Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (60 page)

The biscop spoke words of blessing over them, and there were toasts to their health, to Bayan's virility, and to Sapientia's womanly strength.

" 'Let us contest with swords not with words,'" cried Bayan, " 'and if not in battle with worthy opponents then in the bed of a handsome woman.'" He laughed as he tossed off another cup of wine. He had an amazing capacity to drink and had only had to leave the table twice to pee. He turned to his betrothed with a grin. "These words is teach to me by your brother, the famous warrior Bloody Fields, who makes the land to run red with the blood of his enemies. But you name him differently in your own tongue." He spoke to the frater, grunted, and tried the word on his tongue but could not make it come out like anything intelligible.

"Do you mean Sanglant?" demanded Sapientia. "You have met Sanglant!"

"Hai—ai! We fight the Quman together these five years past. It is a good battle! They run, and do not to come back. He is alive still, your brother?"

"He is still alive," said Sapientia curtly, and seemed about to say more when shouting rose from the far end of the hall.

"Make way! Make way!" Two men in soiled clothing came forward and knelt before the high table.

"What is this?" asked the biscop. "Is the news you bring so urgent that it cannot wait until morning?"

"I beg your pardon, Your Grace," said the elder of the two. He had a reddish beard and a scar above his left eye. "We have had news of several raids beyond the town of Meilessen. There have been more than a dozen such raids, villages burned, many people killed and some beheaded, so it is said. It is hard to know how long ago this began, twenty days or more, but the raiders are moving west. We thought it best to tell you as soon as we entered Handelburg."

The frater had been translating, and now Prince Bayan got to his feet and gestured for a servant to take wine to the two men. "Who does this raiding?" he asked, but he seemed already to know the answer.

"It is the Quman, my lord," said the man, startled as he now took in the assembly of Ungrian warriors mixed together with Wendish folk.

Bayan set his teeth in a vicious smile, an expression quite at odds with his usual jolly demeanor. "What mark do they bear, these Quman?"

The spokesman consulted with his companion, then looked toward the biscop for permission to speak. Sapientia stirred restlessly, then rose, too, a pallid echo of Bayan's movement. The spokesman acknowledged her with a bow, but it was obvious he did not recognize her as Henry's eldest daughter and putative heir.

"They wear the mark of the claw's rake." The messenger took his three middle fingers and made a raking gesture down his arm. "Like so."

Bayan spat on the floor, then leaped up onto the table with raised cup. He shouted out a name, and the hall rang with the shatteringly loud reply of his assembled men as they, too, all cursed a name and spat on the floor in response. He cried out again, and they answered him, then all drained their cups dry to seal their bargain.

"The snow leopard clan," translated the frater. "Bulkezu, son of Bruak."

Bayan had launched into another one of his poems, which Hanna recognized by its distinctive cadences, and by the awkward translation of the frater, who no doubt did what he could to make the words pleasing.

"Hard rjdes the fighter. Strong are his sinews. Many days in the saddle."

"What is the snow leopard clan?" demanded Sapientia, still glaring at the messengers, who, poor souls, looked quite taken aback at being surrounded by a host of shouting Ungrian warriors who were most likely still half heathens themselves—and pungent ones at that. She beckoned to the frater, who faltered, stopped translating, and answered her.

"The snow leopard clan is one of the many Quman tribes."

"There is more than one Quman tribe?"

The frater looked at her with ill-concealed surprise. "I know the clan marks of at least sixteen Quman clans. They are numberless, and as merciless as any of the tribes who live out beyond the Light of God."

"Are they the ones who took your hand?" she asked.

He laughed. "Nay, indeed. They'd have taken my head."

"Who is this Bulkezu they all speak of, and spit at?"

"The war leader who in battle killed Prince Bayan's only son, eldest child of his first wife. She was a Kerayit princess like Bayan's own mother."

"And these Kerayit—" Sapientia pronounced the word awkwardly. "They are a Quman tribe as well?"

"Nay, Your Highness. They live far to the east, beyond even those peoples who pay tribute to the Jinna emperor. It is well enough that his first wife is dead, for she'd not have given him up. She'd have hexed you."

"Hexed me!" Sapientia pressed a hand over the gold Circle of Unity that hung at her throat, and glanced sidelong at the palanquin. The gold silk walls did not stir. There might have been no creature inside at all, only air.

He bent closer. His breath smelled of exotic spices. "They are terrible witches, the most unrepentant of heathens." He bent his elbow to display the stump of his right wrist. "They thought writing was magic, so they cut off my hand." He faltered, glanced like Sapientia toward the motionless palanquin as if he thought that the hidden mother could hear his words even at such a distance and over the howling of Bayan's warriors as they called out the refrain. "That is how I came to Prince Bayan's service. He is a good man, Your Highness, I have nothing but praise for him."

"Is he truly faithful to God's word, Brother?" asked Biscop Alberada, who was not afraid to listen in to her niece's most private conversations.

"As faithful as any of the Ungrians can be."

"And his mother?" asked Sapientia without looking again toward the palanquin. But the frater only gave a tiny shake of his head. "She is a powerful woman. Do not anger her."

Hanna could not help but look, but the palanquin remained undisturbed both from within and from without. How the slaves could stand for so long without staggering amazed her. And wouldn't the woman inside begin to feel cramped, closed up in a sitting position for so long? Hanna wasn't sure she could stay still for such a long time. Even waiting on Princess Sapientia, she had freedom of movement; she could excuse herself to go out to the privies, could pace, laugh, sing when appropriate, and eat and drink what the princess herself did not want. The leavings off a princess' plate were far better fare than anything she had eaten in Heart's Rest.

No, indeed: being a King's Eagle was a good life, even with the dangers involved. Danger walked beside every woman and man no matter what their circumstances. It wasn't often that you could walk through life well fed, well shod,
and
with new things to see 'round every corner.

Prince Bayan was still going on, stamping one foot for emphasis with each line of verse; cups and platters rattled. As the volume of noise in the hall increased, the frater had to bend close to explain: "He is singing the death song of his son, to remind his men of the boy's glorious death, and of the unavenged spirit that still walks abroad."

"A heathen belief," observed Biscop Alberada.

"To get to any place, Your Grace, we must still take one step at a time."

She chuckled. "Brother Breschius, you have gained wisdom in your time among the heathens, despite the suffering they have caused you."

"I have learned to be tolerant, which comes to the same thing. God will be victorious in the end. We need only be patient and trust to Their power."

"War!" roared Prince Bayan, a word echoed by his men in their own tongue. "Swear to this battle we will ride!" he called out, then repeated himself in his own language.

His men clamored in_ answer. Hanna had to clap her hands over her ears.

That quickly, thejf drained their cups and with a flood of movement the hall began to empty.

"Where are they all going?" demanded Sapientia. Biscop Alberada had also risen, watching the milling crowd intently for any sign of trouble. Drunk and excited young men were likely to get into fistfights, or worse; Hanna knew that well enough from evenings at her mother's inn.

"We ride in the morning," cried Bayan enthusiastically. He jumped down from the table, still remarkably agile for a man who was close to Sapientia's father's age. "Now, to bed we go!

Sapientia smiled sharply. Their escort to the bedchamber set aside for them this night was ample: fully thirty people of various stations, but in the end Hanna found herself together with two servingwomen alone in the room with Sapientia, Prince Bayan, and a single male retainer, a sleek, unbearded young man who wore a thin iron torque at his neck that looked suspiciously like a slave collar.

Bayan drew his sword, and for an instant Hanna grabbed her own knife while Sapientia stood, frozen, at her side of the bed.

"No woman," proclaimed Bayan as he laid the sword down the center of the bed. "I swear before my men to have no woman until I kill a man in battle. This the men of my people swear, to give ourselves strength. If we break the oath, then we lose our luck. If it is hard with you to have no man, I have this one—" He gestured to his manservant. "He is one of these
majariki
men who have no, what do you call it? They have the man part but not the seed. They can give you this pleasure without the seed, for now that we are betrothed, you may take no seed but that I give to you. Yes?"

What glinted in his gaze belied the pleasant smile on his lips and the congenial tone. It flashed, a bone-deep core of unforgivingness, startling to glimpse in a man who seemed as easy going and pleasant as the warm glow of the summer sun—until you were caught out under its heat for too long.

"Your children will be my children. Yes?"

"That is the agreement!" retorted Sapientia, looking affronted. She reached across the bed to touch the sword, caressing the blade. It was a handsome piece of metal, slightly curved; letters had been carved into the blade, but Hanna could not read them. Gold plated the hilt. "But I am a warrior, too! I will swear no less an oath than you do!"

"Then you and your fighting men will ride beside me when we go in the morning, to hunt these Quman raiders?" The unforgiving glint had vanished. He laughed out loud. " 'Strong is my woman. She is hunter like the lion queen!' Together, we ride to war!"

PRINCE Ekkehard's servants managed to conceal Ivar and— more importantly—Baldwin from old Lord Atto for ten days during which Ivar had either to trudge alongside the wagons with a cowl over his head like a comman laybrother or be jolted about in the back of one of those same wagons. In a way, it was a relief to be discovered, despite Lord Atto's explosive reaction.

"Lord Baldwin must be sent back to Autun at once! What were you thinking, my lord prince? This is a grave insult to Margrave Judith. Feuds have destroyed whole families on lesser grounds than these!"

Ekkehard did not quail before this onslaught. "She need never know, and I and my people certainly won't be the ones to tell her." He did not really have the stature to stare down Lord Atto, who had the burly physique of a man who has fought in many battles, but he was free of the schola, young, and out on his own for the first time. "Baldwin stays with me!"

"He'll be sent back in the morning, my lord prince. It's what your father would command."

But Lord Atto wasn't as young as he used to be, and his left leg and right arm had sustained enough damage over his years of fighting that no one thought it particularly odd when, in the morning, he slipped while mounting. Maybe the mild paralysis that sometimes afflicted him chose that moment to reappear. Ekkehard and Baldwin hurried over to assist the poor old man, fussing around him and his horse, and by the time anyone thought to check the saddle, the girth was good and tight.

Atto was left at the manor house to recover from the fall, with two servants in attendance. Prince Ekkehard rode on with his party otherwise intact and Baldwin/riding at his right hand. No one mentioned the matter againfBut they rode at a good clip, always aware that the news w^uld get back to King Henry eventually.

Yet such a pace couldn't tire them. They were young, and reckless, and happy to be free of restraint. Happy, that is, except for Ivar.

At first he didn't join in at their nightly revels at whatever manor or guesthouse put them up. They drank heavily, wrestled, sang, and entertained themselves with whatever young female servants were on hand and more or less willing; if no women were available, they entertained themselves with each other.

Ekkehard took to calling him "my prim frater," and it became a joke among them that of all of them, Ivar stayed "pure," just like a good churchman. But Baldwin was always pestering him, and on those nights when Ivar and Baldwin shared a blanket for warmth, Baldwin had a discomforting way of rubbing up against him that aroused thoughts of Liath. He was tired of thinking of Liath. Sometimes he hated her for the way her memory surfaced again and again in his mind. Maybe Hugh was right: maybe Liath had cast a spell over him. Why did the thought of her grip him bodily with such violence? He could hardly think of her at all anymore without embarrassing himself, and then they would all notice. They would all know he wasn't any purer than they were.