“The Kerayit? Are they not a barbarian tribe far to the east? I believe that Prince Bayan’s mother came of that savage race. Beyond that …” She shook her head. “… I know little enough, but I am always eager to learn more. What does it mean to be the luck of a Kerayit shaman?”
A nightjar churred, and Hanna started, half rising to her feet. “It is the wrong time of year for a nightjar to call out to its mate!”
“Unless winter is past and this is the last snow of spring.”
“Hush!” hissed Aurea. “Someone is coming!”
Brush rattled as Diocletia strode out of the underbrush into the clearing where they had thrown themselves down.
“Up!” she said, pitching her voice low. “They are already on our trail. I saw a dozen or more torches back on our path. They were rising and dipping as the men holding them bent to examine the ground. We must move on.”
Fear lent them strength. Hanna pressed her palms to her cheeks before going back to the pallet. Gerwita hurried back to aid Rosvita in standing.
“I won’t leave you!” she said predictably, but Rosvita only smiled and tried not to groan as she started forward. She ached everywhere. She was already exhausted.
“This way,” said Diocletia, heading into the brush.
“What about Sister Hilaria?” protested Heriburg.
“Come along,” said Diocletia, not waiting for them.
They had not gone more than a hundred paces when they stumbled out from under the cover of the wood into an olive grove where, under the light of the moon, Hilaria stood facing a brace of men armed with hoes and a trio of silent dogs standing at alert.
“I can take them,” muttered Hanria.
Hearing them, Hilaria raised a hand although she did not turn. “I pray you, Sister Rosvita, come forward. These speak no language I know. Perhaps they are Arethousan.”
They were not, nor did they appear to recognize that tongue when Rosvita begged for aid. They had the look of farmers, stocky and powerful, and when they beckoned, Rosvita felt it prudent for their party to follow. Perhaps Hanna could dispatch them, but Mother Obligatia could not flee if anything went wrong.
Yet as they walked behind the farmers through the grove and then between the rows of a small vineyard, twisting and turning on a well-worn path, Rosvita did not feel that their captors were precisely suspicious but only wary. They neither threatened nor barked, not even the dogs. The path brought them to a village, no more than ten houses built with brick or sod in a style unknown to her together with a building whose proportions she recognized instantly: this squat, rectangular structure looked more like a barracks than a church, but by the round tower at one end and adjoining graveyard, she knew it was an Arethousan church.
A bearded man wearing the robe of a priest with a stole draped over his left shoulder waited on the portico of the church attended by a score of soldiers. Torches revealed their grim faces. The priest wore a Circle of Unity at his chest with a bar bisecting it, the sigil of the Arethousan church.
“I pray you, Holy Father,” said Rosvita in Arethousan, stepping forward once their party came into the circle of light and the others had set down their burdens. “Grant us respite and shelter, for as you can see we are holy sisters and brothers of the church, like you, who seek a moment’s rest before we go on our way.”
“You are not like me.” The priest’s upper lip turned up with disgust as he looked them over. He had curly hair falling in dark ringlets almost to his shoulders but this angelic attribute did nothing to soften his sneering expression. “You are Daryans. How is it you butcher my language, woman?”
She knew her grammar was good, but he seemed determined to remain unimpressed “I am Sister Rosvita, educated in the Convent of Korvei. I pray pardon if I torture the pronunciation of your words.”
“Just as your people torture the words of our blessed Redeemer and blight the Earth with every manner of heresy. Only among we Arethousans have your false words been strangled and killed. Sergeant Bysantius, what shall we do with them?”
The sergeant had the look of a typical Arethousan, short and stocky, with black hair and a swarthy face, but he had a shrewd expression as he assessed them. He was obviously a man accustomed to measuring the worth of the soldiers he meant to send into battle. “There’s a Daryan army out there, Father, commanded by the usurper and the false mother. How are these few Daryans come here? Did they lose the army that shelters them? If so, how much ransom might we receive from the usurper to get them back?”
“Best to take them to the patriarch in Arethousa,” said the priest.
