Burdel also had another very good reason for riding out of Skarabost before Axis’ invading force. For at least six months Burdel had been running a campaign of retribution in Skarabost. Determined to stop the spread of the Prophecy, and equally determined to stop local villagers drifting north to join Axis’ rebel base at Sigholt, Borneheld had given Burdel a free hand. “Do whatever you need to stop those village idiots who wish to join Axis,” Borneheld’s orders to Burdel had stated. “Do whatever you have to do to kill word of the Prophecy. And do more than you have to in order to cut Axis’ supply routes into northern Skarabost.”
For the past five months, as groups of refugees drifted into Sigholt, Axis had been hearing horrific tales of Burdel’s campaign of terror through the province. Now, as he rode through the Seagrass Plains, the winter-sown crops just starting to shoot their heads above the last of the spring snow, Axis had a chance to see Burdel’s handiwork for himself. Village after village had been razed to the ground, sometimes only on vague rumour that someone there had recited the Prophecy. In other villages, the houses had been left standing and the majority of the villagers left alive, but crosses lined the approaches to the village, and crow-picked cadavers hung from ropes and nails. It was sickening. Wherever they found villages where people remained Axis spent a few days, his army helping to rebuild houses and the confidence of those left alive.
It helped that Axis’ name had been well-known and widely praised as BattleAxe. Now he commanded a vastly different force, but he received as much – if not more – respect. Not only was his force numerically superior to the Axe-Wielders, but Axis had grown immeasurably in assurance and authority. With his stunning red cloak, the outline of the blazing sun stitched in gold across its back, Axis looked like a King as he walked among the villagers, talking to them quietly, and most remembered that he was the son of the Princess Rivkah and would have been a prince in his own right, save for the stain of bastardy. This man did not look like the skulking rebel or the desperate felon they’d been warned against.
Unlike Burdel’s loose command, Axis kept his army under strict control. They always camped well away from the villages they came to, careful not to trample growing grain crops, and they moved into a village only to help rebuild homes and barns. Axis could not rebuild the lives of those rotting on crosses, but he did have them cut down and buried. It was a thankless and stomach-turning task.
As each village slowly began to take shape again, Axis often had Rivkah come and talk to the villagers about her life among the Icarii. The Princess Rivkah’s name was well remembered, and her presence generally overawed the local peasants, but Rivkah spoke well and persuasively, letting these people know that the Icarii were hardly the gruesome creatures of legend at all, but living breathing creatures as the peasants were, who shared many of the same problems, and who laughed at many of the same things. Depending on how-well a particular village had reacted to Rivkah’s words, Axis would often call in several of the less intimidating Icarii to talk to the villagers too.
Whatever village they were in, the villagers always reacted the same. There would be a few moments of shocked silence as the first Icarii landed into the square before them. EvenSong was usually among them, for she was good with the peasants of the Seagrass Plains, and would alight among them, all gold and violet, laughter and smiles. It would invariably be the children who approached the Icarii first, crying out to be allowed to touch their wings. Reassured by the Icarii reaction to the children, perhaps a few of the elderly women, braver than most, would come forward, and then, finally, the entire village would flock about the Icarii, listening in awe as one or more of the Icarii started to sing, stroking their soft wing-backs, exclaiming over their beautiful and alien faces.
Slowly, slowly, and not alivays successfully, Axis tried to reeducate the people of Skarabost about the Forbidden. Resistance to the idea that the Forbidden were acceptable people rather than demon-spawned horrors was strongest in those villagers which still had a resident Plough-Keeper, the Brother assigned to a village by the Seneschal to instruct them in the Way of the Plough. Generally these Brothers warned the villagers back from both Axis and any Icarii who happened to be about.
Axis well knew that the military campaign to win Achar would probably be the easiest part of his campaign to reunite Tencendor. Much harder would be persuading a reluctant people to accept those who they had been taught from the cradle to loathe. The Seneschal had over a thousand years’ head start on Axis, and a tight grip in the poorer rural areas of Achar. Sometimes worry about how he would be able to persuade the Acharites to accept first the Icarii and then the Avar kept Axis awake well into the night.
Axis was happiest, as were the Icarii, when they camped alone under the night skies among the endless grasses of the Seagrass Plains. Most camps were of one night’s duration only, and instead of erecting tents they would sleep rolled into blankets or wings on the hard earth, the stars reeling above them. The skies were clearing the further south and the further into spring that Axis rode, and by mid-Flower-month, when they were approaching southern Skarabost, the skies were invariably clear day and night. As he had when riding at the head of the Axe-Wielders, Axis would often pull out his small travelling harp about the camp fire at night. Axis’ voice had improved even more with his training as an Icarii Enchanter, and his camp fire was one that many vied with each other for the privilege of sitting around. Azhure, her son at her breast, would sit and smile as she watched Axis over the flames of the fire. Her love for him increased daily, and she put aside any thought of where they were headed. She did not know that once Faraday had sat across a camp fire and listened to Axis sing, loving him as Azhure now loved him.
There was one night when Axis made sure that his army was well clear of any village. The first day of Flower-month. Beltide. For the first time in a thousand years, Beltide was celebrated in Achar. The Icarii, two thousand strong, built large bonfires and the Ravensbund people, who also celebrated Beltide, cooked for an entire day. The Acharites, puzzled by this celebration but infected with the suppressed air of excitement that both the Icarii and the Ravensbund people exhibited, accepted StarDrifter’s invitation to partake of this most sacred rite. The night was long, and filled with beauty and music. MorningStar led the rites, assisted by one of the younger Enchanter Icarii women travelling with the SunSoar command, and their sensual and haunting dance celebrating the resurrection of the earth after the death of winter brought Icarii, Ravensbund and Acharite to their feet in union, dancing with them, seeking partners among the throng.
It was a special night for Axis and Azhure. They distanced themselves from the main revelry, taking their son and a blanket to a small hollow where they lay and recreated the magic of that night a year ago, while their son slept. Their blood sang strong and clear each to the other, as it had Beltide a year past, and as it had every other night since, when they made love. Axis wondered again at the extraordinary way Azhure made him feel, at how close he came to the Star Dance as he moved deep and certain within her body.
What Axis did not realise was that Azhure could hear and feel the Star Dance too. It was one of the reasons she had not been able to resist him when Axis had returned from the UnderWorld, one of the reasons she would find it all but impossible to walk away from him, why she would accept any role, no matter how demeaning, if it kept him returning to her bed. The music consumed her, making her blood surge as wildly as the moon-driven tides against strange coasts. But Azhure never mentioned how she felt to Axis. Having known no other man, Azhure simply assumed that all women felt as she did when they lay with a man they loved.
On a night like Beltide, when the magic of the earth was strong in the air about them, and the stars spun closer to them than they did on more ordinary nights, the Dance sounded so loud and so clear in Azhure s mind that she lost herself among it, revelling in the ecstasy and power of the Dance and the beat of distant tides. She grasped at Axis’ back and shoulders and stared into his eyes, and all she could see were the Stars within them, stretching back into infinity, and all she could hear was the beat, beat, beat of the waves.