by Kate Elliott
“Sorgatani!”
A feeble voice reached her. “Hanna. Here I am. But I’m caught beneath. …” The rattling cough made Hanna’s jaw tighten with fear. “I’m caught. I can’t get free.”
“Be patient! Try not to move.”
She grabbed for the first arm that came within her reach, which happened to be that of Lord Berthold, whoever he was—the name sounded familiar, but she didn’t have time to figure it out.
“My lord! A team of men, I pray you, to set this wagon upright.” When he hesitated, looking at her in confusion, she added in the tone she had learned from her mother, “Now!”
They were all addled by the cascade of events. He reeled back, beckoned to his companions, and started giving orders. The Quman youth dragged the corpse of the Kerayit woman aside so it could be readied for burial, and the other youth hailed passing soldiers and set them to work.
She trembled, running hot to cold and cold to hot. She had seen Breschius consumed by the galla. Ai, God! Who would serve Sorgatani now? She must find allies quickly if she meant to save the shaman’s life.
So many voices crowded her, men wailing, women shouting commands, the tramp of feet, and a chaos of loose horses and dogs. So many smells assailed her, but death’s perfume smote her hardest of all.
Tears veiled her sight. Mist spun out of the mountains of storm clouds that surrounded the valley, and the bright blue blaze of the sky overhead was starting to bleed to white as the cloud cover crept back in. The wind shifted west to east, and east to north, and north to south, whipping her braid in gusts that made her eyes tear. Men surrounded the wagon and got their shoulders and boots and hands around it and under where there were cracks and hollows in the roadbed to accommodate such levers as spars of wood and spans of iron.
As they shouted, heaved, and lifted, her gaze was drawn to the top of the ramp, far above. The Eika soldiers gathered at the height formed columns along either side of the road as wagons cleared the line of that foreshortened horizon and began a cautious and controlled descent.
There walked Brother Fortunatus. Safe! She wept to see him, to see others she knew. Behind them flew the proud standard of the Lions.
“Hanna! Hanna!”
But it was not their voices calling her. Their gazes, as all gazes, were pulled to the center of the whirlpool. To the dead man.
She looked west, and saw a figure hobbling at an awkward canter, waving to catch her attention.
He was filthy, as though dragged through the mud, and sopping wet with bits of vegetal matter and slops and drips of slime shaking off him as he ran. But despite the muck, anyone could see the startling flame red of his hair as he lunged up onto the roadbed, grabbed her elbows, and stared at her in disbelief. He had grown taller, his shoulders had gotten broader, and altogether he was a different person in stature and expression, but he was still the same rash, stupid boy she had grown up with.
The one she had always loved.
“Hanna!” He gaped at her as if the sight of her baffled him.
To her surprise—and manifestly to his, for he still looked dazed—he pulled her close and kissed her for a very long time.
“I pray you, excuse me.”
They stumbled apart, Ivar blushing and Hanna reeling. The weather had changed, or the world had. She wasn’t sure which, but it had gotten hot all of a sudden.
There was a man standing beside them with two huge black hounds, although in truth the hounds were cringing as they gazed at the approaching wagons. One whined, and the other whimpered, tail and hindquarters tucked tight like a dog that fears it is about to receive a whipping. The man knuckled their heads affectionately with one hand, but regarded Hanna and Ivar apologetically as he brushed the back of his other hand along his chin, the gesture a man makes when he feels a little sheepish.
“I pray you, forgive me,” he said. “But are you not an Eagle, called Hanna? The one who knows Liathano?”
She blinked. She knew she was gaping. Her lips were warm.
Ivar was still staring at her like a madman, with wide eyes and slack mouth. He appeared not to have heard the question at all. Only he said, without looking at the other man, “You’re the one who was named heir to Lavas.”
“So I was. I’m called Alain.”
“Liath is lost,” Hanna cried. “She’s missing.”
“She lives.” He said it so calmly that she believed him. “I have a favor to ask of you, Eagle. Ride west along the path that leads from here to Hersford Monastery.”
“I know it,” said Ivar.
“Why?” said Hanna. “What of the Eika?”
“An Eika staff will grant you safe passage. Although I think with that hair you’ll have no trouble with the Eika, for they will believe you to be kin to them.”
“What do you want?” she said.
“Liath is coming to Hersford. It seems likely she will ride this way afterward.”
“Ai, God.” Hanna looked at the corpse.
The banner of Saony had reached the road, and the crowd parted to let Princess Theophanu pass through. She stopped dead beside her brother’s body, gazing at him with such a lack of emotion that all at once Hanna felt grief rip straight into her ribs.
“She hides what she feels,” remarked Alain. “But the currents run deep in that one.”
“Ai, God,” said Ivar. “Liath doesn’t know!”
“I’ll go.” Hanna had thought nothing could be worse than reporting to Sanglant that Liath was missing, but now she knew that wasn’t true. There was something much worse. “I’ll go,” she repeated, because it was better this way, that Liath not ride into Kassel unknowing.
“If you arrive before she leaves Hersford Monastery, convince her to stay there, if you can,” Alain added. “I’ll see you get horses, and that staff. I pray you, wait off to the side.”
“What of Sorgatani?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, turning back.
“The Kerayit shaman. In the wagon. She may be injured.”
“I’ll see she is cared for.”
“Nay, you don’t understand! She is bound by a terrible sorcery. To look on her will kill you, or any man or woman. They fear her, those who came with us. But she is no threat to us! She must be cared for. Only I can do it.”
He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. He had dark eyes, and an implacable stare that pinned her to the ground. She did not draw breath. “Hanna. Listen to me. I will see she is safe and cared for.”
She nodded dumbly, and he moved off, and after a moment she shook herself and walked off to the place where he had told her to wait for horses.
“I’ll go with you,” said Ivar, following her. He was still red. He was still filthy, shedding muck and fingerling twigs with each step. Some of the mud had rubbed off on her tunic and cloak. But he clasped her hands between his. He bent to kiss her forehead, quite tenderly. “I’ll not let you go alone. Never again, Hanna.”
Dear Ivar.
She tried to speak, but the sight of him, his look, and his touch, strangled her, and all she could do was cry.
4
SIX carried the litter off the field of battle: Princess Theophanu, Duke Conrad, Duchess Liutgard, Captain Fulk, and two young lords, one chosen from each army to let the battered soldiers see that for now, at least, a truce had been called.
They trudged with their burden through the gate, along Kassel’s broad north-south avenue, and up the steep street cut into the hillside that gave access to the fortified palace, home to the dukes of Fesse. Many wept as they passed. Some of the townspeople who flowed out to line the streets whispered to see their duchess with her hair uncovered in grief, and dirt and tears and blood smearing her face. Soldiers with their helmets tucked under their arms stared in shock as their commander and king was carried past. One man holding a bow broke down and had to be supported by his fellows. Even the slinking street dogs kept to the walls, whining with anxious respect.
Rosvita walked directly behind the litter. Beh
ind her came Lord Alain and his hounds, escorting Stronghand, who marched at the head of a hundred loyal warriors. Seeing these creatures enter the town through open gates caused a hush to fall. Some people crept away into their houses, seeking refuge, while others—and many of the soldiers—fingered their weapons thoughtfully. The street dogs did not bark, only faded away into alleys and open spaces grown high with untended grass. Yet among that century of Eika walked a dozen human soldiers, fair Alban men with glossy golden hair and darker-haired men speaking in the Salian tongue. They walked not as slaves but as comrades-in-arms.
There are deep forces at work here, Rosvita thought, and she feared them.
It hurt both her shoulder and hip to toil up that slope to the palace, but Rosvita fixed her jaw and wept a little in order to tolerate the pain. She concentrated on placing one foot ahead of the next. A sharp twinge jabbed through her right hip each time that foot struck earth. Her right shoulder was already tightening into a screaming knot of agony. She was sweating and crying at the same time, too bewildered and stunned to know just what it was she was crying over.
Before they entered the palace through its wide double doors, the litter bearers paused in the forecourt to catch their breath. She halted with a grateful sigh. Turning, she caught in her breath. This vista she had admired before, years ago, when Henry had fought Sabella and defeated her. Then, too, a guivre had stalked the field, but the outcome had proved very different.
How quickly the outlook changes. Kassel town had gained population in the intervening years, much of it recent judging by the fresh look of hovels and houses erected within the shelter of the town walls. There was less open space, and more fields beyond the walls given over to cultivation. Yet half the ground outside—where fields of rye and barley had been sown—was trenched by siege works, while other fields had been trampled. The detritus of battle lay strewn as though a flood tide had swept over the valley floor.
Just outside the town gates, the armies of Wendar and Varre gathered their forces. They were frighteningly few compared to the many dead left lying on the ground beside the pickets or in the earthworks or across the flat fields. What she saw, looking farther afield, were Eika pulling their net in around the valley itself, ranks and ranks of infantry filing out of the forest. That portion of the army marching with Lord Stronghand along the Hellweg had certainly been decimated, but he had brought many more with him, too many to count. Thousands, she estimated. Even at this distance she could identify among his soldiers the human men who had turned their back on humankind to march with the enemy.
The Eika, it seemed, had arrived in time to witness the slaughter of both the Varren and Wendish armies. Lord Stronghand had merely to stand aside and watch them do his work for him.
She found the Eika lord standing directly behind Alain. He had a sharp, intelligent face, and he, too, studied the lay of the ground and the disposition of forces in the valley. What he thought of it she could not read in his expression, only that he measured and calculated and, moving to one side, spoke in a whisper to a pair of his attendant captains, Eika warriors like him although half a head taller.
The procession lurched up the steps. She hurried after, puffing and wheezing and gasping at the pain. The stone lintel that spanned the double doors leading into the feasting hall swam in her sight, a most welcome apparition, and she passed under it and into the hall itself where a flock of palace stewards and servants swarmed to set out benches for the coming assembly. The body was carried up to the dais.
The faithful Eagle, Hathui, came forward to grasp her hands. “Sister Rosvita!” She was weeping.
Ai, God, she was so weary. Too weary to think. Too weary even to wonder or grieve. It was as much as she could do to allow Hathui to lead her forward, in her authority as an honored cleric in the regnant’s schola, so that she could stand at the head of the litter as it was placed across three parallel benches.
“He would want you,” said Hathui in a choked voice, “to stand guard over his body now that his soul is fled.”
“How can it be?” Rosvita asked her. “I thought—we had all come to believe—that somehow his mother’s blessing would always protect him.”
Hathui shrugged. She could no longer speak. Turning away, she hid her face.
Out of the massing crowd a young nobleman appeared carrying a chair, which he set behind her. “Sister Rosvita,” he said, smiling at her. “I pray you, you look tired. Please sit.”
She blinked. It seemed apparitions would trouble her today, because this lad looked exactly like young Berthold Villam. “You were lost years ago,” she told him, feeling foolish for speaking to a ghost, although in general ghosts could not fetch chairs.
“So I was, Sister, but I am found again. I pray you, Sister. Sit. I will tell you the tale later.”
Berthold Villam!
This was a peculiar miracle, one impossible to believe, yet as he walked away to join a pair of young men—one of them foreign and almost certainly a Quman—she saw that he walked like Berthold Villam and he looked like Berthold Villam. Such a good boy, with the charm of his famous father and the sweet vitality of youth. The vision dizzied her. Gratefully, she sank into the seat, although at this level, steadied by the support, she must look on the mangled corpse at close quarters.
His face was undamaged, but his torso and legs were torn and twisted. Without the soul animating him, he was no more than a collection of parts and pieces; the handsome man who charmed effortlessly and led his troops with determination and assurance could not be glimpsed in this empty flesh.
More, and more still, crowded into the hall. Chairs for the great princes were set to either side of the pallet on which he lay, and one by one they took their places: Princess Theophanu, Duchess Liutgard, Duke Conrad. A murmur arose when the Eika commander sat in a chair beside the others, with two human and two Eika standing behind him in close council, often bending to whisper in his ear.
More were coming in. Mother Scholastica strode in with a look of thunderous anger. Although older than Rosvita, she appeared to have no aggravating aches and pains!
“Dead!” she exclaimed, pausing to examine the corpse. “So the report is true!”
“Mother Scholastica,” said Rosvita in a low voice, gesturing to get her attention. “I pray you. What of my companions?”
“Among the living,” she said curtly. “As are the Lions who protected us. Princess Sapientia was not so fortunate.”
“What can you mean?”
“She, too, is dead. Killed by the sorcery of that witch woman you sheltered.”
This was too much to take in.
“Yet I suppose God’s mercy works in ways beyond our understanding,” continued Scholastica. “Both brother and sister were unfit to rule. Now, they are gone, and we may hope for peace with Conrad and Tallia on the throne.”
Rosvita tried to speak, to voice a thought, a prayer, an objection, but she could not. This she had wrought, and all for nothing.
Mother Scholastica was already moving away to confront the nobles seated on the dais. Her gaze swept them disdainfully. She gestured toward the Eika without looking at him.
“How comes that creature to sit among you as though he were a great prince of the realm?”
Lord Stronghand had a way of baring his teeth that mimicked a human smile without precisely being one. Jewels winked in his teeth, a barbarian’s ornament, but his words were smooth and cool. “Mother Abbess, with all the respect that is due to a WiseMother of your stature and authority, I would suggest that it is the strength of my army that buys me a seat on this council.”
Theophanu’s mouth quirked. She said, “Aunt, have you not yourself observed that laws are silent in the presence of arms?”
“Let your stewards bring me a chair,” said Scholastica, regarding Theophanu with disgust and turning her attention to Liutgard. “If there is to be a council, then I will stand at its head.”
“Yes, Mother Scholastica,” murmured Liutgard, gesturing for a
steward, while Conrad sighed heavily and wiped his forehead with the back of a hand.
Stronghand looked with interest at Theophanu, and she met his gaze, although no emotion could be read behind her careful mask. It was no wonder no one quite trusted her even after all these years of faithful service to her father and his capricious wishes.
Seated in back of the others, behind the pallet, Rosvita had planned to observe without being herself noticed, but after all it took all her effort simply to pay attention. A terrible whisper kept clawing in her mind, saying that Mother Scholastica was right, that it was for the best that Sapientia had died. The poor witless creature could not even obey an injunction to hide her eyes, not to look upon that which would destroy her. She was no wiser than a toddling child. How could it be that she would not fall in the end into the hands of those who wished to put her on the throne and rule her through puppet strings?
That she could even think such thoughts horrified her. The dead man, mercifully, made no comment. No doubt he, also, was not free of sin, for he had abandoned Sapientia in the wilderness. So there they were, the two of them, one living and one dead, who had brought Henry’s eldest daughter to an end she did not deserve.
As though the Enemy had heard her thoughts and sent minions to harass her, two huge black hounds padded up to her and sank down on either side. Their tails thumped in a friendly manner, but that did not make her less nervous of those fearsome teeth. A moment later the young man who had once been Count of Lavas came to stand quietly behind her chair. She could not see his face without turning around, but Lord Stronghand nodded at him just as there came a shout of surprise from the doorway.
Conrad leaped to his feet. “Constance!”
Constance, Biscop of Autun and later Duchess of Arconia, was the second youngest of Henry’s siblings, about the same age as Liutgard, but she looked older than Scholastica now. She was being carried in a chair tied to poles. Her bearers, astoundingly, were Eika soldiers. With the greatest delicacy, they placed her chair to the left of Lord Stronghand, whom she acknowledged with a nod.
