The Gathering Storm Page 7

  “It is Brother Breschius who presides over mass, not an Arethousan priest.”

  “True enough. It’s said the last of the Arethousans fled Ungria when we arrived with Prince Bayan’s body last autumn. They’re worse than rats, skulking about and spreading their lies and their heresy.”

  “It seems to me that there’s heresy enough in the ranks of Prince Sanglant’s army. I hear whispers of it, the phoenix and the redemption.”

  Fulk had a deceptively mild expression for a man who had survived any number of hard-fought battles and had abandoned King Henry to join the war band of that king’s rebel son. His lips twitched up, as though he meant to smile, but his gaze was sharp. “If you toss an adder into a pit without water and leave it alone, it will shrivel up and die soon enough. But if you worry at it, then it will bite you and live.”

  In silence they left the river and followed the track across an overgrazed pasture to the palisade gate. The ring fort had been built along the bend in the river, but in recent times houses, craftsmen’s yards, and shepherds’ hovels had crept out below the circular ramparts and been ringed in their turn by a ditch and log palisade.

  The two men crossed the plank bridge thrown over the palisade ditch and greeted the guards lounging at the open gates. With the king in residence, the Quman defeated, and a good-sized army camped in the fields beyond, the watch kept the gates open all night because of the steady traffic between town and camp.

  In Ungria, peace reigned.

  Half a dozen soldiers were waiting for Fulk just beyond the gate, leaning at their ease on the rails of an empty corral. As soon as they saw their captain, they fell in smartly behind him.

  “A captain cannot appear before the prince without a retinue, lest he be thought unworthy of his captain’s rank,” said Fulk wryly.

  “You came alone to get me.”

  “So I did. I wanted to get a good look at camp without being noticed. Smell the mood of the men.”

  The settlement had a lively air. A summer’s evening market thrived near the tanners’ yard, although the stench of offal, urine, and dung at times threatened to overpower the folk out bargaining over rugs, bronze buckets, drinking horns, pots of dye, woolen cloth, and an impressive variety of shields. Small children with feet caked in dried mud ran about naked. A woman sat beside a crate of scrawny hens, calling out in an incomprehensible tongue that seemed only half Ungrian to Zacharias’ ears, shot through with a coarser language closer to that spoken out on the grasslands.

  Horses pounded up behind them. Zacharias glanced back just as Fulk swore irritably. A sweep of pale wings brushed the dark sky; in an instant the riders would be upon him. The frater shrieked out loud and dropped hard to the ground, clapping his hands over his head. Death came swiftly from the Quman. They would strike him down and cut off his head. Terror made him lose control; a hot gush of urine spilled down his legs.

  But the horsemen swept past, ignoring him, although in their passage they overturned the crate. Freed chickens ran squawking out into the market. One of the birds ran right over Zacharias, claws digging into his neck.

  “Here, now,” said Fulk, grasping his arm to pull him up. “Did you get hit?”

  They hadn’t been Quman after all, come to behead him. It was only a group of Ungrian cavalrymen wearing white cloaks, the mark of King Geza’s honor guard.

  Fulk’s soldiers ran down the chickens and returned them to the woman, who was cursing and yelling. At least the commotion hid Zacharias as he staggered to his feet. The darkness hid the stain on his robe, but nothing could hide the stink of a coward. As long as he feared the Quman, and Bulkezu, he was still a slave. Blinking back tears of shame and fear, he tottered over to the dirty watering trough and plunged in as Fulk and his soldiers shouted in surprise. Chickens, goats, and children made an ear-splitting noise as they scattered from his splashing. He was sopping wet from the chest down when he climbed out. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten apple at him. He ducked, but not quickly enough, and it splattered against his chest.

  “For God’s sake,” swore Fulk, dragging him along. “What madness has gotten into you now, Brother?” The ground sloped steeply up and the ramparts loomed dark and solid above them.

  “I fell into a stinking pile of horse shit. Whew! I couldn’t attend the prince smelling like the stables.” As they walked into the deeper shadow of the rampart gates, lit by a single sentry’s torch, he found himself shaking still. “Next time those Ungrian soldiers will cripple some poor soul and never bother to look back to see what they’ve wrought.”

  “Here, now,” said Fulk, taken aback by his ferocity but obviously thrown well off the scent, “it’s a miracle you weren’t trampled, falling like you did.”

  The passage through the ramparts took a sharp turn to the left, and to the right again, lit by torches. Sentries chatted above them, up on the walls from which they watched the passage below. One of the soldiers was singing a mournful tune, his song overwhelmed by the hubbub as they came into the central courtyard of the inner fort.

  The nobles were feasting in the hall, late into the summer night, in honor of St. Edward Lloyd, a cunning and pious Alban merchant who had brought the faith of the Unities as well as tin into the east. Zacharias heard singing and laughter and saw the rich glow of a score of lamps through the open doors. Servants rushed from the kitchens into the hall, bearing full platters and pitchers, and retreated with the scraps to feed the serving folk, the beggars, and the dogs.

  Fulk gave the bright hall scarcely a glance and headed straight for the stables, currently inhabited by the rest of Sanglant’s personal guard and a sizable contingent of Ungrian cavalrymen. Wolfhere met them at the door.

  “It isn’t raining,” the old Eagle said, looking Zacharias up and down in that annoyingly supercilious way he had, as though he had guessed the means and nature of the injury and. found the frater wanting yet again.

  “An accident.” The words grated, harsh and defensive.

  Wolfhere shrugged. “This way, Captain. We got her porridge and ale, as the prince requested. She said she’d rest and bathe after she’d delivered her report.”

  Instead of heading up a ladder to the loft where the soldiers quartered, the old Eagle led them past stalls, about half of them stabling a horse and the rest storing arms, armor, or barrels of grain and ale, down to an empty stall where Heribert and Sergeant Cobbo hovered beside a tall, dark-haired, big-boned woman who had a stained Eagle’s cloak thrown around her shoulders and a mug of ale at her lips.

  Was the floor heaving and buckling? His knees folded under him so fast that he had to brace himself against the wall to stay upright.

  “Well met, Eagle.” Fulk stepped into the halo of lamplight. “You’ve ridden far.” Straw slipped under his boots as he moved forward and the Eagle, lowering her mug, stood up to greet him.

  Hathui.

  Only a strangled gasp escaped Zacharias’ throat. He tugged at his hood, pulling it up to conceal his face, but she had already seen him. For the length of time it might take a skilled butcher to cut a calf’s throat she stared at him, puzzled, her hawk’s gaze as sharp as a spear’s point. He was so changed that she did not know him. If he was careful, he could make sure that she would never know who he was, never be ashamed by what he had become. He turned to hide his face in the shadows.

  Her eyes widened as recognition flared. She dropped the mug. Ale spilled down her leggings; the mug hit and shattered on the plank floor. Her lips formed his name, but no sound came out. Staggering, she folded forward and fell as though she’d been slugged and, reflexively, as he’d always done when she was only his little sister and had got into trouble yet again, he leaped forward to catch her.

  She clutched him hard. “Ai, God.” She was as tall as he was, with a strong grip and a rank smell. “I thought you were dead.”

  I am dead. I am not the brother you knew. But he could not speak.

  “God’s mercy,” said Wolfhere softly, much surprised. “I knew you had
a brother, Hathui, who walked into the east as a frater and was lost. Can this man be the same one?”

  She wept, although she’d never been one to weep as a child, scorning those who cried; her beloved older brother had been the only soul ever allowed to see her rare bouts of tears.

  “Hush,” he said, remembering those days bitterly. Memories swept over him with such strength that he felt nauseated. Now she would know. Now she would despise him.

  “I thought you were dead,” she repeated, voice hollow. Tears still coursed down her face, but her expression had changed, taut and determined, the hawk’s glare focused again on its distant prey. “All things are possible, if you are truly alive after all this time. My God, Zacharias, there is so much for us to speak of, but first I must deliver my news to the prince.”

  She nodded to the others and strode out of the stables. He was left behind to follow in her wake, fearing the worst: that she brought ill news, and that he had been called because Prince Sanglant intended to bring in the captive Quman and needed Zacharias to interpret. Yet why not? Let the worst be known at once, so that her repudiation of him would come now, the pain of her rejection suffered immediately. That was better than to be left lingering, malignant with hope.

  They pushed into the hall past servants and hangers-on, brushing aside a pack of hopeful dogs waiting for bones. Hathui walked with a pronounced limp, as if she had aggravated the old childhood injury that had left her with a slight hitch in her stride. Was it really almost two years ago when he had glimpsed her that day in Helmut Villam’s presence? Zacharias had kept back in the shadows, and Hathui had not recognized him. Since that day, she’d grown thin and weary and worn, and her sunken cheeks made her hawk’s nose more prominent, bold and sharp. But when they pushed through the crowd and came before the high table where King Geza presided over the feast, she stood proudly in her patched Eagle’s cloak and tattered clothing and spoke in the voice he remembered so well, confident and proud.

  “My lord king of Ungria, may all be well in your kingdom. I pray you, forgive my abruptness.”

  The hall grew quiet as the feasting nobles settled down to listen. Sapientia sat in the seat of honor to Geza’s right while Sanglant sat between the robust but gray-haired King Geza and Lady Ilona, a ripely handsome and fabulously rich Ungrian widow. Brother Breschius leaned down to whisper into Geza’s ear as Hathui turned her attention to the royal siblings.

  “Your Highness, Princess Sapientia, I come from Aosta bearing news. My lord prince, my lady, I have traveled a long and difficult road to reach you. It has taken me almost two years to come so far, and I have escaped death more than once.”

  Sanglant rose to his feet, holding a cup of wine. He wore a rich gold tunic embroidered with the sigil of the black dragon and finished with red braid, and his black hair had been trimmed back from his beardless face. No person could look at him and forget that his mother was not born of humankind.

  Yet neither could they forget that he was a prince, commander of the army that had defeated the Quman. Even, and especially, Sapientia, dressed in all the finery appropriate to a noblewoman, looked as insignificant as a goldfinch perched next to a mighty dragon.

  “You bring ill news,” said Sanglant.

  Hathui almost choked on the words. “I bring ill news, Your Highness, may God help us all. King Henry has been bewitched, ensorcelled with the connivance of his own queen and his trusted counselor. He lives as a prisoner in his own body. You are the only one who can save him.”

  2

  BLESSING had a disconcerting habit of leaning so far out tower windows that it seemed in the next instant she would fall, or fly.

  “Look!” She had crawled up into the embrasure of an archer’s loophole and was still—barely—small enough to push into the narrow opening so that she could look down into the forecourt. “My father has left the feasting hall. I don’t like it when he makes me stay here, like I’m in prison. Doesn’t he have enough prisoners to lord it over? Why does he pick on me?”

  “Your lord father does not like it when you behave as you did this morning,” said Anna for the tenth time that evening. “When you act like a barbarian, then you must be treated as one.”

  Matto sat by the cold hearth, a lit lamp dangling above him. He had made use of the long and dreary afternoon to oil the young princess’ harness until it gleamed. Looking up, he winked slyly, and Anna blushed, gratified and irritated at the same time.

  Blessing forced her shoulders through the loophole. Anna hastily grabbed her trailing feet just as the girl called out, words muffled by the stone. “Who’s that with him? It looks like an Eagle! He’s coming back here!”

  Anna tugged, grunting, but Blessing was either stuck or was holding on. “Matto!”

  He was more than happy to set down the harness and help her, because it gave him an excuse to put his arms around her as he grasped hold of Blessing’s ankles as well. “Your Highness!” he said. “I pray you, do not get stuck in there or we will be the ones who will face your father’s anger.”

  There was a pause.

  Blessing wriggled backward, half slid down the stair-step embrasure, and hopped to the carpeted floor. Despite everything, the girl had a profound sense of fairness and did not like to see her attendants blamed for her misadventures.

  “Well, there is an Eagle with him,” she said defiantly. “I don’t know where she came from, or how she could have found us out here in Ungria. I hate Ungria.”

  “We all know you hate Ungria, Your Highness,” said Anna wearily, allowing herself to lean against Matto’s broad chest. His hand tightened on her shoulder.

  “Thiemo won’t like that.” Blessing had a sweet face still, although she stood as tall as many a nine- or ten-year-old child, but her expression was sharpened by a spark of malicious glee as she bared her teeth in something resembling a grin. “I hear him coming up the stairs now.”

  Anna stepped out from under Matto’s arm.

  “I’m not afraid of him!” Matto muttered as the latch flipped up.

  The door had a hitch to it, and the floor was warped, so it took Thiemo a moment to shove it open. To be safe, Anna took two more steps away from Matto.

  “My lord prince is returning,” said Thiemo, addressing Blessing. “Your Highness.” His gaze quickly assessed Anna, and Matto, and the distance between them, and then he grinned winsomely at Anna, the smile that always made her dizzy. How could it be that a lord like Thiemo even noticed a common-born girl with skin stained nutbrown from the tanning pits?

  Blessing’s tunic was twisted around from climbing. As Anna helped the girl to straighten herself and found a comb to brush her untidy hair, Thiemo and Matto gathered up the harness, neatened up the chamber, and did not speak one word to each other. The two young men had never been friends, since the gulf in their stations did not truly permit such intimacy, but had once been friendly companions in Blessing’s service. Not anymore.

  The clamor of footsteps and voices echoed up from below. Lamplight glimmered and, all at once, fully a dozen people crowded into the tower chamber. Blessing scrambled up to hide in the stair-step embrasure, crouching there like a sweetly featured gargoyle with Thiemo and Matto standing as guards to either side of the opening. Anna retreated to the hearth while Prince Sanglant and his noble companions and loyal followers took up places around the chamber. His sister seated herself at the table with her faithful companion Lady Brigida at her side and the others ranged about the room, standing respectfully or sitting comfortably on the bed or the other bench, according to their station. It was the usual retinue: Lady Bertha of Austra, Brother Heribert, Wolfhere, that nasty Brother Zacharias, whose robes were damp, Captain Fulk, kind Brother Breschius, even-tempered Lord Druthmar, who commanded a contingent of Villam cavalry, and the one they all called the Rutting Beast, the notorious Lord Wichman. The only Ungrian present was Istvan, a noble if rather grim captain who, like Brother Breschius, had thrown his loyalty to Sanglant after Prince Bayan’s death at the Veser
. Anna had expected to see the prince’s mistress, Lady Ilona, whose favorite gown Blessing had so thoroughly ruined this morning, but evidently she did not hold an intimate enough rank within the prince’s personal circle to be invited into this private assembly.

  Sanglant paced, wearing a path from the door to the window and back again, but his attention remained fixed on the battered Eagle who had been given Anna’s stool for a seat, the only common-born person in the room not on her feet. This was no arrogant privilege granted her by reason of her Eagle’s status; she looked too exhausted to stand on her own. But although her shoulders drooped, her keen gaze did not waver from the prince’s restless figure.

  “So it’s true,” Sanglant said at last. “Wolfhere glimpsed the truth with his Eagle’s Sight, but we had no way to confirm what he had seen.” He glanced at Wolfhere, who regarded the other Eagle with a thoughtful frown, as though the news she had brought were nothing more troubling than the screech of a jay.

  “We must march on Aosta at once!” cried Sapientia.

  Sanglant barely glanced at her, nor did she try to interrupt him when he spoke. “With what magic will we combat those who have imprisoned the king? Nay. This changes nothing, and in truth only makes our course more clear. We must continue east. That is the only way to defeat our enemies.”

  “But, Your Highness,” objected the Eagle, “I have been already two years seeking you. How can we know what has befallen King Henry in that time? He is hidden to my Eagle’s Sight. He may be dead. They may do any foul deed to him that they wish!”

  “And so may they continue to do,” said Heribert quietly. “I have seen the power of the sorcery they wield. We cannot fight it with spears or swords.”

  “But, Your Highness,” pleaded the Eagle, “if you ride east, into unknown country and the lands where the Quman breed, it may be years until you return to Wendar. What will happen to your father meanwhile?” She knelt at the prince’s feet, her presence forcing him to stand still.