The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  At dawn they set out again, passing spits of land overgrown with rushes. There seemed to be nothing but reeds, water, and sky; they had left the land behind them but not yet entered the sea. Yet in the end the last islands of rushes fell behind and the brown water of the river poured into the blue of the Heretic’s Sea, mingling until the earthy color was utterly lost. The rushy delta lay green in the west. All else was either the blue of sky or sea.

  Anna stood next to Blessing at the railing. She had never seen anything so vast in her life. Even Blessing, for once, was stricken to silence by the immensity of the waters and the answering sky, mottled with clouds. The wind whipped her braid along her shoulders and rippled her clothing across her skin like a caress.

  “I’ve seen the sea before,” Thiemo was saying boastfully to Matto. “The Northern Sea. I rode there with Prince Ekkehard, when we were at Gent.”

  “I’m just a poor country boy, my lord,” retorted Matto in a tone that made her wince. “I’ve never seen such sights.”

  They both chose that moment to look at her, testing her reaction, and she flushed and looked away over the waters.

  “They’re following us,” said Blessing, head turned to gaze at the ships behind.

  “Of course, my lady. We’ll all sail together, just as we marched together.”

  “No. I mean the men-fish. They want to know where we’re going. They’re following us. But I don’t think they can follow us up onto land.”

  Anna shuddered, but although she peered at their wake, she saw no merfolk.

  For seven days they sailed north and east along the sea, always in sight of land and mostly in good weather, disturbed by one bracing squall out of the north. They often saw other ships sailing southeast, and three times the ship-master caught sight of a sail that looked like a skulking privateer, but no lone pirate wished to attack a fleet and so they continued on their way unmolested. On the eighth day they put into the port of Sordaia.

  At least five hundred Arethousan soldiers stood in tidy ranks along the waterfront, alerted by the number of ships, and it quickly became obvious that any attempt to disembark would be met with force. The governor of the town, an Arethousan potentate from the imperial capital, had sent a representative to speak to the arrivals. The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain in Charge of the Governor’s Treasure, Basil, had no beard but was not a priest. He was, Brother Breschius explained, a eunuch.

  “He’s had his balls cut off?” exclaimed Matto, horrified. He glanced at Anna and blushed.

  “Like Brother Zacharias,” said Thiemo, “but this one doesn’t look the same. He looks softer.”

  “What was done to Brother Zacharias was nothing like this,” said Breschius gently. “That was mutilation. No doubt the operation on this man—if we can call him such—was carried out when he was a boy. It’s considered a great honor.”

  Thiemo laughed nervously, and Matto was too embarrassed and appalled to speak. After lengthy introductions and some kind of tedious speech on the part of the eunuch, Sanglant sent Brother Heribert, who spoke Arethousan, to the palace with an assortment of gifts—a cloak trimmed with marten fur, a gold treasure box, delicately carved ivory spoons, and an altar cloth embroidered with gold thread. The negotiations took the rest of the day, ending in the late afternoon after Prince Sanglant agreed to go with a small party to the palace the next day as a hostage for the good behavior of his troops.

  “The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain Basil informs me that we are allowed to set up camp in an abandoned fort built by the former Jinna overlords outside the town walls,” said Heribert, still flushed and sweating from traveling back and forth between harbor and palace in the hot summer sun.

  “There won’t be time to disembark many before it gets dark,” said the ship-master, examining the sun. “Maybe it’s better done tomorrow.”

  “Or we could send a smaller force tonight to begin setting up,” said Fulk. “That’s what I recommend.”

  “Is it safe?” asked Hathui. “The few who disembark tonight will be easy to kill, if these Arethousans intend treachery.”

  “It seems a foolish way to provoke our anger,” said Sanglant. “We can disembark fighting, if need be. How would it benefit them to anger us in such a petty way?”

  “They are Arethousans, my lord prince,” remarked Lady Bertha, who had been rowed over from another ship. “They imbibe treachery with their mother’s milk. You can’t trust them.”

  “Nor do I. Nevertheless, Captain Fulk has the right of it. Captain, send one hundred men tonight. Not Wichman or any of his company. There should be time for them to reach the fort and reconnoiter before it’s too dark to see.”

  “I want to go! I want to go!” cried Blessing.

  “No.” Sanglant beckoned to Breschius. “I need Heribert to attend me at the palace and you to remain here with the ships until everyone is off. You are the only ones who can speak Arethousan. There must be no misunderstandings.”

  “Yes, my lord prince.”

  “I want to go see the palace tomorrow with you, Papa!”

  “No. You’ll stay with the army.”

  “I don’t want to stay! I want to go!” The girl grabbed the railing ready to fling herself over the side and swim for shore.

  “No.”

  The confinement of a sea voyage had not improved Sanglant’s temper, nor had a day cooling his heels in the harbor made him patient. When he grabbed his daughter’s arm, the girl whimpered.

  “I will.” Her mouth quivered, but her gaze remained defiant.

  “You will not.” The prince turned to Anna. “You’ll go, Anna, to set up camp for your mistress. And take—” his gaze flicked to Matto and Thiemo, pushed to the back during the day’s negotiations. “Lord Thiemo, you’ll go as well.”

  “I want to go!” Blessing tried to wriggle out of her father’s unforgiving grasp.

  “If you give me any trouble tonight, Blessing,” her father added softly, “you won’t even be allowed off this ship tomorrow when the troops disembark. You’ll stay here locked in the cabin until we leave this port. Is that understood?”

  Fighting back tears, she nodded but did not resist when Sanglant thrust her into Matto’s care. Yet Matto’s furious expression could have wilted flowers as he watched Anna. She felt his gaze like the prick of an arrow on her back as she descended the gangplank. Although she stood on solid earth, the ground still moved and it was difficult to keep her feet under her. With Matto and Blessing both so angry, she dared not look back as they marched away. The unsteady ground made her a little nauseated, and the flap of canvas from the rolled-up tent she was carrying that got loose from the ropes and flipped over her eyes only made the dizziness worse. She staggered as they ascended a broad avenue through the town. With the canvas obscuring her vision she could only see her feet, garbage, and an occasional pile of dog shit. The town stank in a way the ship had not; there wasn’t enough wind to chase out the smell. Voices rang all around her—the streets were crowded—but she heard not a single recognizable word.

  How had she ever come so far from Gent? What if she died here in this land of barbarians and foreigners? Was this God’s punishment upon her for her sins? Tears welled in her eyes, but she bit her lip hard until the pain calmed her down. Crying never did any good.

  Yet it seemed a long and lonely walk out to the fort. Sunset washed the land with pale gold when she finally negotiated a narrow plank bridge over a steep-sided ditch, a yawning abyss that made her tremble, and found herself in the fort. She allowed the rolled-up canvas to slide down onto the ground. Her shoulders ached, but at least the ground had stopped swaying. It was good to be back on dirt.

  As she stretched the knots out of her shoulders, she examined the empty fort. A wall built of stamped clay surrounded the interior buildings, which resembled a bee’s hive, a series of cell-like rooms built haphazardly in sprawling units. A number of soldiers wandered out to explore. She followed them.

  “Those infidels lived like pigs,
” observed Lewenhardt as he retreated from yet another chamber filled with mounds of rubbish and dried excrement.

  “Or else they kept their animals stabled here,” said Den.

  “Don’t look like cow shit to me,” said Surly.

  “What do you think, Brother Zacharias?” asked Chustaffus. “Do infidel kings stable their soldiers like beasts? Is there no hall for the men to eat together with their lord?”

  Zacharias shaded a hand against the sun. “I don’t know the customs of the Jinna, but I see no hall, only these small rooms.”

  “This one is empty!” shouted Lewenhardt, who had gone on to the next. The majority of the little chambers lay empty, each one just big enough to sleep four men, but no more than that, more like stone tents than proper barracks.

  “Enough of that!” called Sergeant Cobbo. “Get to work. We’ll need tents set up, and you lot haul whatever you can find over to that gate to build a barrier.”

  Anna was helping Den post rope lines to keep horses from straying into the tented area when the last of the advance force arrived: a dozen horsemen who had to dismount by the gate in order to lead their horses across the plank bridge over the pit. It wasn’t precisely a true gate. The old gates had long since fallen down and, evidently, been carted away, and only the deep ditch protected the entrance, although a fair bit of debris—posts, planks, discarded wheels—had been dragged over to form a makeshift wall on the inner side of the pit.

  Was that Thiemo among them? She shaded her eyes to get a better look.

  “Hey!” said Den. “Don’t let the rope go slack!”

  She went back to work, but as it began to get dark, there was no point in doing more. She wandered over to the horse lines but did not find him there. What was she thinking? Usually she shared a bed with Blessing every night. She wasn’t used to so much freedom.

  She could not stop thinking about finding him, yet she didn’t want to appear to be seeking him out. She climbed a narrow staircase that led up to the walkway along the wall, to survey the camp. A pinkish-purple glow rimmed the western horizon, although the east lay in darkness. The town revealed itself as glimmers of distant lamplight. Below, campfires burned and Sergeant Cobbo began singing. A footstep scuffed on the wall, but it was the watchman in the corner watchtower.

  “Anna.”

  When he took hold of her arm, out of the dark, she gasped, and he slipped an arm around her, pressing her close. He was a head taller than her, broad through the shoulders but with a young man’s slenderness in the torso and hips.

  “I have something to show you,” he whispered, breath sweet against her ear. “Come with me.”

  “I have to go back—” she began, suddenly nervous. Suddenly elated.

  “We’re stuck here for the night, Anna. There’s no one else who needs us. Come this way.”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Shhh. We’ll go slowly.”

  In the dark it wasn’t easy to retrace their path along the wall, where they could have tumbled off the inner side at any moment and fallen two man-lengths to the hard-packed dirt below. It took a fair bit of groping, and tangling, and holding on to each other, to negotiate the worn steps, and by the time they reached the ground they were both giggling yet trying not to, fearing that Cobbo or some other soldier would find them.

  “This way.”

  Thiemo still had hold of her hand, but as he started along the base of the wall, she hesitated. He turned back to her, ran a hand up her arm to her shoulder to caress the curve of her neck.

  “Anna? I found a place where no one will find us. It’s clean, too. I left a blanket there.”

  She wanted him so badly. Even to touch him made her hot in a way the sun’s heat never did.

  “What will happen then?” The future opened before her like the wide waters of the sea, fathomless.

  His lips brushed hers, light as a butterfly’s kiss at first, suddenly insistent. When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing in gasps. Anna clung to him.

  “We could be dead tomorrow,” he murmured.

  What about Matto? But she could not speak Matto’s name out loud. Matto would be in Thiemo’s place now, had Prince Sanglant sent one and not the other. And if it were the prince himself, holding her in the darkness?

  She dared not walk down that path. Thiemo was a lord, but only the eighth child of a minor count. That was why he had been sent to ride in Prince Ekkehard’s retinue, to make his own way as a noble servant to a higher born man. He was disposable, the kind of boy sent into the Dragons. Maybe that was why he wasn’t as haughty as the other nobles, because he was assured of so little.

  “Death is sure,” she whispered, and if not now, then later. Someday. None of them knew what kind of trouble the prince was leading them into. Maybe the prince himself did not know. Anything could happen.

  Anything.

  “Thiemo.” The top of her head barely came to his chin, but it wasn’t difficult to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down to kiss her again.

  What would she be sorry for, the day she died?

  Not this.

  V

  SORDAIA

  1

  IN the morning Zacharias slept late, having made a bed for himself in blessed solitude in one of the little chambers. By the time he stumbled bleary-eyed into the hammer of the late morning sun, all men, beasts, and belongings were accounted for, Captain Fulk had posted guards at the gate and lookouts on top of the wall, and the men were assembling on the open ground in front of the gates. Lord Wichman, Lord Druthmar, and the other nobles watched from beneath the shaded luxury of spacious awnings, lounging at their ease while they sipped wine and played chess and listened to one of their number playing a lute.

  Fulk’s speech to the soldiers was stern.

  “You will not go into the town unless you have been commanded to by myself or by Prince Sanglant. No markets. No brothels. No taverns. Is that understood?”

  Dismissed, they sulked in the dusty fort, having nothing more to look at than each other and nothing more than sour beer to drink. “No wonder this place looks like prison,” said Surly. “That’s what it is.”

  “I always wondered what Jinna women look like,” mused Lewenhardt. “Is it true they dance naked through fire to worship their god?”

  “You might wish,” laughed Johannes, “until you had to do the same thing. And then the fire would burn off your—”

  “Hush,” said Den. “Here comes the captain.”

  “Brother Zacharias!” Captain Fulk nodded at his soldiers and they moved away. “The prince wishes a small party to investigate the market, to scout what’s available for provisions and guides for the journey east. You’ve lived in the grasslands, Brother. You’ll know what kinds of things we must look for.”

  “Wagons.” He remembered wagons too well.

  “You’ve said so before,” said Fulk with the skepticism any westerner might show who did not understand the grasslands. “We don’t know how long we’ll be delayed here. We’ll need supplies and plenty of ale or wine to drink, with this hot sun. Wolfhere will go with you, as will Lady Bertha’s healer, Robert, who can speak somewhat of the Arethousan language.”

  Their departure was delayed at the gate when Blessing ran up. “Take me with you! I hate it here!”

  “My lady!” Matto arrived, huffing from the exertion in the heat. “You must come back to the tent now. You know what your father the prince told you.”

  “I don’t want to stay here! I want to go see the governor’s palace. I want to see people with big ears like tents. Maybe they have a phoenix in the market.” Matto started, looking guilty, as the girl crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. “I want to go with them.”

  Wolfhere softened as that glare was directed at him. “What harm if she comes with us?”

  “Has the sun cooked your head?” demanded Zacharias. “There’s a slave market in this port!”

  “I want to see the slave market!”

  Anger
made him clench his jaw, but he struggled to remember that she was only a child. “It’s no merry thing to be sold in a slave market, my lady, as I should know. What’s to stop some Arethousan thief from seeing what a proud, fine noblewoman you are and stealing you away and selling you to the infidels?”

  “I’d bite him!”

  “He’d slap you so hard you’d lose your wits,” retorted Zacharias, earning himself a sharp glance from Fulk.

  Blessing was hopping from one foot to the other; she hadn’t heard. “I’d bite him five times, until he let me go!”

  “For God’s sake, Wolfhere, dissuade her from this foolish notion!”

  “A day of freedom would not harm the child,” muttered Wolfhere irritably. “I don’t like the heat and the dust any better than she does. This is an unnatural place.”

  “Unnatural, indeed! How can you think it safe for her to go wandering in the market when we don’t even know how we’ll be greeted by the townsfolk?”

  Blessing screwed up that adorable face and put her fists on her hips; she was steering hard for a big storm.

  “My lady.” Captain Fulk motioned for Matto to step back. “I will personally escort you into the market, but not today. Any disruption may harm your father’s negotiations with the governor. You would not want that.”

  Captain Fulk was the only person besides her father she truly respected. Everyone else she either ignored or had wrapped up tight on a leash like an adoring dog. Her frown was so terrible that Zacharias was surprised that it didn’t draw in clouds to cover the heartless sun.

  “I’ll go anyway,” she muttered.

  “I must obey as your royal father commanded me, Your Highness, and keep you in this camp. If I do not, he will strip me of my rank and cast me out of his war band, and he would be right to do so.”