by Kate Elliott
There was no sign of Agnetha’s uncle among the ones who had escaped the carnage.
Hanna noticed first that the attention of her guards slipped away from her as they pointed toward the trees and the encampment’s flags, barely visible above the foliage. The smoke had changed. Three fat balls of smoke puffed up and dissipated. One of the guards whistled sharply, beckoning to her as he touched the handle of his whip. She wasn’t the one who would be struck if she didn’t obey immediately.
They got to Bulkezu’s pavilion just as he rode up, attended by a dozen of his favored captains. His gaze marked Hanna, but that was all, before he called his brother over. The two spoke rapidly, words blending together so that she could pick not even one common word out of the conversation except a name.
Bayan.
Cherbu hemmed and hawed. He frowned and spat. He scratched his crotch and pried a tiny stone out of the sole of his shoe. Bulkezu wanted him to do something that he clearly did not want to do. But in the end he acquiesced, muttering and mumbling as he walked away with his odd, rolling gait. He had stripped down to almost nothing because of the heat, and the tattoos that covered his body seemed to shudder and move where sweat glistened, trailing down his dark skin.
Bulkezu returned his attention to the scouts who rode up at intervals and gave their reports. Hanna was too nervous to understand even a single word. Around her, men began breaking down tents and pavilions. Cherbu made a circuit of the camp, hopping from one leg to the other while he sprinkled dust onto the ground at intervals. His singsong chant interwove with Bulkezu’s laughter every time a new scout rode in.
What was going on? Were they abandoning the siege? Had Prince Bayan tracked them down at last?
Ai, Lord. Maybe Ivar was with him. Maybe Ivar wasn’t really dead.
Prince Ekkehard emerged from his tent with his four faithful companions behind him, but they stopped short, caught cold, when two Quman soldiers rode up and dumped at Bulkezu’s feet the body of a Wendishman dressed in the light armor of a scout and wearing the badge of Princess Sapientia. Ekkehard grabbed his battle banner out of Welf’s hand and tossed it back inside the tent. Standing with his friends, he could no longer be identified as a royal prince of Wendar.
Bulkezu held up a hand for silence. He had taken off his helm. The wind streamed through his beautiful hair, making it writhe like snakes around his shoulders. Below, the Quman army was pulling back from the walls; on the far shore of the river, groups of ten and twenty riders moved toward the eastern bank, gathering into larger cohorts as they returned from their far-flung foraging.
“Arm for battle, Prince Ekkehard,” said Bulkezu. “The time for fighting is soon upon us.” At last, he met Hanna’s gaze. “When I have destroyed their army, and burned their city, then you will lead me to the witch called Liathano.”
4
THAT day, the ninth of Setentre, the feast day of St. Mary the Wise, six of the ten scouts sent far forward of the army did not return. That evening, Prince Bayan called a war council so that all the nobles and commanders could hear the reports of the four who had survived.
But before Prince Sanglant led his personal retinue to the council, Zacharias had the pleasure of watching the prince make his Eagle squirm. “It worked well enough with Hedwig.”
“That is what I am trying to explain, Your Highness.” Wolfhere was actually sweating, although in truth it was an unseasonably warm evening, muggy with the promise of a thunderstorm looming on the horizon. “Princess Theophanu had three Eagles in her entourage, and the only one who has the gift of the Eagle’s sight is no longer with her. I can use my sight to see where the princess is—”
“At Quedlinhame. Not here, where she ought to be.”
“—but without another Eagle with sight to communicate with, I can’t know why she is there, or what she intends, nor even how large an army she has with her.”
“What of the missing Eagle?”
“As I told you. She rode south to Aosta. Soon after, I lost track of her.”
“Lost track of her?”
“Just so, Your Highness. We are not the only ones seeking to conceal ourselves.”
One of Sapientia’s stewards rushed up, and Heribert stepped aside to speak to the man.
“Which would explain, I trust, why you did not see the Quman army lying in wait for us at Osterburg? Or, as I’ve heard, Liath and I when we lived at Verna. Indeed, now I see the limitations of your Eagle’s sight, if it is so easily clouded by sorcery.”
Wolfhere lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “In truth, no more than one of every five Eagles has ever had even an inkling of the Eagle’s sight. It’s a secret we guard—”
“Or hoard.”
“—and one that not all Eagles can, or should, master.”
“Well,” said the prince. He beckoned, and Heribert came over to him and whispered in his ear. Sanglant smiled sourly. “We must go, if they are waiting only on us.” He glanced around the sprawl of his encampment, fires flowering into life as twilight spread its wings over the army: a few cloth tents but mostly men hunkering down to rest on their cloaks. Every man there kept his armor on and his weapons and helmet beside him, now that they knew the Quman were close by. They had marched through open woodland this day, an easy march, seeing nothing.
Too easy. The Quman scouts ranged wide and saw everything; everyone knew that. Bulkezu was sure to already know exactly where they were and how many soldiers they had. He was only playing with them, letting four enemy scouts escape the net of his own scouting line to lure his enemies into complacency. Zacharias had begun to entertain thoughts of running away, into the woods, but then he would only be caught by a Quman scout and dragged back to Bulkezu. But probably they were all going to die, anyway, in whatever battle was sure to come. He just hoped it would be quick.
“You’re pale, Brother Zacharias,” said the prince. “You’d best come with us. We’ll need to know what you know about the Pechanek clan. None here knows them as well as you do.”
He couldn’t even answer, only shake his head, fear choking him, as Sanglant picked out his most trusted commanders to attend him: Lord Druthmar, Captain Fulk, Sergeant Cobbo, even the lapdog, Hrodik, who at least had the knack of obeying orders.
Bayan and Sapientia held court at their huge tent, all the sides strung up from trees, making it an open air pavilion where every important noble could gather. The crowd parted to let Sanglant through. He took the place of honor at Bayan’s right hand, with Heribert and Zacharias given leave to stand behind him and the rest of his captains fading back to find places in the crowd. Blessing, as usual, sat on her father’s lap. She had a stick, carved into the shape of a sword, but she had learned patience in the last few days and now held it over her thighs, her little face drawn into an intent frown as she listened to Bayan quiet the crowd and call forward the surviving scouts.
Of the four scouts who had managed to return, three were Ungrians and the fourth a wily marchlander out of Olsatia, one of Lady Bertha’s trusted men-at-arms. Not one of Princess Sapientia’s Wendish scouts had come back. The marchlander had seen a man in Wendish armor strung up in a tree, missing his head, but she hadn’t stayed to investigate.
“The main army lies on the west bank of the Veser River,” said Bayan after the reports were finished. “We’ll cross the Veserling tomorrow and continue to march west through the rough country between the two rivers.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to move northwest along the Veserling, where the marching is easier,” asked Duke Boleslas of Polenie, aided by his translator, “and move directly to relieve the siege on Osterburg?”
Bayan shook his head. “The Quman rely on archery. If we approach through rugged country, they’ll have less chance to break up our line of march with arrow shot. We would be easier targets marching along the river valley.”
Prince Sanglant said little as Bayan outlined the order of march. There was little to say, reflected Zacharias. Bayan was an experienced soldier. He k
new what he was doing.
A misty rain fell part of the night, enough to break the heat but not so much to make anyone miserable. In the morning the army set out, a process that took a goodly length of time as each legion or cohort or war band waited its turn and then moved forward. Because of the dampened ground, they raised little dust, a mercy for those marching in the rear. It also meant that they wouldn’t betray themselves to the Quman too soon, although surely by now the Quman knew exactly where they were.
It was the tenth day of Setentre, the feast day of St. Penelope the Wanderer, as Heribert was quick to remind him, warm and muggy with that coiled snap in the air that heralded a thunderstorm. But as they marched and the sun rose to zenith, as the trees sweated last night’s raindrops onto their heads, no thunderstorm blew through to break the heat. Zacharias rode two ranks behind Prince Sanglant, praying that he wouldn’t vomit out of plain fear. His stomach roiled, as disturbed as the air and the wind, waiting for the coming storm.
Once, shouts rose, and a messenger galloped down the line, pausing to speak to Prince Sanglant before continuing on, back to where Prince Bayan rode with his Ungrians. Rumor filtered back to the group around Zacharias. Outriders had clashed with Quman scouts. Skirmishes had broken out across their line of march. The Quman were retreating, falling back toward the Veser, still several leagues away. It was hard to know what was true and what falsely hoped.
They crossed the Veserling in the afternoon at a ford controlled by a contingent of Lions under Princess Sapientia’s command. She had crossed first, in the van, with three legions, and left soldiers behind in case Quman horsemen crossed the river and swept around in an attempt to divide their forces. The Lions left behind to guard the ford were already digging in, calling to each other as they worked.
“Ho, there, Folquin, you idiot! Don’t drop that log on my head, if you please.”
“Lady’s Tits, Ingo, if you keep getting in my way I’ll scar that handsome face of yours, and then your sweethearts won’t want you anymore, and the Quman will probably refuse to cut off your head for a trophy!”
It was amazing how quickly a crude palisade could go up when the workers were lashed by the goad of fear. Strange how these kept joking as they labored. Zacharias felt he could hardly speak, as though he’d lost his tongue.
How would Bulkezu cut it out? Where would the knife’s edge first touch flesh?
The jolt of water on his legs brought him back, hazy, clinging to the saddle as his horse plunged into the river. The current streamed past, trying to drag him off, but he had clung to life for this long that he hung on with bitter strength as the horse made for the opposite bank. This time of year the river was wide but shallow, a silty greenish-brown color. A branch swirled past him, then, strangely, a mangled glove. At last the horse struggled up the shore and he was at once directed to the right, leaving a trail of water drops as he followed the others along a narrow trail cut through the forest, mostly oak and hornbeam here along the river, fairly open, with a dense layer of crocus, hellebore, and wild strawberry carpeting the ground. They regrouped north of the ford where someone had years ago cut a clearing into the wood. An old shack lay tumbled down, good for nothing more than breaking into firewood. In all, as they gathered into their command groups, Zacharias estimated they had about five hundred mounted soldiers: Sanglant’s legion, made up of his own personal retinue, Gent’s irregulars, and Waltharia’s levies.
“We’ll make camp here, with the river at our back,” said the prince. Lord Druthmar and Lord Hrodik hurried off to give their captains the order to dig in for the night.
Bayan and his Ungrians had just crossed when a scout rode up to Sanglant’s position. “Come quickly, my lord prince. There’s news! The siege has been lifted!”
A cheer rose raggedly from the men standing around, echoed by others, farther away, as the news was relayed out to them. Sanglant only frowned. “I’ll come,” he said, hauling his daughter up on the saddle in front of him. “Heribert! Lord Thiemo. Zacharias. Wolfhere. Fulk. Lord Druthmar. You’ll attend me. The rest, be mindful that we must be ready. An attack might come at any moment.”
At the ford, Duke Boleslas and his Polenie were crossing; behind them waited the baggage train, lost to Zacharias’ sight where it snaked back into the woodland on the other side of the Veserling. Sanglant’s party rode on upstream, where Bayan’s Ungrians had made camp next to Sapientia’s Wendish legions.
The princess and Bayan held court where three logs had fallen together in such a way that planks could be thrown over them and chairs set up on this raised platform. As they rode up, and Sanglant handed his horse over to Captain Fulk to hold, an argument broke out between two lords standing right in front of the makeshift platform. One of them Zacharias had never seen before; the other was the infamous Lord Wichman, second son of Duchess Rotrudis of Saony, known throughout the army for impressive deeds of valor as well as an absolutely vile temperament. Some said he couldn’t be killed, for many had tried, and not all of them were Wendar’s enemies.
“—swore you wouldn’t molest, but then I found that you’d forced her not even just once but three times before you left for Gent!” said the other lord, a brawny fellow with a bald spot and a fleshy face.
“Who’s to say I forced her,” sneered Wichman, “or that she didn’t ask for it, wishing for a bull instead of an ox?”
The other lord swore violently, leaped forward, and grabbed Wichman’s throat in his beefy hands. Prince Bayan turned bright red with anger as he jumped up, but before he could act, Sanglant had cut through the crowd and hauled the first man off Wichman.
“I beg you, Cousin, pray leave off strangling your brother.” His hoarse voice rang out over the rising clamor. “He may well deserve it, but we need him to fight the Quman.”
Laughter coursed through the ranks of the assembled nobles. A good family quarrel broke the tension. Bayan leaned down to whisper in Sapientia’s ear.
Gagging and rubbing his throat, Wichman spat on the ground, careful to aim away from the prince. “Ai, Lord! She was just his concubine, common born. Easy enough to get another one, if she didn’t please him.”
The brother was struggling in Sanglant’s grip, but even a man as stout and broad as he was couldn’t quite get free. “She pleased me well enough, before you spoiled her!”
“Lord’s balls, Zwentibold, that was—what?—two years ago? She’s forgotten you by now—”
“She’s dead. She hanged herself after you raped her.”
The crowd had drawn back away from the brothers, but Zacharias couldn’t tell if the nobles were appalled at the tale or only worried that one of the two men would draw a sword and accidentally injure a bystander.
Unexpectedly, Sapientia rose, signaling to Bayan to sit down again. “I pray you, Sanglant, let go of our cousin Zwentibold.” She took a spear out of the hands of one of the men-at-arms standing below the platform and, from the height, drove the point into the ground between the two men. “Place your right hand on the haft,” she commanded imperiously. Not even Duchess Rotrudis’ sons, who both wore the gold torque that signified their royal birth, dared disobey a public order made by the king’s heir, especially not when so many of her husband’s picked soldiers crowded around, smiling grimly with their spears in hand.
“Now swear by Our Lord and Lady,” she said when both men gripped the haft, glaring at each other with a hatred as palpable as that of the looming thunderstorm. “Swear that until the Quman are vanquished, you will do no harm to the other, for the sake of peace in our ranks and for the sake of the realm itself.”
Put to the test in front of the entire assembly, they had no choice but to swear.
Sapientia’s triumph was easy to see in her expression. At that moment, she looked truly as the heir ought to look: bold, stalwart, and ready to lead. But it was Bayan who stepped up beside her and raised his voice.
“Lord Zwentibold has brought us valuable news: The Quman army withdrew this morning from their siege o
f Osterburg.” A cheer rose, but it died away when Bayan lifted a hand for silence. “Lord Zwentibold was therefore able to ride out of the city with three full cohorts of mounted men and make his way to us. But if Bulkezu withdrew his soldiers, it was only to prepare to meet us. We have no good count of their numbers, and they are in any case difficult to count because of their habit of ranging wide and moving quickly. Do not believe that they can defeat us, because God are with us.”
This ringing statement produced another cheer, during which Bayan whispered into Sapientia’s ear. When the cheering died down, she grasped hold of the spear’s haft again and called out. “Let every leader swear peace and mutual help to one another. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Angels, when the heavenly host sing of the glories of God. We will fight in the name of Our Lord and Lady, and they will ride with us. Do not doubt that we will defeat the Quman once and for all time.”
5
THAT morning, Antonia rose early, prayed, and paced, knowing it important to keep up her strength. At the appropriate time, she waited by the curtained entrance to the guest quarters, head bent and hands folded in the very picture of perfect repose. But in her heart she fumed over the petty insults and grave wrongs the mother abbess and nuns at the convent of St. Ekatarina had done to her.
