In the Ruins (63 page)

Heric whimpered. Alain looked back to see that Rage had gotten hold of the man’s leggings as he tried to creep back the way they had come.

“That’s a big party,” he whined. “Listen! A hundred or more, Lord Geoffrey riding to war. Maybe come to have you killed!”

Alain shook his head. “They’re riding
toward
Lavas Holding.” He turned to the hounds. “Rage. Sorrow. Stay. Guard.”

He picked his way past fallen branches, more numerous close to the joining with the road as though the bandits had pulled down obstacles to cover their tracks. Soon he heard the procession in full spate but marked also with the giggling of children and an unexpected snatch of hymn from a voice he had heard before but could not quite place.

He came to the last turning, where the path hitched around a massive oak that served as a towering landmark. He recalled it from earlier years. The autumn storm had half torn it from the ground. Its vast trunk had fallen westward to leave roots thrust like daggers across the path. He used these as cover as he examined the road.

There were soldiers riding in pairs or marching in fours while between their ranks trundled carts and wagons filled with household goods and children and elders and caged chickens. Youths and sturdy looking women walked alongside, most of them carrying a bundle or two. A pair of clerics walked beside a wagon containing several fine chests. He saw—

Hathumod
!

She sat on a wagon next to a white-haired woman placed among pillows. Another, older woman dressed in cleric’s robes made up the third in the bed of the wagon. Her back was to Alain, but by the movements of her shoulders and
hands she seemed to be talking in a lively way while the others listened, the white-haired woman with a smile of patient interest despite the pain etched into her face, and Hathumod with a scarcely concealed look of boredom.

The wagon passed and was gone beyond his line of sight through the trees before he realized who he had just seen. And where she must be going: Lavas Holding was about three days’ journey west, and there was no crossroads that came sooner on the road than the holding itself.

Soon it would be dark. The cavalcade must camp for the night, most likely on the road itself. Soldiers scanned the woodland as though they expected attack, but the upturned oak hid him because he did not move. What strange company was this? It was like an entire village on the move, not like a noblewoman’s royal progress.

When the last ranks of infantry had passed, he waited a while longer, and at length a trio of silent outriders ambled by. He waited even longer until one last pair of men rode past with hands easy on the reins, their gazes keen and penetrating, and a bow and a sword, respectively, laid across their thighs.

It was one of these who saw him, although he hadn’t meant to be seen.

“Whsst!” The young man’s chin jerked around fast. He had his bow up and arrow ready, holding his horse with tightened knees, before Alain could take a second breath. The other man reined his horse around to face back the way they’d come, sword raised.

“I’ll come out,” said Alain in an even voice. “I’ve been waiting for you. What business has Biscop Constance in these parts? I heard she was a prisoner of Lady Sabella in Autun.”

“Come out,” said the archer. “What think you, Captain? Are there more? Should we shoot him?”

The other man’s horse took one side step. “Let him come free if he moves slowly. Let’s see what he knows first. Better the battle come sooner when we’re ready for it than later when we’re not.”

Alain put his hands out with palms raised and turned toward them, and walked onto the road.

The captain narrowed his eyes, examining him. “I’ve seen you before.”

“Gent!” said the young one. “In Count Lavastine’s company. Wasn’t he—?”

The captain hissed sharply between gritted teeth. “You’re Lavastine’s heir—the very one. Your claim was put aside in favor of Lord Geoffrey’s daughter.” He extended his sword as a threat. “What brings you here? I heard you had marched east as a Lion.”

“So I did. Now I am come back.”

“To challenge Lord Geoffrey?”

“No. I have another purpose.”

“What might that be?” asked the captain in a genial tone that made it clear he demanded an explanation.

In that woodland, sound carried far. The progress of the cavalcade had faded westward. With the promise of nightfall, the wind sighed to a halt.

A jingle of harness out of the east rang brightly in warning.

“Damn,” said the captain. They had all heard it. “As I feared.”

“What are we to do, Captain?” asked the young man, looking exceedingly nervous but also determined and angry. “If they catch us …”

“Who follows you?” Alain asked.

“Lady Sabella’s soldiers,” said the captain.

“If I can turn them back,” said Alain, “will you take me to Biscop Constance? I ask only to speak with her briefly. Then I’ll be on my way.”

“Turn them back!” scoffed the young man.

“Hush, Erkanwulf! We must get the biscop to Lavas Holding. You ride and alert the rest. Form up with all soldiers to the rear and flanks, out into the forest. I’ll stay here.”

“No, Captain. Begging your pardon, Captain. It’s you they need, more than me. I can wait behind and catch up. If I don’t come, it’s because I’m dead.”

The captain considered. He was a thoughtful man, Alain saw, one who was neither too eager nor too cautious; a
good commander. His features triggered an old memory, but if he’d seen this man at Gent, and he surely had done so, it was in passing. Many men rode in the war parties of other nobles. A lord might note faces and go on, not marking them because he had no authority over them.

With regret, the captain nodded. “So be it.” He turned his measuring gaze on Alain. “If Erkanwulf brings me news that the ones who follow us turned back, then I’ll see you have an audience with the holy biscop.”

He sheathed his sword, gave a hard look at Erkanwulf, and rode on. He looked back twice before vanishing around a bend in the road.

“Best if I do this alone,” said Alain.

“I’d rather die than betray my captain!”

“If you take the horse down that path, you can tie him up and then watch without being seen.”

“And without hearing! You might tell them anything, the disposition of our forces, our numbers, our destination if they haven’t guessed it already. You might be a spy in league with Lady Sabella.”

“I might be, it’s true, although I’m not.”

Erkanwulf scratched his head. “I’m minded to believe you, although I don’t know why. How will you stop them?”

A second jangle of noise rang closer. The first had been a trick of air and leaf, but this grew steadily in volume.

“Go,” said Alain.

Erkanwulf hesitated only a moment, biting his lip, before he dismounted and lead his horse down the track that cut off toward Ravnholt Manor.

Alain set himself in the middle of the road with a hand on his staff and the other hanging loose at his side. He waited, breathing in the loamy air. The battered roadbed gave beneath his right foot where a trickle of groundwater seeped up to dampen the leather of his boots and creep in through the seams. A fly buzzed around his left ear. A bee wandered into the shadow of a copse of withered honeysuckle grown up along a patch of open ground. He waited, content to let the time pass. He felt the barest glimmer of sun above, like the kiss of a mouth through cloth. If the
weather didn’t change, then crops wouldn’t grow or would grow weakly. The thought stuck with him and gave him courage.

In time, the first outriders appeared out of the east as shadows lengthened on the road. It was a good long straight stretch of track, open enough that he soon saw most of the company moving along. He faced about threescore riders. Half were mounted, dressed in surcoats bearing the sigil of the guivre of Arconia. A dozen of the infantry wore a tower sigil that he did not recognize. The others wore any kind of leather coat or tough jacket, men brought quickly into service for a specific task but not serving in the duke’s milites on a permanent basis.

Their captain rode in the third rank behind a double line of anxious-looking younger men bearing small shields and short spears. He was a fearsome-looking man, grim with anger and horribly scarred. He was missing an eye, healed as a mass of white scar tissue, and old gashes scored his forehead and jaw. Now and again a man in the first rank would lift an arm to point out yet another mark of the passage of a significant cavalcade. They knew what they followed. They could not be turned aside through misdirection. They had marked Alain already and now sent scouts on foot into the underbrush, seeking to forestall an ambush. The
shing
of swords leaving sheaths cut the air. Shields were raised, and spears wavered. Some had bows, and these men set arrow to string and scanned the woodland for movement.

“Tammus!” shouted Alain. “Keeper!”

The captain started, and around him his men muttered. Slowly, the war band moved toward Alain as toward a trap they must spring.

“I am alone except for one witness, hidden in the trees,” continued Alain, “and farther back two hounds guarding a criminal who consorted with bandits.”

“A likely story,” said the captain. “How do you know my name? Are you one of the biscop’s men?”

“I am not.”

“To what lord or lady do you owe allegiance?”

“I serve God, Captain Tammus. Whom do you serve, God or the Enemy?”

They murmured angrily at that, like bees stirred up by smoke, and one rash fellow actually rode out ahead of the front rank brandishing his sword.

“Fall back!” snapped the captain.

The man obeyed. The rest halted an easy spear’s toss from Alain. A branch snapped in the woods.

“What do you want?” asked the captain. “I’ve no patience. We’re close to our quarry and you’re in our way.”

Alain was close enough to see Tammus’ eye flare as he reacted to a bold stare. The captain had but one hand. The other arm ended in a stump at the wrist, seared by fire.

“To pass, you must kill me, keeper.”

One among the guard sniggered.

“Hush! Why do you call me that? How do you know my name?”

“You kept the guivre for Lady Sabella. I saw you feed a living man to it, once. That’s how you kept it alive. I think you might have called yourself by a different name, then.”

Tammus’ gaze flickered, losing touch with Alain’s as he traced the reaction of his men. Soldiers looked one at the other; hands fluttered as in sign language; a murmuring passed back through the ranks.

“Hush!” said the keeper. “I am Lady Sabella’s servant. I do as she bids me. You are in my way. We’ll ride right over you. You have no weapon.”

Alain caught his gaze again and held it. He challenged him as a hound might, with a stare from which one must back down and the other emerge triumphant.

“With your own hand you must kill me,” he said, “or with your own voice you must command one of your men to slay me because you refuse to spill my blood with your own weapon. Either way, your hands are stained.”

“I am the lady’s servant,” growled Tammus. “I do as she bids me.” He could not now look away without losing face, not with every man among his company watching him.

Alain said nothing, only kept his gaze locked on the captain’s. He remembered the night he had stumbled upon the guivre’s cage, how it had been shrouded in canvas to conceal
the monster within. He recalled the slack body of the drugged man who woke up too late to the fate that would consume him. He knew in his heart and in his limbs the touch of the guivre’s gaze, which struck like the sword of God, for he had felt it that night. So did the creatures of God teach humankind what they needed to know.

“I’ve killed lots of men and in worse ways than cutting a man down on the road,” muttered Tammus hoarsely.

“I know,” said Alain, remembering that great eye and its power. “For I am the one who aided Brother Agius in killing that poor beast at Kassel. With a sword I killed it, and Lady Sabella’s army was routed. Do you think you can kill me?”

A breath was the only sign; lips parted. Wind curled in leafless branches.

Tammus lost his nerve. He froze. Every man there felt it, heard it, saw it,
knew
it with the same instinct hounds have for weakness. It took only that one breath for the advantage to shift, for the battle to be lost.

Alain did not move. It was they who fled back the way they had come.

“YOUR Grace.”

Alain knelt in the spot indicated by Captain Ulric.

“I don’t
know
how he did it!” Erkanwulf was saying off to one side. Because of his mounting exasperation, his voice carried. “He just
looked
at them. They turned tail and ran. That was before I saw those monstrous black hounds!”

“I know who you are, or who you once were.” Biscop Constance had aged horribly. Lines marked her face as deeply, in their own way, as Tammus’ scars had disfigured him, and she favored her right side over the left as though it was agony to shift her left hip at all. But her gaze was calm and her voice was mild. “Beyond what I witnessed
myself, and what I learned when I ruled Arconia, I have heard just these last few moments such tales as make my head spin. You are a count’s bastard son. A count yourself. A cheat and a liar and thief. A whore’s son. A faithful Lion who died in the east in battle. You are, it appears, a man who commands the loyalty of fierce beasts. Who can turn back a war band on a forest lane with his gaze alone.”

“I am the son of a Salian refugee, Your Grace. I was raised in an honest household of merchants out of Osna Sound. That is all that matters.”

“Perhaps. Why are you come, Alain of Osna? What do you want from me?”

“I ask you to bring justice to the folk murdered at Ravnholt Manor, including four young women who were raped and murdered. Find their bodies, and bury them. Bring to trial the bandits who killed them.”

As many as could crowd in around her shelter had come to see; everyone surely had heard the tale of the encounter on the road by now. They were silent, but their stares had an unexpected force, as powerful as that of the guivre.