The Gathering Storm (110 page)

“Let’s be off, then,” said Bysantius. He had a horse. The rest walked, and so did Rosvita and her companions, trudging along the dusty road at a numbing pace, their way lit by
the torches the soldiers carried, until at dawn the sergeant had pity on Rosvita and the coughing Ruoda and allowed them to sit in the back of the cart. Their party moved not swiftly but steadily, pacing the ox, yet as Rosvita stared back down the road up which they’d come she saw no armed band pursuing them. The countryside was sparsely wooded, and quite dry, although the ground was brightened by a spray of flowers.

“It must be spring,” said Ruoda quietly, voice hoarse from coughing. “How long did we walk between the crowns?”

“Three or four months. I don’t know the date.”

The girl sighed, coughed, and shut her eyes.

“Sister Rosvita.” Obligatia was awake; she too examined the road twisting away behind them, the sere hillsides, and the pale blue sky. “Do you think we have escaped the skopos?”

“I pray so. Perhaps the priest put them off. Perhaps Henry’s patrol believed that it had been Arethousan soldiers all along and gave up the chase.”

“In whose hands will we find safety?”

Rosvita could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”

They marched inland at this leisurely pace for three days, stopping each night in another village where they gathered new provisions to replace what they ate as well as a pair or three of reluctant recruits. Once an old man spat at the sergeant, cursing in a language Rosvita did not recognize. Gerwita screamed as Bysantius stabbed the offender, then left his body hanging from an olive tree, a feast for crows.

“I wonder if we would have found more mercy at the hands of the skopos,” said Hanna that night where they settled down to sleep in a cramped stable, enjoying the luxury of hay for their bed and cold porridge and goat cheese for their supper.

“Learn the artifices of the Arethousans and from one crime know them all,” muttered Fortunatus.

The sergeant kept a watch posted on them all night, and in the morning they set out again.

Today Sergeant Bysantius gave up his horse and during the course of the morning walked beside the wagon.

“So, Sister,” he said, “how comes the usurper to these
lands? Why does he wish to rob us of what rightfully belongs to another?”

“You must know I cannot speak in traitorous terms of my countryman and liege lord. I pray you, do not press me for information which I cannot in good conscience give. Even if I knew it, which I do not.”

He grinned. He had good teeth, and merry eyes when he was smiling. “The Daryan soldiers that come marching in that army weren’t just of the old city where the heretics will burn. They say the new Emperor of Dar is a northern man, an ill-mannered barbarian.”

She smiled blandly knowing better than to rise to this trivial bait.

“He’s a Wendishman, they say, king of the north. The masters like to say that Daryans and northerners are louts and liars, goat-footed and braying like asses. I’ve seen them fight, though.”

“Have you fought against them?”

He grinned again but did not answer, instead calling for his horse in a language she did not recognize, and for the first time it occurred to Rosvita that Sergeant Bysantius, like her, spoke Arethousan without the pure accent that the priest had scorned her for lacking.

IN early afternoon the Garters dumped Ivar out of the wagon beside the appointed meeting place, but it was only after they had rumbled away and their voices had faded into the distance that a young man stepped out from behind the massive oak tree that dominated the clearing. He was slender, with pale hair, and carried a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

“You’re Brother Ivar,” the soldier said. “I recognize you.”

Ivar spat out the tiny scroll concealed in his mouth, then groaned as he staggered, trying to catch his balance, and sat
down hard instead. His limbs still weren’t working right. “How can you recognize me? I don’t know you.”

“It’s the red hair. I was there when you were brought by the prior of Hersford Monastery to stand before Duchess Sabella for judgment.”

“Ah.” The memory of that humiliating day still made him hot with anger. The other man—no older than himself—squatted beside him. Ivar squinted at him, finding that his eyes hurt and his back ached and that he had a headache starting in like a mallet trying to pound its way out of his skull. “I don’t recognize you.”

“I’m called Erkanwulf. I belong to Captain Ulric’s troop. We served Biscop Constance, and now—” Here his tone crept lower, ragged with disgust. “—now we serve Lady Sabella, whether we will it or no.”

“Had you a choice in the matter?”

“Captain Ulric told us we’d a choice whether to stick with him or go back to our homes. He said we had a chance to bide our time and wait for the right moment to restore Biscop Constance. He said if we rebelled against Lady Sabella now, we’d be killed.”

“So he chose to be prudent.”

Erkanwulf shrugged. “That’s one way to put it. We could have ridden to Osterburg. That’s where they say Princess Theophanu has gone to ground. She’s made herself duchess of Saony what with her father gone south and her sister and brother lost in the east.”

“Why didn’t you do that?”

“Captain Ulric said he wanted us to stick close by the biscop, so that we might keep an eye on her, in her prison. Make sure she remains safe. Now that the king has abandoned us for the foreigners in the south, there’s no one else to aid her. Here, now, let’s get you out of the sun.”

He helped Ivar to his feet and led him to the shelter of the little chapel, which was no more than a curved stone wall roofed with thatch, open on one side to the air. The remains of a larger structure lay half buried in the earth around it. Inside the chapel a log had been split and each half planed smooth of splinters to make a bench; Ivar collapsed gratefully onto one of these seats. The altar consisted of little more
than a mighty stump greater even than that of the remaining oak giant that dominated the clearing. A big iron ring affixed to an iron stake had been driven into the center of the stump, and spring flowers woven into a wreath garlanded the ring. A wooden tray had been set on the stump, laden with an offering of dried figs, nuts, and a pungent cheese that made Ivar’s headache worse.

He was trying to remember what had happened to Sapientia and Ekkehard, but they had vanished with the rest of Prince Bayan’s army that awful night, and he and his companions had found themselves adrift and lost, three years of traveling swept away in a single night punctuated by blue fire.

“Eat something,” said Erkanwulf, bringing him the tray. “They said you might feel poorly. We can stay a night here, mayhap, but we’ll have to move swiftly if we want to get out of Arconia before Lady Sabella’s loyal soldiers wonder if there’s anything amiss. If we can cross into Fesse, we should be safer, but, even so, Sabella’s people have been growing bold.”

“Bold?”

“Duke Conrad pushes into Salia. There’s a civil war, so they say, one lord fighting the next and the only heir a girl. Isn’t it outrageous? A Salian princess can’t inherit the throne, only be married to the man who will sit there.”

Ivar grunted to show he agreed, but he had to pee, and he was feeling distinctly queasy with that powerful stink of goat cheese right beneath his nose, yet he wasn’t sure he had the strength to get up off the log bench.

“Do we have horses?” he asked finally. “Or can you ride?”

“I can ride!” Erkanwulf slapped the tray down beside Ivar and moved away, his shoulders tense, by which Ivar deduced muddily that he had offended him. “My lord.” He walked out into the clearing, quiver shifting on his back, and fastidiously wiped off the tiny scroll before tucking it into his belt pouch. Now he didn’t need Ivar at all.

Who did, after all? Not even and not especially his own father, who had given him to the church as a punishment,
knowing that Ivar had far different hopes and dreams, which by now had disintegrated into ashes and dust.

It was all too much. He retched, but there was nothing more than bile in his stomach, and after a few heaves he just sat there shaking and wishing he had actually died on that cart. He rubbed his hands together to warm them and caught a finger on the ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger—a fine piece of lapis lazuli simply set in a plain silver band. Ai, God! The token reminded him of Baldwin’s stricken face; he had to survive if only to let Baldwin know he wasn’t dead. It wasn’t fair to allow Baldwin to go on grieving over a man who was still living.

Yet why did living have to entail so much misery?

For some reason he wondered where Hanna was, or if she were still alive, and the thought of her made him begin to cry, a sniveling, choking whine that he hated although he couldn’t stop because his stomach was all cramped and the mallet in his head kept whacking away in time to the pulse of his heart. Just before he wet himself, he managed to push up and reel, stumbling, to the edge of the forest and there relieve the pressure. He shuffled back to the bench and curled up beside the stump, praying for oblivion.

Lady Fortune, or the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, had mercy on him. He slept hard, without dreams, and woke a moment later although by now it was dusk. An owl hooted. He recognized that sound as the one that had startled him awake.

His headache was gone and although his mouth was dry and had a foul taste, he could stand without trouble even if every joint felt as stiff as if he needed a good greasing.

“Erkanwulf?” he croaked. “Ho, there! Erkanwulf?”

There was no answer.

I’ve been abandoned.

Wind creaked the branches. Twigs rattled and murmured like a crowd of gossips. A pale light bobbed away among the boles, and he rubbed his eyes, thinking some mischievous demon had corrupted his sight to make him see visions, but the light still wove and dipped like that of a will-o’-the-wisp. He got a sudden creeping pricking sensation in his shoulders and back although he stood with his back to the curving
chapel wall, which was a stout shield, a comfort to the righteous.

“Erkanwulf,” he whispered, but no answer came, nor did he see any movement except that of the ghostly light.

He heard voices. He took a step back and rammed up against the stump, tipped backward, and was brought up short by the huge iron Circle. The sharp cold of iron burned through cloak and tunic to sear his flesh.

A torch wavered into view, followed by a second, and a dozen soldiers thundered cursing into the clearing. They stopped and turned, standing back to back and holding out their torches to survey the lay of the ground.

“This must be the old church what the man said,” said one of them. “But there’s no graveyard, just this old tree and that bit of a ruin there.” He gestured toward the chapel, but evidently none of them saw Ivar hiding in the shadows. “Captain was right. It were some kind of trick to sneak a man out—”

They stilled so abruptly that the hush that fell had a presence as though it were itself a vast and ominous creature stalking the stalkers. Light flickered deep within the woods. A breathy whistle broke the silence, then stuttered to a stop. Branches rustled. A cold wind brought goose bumps to Ivar’s neck.

“Hai!” shouted one of the soldiers before pitching over onto his face. A thread of light glimmered in his back, then dissolved into dying sparks that winked out one by one.

Shades emerged from the forest on all sides, creatures that had the bodies of men and the faces of animals: wolf, lizard, lynx, crow, bear, vulture, fox, and more that he could not identify as their darts flew into the clot of soldiers, most of whom shrieked and ran while a few lifted shields and leaped forward to fight. Yet the shades had no solid substance, nothing to receive the strike of an ax; they could kill but were themselves immune.

Half of the soldiers escaped, blundering back the way they had come, thrashing through the woodland cover until the noise of their flight ceased. Half lay on the ground, bodies contorted and twisted as though their last moments had been agony, yet no blood marked their bodies where the elfshot
had pierced their skin. Shades flowed away into the forest in pursuit, but a fox-faced man and a vulture-headed woman turned to stare right at Ivar. Both were stripped to the waist, wearing nothing more than loincloths across their hips, leather greaves and arm-guards decorated with shells and feathers, and stripes of chalky paint that delineated the contours of their chests. She was young; that seemed obvious enough by the pertness of her breasts, but whatever lust Ivar would otherwise have felt to see so much nakedness was killed by the cruel curve of the vulture’s beak that was her face and the blank hollow behind its eyes.

They are masks
, he thought, waiting as they raised their short bows and sighted on him. Instinctively, he raised a hand, although it would afford no protection against their poisoned darts. The lapis lazuli ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger winked blue.

They lowered their bows, glanced each at the other, and faded away into the forest.

He stood there shaking so hard he couldn’t move as the jolt of adrenaline coursed through him. It paralyzed him as efficiently as Sister Nanthild’s concoction had mimicked death.

But after a long while it, too, faded, and the night noises of the forest returned piecemeal, first an owl’s plaintive hoot, then a whisper of wind and the wrangle of branches, and finally the clear and loud
snap
of a breaking tree limb.

He leaped sideways and crashed into the stone wall, bruising his shoulder, but it was Erkanwulf returning with four horses on a string, two saddled and two laden with traveling packs filled with grain. Ivar could smell the oats even from this distance. The young soldier carried a lantern, and he stopped in confusion and fear as the light crept over the dead men.

“I-Ivar?”

“I’m here.” He stepped out of the chapel, shaking again, shoulder on fire and tears in his eyes. “Where were you?”

“I hid the horses. What happened? How did they find us? Did you kill them?”

“No. I don’t know. Shades came out of the trees. Ai; God!
They’re probably still wandering nearby! Let’s get out of here!”