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Captain Fulk , my lord prince? I believe we killed thehter this day"

"Nay, it’s not that, although we have to win the battle at hand before we can be sure we’re free of trouble" Sanglant had aall around his head, but it sloughed off quickly Yet he still could not shake the sense that soh knowing the danger ht on her Lord knows I’ve done things I’ive ain?"

"I pray that you will, my lord prince"

At tiht than to dwell on his grief and his fears He lifted his hand again, calling for a new lance to be brought for him

A crack of thunder splintered the air around the Men raised their voices in alarh silence itself colant, too, looked back over his shoulder to see a tiny figure descending from the knoll A veil concealed her face, but her ancient hands, gnarled with arthritis, betrayed her age Scarcely taller than a child, Bayan’s old robes elaborately eons locked in battle When she commandeered a horse froh felled--and lant saw that the robes were split for riding Hastily, he rode over to her as soldiers reined away, made superstitious by the stories they had heard and by the uncanny behavior of the rain

"My lady," he began in Wendish, "I pray you, forgivethe proper address for a woh she was e warhorse whose size dwarfed her, she did not look ridiculous Sanglant towered over her "I beg you, you will be safer here in the rear now that we have--"

One of her slaves stepped forward "Stand not in the way of the holy woe man with a dark coling with in a fight unless necessary

"She is safer--"

She rode away Her feet didn’t even reach the stirrups

"The holy woer," said the slave "She o"

Her luck?

That quickly, Sanglant remembered the old Kerayit custom, that a shaman woman’s luck resided in the body of another person

Her luck was her son

This time when he raised a hand, twin horns blared In the distance, he heard the answering bell of Druthmar’s horn Afflicted all at once with a horrible sense of foreboding, Sanglant signaled the advance With his forces lant led theo, at besieged Gent, when she saw hion helm, splendid and handsome Just as he was then Just as he is now Desire is a flaht No traveler can help but be draard it

Ai, God, she misses hio on She has to choose wisely, never forgetting that she isn’t truly on Earth but rather ascending the last sphere

No creaturethis, she stayed her hand through the worst of the fighting In battle, truly, Sanglant can take care of hiotten the lesson she learned in the sphere of jedu, the angel of war

She hasn’t forgotten the horror of being killed, over and over again, by the one she loves

But those hornets bother her She saw the at his face and hands He shook theic, hoping to harolden robes of the old woh the crone starts around surprised, feeling her touch, the woaze The old woman has a face so wrinkled that it is hard to see the soul beneath, like an insect protected by its carapace Despite her great age her hair is still as black as a girl’s Her coht at the corners in the shape of an almond These features mark her as a steppe dweller, a woman from the eastern tribes, the people who live on the endless plains of grass with their herds and their tents

She has powerful h infested with bees, but it isn’t her lant, Blessing, and the old woman behind and speeds onward, an arrow on the aetheric winds binding the Earth She has become the bow