Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“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.”

“My mother had only boys,” retorted the Lion, “but we none of us gave her reason to be ashamed. Come now, give this loyal Eagle something to eat.”

Grudgingly, the woman did so, a fresh piece of pork spitted on a twig. The Lion handed her a round of flat bread, coarse flour mixed with a paste of dried berries, their usual rations when all else was gone. It was still warm from baking.

“Thank you,” she said, not quite knowing how to respond to his kindness except to identify herself. “I’m called Liath.”

“I’m known as Thiadbold. You’re the Eagle who rode in from Gent,” he added. “We remember you. Those of us who serve the king, and who don’t have noble kin—” Here he grinned. He had a shock of red hair and part of one ear missing, the lobe sliced cleanly off and healed now into a white dimple. “—must watch out for each other as we may. Will you drink with us?”

The camp of Lions, sited near the king’s tent, was much reduced. The first King Henry had commissioned ten centuries of Lions. In these days, at least five of those centuries served in the eastern marchlands, protecting market cities and key forts from the incursions of the barbarians. Two Lion banners flew at this camp, marking the two centuries who marched with the king. But even considering those men who stood watch at this hour, Liath could not imagine that more than sixty men out of two hundred had survived the final battle with Lady Sabella.

“I can’t,” she said with some regret. She was not used to sitting and chatting in the company of soldiers—or anyone else, for that matter. Even some of the other Eagles thought her aloof and had told her so, being by nature an independent group of souls who had no reluctance to speak their minds when in the company of their own kind. “I stand watch tonight.”

He nodded and let her go.

In the woods beyond she heard the bleating and lowing of livestock, kept well away from the tempting fields. Some soldiers, too, had been commandeered from those recalcitrant Varren lords who had fled home after Sabella’s defeat and hoped to avoid the king’s notice. These sat sullen in their own camps, watched by the king’s men. A few brace of young noble lordlings and a handful of their rashest sisters had come along as well, some as hostages, some for the hope of war and booty at Gent or farther east in the marchlands. At least some of these had gear and horses but, all in all, Henry’s army had lost much of its strength.

By the time she got back to the king’s tent, she had licked every last spot of grease off her fingers. The king had gone to his bed and his noble companions had retired to their own tents.

Hathui handed her a skin filled with ale. “You’ll want this,” she said. “If we don’t take this damned city by tomorrow, we’ll be forced to drink water. Now I’m to bed.” As the king’s favored Eagle, she slept just inside the entrance to his tent, along with his other personal servants.

Liath got the night watch because she could see so well in the dark, but she also liked it because it left her alone with her thoughts. Some nights, though, her thoughts were no fit companion.

Gent.

She could not bear to think of Gent and what had happened there. Sometimes, at night, she still dreamed of the Eika dogs. It was better to remain awake at night, if she could.

With the sky overcast, she could not observe the heavens. Instead, she walked through her city of memory. Only standing alone through the night, freed from Hugh and no longer under the eye of Wolfhere, dared she risk the intense concentration it took to order her city and remember.