Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (34 page)

"I have come to get your pledge, your person, and your men-at-arms, to join with Sabella."

Lord Geoffrey started visibly. To Alain, this was confirmation of his own belief that Lavastine was ensorcelled. Surely Geoffrey knew his cousin's mind on this matter better than any other person might. "T-to join Lady Sabella?" he stammered.

"So I said," snapped Lavastine.

"But that is treason against King Henry."

"It is treason not to take up Sabella's cause against

Henry. She is the elder child, the named heir. Her mother was queen of Varre in her own right."

"But by right of fertility
—" protested Geoffrey.

"Sabella has a daughter, born of her womb. By what right does Henry claim the throne? By the right given him by a bastard child born to a creature who cannot even be called a true woman? Is it imagined this creature's oath, before the assembled biscops, is worthy of being called truth? How can we know Henry got the child on her? How can we trust the male line at all? It is only through the female line we can be sure."

Geoffrey appeared staggered by this argument. "B
— but, cousin. Your own line, your own father . . . Lavas has for three generations passed its inheritance through the male line."

"Do you stand with me?" asked Lavastine without apparent emotion. "Or against me?" He raised a hand, calling his troops to order. His captain actually hesitated, he was so surprised by this command.

"I
—I—I must have time to think!"

"There is no time to think! You must choose!"

Lavastine urged his horse forward and drew his sword. Joy and Fear loped beside him. Geoffrey was too stunned even to shy aside as the count bore down on him, sword aloft. But Geoffrey's clerics and retainers were not so slow-witted. Several threw themselves in front of their lord, so that when Lavastine cut down, it was a man in wool tunic and leggings who took the blow meant for his lord; Geoffrey merely cried out in shock.

It was a cleric in the simple robes of a frater who turned and sprinted for the gate. Perhaps he ran for safety. Perhaps he meant to warn those left inside.

Alain could not know. A crossbowman shot, and the quarrel hit the frater in the back. He went down to his knees, for an instant caught in an attitude of prayer, and then tumbled forward into a puddle. Mud splashed over his robes. The water turned a muddy red.

Lavastine rode on past Geoffrey and the knot of men clustered around him, leaving them to the mercies of his men-at-arms. He passed the dying frater. His captain spurred his own mount forward, calling to the other mounted soldiers to follow, and they galloped after Lavastine. Ahead, at the palisade gateway someone was trying to get the gate shut.

"Hai! Hai!" shouted Sergeant Fell, running forward along the line of foot soldiers. "Form up and drive forward at a trot!"

What happened next happened so quickly that afterward Alain could never entirely make sense of it. He surged forward with the other men-at-arms. He could not help but do so. The hounds barked and nipped at the air, scenting battle. Some he restrained, but three more broke away and these tore after Lavastine.

A struggle had erupted around Lord Geoffrey, though Geoffrey's few retainers could scarcely hope for victory. But they beat about themselves with hands and sticks and their ceremonial spears, even with the lance that held the banner of Lady Aldegund's kin, a white hart running against a background colored the deep blue of the twilight sky.

Lavastine, backed by his mounted soldiers, reached the gates. What resistance they met there was cursory. How could Geoffrey's soldiers have ever imagined their lord's cousin would attack them? But one man had kept his wits about him. One man remained in the lookout tower with crossbow in hand.

Perhaps he meant to shoot Lavastine and his hand wavered. Perhaps he meant exactly what happened. Alain knew of it only because when the crossbow quarrel hit Joy and pierced her heart, the other hounds went wild.

Not even Alain could control them.

Lavastine had vanished into the stronghold. Alain ran. He ran in the wake of the hounds and did not even have to shove his way past Sergeant Fell and through the other men-at-arms; they had scattered when the hounds raged through and began to ravage Lord Geoffrey and his men, the closest targets.

With his spear, Alain beat them back, though in their madness the hounds bit at him. Some of the men he could not save, but he straddled one poor frater with his feet and knocked the hounds away from Lord Geoffrey ten times at least before they growled even at him and then turned and ran toward the stronghold. Their eyes were wild, red-rimmed with the battle madness. Blood and saliva dripped down their muzzles.

What they left behind them was terrible to see, one man with a hand bitten clean off, others with flesh torn to expose bone. One poor lad, the banner bearer, had his throat ripped open. Lord Geoffrey had a number of bites, but he could stand. He swayed; Alain could not tell whether he staggered from the shock of his wounds or from the shock of his cousin's attack.

To be attacked by one's own kinsman was the worst kind of betrayal.

Was this the kind of war the Lady of Battles intended him for?

It could not be. Lavastine had always walked the middle road. Hadn't the count understood that a war between Sabella and Henry would be the worst possible thing that could happen?

At that moment, Alain
knew
that Lavastine no longer moved and thought under his own free will, whatever Agius might say. Even Frater Agius would have been stunned by this unprovoked attack on Lord Geoffrey, whom everyone knew was Lavastine's most favored kinsman. Lackling's blood and Lackling's life had been stolen in order to give Biscop Antonia the power to steal Lavastine's heart and will.

"I will stay with him," Alain murmured to himself, half embarrassed by his own arrogance in stating such a thing. "Someone must protect him." Even if that someone was a common boy, who was nothing, who had nothing
—except a rose that never ceased blooming.

Sergeant Fell sent half of his men ahead to the stronghold, but the brief flurry of shouts and cries that had erupted from inside the palisade walls had already faded. With his other men, Fell cleaned up from the skirmish. He appeared profoundly uncomfortable as he placed Lord Geoffrey in custody; a frater known to have healing skills hurried forward from Lavastine's train to attend to the wounded men.

"Hai, you! Lad!" Sergeant Fell caught sight of Alain. "Go on, then. Go on. You must fetch them hounds and tie them up. Think of the children in there."

Several of the men-at-arms quickly, reflexively, drew the circle at their breasts. For who among them could forget that those very hounds had killed Lavastine's wife and child? The full story Alain had never heard, since no person in Lavas Holding would speak of it.

"Go!" ordered Fell.

"My wife!" gasped Lord Geoffrey. "The baby!"

Had Alain waited ten breaths longer he would have been too late. It was easy to follow the path of the hound pack: Alain counted two dead men and eleven wounded ones strewn in a ragged line across the broad courtyard. Servants cowered by the well, protected by five of Lavastine's soldiers.

Lavastine's horse stood outside the great timber hall that was the lord's and lady's residence. At least half of the mounted soldiers had left their horses there and gone on, into the hall, following their count; several terrified stableboys held the horses. Alain ran inside.

The hounds were swarming up the steps that led to the spacious loft above the long hall where the lady and her kinswomen and children and the servants lived. The battle madness was still in their eyes. Alain sprinted and grabbed the last one in the pack by its thin tail, and yanked it backward. It spun, biting.

"Sorrow! Down!"

Of a miracle, it worked. Sorrow sat. Ahead on the steps, hearing his voice, Rage sat as well. But the others flowed upward like water running uphill: impossible to stop unless one is truly a sorcerer, for only by sorcery can such an unnatural act be realized.

Alain took the steps two at a time. He shoved through the hounds and though they nipped at him, they were

too intent on their prey to worry about one slender youth in their midst. Lavastine walked forward, sword still raised. He appeared oblivious to the hounds and the threat they posed
—not to him, of course, but to the women and children and handful of men who, step by slow step, cowered back toward the far wall of the great hall.

Only two had the courage to step forward. Alain recognized the young Lady Aldegund at once; she was certainly no older than he was, though clearly she was now a woman, no longer a child. Pale and shaking, she took a staff and advanced toward Lavastine, crying: "What is this, cousin? Why have you come in such warlike guise to a hall which greets you in friendship and love?"

She held her six-month-old infant in her arms, the child who it had been suggested might become heir to the childless Lavastine. One older woman, weeping, stepped out beside her, as if to throw herself before her lady, to save her from Lavastine's sword or the hounds' bloody fangs.

Alain grabbed tails and flanks, but still they slipped out and charged. They meant to kill her. They
would
kill her, if no one acted, and likely tear the infant child to pieces.

So he laid about him with the butt of his spear, without thought to the consequences. And he cried out sharply as he beat them back.

"Sit! Down! You will obey me, you beasts! Sit!" Terror had actually reached the lady's skirts before Alain hit the hound so hard alongside the head that the animal was stunned. But the rest, finally, sat, though they growled menacingly, eyes fixed on the huddled mass of Lady Aldegund's household.

Lavastine did not sheathe his sword. "You will pledge your loyalty to Lady Sabella's cause, or you will leave," he said.

Aldegund gasped aloud. She looked about to faint, but when her faithful kinswoman touched her on the elbow, she steadied herself. "That is impossible," she said proudly. "My kin traces its allegiance back to the first King Henry, when Queen Conradina passed over her brother Eberhard in favor of naming Henry, then Duke of Saony, as her heir. Though I married into a Varrish family, I will not betray the faith my kin have held in their hearts for so many generations."

How much it cost her to say this Alain could not imagine. He no longer knew what Lavastine would do. Surely she could not know either and she with a babe in her arms and two young stepchildren to protect. And of course she could not know, not yet, what had happened to her husband.

Lavastine remained unmoved by this brave statement. He said, in that flat voice: "You will give me the children as surety for your good behavior. Then you will leave this place with your retinue and return to your mother's lands."

"These are my mother's lands!" Aldegund protested. "They were given to me upon my marriage! You cannot take them!"

"Can you prevent me? These lands now serve Lady Sabella's cause. I will set a chatelaine over them until such time as you choose the wiser course and support Sabella, or until Sabella herself appoints a new lady to administer them." He gestured, and his men
—rather hesitantly but without any appearance of moving to contravene his orders—came forward, rounding up the children.

Alain had finished tying the hounds together on a long leash. They nipped and snarled at each other, but they no longer resisted him. Only Rage and Sorrow did he trust enough to leave off the leash. They sat by the stairs like sentries, watching.

Aldegund clutched the infant against her breast. "This one I will not give up!" she exclaimed. "I am still nursing her. It is an offense against Our Lady to take children unwillingly from their mothers!"

"Leave her the infant at least, Count Lavastine," Alain

muttered. He could not know whether the count had heard him.

But Lavastine blinked. His pale hard gaze faltered. He batted at his face, as if to brush away a fly. "Just the elder children," he said, sounding uncertain, almost bewildered. But the moment was brief.

Aldegund's mouth trembled but she did not give way to tears. Lord Geoffrey's two children by his first wife were taken away. Lavastine sheathed his sword and glanced at Alain, marking him with some confusion. Then he shook his head and stiffened, losing all expression. He snapped his ringers and the hounds, swarming together because they were tied to the leash, approached him, licking his fingers and fawning at his boots. He took the leash, turned, and with no further speech to anyone left the great hall.

They celebrated the Feast of St. Sormas at the holding, but it was a somber feast. Only Lavastine and his men-at-arms ate at the banquet tables, served grudgingly but without protest by the servants of Geoffrey and Aldegund. Geoffrey was confined to the tower cell and Aldegund and her retinue to the loft upstairs.

In the morning Lavastine allowed the women to leave with only enough food for the fiveday's journey east into Wendish lands, where lay the estate of Lady Alberga, young Aldegund's mother. It was a pathetic procession that set out
—Aldegund, the infant, and her two kinswomen, as well as the wet nurse and only two servingwomen. How could anyone be expected to know she was a lady, with such a paltry retinue? Aldegund was not even allowed to keep her own horses but had to ride on the back of a donkey.