King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

Constance raised a hand for silence, and it was granted her.

“How then did Henry win the day? If all transpired as you report?”

“I do not know. Only that a man—a frater—threw himself on the beast and somehow it was distracted from its sorcery and killed.”

Antonia said something under her breath, but Hanna could not hear. Her face remained pleasant, but her eyes had grown hard.

Constance paled. “A frater?” she asked. “What do you know of this?”

“Some say it is the son of Burchard, Duke of Avaria, but I can scarcely believe that—” Constance lifted a hand sharply and he fell silent.

One tear rolled down Constance’s cheek, and then the wind blew it away and it vanished as if it had never existed. “Take her away, out of my sight,” she said, pointing at Biscop Antonia, “but guard her closely.” The captain, startled, jumped to his feet and did as he was told.

“What about Sabella?” Sapientia called after the captain. “Did she escape?”

“No,” said the captain as his men surrounded Biscop Antonia and led her away to one of the wagons. “Villam captured her himself, though he was sorely wounded. Some fear he will not live. She is in Henry’s custody now.”

Constance shut her eyes and remained that way for a long while as Antonia was taken away and lodged in a wagon under heavy guard, as Sapientia finally lost patience and called for her horse.

“Come, Eagle,” called the princess. “You will ride with me.”

“No,” said Constance suddenly, opening her eyes. “Go if you wish, Sapientia, but I will have an Eagle by me, as is my right.” She touched the gold torque at her neck.

“It is true,” said Sapientia thoughtfully, tossing her head, “that your loyal Eagle reached us from Autun, and that was how Father knew to ride here.” Then, strangely, she smiled. “But without an army, how can Father ride to Gent?”

“Ride to Gent?” asked Constance. “Why would Henry wish to ride to Gent?”

Sapientia reined her horse aside and rode away without answering the question, back to the battlefield to meet her victorious father.

“Ai, Lady,” murmured Hanna. For it was true. Henry had marched with a large army, fully eight hundred or more soldiers. He could raise more, it was true, but it would take months to raise levies from the far-flung lands of Wendar and Varre and the marchlands and more time after that to march them all the way to Gent. Sabella had lost many soldiers as well, this day; how was Henry in any case to trust the lords of Varre, who had risen against him? They might well refuse to give him an army, to save the son none of them had any love for.

They would not think about the people of Gent and what they might be suffering. They would not think about Liath and the danger she faced. What did kings and princes care for the lives of Eagles? Like swords, they were only a tool to be used for the nobles’ own gain.

3

KING Henry was in a foul mood. He was, indeed, in as rare a fury as Rosvita had ever seen him.

At Kassel they had received news of the victory and ridden out at once, only to arrive to find Henry pacing back and forth, back and forth, outside the hastily erected tent in which Helmut Villam lay. It was rumored Villam was dying. All of Henry’s servants and the various lords and ladies in attendance on his progress looked terrified, cowering at least twenty steps from him. Henry was perfectly capable of delivering a stinging and unprovoked rebuke to any persons who placed themselves in his line of sight.

Theophanu, sizing up the matter in one glance, drew Ekkehard aside and led him away to where shelters had been set up for the wounded, to give succor there. The Eagle Hathui, adept at being anonymous, walked over and took up her post beside the tent’s entrance, close to the king and yet so still, so effaced against the plain cloth siding, that he seemed not to notice her.

Rosvita found herself besieged by courtiers begging her to bring the king to his senses. She calmly distracted them and sent them off on various useful errands and finally found a person who might give her information: Margrave Judith.

The margrave sat in a camp chair and surveyed the scene from a safe distance. Her servants kept importunate courtiers away from her, and so she sipped wine in a semblance of solitude and watched Henry pace. Servants fluttered close to the king and were chased off.

Beyond, Rosvita saw carnage. The field was littered with corpses. Most of the wounded had been moved, but there were far far too many to bury so quickly. Possibly the field would simply have to be abandoned; it had happened before. Men and women—common soldiers and people from neighboring farms—walked among the dead, looting the corpses for valuables. Rosvita supposed the best booty had already been taken by the king’s servants or by the noble lords.

Strangest of all, and worst to behold, a creature lay in the center of the field of slaughter, a great beast so ugly in death that she shuddered to look on it, even at this distance. Its head was as big around as a cart’s wheel, resembling more than anything a grotesque rooster’s head, but it had the sinuous body and tail of a reptile and the talons of a giant eagle.

“That is the guivre,” said Judith with the detached interest of one who has taken no harm in the midst of disaster.

“A guivre!” Rosvita stared. “I have read of such monsters but never hoped to see one.”

The creature lay with one huge eye open to the sky, staring blankly at the blue heavens above. Its wings wore a sheen like metal, feathered with copper, and— most gruesomely—the shape of a man’s body was half covered by its carcass. Some rash looter had stolen the dead man’s shoes—or else he had been barefoot. Small white things, like maggots, crawled over the guivre’s body. Rosvita looked away quickly.

“What has happened?” she asked Judith.

“A great beast has met its death, as you can see,” said the margrave. She had blood on her tabard, a rent torn in her mail shirt, and a purpling bruise on her right cheek. Her helmet, somewhat dented, sat at her feet. “Ai, Lord. I’m too old for this. No more children, no more fighting, or so the healers say. A man can fight long after his hair has gone silver, if he lives so long. I hurt to the very bones. After this, my daughter’s husbands ride out, as is proper, or if a woman must attend the battle, then one of them can go!”