come up beside him, wiping fresh tears from his face. Ermanrich stood on the other bank, mouth an "o" of astonishment. "That's all I ask, Your Highness. Just burn it."

When the boy came in, leading the bolted horse, he was sent to the village with the news. Wichman ordered half his men to seek out the rest of the lost horses. Poor Mindless, the only casualty, was dying fast of blood loss and trauma: the beast had ripped his arm from its socket. They didn't bother to carry him anywhere, only made him comfortable on the ground and, squirting wine from their wineskins down his throat, got him drunk to kill the pain. Those who remained pulled feathers from the beast as well as they could, but they had to give up their looting because its blood blistered them even through gloves. When the villagers finally paraded in with cries of triumph and a garland of fireweed and pansies to drape around Prince Ekkehard's bruised neck, they had brought flagons of ale and a lit lamp.

Ekkehard still couldn't lift his arms, so he merely nodded when the old village woman offered him the lamp. "It injured you more than us," he said magnanimously. "Let the one of you who lost the most livestock set it on fire."

"But none of us lost any livestock, my lord," she said. "It were so cruel and fearsome looking, living so nearby, that we feared it might begin to stalk us."

Ekkehard blinked several times in quick succession, as if her words didn't quite make sense to him. Then, with a shrug, he sent Milo forward to fling the lamp onto the corpse from a safe distance.

Flames exploded from the body. Useless, still hanging about hoping to glean a few more feathers, got singed and skipped back, yelping like a hurt dog.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Ermanrich demanded of Ivar for the fourth time.

Ivar could only shrug. Sigfrid knelt at a safe distance from the bonfire and began to pray, lips moving although no intelligible sound could come out. He was still weeping.

The fire roared, and as feathers crisped and evaporated in the heat, Ivar began to see shapes in the flames: a multitude of honey-colored doves borne upward by the smoke; lions pacing into an unseen distance, sleek and pale; silvery roes leaping away as up invisible stair-steps of rock, vanishing into the heavens; salamanders delighting in the flames, their bright bodies more red than coals and their eyes sparking blue fire.

"I think we made a terrible mistake," he whispered.

Beyond the fire, where the rejoicing hadn't slackened and no one seemed aware of these strange emanations except as a heady cloud of incense wafting heavenward, an argument erupted as violently as had the fire out of the great bird.

"You're lying to us, you old bladder!" Wichman towered over the old woman who had first spoken to them, threatening her with a bloody-knuckled fist. "I know you hid your daughters. You admit yourself that it was a lie that the beast ate any of them. I saw some of them running into the woods."

"Leave them alone," said Ekkehard suddenly. He was still sitting on the ground, Milo, Baldwin and Udo hovering behind him as his servingmen agonized over how to get the bloodied mail shirt off without aggravating his injured shoulders. "What right have you to molest them?"

"The right of a commander who just lost a soldier to defend these miserable vermin!"

"I grieve for Lord Altfrid, too, but that's no reason to rape their daughters in exchange."

Wichman snorted, throwing his arms out and taking a big step to one side. He had a way of flinging his body into any space nearby when he was in a foul mood, the way a person took up room to show that he could. He wiped blood from his nose. "Now here's a change of heart from the randy little boy who was never happier than when groping his sluts in Gent. Or are you happy enough with your pretty attendant Baldwin? If he's not sword enough for you, I can loan you Eddo here, for he'll probe the canals of quite any creature, human, animal, or otherwise."

"Don't mock me," said Ekkehard in a low voice. "And don't molest these people." He had gone white along the jaw, but at
^!
least blood wasn't dripping anymore. The wind was blowing the inebriant smoke from the beast's pyre directly into his face, although he didn't seem to notice.

Wichman had, of course, stepped wisely out of the heaviest stream of smoke. "How do you mean to stop me? I have fifteen experienced men to your fourteen half-grown boys. We could chop you into pieces and go on our way without breaking a sweat."

"And pork the village girls besides," added Thruster enthusiastically. "Did they really
hide
them from us? Mean of them!"

"My father—" began Ekkehard, almost squeaking with anger.

"Ai, God!" cried Wichman, clapping a hand to his head in the familiar, mocking way. "What will dear Uncle Henry do to me? I'm kin. And he needs my mother's support, doesn't he? So just shut up, little Cousin, and go back to your novices and your prayers, or have you forgotten that you're a monk, not a soldier?"

"Then do it," said Ekkehard quietly. Sitting, he looked like a chiU vainly attempting to bully a roaring giant. Yet as the smoke poured off the pyre, it seemed to pool around his body. For an instant, Ivar thought he saw the golden shadow of the dead bird rising, wings outstretched, from the battered shoulders of the prince.

With a grimace, and some help from his companions, Ekkehard got to his feet. Even standing he was entirely outmatched by his brawny cousin, a big, stout, experienced fighter, survivor of the second battle of Gent, leader of that troop of reckless young men who, outnumbered and outmatched, had fought hit-and-run engagements against Bloodheart's Eika raiders for half a year. Ivar had heard all the glorious stories. So had Ekkehard, and his admiration for his cousin had become both embarrassing and a nuisance to Wichman.

But something had changed.

"Do it," repeated Ekkehard. "Just be sure my father knows who killed me, and who terrorized these helpless villagers. They've got no lady or lord to avenge them, to call out a feud on their behalf, to get repayment for any damages you do them. They've only got the pledge of the king that they are under his protection." He turned then to address the villagers. To their credit, they hadn't fled; they'd only slunk back like dogs about to be whipped who knew that bars hemmed them in with their captor. "Keep your daughters hidden," he said to them before turning back to defy his cousin. "Now what will you do? Kill them one by one until they bring out their daughters? Don't they have enough sheep to satisfy you and your companions?" Wichman slugged him. He fell, thrashing a little like the bird had as it died in the stream. His wounded arms fluttered, then stilled. With eyes rolled up in his head, he lay there limply.

Baldwin lunged for Wichman, and then there was a gasp of fighting, Ekkehard's boys throwing themselves against Wichman's men. Ivar would have leaped in, but Ermanrich restrained him and it was over in moments in any case. Half of Ekkehard's boys had blackening eyes and the rest purpling cheeks, most of them now held at arm's length like puppets.

"Let them go," said Wichman with disgust. "Bring me my horse," he called to his groom. He spat at the feet of the crone before mounting. The horse sidestepped, trying to get away from the pyre, and he yanked its head round. "Let's go," he said to his companions. "We can find better lodging than this. Get Altfrid's ring so we can return it to his sister."

They thundered off through the woods, making for the main road. Strangely, after their departure, the sun came out from its veil of clouds. The fire roared on, oblivious. Glittering stags poured out of the burning corpse, running in the sweet smoke until their shapes were lost in the light of the sun.

In the morning, Ekkehard still couldn't move his arms well enough to ride, but he looked remarkably cheerful as the villagers fussed over him. He'd been given the best bed in the hamlet, roomy enough for three and, according to Baldwin, not more infested than usual with fleas. The householder had strewn the floor with tansy to keep away vermin, and rushes had been brought in plenty to make soft bedding for Ekkehard's companions and servants.

But Sigfrid was missing.

They found him at the pyre. By the golden sheen of soot on his hair and nose and the state of his robe, they deduced he had snuck out sometime late in the evening after everyone else had gone to sleep and prayed all night beside the pyre. Seeing Ivar and Ermanrich, he grabbed a stick and scratched writing into the ashes.

"The Feast Day of St. Mercurius the Changeable," read Ermanrich, who still had an easier time reading than did Ivar. "No doubt accounting for Prince Ekkehard's noble behavior yesterday." He took the stick from Sigfrid and poked at the coals still smoldering in the pyre. No smoke rose, but a low mist of ashes seemed to hang about the coals as though blown up by some vast creature exhaling below. The pyre still gave off heat. It smelled now like a vast grave of flowers, a hundred rich scents tangled into one.

"Euw!" Ermanrich leaped back, dropping the stick. Within the bright embrace of the coals, a gleaming red-gold worm writhed.

Startled, Sigfrid flung out his hands to hold Ivar and Ermanrich back. He actually tried to speak—normally he never forgot about his missing tongue—but he was so excited now, trembling, mobile face working, that he made the most pathetic noises until, finally, he grabbed the stick and tried to write something in the ashes. But a hard wind came up and they had to jump back as the pyre swirled up in a cloud of golden ash, spinning, then settled.

The glowing worm had vanished. Sigfrid began to weep.

"It was a sign," said Ermanrich portentously. "But was it the Enemy, or God?"

Sigfrid, looking ecstatic more than grief-stricken, flung himself down onto his knees and began to pray again. They could not budge him, and there he prayed for the rest of the day while villagers came and went to exclaim over the remains of the beast, although none dared touch the coals. Indeed, as the day progressed, the coals seemed to glow more hotly. But maybe that was only Ivar's imagination, his own weak flesh reacting as, emboldened by Wichman's departure, the village's young women crept back. Nervous at first, like pigs knowing that one of their kind has been slaughtered, they grew bolder when none of the young men in Ekkehard's party molested them.

"Perhaps our preaching has finally reached Prince Ekkehard's heart," Ivar said to Ermanrich that evening as they feasted on roast chicken flavored with mustard, honey cakes, greens, and a very coarse dark bread that he had to soak in ale to make edible.

"I don't know," said Ermanrich, looking doubtful. "It was very sudden."

Ekkehard's arms still hurt him too much to move, although otherwise they seemed to be healing well. He allowed Baldwin to feed him, and had further charmed the villagers by drinking out of the wooden cup, engraved with a swan, offered to him by a village elder.

"I pray you, my lord prince," said Baldwin, smiling prettily, "let me take something out to our companion, Sigfrid, for otherwise I'm afraid he won't eat."

"Pray do so," said Ekkehard, who like everyone admired Sigfrid for his humble devotion to God and the ease with which he shed sincere tears. But then, the noble expression shattered briefly, twisting into something else. "But don't take
him,"
he said, waving toward the far end of the table where Ivar and Ermanrich sat. "Take the fat one."