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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 the his mother wasn’t here to see him now, the son who had dishonored the fanaled the charge Welf pressed forward as their horses broke fro his ears He pushed his horse past the prince, so that he took the brunt of the iht over the heart As he fell, he heard a cry of grief and anger, and a man’s hoarse voice shouted Ekkehard’s nalant!
The ground sla he saas the hooves of his horse, co down on his head
If she rerass and only the keenest eye could observe her Sanglant was intent on herstone
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 e was hers The shaft of his spear shattered under her attack, and her weight bore hi her shriek of triu 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 hi her great head to one side to get a better look at hio, half hidden now by a braided gold torque She had thought him dead, once before, and had died for her e 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 ar the blood leaking froers as he clawed for purchase at her iron feathers She struck at his vulnerable eyes
The last thing she heard was his screa 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 wasGone
With a screas of flaht, 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 stor into the distance
"Now you are bitten Who has won, and who has lost?"
"I have escaped you," cried Liath triuap splitting open in the glea shell that hter had already lodged in her heart And she could still feel blood, and life, spilling from her unmarked throat
XV
EAGLE’S SIGHT
1
BULKEZU and his arh the southern portion of the dukedo north as summer waned, but Hanna never saw Prince Ekkehard weep for his father’s ravaged kingdo ar As the abandoned palace came into view, populated now only by weeds, insects, and a pair of red deer that sprang away into the forest, the young prince began to cry silently, tears strea down his cheeks Had he been there that day when Liath had sent the palace up in flah?
Hanna could not now recall She only re heat that had scorched her skin when she had dragged Liath away froood 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 si desolation and terror for as long as he wished?