PROLOGUE (94 page)

"Sanglant!" she whispered, having no breath to shout.” It's me. It's Liath!"

He slipped his arm across her chest, a broad knife clenched in his fist as he brought it to her throat. In a quick motion, the merest sting, the blade bit deep and her words choked and drowned in blood as she struggled to tell him. Her life gushed from her neck. She clawed toward her throat, anything to stop the blood, but he pinned her arms under his weight. Gasping, she looked into his green eyes, but all she saw was the rage of Jedu. Rays of sun melted holes in her vision; murky stains blotted out Sanglant's face. The world narrowed, sound faded, and all washed black.

The clash of arms and the jerk of her horse woke her as if from sleep. On her left side the begh, with his fearsome griffin feathers gleaming from the wings fastened to his armor and his iron visor making a mask of his face, urged their line forward. His standard billowed in a stiff wind, the rake of the snow leopard's claw that marked the proud warriors of the Pechanek clan. They charged and she, like her chief, lowered her lance. The banner of the Dragons amidst a mass of mounted Wendish and Ungrian soldiers surged forward to meet them.

The King's Dragon led the charge. Sanglant, older now, drove straight for her chieftain, his ax raised. With a deft shift of his point, the griffin rider slid his spear around Sanglant's shield and caught the prince just where his coif gapped to expose his throat.

The young prince fell back across the rump of his warhorse but still, somehow, managed to drag himself back up. He clung to the saddle, blood from the wound pouring down over his Dragon tabard, as the steed charged through the crowd and broke to the rear of the Quman charge. Behind, his Dragons raised a cry of alarm and fury.

Liath fought her horse back through the chaos to catch up to Sanglant. His helm had fallen askew and he was as pale as if all his blood had drained out through that horrible wound. He lay like a dead man over the withers of the horse. Tears streamed from her eyes as she called out to him and brought her mount up alongside his. He convulsed once, like a man spitting out his death, and heaved himself up to strike with the speed of a snake.

A crushing force came down on her head and for a moment she could actually see along either side of the ax blade protruding from her forehead, but all she really saw was the desperate look in her lover's eyes. Red seeped into her vision. She slid limply from the saddle.

Slipping in the blood and stink of one of her fellows, she scrabbled to gain purchase on the stone floor. The man creature had one hundred small wounds, one hundred rivulets seeping blood. The scent of his blood made her wild with hunger. She thrust aside the others, biting at their flanks so that they gave way, and trod on his chest, pinning him.

A glimmer of sentience sparked in her tiny mind. Was this man creature part of her pack? But hunger ate at her belly and he smelled so sweet. She lunged for the kill.

He was too fast for her. He caught her under the throat and like a dog bit down on her windpipe. Thrashing, fighting, she felt the wind crushed out of her, the air choked, the rich smell of blood and death fading, dulling, until the world was cold iron and for an instant she remembered the waters of her birth softly lapping around her and then even that sensation fled.

And she was fleeing Gent with the other RockChildren, running behind Isa's banner, but a figure that stank of captivity rode her down and with the strength brought about by madness clove her head from her shoulders.

And she had no body, not here where the perfume of flesh and blood made her thirst, an aching, ragged, raw pain. She had not wanted to come here. Torn from the halls of iron, she swayed in the hot blast of wind and sighed the name of the one she sought.” Sanglant." His blood would release her to return to her home. That alone she knew. But as she advanced with her sister galla, tasting his blood on the wind, he attacked, piercing her with the stinging tip of a griffin's feather. The sorcery that bound her to the halls of earth burned and snapped, and she was flung into agony.

And she shrank back in terror as the mounted man charged through her motley companions, cutting them down like reeds. She

cried out, begging for mercy, as her last arrow spun uselessly to the ground.

Ai, Lord, why had she left her mother's house? She'd been a fool to argue with her brother, and a bigger fool to let anger drive her away, and the biggest fool yet to allow Drogo to convince her that there was wealth to be made and supper to be had by picking on hapless travelers. But she'd been desperate by then, and too proud to go home. She'd been so hungry, and Drogo had offered her bread if she'd join his miserable pack of bandits.

Sage and fern halted her backward stumble.” Mercy!" she cried. Then he was on her, death in his eyes.

Sanglant.

His sword came down, and pain obliterated everything else.” Nay, Welf!" cried Ekkehard, stopping him with the point of his lance.” You'll not desert me now."

She wept in her young man's body. She had never known fear could hurt so much.” I'll never desert you, my lord prince. You know that. But it isn't right that we fight on the side of the Quman against our own countryfolk. It's treason."

Ekkehard flushed.” We've dirtied our hands too much to ever go back. Better to die in battle than hanging from the gallows."

They waited as the gold banners flown by their foes advanced. Frithuric and Manegold waited with stolid patience, but he could see, she could see, the despair in their eyes. How had they all been so stupid? How had they let Bulkezu seduce them? It was a good thing his mother wasn't here to see him now, the son who had dishonored the family name.

Drums and a horn call signaled the charge. Welf pressed forward as their horses broke from walk to trot to gallop, a roll like thunder filling his ears. He pushed his horse past the prince, so that he took the brunt of the impact. A lance struck him right over the heart. As he fell, he heard a cry of grief and anger, and a man's hoarse voice shouted Ekkehard's name in surprise. Ai, Lord, it was Prince Sanglant!

The ground slammed into him, and the last thing he saw was the hooves of his horse, coming down on his head.

If she remained still, her feathers would blend into the silvery grass and only the keenest eye could observe her. Sanglant was intent on her mate, a silver-hued griffin asleep on the sunning stone.

The prince's spear was poised as he prepared to strike. His eyes calculated his next move, as did hers. She would not let him kill her mate.

She pounced, he spun to meet her, but the advantage was hers. The shaft of his spear shattered under her attack, and her weight bore him to the ground. Her mate awoke at the noise, hearing her shriek of triumph. Calling shrilly, he shook himself free of sleep and leaped forward to assist with the kill.

Her claws pressed the prince's shoulders to the ground. But he hadn't given up. His knee jabbed hard into her belly, but she would not free him. She could not let him kill again.

Slewing her great head to one side to get a better look at him, she recognized at his throat a scar taken long ago, half hidden now by a braided gold torque. She had thought him dead, once before, and had died for her mistake. She screamed fury. The Angel of War danced at the edge of her vision. Razor sharp, her beak would cleave flesh easier than any sword could. She would not die at his hands again. And again. And again.

A growl rose in his throat as he tensed to fight her off. He yanked an arm free and grabbed desperately for her throat, ignoring the blood leaking from a dozen cuts scored along his fingers as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers. She struck at his vulnerable eyes.

The last thing she heard was his scream as she fell free of the mirrors, spinning and tumbling in the blast furnace that was the wind of war.

Ai, God, she had killed Sanglant. She groped at her throat, thinking to find a bruise where he had tried in that last instant to choke her. Instead, her gold torque was missing. Gone.

With a scream of fury, she lifted heavenward on her wings of flame, beating for a sliver of light, like the moon's crescent, that drifted far above her. The world below had gone white as a blizzard of snow and wrath obliterated the plain, the dead and those who killed them, all vanished beneath a mantle of white. A broken spear rolled over the icy waste, caught by the wind's cold hand.

Mirrors winked like flashes of lightning half hidden by storm

clouds. A wild laughter boomed like thunder, fading into the distance.

"Now you are bitten. Who has won, and who has lost?"

"I have escaped you," cried Liath triumphantly as she neared the silvery boundary and saw a gap splitting open in the gleaming shell that marked the sphere of Mok.

But Jedu's laughter had already lodged in her heart. And she could still feel blood, and life, spilling from her unmarked throat.

BULICEZLJ and his army cut a swath of misery and destruction through the southern portion of the dukedom of Avaria before turning north as summer waned, but Hanna never saw Prince Ekkehard weep for his father's ravaged kingdom until the day the vanguard of Bulkezu's marauding army came across the ruins of the palace of Augensburg. As the abandoned palace came into view, populated now only by weeds, insects, and a pair of reddeer that sprang away into the forest, the young prince began to cry silently, tears streaming down his cheeks. Had he been there that day when Liath had sent the palace up in flames, desperate to escape Hugh?

Hanna could not now recall. She only remembered the terrible flames and the blasting heat that had scorched her skin when she had dragged Liath away from the inferno. Where were Folquin, Leo, Stephen, and her good friend Ingo now? Had they survived the winter in Handelburg? Would she in the end find herself facing them across the field of battle? Would any Wendish army ever confront Bulkezu, or would he simply march across the length and breadth of the land sowing desolation and terror for as long as he wished?

Bulkezu called a halt. His soldiers and slaves busied themselves setting up camp for the night and turning the horses and livestock out to graze on the lush grass. The site had been entirely abandoned. The forest had encroached upon the open space cleared around the palace grounds. It was a beautiful place, calni and j peaceful if only because this one afternoon, at least, there would be no killing.

Hanna had seen enough killing to last her ten lifetimes. Each death was a scar cut into her heart, untold wounds that never really
<
healed, only scabbed over with time.

"Sit here, my lord prince." Lord Welf steered Ekkehard to a | camp chair, swiftly set up by one of their concubines, a blonde girl with the look of a cornered rabbit. As Ekkehard let the girl wipe the tears from his face with a scrap of linen, various slaves erected one of the round Quman tents behind him, deploying an awning to spare him from the afternoon sun. It was a hot day. Hanna sat in the shade of a tree, savoring the tickle of grass against her wrists as she leaned back. Her ever-present guards waited as patiently as stone to either side, not so close that they pressed in on her but not so far that they couldn't drag her down within ten steps if she made a run for it. One of them chewed on a stalk of. grass as he surveyed the birds flitting among the trees. The other two stood there as stupidly as sheep, an easy illusion to cling to until one looked into their eyes.

Bulkezu came whistling cheerfully out of his tent, the first to be erected, leading the prettiest of his concubines, a plump young woman with waist-length black hair almost as luxuriously thick as Bulkezu's own. This was Agnetha, whom Bulkezu had picked out from the crowd of prisoners that awful twilight when plague had flowered in the mob. She was one of the few to survive that terrible night and she had, amazingly, saved a dozen of her kinsfolk from the slaughter. Bulkezu brought her to Ekkehard and indicated that she should kneel before the young prince. Hanna rose hastily and strode over.

Boso strutted up, as self-important as a rooster.” His Gloriousness cannot bear to see you snivel and whine like a sick child, Your Highness. Therefore, to raise your
spirits,
and your cock, he's giving you one of his well-used cunts."

Hanna had long since grown accustomed to Boso's coarse and arrogant way of speaking, but she often wondered what exactly Bulkezu did say to his interpreter and how much the Wendish man was twisting his master's words. As Hanna slid in behind Lord Frithuric, poor Agnetha caught sight of her but could do no more than look at her beseechingly. The young woman was too wise to protest, or even speak or cry, as she was handed from one man's tender mercies over to the other's.

However phrased, the offer dried up Ekkehard's tears. He was well supplied with women, of course, but Agnetha bore about her a certain cachet beyond the perfumes she wore because she was the best-looking woman currently with the army, and Bulkezu's besides. It was a grand gift to Ekkehard's mind, and he almost fell over himself thanking Bulkezu while the young woman knelt silently at his feet, trying hard to show no expression at all.