PROLOGUE (69 page)

But the Eika princeling only blinked. His copper-melded face wore no human expression. He had eyes as sharp as obsidian blades, thin nostrils, and a narrow chin. His ice-white hair was itself as bright as the sun that glanced in through the cathedral windows. His thin lips remained set, considering. "No. You are my father's challenge, not mine. I only want to know why you are still alive. You are not like the other Soft Ones. They would be dead by now of such wounds. Why aren't you dead?"

Sanglant grunted. The pain was bitter and would remain with him for some time, but he was used to pain. He got an elbow to move and, with a second grunt, heaved himself up onto the elbow. He stared down the Eika, who merely appeared . . . curious? Sanglant was himself curious.

"What was it?" he whispered. "The thing in the chest."

The Eika glanced toward the dogs, but they still munched on the bones. One raised its head to growl at him, but as no violence seemed imminent, it turned its attention back to scrounging for the last scraps of meat. "Don't all the leaders of your people carry the trophy of their first kill with them?" He lifted a copper-scaled hand, turning it slowly to display the tufts of bone claw, filed and sharpened to points, that sprouted from his knuckles. "That is the mark of the strength of their hands."

"That
was his first kill?" Disgust swamped him, and he briefly forgot the pain under a spasm of nausea.

"So it is with all of us. Those destined to mature into men must prove their manhood by killing one of their nestbrothers. Don't you do the same?"

"It wasn't dead. It ran."

The Eika flashed a sudden and startling grin, white sharp teeth glinting with bright jewels. "What is dead may be animated by sorcery. So Bloodheart protects himself against his sons and any others who might attempt to kill him."

Sensation had returned to his legs and he got one heel to move, sliding under him. His broken wrist was stiff but whole. "Protects himself? How?"

"It is the curse we all fear, even the greatest chieftain."

"A curse on you all," muttered Sanglant under his breath. He jerked over, fist swinging.

But the Eika laughed and nimbly leaped out of the way as the dogs, alerted, bolted away from their food and rushed the princeling.

"Stop," said Sanglant and the dogs sat, yipped irritably, and returned to the scraps. "Did you come to strip me of what little I have left?" He could move enough now to indicate his tattered clothing.

The Eika recoiled. "No Eika would want such things so foul. Here." He kicked at something on the floor and the brass Eagle's badge skidded across the stone and lodged against Sanglant's thigh. Dried blood caked his skin
—or at least, the dirt that grimed his skin. He was all dirt and stink except where the dogs had tried to lick him clean. The tatters of his undertunic were translucent, almost crystalline, because they were soaked with months of sweat. What remained of his tabard had so much dried blood and fluid on it that flakes fell off with each least movement and the cloth itself was stiff with grime.

The Eika princeling stared, then shook his head as he stepped away. "You were the pride of the human king's army?" he demanded. "If you are their greatest soldier, then no army they bring can be strong enough to defeat us."

"No army," murmured Sanglant, the words bitter to his ears.

"Even the one that has now camped in the hills toward the sunset horizon cannot possibly be strong enough to defeat us."

"Is it true? Has King Henry come to Gent with an army?"

"Henri,"
mused the Eika, naming the king in the Salian way. Without answering, he walked away.

"Ai, Lady," murmured Sanglant, crawling to his hands and knees. "How long has it been? Lord, have mercy upon me. I am not an animal to roll in my own filth. Spare me this humiliation. I have always been Your faithful servant." He tried to get to his feet but did not have the strength. One of the dogs wandered back and, seeing his weakness, nipped at him. He barely had strength to slap it back, and it whined and slunk away, snapping at the other dogs who came to trouble it for its own sign of weakness.

What had he done wrong? He had been so sure that Bloodheart kept his heart in the wooden chest; it was the obvious place. It was the only place. But Bloodheart had said:
"The heart you seek lies hidden among the stones of Rikin fjall."

Ai, Lady, he was only grateful that the cathedral was empty, that the Eika had left. That way they could not see him humbled. That way they could not see him weep with pain as he struggled to stand upright like a man.

LORD Wichman's deacon sang Mass every morning, and that morning she closed with her usual prayer: "From the fury of the Eika, God deliver us."

That morning after Mass, Anna paused beside the tannery to catch a glimpse of Matthias, as she did every morning to remind herself he really was still alive.

Not
well,
perhaps, but alive. He spoke no word of complaint; he never once said that his leg ached him although he could scarcely put weight on it. How he had broken the calf bone she never knew. He wouldn't speak of his captivity among the Eika. He had suffered terribly from fever and swelling after his rescue, but in the end he had recovered although the leg had healed crookedly, with an unnatural skew to it, ugly and discolored. Now he limped like an old man, leaning heavily on a stout stick, and had to brace himself on his good leg and prop his weight on a stool while he scraped hair and the residue of flesh from skins draped over a beam of wood. He had a delicate hand at this labor and could do it quickly, and for that reason had been allowed back at the rebuilt tannery despite his crippling injury. For his work he was fed twice a day.

Anna slipped away before he saw her; he didn't like her to forage in the forest, but with her gleanings and the scraps given Master Helvidius for his songs and poetry, they had survived through winter and early spring. Now, as spring ripened into summer, the first berries could be harvested, mushrooms gleaned from damp hollows, and all kinds of plants collected in glades and meadows and in the shade of trees. Certain bugs were edible, too
—and, Anna had discovered, if you were hungry enough, they could be quite tasty.

Little Helen had grown but never uttered an intelligible word. Master Helvidius complafned incessantly but, with a steady if sparse diet and a rough bed to sleep in every night, he had grown stronger and had less need of a stick in order to walk than did Matthias.

It was Matthias who worried Anna the most. "That I survived is a blessing from God." That was all he would say on the matter.

Outside the palisade she hurried down paths that led west through fields where men and women labored in the hot sun. Many of them
—male and female alike—had stripped down to breechclouts for comfort's sake; there was little place for Godly modesty under the sweltering sun. Anna would gladly have shucked her tunic, but in the forest she needed its protection against burrs and bugs. The heat and recent rains, though, meant that nature's bounty prospered, and indeed Lady Fortune smiled on her this day. She found sweet berries and a trove of mushrooms. She collected fennel, parsley, and onion grass as well as moss for bedding. By midday her wandering brought her to the westward road.

The wide track lay quiet at this hour, pleasant and bright.

Little traffic moved in and out of Steleshame these days although Mistress Gisela often talked of the great days of Steleshame, before the Eika had come to Gent, and how nobles had sheltered in her longhouse and merchants haggled over the fine cloth woven by her women. No one, seeing Steleshame now, would be reminded of these past glories. Anna herself was not sure if Mistress Gisela was telling the truth or only a story, as Master Helvidius told stories. But Master Helvidius' stories were all true, or so he claimed; it was only that they had happened so very long ago.

Anna stood in the sunlight. Such moments of peace came rarely and were to be savored as long as the threat of the Eika hung like a sword over them all. Anna supposed that eventually the Eika would mass an army and wipe out Steleshame completely, for the Eika were as numberless as flies supping on carrion. Lord Wichman rode out each day to harry the Eika, but he had lost perhaps a third of the men he had come with, and while young men from distant villages had joined him in the hope of sharing in the spoils, he could not hope to hold off the Eika forever
—not when he was a mortal man and his foe not only a savage but an enchanter into the bargain.

But what point in dwelling on such horror? She sighed and opened her eyes to survey the roadside with pleasure.

No one had gleaned here along the verge of track and wood. She found tansy growing in abundance, and this she pulled and bundled, for it could be mixed with the rushes strewn on the hall floor to drive away fleas. She found nettles densely packed along a ditch, their feet sodden in standing water. Swathing a hand in cloth, she plucked as many leaves as she could stuff into her bursting shawl. Then she bundled up her skirt, tucking it under her belt, and picked dandelion leaves and bistort. These, and delicate clover, she heaped into the folds made of her skirt.

Humming tunelessly, she did not at first hear what she ought to have listened for. She felt it first through the soles of her feet where they pressed against the pleasantly coarse dirt: the thrum of an army, marching. Too late she heard them, the creak of armor, the hum of voices, horses blowing and the sudden warning bark of dogs. The Eika had circled all the way around Steleshame and now approached from the unprotected west.

Clutching her treasures to her, she bolted for the shelter of the trees.

"Hai! There! Child!"

The voice called, a human voice, and she hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder.

"Never hesitate,"
Matthias always said.

But for once, Matthias was wrong.

She lurched to a stop, spilling a few stalks of tansy, and stared.

"How far to Steleshame, girl?" asked the voice, but it was no phantom but a real flesh-and-blood man outfitted in a leather vest and a thick leather cap. He carried shield and spear. There were many more with him. She was too astonished to reply.

Soldiers.
Led by a noble lord who was mounted on a fine gray horse, they advanced without fear and only the lead file even noticed her as they marched past where she stood, balanced on the lip of the ditch of nettles. Three banners flew before them: two black hounds on a silver field; a red eagle; a gray tower surmounted by a black raven.

An army had come at last.

That night neither she, Matthias, nor Helen could get into the hall to observe the great nobles, for such a press of folk stood there, some of them soldiers newly marched in, others residents of Steleshame who wanted to catch a glimpse of the noble lord and his son, that they had to go stand by the corner of the great hall and listen through the gaps in the wall to the gathering within.

Amid the buzz of a feast, Anna could hear Helvidius intoning the now-familiar phrases from the
Heleniad.

"Now the guests of King Sykaeus fell silent, and each one turned to face Helen. In this way they waited intently for her to speak, to tell the tale of her sufferings and of the fall of Ilios."

"Look," whispered Matthias.

A young woman emerged from the hall. In the darkness her complexion had a strange shade, as if she had rubbed her skin with soot. She wore a gray cloak trimmed with scarlet and clasped with a badge marked with the likeness of an eagle.

"A King's Eagle!" murmured Matthias, his tone breathless with admiration. "She's a messenger for the king himself! So would I become, given the chance." His tone turned sour. "If I wasn't crippled now."

Escaping from the crush, the Eagle pushed her way past the crowd and came to rest in the open a few steps from Mistress Gisela's niece, who had also come outside.

"Ai, Lady," swore the Eagle. "He's mangling Virgilia again!"

"Who is that you speak of?" asked the niece, wiping a speck of dirt from her eye and turning to regard the other woman.

"The old poet. But I oughtn't to complain of him, I suppose. It's a miracle and a mercy he survived Gent."

The niece eyed the young Eagle with regret and hesitation before, at last, she spoke. "You were there at the end."

The Eagle got a still, sudden look on her face, like the Eika statues, like the niece when she had been handed to Wichman as his prize. "So I was, alas. The prince died bravely."

"Of course," replied the niece. She bit at her lip, then reached out to touch the delicate embroidery that trimmed the cloak.