The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  She looked up then, her gaze like a sharp rap on the head.

  “It would take a lot of rats to fill a dog’s belly,” answered Hanna, floundering.

  “Not if they’ve grown as big as a dog themselves, or bigger even, human-sized or some say as big as a horse. A horse!” She bent back to her task with a curt chuckle. “I’m not believing such foolish tales. No rat can grow to be the size of a horse, and where would it hide, then? But I suppose they could become mighty big, nibbling on scraps and prisoners’ fingers and toes.”

  That sharp look made Hanna cautious. Was there a veiled purpose to Aurea’s talking, or was she just nattering to pass the time?

  “I remember stories that my grandmother told me.” Hanna moved along the attic until she came to the open trapdoor. She squinted down the length of the ladder but saw no lurking shadow, no listening accomplice. “I do love to trade old stories, about dragons and rats and wolves. I have a few stories of my own to tell.”

  “So it might well be, you being an Eagle and all,” agreed the woman, sweeping past Hanna toward the window. Tidy piles of dirt and dust marked her path like droppings. “Eagles see all kinds of things the rest of us can’t, don’t you? Travel to strange and distant lands with urgent messages on behalf of the king. You’re welcome to join those of us servants from Wendar when we attend Vespers in St. Asella’s chapel, by the west gate of the city. There’s a cleric from Wendar called Brother Fortunatus who gives the sermon in Wendish there. Only on Hefensday, mind. That’s when we’re allowed to go.”

  Since there were a dozen chapels within the regnant’s palace alone and a rumored five hundred or more within the walls of the lower city, Hanna could not guess which one the woman meant. Most of them she only recognized by the image of the saint that marked the portico. Yet she could not help herself. Clerics hidden like rats in the dungeon. Eyes that could see through walls, and traveling Eagles.

  Perhaps she was making a conspiracy where none existed, but it wouldn’t hurt to follow this path a bit farther.

  “I don’t know of St. Asella. If I go down to the west gate, is there some way to know which chapel is dedicated to her?”

  The woman stilled her broom. Though her gaze was as innocent as a lamb’s, the soft words carried a barb. “St. Asella was walled up alive.”

  2

  IN the deepening twilight, tall trees seemed a grim backdrop to swollen grave mounds and a stone circle. As their little group neared the gap in the wall of trees that promised to be a trail, Ivar looked back over the clearing. He had never seen a stone circle in such perfect repair, each stone upright and all the lintels intact. It looked as if it had been built, or repaired, in recent months. Only the great stone at the center lay flat. His companions paused as dusk settled over them and a breeze sighed through the forest. The grave mounds seemed to exert a spell, luring them back. Ivar simply could not move, as though dead hands gripped his feet and held him tight. A twig snapped, breaking their silence.

  “Do you think we’re really near Hersford Monastery?” asked Ermanrich, voice squeaking.

  “As long as we’re well away from that Quman army, then I don’t care where we are.” Ivar knew he sounded braver than he felt as daylight faded. A wolf howled in the distance, answered by a second, and everyone grabbed for their weapons. “Where’s Baldwin?”

  “He was right behind you,” said Ermanrich.

  “He didn’t wait.” The younger Lion, Dedi, pointed toward the trees. “He went to look at the path.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” demanded Ivar.

  Ermanrich gave him a look. “When has Baldwin ever listened to any of us?”

  “Nay, Ivar, don’t be angry at Dedi.” Sigfrid laid a gentle, but restraining, hand on Ivar’s arm. “Ermanrich’s only speaking the truth, which you know as well as we do.”

  “Damned fool. Why couldn’t he wait?” But Baldwin never listened, he just pretended to.

  “He probably ran off because he thought he saw Margrave Judith come looking for him,” joked Ermanrich nervously.

  “Why should a margrave like Judith come looking for the likes of him?” asked Dedi with a snort of disbelief.

  “Hush!” said Hathumod abruptly. “Listen!”

  The sound of thrashing came from the trees. Baldwin burst out of the forest, arms flailing.

  “A lion!” He hadn’t run more than ten steps into the clearing when he tripped and fell.

  They hurried over to calm him down, but as they swarmed around him, he jumped to his feet with a look of terror on his beautiful face. “I found an old hovel over at a rock outcropping, not far from here, but when I stuck my head inside, I heard a cough behind me. I turned around and there was a lion up on the rocks!”

  “A Lion?” demanded Gerulf. “From which cohort?”

  “Nay, a lion. A beast. Quite tawny and as hungry looking as you please. A second one came to stand beside the first.”

  Gerulf snorted. “I’ll thank you not to pull my leg, Son. There aren’t any lions in the north except them as you might find in the regnant’s menagerie. Lions live in the southern lands.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “If it was a hungry lion, then why didn’t it eat you up?” asked Dedi with a laugh. “Or was it too busy admiring your pretty face?”

  Ivar jumped between Baldwin and Dedi just as Baldwin drew his arm back for a punch. “Baldwin can’t help the way he looks. No need to tease him for it. It’s getting dark anyway. I don’t care to spend a night here inside this stone circle with those barrows as our guardians. Do any of you?”

  No one did, not even Sigfrid, whose powerful faith made him hardest to frighten.

  “Anything might happen here among the stones and graves,” said Ermanrich. “I’d rather face the lions.”

  “We’ll let you go first,” said Hathumod dryly to her cousin, “for then they’ll have a good meal and won’t need to eat any of the rest of us.”

  “There’s the path.” Gerulf pointed toward the gap.

  “I’d hate to take any path with darkness coming on and wolves howling nearby,” said Ivar.

  “Not to mention the lions,” said Dedi.

  “You’ll see,” muttered Baldwin.

  “How big is this hovel?” Gerulf nodded toward Ivar to show he agreed that they shouldn’t try to go far lest they lose themselves in the night.

  “One man could sit inside it, but not comfortably,” said Baldwin. “But right below where I saw the lions the outcropping cuts in and makes a bit of an overhang.”

  “That might serve as shelter,” said Gerulf, “enough for one night. We can follow the path in the morning.”

  “You don’t believe me!” Baldwin looked from face to face. “None of you believe me! Ivar?”

  Drops of rain brushed Ivar’s face. A gust of wind, heralding stronger rain to come, rattled through the trees. “It might have been wolves,” he said reluctantly. Seeing Baldwin’s indignant expression, he quickly went on. “Or lions. I’d hate to fight them out in the open. We’ve weapons enough to fight off ravening beasts as long as we have a good stout wall at our back.”

  “There you are, Son!” replied Gerulf cheerfully. “If we can get a fire going, then a good overhang will serve us better whether wolves or lions or even a guivre itself comes a-courting. Better anyway than standing out here and getting soaking wet. You’d have made a good Lion, lad.”

  “I would have been no Lion,” said Ivar, stung by this statement. “I’d have been a Dragon, if my father who is count up in the North Mark would have let me ride with them instead of putting me into the church.”

  “I pray you, my lord,” said Gerulf hastily. “I meant no offense.”

  The momentary embarrassment, the realization that although their group had escaped the Quman as comrades they were, in fact, quite unequal in station, held them motionless until rain drove them into action. They slogged through what remained of the grassy clearing, sheltering their heads against the rain as best they cou
ld, keeping the torches dry. Luckily, the track ran straight and true through the trees. They took not more than one hundred steps on a downhill slope before they stumbled out onto a rocky outcropping. Cliffs rose above and below, staggered like the shoulders of a hulking beast. Rain washed over them with a fresh gust of wind, and they stumbled into such shelter as the overhang afforded. In the last of the fading light, Ivar saw a tiny hovel built of sticks standing off to one side, out in the rain, but truly, as Baldwin had reported, it hadn’t enough space even for one man to lie down in.

  “Come, there’s plenty of sticks here to build a fire that’ll last the entire night, and they’re not too wet yet,” said Gerulf, then added: “If you will, my lords and lady.”

  They gathered up fuel as quickly as they could and lit a fire just as it really got too dark to see. After some discussion, they settled on watches: Gerulf and Hathumod to begin, followed by Dedi and Ermanrich, and Ivar and Sigfrid last. Baldwin had already bundled himself up in his cloak and lain down to sleep in the deepest, driest crack of the overhang. They set out torches within easy reach, in case they needed them as weapons against marauding beasts, and settled down for the night.

  Ivar lay down next to Baldwin. He dozed off at once and was startled awake much later by the sound of Hathumod’s voice, as soft as the brush of rabbit fur across his skin but rather more persistent.

  “Nay, friend Gerulf, it isn’t a heresy at all, although the church may have said so.”

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Hathumod, but why should the church mothers lie? Why would the holy women who have worn the robes and seal of the skopos each in her turn be party to such a deception?”

  “Some simply were ignorant. They were taught as we were and knew no better. But truly, I do not know why the ancient mothers who wrote in the early days concealed the truth. They were the heretics, and the Enemy spoke through them. But now the truth is unveiled and shines brightly for all to see. I have witnessed miracles—”

  Ivar had heard similar words from the lips of Lady Tallia, whose tortured body and zealous gaze had thrown all of them onto the path of heresy back in Quedlinhame. As he drifted back into sleep, he marveled that Hathumod, despite her undistinguished voice and unremarkable bearing, could sound so persuasive.

  A foot nudged him, and when he shifted to turn his back to the summons, it nudged him again.

  “Nay, nay,” he muttered, thinking himself back at Quedlinhame, “it can’t be time for Vigils already, is it?”

  “So it might be,” whispered Ermanrich cheerfully, “although with the clouds overhead I can’t see the stars to tell what hour it is. It’s your turn for watch.”

  Ivar groaned. He hurt everywhere. Even his fingers throbbed, but when he rose, crouching, and closed his hand over his spear, the grip felt funny. Memory jolted him awake. He’d lost two fingers in the battle. Maybe the Quman were already on their trail, ready to cut off his head. He straightened and promptly banged his head on the rock above.

  “Hush,” hissed Ermanrich. “No need to go swearing like that. We’ve seen nothing on our watch and nothing was seen on the first watch either. I think Baldwin’s lions must have been scared off by his handsome face.”

  “God Above.” Ivar stepped out past Ermanrich. A rush of cold night air swept his cheeks. He’d been breathing in smoke from the fire all night, and his lungs ached with soot. Outside, the rain had stopped, but he still couldn’t see any stars. “I’d forgotten how much I hated rising for prayers in the middle of the night.”

  “Where’s your purity of faith? Don’t you remember the miracles?”

  “They never took place at Vigils.”

  Sigfrid stood next to the fire, rocking back and forth with eyes closed as he murmured prayers. Ivar fed a stick to the fire and rubbed his hands near the flames to warm them. Ermanrich and Dedi settled down on the ground to sleep.

  Ivar didn’t like to interrupt Sigfrid at his prayers, so he stood quietly at watch. Neither did he want to pray. He had learned all those prayers in the church of his childhood and youth, the church of his mothers and grandmothers. But after witnessing the miracle of the phoenix and the miracle of Lady Tallia’s bloody wounds, he knew the church had lied to him. Perhaps Sigfrid and Hathumod could still pray, changing the words so they echoed the truth that had been hidden for so long. But prayer seemed to Ivar like an illusionary feast, pretty to look at and delectable to smell but tasting like ashes when you went to gobble it down.

  Perhaps he had suffered so many betrayals and setbacks because he had himself believed what was false. Yet others believed what they had been taught, and they hadn’t suffered as he had. Nay, truly, his trials must have been a test of his resolve. Maybe he had been granted leave to witness the miracles because he had resisted Liath’s blandishments. She had tempted him, but he had escaped her. Even if he did still dream of her, here on a rainy night lost in a distant country, wondering what was to become of them all.

  If it hadn’t been for Liath, maybe his father would have let him join the Dragons. But of course, then he would have been killed at Gent by the Eika along with the rest of the Dragons; all but that damned Prince Sanglant, who everyone knew had been enchanted by his inhuman mother so that he couldn’t ever be killed.

  Looked at that way, maybe Liath had saved him from death. Or maybe it wasn’t Liath at all. Maybe God had saved him, so that he and his friends could work Her will. God had saved them from the Quman, hadn’t She? God had transported them by a miracle from the eastern borderlands to the very heart of Wendar. God had turned summer to autumn, and healed their wounds, and by these signs had revealed their task: It was up to them to tell the truth of the blessed Daisan’s death to every soul they encountered. God had given the truth into their hands and saved them from sure death in order to see what they would make of these gifts.

  The shape ghosted past at the limit of the fire’s light.

  Startled, he dropped his spear. As he bent to pick it up, he noticed a second shape, then a third.

  “Hsst, Sigfrid! Wolves!”

  As if their name, spoken out loud, summoned them, the wolves moved closer. Lean and sleek, they eyed the sleeping party hungrily. The leader yawned, displaying sharp teeth. As he gathered breath into his lungs to shout the alarm, Ivar counted two, then four, then eight of the beasts, poised to leap, ready to kill.

  They scattered, vanishing into the night.

  The shout caught in his throat, choking him, as a lion paced into the circle of the fire’s light and lifted its glossy golden head to gaze at him. It had huge shoulders and powerful flanks, and when it yawned, its teeth sparked in the firelight like the points of daggers.

  A choking stutter came from his throat. For a space during which he might have gulped in one breath or taken a thousand, he stared at it, and it at him, as calm in its power as God’s judgment.

  Then he remembered that he had to wake the others before they were ripped into pieces and made into a feast.

  Something touched him, and he jumped, but he still couldn’t find his voice, and anyway, it was only Sigfrid.

  “Nay, Ivar,” he said in his gentle voice. “They’re protecting us.” His small hand weighed like a boulder on Ivar’s forearm.

  He didn’t dare move, because the lion hadn’t attacked yet. As he watched, too stunned to do anything, a second lion paced majestically into the fire’s light. This one had a coat so light that it seemed silver. It, too, stopped and stared with a gaze so intelligent that at once he knew it could see right down into his soul. It knew all his secrets, every least bitter and petty thought he had ever entertained, every ill he had wished on another, every greedy urge he had fulfilled. It knew the depths of his unseemly passion for Liath and how he had allowed lust to smother his decent affection for Hanna, who had never turned away from him, even when he had treated her badly. It recognized how far he had fallen into debauchery among Prince Ekkehard and his cronies. But it also saw his efforts to preach the truth of the sacrifice and redemption of the b
lessed Daisan to the city folk in Gent and to the village folk in the marchlands. It saw how he had aided his friends on the battlefield and helped the wounded Lions to safety. It witnessed, through him, the glorious flight of the phoenix, and for these things it forgave him his sins.

  “W—why should they protect us?” he stammered when he found his voice.

  “Lions are God’s creatures,” said Sigfrid. “They’re waiting here.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rain spattered down and ceased. The lions paced back and forth, obliterating the tracks of the wolves. Their steady movement, weaving in and out but never coming close, made him so sleepy that he swayed on his feet, started awake, then drifted off again.

  And found that it was dawn. Light stained the east, and from this outcropping he saw forest falling away into a deep cleft rank with trees and rising again into wooded hills. To the south he saw the edge of a tidy clearing that suggested a settlement, perhaps the fields of Hersford Monastery.

  Sigfrid had found a spring in the rocks and drank deeply as the others woke, stretched, and came to slake their thirst. Ivar walked forward, but the ground betrayed no trace of what he had seen in the night. He saw no prints of wolf and certainly nothing like the massive paw prints that lions of such a size ought to have left behind them as evidence of their passage.

  Gerulf came up to him. “I see you’ve noticed it as well. That looks to me like the monastic estate. We’d best strike out at once, so we don’t have to spend another night in the forest.”

  “Alas, Lord Baldwin,” Dedi was saying back by the spring as Baldwin staggered up, still half asleep but no less handsome for looking quite rumpled, “it was quiet enough this night, although your stout friend Ermanrich quite bent my ear the whole time we were on watch with so many astounding tales that I don’t know what to think.” He paused, as a thief might pause to listen before grabbing the jewels out of their resting place in a nest of silk. “I fear your lions chose not to pay us a call, eh?”