The Gathering Storm (79 page)

“Tomorrow, then,” said Liath, exhausted at the sight of such a large gathering.

“Will we ride west at last? I fear we may already be too late for King Henry.” Hathui’s gaze was steady. She expected bad news but did not fear to hear it. She had taken three scars to the face in the years since Liath had seen her last and
walked with a limp. Her injuries had not dimmed her strong spirit, yet Liath glimpsed vulnerability in her expression.

“You are Henry’s loyal Eagle, are you not, Hathui?”

Pride sparked in her face. She lifted her chin. “I am.”

“Then I’ll tell you truly. I just don’t know. I’ve heard your tale, and I think it likely that his keepers must keep him alive until Princess Mathilda is older. It’s even possible they don’t actually wish to kill him, only to control him.” Despite his twisted nature, Hugh had never seemed to Liath like a man who reveled in death. He would choke you until you yielded, but he would not gleefully spill blood. He liked things tidier and more elegantly disposed. “That’s all we can hope for.”

“What of you, Liath? You gave up your Eagle’s badge to follow Prince Sanglant, yet now the prince has rebelled against his father. It was said you were the great granddaughter of Emperor Taillefer, yet now you deny it. What are you, then? King Henry’s subject? Or do you also count yourself a rebel?”

Liath shook her head. “My fight goes so far beyond the regnant’s authority that I cannot really consider his well-being as I make my plans. If we do not stop Sister Anne, then we may all die. What does his lineage and mine and yours matter then? Isn’t it true that in the Chamber of Light, before God, we all stand as equals? It may be we will find out.”

“And what then?” Hathui’s face and lips were chapped from months of battering by cold and icy wind, yet the sunshine of the last few days had burned her hawk’s nose, now peeling. If it hurt, she seemed not to notice it. She had suffered worse, no doubt.

No, Hathui wasn’t afraid of the truth. She could face down anything.

“What then?” Liath echoed. “I have walked the spheres. I have seen things I cannot describe, though when I close my eyes I can still see them as vividly as ever I did when I faced them. A daimone of glinting ice barring my path. A sea of burning water that ate through the flesh of my hand. A golden paradise rotten with illusion and false hope. Wheels that spun and burned. A rainbow stairway that led up into the highest reach of the heavens. My mother’s death. And more besides, far more.”

Hathui nodded. Liath had not spoken in detail of her journey, not even to Sanglant, but the Eagle understood its momentous import. The wind stirred the grass around them. The sun sank westward and the lazy warmth of its glow melted into her skin.

“I have seen a crown of stars laid out across the land, spanning Taillefer’s empire and far beyond. In ancient times seven sorcerers wove a vast spell to sunder the land. I do not believe that these seven wielded such power because they came of noble bloodlines. I believe they possessed hard-won knowledge, they possessed determination, they possessed courage. They feared and hated their enemy so much that they were willing to risk anything and everything to rid themselves of them. They were willing to die. And to kill.”

Willing to die, and to take friend and foe with them into death. One of these victims she had known.

By unknown sorcery, Alain had come to inhabit the ancient past. What did he know of the great spell woven there? He might possess valuable secrets, crucial knowledge, if only she could find him.

“And then?” Hathui coaxed.

“And then?” The comment left her scrambling to remember what she had been speaking about. “Only this. Why do God grant each one of us souls? Is the soul of King Henry weightier than yours? Or does each woman and man bear a burden of equal worth? If King Henry can save us, then I will follow him gladly. But if he cannot, then I see no need to follow him blindly only because he is the son of a king.”

“These are dangerous words.”

“Are they? Or are they practical ones? Sister Anne
is
the granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer, but that does not mean we must do what she wishes us to do only because of her grandfather’s imperial throne.” Examining Hathui’s wary expression, Liath shook her head, dismayed. “Nay, you yourself, Hathui, are worth far more than she is.”

The griffin huffed behind them, and Hathui started, then sidestepped nervously, keeping her gaze half on the griffin and half on Liath as if she were not sure who posed the worst threat.

Would it always be like this? Liath knew her journey had
changed her, and now she wondered if she could ever again live easily among humankind.

Sanglant was awake when she returned to the tent, and not just awake but up and moving with only a trace of the stiffness one expected in a man who had so recently suffered such grave injuries. In fact, he was sitting on a bench and eating, careful not to bolt his food but clearly starving. When she swept past the entrance flap of the tent, he looked up immediately, set down his spoon with a sharp rap on the camp table, and stood.

She had forgotten the way every action in any chamber he inhabited danced about the center—which was him. He did not clamor for attention; he just possessed the king’s luck, the regnant’s glamour, that brought all gazes to him whether they intended to look that way or not.

“Liath,” he said. That was all. What he didn’t say needed no words. He stared at her. Devouring her with his gaze, as the poets said. He didn’t even need to touch her.

Two unlit lamps caught flame.

She flushed, bent her mind to their fires, and snipped them off.

He laughed and, satisfied, sat back down and took up his spoon.

“My lord prince.” Captain Fulk entered with a young soldier behind him.

“What is it?” Sanglant saw the second man and beckoned him closer. “What news, Lewenhardt? Were you on watch?”

“I was, my lord prince. Gyasi returns with two-score companions, half of them winged and the others women or boys. They’ll be here within the hour.”

“Very well. Place my best chair outside with an honor guard. Let it face west. Call all the captains. I will receive them there.”

He was sitting on a bench cleverly fastened together so that it could be broken into easily transportable sections. He looked at Liath and slid to one side, making room for her.

When she sat, he gave her his spoon so she could share his stew. The smell, however bland and greasy, made her stomach growl and her mouth water, and she set to work, all the time so very aware of him beside her, every least shift of movement as
he adjusted his posture or set weight on an elbow or nudged his foot up against hers. She had forgotten how big he was, something more, really, than just muscle and height and the breadth of his shoulders. This was the glorious prince she had fallen in love with at Gent—miraculously recovered from his mortal wounds and fully in charge of the army that followed at his heels very like a well-trained and adoring hound.

For the next hour the flood of petitioners did not abate. No complaint was too trivial to address; no soldier too humble to be refused entrance; no decision too weighty, since he evidently had the gift of knowing exactly whether it needed immediate resolution or time for thinking over.

A horse must be put down, but its meat and gristle could be added to the stewpot, its hair and sinews used for stringing bows and strengthening rope, its hide scraped, its hooves boiled down. Two men had quarreled, and a knife had been drawn and one of them stabbed, although not fatally, but Sanglant simply assigned them to different units and forbade them from speaking.

“Shouldn’t an example be set so other men don’t pick fights?” Liath whispered.

Although his foot lay hard against hers, he was careful not to touch or look at her in view of the men waiting their turn to address him.

“This is the time for a soft hand, not a firm one,” he murmured so quietly that only she, and Heribert standing behind him, might hear. “No one will say so aloud, but it is a lovers’ quarrel. My army has marched a long way without the comfort of women. Such things will happen. I won’t punish them for seeking relief.” He shifted restlessly and pulled his foot away from hers, as though it burned. But then he spoiled it by grinning, although he was not looking at her.

That grin had the force of a hundred caresses. She got very hot, but she was ready; she guarded the force of her desire, not wanting to light the tent on fire. She could control it—more or less. Yet holding it in only made her want him more.

Captain Fulk stuck his head in. “My lord prince.”

Quickly he armed himself. He paused only to kiss Blessing before he went outside with Liath. There, a dozen captains and noble companions waited.

“Who’s this fine heifer?” demanded a big man dressed in the embroidered tunic and fur-lined cloak of a nobleman. He leered at her as he looked her up and down, and she knew that she had seen him before, but she could not place him. “Can I have her when you’re done?”

Sanglant stopped dead and turned. A hush choked off the conversations between the gathered crowd as everyone stilled. There are some things that have no physical body and yet can be felt as strongly as the slam of a rock into one’s head.

“What did you say about my wife, Wichman?” he asked so pleasantly that Wichman went ghastly pale and took a step away from him, although Sanglant had not moved, not even his little finger.

Liath recognized him now—Duchess Rotrudis’ reckless son, who had harried Gent for months and taken Mistress Gisela’s poor niece into his bed against her will. Sanglant’s interference irritated her; did he think her helpless? Yet she did not know how to respond. She possessed no skill at crossing words like swords. She had power, but so did a spear—and it was the person who wielded it who gave it direction and aim.

She fumed as Wichman retreated, as the other captains and nobles came forward to greet Sanglant and exclaim over his return to strength. To meet her warily or pleasantly, depending on their nature. She had to learn who they were, but names and titles spat at her in such quick succession that while all the names stuck she could not recall which name matched which face.

“And this is Lady Bertha, my strong right hand,” Sanglant said last of all. “She is the second daughter of Margrave Judith.”

That caught Liath’s attention.

“You are Hugh’s sister,” she said, not having meant to speak any such words.

“So my mother told me.” Bertha looked nothing like Hugh, having no particular elegance and less beauty, but she appeared tough and competent. “So he claimed, since it gave him the advantage of our support when he needed it. I might have wished otherwise, since I always detested him.” She
smiled mockingly as Liath schooled her expression, for she had never expected to hear Hugh spoken of so slightingly by his own kinfolk. “Have I offended you? Perhaps you held him in some affection.”

Sanglant glanced at her, but she shook her head, aware of the way his shoulders tensed as he waited for her reply.

“I did not. I am only surprised.”

“My mother spoiled him, and he only a bastard. Why should my sisters and I not resent him? Well, so be it. According to this good Eagle, he has earned his just reward and luxuriates in a position of great power and influence with many a noble lady begging for admittance to his holy bedchamber. It was ever so with him, and he always put them off, like dangling meat before a starving dog and then pulling it away before it could taste it. He liked them to beg. And they did,”

Sanglant was looking stormy, and while Bertha’s sentiments might appeal, Liath did not find the noblewoman’s manner particularly sympathetic. But she did not know how to change the subject.

Heribert stepped forward. “They are coming, my lord prince.”

Bertha looked past Liath, and laughed. “Not as many as you wished, eh?”

Sanglant seated himself in the chair. “That depends on what they have to say.” The others ranged around him, falling into obviously familiar patterns but leaving Liath unsure how to position herself. Where did she fit in?

She had felt so strong, walking the spheres, but there she had been acting alone. Here, maybe she would never fit into the tightly woven army that Sanglant led. She stared at the sun’s fiery trail, a golden-pink layer sprawled out along the western hills. Ai, God, how cleverly Sanglant had placed himself: it seemed as if the sun set in order to do him obeisance.

Gyasi appeared at the head of a score of riders who pointed at the hooded griffin, exclaiming among themselves. They bore two banners, one marked with three slashes and the other with a crescent moon. Sanglant shifted in his chair, hand restless on his hilt of his sword, as Gyasi dismounted and led six of the Quman forward: four winged warriors and two women
wearing impossibly tall conical hats ornamented with beads and gold. The two barbarian women were burdened with more jewelry even than Sorgatani, as if the weight of their gold determined how important they were.

As they advanced, Liath slipped sideways, out of the crowd. Wichman glanced at her as she slid past him, and he recoiled, bumping into Brother Breschius, who constituted the other half of Sanglant’s schola.

“I pray you, Brother, attend me,” Liath said softly, and Breschius obediently walked with her a stone’s toss away from the rest. They halted near a group of soldiers come to stare and to keep their prince safe from the interlopers. “What do you know of these Quman?”

“Little enough.”

“What do those markings mean?”

“It is the mark of a snow leopard’s claw, the device of the Pechanek tribe. They are the ones who abandoned us the day we met the Horse people. The other—” He shrugged helplessly. “—I do not know. Brother Zacharias would have. He knew a great deal, for he had lived as a slave in the Pechanek tribe.”

“I know no Brother Zacharias. Where is he now?”

“He fled with Wolfhere when we were in Sordaia.”

“I heard a little of this tale. Is it certain that Wolfhere betrayed Prince Sanglant?”

Breschius shrugged. “Who can know? Both he and Zacharias are gone in the company of a small, dark man, a powerful sorcerer, so Gyasi says. That’s all I know. I was with Prince Sanglant at the palace of the exalted Lady Eudokia. I did not witness the incident. Only Brother Robert did, who was Lady Bertha’s healer. The poor man died a few months ago of the lung fever. It is a miracle that Prince Sanglant kept so many of us alive. Yet perhaps not a miracle at all. He has the regnant’s luck.”