“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.”