Alain lifted his hands from the wagon’s side just as it lurched forward, pulled by two strong centaur women. Torches lined the roads, and an eerie whistling rose from the assembled centaurs as the wagon passed through their ranks.
“Come,” said Agalleos, taking Alain by the arm. “We must go with them.”
“But we have to go back to get Adica!”
“The road back is closed to us now. The Cursed Ones will roam everywhere because of this. It isn’t safe.”
“But—”
Sos’ka trotted up. “Here is my cousin,” she said, indicating a husky centaur who bore a remarkable resemblance to Sos’ka: shoulders the width of Beor’s and muscular arms. Like all the others, she went naked, not a scrap of clothing. “She will carry you for the first part of the road.”
“Come,” said Agalleos.
Rage and Sorrow nosed against him, licking his hands. In the distance, a shout raised from Spider’s Fort. Already the mass of centaurs had fallen in to follow the wagon, torches fading into the distance as they picked up speed.
Alone, he could not make his way back to Shu-Sha’s camp through unknown country now surely buzzing with agitated soldiers on the lookout for creeping enemies. In a way, it seemed like losing the phoenix feather was a terrible omen. Anger and fear warred within him, until he remembered the Holy One’s whispered words about Adica: “Who needs you.”
No matter what came next, he would find a way back to her.
XVII
POISON
1
AFTER twenty days marching west, the armies moving in parallel columns under separate commanders, they began to get sporadic and possibly exaggerated reports of a large Quman force moving north along the Veser River, closing in on Osterburg. Just as they were. The thought of facing Bulkezu again made Zacharias so sick that he could scarcely bring himself to eat.
Rumors flew violently among the troops, often accompanied by fistfights. Who would command, when the battle came that everyone was hoping for? Henry had said that he meant Princess Sapientia to be his heir, her soldiers argued; but he never anointed her, Sanglant’s loyal followers retorted. They had heard the king offer Aosta and its crown to Sanglant. Didn’t that count for anything? Not if he’d refused it, the answer went. He was still a bastard, after all, even if he was a great fighter and leader.
No one could answer that objection satisfactorily: he was still a bastard, after all.
It was rumored that Princess Sapientia was pregnant. When at last the call came down through the ranks that there would be a trial by combat to determine who had the right to command, everyone knew that she would therefore choose her husband as her champion. The church sometimes used such trials to determine which person God ordained as victor when an irreconcilable dispute was brought before a biscop. Only one could win, and that one would win the right to command the combined armies, now almost three thousand mounted warriors, a huge force with more lordly and monastic retinues joining up every day as they marched west, gathering strength and resolve.
The road in this region of Saony was more a wagon track, but at least the local residents at the villages and estates had heard rumors of the atrocities committed by the Quman army to the south and were, for that reason, only somewhat reluctant to give over stores of their newly harvested grain to the army.
They set camp early that night where three grassy meadows cut a swath of open ground through woodland. Sheep and cattle grazed, watched over by shepherds. The commanders ordered half the beasts taken from the herds to feed the army and sent the rest on their way to discourage hungry soldiers from stealing what they wished under cover of night.
The two armies gathered just before twilight in the central meadow, where a slope ran down to a stream. Grass grew abundantly. The soldiers took their places on the slope while servants set up a pavilion by the stream’s edge for those nobles privileged enough to attend Princess Sapientia: Bayan’s Ungrian retainers, Lord Wichman, the Polenie duke Boleslas, Hrodik and Druthmar, Brigida with her levies from Avaria, a lady from Fesse, and several nobles from the marchlands who had joined to avenge the damage done to their lands by the Quman.
Prince Bayan’s mother had been brought forward in her palanquin, but of course, with all the veils drawn and curtains closed, no one could see her nor ever would. She had a new slave, one of the ones she’d bought at Machteburg: a well-built Quman youth standing beside one of the carrying poles. Like the other three, he watched without expression as the proceedings unfolded, as though he was both deaf and mute. Had the old woman ensorcelled all those who served her? Had she cast a love spell over Sapientia to make the princess besotted with her husband?