The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“So I did. I wanted to get a good look at camp without being noticed. Smell the mood of the men.”

The settlement had a lively air. A summer’s evening market thrived near the tanners’ yard, although the stench of offal, urine, and dung at times threatened to overpower the folk out bargaining over rugs, bronze buckets, drinking horns, pots of dye, woolen cloth, and an impressive variety of shields. Small children with feet caked in dried mud ran about naked. A woman sat beside a crate of scrawny hens, calling out in an incomprehensible tongue that seemed only half Ungrian to Zacharias’ ears, shot through with a coarser language closer to that spoken out on the grasslands.

o;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.”

“So I did. I wanted to get a good look at camp without being noticed. Smell the mood of the men.”

The settlement had a lively air. A summer’s evening market thrived near the tanners’ yard, although the stench of offal, urine, and dung at times threatened to overpower the folk out bargaining over rugs, bronze buckets, drinking horns, pots of dye, woolen cloth, and an impressive variety of shields. Small children with feet caked in dried mud ran about naked. A woman sat beside a crate of scrawny hens, calling out in an incomprehensible tongue that seemed only half Ungrian to Zacharias’ ears, shot through with a coarser language closer to that spoken out on the grasslands.

Horses pounded up behind them. Zacharias glanced back just as Fulk swore irritably. A sweep of pale wings brushed the dark sky; in an instant the riders would be upon him. The frater shrieked out loud and dropped hard to the ground, clapping his hands over his head. Death came swiftly from the Quman. They would strike him down and cut off his head. Terror made him lose control; a hot gush of urine spilled down his legs.

But the horsemen swept past, ignoring him, although in their passage they overturned the crate. Freed chickens ran squawking out into the market. One of the birds ran right over Zacharias, claws digging into his neck.

“Here, now,” said Fulk, grasping his arm to pull him up. “Did you get hit?”

They hadn’t been Quman after all, come to behead him. It was only a group of Ungrian cavalrymen wearing white cloaks, the mark of King Geza’s honor guard.

Fulk’s soldiers ran down the chickens and returned them to the woman, who was cursing and yelling. At least the commotion hid Zacharias as he staggered to his feet. The darkness hid the stain on his robe, but nothing could hide the stink of a coward. As long as he feared the Quman, and Bulkezu, he was still a slave. Blinking back tears of shame and fear, he tottered over to the dirty watering trough and plunged in as Fulk and his soldiers shouted in surprise. Chickens, goats, and children made an ear-splitting noise as they scattered from his splashing. He was sopping wet from the chest down when he climbed out. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten apple at him. He ducked, but not quickly enough, and it splattered against his chest.

“For God’s sake,” swore Fulk, dragging him along. “What madness has gotten into you now, Brother?” The ground sloped steeply up and the ramparts loomed dark and solid above them.