PROLOGUE (81 page)

An old woman limped, a trail of blood marking her stumbling path. A young man hugged a baby to his chest while at his side his pretty wife, her expression caught between terror and hopeless anger, slapped her screaming toddler into silence before clutching the now-stupefied child tightly against her as tears streamed down her cheeks. Children sobbed. A girl tried vainly

to hold together her torn sleeve. A chubby man in steward's robes fell to the ground and lay there moaning helplessly, face buried in the dirt.

Smoke from the burning houses clouded Hanna's vision. Tears stung her eyes. The townsfolk saw her then, an Eagle riding among the hated Quman.

An elderly man dressed in a rich man's tunic stepped forward, raising his merchant's staff.” I pray you, Eagle," he cried, "intercede for us—"

A Quman struck him down. Blood pooled from the old man's temple into the depression left by the heel mark of the warrior's boot. A half-grown boy with a cut on his cheek screamed out loud, once, and an older girl who looked to be his sister clapped a hand over his mouth. There was a terrified silence. All of the townsfolk dropped their gazes and hunched their shoulders, as if by not seeing, by making themselves small, they would not be seen.

Bulkezu laughed. The sound echoed weirdly, muffled by his helm. He gestured, and the interpreter hurried foi'ward, eager to serve. He had stolen a new tunic off a corpse about ten days ago and had recently gotten hold of a silver chain out of the ruins of a burned church. The finery made him vain. Hanna hadn't known his name before, but now that he had a half-dozen prisoners to use as slaves, he had begun to style himself "Lord Boso." Sometimes, if Bulkezu was in a magnanimous mood, Boso got to pick a fresh woman from among the newly-captured prisoners rather than accept the leavings after the Quman had done with them.

Bulkezu pulled off his helm. He spoke, and Boso translated.

"His Munificence feels a strong mercy weighing upon his heart. Be glad you do not face his wrath. Because of his good humor this day, he will allow the Eagle to choose ten from your number. The rest will become prisoners. It will become their good fortune to be allowed to serve their Quman masters."

Was this mercy? Hanna felt sick. The townsfolk stared at her, seeming not to understand his words. Already Quman warriors walked among the three hundred or so captives, testing the soundness of limbs, pinching the arms of the young women to see how pleasingly fat they were, prodding the few men who remained,” those who hadn't been killed in the first assault or the final desperate fighting. Some men made good slaves; some did not, because they would always struggle. Bulkezu and his men knew how to tell the difference.” What will happen to those left behind, the ones I choose?" she asked.

Bulkezu kept a stony face until Boso translated her words. His reply was swift and certain.” His Bounteousness gives his word that they will be allowed to stay behind, unmolested. Let the Eagle choose."

The reputation of the Kerayit shamans had protected her for this long. Bulkezu had not laid a hand on her, but perhaps he meant to win her regard using different methods, mercy and persuasion, if you called this mercy. She regarded him suspiciously, but he only smiled, looking ready as always to burst out laughing.

She made the mistake of looking again at the townsfolk. They were beaten, they were lost, but a few had managed to understand Boso's words. No matter how they struggled to keep their expressions blank, she saw hope flower in their eyes, she saw hatred burn for the choice she would be allowed to have over them. The girl with the torn sleeve hissed.” Slave! Traitor!" She wasn't talking to Boso.

The townsfolk all looked at Hanna; in their hearts they knew what she was, if she rode among the Quman. Fire hissed from the town, an echo of the girl's accusation. Boso whispered to Bulkezu, and the prince snapped a command. The girl was dragged forward, thrown down to her knees before him. She began to snivel and cry. She couldn't have been more than thirteen. He drew his sword.

"I choose her," said Hanna hastily.” I am a prisoner, too. I have no choice, I didn't ask to travel with them." These words she spoke to the watching townsfolk, but they didn't believe her. They hated her now anyway, whatever they believed of her, because she had the power of life and death over them, the power to choose who would remain free and who would become a slave. It was a cruel game to play with them, and with her. Hope is often cruel.

But if she didn't choose, then they would all suffer as Bulkezu's slaves.

He laughed as she choose them—the defiant girl, the young couple with the two small children, a man with the burly arms of a smith, a woman who reminded her of her mother and the teenage girl clinging to her side—because by the time there were only two choices left to make they were all begging and pleading to be chosen themselves, or thrusting their innocent children forward in the hope of saving them from the Quman yoke. So many.

Cold wind stung her cheeks, bringing tears. The Quman warriors shoved the desperate townsfolk back, away from Hanna.

Children wept. The boy with the cut cheek shuddered as his sister gripped him tightly, but no sound escaped him. The steward curled up and moaning into the dirt began to claw the ground as though he meant, like a mole, to dig himself in to safety. He was missing three fingers. His blood had spattered the front of his linen tunic.

"Two more," cried Lord Boso cheerfully. The townsfolk's fear excited him. His eyes ranged over the women who were left, measuring them, his own nasty gaze lit with greedy desire.

The Quman watched without expression, all except Bulkezu, who found the scene amusing. She hated him for his laughter. She hated him all the more because it would have been easier to hate him if he had been ugly, but even when he laughed, even when he reveled in her pain and in his captives's despair, when his laughter revealed a pitiless and ugly heart, none of that darkness marked his handsome face.

It wasn't true after all, what the church folk sometimes preached: as inside, so outside.

Let no one know she was weeping inside. She was the King's Eagle. It was her duty to witness, to save what she could. She picked out two more girls, both about the same age as the girl with the torn sleeve. Old enough to survive if they were left on their own. Old enough to be raped and taken as concubines if they were left with the Quman.

Boso cursed at her, having had his eye on one of them. Bulkezu finally stopped chuckling. With shuttered eyes, he watched Hanna, not the chosen ten being herded back to burning Echstatt. A captain called out the advance. A horn blew. Weeping and wailing, the rest of Echstatt's survivors were goaded and lashed toward the waiting army.

<>
The captives stumbled along. One toddler, falling behind, was killed where it lay sobbing, a prod for the rest. Riding with the command group, Hanna soon outdistanced them, but their cries and grief stayed with her anyway, melding soon enough into the morass of sorrow that attended the Quman army: the mob of prisoners driven along with livestock and extra horses.

Late that afternoon the scene was repeated again when the vanguard reached a village. Soldiers drove a crowd of prisoners forward to take the brunt of the initial assault. When the first flurry of arrows trailed off, the Quman troops attacked, burned the palisade and houses, and rounded up prisoners. Bulkezu brought her forward again, to grant mercy to ten.

"I won't do it," she said.” You're only playing a game with me. You don't care about mercy."

Bulkezu laughed. As he spoke, Boso translated.” Then I will choose, and leave ten behind for the crows."

This time a woman spat on her, calling her worse names than "slave" and "traitor", and was murdered for her disrespect. But Hanna chose ten while the others huddled in hopeless silence or stared at her accusingly.

"Mercy is a waste of time," said Bulkezu as Boso translated.” People despise the ones who show them mercy."

"They feel I have betrayed them," said Hanna, "and maybe I have."

The vanguard set up camp an arrow's flight from the ruined village, upwind from the mass of the army and, more particularly, from the stinking mass of livestock and prisoners. But Bulkezu liked to survey his riches. He liked his luxuries, his silk robes, handsome gold trinkets, sweet-smelling women he did not treat badly as long as they did not resist him. Yet these were all things he could give up and leave behind without a moment's thought. What he enjoyed most of all, as far as Hanna could tell, was the misery he left in his wake.

With his night guard in attendance and Hanna perforce at his side, he rode back along the lines, weaving in and out through his troops, stopping at campfires, inspecting tents, until he reached the bloated crowd of prisoners mixed together with stolen livestock, cattle and goats and sheep bleating and lowing, chickens and ducks fluttering and squawking in cages, and

every variety of donkey and horse, from scrawny asses to sturdy work ponies to an aged warhorse now ridden by four small children. Even cowed as the prisoners were by their fear of their masters, they still made noise enough to wake the dead. She could not count them all; in the last few days the numbers had swelled alarmingly as the Quman army swept into more densely inhabited areas. By now, she guessed there were twice as many prisoners as soldiers.

Winter had become spring, although here and there snow lingered on the rooftops or in the northern shadow of trees. Cold and wet made conditions wretched even for those who traveled in some comfort. For the prisoners, most barefoot and half without even a cloak to warm them, spring was deadly. Every night some lay down who would not get up again in the morning. Children too weak to cry whimpered. A man scratched the festering sores on his legs. A mother clutched an emaciated child to her breast, but she had no milk. Here and there knots of people huddled together, protecting precious stores of food gained from relatives who had by one means or another come under the protection of a man in the Quman army—a young woman to be his concubine, her mother to cook his meat and gruel or to mend his shirts, a boy to groom his horses or polish his armor.

While Hanna watched, a dozen soldiers rode up to look over the new captives. The guards rounded them up—easy to mark out the new ones because their look of terror hadn't yet been subsumed by numb despair—and prodded them forward. Bulkezu watched with that irritating half smile on his face. Other villages had been overrun today. Hanna saw prisoners who had not been among those she had seen taken, chief among them a pretty young woman who had just the kind of pleasingly plump figure that Quman men found attractive. Soldiers jostled each other to get close to her, to poke and pinch her, to check her teeth and test the strength of her hair; soon enough she was crying openly, so afraid that she wet herself. One man shoved another to get him out of his way. Curses flew fast and furious.

The smile vanished from Bulkezu's face as he urged his horse forward. At once, the jostling ceased and the men moved back obediently. His griffin wings hissed softly as a breeze rose. Bulkezu ruled his army with an iron hand. He did not tolerate fighting among his troops. Lord Wichman and his cronies would not have lasted a day among the Quman, no matter how great their prowess in battle.

He bent down from the saddle to touch the young woman's hair, letting it fall through his hands before lifting it up again, testing the weight and silkiness between his fingers. The young woman had wits enough to stop weeping, although maybe she was only shocked into a stupor.

Bulkezu had decided to take her for himself.

He called out orders. Then they all waited with that seemingly infinite patience the Quman had while two of the night guards rode away to the vanguard. Bulkezu whistled merrily while he waited; some of the soldiers contented themselves with other, women, dragging them away from their families while cries of grief and fear broke out among the new prisoners. The young woman stood stiffly, bolt upright, only her gaze ranging as she looked for help, for succor, for escape—hard to say.

Hanna moved forward as the night guards returned with all five of Bulkezu's current concubines, to be handed over to the men who had been fighting over the new woman. One of them—the blonde who had been found hiding in a root cellar—threw herself down before his horse, crying and pleading, trying to grab his boot and hang on. Bulkezu, laughing, kicked her in the face and signaled to a soldier to drag her away.

Hanna used the cover of this mild disturbance to ride in close to the new captive. She bent forward as she passed, spoke quickly and in a low voice, hoping the girl had wits enough to pay attention.” No flattery. No whining. No fear. Don't cry."

Then she had crossed beyond her, not daring to turn to see how the woman had reacted. The blonde was still weeping as one of the soldiers who had started the fighting over the new captive hauled her away. The old captives merely watched, too ill, too weak, or too hopeless to react. A few enterprising children, grown wise from neglect, sidled over to the families of those taken away. They knew who had access to food: the ones who pleased their masters.