The Gathering Storm Read online

  Hanna felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Her heart thumped annoyingly, and her breath came in short gasps.

  “Come, now, friend,” Thiadbold said as he took hold of the reins of her horse so she could mount again, “she was scared, and acted out of fear.”

  “Next time those soldiers will cripple some poor soul, and never bother to look back to see what they’ve wrought. Ai, God.” She got her leg over the saddle, but the effort left her shaking. “I still have nightmares about the ones who cursed me.”

  “There was nothing you could have done to help them. You were as much a prisoner as they were. You did your duty as an Eagle. You stayed alive.”

  Words choked in her throat.

  “What are you speaking of?” demanded the steward, who had waited behind to escort them. “We’ve heard rumors of Quman, of plague, of drought, and of foul sorcery, but seen nothing. Rumor is the speech of the Enemy. Lord Hrodik rode off with Prince Sanglant. There’s been no news of him. We’ve been praying every day for news from the east.”

  “In good time,” replied Thiadbold, glancing at Hanna.

  The steward sighed heavily, then laughed. She was a short, stout woman, with a clever, impatient face and, apparently, a sense of humor. “So do God teach us patience! Come now. Her Highness, Princess Theophanu, will be eager to hear news of her brother.”

  They made their way through the streets of Gent, their path cleared by Theophanu’s milites. Once their party entered the palace compound, the steward directed Thiadbold and the Lions to the barracks above the stables but took Hanna immediately to the opulent chamber where Theophanu held court. The vivid colors made her dizzy: a purple carpet, gold silk hangings on either side of the royal chair where Theophanu sat studying a chessboard, a dozen noble companions garbed in reds and blues and greens. Four braziers heated the chamber, but the atmosphere of the chattering women gave it life and energy. As Hanna entered, the women looked at her expectantly, murmuring one to the other.

  “From the east!”

  “From Sapientia, do you think? I recognize her. She is the Eagle who served Sapientia before.”

  “Make haste to speak, Eagle!”

  “I pray you, let us have a moment’s calm.” Theophanu rose. At her gesture, a serving woman hurried out of the shadows cast by the silk hangings and carried the chessboard away to a side table. “You look pale, Eagle. Let ale be brought and some bread, so that she may refresh herself. And water, so that she may wash her hands and face.”

  Her companions were not so patient. “How can you stand it? After all these months!”

  “After everything we’ve suffered, waiting and wondering! After Conrad’s insolence at Barenberg!”

  “Yes!” cried others. “Let her speak first, and eat after.”

  Theophanu did not need to raise her voice. “Let her eat. We will not die of waiting, not today. I pray you, Eagle, sit down.”

  Two servants carried forward a bench padded with an embroidered pillow onto which Hanna sank gratefully. Ale was brought as well as a fine white bread so soft that it might have been a cloud, melting in Hanna’s mouth. A servingwoman brought a pitcher of warmed water, a basin, and a cloth, and washed Hanna’s hands and face herself, as though Hanna were a noblewoman. The women around Theophanu muttered to each other under their breath, pacing, fiddling with chess pieces, quite beside themselves to hear the message she had brought. One dark-haired woman dressed in a handsome green gown turned the corner of the carpet up and down with her foot, up and down, while servants gathered at the open doors, spilling back into the corridor, eager to hear news from the east. Theophanu alone showed no sign of impatience as she sat in her chair, as easy as if she already knew what Hanna was going to say.

  It was hard to really enjoy one’s food and drink under such circumstances, and better, perhaps, simply to have done with the message she had carried in her memory for so many long and weary days. When she rose at last to stand before the princess, she heard the crowd exhale in anticipation, and then, like an angry toddler making ready to scream, fall silent as they each one drew in breath.

  Hanna shut her eyes to call the message to her tongue.

  “This message I bring from Prince Sanglant, to his most glorious, wise, and beloved sister, Princess Theophanu. With these words I relate to you the events which have transpired by Osterburg and in the east.”

  She had repeated the words to herself so many times that they flowed more easily the less she thought of which word must come next. Not even the wheeze in her chest or her frequent coughs could tangle the message now as she recounted the events of the last two years.

  King Henry had sent her and two cohorts of Lions east to aid his daughter. Their party had met up with Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan and soon after faced a Quman army under the command of Bulkezu. Only Bayan’s wits had saved the army from a catastrophic defeat. That terrible retreat toward Handelburg with a battered army had been the best of a bad year. It had started going worse once they had reached Handelburg, where Biscop Alberada had condemned Prince Ekkehard as a heretic. Sapientia’s jealousy had made Hanna a target, too, and so she had ridden out with Ekkehard and the other excommunicated heretics into winter’s heartless grip.

  Better not to think of what had happened next, if she could speak the words without listening to what she was saying. Better not to think of the Quman invasion of the marchlands and eastern Wendar that had caught her in its net. Better not to think of the destruction Bulkezu had inflicted on the poor souls unfortunate enough to stand in the path of his army. Plague and misery had stalked them, and only after much suffering had she caught a glimpse through fire, with her Eagle’s Sight, of the war council held by Bayan and Sanglant. Was it she who had persuaded Bulkezu to ride to the city of Osterburg? Or was it God who had inspired her voice? Outside Osterburg, on the Veser River plain, Sanglant had defeated the Quman, but Bayan had been killed in the battle together with so many others, including Lord Hrodik. The Lions had been particularly hard hit, losing fully a third of those left to them, two proud cohorts shrunk to one.

  She had to stop; the effort of speaking was too great. The crowd stood shocked into silence at her litany of war, famine, drought, plague; disease, heresy, and countless villages and towns destroyed.

  Theophanu lifted a hand, a gesture as casual as a lazy swipe at a fly. “All of which,” she said, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone although no trace of emotion blotted her smoothly handsome face, “are not unknown to me. We saw each other last at Barenberg, Eagle, where I was helpless to combat the invaders and had no recourse left me except to pay them off temporarily. I am glad you survived your captivity.”

  Hanna really looked at her then, seeing in her dark eyes, steady gaze, and firm mouth the mark of a personality not tumbled every which way by the prevailing wind. “That is not all, Your Highness. Indeed, according to your brother Prince Sanglant, that is the least of it.”

  Theophanu had the intelligence of a churchwoman, hidden at times by the inscrutable eastern temperament she had inherited from her mother. She rose to her feet before Hanna could continue. “My brother speaks, I believe, of a sorcerous cabal whose plotting will destroy Wendar and bring a cataclysm upon the land.”

  “That is so.” Surprised, Hanna lost track of her laboriously memorized words. “If I may have a moment, Your Highness, to collect my thoughts….”

  A fit of coughing seized her.

  Theophanu waited her out before going on. “Do not forget that I was at Angenheim when Sanglant came with his child and his mother. I heard him speak. Yet I heard nothing to make me fear sorcery more than I already do. It seemed to me that he spoke rebellion against our father, the king. Perhaps he does not know his own mind. Perhaps his mother’s blood taints him—”

  “Or it is a madness set on him by the witch he married?” said one of her courtiers.

  “Perhaps,” replied Theophanu so skeptically that it took Hanna a moment to realize that the “witch” they spoke
of was Liath. “But if a cataclysm does threaten us, then surely our enemy are the Lost Ones, not those who would protect us against them. I cannot believe that my brother acts wisely in this case. But I am grateful to him for sending me what remains of the Lions who marched east last summer. Why did he not come himself?”

  “When I left him, he meant to escort the body of Prince Bayan to Ungria, Your Highness. From Ungria he intends to journey farther east into the lands where sorcerers and griffins may be found.”

  “Can such stories of the east be true?” demanded the woman in the green dress. She had pressed forward to listen, and now sat on a pillow beside Theophanu’s chair. “Marvels and wonders. Snakes that drink blood. One-legged men who hop everywhere. Did you see such things in the marshlands, Eagle?”

  “Nay, I did not, my lady, but we did not ride even so far as the kingdom of Ungria. Most of the time I was in the march of the Villams, or in Avaria and even here into Saony. I do not know what lies beyond Ungria—”

  Except that in her dreams she did know, for she had seen the Kerayit princess Sorgatani wandering in desert lands or through forests of grass growing higher than a man’s head. She had felt the claws of a living griffin grip her shoulders. She had touched the silver-and-gold scales of dragons heaped into dunes on the edge of habitable lands. She had seen the tents of the fabled Bwr people, whose bodies combined those of humankind and horse.

  “Any expedition to the east must prove dangerous, and might take years to complete, if he even returns at all.” Theophanu beckoned. A servingwoman brought forward a silver cup on a wooden platter with sides carved in the likeness of twining ivy. “Here, Leoba.” She offered the cup to the noblewoman sitting at her feet.

  “Is Aosta closed to us?” Leoba took the cup but did not drink. “How can it be that a messenger comes to us from Prince Sanglant, but not from King Henry? Why have we heard no news from Aosta when so many troubles assail us here? Where is the king?”

  “And where is your venerable husband?” Theophanu smiled fondly at her companion. “I am no less troubled than you. It seems strange to me that I have sent three Eagles separately to Aosta and yet no word has come to us from my father.”

  “With winter setting in, there’ll be none who can cross the Alfar Mountains.” Like Theophanu, Leoba was young and robust, but she had a hound’s eagerness in her face, ready to fling herself forward into the hunt, in contrast to Theophanu’s calm.

  “We must wait.” Theophanu took the cup and sipped while her attendants whispered. A tapestry hung in the room between shuttered windows, so darkly woven that lamplight barely illuminated the images depicted there: a saintly figure impaled by knives. Hanna’s hip twinged as if in sympathy as she shifted on the bench. A servant padded forward to refill the wine cup, and the princess sipped, eyes shuttered, as though she were mulling over a difficult question. She spoke in an altered voice, so smooth it seemed doubly dangerous.

  “There is one thing that puzzles me, Eagle. You bring me a message from my brother, Sanglant. You speak of the death of Prince Bayan of Ungria, and of other worthy folk, in the battle against the Quman invaders. But you have spoken no word of Princess Sapientia. You served her once, I believe. What has become of her?”

  The question startled Hanna, although she ought to have expected it. “She lives, Your Highness.”

  “Where is she? Where is her army? Why have these Lions been sent at Sanglant’s order, and not hers? Is she injured? Lost? Separated from the army?”

  “Nay, Your Highness. She rides with Prince Sanglant.”

  “How can it be that my brother sends me greetings, but my sister does not? Wasn’t she named by Henry as heir to the throne of Wendar and Varre?”

  Spiteful words came easily to her tongue. “Prince Sanglant commands the army, Your Highness. Princess Sapientia does not.”

  The courtiers murmured, a warm buzz of surprise and speculation.

  Only Theophanu seemed unmoved by Hanna’s statement. “Are you saying he has taken from her what is rightfully hers to command?”

  “I cannot know what is in the mind of princes, Your Highness. I can only witness, and report.”

  “Where goes Sapientia now?”

  “East to Ungria with Prince Bayan’s body.”

  “Did she consent to this journey, or was it forced on her?”

  All the anger boiled back. Hadn’t Sanglant betrayed her and all those who had suffered at the hands of Bulkezu by leaving Bulkezu alive? Perhaps it was true that Sanglant was fit to rule, and Sapientia was not. But he was a bastard and meant for another position in life; he had usurped his sister’s place. He had let Bulkezu live. She could no longer trust a man who would let a monster go on living after so many had died under its trampling rampage. Sapientia would have ordered Bulkezu hanged. Sapientia would not have saved him in the vain hope that he would somehow serve Wendar better alive than dead. Sapientia’s choices would have been different, had she been allowed to make the decision, as was her right as Henry’s eldest legitimate child.

  But she hadn’t had the choice. “This is my army now,” Sanglant had said after the battle at the Veser. He might as well have torn the crown from her head. Yet no one in that host had refused him.

  “The command was taken from her against her will,” Hanna said.

  Everyone in the chamber began talking at once, and Hanna’s words were repeated back into the mob of lesser courtiers and servants crowded into the corridor.

  “Silence,” said Theophanu without raising her voice. After a moment of hissed demands for quiet and a few last hasty comments, the gathered folk fell quiet. Like Sanglant, Theophanu had the habit of command, but she hadn’t his warmth and charisma; she hadn’t fought and suffered beside an army, as he had; she didn’t shine with the regnant’s luck, as he did.

  “If that is not rebellion against Henry’s rule, then I do not know what is. So be it. Nothing can be done today. Eagle, I pray you, eat and drink well and rest this night. Tomorrow I will interview you at more length.”

  Hanna slipped forward off the bench to kneel, shaking, too tired even to walk. “I pray you, Your Highness, may I keep company with the Lions? I have traveled a long road with them. I trust them.”

  “Let it be so.” Theophanu dismissed her. Calling for her chess set, she returned to her amusements. Hanna admired her for her composure. No great heights of emotion for her, however unnatural that might seem in a family whose passions, hatreds, joys, and rages were played out in public for all to see. She was like a still, smooth pond, untroubled by the tides of feeling that racked Hanna. Theophanu, surely, would not succumb to jealousy or greed, lust or pride. Not like the others.

  A servingwoman came forward to help Hanna up. Even standing hurt her, and she could not help but gasp out loud, but the gasp only turned into a painful cough.

  “I beg pardon, Eagle. Let me help you out to the barracks. I can see you need some coltsfoot tea. Are you also injured?”

  “I took a fall some days ago and landed on my hip.”

  “I have an ointment that might help, if you’ll let me serve you. It came to me from my grandmother, may she rest at peace in the Chamber of Light.”

  They moved out through the door, and the servants in the corridor had enough courtesy to stand back to let the two of them pass through, although it was obvious by their whispering and anxious looks that they wished to hear more extensive news of the troubles plaguing the borderlands and the southerly parts of the kingdom. Gent might lie peacefully now, but they had not forgotten what Gent had suffered under the Eika invasion just two years before.

  “I’ll take any help you’ll give me, and thank you for it,” said Hanna. Weight pressed into her chest with each hacking cough. “Has the plague reached here?”

  “Nay, it has not, thank God. But we’ve heard many stories from the south. They say that in the duchy of Avaria the plague killed as many as the Quman did. I don’t know if it’s true.”

  Outside the palace they paused on a
broad porch while Hanna rested, sucking in each breath with an effort. Such a short walk shouldn’t have tired her so much, but it had, and her hip hurt so badly that her vision blurred. A drizzle wet the dirt courtyard. The barracks lay across that impossibly wide expanse.

  “You’re white,” said her companion. “Sit down. I’ll bring some lads to carry you over. You shouldn’t be walking.”

  “Nay, no need. I can walk.”

  The servingwoman shook her head as she helped Hanna to sit on the wooden planks. “You haven’t caught the plague, have you?”

  “I pray not.” She leaned against the railing, shivering; aching, and with a dismal pain throbbing through her head and hip and chest. “It starts in the gut, not the lungs.” She glanced up, sensing the other woman’s movement, and got a good look at her for the first time: a handsome woman, not much older than she was, with a scar whitening her lip and a bright, intelligent, compassionate gaze. “What’s your name? It’s kind of you to be so … kind.”

  The servingwoman laughed curtly, but Hanna could tell that the anger wasn’t directed at her. “It takes so little to be kind. I’m called Frederun.” She hesitated; cheeks flushed. Her unexpected reserve and the color suffusing her face made her beautiful, the kind of woman who might be plagued by men lusting after her face and body. The kind of woman Bulkezu would have taken to his bed and later discarded. “Is it true you traveled with Prince Sanglant? Has he really rebelled against his father, the king?”

  “What does it matter to you?” Hanna blurted out, and was sorry at once, throwing sharp words where she had only received consideration. Was sorry, twice over, because the answer was obvious as soon as the words were spoken.

  “No matter to me,” said Frederun too quickly, turning her face away to hide her expression. “I only wondered. He and his retinue spent the winter here last year, on their way east.”

  “You don’t grieve that Lord Hrodik is dead?”