The Gathering Storm (109 page)

“Hush!” said Aurea from the gloom, where she kept watch. “Look there! Torches!”

With a grimace, and aided by a spike of adrenaline, Rosvita got to her feet. Fortunatus kept hold of her elbow. Standing, she had a clear view of the land northward. A procession approached from the distant camp, no more than two abreast but more lights than Rosvita could easily count winding toward them.

“They are seeking us,” sniveled Gerwita. “They know we’re here!”

“They must have seen the threads of the spell sparking,” said Fortunatus.

“I pray you, let us go!” said Hanna.

“Where shall we go in such darkness?” asked Aurea, always practical. “We dare not light a torch.”

“We do not fear the darkness,” said Sister Hilaria. “If you can carry Mother Obligatia and the chest, then Diocletia and I can take turns leading the group. Night seems bright enough to my eyes. Teuda will bring up the rear. Let me take the staff so that I can test shadows and beat aside brush.”

“A wise solution.” Rosvita grasped hold of Gerwita’s shoulders. “Sister Gerwita, I am still weak from my labors. Fortunatus must help carry Mother Obligatia. If you cannot support me, then you must leave me behind.”

Gerwita’s choked sobbing ceased. “I shall never leave you behind, Sister! Here, let me put my arm around your back. Can you lean on me? That’s right!”

Heriburg had the books, which she refused to relinquish. Ruoda and Jehan had themselves to care for, and it was clear that both of the young novices suffered from a severe grippe but would not complain. It fell, therefore, to Jerome to carry the chest and Fortunatus and Hanna to lift the pallet while Hilaria and Diocletia took the van, each carrying a staff. Teuda and Aurea brought up the rear, shepherding Sister Petra, who showed a tendency to stray if she were not led.

“Have you a rope that you might tie on her?” Rosvita asked gently, and after brief consideration Teuda used Petra’s belt as a leash, so that the woman would not run off and delay them—or give them away.

In this fashion they stumbled east parallel to the cliff with the sea to their right and the wind stiff against their faces as it blew in off the water. It was cool but not cold. A salty damp
pervaded everything, and as they walked, the fine blanket of snow faded into patches and at last gave way as a warm breeze rose out of the southeast. The ground was rocky and tremendously uneven, but there were few enough trees and large shrubs so Rosvita, walking directly behind Diocletia, did not find herself scratched and mauled too often as the nun flattened or broke off any offending branches. Even as Rosvita’s eyes got accustomed to the dimness, she still felt half blind, but the nuns walked as confidently as if they held aloft torches to light their way. Gerwita steadied her, and indeed the girl trudged along like an old soldier, as surefooted as sin. Behind, Jerome tripped once, landing with a grunt of pain and the heavy thump of the chest, but he insisted he was unhurt and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. They had to go on. They all of them glanced back frequently, and Rosvita felt a great sense of relief when the lay of the land cut off any view they had of the torchlit parade that snaked its way ever nearer to the stones.

“Will they follow our trail?” Gerwita whispered.

“It may be, but we must pray they detect nothing until morning.”

“I hope so.”

“Careful,” said Diocletia, ahead of her. “There’s a cut in the ground five steps ahead. When I touch you, stop, and I’ll help you over.”

Rosvita relayed the message back to the others. In four more steps she found herself passed from one strong hand to the next as Diocletia and Hilaria helped her over a ditch cut into the ground by a dry streambed. She and Gerwita waited on the other side while the pallet was laboriously handed across, and the rest followed, using the staffs for balance. After a brief rest, they moved on.

In this way, although she was so weary that she was shaking all over, they walked and walked and walked, pausing to rest only when they reached an obstacle of rock or earth or, once, a dense tangle of thorny burnet they had to detour around. Gaps appeared in the cloud cover, revealing, stars and, intermittently, the waxing gibbous moon. No one spoke except to pass warnings down the line; once, Petra bleated
like a goat, and they heard a distant answering bleat from the night. Gerwita giggled nervously. Ruoda coughed.

Eventually, the ground began to slope noticeably upward and the noise of the sea receded as they climbed, pressing inland until they came to a forest of pine with a light layer of shrub whose spines and thorns caught in their clothing. When Jerome dropped the chest a second time after stumbling over a root, Rosvita insisted they stop and rest.

Every soul there dropped to the ground like a stone except Hilaria and Diocletia, who consulted with each other and then split up, Hilaria to scout forward and Diocletia to range back along their trail to make sure they weren’t yet being followed. Gerwita fussed over Rosvita.

“I pray you, child, I am too weary to move, but perhaps you could see if Brother Jerome is injured in any way.”

“Of course, Sister!”

Hanna groaned and moved over to sit beside Rosvita, blowing on her hands. “I’ll have blisters!”

“How do you fare, Eagle?”

“Well enough. Mother Obligatia weighs so little. It’s a miracle she still lives.”

“A miracle, perhaps, or stubbornness. Never underestimate the power of obstinance.”

Hanna chuckled, then sobered. “Is it true she is Liath’s grandmother?”

“Twice over.”

“Ai, God! I pray we find Liath again, and that Mother Obligatia survives long enough for them to meet.”

“I believe that it is that hope which keeps the good mother alive.”

They breathed in silence for a while, listening to the murmur of wind through the pines and underbrush, to the hacking coughs of the companions, to Petra’s mumbling conversation held with herself. The scent of myrtle and wild sage gave the night a bracing flavor. Their party sat so close together that it was easy to mark all of them as much by feel as by sight, although by now the wind had blown the clouds into scraps that left the sky in tatters with the moon’s face revealed.

“I can no longer hear the sea,” said Rosvita, “yet that was all I heard in my dreams.”

“There was light enough to see when we first walked out of the crown. The stone circle stands at the edge of a great cliff. I got dizzy looking down to the water. It was so far below. And all up and down the coast I saw neither dunes nor beaches, but only a line of sheer cliff. It seemed strange to me, so sharp. I’ve seen the shore of the northern sea, and it’s so very different, very flat. The waves creep in a long ways before they draw out again.”

“I’ve never seen the sea.”

“Not in all your travels with the king?”

Rosvita smiled. “Are you surprised, Eagle? I expect you are better traveled than I am.”

“Although you ride with the king’s progress? I wouldn’t have thought so. You’re from the North Mark, just as I am. The sea is not more than a day’s walk from my village and your father’s manor.”

“I was sent south as a child to enter the schola before I ever rode to the sea. Nay, I have never seen it, although I would like to.”

Hanna lifted her hands and blew on them to ease the raw skin. Rosvita shifted her weight from one buttock to the other; the litter of pine needles was a prickly cushion. Gerwita whispered to Jerome; Aurea brought round a skin of cider, almost turned to vinegar, which she offered first to Rosvita and then to Hanna, and it was only after she had gone on to Fortunatus where he sat beside Mother Obligatia that the Eagle replied.

“I have dreams, but they seem like true dreams, like visions of things that are happening, not dreams at all. I was told in a dream that I am the luck of a Kerayit shaman. Do you know what that means?”

“The Kerayit? Are they not a barbarian tribe far to the east? I believe that Prince Bayan’s mother came of that savage race. Beyond that …” She shook her head. “… I know little enough, but I am always eager to learn more. What does it mean to be the luck of a Kerayit shaman?”

A nightjar churred, and Hanna started, half rising to her
feet. “It is the wrong time of year for a nightjar to call out to its mate!”

“Unless winter is past and this is the last snow of spring.”

“Hush!” hissed Aurea. “Someone is coming!”

Brush rattled as Diocletia strode out of the underbrush into the clearing where they had thrown themselves down.

“Up!” she said, pitching her voice low. “They are already on our trail. I saw a dozen or more torches back on our path. They were rising and dipping as the men holding them bent to examine the ground. We must move on.”

Fear lent them strength. Hanna pressed her palms to her cheeks before going back to the pallet. Gerwita hurried back to aid Rosvita in standing.

“I won’t leave you!” she said predictably, but Rosvita only smiled and tried not to groan as she started forward. She ached everywhere. She was already exhausted.

“This way,” said Diocletia, heading into the brush.

“What about Sister Hilaria?” protested Heriburg.

“Come along,” said Diocletia, not waiting for them.

They had not gone more than a hundred paces when they stumbled out from under the cover of the wood into an olive grove where, under the light of the moon, Hilaria stood facing a brace of men armed with hoes and a trio of silent dogs standing at alert.

“I can take them,” muttered Hanria.

Hearing them, Hilaria raised a hand although she did not turn. “I pray you, Sister Rosvita, come forward. These speak no language I know. Perhaps they are Arethousan.”

They were not, nor did they appear to recognize that tongue when Rosvita begged for aid. They had the look of farmers, stocky and powerful, and when they beckoned, Rosvita felt it prudent for their party to follow. Perhaps Hanna could dispatch them, but Mother Obligatia could not flee if anything went wrong.

Yet as they walked behind the farmers through the grove and then between the rows of a small vineyard, twisting and turning on a well-worn path, Rosvita did not feel that their captors were precisely suspicious but only wary. They neither threatened nor barked, not even the dogs. The path brought them to a village, no more than ten houses built with
brick or sod in a style unknown to her together with a building whose proportions she recognized instantly: this squat, rectangular structure looked more like a barracks than a church, but by the round tower at one end and adjoining graveyard, she knew it was an Arethousan church.

A bearded man wearing the robe of a priest with a stole draped over his left shoulder waited on the portico of the church attended by a score of soldiers. Torches revealed their grim faces. The priest wore a Circle of Unity at his chest with a bar bisecting it, the sigil of the Arethousan church.

“I pray you, Holy Father,” said Rosvita in Arethousan, stepping forward once their party came into the circle of light and the others had set down their burdens. “Grant us respite and shelter, for as you can see we are holy sisters and brothers of the church, like you, who seek a moment’s rest before we go on our way.”

“You are not like me.” The priest’s upper lip turned up with disgust as he looked them over. He had curly hair falling in dark ringlets almost to his shoulders but this angelic attribute did nothing to soften his sneering expression. “You are Daryans. How is it you butcher my language, woman?”

She knew her grammar was good, but he seemed determined to remain unimpressed “I am Sister Rosvita, educated in the Convent of Korvei. I pray pardon if I torture the pronunciation of your words.”

“Just as your people torture the words of our blessed Redeemer and blight the Earth with every manner of heresy. Only among we Arethousans have your false words been strangled and killed. Sergeant Bysantius, what shall we do with them?”

The sergeant had the look of a typical Arethousan, short and stocky, with black hair and a swarthy face, but he had a shrewd expression as he assessed them. He was obviously a man accustomed to measuring the worth of the soldiers he meant to send into battle. “There’s a Daryan army out there, Father, commanded by the usurper and the false mother. How are these few Daryans come here? Did they lose the army that shelters them? If so, how much ransom might we receive from the usurper to get them back?”

“Best to take them to the patriarch in Arethousa,” said the priest.

Sergeant Bysantius’ gaze rested on the pallet and Mother Obligatia’s frail form. “Just so,” he said finally. “We’re pulling out tonight. I haven’t the men to fight a force as large as that one.”

“Surely a dozen good Arethousans can slaughter their entire expedition! They are the feeblest of nations. The lord of Arethousa is the only lord who has stout soldiers and command of the sea.”

“True enough,” agreed Sergeant Bysantius, but there was something mocking in his tone that made Rosvita like but distrust him. “I’ll take these prisoners to the lady of Bavi and she can send them on to the patriarch. What of you, Father? Do you stay and fight?”

“My people expect me to stay. Not even the slaves and murderers who make up the Daryan army dare strike down a man of God! Take what you came for, and go!”

“Very well.” Bysantius turned away and gave orders to his men, who dispersed about their business.

“What did he say?” asked Hanna, and the others crept closer—as much as any of them dared move a single step—as Rosvita told them what she had heard.

A cart rolled up, and after loading sacks of grain, two barrels of oil and two of wine, and a cage of chickens into the back, the soldiers made room for Mother Obligatia’s pallet, braced among the sacks in a way that would, Rosvita noted, offer the old abbess something resembling a more comfortable ride. It appeared that in addition to the provisions, the sergeant had come for recruits. As his party formed up, they prodded into line two frightened young men whose mothers and sweethearts, or sisters, wept in the doorways of their huts.

A pair of soldiers jogged into the village from the direction of the olive grove.

“Sergeant! There’s a patrol of the Daryans, coming this way!”