"Kate Elliott - Crown of Stars 7 - Crown of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

"No!" He gestured. That horn call blatted again from deeper within the trees. Feet clattered on the
earth. Branches rustled. "Go on! Go on!" He seemed furious, or near to tears. A scar blazed his
forehead. One of his comrades was missing a finger on one hand, and the other was painted with a
startling red rash across his cheek and down one side of his neck. "No one will come in. We can trust no
one."
"I am a King's Eagle!" cried Hanna indignantly.
"Where is the king and the king's justice? It's vanished, that's what! You'll get no shelter from us.
We'll fight if you try."
"I've never been treated so disrespectfully by Wendish folk! Can it be you are not Avarians after all
but creatures of the Enemy come to inhabit the bodies of decent people?"
"You would know, would you not, who speak of Henry's bastard son! Spawn of devils!"
"Aronvald, make ready!" Bertha called.
The sergeant signaled. The archers raised their bows. The carpenter's son called back to unseen
folk in the forest and out of sight down the track, but he did not move to take shelter from arrow's flight.
Sister Rosvita moved up to take hold of Bertha's reins.
"Let be, Bertha," she said in a pleasant voice.
"They owe us shelter!" said Bertha, but she looked down at the cleric, frowned, and lifted a hand.
Archers lowered their bows, but did not otherwise shift.
"Look at his face," said Rosvita. "He means what he says. He is desperate, fearful, determined. Yes,
your good soldiers will win the skirmish. We are armed in leather and mail and have good iron swords
and spears and six fine archers. But what if we lose even one soldier, if even one of my faithful clerics is
wounded or killed when we have come so far over such a treacherous road. If we lose this Eagle, who
guides us. For the sake of one night's shelter, I judge it not worthwhile."
Bertha grunted an answer, too angry to agree but too wise to object. Hanna fumed, but she, too,
said nothing as the soldiers fell back into marching order and they moved on. The villagers gathered on
top of the roadblock, staring, until the fork in the road was lost behind the trees and the contour of the
road.
"How could you?" demanded Hanna at last. "They owe us shelter. ..." She sputtered, too angry to
continue.
Rosvita paced alongside them. The entire cavalcade moved slowly enough to accommodate the
wagons, which seemed always to be half mired in muck, but in truth Rosvita had not weakened on this
journey. She had grown wiry, strong enough to walk all day without flagging. She often commented, with
surprise, how much better her aching back felt, although she slept on the ground most nights.
"I know that look in a man's eye, Eagle," she said now. "This is not a battle worth fighting."
"What can have made them so desperate?"
Bertha snorted, half laughing. "War between neighboring lords. The Quman barbarians. Plague. The
great storm. What else may have afflicted them I cannot tell."
"I am puzzled," said Rosvita, "by what he meant by men with animal faces. Why he turned against us
when Lady Bertha mentioned Prince Sanglant. It makes no sense."
'Any man may shake his fist at the regnant when he suffers, and love the king when he prospers,"
said Bertha dismissively. "Yet I wonder. We have seen few enough folk in these last weeks when we
ought to have seen more. Seven abandoned villages. Children hiding in the woods without their parents.
Freshly dug graves. Solitary corpses. This is not just famine at work."
"What, then?" asked Rosvita.
Bertha shrugged. Hanna, too, had no answers.
I

ARROWS IN THE DARK
1
IN the end they camped along the damp road. The next day when they rode into the ruins of