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“Thank God,” said Heribert. That was all.
Anna crept forward to sink down next to the cleric. A moment later young Matto and Lord Thiemo, limping but mobile, pushed their way out of the crowd as well. Were they all that remained of the men he’d left behind to guard Blessing?
Fulk and his company had slaughtered any remaining Quman and now hunted through the scattered remnants of the baggage train. None of the ill-gotten loot from the train would ever arrive in the eastern plains, nor would any of these rich fabrics and glittering jewelry ever adorn Quman women.
“My lord prince.” Captain Thiadbold knelt before him, bloodied but not bowed. The groans of wounded men, Wendish and Quman alike, made a horrible din around them. “What is your command?”
“Set up a field hospital.” Sanglant glanced around and caught sight of Wolfhere, who had done his part in the fighting but now moved through the battlefield, searching for wounded who could be pulled free. “Eagle! You’ll stay with the Lions. There must be men here who might still live if they’re cared for. These wagons can be set to rights, and loaded. Be ready to march as soon as you can.”
“What of the Quman who are injured?” asked Thiadbold. “My men will kill them willingly enough.”
Sanglant hesitated. “Nay. Save those who can live. The Lord enjoins mercy, and I’ll have it now. Our enemy may yet prove of use to us.”
Wolfhere glanced at him, a strange expression on his face, but he said nothing. Instead, he hurried down the knoll to organize the freed prisoners and surviving soldiers into a work detail. Thiadbold merely shrugged and rose, calling to his men.
Captain Fulk rode up. “My lord prince. The Quman are routed.”
“Sound the horn and rally the men. We must return to Prince Bayan.”
Sibold raised the gold banner high so that all could spot the prince’s colors as Fulk blew three staccato blasts on the horn. Almost all his men reassembled; Lord Hrodik had fallen and was possibly dead, but the prince guessed that he hadn’t lost more than ten men in the attack. If only the Lions, and Duke Boleslas and his Polenie, had been so lucky. He could see the line of battle, and the dead, stretching east into the forest, a clear trail of bodies and blood showing the way the earlier battle had fallen out with the Quman chasing down the fleeing baggage train and the Polenie trying desperately to stop them.
No use dwelling over what was past. No time for regrets in the midst of battle. Knowing the real battle could be joined at any moment back on the Veser plain, Sanglant raised a hand to signal the advance. Paused. The skin between his shoulder blades crawled, as though an arrow had been aimed to pierce his back. He glanced back over his shoulder.
Captain Fulk moved up beside him. “Do you see anything, my lord prince? I believe we killed them all. They’ll not be back to trouble your daughter this day.”
“Nay, it’s not that, although we have to win the battle at hand before we can be sure we’re free of trouble.” Sanglant had a momentary illusion that hornets were swarming all around his head, but it sloughed off quickly. Yet he still could not shake the sense that someone was watching him. “Ai, Lord, Fulk, it’s hard enough knowing the danger my sweet child faces every day, that I’ve brought on her. Lord knows I’ve done things I’m not proud of these last months, but God forgive me, I still think of Liath constantly. Will I ever see her again?”
“I pray that you will, my lord prince.”
At times like these, battle was almost a relief. Better to fight than to dwell on his grief and his fears. He lifted his hand again, calling for a new lance to be brought for him.
A crack of thunder splintered the air around them. Horses neighed, rearing. Men raised their voices in alarm, but as suddenly quieted. As though silence itself commanded attention, men began to look around. Sanglant, too, looked back over his shoulder to see a tiny figure descending from the knoll. A veil concealed her face, but her ancient hands, gnarled with arthritis, betrayed her age. Scarcely taller than a child, Bayan’s mother wore rich gold robes elaborately embroidered with scenes of griffins and dragons locked in battle. When she commandeered a horse from a soldier—who promptly dropped to his knees as though felled—and mounted with assistance from one of her slaves, Sanglant saw that the robes were split for riding. Hastily, he rode over to her as soldiers reined away, made superstitious by the stories they had heard and by the uncanny behavior of the rain.
“My lady,” he began in Wendish, “I pray you, forgive me for not knowing the proper address for a woman of your birth and rank.” Though she was mounted now on a huge warhorse whose size dwarfed her, she did not look ridiculous. Sanglant towered over her. “I beg you, you will be safer here in the rear now that we have—”
One of her slaves stepped forward. “Stand not in the way of the holy woman.” He was a huge man with a dark complexion and thick shoulders and arms, not the kind worth tangling with in a fight unless necessary.
“She is safer—”
She rode away. Her feet didn’t even reach the stirrups.
“The holy woman has seen that her luck is in danger,” said the slave. “She must go.”
Her luck?
That quickly, Sanglant remembered the old Kerayit custom, that a shaman woman’s luck resided in the body of another person.
Her luck was her son.
This time when he raised a hand, twin horns blared. In the distance, he heard the answering bell of Druthmar’s horn. Afflicted all at once with a horrible sense of foreboding, Sanglant signaled the advance. With his forces marshaled and Druthmar waiting farther down to join them, Sanglant led them back along the road at a trot.
Long ago, at besieged Gent, when she saw him for the first time, he had been wearing that same dragon helm, splendid and handsome. Just as he was then. Just as he is now. Desire is a flame, a torch burning in the night. No traveler can help but be drawn toward it.
Ai, God, she misses him. She misses the feel of him.
But she has to go on. She has to choose wisely, never forgetting that she isn’t truly on Earth but rather ascending the last sphere.
No creature male or female can harm him. Remembering this, she stayed her hand through the worst of the fighting. In battle, truly, Sanglant can take care of himself. She hasn’t forgotten the lesson she learned in the sphere of jedu, the angel of war.
