The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  “Nay, we’re dreaming of decent women, my lord. Those Quman woman are the ugliest creatures I’ve ever laid eyes on! They don’t have noses!”

  “I saw one who was as handsome a maid as any Wendish girl! That was back before it got so cold.”

  “And where is she now? Bundled up in furs, most like, and oiled up with stinking grease like her mother!”

  The slave woman stood back and said nothing.

  So it went, tent by tent. His soldiers greeted him cheerfully despite the searing cold and the interminable journey eastward across the bleakest land he had ever laid eyes on. The men had stitched together smaller tents into larger ones, crudely strung up but strong enough to withstand the howling winds and able to house more all together and thus keep everyone warmer through the terrible nights.

  He had placed his most experienced, strongest men along the outer rim of the encampment together with the steppe horses who suffered the cold and could dig through the drifting snow to find grass, twigs, or tree bark. Like Quman women, Quman horses were as ugly as any he had seen, but they were tough.

  He lifted a hand to greet four sentries huddled in what shelter curtains of felt provided against the cutting wind, which thrummed merrily against the cloth. The covered lamp Breschius held rocked as the wind caught it square on.

  “My lord prince! It’s cold to be out tonight.”

  “How do you fare?” he asked them.

  “We’re having a pissing contest, to see whose piss can reach the ground without freezing.”

  “Sibold left his sword out too long, so it froze off. Now he’ll never get a wife!”

  “A few sticks bound together will serve him well enough, won’t they, Surly?”

  “I hope so, since that’s more than you have, Lewenhardt!”

  “Hush now, you men.” Captain Fulk emerged from the tent, having heard voices. “You lot go in, you’ve been out long enough.”

  With groans of relief, the four men hurried inside. Ice splintered off the tent flap as they jostled it, raining down on the snow-covered ground in a crystalline spray.

  “How do the men fare, Captain?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Provisions?”

  Fulk frowned at four soldiers moaning and chafing their gloved hands as they edged outside to replace the ones just come off watch. The men greeted the prince warmly and, stamping feet and rubbing arms, squinted into the darkness toward the fires that marked the Quman encampment, an arrow’s flight from theirs. Over in the nomad camp a man was singing, voice rising and falling in a nasal whine; despite the skirl of the wind, Sanglant was able to pick out a few words—man, woman, river, ice, drowning, death. If the Pechanek Quman knew any happy songs, he had yet to hear them.

  “We’re down to the last two barrels of salted fish eggs, my lord prince.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I can’t stand the taste of it either. Poor man’s food, as Brother Breschius told us, but it will go hard on us unless we reach a place we can obtain food in greater quantities than what we have available to us now. We’ll have to start eating horse every day, slaughter the weak ones.”

  “Or drink their blood, as the Quman do.”

  “I pray we never do such a barbaric thing, my lord. Their milk wine is bad enough.”

  “Do you think so? It isn’t so bad.”

  Breschius moved up beside him to stare out at the gap of land between the two encampments. Snow dusted down, swirling on the ever-present wind, but Breschius squinted into the darkness as though seeking something that lay beyond Sanglant’s sight. Briefly the prince heard the tinkle of delicate chimes, fading and vanishing below the whine of the wind.

  “Do you know where we are, Brother, or when we can expect to find better shelter and a good supply of food?”

  Breschius shook his head, looking distressed.

  “Do you know?” Sanglant asked the slave.

  She shrugged, looking away from him. “These are not questions I can answer, my lord prince.”

  “Have you remembered your name yet?” he demanded, irritated by her placidity. At least Zacharias had hated and reviled his captors.

  “You may call me what you wish, my lord prince. Whatever you require, I am bound to agree to, so the mothers have said.”

  Her lips were so red, full and shapely. Was she hinting that he might ask her into his bed? Or pleading with him in the only way she had, short of outright defiance of her masters, to beware what he asked of her? Was she begging for freedom?

  “The wind would be worse,” said Breschius suddenly “but you can see how the slope protects us from the brunt of it.”

  “It’s difficult to imagine it being wrose,” said Hathus.

  Fulk drew the Circle at his breast. “May God have pity on us. I’ll be glad to see spring, my lord prince.”

  “It is spring in Wendar,” said Breschius, “but when the winter cold blows off and warmer weather comes, then the travel will get worse since it rains all day.”

  “And in summer you boil,” said Hathui.

  Sanglant laughed. “A fine place to make your home. Come,” he said to the slave, “grab the rope.”

  Each afternoon when they stopped to set up camp, a Quman boy strung up a rope between the two camps in case of blizzard. Because the ground was frozen, they could not drive in a post on which to fasten their end of the rope, so Gyasi and his nephews had volunteered to act as post wardens and gatekeepers. They strung the rope from the small felt tent in which they sheltered each night. Sanglant ducked under the awning that protected the entrance of their tent, slung at an angle to cut off the prevailing wind. The old shaman crouched at the threshold, eyes closed. Behind him, glimpsed through a slitlike opening, Sanglant saw the twisting flame of a lamp and dark shapes clustered around it. An owl hooted nearby, calling out of the night, and Gyasi raised hands to his mouth and answered it.

  “Great lord,” he said without opening his eyes. “Be warned. Storm comes.”

  “Worse than this? Is there any threat to my people?”

  “I am still listening.”

  Captain Fulk followed him under the awning.

  “Captain, send word along the line for the men to make sure everything is secure.”

  “Yes, my lord prince. Do you desire an escort?”

  Sanglant glanced back toward the slave, who was, he gauged, out of earshot. He spoke quietly. “We still have Bulkezu. If I show weakness or anything they interpret as fear, the Pechanek may feel free to attack.”

  “They might take you prisoner, my lord prince, and then we would have to bargain for your release.”

  “We have sworn oaths, an agreement.”

  “People are tricky,” Gyasi said, still without opening his eyes. “One man may promise life to his brother and after this stab him in the back.”

  “What protection should I take?”

  One of the nephews eased out from between the slitlike entrance. He dropped to one knee before Sanglant in the gesture of obedience common to the Quman, then slipped out into the night with his bow case bobbing on his back.

  Because of the way the light cast shadows, Sanglant could not see Gyasi’s face distinctly, but he knew when the shaman opened his eyes. That stare could be sensed even when it could not be seen, as a man can feel the glare of the sun on his back or the appraisal of an interested woman.

  “We protect you, great lord. Bulkezu had one time a brother who is like me a shaman. Now he is dead.”

  “He is the one whose magic killed Prince Bayan.”

  Gyasi shrugged. Bayan’s fate held little interest for him. “Many seasons ago I am driven out of the tribe like a sick woman with no sons to protect her. My cousins know I hold no love for them in my heart after they have beaten me with sticks and burned my tent. No shaman walks with the Pechanek tribe who is so powerful that he can walk the shaman’s path beside me. Do not fear them. They fear me. If they kill you, I will eat their flesh and grind up their bones to feed the dogs.”
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br />   Sanglant laughed. “Then I shall walk into their camp without fear. I’ll go alone, Fulk, with Breschius and Hathui. They can’t kill me in any case, even if they try, and it’s better if they continue to fear me because I do not fear them.”

  “I do not like this, my lord prince.”

  “I have made up my mind.”

  Fulk nodded unhappily. He was the most valuable of captains: a good man in all ways, including knowing when his protests might receive a hearing and when it was better to shut up.

  Gyasi shut his eyes, humming in a singsong voice as though he had forgotten them.

  Sanglant stepped out into the full blast of the wind and took hold of the rope. As they trudged across the open ground, the lamp sputtered and went out despite its glass casing, but with a hand on the rope it was possible to move with reasonable certainty across the uneven ground. A dark figure ghosted past—one of Gyasi’s nephews, scouting the perimeter. They and their uncle guarded the camp at night and slept by day on horseback. The cold never seemed to bother them.

  Was it wise to leave his life in their hands? Or was he becoming more reckless? This long journey chafed him, thrown on the mercy of others without being able to choose direction or speed. Once upon a time he had ridden at his father’s behest and never questioned, but he had lost the habit of obedience; he could no longer bear to be ruled by another, and he knew that he put himself at risk every time he pushed at the boundaries of what seemed possible.

  He had forged out into a wilderness of his own making. He did not know what he would find at the end of his journey.

  Before the winter, he could have smelled the stink of the Quman camp long before he reached it, but ice and snow had their mercies. Sooner than he expected, he came to the end of the rope, which was tethered to a slender line hung with tiny bells that encircled the entire Quman camp. The bells chimed in counterpoint to the whine and thrum of the wind among the tents. Only as the sentry stepped back to let him pass, ducking under the line, did he catch a hint of the familiar rank stench of rancid grease compounded with offal, sweat, and farting horses.

  The Quman laid out their tents in a curving windbreak behind which most of the herd sheltered and a handful of dung fires burned. Men squatted around them, although he couldn’t imagine how they did not freeze to death. He had already lost feeling in his toes, and his fingers stung as though he had rubbed them with ice. Although common sense and his own observations argued against it, maybe it was true that they weren’t fully human. How else to explain their unnatural resistance to cold?

  The tent of the mothers was constructed of white felt, spanning two wagons, the fabric blending into the snow swirling around it. Its entrance was turned to the south, away from the prevailing wind. Two sentries stepped aside to let him climb the steps that led into the interior.

  “Beware the threshold,” murmured Breschius as Sanglant ducked through the opening.

  Inside, smoke hazed the air, sated with a sour-sweet incense that did not cover the nauseating stink of rancid oil. Two musicians sat beside the center pole of the tent; one tuned a spiked fiddle while the other arranged a collection of rattles and scraps of bark around a pipe. Although several braziers placed up on tripod legs made it pleasantly warm, here where they need not lie down directly on the frozen ground, the sight of the little pipe chilled him with the cold breath of memory: Bloodheart had tormented him with such an instrument—a bone flute carved from the remains of one of Sanglant’s own men.

  Six men sat cross-legged on rugs and pillows near the musicians, all of them seated on the left-hand side of the circular tent. One was young and effortlessly handsome with features that resembled a younger Bulkezu. He rested his hand on a pair of wings constructed out of griffin feathers and, like the others, faced the right side of the tent where the three mothers of Bulkezu sat upright on two couches. The stiff posture of the men reminded him of Bulkezu, wrapped in chains but sitting bolt upright.

  In contrast, Sapientia reclined at her ease beside the youngest of the mothers. A slave girl massaged the Wendish princess’ bare feet.

  “Brother!” she cried without sitting up to greet him properly. “I expected you sooner!”

  The three mothers of Bulkezu did not greet him. Although one was a maid, one middle-aged, and one an enormously fat crone, they looked mightily similar, as if they were three ages of the same woman in three different bodies. Had one of the older two actually spawned Bulkezu, giving birth to him out of her own womb?

  He did not know, nor did he have Zacharias here to interpret their customs and speech for him. Sapientia and her new allies had him at a disadvantage.

  The slave woman from Salia crossed to stand behind the mothers’ couch. Indeed, only slaves remained standing. He caught the eye of the griffin warrior. With the merest tightening of one eye, as though he wished to grin but dared not, the young man tossed him a pillow embroidered with a red-and-gold griffin. Sanglant sank down cross-legged, mirroring the casual pose of the other men. Hathui hunkered down beside the entrance. Breschius bowed his head, still holding the lamp, and remained standing.

  “The mothers of Bulkezu are displeased,” said Sapientia. She sipped at a bowl half full of the fermented milk they quaffed like ale, and after she was done, handed it to a black-haired girl no more than ten or twelve years of age.

  The mothers of Bulkezu watched him. They never blinked. They might have been carved in stone: maid, mother, crone, implacable and morose.

  “We are traveling too slowly,” continued Sapientia. “We have to spend too much time setting up and taking down camp each day because you insist that your army uses the big tents. They want to know why the western soldiers are such weaklings.”

  “These western soldiers defeated their great begh and their powerful army.”

  “Under Bayan’s leadership! With the aid of Ungrians, who have left us.”

  “I won the battle, Sapientia, however bravely Bayan fought. Bulkezu remains my prisoner.”

  “Only because you betrayed me.”

  “Because you are the strongest piece on the chessboard. No other has as much weight as Bulkezu, to achieve our ends. You agreed to this yourself.”

  “Maybe you tell yourself I agreed to deliver myself to the Pechanek as a hostage. If you do, you are lying. You coerced me. I had no choice.”

  Drink and anger brought her emotions to the surface where, like a broad path through the forest, her thoughts were easily traced: consternation, pride, frustrated anger, shame.

  “But that doesn’t mean I am helpless, Brother. I am honored here as I deserve. If I were commanding the army, we would not suffer these troubles. You should have got rid of all our horses. The steppe horses are better. You’re only slowing us down by having to kill so many. What a waste of horseflesh! You’ll lose the entire army before we reach the hunting grounds!”

  “We have lost five men out of eight hundred.”

  “Winter isn’t over yet!”

  “Where are your Wendish attendants, Sister? I have not seen Brigida or Everelda in many days, nor any of your serving women.”

  She changed color, flushed face bleaching to white. Her hands trembled as she took the shallow bowl from the slave girl, swallowed a healthy draught, lowered the bowl, looked at him, lifted the bowl again, and drained it.

  The slave woman leaned forward to whisper into the ear of the crone, and the old woman lifted a hand in a gesture of command. The fiddle player set his instrument vertically on its spike and sawed a drone on its string. All the Quman in the tent listened intently as, after an interminable prelude featuring only that drone, the other musician began to sing in a high-pitched, nasal voice.

  Although he had made some effort to learn the rudiments of the Quman tongue, Sanglant found it difficult to pick out individual words: eyes, spear, griffin, and the ubiquitous references to death and rivers, usually together. Now and again, to break the monotony of a song whose melody did not seem to span more than five notes, the man lifted a scrap
of birch bark to his lips and imitated the calls of birds.

  His thoughts wandered.

  When had he come to despise his poor sister? He regarded her surreptitiously through the hazy air. She had been so sweet when she was a little girl tagging after him, passionate in her likes and dislikes. Envy had soured her.

  Perhaps he had hoped that the Quman would solve the problem she represented for him. She was difficult, light-minded, easily led, and, despite her name, had no head for wisdom. Bayan might have made something of her, but Bayan was dead. King Henry was ensorcelled, and no other noble in the kingdom had the authority to make a marriage for her, except Sapientia herself.

  Rash vows make weak alliances, so the saying went.

  Hadn’t he rashly sworn to marry Liath?

  It was almost satisfying to press such needles of recrimination against himself.

  Yet down that tangled path he hesitated to walk for the thousandth time. Every helpless night of longing, thinking of her, every memory of how when they were together they seemed never to speak the same language, every glimpse of the bright spark that lay at the heart of flame veiled inside her, brought home the foolish impulsiveness of what they had done.

  How had they come to be so stupid?

  He could not regret it.

  The Salian slave woman knelt beside him. He had not noticed her cross the rugs, but now he was painfully aware of the swell of her breasts concealed beneath her felt jacket, brushing against his arm.

  “This is the story of the ancestor of the Quman people.” Her expressive voice flowed counterpoint to the monotonous tune.

  “Is it a lengthy tale?”

  “No. It only takes five nights to tell. Listen!”

  The song rose and fell like waves on a shore, but now two slaves—a girl on the women’s side and a man on the men’s side—brought around a ceramic pipe with steam bubbling in its belly; a smoky odor drifted up from its bowels. Sapientia sucked greedily at the pipe before it was transferred down the row of mothers, the fierce-eyed girl, the powerful matron, the dour crone. The Quman warriors each took their turn on the pipe reserved for the men. When Sanglant’s turn came, he inhaled cautiously. The smoke tasted sweet on his tongue, but it bit afterward deep into the lungs like a burrowing worm swollen and heavy with dreams.