The Gathering Storm (54 page)

Bulkezu cursed wickedly, standing at the brink, not going forward into the current although the river looked fordable. She crouched to splash water on her face. Its touch stung, so sharp a pain especially on her bruises and cuts that she whimpered, trying to hold the sound in so he wouldn’t know how scared she was. That was the lesson she and Matthias had learned in Gent: never let your fear rule you. Those ruled by fear died.

The wailing cry cut through the air again, closer now, followed by an answer off to the right and, abruptly, a third yipping wail behind them.

A rider galloped toward them along the shore of the river. Anna blinked, thinking the sun or her injuries had addled her mind: the creature had only one head, yet it was obviously human. Wasn’t it?

“Pray God,” she murmured, drawing the Circle of Unity at her breast, waiting for Bulkezu to force them out into the water. “Lord and Lady protect us.”

“Anna! It’s centaurs! I heard them coming!”

Bulkezu broke to the right, but as Blessing bolted for the
slope, he whirled back, grabbed her, and slammed her against his body, holding his knife to her throat.

Three horsemen came out of the grass, bows drawn and arrows fixed, aiming right at Blessing’s chest. Anna’s heart thudded madly.

They were not horsemen.

They were not human.

They were women—that was obvious, for they went bare-breasted—but at their hips their human form flowed away and became beasts. Women with the bodies of horses.

Centaurs
.

Bulkezu did not move nor did his knife waver.

One of the centaurs, a cream-colored mare with dark hair on her woman’s head, spoke to him in words Anna could not understand. Still he did not move, although he was surrounded.

“They told you to let us go!” shouted Blessing indignantly, squirming in his grasp. “I hate you, you smelly bag of grease!”

He released her. The centaurs backed up, still with their arrows trained on him, but they did not move as he bolted away upriver, running east toward the crags.

“I told you something was coming, Anna! No one ever believes me!”

Anna staggered. The sun made the swaying grass into a green-gold haze, impossible to focus on. A cloud of white butterflies rose up from the shoreline of the river, light winking with each beat of their dazzling wings. A distant call rose, high-pitched, melding with the song of the river. Far above, a graceful shape emerged out of the vanguard of the new storm sweeping in from the east.

“Look!” shrieked Blessing. “Look there!”

Its iron wings flashed and glittered, catching the sun’s light. It wore an eagle’s proud head and a lion’s strong body, with a snake’s tail lashing as it flew. If it saw them, it ignored them; perhaps they were beneath its notice. Certainly it was too far away for any of the centaur women to shoot at it.

“I
knew
we’d reached the hunting grounds! Now we can hunt!”

Anna’s knees gave out, but she did not hit the ground.

Strong arms caught her, and she was lifted as easily as a grown woman hoists a weary infant and thrown across the back of the cream-colored mare.

She clutched at the creature’s mane to drag herself upright. This was neither mare nor woman. Creatures out of legend had rescued them. Bulkezu had not raped and murdered them. They were free. Laughing, crying, she could not speak to thank them, but she had no need to do so since Blessing had already begun asking questions, demanding to know more about the griffins and the river and the storm of butterflies.

Someday Anna would go home to Gent and tell the tale of her adventures. Matthias would never believe her.

That thought only made her cry more.

“CENTAURS!” breathed Captain Fulk. Like the rest of the men, he stared in astonishment at the inhuman army—perhaps five hundred strong—that approached their hastily-drawn line.

“Let the men remain in formation,” said Sanglant, “but do not act unless I give you a signal. Or if I fall.”

“My lord prince!”

“I know what I’m doing. Breschius, accompany me.”

He sheathed his sword and stepped out in front of the line of soldiers drawn up along the slope with the camp behind them. They had a terrible position, downslope, where the weight of the centaur charge would press them backward into the wreckage of their camp, scattered, frightened horses, tangled ropes, twisted and fallen canvas everywhere … yet such a ruin gave dismounted soldiers an advantage over four-legged opponents.

Breschius and Hathui fell in behind him as he trudged up the slope toward the creatures advancing at a walk over the crest. Behind, men called out, calming horses, seeking armor, trading weapons, strengthening their line in case the worst
happened. He had only his red cloak to shield him should they attack—that, and his mother’s curse. “Are these the sorcerers we seek, Breschius?”

“We must hope so, my lord prince. The Bwr people have little mercy for our kind.”

“Be sure I am remembering the history of the Dariyan Empire and their fate at the hands of a Bwr army so long ago. Yet in the old tales it is always said that the Bwr people came not only to plunder and capture slaves, but because they hated the empire itself. Why would the centaur people hate the Dariyans so much?”

“Poets entertain by embroidering fancy patterns on plain cloth. I think bloodlust and greed suffice to explain the Bwr invasion that destroyed the Dariyan Empire. After all, they are more like to the beasts than we are. Yet if these meant to attack, they could have done so under cover of the storm when we were helpless.”

“So I am also thinking.” Grass whispered against his legs as he followed the scars left by Bulkezu’s passage up the hill, pockets of snow melting into slush that made for slippery going. “Do you think there are weather witches among them who brought the storm?”

“Truly, it is said the centaurs of old taught weather magic to the Kerayit shamans, my lord prince. They might have sent the blizzard before them, or overwhelmed it with this spring wind.”

“The Quman are retreating, my lord prince,” said Hathui. “They are abandoning their tents and fleeing.”

“Keep your eye on them in case they attack us from the rear.” He dared not shift his attention away from his new adversaries as he and his companions came into bow range. He had to try to turn these inhuman creatures into his allies, but he wasn’t at all sure they would believe his stories of distant conspiracies and a vast cataclysm.

And what of Blessing? What she might suffer at the Quman chieftain’s hands … he dared not think of her if he was to command effectively.

Although it was hot only in contrast to the appalling cold they had just suffered, Sanglant sweated under the blaze of an unexpectedly bright sun. He paused to catch his breath and
wipe his brow. Ahead, the massed line of the centaurs came to a halt. He noticed for the first time that although they carried bows and wicked-looking spears, they wore no armor.

“God help us,” he breathed, half laughing, “can it be that they are all females? Are there no stallions among them? Nor even geldings?”

“Beware; my lord prince,” said Breschius. “One comes to meet us.”

“What of the Quman, Hathui?” He kept his gaze fixed on the silver-gray centaur now picking her way down the slope, stepping with precise neatness through pale winter grass.

“They seem truly to be running, my lord prince. I would guess that they did not expect to meet up with the ones we face now.”

“They are wise to be fearful,” commented Breschius, but his voice seemed steady enough for a man approaching, unarmed, an army that might prove foe as easily as friend. Sanglant glanced at the frater’s right arm, which ended in a stump, but although Breschius, too, was sweating, he did not seem afraid. Sanglant waited, more impressed than he cared to admit, as the centaur halted a body’s length from him, surveying him as closely as he examined her.

She was old. Strands of glossy black hid within her fine silver coat and the coarse braids of her human hair, which fell past her hips. She wore no clothing of any kind except a quiver across her back and a leather glove covering one hand and wrist. Once all her coat and her woman’s hair had been black, a fine contrast to the creamy color of her woman’s skin. Now faded green-and-gold paint striped her human torso, even her breasts, which sagged as did those of crones well past their childbearing years. It was hard to read age on her face, for she did not possess the exact lineaments of a human face but something like and yet unlike, kin to him and yet utterly different. The expression of her eyes seemed touched by ancient pain and hard-won wisdom. Like a virtuous biscop, she wore holiness like a mantle on her shoulders. She looked older than any creature, human or otherwise, he had ever seen.

He inclined his head respectfully. “I give you greetings, Holy One,” he said, using the Kerayit title which, Breschius
had taught him, was used to address the most senior of their shamans.

She returned his scrutiny with her own appraisal. “I do not know you, although you have the look of my old enemy. Yet you are not the one I seek, the one I hoped for. Has he not returned?”

“I do not know what person you speak of.”

“Do you not? Is he not known in your country?”

Already she had lost him. “Who is your old enemy, Holy One?”

“Humankind once called them the Cursed Ones, but the language you speak now is different from the language you spoke when you were young.”

“I have always spoken Wendish, even as a child,” he began, but he faltered. “You are not speaking of me.” When
who
was young? He felt as though he teetered on the edge of an abyss whose depths he could not plumb. “How old are you, Holy One?”

She smiled, something of warmth and blessed approval in her expression. “You see keenly, you who are son of two bloods, for I smell both humankind and the blood of my old enemy in you. What are you called?”

“I am Sanglant, son of Henry, king of Wendar and Varre.”

“This ‘Henry’ is your mother? Is king among her people?”

“Henry is my father.”

Her surprise startled him. Although he could not be sure that he could interpret her expressions as though she were a human woman, she seemed taken aback at the word “father,” as though it were ill-mannered or even a little coarse to mention such a word. But she recovered quickly.

“You are bred out of a stallion of the human line, then. Who is your mother?”

“My mother no longer walks on Earth. She is one of the Aoi, the Lost Ones.”

“You have more the look of the Ashioi than of humankind. You are therefore a prince twice over in the manner of your people, for your mother must be a shaman of great power. I have seen her—or the one who must be her, since in all the time of their exile only one among them has negotiated the
crossroads where worlds and time meet. She alone has set foot upon the earth they yearn for.”

“You know of their exile?”

Her smile now was less friendly, even bitter. “I helped bring it about, Prince Sanglant. Do you not know the story?”

“I know no story of the Aoi exile that includes mention of your people, Holy One. I would gladly hear your tale.”

“So you may, in time.”

A spike of anger kicked through him; he was not accustomed to being spoken to so dismissively. She seemed unaware of his annoyance, however, and continued talking.

“First I need to understand what has brought you here, in the company of those vermin who call themselves children of the griffin.”

He looked over his shoulder. The Quman had fled, leaving their tents and half their wagons, but none of their horses. The dust of their passage formed a cloud that obscured their flight, or perhaps that was only one of their shamans raising a veil to hide them.

He turned back. “How is it you speak Wendish, Holy One? Have you met one among my people before?”

“I survived the bite of a snake and now carry its magic in my blood.” She tossed her head as might a restless horse. “Such things are not important. If you were come to attack us, surely you would have done so by now, Prince Sanglant. Nor would you have approached us alone, with these two unarmed companions, if you did not wish to speak with us. What do you want? Why have you traveled so far?”

“To meet you,” he said, “for it is known that among the Kerayit tribe, who are your allies, there live powerful sorcerers. I seek powerful sorcerers and the feathers of griffins.”

“You have ridden a long way, seeking that which you are unlikely to obtain. What is your ambition, Prince Sanglant? What manner of man are you, who desires what he cannot have?”

He laughed, because the pain never left him and now had scarred him afresh. “I have already lost what I cared most for. Twice over. What I seek now I do not desire for my own use, but only for duty’s sake—that duty which I was born to because I am the son of the king. I owe my people protection
and well-being. Do not believe, I pray you, that because you live so very far from the cities and lands ruled by my people that you are therefore safe from those among them who can work magic.”

“The seven died, and their line died out too quickly. Only the Kerayit remember the ancient knowledge.”

“Do you mean the Seven Sleepers? They live still, and they have uncovered a working of great power which they mean to weave again in order to cast the Lost Ones back into the aether.” Was that impatience in her expression? She stamped her back leg, and he had an odd instinct that, had she been able to, she would have lain her ears back in annoyance and snapped at him as does a mare bored with a stallion who is bothering her. “If you would only let me explain the story to you in full, I pray you—”

“I know the story, as you cannot. I know what is coming, Prince Sanglant, as you cannot.”

“Many will die—”

“Yes. Many will die. They always do. The Ashioi were our enemies once. We banded together with humankind to war against them. But in the end it is your people who crippled us and brought us low. It is your people who threaten us now, the Quman, the Sazdakh, the Jinna, the Arethousans, these Daisanites who bring their words that make us sick. We chose the wrong enemy. Or perhaps our fate was already sealed.”