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“’Ware! ’Ware!” shouted Aronvald. “Laurant! Tomas! Get to the horses! Go!”
She turned just as an arrow buried its burning head in the thatch that roofed the weaving shed. The roof of the hall smoldered but did not catch, but when a second arrow slammed into the weaving shed’s roof, flames caught and leaped and danced. The light threw twisting shadows all around, and cast yellow into men’s complexions as they backed away. Their enemy had settled on the same plan of attack: burn them out.
“Water! Water!” cried Thiadbold.
Horses neighed from the corral where they had been confined. If they panicked—
Sister Rosvita and Sister Acella appeared on the porch of the hall. Smoke leaked out of the door, wrapping them in a writhing gray aura that dissipated an instant later in the wind.
Must go, she thought, knowing herself vulnerable out in the open, but she could not make her feet move as a fire broke out in the thatch of a storage hut. A clamor began out by the main gate, men shouting an alert, men running. A man screamed.
“Hit! Hit!”
“Pull him back!” That was Ingo calling out commands. Ai, God. “Where’s that cart? Faster, boys! Get it in place! Keep your heads down!”
“It burns! Ai! Ai!”
“Hold him down! Get him to the hall!”
“Hanna!” The cry came from Thiadbold.
She turned toward him, and saw a streak, a shadow. “Thiadbold!”
Too late. The arrow cut through his glove and stuck, bobbing as he cursed and yanked it free. Aronvald, behind him, sprang forward, shoved the captain to the ground so hard that Thiadbold collapsed straight down on his back, arms flung out. The sergeant swung with all his strength and with precise aim. He severed Thiadbold’s left arm midway along the forearm, cut it clean off.
Thiadbold seemed in shock, perhaps from hitting his head on the ground, as the sergeant dropped his own sword and fell to his knees, unbuckling his belt. There was blood, but Hanna was too far to see it gush from the wound, only trails of it rushing past Aronvald’s kneeling figure. The flow slowed to a trickle.
Aronvald twisted. “Hanna!”
An arrow thudded into the ground a body’s length from her. Another shivered in the earth behind the sergeant, who grabbed his sword and rose.
“Ai, God!” said a calm voice from the wall. “Sergeant, I’m hit. In the shoulder.”
“Come down,” said the sergeant in a voice just as calm. Dead men walk because they have no need to run, already knowing their fate. Thiadbold stared heavenward, his left hand lying at an impossible angle to his body.
Hanna got a foot to move at last, followed by the other. As in a dream, she saw an arrow circling spinning streaking out of the darkness from over the wall, lit by the hellish yellow of the flames as it found its target: it scraped hard across Thiadbold’s remaining arm just above the elbow.
Aronvald, mute, raised his sword a second time.
“I would rather die than lose the other one, too,” said the captain, his voice as even as if he were discussing the weather. “Get to cover, I pray you. Hanna, if you’ll help me up.”
He had, after all, been watching her this whole time; in this dim writhing light it had been impossible to tell. The roof of the weaving shed roared as the flames rushed skyward. The harsh smoke burned in her nostrils as—at last—she found her legs and dashed forward. Her eyes stung from the smoke pouring off the roof and along the beams and posts of the building. She grabbed Thiadbold under her arms and heaved him up as Aronvald ran to the wall and got there in time to catch a man collapsing down a ladder in convulsions.
That eerie cry wailed out of the forest as Hanna lugged Thiadbold along. His remaining hand clutched her shoulder. He could move his feet; he was still in shock. Blood pumped lazily from the stump of his arm. She got him up onto the porch. There was a pallet inside, one of several. She laid him down, and he grunted—with pain, perhaps, or with fear, or simply with relief. She didn’t know and couldn’t tell.
Sister Acella knelt beside him. “Sister! A length of stout cord, quickly! This belt hasn’t stemmed the flow of blood. Get the coals hotter. I want a lotion of betony—”
“We’ve none left, Sister.”
“Then dead nettle. Bay, if we have it. Best yet, feverwort. I know there is a small stock remaining.” She did not look up as she spoke. The younger nun hurried to do her bidding.
Smoke streamed down from the roof. Hanna coughed. She was weeping from the stink of it.
“Go, Hanna,” said Sister Rosvita, coming up beside her. “If there’s aught else you can do.”
Out into the terrible rain of arrows.
Hanna shuddered, and yet how was she safer here if more burning arrows lit the thatch of this hall? She hadn’t delivered her message to Ingo about flaming arrows and Thiadbold’s plan. From outside, she heard another bout of screaming, echoed by a second drawn-out wail, that hideous cry emanating from the forest. Under the eaves, clerics huddled in silence, their faces pale as they stared at her. She hated them for hiding here, but only for an instant. There was nothing they could do. They didn’t wield weapons; they wielded pens and prayers, and, by the murmuring, she guessed they were praying as fiercely as they could.
