He extended his right hand and unfolded it, like a petal opening to the sun. In his hand lay a gold ring.
Villam groaned out loud and snatched the ring out of the old man’s hand. He turned it over, and over again, but there was no doubting the look on his face. “His mother’s ring,” he whispered, “which she willed to him on her deathbed.”
After that he wept, and the others wept with him, the armsmaster and young Berthold’s retainers. By not protecting him, they had failed their young lord. Henry, quick to tears, wept as well, as befit a king showing sympathy for the pain felt by others and so—as was a kingly virtue—by himself on their behalf.
Rosvita could find no tears. The tale had overset her. It had astonished her, and yet set her mind racing. Strange forces were at work. How could stones of such size be lifted and returned to their places? From where had come the lions which the men had seen? Why had Brother Fidelis given her the book at just that time, as a man might dispense of his possessions when he knew death was upon him? What had he meant by his reference to the Seven Sleepers?
What had prompted Berthold to go exploring with six young companions?
Rosvita did not believe in coincidence.
At last, Villam mastered his grief, though surely it would haunt him in the months to come. He had, after all, a duty to his king, and a war to fight.
With somber faces and heavy hearts, they rode west to meet Sabella’s army.
XII
BLOODHEART
1
THE streets of Gent were chaos and only the misting slant of rain over rooftops and roadways kept them from boiling with clouds of dust in the pandemonium. Mud and dirt were everywhere; no one dared use precious water to clean. The wells continued to supply water and with the river on both sides were unlikely to run dry, but no one cared to take that chance. It was still possible to wash by the river’s bank on the island’s shore, but the Eika had primitive bows and even stone-tipped arrows could kill.
Liath had seen many places in her life; she had lived in the skopos’ city of Darre, visited villages built on the ruins of the magnificent ancient cities of Sirraqusae and Kartiako, resided near the Kalif’s palace in the fine clean Jinna city of Qurtubah, passed through the seat of the Salian kings, Pairri, taken ship at the emporium called Medemelacha along the coast, and walked among the proud, bustling townsfolk of the cathedral city of Autun. She and Da had passed through villages recovering from famine, avoided towns flying the red banner that warned of plague; she had prayed at churches small and vast, including the great basilica dedicated to St. Thecla the Witnesser in Darre. In eight years she and Da had traveled as much as a thousand people might in an entire lifetime.
But she had never seen anything like Gent: a prosperous cathedral city crammed with twice or three times its usual population, the refugees fled within the walls from the countryside, and living constantly on the edge of terror. Siege was an ugly business.
Now she walked through this chaos every day.
Mayor Werner was a vain man, spoiled by his mother and accustomed to getting his own way. He was overjoyed at the opportunity to have a King’s Eagle at his beck and call. In the evenings, Werner expected Wolfhere to attend him at the feasts he held every night. Werner was—reasonably enough—terribly impressed by Wolfhere’s age and knowledge and reputation as a man who had once been King Arnulf the Younger’s most favored counselor. So in the evenings Wolfhere could not question Liath about the life she and Da had led for the last eight years.
Liath made sure she came to Werner’s attention, and so during the day she waited on Werner and ran messages here and there within the walls of Gent. Most of the messages were pointless, but it gave her something to do—and it kept her out of Wolfhere’s way. She had many questions she wanted to ask Wolfhere, but as Da said, “Always measure the ground before you jump the stream.” She was not fool enough to think she could outwit Wolfhere and she did not yet feel confident enough to face him. So she avoided him.
But, running messages for Werner, she could not avoid the city. This day she felt an undercurrent of madness running like ground lightning through the streets. On her way to the armory to get the daily count of swords forged and spears readied and to find out how their fuel was holding out, she had to shove her way along the plank walkways despite that she wore the red-lined cloak of a King’s Eagle. Folk crammed the streets, some of them carrying their earthly belongings on their backs as if they had no place to rest them. Others spoke, gesticulating, shouting, in pockets at corners or under the shelter of overhanging houses or bursting out of ale-houses.
“Make way!” she said, trying to force her way through a knot of men gathered at the corner of the marketplace. “I am an Eagle.”
“Cursed Eagle!” shouted one of them, lifting a staff threateningly. “You’re well fed enough, up there at the palace!” He was ragged and thin, stooped by hunger, but anger is its own food. And Liath became aware at once that his many companions, at his back, stared at her with hostile expressions. One fingered a knife.
“Come now, my friend.” Another man stepped forward, a stout artisan with smudged hands and a grim face. “This Eagle is but the King’s messenger. She is not responsible for the mayor’s faults. Let her by.”
Grudgingly the other man stepped back, his comrades with him, muttering.
“I thank you,” she said to the artisan.
“I think you will find it better to avoid the marketplace,” said the artisan, “for there are many angry folk gathered there. There is an alleyway back by here. Go, and when you return to the palace tell the mayor from me, a good citizen of Gent, that he should beware the inner beast as much as the outer one, if he will not feed it properly.”
“I will,” she said, puzzled by this reference. She took the side route gladly but even here she had to make her way through refugees huddled with all their belongings—what they could carry—against wooden walls, some of them without even a bit of cloth to cover their heads against the rain. Babies cried. Children whimpered. An old woman sat wrapped in a filthy shawl whose fancy embroidered edge peeked out beneath a caking of mud. She tried to bake flour and water mixed to a muddy paste into flatcakes over a steaming fire placed hard up against the back of a house.
Ai, Lady, thought Liath. How easily a fire could start, in drier weather. Maybe it was for the best that it rained. But then, she had a roof over her head.
“I pray you! Eagle!” The man’s voice was soft, thickened with the congestion of a grippe.
Surprised, she halted in the shadow of a pile of garbage. It stank. The bones and skin of rats lay littered at the base of the pile; the flesh had been gnawed from their small remains. She smelled urine and feces. A man wearing the heavy tunic of a farmer emerged from the shadows; he had a thin, desperate face and mucus running from his nose. She stepped back, startled, away from him.
“I pray you,” he repeated. “Take me to the mayor.” “I cannot. I only run errands.”
“Please,” he begged. Then he tried to grasp her hand, to pull her. She bolted back and yet something in his manner stayed her from running away. “Please. There must be something you can do. My daughter.”