Skirmishes are being fought far into the woods and as far away as the twin rivers, flowing northward to join at the base of Osterburg’s walls. Such melees do not warrant more than a glance. She seeks, and she finds two armies massed for battle just beyond the woodland, gathered on open ground. The Wendish fly the banner of Princess Sapientia, the sigil of the heir of Wendar and Varre, six animals set on a shield: lion, dragon, and eagle, horse, hawk, and guivre. A large force of Ungrians bearing the sigil of the double-headed eagle comes up behind the Wendish line, ready to strike at the center of the Quman line.
Already the Quman archers fire at will, to soften up their enemy, but the Ungrians give as good as they get, and the Wendish legions swing wide and begin a steady advance toward the flanks. The Quman force seems larger than it is. From this height, like a hawk circling, she sees that the wings they wear make them seem as if they have more soldiers than they really do.
Brute force will win this engagement today, unless that magic she tastes in the air and feels like a prickling along her skin turns the tide.
A rumble like thunder rises as the armies shift forward and charge. Dust billows into the air. The Wendish and Ungrian forces shriek and cry out, voices ringing above the pound of hooves, but the Quman advance in uncanny silence, goaded on by their prince, whose griffin wings shine and glitter in the sunlight.
Just as the two armies meet in a resounding clash, she finds a thread spanning the wind. Aetheric hornets gleam along its length, buzzing and chattering as it extends toward the armies. She speeds backward along the thread. Beyond the Veser in a makeshift camp, desperate prisoners huddle, awaiting the outcome of the battle, but the thread leads her an arrow’s shot away from the groaning, helpless captives, back across the river to a low rise on the east bank overlooking the plain. The glimmering thread curls into a line of horsemen: a dozen guards, one light-haired person dressed in ragged Wendish garb, and a strange man stripped down to trousers patched together from a hundred different pieces of fabric. Blue-black tattoos cover his torso; they seem to writhe and shiver as he chants. Unlike the other Quman warriors, he wears no blackened and shrunken head dangling from his belt, but his ornaments are gruesome enough: earrings made from shriveled human noses, a needle piercing the septum of his nose and each end of it adorned with a withered human ear.
He is a shaman. The thread of hornets spins out from his voice, twisted into life through the words of his spell.
The woman beside him raises her head. In that first instant, Liath does not recognize her because of the hatred that mars her expression as she gazes over the field of battle. Hate distorts the heart, leaving scars, as it has scarred her own heart. Remembering this, she knows her.