PROLOGUE (58 page)

Ekkehard gasped out loud, but got control of himself as though he'd just remembered that, in the epics, the hero always died nobly. Straightening up, he composed his face sternly to meet his doom.

Bulkezu laughed again. He clapped Ekkehard on the shoulder and gestured toward the large tent.

The interpreter spoke mockingly.” Prince Bulkezu wishes to share wine with his Wendish brother, in token of their kinship."

"Is he going to poison me?" whispered Ekkehard, trying to look courageous and cool.

"Nay, my lord prince, he's going to do just as he says, share a cup of wine with you that he's taken off some poor God-fearing decent folk who are now dead and lying unburied, food for the ravens. I hope you enjoy it."

It seemed to Hanna that not one man there was paying attention to her. There were no obvious sentries anywhere. Most of the two dozen men in the small clearing stood around watching with various expressions of amusement the interplay between their prince and his prisoners. Off to the right, beyond the tents, seven men moved among the horses. These stocky creatures looked awkward compared to the bigger, prettier mounts captured with Ekkehard. One older man with a tattooed face and wearing a strange costume composed of dozens of scraps of cloth sewn into a patchwork stood off to one side, where he fingered the elfshot gashes torn into the roan's rump. With an absent, almost crazy smile, he smeared a yellowish paste onto the wounds, letting another man hold the horse's head so it wouldn't bolt.

She shifted sideways on her knees as Ekkehard made up his mind to approach the princely tent with as much dignity as his tied hands allowed. With everyone watching that little procession, she might have a chance to make a break for it.

But to what end? Would abandoning Ekkehard result in his execution? Could she really expect to escape when they had horses and she was on foot? Were the shadow elves still lurking in the forest?

Yet no matter what, no matter the risk or the consequences, she had to try to reach the king. He had to be made to understand that Quman raiding parties were overrunning the eastern borders of his kingdom.

Hanna got a foot under her, pushed up—

—and saw a needle-thin arrow skate across the snow right in front of her. It dissolved into smoke, melting down into the snow. A cloud of air, puffing out from nose and mouth, shrouded her vision briefly, but the shadow forms of the Lost Ones were unmistakable once you knew them, old enemies returned to haunt her. She sucked in air, and the mist cleared. A dozen bows aimed down at the camp as the shadow elves gathered at the forest's edge At whose hands would death be worse?

Like firebrands being quenched in water, arrows hissed and smoked through the brittle air. Two struck into the snow, first at one side of her and then, as she rolled away, to the other. Tiny trails of smoke rose where the arrows melted into the snow.

It seemed impossible for such delicate threads to be so deadly.

A scream pierced the quiet clearing. A Quman soldier reeled backward, hands grasping his head. Blood leaked between his gloved fingers as he staggered and fell, although his scream echoed on and on in time to the pounding of her heart.

She scrambled backward. An arrow streaked toward the Quman prince. Whether by luck or calculation, he twisted, catching the dart on his griffin wings. A shower of sparks like a hot iron forge lit up the dawn.

Bulkezu shouted unintelligible orders. Those with horses near turned them to become shields against the shadow foe. A few Quman loosed arrows in reply, but their shots flew wildly, clumsily drawn, and the shadows always faded into bush or tree before Quman arrows could strike a target.

A half-dozen Quman soldiers shoved Prince Ekkehard and his company toward the big pavilion. Lord Welf fell, although Hanna did not see where he was hit. A burly soldier hooked him under the armpits and dragged him on after the others.

The patch-cloak man let out a sudden whoop, dancing toward the prince, who had slapped his helmet back over his head. The shaman stripped off his cloak to reveal a naked torso, his chest and back covered with fantastic blue-black tattoos. As he babbled and pranced, the designs, wild and magical animals, scenes of battle, celestial forms, began to writhe and come to life.

Hanna shook her head hard, thinking she was seeing things, and found shelter behind a stalwart pony too stupid to be scared. She could not keep her gaze from the dancing man, his stocky, hairless torso, muscular legs, and powerful arms. In each of his ears he wore a chain of three human noses. A golden needle pierced the septum of his nose, with a human ear, dried and withered, skewered on each end. His hands were gloved in skins from human feet and his feet in skins from human hands.

Bulkezu ducked, catching a shower of arrows in his wings again, and took cover behind the captured roan. But the shaman crouched in plain sight and sang. With each phrase he hunkered lower and lower until Hanna thought he meant to dig himself entirely into the snow. A white haze rose around him, like wind blowing the top layer off a snowy field, and his tattoos actually slipped off his body onto the snow and like a thousand wriggling worms climbed up onto Bulkezu, and the horse, spreading and growing until a half-dozen men and then a dozen more were dappled with his tattoos.

Bulkezu mounted the horse and shouted a command. With bows and spears and swords, the Quman charged up the hill. A hail of darts fell among them, but neither Bulkezu nor his soldiers flinched. As the shadow arrows struck, the tattoo beasts and warriors caught and swallowed them, and any harm they might cause. Neither horse nor rider could be wounded. With Bulkezu in the lead, they crested the slope and fell upon the shadow elves.

The battle thrashed away into the trees as the Quman drove off their attackers. Prince Bulkezu was nowhere in sight, a dozen men scurried to corral the spooked horses, and the shaman, rising from the snow, threw his patchwork cloak back on and with a few assistants got busy tending to the wounded, including poor Lord Welf.

No one was paying attention to Hanna, no one at all.

Lady Fortune had a strange way of showering her favor over the hapless. Hanna got as far as the tree line before, amazingly, she tripped over that same damned trip line that had caught her in the first place. She fell hard, wind knocked out of her. Her head ached, and her hands had gone numb. But by God she was going to get out of here. She forced her elbows under herself and began to push up, just as hands grabbed her ankles.

She swore helplessly as a soldier dragged her back into camp. It was as much as she could do to keep her head up off the ground so she didn't smother in snow. Her captor didn't let go of her until he reached the entrance to the great tent. There, he let go of her ankles and rolled her over the threshold—a ridge of wood that bruised an arm and hip as she was tipped over it—onto a miraculously soft carpet that had no snow on it. She lay there, gasping for breath, as melting granules of snow trickled from all the creases in her clothing to numb her skin under her clothing. She wanted to weep, but she didn't have the luxury.

After a moment, she pushed up to her hands and knees, staggered slightly, and stood, aware that about a dozen men had crowded into the pavilion, eager to watch the final tawdry scene unfold.

Bulkezu sat on a stool at his ease, watching her. He still wore his armor, but his wings and his helmet had been set aside and his skin and clothing bore no sign of the tattoos that had protected him. If the fight had discomposed him at all, she saw no sign of it in his posture or his serene expression. He said a few casual words to the interpreter, who like Hanna was still breathing hard, looking relieved to have escaped death.

"His Imperiousness Prince Bulkezu suggests with all politeness that you not try to escape again. He's quite taken with your blonde hair. If you're lucky, he'll like you well enough to keep you to himself for a bit before he throws you to the wolves."

"I wonder that he can't hear what a bastard you are just from your tone of voice," said Hanna.” I'll thank you, traitor, to let His Most Gracious Prince Bulkezu know that he'd better not touch me, because I'm a King's Eagle, and my person is sacrosanct."

The interpreter merely snorted, then repeated what she hoped were her words. Bulkezu only laughed as he rose and approached her. Miraculously, her cloak hadn't come unpinned despite all the dragging and tumbling about. He grabbed hold of her brass Eagle's brooch and ripped it clean off. Her cloak slid down her body to land in a heap on the carpet, all ridges and rumpled valleys. Her tunic, torn, drooped a little, revealing skin.

Bulkezu sighed, lifting a hand to fondle her hair.

"Sorry to tell you," said the interpreter, who hadn't moved from his place beside the prince's stool.” The Quman believe that blonde hair is good luck. I've seen a man killed fighting to get possession of a light-haired bed-slave."

She was really getting frightened now, knowing how ugly it was probably going to get, and her fear made her angry and reckless. She hated the feel of Bulkezu touching her like she was an animal, or already his bed-slave. Grabbing his wrist, she yanked his hand down from her hair.

He hadn't expected her to defy him, and anyway, she'd worked hard all her life and wasn't a weakling. For the space of two breaths they stood poised there, she holding his wrist away and he gone tense, resisting her. They were almost exactly the same height. This close, she saw a shadow flicker in his eyes, the spark of anger. Something about him changed, his posture, the cant of his head, the tension in his shoulders. The atmosphere in the tent altered completely. The interpreter made a strangled noise in his throat, catching back a gasp of fear.

The ugly scene was upon them.

Bulkezu forced her hand down slowly, slowly. It wasn't easy for him to do it, but in the end he was stronger although she fought him all the way. He just held her arm down by her hip to prove that he had her, that she'd lost, that nothing she could do would change the fact that she was his now, to do with as he willed. He kept his gaze locked on hers, to drive her into utter submission.

She didn't flinch. In this contest, he could kill her if he wished, but he would never win. She refused to be beaten.

Fluttering up from the depths of her memory in that moment before the worst happened, she remembered Brother Breschius.

Without looking away from the Quman prince, Hanna spoke clearly and strongly.” I pray you, traitor, tell your master that he'd rather be dead than touch me because I'm the luck of a Kerayit shaman."

She saw the word "Kerayit" strike Bulkezu as might an arrow, right in the eyes. His grip on her slackened, just for an instant, but hesitation is usually fatal. She twisted her wrist within his fingers and jerked out of his grasp.

The interpreter made a gagging noise in his throat, as though a bone had stuck there. But he spoke words nevertheless. Prince Bulkezu stepped back from her at once, alarmed and surprised. He snapped an order in his own tongue. It seemed like every man there gaped at her, faces white or flushed, as one darted out of the tent. He returned quickly with the man dressed in the patchwork cloak.

The shaman groped in one of his barkskin pouches. He came up with a handful of powder and flung it at her. Coughing, she waved the white powder away as it settled down into her hair and on her shoulders, drifting to the carpet. Its stink ate into her and woke the wasp sting in her heart. The shaman's eyes got very wide. He babbled in a high, anxious voice, made a number of signs that looked like the kind of gestures witches made when casting protection about themselves, and became so agitated, drooling and spitting froth, that most of the men fled the tent. His nose earrings swayed as he shuddered and twitched. Finally, he sank down into a huddle on the floor, exhausted. As well he might be, after fighting off the shadow elves with his magic.

There was silence. Hanna began to wonder where Ekkehard was, or if he was even still alive.

And then, of course, Prince Bulkezu laughed, as if he'd just heard the best joke of his life. That easy laughter was beginning to make her nervous.

Her wrist hurt, and her stomach and breasts ached from the jolting drag across the ground, and her feet especially were freezing with flashes of hot and cold. But she couldn't afford to look weak now.

With an amused smile on his handsome face, Bulkezu sat back down on his camp stool and gave some orders, nothing she could understand. The old shaman unrolled himself from his stupor, rose, and hurried away without any sign he'd had a fit. He returned with a fine copper basin engraved with griffins devouring deer and a copper pitcher filled with hot water. Where on Earth had they come by hot water in this godforsaken wilderness when they had not even one campfire burning to alert enemies to their position?

He gestured toward a curtain while Bulkezu watched her with avid interest. Other men hurried out, sent on errands. Hanna allowed the shaman to show her behind the curtain. Here lay pillows and furs, the plush sleeping quarters of a nomad prince. The shaman ignored them, indicating that she should wash herself.