Banners fly outside a fine wood hall. Ranks of young men wait restlessly, talking among themselves, handling their spears as grooms walk among the horses tightening the girths of saddles and making a last examination of hooves. A few wagons are still being loaded with royal treasure: mantles and rich vestments; thin bars of gold and silver wrapped in linen; small iron chests full of minted coins; gold and silver plate and utensils worthy of a king; tents sewn out of a heavy imperial cloth more deeply purple than violets. A chest heavy with royal regalia and crowns. As the sun rises, the full moon sets. The grass grows high beyond the hall, and the trees are dense with leaves.
The doors of the hall are flung open and the king strides out, escorting a pretty young woman half his age who has the bearing of a queen. He laughs delightedly at something she says. His courtiers swirl around them like the tidal currents, some in, some out. A servant lifts a mantle woven of a plain gray weave and swings it open over her shoulders, but his attention is caught by the Eagle badge at her shoulder. It is his sister, and as the cape swirls and settles around her torso, he is spun by that motion
into the gray surge and slap of waves against the hull of a lean, long ship. He swims in the salty seawater and heads bob around him but they have faces so inhuman that he shudders, stroking away. They have eels for hair and no true noses, only slits for breathing and their teeth glitter with menace. But as he turns and dives, tail slapping the surface, he realizes he is one of them, coursing alongside the ships toward some unknowable destination. The sky is dark without even stars to mark their course. A light flares from the stem of the foremost ship, a signal echoed on a distant, unseen shore
that he watches as a rider escorted by three men bearing torches dismounts outside a large pavilion of white cloth. The torches spit and hiss in the drizzle. Rain wets the ground, and grass squelches under the messenger’s feet as he pulls off his hat, loose fitting and curled to a point at the top, before stepping out of the rain and into the shelter of a striped awning that makes a sheltered entranceway for the pavilion. A tall bronze tripod stands under the awning. A bowl of thick glass sits on the tripod, and a candle burns inside the bowl with a muted, cloudy light. After a moment, a burly man staggers out of the pavilion, tying up the strings of baggy trousers.
The messenger kneels. “My lord prince. A large host under Prince Bulkezu has attacked the garrison at Matthiaburg and won a victory. There was much slaughter. Lord Rodulf of Varingia and his companions fell or were taken prisoner. Rederii scouts reported that at least ten of their headless corpses were seen stuck on pikes outside the Quman camp.”
“How know they these are the corpses of Rodulf and his companions?” demands the prince. He gestures to one of his servingmen, who brings him a cup of wine.
“By their arms and armor, my lord prince.”
He sips at his wine consideringly. He has well muscled shoulders and a bit of a paunch around the middle. The curtain leading into the interior of the pavilion stirs, and a small, black-haired woman looks out. She is dressed in nothing more than a gorgeously embroidered blanket which she has wrapped around herself.
“What news?” she asks.
“The Quman are on the move.” He spits suddenly, a faint purplish stain flowering on the carpet. “Again we must retreat. Them we cannot engage with the troops we have now. We must have reinforcements from your father!”
“No word from Margrave Judith?” she asks. “The Quman will be in her territory soon.”
“No word,” he says softly. “But north we must ride along the Oder River. There hope we to meet up with her forces. Then we can to attack.”
The woman steps out into the soft lamplight. The blanket she holds so tightly glitters, gold thread tracing antelopes and bounding lions no bigger than her hands. She, too, has well-muscled shoulders, compellingly white, and the prince rests a hand caressingly on one of them. A wind sighs along the cloth face of the pavilion. Bells sewn to the fringe of the awning chime in a hundred light and ever-changing voices.
Bells chimed, and Zacharias started back, flailing a little as he got his balance.
“The tide comes in,” she said. She shook her spear a second time, an incantation of bells that echoed along the narrow path. The high stone walls seemed to sing back in answer to their song, but as the sound faded, she merely began walking again, downward as the spiral steepened and small stair-steps became evident in the path.
He shook himself out of inaction and followed her, but she seemed already so far below him, a thousand leagues away through a substance as murky as the glass bowl that had sheltered the single burning candle. Mist cloaked the sky, and he only knew the sun’s position by a whitening glare of haze above.
The next gate shone with a pale iron gleam not unlike the mist that lay dense along the top of the stone walls. Beyond the gate lay a cover of fog so thick that it might have been a host of sheep gathered together, blotting out the earth and sea beneath. Oddly, he could see a few stars overhead and a quarter moon sliding in and out of wispy clouds.
He was so tired suddenly, and very thirsty. He leaned into the wall, bracing himself, unwilling to see any more visions, but his fingers slid anyway along the slick wall and he touched the iron gate and saw beyond it.
A woman sits in a chair carved with guivres. She wears the gold torque of royal kinship at her throat and a coronet on her brow. Her hair runs to silver, and her face is lined with old angers and frustrations. A girlish young woman with hair the color of wheat kneels before her, trembling. She wears only an undershirt, the linen cloth woven so fine that he can see the shape of her body beneath. She is very thin.
“Constance has gone on progress through her duchy,” says the seated woman with a tone no less iron than the gleaming gate. “You could have ridden with her, but you chose to remain here.”
“She promised me—” sobs the kneeling woman.
“I made no promises to you. I have my allies, and they have their price. You threw away one husband, Tallia. Now you will do as I bid you. Let that be the end of it.” She rises from her chair. “Gerhard,” she calls to one of the guards. “I will walk in the garden now. Let our guest enter.”
The guards standing at the door move aside to admit a man. He walks into the room with the kind of effortless force of a thunderhead. He isn’t particularly tall but his broad shoulders and his somewhat bow-legged swagger suggest a man who has fought in many battles and ridden a long way to get here.
“Duke Conrad,” says the silver-haired woman, greeting him with a nod. “I have met the terms of our agreement.” She gestures toward the sobbing young woman, who has clasped her hands in prayer. “I’ve cleaned her up a bit, although I can’t imagine why any man would find her appetizing.” Without waiting for an answer, perhaps even finding the entire transaction distasteful, she walks out of the chamber.
essenger kneels. “My lord prince. A large host under Prince Bulkezu has attacked the garrison at Matthiaburg and won a victory. There was much slaughter. Lord Rodulf of Varingia and his companions fell or were taken prisoner. Rederii scouts reported that at least ten of their headless corpses were seen stuck on pikes outside the Quman camp.”
“How know they these are the corpses of Rodulf and his companions?” demands the prince. He gestures to one of his servingmen, who brings him a cup of wine.
“By their arms and armor, my lord prince.”
He sips at his wine consideringly. He has well muscled shoulders and a bit of a paunch around the middle. The curtain leading into the interior of the pavilion stirs, and a small, black-haired woman looks out. She is dressed in nothing more than a gorgeously embroidered blanket which she has wrapped around herself.
“What news?” she asks.
“The Quman are on the move.” He spits suddenly, a faint purplish stain flowering on the carpet. “Again we must retreat. Them we cannot engage with the troops we have now. We must have reinforcements from your father!”