The Gathering Storm Read online

  4

  “I’M afraid to go to sleep.” Hathui clutched Zacharias’ hand as they sat together on the lip of the stone water trough set in the broad courtyard in front of the stables. “When I wake up, you might not be here any more.”

  “I’ll be here.” He wanted to weep. How could he be so happy, reunited with his beloved sister, and yet so terrified? “I won’t be going anywhere.”

  “I’m sorry I thought you were dead,” she replied, lips curving in an ironic smile. The moon had finally risen, chasing scattered clouds, and because he knew her expressions so well he could interpret them although there wasn’t really enough light to see her clearly. “Not very faithful of me.”

  “Nay, do not say so. You couldn’t have known.”

  Her hand tightened on his as she stared across the silent courtyard. A spear’s throw away, two guards walked the ramparts. Their figures paused beside a torch set in a tripod above the gate; the flickering firelight glimmered on their helmets. “Zacharias, can I trust him? Is he worth giving my loyalty to, until the king is restored?”

  “What other choice do you have, except to return to Aosta?”

  “I can go to Princess Theophanu. That’s what Hanna said I should do. Had I done it last summer, when I met Hanna, we might be in Aosta with an army by now.”

  He shuffled his feet in the dirt, blotting the lines where a servant had raked away manure and litter earlier that evening. The smell of horse lay heavily over them. Nearby a dog barked, then fell silent when a man scolded it. He saw the dog suddenly, a dark shape scrambling along the rampart in the company of a guard, its leash pulled taut. Choking him.

  He rubbed his throat as the nasty whispers surfaced in his mind. She would hate him when she found out the truth. She would despise him, which would be worse. It was bad enough being a coward, but he could not bear it if she turned away from him with contempt.

  “Yet who else?” she asked, unaware of his silence, his struggle, his agony. “Who else can save Henry? Who can fight Hugh of Austra, and Holy Mother Anne? Princess Sapientia is like a lapdog, suffered to eat and bark but kept on a chain. She cannot lead this army. Yet what can Princess Theophanu do against Hugh of Austra’s sorcery? She fell under his spell once before. She might do so again.”

  He did not need to answer, simply to listen as she worked her way through her own argument. She wasn’t really asking for his advice; she was trying to convince herself because she was desperate.

  “Sister Rosvita told me to come here. She must have known the prince’s worth. She must have had a reason. She has served the king loyally, and wisely. What else do I have to go on?”

  “You’d better sleep. The path will show more clearly in the morning.” Up on the ramparts, the guard dog growled. A person emerged from the stable carrying a candle; its light splashed shadows around them. Without turning, he knew who had come to look for her.

  “Hathui? You’d best sleep.” Wolfhere sounded concerned, even affectionate. All those humiliating years while Zacharias had lived as a slave among the Quman, Wolfhere had trained and ridden with Hathui, her mentor among the Eagles. She respected Wolfhere; she’d said so herself, as they’d eaten in the soldiers’ barracks after being dismissed from the prince’s chamber.

  She would never respect her own dear brother, not once she knew the truth.

  She let go of Zacharias’ hand. “True enough, old man. So many times in the past months I despaired of finding Prince Sanglant. Yet now that I’m here, my path seems just as troubled. Where will it end? Have you an answer?”

  “You say it was Sister Rosvita who sent you to find my lord prince,” the old Eagle answered. “She is a wise woman, and a faithful counselor to King Henry. Stay with us, Hathui. That is the only way to save Henry.”

  She grunted, half a chuckle, rising to her feet with a grimace. “Spoken by the man whom King Henry put under ban. You’ve never liked him.”

  “Nay. I’ve never disliked him. It is Henry who did not trust me.”

  “Wisely,” muttered Zacharias, but neither heard him. Hathui had already begun moving away, pausing when she realized he wasn’t following her.

  “Where do you sleep, Zachri?” she asked, using the pet name she’d called him when she was too young to fit his entire name to her tongue.

  “Elsewhere,” he said softly, hoping Wolfhere would not hear. It hurt to hear her use that fond old name. He was no longer her cherished older brother, the one she followed everywhere. He was no better than the dogs, sleeping wherever he found a corner to curl up in. No one tolerated him enough that he had a regular pallet—or perhaps it was more fair to say that Anna could not stand him, he could not himself bear to sleep near Wolfhere, and the camaraderie of the soldiers grew painful after a few nights. He could only exist on the edge, never in the heart.

  She came back to hug him. “There’s room enough in the stall where I’ve been given straw—”

  “Nay, nay,” he said hastily. Tears stung his eyes. “Go to sleep, Hathui. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She remained there a few breaths longer, staring at him in the hazy halo of light wavering off Wolfhere’s candle. She was trying to understand his hesitation, knowing him well enough to see that there was something wrong. But she could not yet see what he had become. She still saw the older brother who had walked proudly into the east to bring the light of the Unities to the barbarians. How could she know that he had become lost in the umbra? That he had compromised his honor, submitted to the worst indignities, and licked the feet of those who owned him, in order to stay alive? It was only when they had threatened to cut out his tongue that he had fled. Shouldn’t he have offered up his tongue, his very life, before he had sacrificed his faith and his honor?

  “You look tired, Zacharias,” she said at last, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek. “You should sleep, too. I’ll be looking for you at first light, to make sure you aren’t a dream.”

  She went inside the stables with Wolfhere. The light fled. So small a thing had the candle’s flame been, to cast so harsh a light onto his soul.

  When she found out the truth, she would hate him. And she would find out the truth in the end, because the one person who knew everything still traveled with Sanglant’s army and had no better way to amuse himself. He would know. He would see Zacharias’ weakness, his fears, and his hopes. He would destroy Zacharias’ last chance for redemption, as long as he still lived.

  Zacharias got to his feet and staggered like an old man to the door of the stable. It was dark inside, Wolfhere’s candle vanished entirely, although he heard a murmur of voices that faded. Half of the stalls were empty; at this time of year, and in a peaceful city, many of the horses had been put out to pasture beyond the inner walls. But soldiers stored other things here as well.

  Groping, as quietly as he could, he found a stout spear leaning with its brothers in a stall. He slipped his fingers around it, eased it free, and crept out of the stable. Hands trembling, breath coming in gasps, he hugged the shadows, having to steady himself on the butt of the spear every time his knees started to give out. The haft kept wanting to spring right out of his grasp, but he clutched it tightly.

  He would not lose Hathui, not after losing everything else.

  Beside the great hall lay the old keep, said by the locals to have been built in the time of the ancient Dariyans, although Heribert had firmly proclaimed that it could not possibly have been built by Dariyan engineers: the technique and stonework were too crude. With a new hall and stables now built inside the ring fort’s restored walls, the old keep was considered too drafty and damp for the king and his court. But stone made good prison walls.

  The two Ungrian soldiers standing guard at the entrance to the keep knew him by sight and let him pass. Up the winding stairs lay the tower rooms where King Geza kept certain prisoners who traveled with him wherever he went—his first wife, an unrepentant pagan whom he had divorced on his conversion to the Daisanite faith and whom he was forced to ho
ld hostage so that her angry kinfolk did not murder him for the insult; an Arethousan priest who had poisoned a young Ungrian princeling but whom Geza dared not execute because of the priest’s connections to the Arethousan royal court; an albino boy who was either a witch or a saint, too crazy to be allowed to roam about on his own and too valuable to be given into anyone else’s care.

  Others, too, slept confined in chambers, but they weren’t the dangerous ones, only hostages. Usually the dangerous ones were killed outright.

  As he should have been killed, the day they captured him.

  Zacharias used the butt of the spear to feel his way down the curving stairs to the lower level, where stone foundations plumbed the ground. It was cooler here, damp, smelling of mold and decay.

  “Who’s there?” asked the guard in Wendish, rising from the stool where he waited out the night in the dank, dark dungeon. An oil lamp hung from a ring set into the wall. The light barely illuminated the hole cut into the plank floor and the ladder lying on the planks beside it. “Oh, it’s just you, Brother. What brings you here so late?”

  Would his trembling hands and sweating brow give him away? He must not falter now. His glib tongue had always saved him before.

  “My lord prince has sent me to interrogate the prisoner.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  He raised a finger to his lips and beckoned the soldier closer, so that they wouldn’t wake the prisoner. “Malbert, when did you come on watch? Did you hear that an Eagle rode in?”

  “An Eagle? Nay, I’ve heard no such news. From Princess Theophanu? News of Wendar?” Malbert came from the northern coast of Wendar, near Gent, and was always eager for news of the region where he’d grown up.

  “Nay, she brings news from Aosta. King Henry is ill. He’s being poisoned by sorcery.”

  “God save him!”

  “Prince Sanglant doesn’t know whether to ride east or return to Aosta. I’m to ask the prisoner again of the eastern lands. See if he’ll talk, give us any information.”

  Malbert snorted. “As if he would! He’ll laugh at you.” But not for long.

  “If he’s groggy from sleep, he might reveal something. How many days to the eastern swamps. Where the griffins hunt.”

  “Hasn’t the prince come to listen and watch? Where is he?”

  “Well. Well. Just where most men wish they were in the dead of night. Heh, yes. He’s gone to his bed.”

  Malbert grinned. “I wish I were in as sweet a bed as he’s in now. But I can’t come down with you. You know the rule.”

  “It’s better if he thinks I’m alone. I’ve got this spear with me to keep him honest.”

  He bit his tongue to hold back the frantic words that wanted to spill out: to silence him.

  That was the only way. Hathui must never know.

  Malbert had an open face and was himself too honest not to let his skepticism show. They all knew how disgracefully Zacharias had behaved in a skirmish before. “So you say. I’ll keep watch from above.”

  They slid the ladder down through the hole until it rested on the dirt beneath. Malbert held the lamp over the opening to light Zacharias’ descent. With the spear tucked under one arm, he climbed down into the pit.

  Although the prince had had the pit swept clean the day they had arrived here, it still stank of garbage, urine, and feces. Dirt squeaked under his feet as Zacharias steadied himself. Malbert lowered a second, newly lit oil lamp to hang from a hook hammered into the underside of the plank floor. Drops of water beaded on the stone walls, dripping onto the soil. The stink of closed-in air almost choked him, but hatred drove him on.

  The prisoner lay silent, still asleep, on a heap of straw. Chains draped his recumbent body, iron links fastened to the wall. Without chains he was too dangerous, so the prince had discovered. No matter that Zacharias had warned him. Two servants had died and three soldiers been injured in that first and only escape attempt one month after the battle at the Veser. Yet even the heavy chains did not weaken him. They barely contained him.

  Do it now, while the fever burned. Do it for Hathui, so she need never know. So she need never spit in her brother’s face.

  Sweat dripped in his eyes and tickled the back of his neck. Flushed, heart pounding as though he were running, he stumbled forward. Triumph flooded him as his hands wrapped tight around the haft of the spear and he thrust hard at the exposed back of the man lying in the straw.

  He should have done this long ago.

  Lithe as a serpent, the shadowed figure twisted, and his manacled forearm batted the spear aside. The point drove into the dirt beneath the straw. Quick as a striking snake, he grabbed the haft with his right hand and with his left wrapped the chains shackling his arms around the point. Linked by the shaft of wood, the two men stared at each other. A smile quivered on Bulkezu’s lips as he slithered to his feet, confined only by the limit of his chains.

  The wound that had torn a flap of skin half off his cheek had healed remarkably well, but the ragged scar marred his beauty. No one could possibly look at him now and wonder how a man so handsome could be so monstrous. It had never been true that God so wrought the world that those things They lavished loving care on by granting them beauty were, because of their beautiful nature, therefore also good. Sometimes you met evil in the guise of beauty. You had to be careful.

  “So the worm comes with a long knife to poke at the lion.”

  Bulkezu thrust. Propelled backward, Zacharias hit the opposite wall, first his back, then his head colliding with cold stone. His shriek was cut short as the butt of the spear, still with his own hands clutching it, jammed hard into his gut, pinning him against the wall.

  “Impotent worm,” said Bulkezu in his soft voice. Now that he had hold of one end of the spear, he could reach anywhere in the cell. “But worms aren’t men, they’re only worms. They can’t even bark like dogs or rut like them, can they?”

  How he hated that voice, and the bubbling laughter, sweet with delight and with the cunning madness that had made Bulkezu the greatest chieftain of his day, that had allowed him to unite many of the Quman tribes into an army with which to ravage Wendar. All he could do was grasp the haft more tightly.

  If he let go, it was all over.

  Adjusting his grip, bending slightly at his knees, Bulkezu lifted Zacharias from the floor and slammed him against the wall again. A second time the Quman pitched him against the stone as Zacharias screamed with anger and pain.

  Malbert’s face appeared above like some sort of angel illuminated by the lamp’s glow. He shouted down unintelligible words as Bulkezu kept battering Zacharias against the wall and Zacharias kept holding on.

  Was that the sound of footsteps, clattering on the floor above? Impossible to tell. Again and again, Bulkezu slammed him against the wall as spots sparked like fire before Zacharias’ eyes and sound roared in his ears. A stone fell from above, then a second, but the angle was wrong, the trapdoor set too far to one side. The guards could not reach Bulkezu as he battered Zacharias against the wall again, and again. Yet was that frustration growing in the monster’s laugh?

  If he could only hold on a moment longer. He had escaped the Quman in the first place simply by holding on, by not giving up. He had to remember that.

  A new voice rang above the fray.

  “Zacharias!”

  Horror gripped him, and his throat burned as bile rose.

  Hathui would witness it all.

  Again, Bulkezu thrust, and Zacharias smashed into the stone behind him, but this time when his head hit his vision hazed and darkened. The shaft of the spear slid out of his weakening grip. His legs no longer held him up. He toppled over, hit the ground and, as his sight faded, he braced himself for the final, killing thrust.

  5

  HE could not sleep. Again. Not even the soft bed and the voluptuous woman breathing softly beside him, her full breasts pressed against his arm, could soothe his agitated thoughts tonight. He slipped from the bed as quietly as he co
uld, pulled on his tunic, swept up leggings and belt and court shoes from the bench where they had been left in a heap. Ilona did not wake. She never did, when he was restless—not as Liath had, attentive to his moods—or perhaps she only pretended to sleep, having got what she wanted out of him and being unwilling to give more of herself than her body.

  She was loyal to Ungria, not to him, loyal to her estates and her young children, who would inherit her portion when the time came. No reason she should offer him her heart, her confidences, any intimacy beyond that shared in the bed, two lonely people finding release.

  For some reason it bothered him mightily that, as much as she enjoyed his company, she seemed to harbor no actual love nor even any particular companionable affection for him at all.

  One of her servingwomen woke and, with barely a glance at him, no more than a respectful bob to acknowledge his princely rank, opened the door to let him out. In this same way she would let out a scratching dog.

  He walked barefoot down the hall, down the stairs, feeling his way by touch to the entrance to the great hall. The feast had ended. Men snored in the hall, reeking of drink and urine. A dog growled, and he growled right back, silencing it.

  The whole world seemed asleep, able to rest—as he could not.

  Yet that wasn’t all that was bothering him. Something wasn’t right; he could smell it. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he stepped out into the open air, taking in a deep breath, listening. His hearing had always been as good as that of a dog.

  Shouts and motion roiled the night over by the old keep, where the prisoners were kept.

  He ran, reaching the door to the keep just as Wolfhere did.

  “Trouble?” he asked.

  From inside a guardsman shouted unintelligible words and he heard the voice of the Eagle, Hathui, raised in fear. Taking the stairs three at a time, he fetched up beside a clot of guardsmen, all crying out and exclaiming, one of them on his knees dropping stones through the open trapdoor.

  “Damn fool,” cursed one as Hathui tried to push past him to get to the ladder. “The damn fool took a spear. Now the prisoner’s got hold of it.”