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The interpreter looked much improved, remarkably so, since she had last seen him throwing up during the parley, but perhaps it was only glee over her impending punishment. “Be afraid, woman. His Dreadfulness has had enough of your disobedience and disrespectful words.”
Was it actually possible that Boso hadn’t realized what had happened at the parlay? Didn’t he know that Bulkezu could understand him? Or was she the fool, thinking all along that Boso hadn’t known? She staggered, head swimming, and fought to keep her balance, to keep her dignity.
“His patience is at an end because you’ve made him very angry.”
A cold fear crept into her gut as the silence dragged out. A few slaves stopped to stare, but Bulkezu’s guards chased them away. He wasn’t one for the big public gesture, not like the Wendish nobles, who raised up and threw down their favorites in the middle of court so that everyone could see. He was a man who kept his grudges personal.
Boso actually sniggered; so aroused was he by the expectation of her imminent downfall that he forgot to be sarcastic. “You can keep your clothes and your Eagle’s cloak, so no one forgets who you are. But all other protections Prince Bulkezu withdraws.”
She found her voice, hoarse as it was. “You mean he’s going to hand me over to Princess Theophanu?”
Boso guffawed, giggling helplessly. Bulkezu’s expression didn’t change. Four guards came forward. If she fought, they’d see how desperately frightened she was. Hadn’t Sorgatani’s luck protected her? Wouldn’t the Kerayit shaman watch over her? She looked toward Cherbu, but he had already wandered away into the trees.
Had she really believed in any savior but Bulkezu’s whim, which had now turned cold?
“You thought yourself better than the rest,” said Boso.
“No more than did you,” she murmured, but she could barely get the words out. It hurt to talk. The impassive guards moved in around her, lances raised. She took a step back, flushed and perspiring as the sun slid out from behind the clouds and beat down upon her.
They advanced, and she retreated, step by step, until she realized that they were driving her, as they would drive a cow or a ewe, back to the miserable crowd of prisoners scattered like so many wilting flowers through the clearing. No longer was she Bulkezu’s honored hostage, his model prisoner. She was just one more hapless captive left to stagger along in the wake of the army, one short step in front of the lances of the rear guard.
Most of the captives had collapsed in the grass, trying to cover their heads against the glare of the sun. Few had survived the night of the slaughter, and perhaps because of that, the plague had not surfaced again in the train of Bulkezu’s army. He had raced ahead, leaving the plague behind, but he still took prisoners and he still dragged them along for his amusement, for his assaults, for whatever sick reason he had, if he had reasons at all beyond laying waste.
A few, those not yet so weakened by their ordeal that they noticed nothing beyond the next sip of gruel, raised themselves up to watch as Hanna was pressed back into their midst.
More than anything, she noticed the stink of so many unwashed bodies, open sores, pools of diarrhea and urine and vomit spreading from those too sick to crawl away from their own sickness, all of it a sink of despair. Flies buzzed everywhere, feasting on infected eyes and filth-encrusted hands. Surely plague was hiding here, waiting to burst out again as it had that awful night.
Ai, God, if truth be told, she was more afraid of the plague than she was of Bulkezu.
A man sporting a black-and-blue eye and drooping folds of flesh at his chin heaved himself up from the ground and spat at her. “Whore! I see you got what you deserved at long last. I hope you got pleasure of what that demon gave you, while he was giving, because you’ll get no such pleasure here.”
His comrade, a tall man dressed in rags, lurched forward to grab for her. “I’d like a taste of his leavings!” He got a hand on her shoulder.
She ducked, by some miracle found a stout stick in the grass, and whacked him across the face. He was a lot bigger than she was, but she’d been eating and he hadn’t. Staggering, he stumbled back and sat down hard. Pain stabbed through her cheek, but she dared show no weakness.
Yet no one laughed, or protested, or reacted at all. Most of them were too ill and exhausted even to care, even to hate. The Quman guards moved off, leaving her standing in the midst of the pack with a pounding headache and a swollen face.
“I am also a prisoner, a commoner from Wendar, just as you are. A King’s Eagle, taken captive in the east—”
Even a starving man can feed on hate, if he’s nothing left to him.
“Whore and traitor,” said one of the women listlessly. She had a bundle of dirty rags clutched to her chest, but it was only when she shifted that Hanna saw she held a sickly child, eyes crusted shut with dried pus. Flies crawled over the child’s pallid face, but neither it nor its mother had enough strength to brush them away.
In the distance a river ran noisily. She smelled water, although the trees hid it from view. Most of the prisoners were looking at her now. Good Wendish folk, just like her.
The tall man coughed and braced himself on his hands as he caught his breath. When he grinned, she saw that all of his front teeth were missing. “You’ll have to sleep sometime.”
She spoke to the others. “Don’t you see? The more we quarrel among ourselves, the easier his victories come.”
No one answered. After a bit, the tall man and his companion dragged themselves off to the edge of the group. As for the rest, they were too weary, too hungry, and too apathetic to do anything but lie back down on the ground and close their eyes.
The Quman guards did not stop her as she gathered grass and, after several abortive attempts, wove a shallow basket and lined it with leaves. They shadowed her as she made her way through a narrow patch of woodland to the river’s shore and knelt in the shallows. Upstream she saw only forest, but far downstream she saw a line of smoke rising into the sky.
Had Bulkezu taken Theophanu’s bribe and ridden on, bypassing Barenberg? There had been no battle today, and this river looked broad enough to be the mighty Veser, flowing north toward the Amber Sea.
The basket held water well enough that she could carry it around to those folk too exhausted, or too afraid of the Quman, to walk to the river themselves. Best to start with the weak ones. They hadn’t the strength to spit at her and were usually grateful for the water.
When she brought it to the mother with the sick child, she met suspicion first.
