The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Kind of like you and women, eh?” asked the Karronishman, Johannes, who only spoke to tease.

“Did I show you where that Ungrian whore bit me?” Lewenhardt pulled up his tunic.

“Nay, mercy!” cried Johannes with a laugh. “I can dig up worms enough to get the idea.”

“Someone’s been eating worms,” said Surly suddenly, “and not liking the taste. There’s been talk that King Geza is going to divorce his wife and marry Princess Sapientia. That’s the best way for the prince to get rid of her.”

“Prince Sanglant would never allow that!” objected Lewenhardt. “That would give King Geza a claim to the Wendish throne through his children by the princess.”

“Hush,” said Den.

Captain Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs. Beyond him, poplars swayed in the evening’s breeze where they grew along the banks of a river whose name Zacharias did not yet know. Where the river curved around a hill, an old, refurbished ring fort rose, seat of the local Ungrian noble family. Beyond its confines a settlement sprawled haphazardly, protected by a palisade and ditch but distinctively Ungrian because of the many stinking corrals. Every Ungrian soldier kept ten horses, it seemed, and folk who walked instead of riding were scorned as slaves and dogs. Yet who tilled the fields and kept the gardens? The farmers Zacharias had seen working in hamlets and fortified villages as Prince Sanglant and his army followed King Geza’s progress through the Ungrian kingdom were smaller and darker than the Ungrian nobles who ruled over them. Such folk were forbidden to own the very horses they were scorned for not riding.

All the men rose when Fulk halted by the fire’s light.

Lewenhardt spoke. “Captain. Is all quiet?”

“As quiet as it can be, with the army marching out in the morning.” Fulk surveyed the encampment before looking back over the six soldiers seated around the fire. “I posted you out here to keep alert, not to gossip.” He nodded at Zacharias. “Brother, I come from the prince. You’re to attend him.”

“I thought he had Brother Breschius to interpret for him tonight. Isn’t it only Ungrians and Wendishmen at the feast?”

“I don’t answer for His Highness. You’re to come at once.”

Surly began whistling a dirge, breaking off only after Chustaffus punched his arm.

“You take your watch at midnight,” said Fulk to his soldiers. “I’ll be back to check up on you.”

That sobered them. Zacharias rose, with a sigh and followed Fulk. They walked along the river, listening to the wind sighing in the poplars. Although the sun had set, the clouds to the west were still stained an intense rose-orange, the color lightening toward the zenith before fading along the eastern hills to a dusky gray.

“I miss the beech woods of home,” Fulk said. “They say we’ll ride through grasslands and river bottom all the way to the Heretic’s Sea. There are even salt marshes, the same as you’d see on the Wendish coast, but lying far from the seashore. When I left home to join the king’s service, I never thought to journey so far east. But I suppose you’ve seen these lands before.”

“I have not. I traveled east the first time through Polenie lands.”

“Did you see any one-legged men? Women with dogs’ heads? Two-headed babies?”

“Only slaves and tyrants, the same as anywhere.”

Fulk grunted, something like a laugh. Like all of Sanglant’s personal guard, he wore a pale gold tabard marked with the sigil of a black dragon. “The Ungrians are a queer folk,” he continued, humoring Zacharias’ curtness. “As friendly as you please, and good fighters, yet I know their mothers didn’t worship God in Unity. I’d wager that half of them still sacrifice to their old gods. One of the lads said he saw a white stallion being led out at midwinter from the king’s palace, and he never saw it come in again for all that King Geza spent the Feast of St. Peter on his knees in church. God know they’re half heretics themselves, for it was Arethousan churchmen who first brought the word of the blessed Daisan to these lands.”

“It is Brother Breschius who presides over mass, not an Arethousan priest.”

“True enough. It’s said the last of the Arethousans fled Ungria when we arrived with Prince Bayan’s body last autumn. They’re worse than rats, skulking about and spreading their lies and their heresy.”

“It seems to me that there’s heresy enough in the ranks of Prince Sanglant’s army. I hear whispers of it, the phoenix and the redemption.”

Fulk had a deceptively mild expression for a man who had survived any number of hard-fought battles and had abandoned King Henry to join the war band of that king’s rebel son. His lips twitched up, as though he meant to smile, but his gaze was sharp. “If you toss an adder into a pit without water and leave it alone, it will shrivel up and die soon enough. But if you worry at it, then it will bite you and live.”

In silence they left the river and followed the track across an overgrazed pasture to the palisade gate. The ring fort had been built along the bend in the river, but in recent times houses, craftsmen’s yards, and shepherds’ hovels had crept out below the circular ramparts and been ringed in their turn by a ditch and log palisade.

The two men crossed the plank bridge thrown over the palisade ditch and greeted the guards lounging at the open gates. With the king in residence, the Quman defeated, and a good-sized army camped in the fields beyond, the watch kept the gates open all night because of the steady traffic between town and camp.

In Ungria, peace reigned.

Half a dozen soldiers were waiting for Fulk just beyond the gate, leaning at their ease on the rails of an empty corral. As soon as they saw their captain, they fell in smartly behind him.

“A captain cannot appear before the prince without a retinue, lest he be thought unworthy of his captain’s rank,” said Fulk wryly.

“You came alone to get me.”