The Gathering Storm (119 page)

As soon as it was light, he rode south with two dozen men along the trail while leaving Captain Fulk to set the army in order. The path made by the galla was easy to follow: all living things were dead where they had passed, even the plants. About an hour’s ride south he discovered a hollow lying east of the road where the massacre had happened. Vultures and crows led him to it, for they had gathered in great numbers. Within this bowl of ground fifty or more men had had their throats cut and then been abandoned. Blood spattered everywhere, and it stank. The birds had pecked out all the soft eyes already, and the feast was so rich that he had to kill one before the rest fluttered away reluctantly only to roost close by, waiting.

Hathui and several of the men were sick; he himself could scarcely stand to look. It was one thing to kill in battle against an armed opponent. This was murder, plain and simple.

They returned to the army in a grimmer state of mind than they had left it, rejoining them at midday. Captain Fulk had the ranks set in marching order, and as soon as the prince arrived, he made his report.

The guide and his pretty granddaughter had vanished, but more than one man reported having seen them running north with their packs bouncing on their backs. All but forty-eight men were accounted for, yet the bones they had collected on the hillside and along the road where the galla had attacked seemed to add up to no more than nineteen men. Most likely some had lost heart and run for home. Still, not one among the Quman, or the centaurs, deserted him. Of his own men, Den and Johannes were missing and presumed among the dead.

“My people took the brunt of it!” Lord Wichman complained. “Twelve men posted on sentry duty in the van, and only poor Thruster is left of them. Look at him!”

Lord Eddo had a bad reputation and was not liked even by Wichman and his cronies, but Sanglant had to pity the man now. He was a wreck, babbling and weeping without end about demons and fearful whispers and the claws of the Enemy raking into his guts until a potion got down his throat made him sleep.

“This may be the least of the losses we’ll suffer,” said Sanglant, looking at each of his commanders in turn. “If there
are any without the heart to go on, now is the time to leave, without shame.”

His captains looked beyond him to the two griffins, who lounged up on the rocks, taking the sun, sated and satisfied. Unbound and unrestrained, they had not flown off.

Captain Fulk laughed. “If such creatures follow you of their own volition, why would we poor frail humans turn away? Your army is ready to march, my lord prince.”

UNCLE pushed the handcart and its precious container of grain plus a beautifully carved bench for trade along the windy path that led out of the valley. The Brat padded alongside, chattering nonstop about each least sight; she had never left the valley before, not in her entire life. The trail rose, crested a ridge, and descended out of the hills into open country beyond. That journey took them all morning and into the afternoon. Treu followed at his heels the entire time and now and again licked his hands.

“Look at how wide open everything is! Look, there’s a hamlet! Look, I’ve never seen those people before! Hey, there! Hello, there! We’ve come walking all the way from Shaden! What’s this place called? Obstgarten?” In a lower voice. “Isn’t that a peculiar name, Uncle? Just calling themselves ‘orchard’? Look! I’ve never seen an oak tree so big! We could live inside that trunk if it was hollow! Is it much farther to the miller?”

His stomach hurt. Although the others had taken cheese and baked eggs for the journey, he was so hungry he couldn’t wait for midday so he had eaten another half a loaf of old bread that morning, the last of the hoard stored in the deacon’s cupboard, too precious to waste although it had become so desiccated that it tasted like rocks and gritted between his teeth.

This countryside seemed vaguely familiar to him, although
he wasn’t sure why, but every time they came around a curve in the path the sight of that particularly unmistakable oak tree whose broad, leafy crown seemed to hide half the sky, or an apple orchard, or a hollow lush with alder made his eyes hurt and his head throb until he thought he would go blind again. His fingers were cold, although it was a late summer day so hot that the heavens had a tendency to shimmer.

“Storm,” said Uncle, pausing to rest while he wiped sweat off his brow. He pointed southeast where the land was most open. “Coming up that way.”

Thunderheads piled up to form a huge wall of cloud, white at the top and an ominous green-gray color along the base.

“We’d best take cover,” added Uncle.

“Can’t we make it to the miller?” asked Brat anxiously, biting on a grimy finger.

“We’ll go a bit farther. I don’t see any likely place here and we passed that village too long ago. I don’t feel rain yet.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll eat when we’ve reached shelter.”

The leaves danced on the trees, spinning and whirling until he thought he saw daimones at play in the rising wind, laughing and teasing as they sported in the branches of the broken woodland through which they traveled. Meadows and fallow fields cut the woods into clumps and strips where humankind had hacked out a place for themselves; they could never leave well enough alone. They delved deeply where they weren’t wanted and chopped down the forest because it made them fearful, and in time they would flatten and consume everything like rats set loose in a storehouse of grain.

He walked behind Uncle and Brat and the cart, wondering why his fingers, which had been so cold, were now beginning to burn as if he had thrust them into flames and yet here he just walked and there wasn’t a fire anywhere except maybe the one in his head because his head was burning, too, a conflagration so fierce that although he could see, it wasn’t like true seeing where a man touches an object with his vision and notes and measures that it is there and thinks about it and makes a judgment or a decision of what to do regarding what he has seen, only there were objects before him moving or not moving and he wasn’t sure what they were any more only that
he had to avoid smashing into things which was getting more and more difficult.

“What’s he babbling about, Uncle?”

“Hush, child. He’s a holy man. Don’t offend him.”

“He’s scaring me, Uncle! He’s a crazy man! Fire and judgment and the world burning. Is he seeing the end of the world?”

“Hush, Brat. Hush. Look there! Thank the Lady. It’s the miller.”

A little river glimmered in front of them, but it was the turning wheel that made his head spin so badly that he staggered sideways until he stumbled up against a fence, which he hadn’t noticed. Two white clouds moved in the field: a pair of sheep running away from something.

“Why are they building that wall, Uncle?”

“I don’t know, Brat. Best you keep quiet and let me do the talking.”

Rain spattered, flecking the dirt road. The wind tossed the boughs in a stand of apple and walnut trees lining the path. A pair of ripening apples fell and bounced on the ground. A branch heavy with walnut fruit whirled past on a gust, sank as the wind dropped off abruptly, and landed on the earth with a thump and crackle.

“Hey! Hey, there, traveler!”

A pair of men dressed in the coarse tunics of workmen strode out from the settlement, which consisted of a pair of houses and the laboring contraption that was the wheel and the grinding house. A half-built stone wall rose between the mill and the path like a fortification. Treu loped forward to place himself between Uncle and the men, barking.

“Quiet!” scolded Uncle. Treu whined and flattened his ears.

“Big storm coming in!” cried one of the men, having to shout to be heard as the wind roared behind them. “Hurry!”

They ran, but not quickly enough. Rain lashed their backs. They were pummeled by loose branches and debris as the wind gusted so strong that it pushed Brat right over, and she stumbled and fell while Uncle struggled to keep the handcart from tipping over.

He grabbed Brat’s wrist to drag her up. A stick came down on his arm.

“Leave off her, beast!” cried one of the workmen, brandishing the stick as if it were a sword. The other man hauled Brat up and they ran for the door of the miller’s house, where a stout woman stood crying out and beckoning although her words could not be heard above the howl of the storm. Thunder rolled, but it was the shriek of the gale and the drumming of rain that deafened them. He staggered to the shelter of the half-built wall just as Brat tore away from the man holding her and dashed back to him.

“Come on!” she screamed. “You can’t stay out here!”

Maybe the mortar hadn’t set yet. Maybe it was the wind, because a cruel gust actually tore thatch off the roof of the miller’s house and sent one line of fence clattering into sticks.

The wall tumbled down on them. Heavy stones hit his legs and head but, because the Brat had been crouching under the highest part, the stones buried her entirely. Only one strand of her pale brown hair could be seen, and a pair of fingers, twitching once, then still.

Bruised and dizzy, afire as his hands burned and his head was struck again and again by flying debris, he shoved stones off his legs and heaved the stones that had covered her to one side as the gale tried to flatten him. Beyond, he heard faint cries like the whimpering of birds. He glanced that way only once. Treu had been blown over against the mill itself; the gale pressed the poor dog against the wall of the outer housing, and if he barked, the scream of the wind drowned him.

Uncle dropped down beside him, hair whipping wildly against his face, half blinding him, but he, too, tossed stones aside until Brat was revealed, crushed, lying as still as a dead thing. The second workman fought over to them, holding tight a blanket that seemed ready to take wing. A branch hit him square on and he went down to one knee and crawled forward. They managed to roll her body onto the blanket, but even so she seemed likely to be blown away on that gale as they carried her at a run back to the houses, going to the shed, which hadn’t lost half its roof.

The door banged shut. Inside the storehouse they huddled as the wind tore at the roof and whistled through cracks in the
logs. More than once the whole structure shuddered as if it was being shaken in the claws of a monster.

“Ai, God!” moaned Uncle, bending over his niece’s body. The gloom hid much, for the shed hadn’t any windows, but it was obvious that the collapsing wall hadn’t just broken all the bones in her body but crushed them. Horribly, she was still breathing. Blood bubbled on her lips, and one eye was open while the other was purpled and swelling shut so fast they could see the skin rise and blood rush up under it.

He wept over her, although he burned. His tears burned, as bright as petals of flame where they struck Brat’s mangled body. The dark shed flickered with sparks of light flashing in and out of existence. Angels had come to visit them, bringing holy fire.

“I pray you,” he murmured, beseeching them, “heal her.”

But the angels tormented him, pricking and stinging his skin, and the wind piped a tune around the frail shed that forced him to dance although there wasn’t much room among the barrels and sacks and the shelves piled with rope and tools shaped by the millwright’s lathe.

“He’s a madman!” cried the workman who still wielded the stick. “He threw that wall down on her!” He poked him back, and back, slapping at his thighs and body until he was driven up against the door.

“Leave him be!” cried Uncle, still weeping. “He’s a hermit, come out of the forest. Just a beggar. The wall fell because of the storm, or because of your poor workmanship! Leave be!”

“We didn’t! I won’t!” cried the workman. “I’m not feared of madmen. I fought in the army of the old count, God save him. We saw plenty of worse things than filthy beggars, didn’t we, Heric?”

The stick pressed him against the door while, beyond the planks of wood, the wind battered and beat, the strength of it thrumming against his shoulders. He twitched and jerked, needing to dance, anything to shake the sparks free that snapped open and closed all around him.

A shadow rose beyond the dying girl, a face that exploded into bits only it was still there, staring at him with a twist of
its lips and a jaded gaze. “I recognize him.” The workman shook his head. “Nay. Can’t be.”

“Let me go!” he begged. “Can’t you see the angels? It’s all fire! Ai! Ai! It burns!”

“What, that filthy creature?” asked the other man.

“Leave him be,” said Uncle, but weeping had crushed his voice to a monotone and he did not look up from his niece to see what they were doing.

“Uncle?” whispered the girl, the sound of her voice almost lost beneath the noise of the wind.

“It looks like that stable boy, the one the old count took for his son and who was fooling him all along, the cheat.”

“Nay! Do you think so, Heric? I’ve heard all kind of stories—that Lord Geoffrey’s daughter ain’t the rightful count and that there wouldn’t be such bad times if that son had stayed on. Wouldn’t Lord Geoffrey be happy to show the doubters that the cheater was nothing more than a madman? There might be a great deal of silver in it for us, if we took him along to Lavas Holding.”

“Silver! Don’t you remember how he tossed us out after all that time we’d served the old count, bless his soul? Why shouldn’t Lord Geoffrey cheat us as well even if we did do him a good turn?”

The wind was dying. Far beyond, he heard the bleating of sheep and Treu barking and barking and barking, but the snow of angels had turned to flowers winking and dazzling in front of his eyes until the whole world turned the white-hot blue fire of a blacksmith’s flame, searing his body.

“As if we can live with what work we can find now, eh, Heric? Building walls for a bowl of porridge. That’s no way to live!”

“Least we eat almost every day.”

“You lost your spirit in the war.”

“I lost my spirit when Lord Geoffrey threw us out to make room for his wife’s uncle’s war band! Didn’t even give us a loaf of bread for our pains and our wounds.”

“Why not try? It’s a gamble. It might not be the same man. Lord Geoffrey might want nothing to do with him. But we might win something.”