by Kate Elliott
He hopes this terrible burden will lift soon, that he will wake in the morning restored to blindness, but possibly he will always be so cursed. So be it. He accepts the path God has given him to walk.
The hounds tug at his sleeves and lead him past a row of cooling bodies and a contingent of soldiers digging a long grave under the supervision of a weary cleric reciting psalms. There is a tiny chapel built here atop an old foundation; oak saplings push up around it. A few graves are marked with lichen-covered stones, now unreadable, as though this cemetery was used a century ago and then abandoned. Many will populate it tonight.
The hounds pad past tents marking the Varren encampment and into the entangling siege works that protected the southeastern flank of the Varren camp. They sniff up to a half-finished ditch. Water seeps into the dirt. With the shadows drawing long, it is easy to overlook soldiers fallen where pickets have collapsed. In the ditch, a man lies with his legs pinned by a log and his face inches away from being submerged in the rising muddy seepage.
“Here! Here!” Alain shouts, getting the attention of a trio of filthy soldiers wearing the stallion tabards of Way land who happen to be walking past.
They do not know who he is, but they respond as soldiers do. When they see the man caught, they scramble down beside him, and with all four of them slipping and sliding and grunting and cursing and the hounds barking, they get the log lifted and the man—he is husky, no lightweight—dragged out of the ditch.
“Tss!” says one man, with the grizzled look of a veteran. “A Saony bastard, all right.”
So he is, with a crude representation of Saony’s dragon stitched to his dark tabard. When Alain wipes away the mud crusting his face, he is seen to be young, and the Wayland soldiers mumble and mutter and scratch their heads and finally, with a certain practical fatalism, check him for injuries. He’s been cut low, just above the hip, and one foot is broken. The gut injury, especially, is likely to turn black with imbalanced humors, although the youth so far smells no worse than the rest of the dead, dying, and wounded.
He sees her: the Lady of Battles rides across camp, coming into view between a pair of campfires. She is heading in their direction.
“What do we do with him?” asks one of the Wayland soldiers.
The veteran says, “There’s the Wendish camp. They can fetch him when their folk make a sweep this way.”
“Might not find him till morning,” says the youngest of the three. “Because of the dark.”
“Best we take him over there now,” says Alain. “As you’d wish done if it was one of your men found by the Wendish. He needs care right away.”
They look at him. Blood splashes their armor and their exposed skin, mixed with dirt and exhaustion. They don’t say what they saw and suffered this day, but after a moment they find a span of canvas—once the awning of a tent—and roll the man onto it. With one holding each corner, they trudge across the encampment and find a cluster of Saony tents under the command of a captain whose right arm is bound up in a blood-streaked sling.
“God be praised!” cries the captain. “That’s Johan! I thought we’d lost him. My thanks to you. Here’s a sack of ale for your trouble.”
The man’s gratitude discomfits the Wayland soldiers, but they accept the ale and turn away, and they move back toward the nearest cut of ditches and scramble down to keep looking. Alain lingers as the young soldier is carried off toward the chirurgeon’s tent. Campfires flare up in a hundred places, tight rings where companies and militias have grouped themselves within the encampments and along the fields. Farther away, a line of campfires marks the Eika line at the forest edge. The air is strangely quiet, smelling of rain, but no rain falls. The storm threat has faded as a stiff wind pushes the weather away toward the west. The heavens are cloudy once more, and it seems likely to be an unusually chilly night although they are well come into the height of summer, days that should be long and lazy and hot bleeding into sticky warm nights. Men will shiver tonight under a dark sky, with moon and stars shrouded like the dead.
“Brother,” says a soft voice out of the darkness.
He turns to see the pair of Eika soldiers who have been shadowing him for the last hour. One is a brawny blond Alban youth with a lurid scar on his cheek; the other is a tall, muscular Eika with the bronze-skinned sheen common especially in Rikin Tribe.
“Need you an escort back to the hall?”
“Has Stronghand set you on me?” he asks them, amused by their earnest and stolid companionship.
“So he has, Brother,” says the Eika.
“And charged us to be sure that you return safely to the hall,” adds the Alban youth, who is eyeing him with curiosity. “How comes it that you speak the Alban tongue? Not many among your nation do so.”
“It’s in my blood,” says Alain. “What are you called, you two?”
“I’m called Aestan, son of no woman who claimed me,” says the Alban youth. “Once slave to the earl of the middle country, but now a free man and a soldier with the rights according to me thereby, under the charter of the new king, Lord Stronghand.” He cocks a thumb at his companion. “This is my brother, called Tiderunner, although I just call him Eagor, which is what we call the flood tide in my country.”
“Although his is the tongue that floods,” says the Eika with a grin that displays four sparking jewels drilled into his sharp teeth.
Aestan punches him on the arm, and they shadowbox for a moment before recalling where they are and what their mission is.
“Have you lamps?” Alain asks them.
“We do, a pair of them,” said Aestan, and adds, “They’re not lit yet.”
“As if he couldn’t see so himself!” retorts his companion.
“Heh! Having you for a companion, I begin to think all men are blind!”
Alain whistles. The hounds stand with heads high and ears pricked up, smelling and tasting the air. “There may be more wounded men lying out here who can be saved if they’re found quickly.”
They nod obediently.
He marks her in the distance, riding along a flank where men scramble through ruined pickets seeking survivors. The wings of dusk settle over the Lady of Battles until he can no longer see her, but he knows she still stalks the field. Always and ever she will ride. “We are not done yet, you and I,” he says to her, knowing she can hear him at any distance. “I challenge you. I challenge you.”
He turns to the soldiers. “Light a lamp, I pray you,” he says.
Flint snaps. A flame leaps from the wick, and the lamp wakens, spilling light. He leads them out to search the darkening battlefield.
“He is coming,” said Stronghand.
Duchess Liutgard and Duke Conrad had long since marched out to the Varren encampment to recover Liutgard’s daughter, and returned to their separate quarters in this portion of the new palace. The holy mothers had arranged to meet in the morning for a conclave.
Theophanu and Stronghand sat in chairs on either side of an open window, in the middle chamber of the suite reserved for the regnant. Her servants and stewards and his guardsmen and council members waited in attendance together with a half dozen of the messenger eagles.
All night he and she had sat thus, alone, just talking. She had described the forthcoming conclave at length—and with a subtle humor that repeatedly amused him—in terms that suggested it would be nothing more than a wrestling match argued with words rather than grappling. He had told the story of the Alban conquest. Of Aosta, there was rumor to chew over and discount. Of her father, the king, she spoke affectionately and yet with a kind of bitter reserve that betrayed ambivalent feelings. He told her of what he had seen at Gent in the days when his father, that belligerent warlord, still lived. They touched last on the afternoon’s council, when the two of them had come to such an abrupt and instinctive accommodation.
Dawn would come soon.
Flambeaux smoldered in their sconces, trailing smoke and the waxy scent of herbs tucked in to sweeten their burni
ng. A fire burned in twin braziers, because the humans found the night air cold, although the chill made no difference to him.
She wore a shawl draped over her shoulders; her hair was uncovered, twisted back in a single thick braid. She was easy to look on, unusual among humankind for not fidgeting or stretching her mouth into the grimaces called smiling and frowning. Like stone, she had patience and a smooth exterior. She was easy to talk to, and had an exceedingly clever mind, nor did she reveal too much in the manner of a person attempting to ingratiate herself where she feels inferior. He minded the same balance: they must learn enough of each other now to gain a worthy measure of trust, but not too much, lest the arrangement fall through before it is binding.
“If he is not truly the son and heir of Count Lavastine,” she said, “then who is he? Who is his mother? Who his father?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to you, which tribe you are sprung from. You named your birth tribe and cousin tribes, and those who allied with you early, and those who came late or not at all. You remember their names. Kinship always matters. He is bound to the county of Lavas in some manner. I would like to know how. The count of Lavas controls a great deal of territory along the northeastern coast of Arconia and well inland. The one who rules there would be a welcome ally.”
“Against Conrad and the heir to Arconia?”
“Yes. Conrad has multiple claims. His elder surviving daughter will be duke of Wayland after him. His younger daughter by Tallia can claim the duchy of Arconia. The infant son—if the child still lives—also has a claim.”
“Do you think it wise to honor the arrangement he claims to have made with Sanglant before the end? That Conrad’s infant son, if he lives, marry Sanglant’s young daughter, if she lives?”
“We must have heirs.”
“My sons in the north and west, your kin here in the south and east.”
“One daughter of Wendar to marry one son of the Eika in every generation, to keep the alliance.”
“Should it hold,” he said, with a flash of teeth.
“That promise lies beyond our power to enforce. We must raise those who will come after us to honor the agreement, and pray that they do.”
“It’s true that after death our hands clutch nothing but dust. That is fair. You remain suspicious of Conrad, it seems.”
“I think it wise to distrust him. He is a likable man. But we hold weapons against him as well. If Lavas supports us, and we enrich Lavas with certain estates and toll routes currently claimed by the duke of Arconia, Lavas will counterweight Conrad’s power.”
He nodded. “As well, an emporium developed north of Medemelacha—in Osna Sound—would provide another staging ground for a fleet. Supported by the Lavas militia. Their placement along the coast makes them a bridge between the regions of the alliance.”
“We’ll have Arconia caught in a pincer, and keep her weakened. Cut off her access to trade. Route trade through the north coast, which Lavas can control.”
“A good plan. Especially if we institute a census, so we know who has survived and what taxes and tithes and tolls to expect, what regions were hurt most and which harmed least. But we must keep in mind this caution. The shorelines have altered all along the northern sea. It will take years to see how this upheaval has altered the nature and utility of the ports and coastal drainage.”
“Yes. When we were in Gent—Sanglant and I—we saw that it may be necessary to abandon Gent’s sea trade, although it remains a land crossroads. Much has changed.”
So it had.
Hearing the click of nails on the stairs as the hounds padded up to the outer door of the suite, he rose. Now Theophanu also heard voices from the outer chamber as one of her servants admitted the visitors. She stood and went to the window. Resting a hand on the sill, she gazed over a garden made murky by night except where a pair of lamps hung from tripods beside a dry fountain. In that garden stood the battered Kerayit wagon and the dozen silent Eika soldiers who had pulled it all the way up here and now stood guard. The door to the wagon remained shut—in fact it was cracked—because he was no longer sure what would happen to his men were the sorcerer to step forth; his standard had been broken to pieces in the wake of the galla.
The door into the antechamber opened. Papa Otto looked in, and Stronghand nodded at him. The man stepped back and spoke a few words to someone behind him. Then Alain came into the room with the hounds at his heels. The hounds halted on either side of the door, panting. Sorrow lay down and began licking a paw, but Rage was restless and kept shifting to find a more comfortable position.
“Why do we give this sorcerer protection when it seems she could easily kill us all?” Theophanu asked. She shivered in the cold night wind, but no fear or anger stained her voice. She was merely curious, seeking an answer so she could see what use to make of it.
“Compassion alone might make its claim,” Alain said, “but if you must have a practical reason, then consider this. She is a weather worker of great power. A tempest brought this change of weather across the land. The heavens remain clouded. You see yourself that the crops do not ripen. That fruit stays green long past its time. Perhaps the skills of a tempestari could aid Wendar in some small way.”
“Why should we trust sorcery now,” asked Stronghand, “when we have never trusted it before?”
“That it exists and is used is not a matter of trust but a matter of truth. Yet also consider that the Kerayit are the allies of the Horse people. Their children, if you will, adopted into the clan long ago.” He faltered. Stronghand watched the way he shuttered his eyes and exhaled a breath. Then shook himself, as if waking up. “The leader of the Horse people, their most powerful shaman, is dead. This woman must return to her people, because it is her obligation to do so. Perhaps she will become their leader. Do you wish her to depart as your ally, or your enemy?”
“She might be dying,” said Theophanu. “No one knows how badly she was injured in the crash.”
“She will live,” said Alain.
“We could kill her,” suggested Stronghand. “It would be the most practical measure.”
“We could try,” said Theophanu. “I suppose we would have to set fire to the wagon to force her to come out, place archers on all sides, but any of them who looked upon her in order to shoot would, on seeing her, die.”
“It would be difficult,” Stronghand agreed, “but with some careful thought and precise planning it could be done.”
She considered him, and after this looked again down at the wagon. Seen at this angle—from the second story of the palace—the lamplight made the painted sigils, already streaked and scraped from the crash, give a kind of wiggle, as though they were alive and moving on the wood. “If she lives, she will always be a threat, no matter how far away.”
“Any ally may turn into an enemy,” Stronghand replied, “so all alliances must be cultivated in such manner that they will grow and not wither.”
“We must decide what she wants, and what will bind her to us. Where is that Eagle? The one called Hanna. I have heard that she can look upon the sorcerer and live. She must act as negotiator.” She looked at him, and he at her, and they nodded.
“A reasonable plan,” he said.
For a little while she said nothing, regarding him steadily. “It is a rare gift to consider all sides to a question without succumbing to judgment or emotion before the best or most practical answer is reached,” she said to him.
She extended a hand. He took a step toward her and placed his hand on hers. She examined it thoughtfully. “I pray you, Lord Stronghand, show me your claws.”
He stepped back, lifted his arms square in front of his body, and released the claws that lived within.
She did not flinch. “Thus are we all armed with unseen weapons. Better to see if we can seal a treaty with her, for now. Later, if she returns to her home, as she must, she will be very far away and thereby less of a threat.”
“I agree,” he said, sheath
ing his claws. “It is the most practical solution. For now.”
“Yet where is the Eagle?” asked Theophanu.
“Riding toward Hersford Monastery,” said Alain. “I pray you, Your Highness. Let a procession be made ready to depart as soon as possible for Autun.”
“Yes. Mother Scholastica has already claimed the right to bury Sapientia in Quedlinhame. It’s best to move Sabella’s body to Arconia immediately, so the succession can be set in motion. We must consider where we should first be crowned and anointed. Quedlinhame, or Autun? And what of Sanglant? Where shall we bury him? He has no true home, not really, poor man.”
Moisture winked in her eyes, the only real surge of emotion Stronghand had seen in her. In this, at least, her heart was strong: she had loved her brother and been faithful to him. So was he, in his own fashion, true to Alain.
“Let him be carried west as well,” said Alain, “with a proper escort. Best if he’s carried on a separate track from Lady Sabella and her retinue. There is a more northerly path leading west, that crosses the El River near Hersford Monastery.”
He was clear and clean, like an unsheathed sword, beautiful yet filled with a deadly grace and wielded by an unseen hand. It was a mystery that Stronghand did not understand, but no greater a mystery, really, than the day the Eika had come into being long centuries ago, in the aftermath of the first great weaving. There is power in the universe that cannot fully be understood.
Theophanu said, “Who are you, Lord Alain?”
He smiled gently. “My mother is dead, although she was nothing more—and nothing less—than a starving refugee who used what coin she had to feed herself. I do not know who my father is.”
“You do not answer my question.”
He went to the door. “That I am here is the only answer I know. I pray you, forgive me, but there is one other person here I must meet.”
