The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

The lad seemed so young, yet surely he wasn’t any younger than she had been the day Wolfhere had asked her mother if it was her wish that her daughter be invested into the king’s service. In times of trouble, Wolfhere had said, there was always a need for suitable young persons to ride messages for the royal family.

o;Or his ambition?”

“Do you think so? That all this talk of a sorcerous cabal is only a cloak for vanity and greed? That he is simply a rebel intent on his own gain and glory?”

“What did the great nobles care when the common folk were murdered and enslaved by the Quman? How many came to the aid of the farmers and cottagers? They only thought to defend themselves and their treasure, to nurse along their own petty quarrels. They left their people behind to suffer at the hands of monsters.”

“So that may be. I will hardly be the one to defend the likes of Lord Wichman, though it was God’s will that he be born the son of a duchess and set above you and me. Some say that the Quman were a punishment sent from God against the wicked.”

“Innocent children!”

“Martyrs now, each one. Yet who can say whom God favor? It was Prince Sanglant who defeated the Quman in the end.”

She could think of no answer to this and so fumed as rain pelted down, drumming merrily on the earth. Drenched and shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. A gust of wind raked the trees while thunder cracked. Branches splintered, torn free by the wind, and crashed to the ground a stone’s toss away. Out in the meadow, a tent tore free of the stakes pinning it to the ground, exposing the poor soldiers huddled within. She recognized three wounded men who couldn’t yet move well; one had lost a hand, another had a broken leg in a splint, and the third had both his arms up in slings to protect his injured shoulders. The canvas flapped like a great wing in the gale, trying to pull free of the remaining stakes.

Thiadbold swore, laughing, and ran out into the full force of the storm. For a moment she simply stood there in the wind and rain, staring, slack. Then a branch snapped above her, like a warning, and leaves showered down. She bolted after Thiadbold and together, with the belated help of other Lions, they got the tent staked down again while their injured comrades made jokes, humor being their only shield against their helpless condition.

At last Thiadbold insisted she walk over to the village and ask for Eagle’s shelter at a hearth fire. There she dried out her clothing and dozed away the night in relative comfort on a sheepskin laid over a sleeping platform near the hearth. She woke periodically to cough or because the ache in her hip felt like the intermittent stabbing of a knife, thrust deep into the joint.

Would she never be rid of the pain?

The next day they chose a lanky youth from the village to take a message to Mother Scholastica at Quedlinhame. No person among them, none of the Lions and certainly not any of the villagers, could write, so the lad had to be drilled until Hanna was sure he had the words right and could repeat them back at need. He proved quick and eager, learning the message thoroughly although eventually they had to chase away a chorus of onlookers who kept interrupting him to be helpful.

“I’d be an Eagle, if I could,” he confided, glancing back to make sure his father could not hear. The old man was complaining to Thiadbold about losing the boy’s labor for the week it would take him to walk to Quedlinhame and back at this time of year when the fields were being turned under and mash shaken down for the pigs and wood split. “It must be a good life, being an Eagle and serving the king.”

“If you don’t mind death and misery.” He looked startled, then hurt, and a twinge of guilt made her shrug her shoulders. She hated the way his expression lit hopefully as he waited for her to go on. “It’s a hard life. I’ve seen worse things than I can bear to speak of—” She could not go on so stood instead, fighting the agony in her hip as tears came to her eyes.

But he was young and stupid, as she had been once.

“I wouldn’t mind it,” he said as he followed her to the door of his father’s small but neat cottage. “I’m not afraid of cold or bandits. I’ve got a good memory. I know all the psalms by heart. Everyone says I’m quick. The deacon who comes Ladysday to lead mass sometimes asks me to lead the singing. B-but, I don’t know how to ride a horse. I’ve been on the back of a donkey many a time, so surely that means I can easily learn how to sit a horse.”

She wiped tears from her cheeks and swung back to look at him, with his work-scarred hands and an undistinguished but good-natured face that made her think of poor Manfred, killed at Gent. She’d salvaged Manfred’s Eagle’s brooch after Bulkezu had torn it from her cloak, that day the Quman had captured her. She’d clung to that brass brooch and to the emerald ring Henry had given her. Together with her Eagle’s oath, these things had allowed her to survive.

The lad seemed so young, yet surely he wasn’t any younger than she had been the day Wolfhere had asked her mother if it was her wish that her daughter be invested into the king’s service. In times of trouble, Wolfhere had said, there was always a need for suitable young persons to ride messages for the royal family.

“Is it your wish to be invested as an Eagle?” she asked finally.

The boy’s strangled gasp and the spasmodic twitch of his shoulders was answer enough. Even the father fell silent as the enormity of her question hit him. His younger sister, left behind when the loitering villagers were chased out, burst into tears.

“Yes,” he whispered, and could not choke out more words because his sister flung herself on him and began to wail.

“Ernst! My son! A king’s Eagle!” The father’s tone was querulous, and Hanna thought he was on the verge of breaking into a rage. But hate had clouded her sight. Overcome by emotion, his complaints forgotten, the old man knelt on the dirt floor of his poor house because his legs would not support him. Tears streaked his face. “It’s a great honor for a child of this village to be called to serve the king.”

So was it done, although she hadn’t really realized she had the authority to deputize a young person so easily. Yet hadn’t Bulkezu taught her the terrible power borne by the one who can choose who lives and who dies, who will suffer and who survive?

“If you mean to earn the right to speak the Eagle’s oath, then you must deliver this message to Mother Scholastica and bring her answer to me where I will bide with Princess Theophanu. If you can do that, you’ll have proved yourself worthy of an Eagle’s training.” She unfastened her brooch and swung her much-mended cloak off her shoulders. “You haven’t earned the Eagle’s badge yet, my friend, nor will you happily do so. But wear this cloak as the badge of your apprenticeship. It will bring you safe passage.” She turned to regard Thiadbold, who had kept silent as he watched the unfolding scene. “Give the lad the dun pony. He can nurse it along the whole journey, or perhaps Mother Scholastica will grant him a better mount when he leaves Quedlinhame.”

The lad’s family wept, but he seemed sorry only to leave the sister. The company of Lions marched out in the late morning with the sky clearing and yesterday’s rain glistening on the trees and on wayside nettles grown up where foliage had been cut back from the path. Hanna and the Lions took the turning north and rode for Gent. The lad was soon lost around the bend as he continued west toward Quedlinhame along the northern skirt of the Thurin Forest, but for what seemed a long time afterward she could still hear the poor, artless fool singing cheerfully as he rode into his new life.

2

“HANNA? Hanna!”

Blearily she recognized Folquin’s voice and his strong hand on her elbow, propping her up. She had fallen asleep on the horse again, slumped over. In a panic she began whispering the message from the prince which she had committed to memory, afraid that it had vanished, stolen by her nightmares. But as he pushed her up, an agony of pain lancing through her hip tore her thoughts apart. Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away to focus, at last, on the sight that had caught the attention of her companions.

After many days of miserable rainy weather, their path had brought them to an escarpment at the border of hilly country, and from this height they had a good view north along the river valley. A broad stream wound north through pastureland and autumn fields, and she recognized where they were with a clarity so ruthless that it pinched. Here among fields of rye the Eika and their dogs had attacked them, when she, Manfred, Wolfhere, Liath, and Hathui had ridden toward Gent in pursuit of Prince Sanglant and his Dragons. Here, when King Henry had come with his army to fight Bloodheart, she had seen the chaos of battle close at hand as Princess Sapientia had urged her troops forward to descend on the Eika ships beached on the river’s shore.

“Hanna?” Folquin’s tone was sharp with concern. “Are you well? You didn’t finish your porridge last night nor eat the cold this midday.”