Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

But Bloodheart was not even listening. Instead, the Eika chieftain lifted the smooth white tubes one by one to his lips, testing their tone. Some breathed high, some low, and on them, switching from one to the next, he played a ragged melody while at last lightning flashed, seen through the great cathedral windows, and thunder broke overhead, and the Eika soldiers outside laughed uproariously in the sudden drenching rain and continued their game.

2

“TWO months!” King Henry paced under the awning while rain drizzled beyond the overhang, dripping down the sides of his tent, curling down tent poles in slow streams. “I have wasted two months on these dammed stubborn Varren lords when we could have been marching on Gent!”

Liath had taken shelter under a wagon; with night watch ahead, she had been permitted an afternoon’s nap. Thank the Lady the rain had not drenched the ground. She was still dry, and now she listened as Henry’s advisers rallied around him, soothing his temper.

“You could not have left Varre behind that quickly,” said his favored cleric, Sister Rosvita, in her usual calm voice. “You have done the right thing, Your Majesty, the only thing you could do. Your anger toward the Eika is justified, and when the time is right, they will suffer your wrath.”

“The time will never be right!” Henry was in one of his rare sour moods. Liath could see only legs and torsos from this angle, and while any soul would have known Henry by the belt he wore embossed and painted with the badges of each of the six duchies whose princes owed allegiance to him as king regnant, on this day he was also recognizable by the sheer irritable energy he projected as he paced from one corner of the carpet to the other. “Five sieges we have laid in, in the last two months.”

“None of them lasted more than five days,” said Margrave Judith with disdain. “None of these Varren nobles had any stomach for a fight, knowing Lady Sabella was defeated.”

“Your Majesty.” Now Helmut Villam weighed in, and the others paused to listen respectfully to the words of a man whose age and experience of hard campaigns eclipsed even that of the king. “Once Lady Svanhilde surrenders to your authority, we can turn east. You have sent what Eagles you can to the Wendish dukes and nobles, to raise the alarm. But do not forget that after the battle we fought near Kassel, your forces are too weak in any case to attack the Eika at Gent. It will take time to assemble a new army.”

“Damn Sabella,” said Henry. “I was too lenient with her.”

“She is our sister, Henry,” said Biscop Constance. Though the rebuke was mild, only one of Henry’s powerful younger sisters would have dared utter it.

“Half sister,” muttered the king, but he had stopped pacing.

“She is safely confined under my authority in Autun, where I will soon return,” added Constance, who despite her youth had the grave authority of a much older woman. He grunted, acknowledging this truth.

They began to talk about the disposition of this latest siege, invested yesterday afternoon, and what route they would take when they at last marched east through northern Arconia back into Wendar.

The rain slackened and stopped. Liath wormed out from under the wagon, strapped on sword and quiver and draped her saddlebags over her shoulder, then went hunting for food. Rations had been scarce the past several weeks. Hard as it was to feed the king’s progress, it was more difficult still in these days of summer before the harvest came in. That they marched through lands hostile toward the king did not help matters any. Although the former kingdom of Varre was by right of succession under Henry’s rule, the number of recalcitrant nobles and reluctant church leaders in Varre amazed even Liath, who had long ago gotten used to being an outsider.

Yet despite the hardships, she was as content as she could be. She had food, most of the time, and such shelter as a wagon or tent awning afforded. She was free. For now, it was enough.

The camp sprawled in a ragged half circle around a wooden palisade, the outer ring of Lady Svanhilde’s fortress. The two siege engines and three ballistas sat just out of range of an arrow’s shot from the wall; hastily dug ditches protected their flanks, and a wall of mantelets shielded the men who guarded and worked the machines. On either side of the mantelets a picket of stakes stood, protecting the camp from a charge of cavalry. The first line of mud-streaked tents, some listing under the weight of rain puddles caught in canvas, stood somewhat back from these stakes, and the tents of nobles and king yet farther back, almost into the trees. The patchwork of tents and wagons left many gaps and wide stretches of open ground, but Henry had been careful to avoid trampling the ripening fields. He needed grain to feed his retinue.

Certain of the camp followers had set up stalls or brought wares from nearby villages to sell. Indeed, the army’s camp resembled a large disorganized autumn market more than it did any other army Liath had ever seen.

In Arethousa, a precise order of march prevailed and every tent had its specific site rated in order of proximity to the emperor.

In Andalla, the Kalif had his own compound made of manteletlike frames draped with bright fabric. Only the favored few were allowed inside this compound, and the Kalif himself from his place of seclusion ordered the generals who led his troops into battle.

In that almost fatal passage across the deserts west of Kartiako, so many years ago now, she remembered a silent and deadly army whose robes were the color of sand and who seemed to move as with the wind’s speed and sudden gusting shifts of direction. She and Da and a dozen others were all that had survived of the one hundred souls who had started the trek in a vast caravan. She had been so hungry, and too young truly to understand why there had been no food toward the end of that terrible journey.

Now she stared, caught by the enticing smell of a rack of pig meat roasting over a fire. The robust woman tending it looked her over.

“Any coin?” she demanded. Her accent had the broad Varren lilt. “What do you have to trade?”

Liath shrugged and made to move on. She had nothing, only her status as a King’s Eagle.

“Here, friend.” A Lion halted beside her. Ragged around the edges of his well-worn tunic, still, he had a friendly smile. “Don’t just walk away. We serve the king, and such as her must feed the king’s servants.”

The woman spit on the ground. “If I feed the king’s servants all that I have, for no return, then I’ll have nothing to feed my own kin.”

“You came to take coin off of us, good woman,” said the Lion with a laugh, “so don’t complain if you must feed those of us who have no coin. We only came here because your Varren lords rebelled against the king’s authority. Otherwise we’d not have been graced with the vision of your beautiful face.”

This was too much. She smiled at his smooth flattery, then recalled her irritation. “It isn’t my fault the nobles quarrel. And it wasn’t Lady Svanhilde that followed the king’s sister, it was her reckless eldest son, Lord Charles. Poor woman. She had only boy children and loved them too well.”

o;Damn Sabella,” said Henry. “I was too lenient with her.”

“She is our sister, Henry,” said Biscop Constance. Though the rebuke was mild, only one of Henry’s powerful younger sisters would have dared utter it.

“Half sister,” muttered the king, but he had stopped pacing.