The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

ps he had suffered so many betrayals and setbacks because he had himself believed what was false. Yet others believed what they had been taught, and they hadn’t suffered as he had. Nay, truly, his trials must have been a test of his resolve. Maybe he had been granted leave to witness the miracles because he had resisted Liath’s blandishments. She had tempted him, but he had escaped her. Even if he did still dream of her, here on a rainy night lost in a distant country, wondering what was to become of them all.

If it hadn’t been for Liath, maybe his father would have let him join the Dragons. But of course, then he would have been killed at Gent by the Eika along with the rest of the Dragons; all but that damned Prince Sanglant, who everyone knew had been enchanted by his inhuman mother so that he couldn’t ever be killed.

Looked at that way, maybe Liath had saved him from death. Or maybe it wasn’t Liath at all. Maybe God had saved him, so that he and his friends could work Her will. God had saved them from the Quman, hadn’t She? God had transported them by a miracle from the eastern borderlands to the very heart of Wendar. God had turned summer to autumn, and healed their wounds, and by these signs had revealed their task: It was up to them to tell the truth of the blessed Daisan’s death to every soul they encountered. God had given the truth into their hands and saved them from sure death in order to see what they would make of these gifts.

The shape ghosted past at the limit of the fire’s light.

Startled, he dropped his spear. As he bent to pick it up, he noticed a second shape, then a third.

“Hsst, Sigfrid! Wolves!”

As if their name, spoken out loud, summoned them, the wolves moved closer. Lean and sleek, they eyed the sleeping party hungrily. The leader yawned, displaying sharp teeth. As he gathered breath into his lungs to shout the alarm, Ivar counted two, then four, then eight of the beasts, poised to leap, ready to kill.

They scattered, vanishing into the night.

The shout caught in his throat, choking him, as a lion paced into the circle of the fire’s light and lifted its glossy golden head to gaze at him. It had huge shoulders and powerful flanks, and when it yawned, its teeth sparked in the firelight like the points of daggers.

A choking stutter came from his throat. For a space during which he might have gulped in one breath or taken a thousand, he stared at it, and it at him, as calm in its power as God’s judgment.

Then he remembered that he had to wake the others before they were ripped into pieces and made into a feast.

Something touched him, and he jumped, but he still couldn’t find his voice, and anyway, it was only Sigfrid.

“Nay, Ivar,” he said in his gentle voice. “They’re protecting us.” His small hand weighed like a boulder on Ivar’s forearm.

He didn’t dare move, because the lion hadn’t attacked yet. As he watched, too stunned to do anything, a second lion paced majestically into the fire’s light. This one had a coat so light that it seemed silver. It, too, stopped and stared with a gaze so intelligent that at once he knew it could see right down into his soul. It knew all his secrets, every least bitter and petty thought he had ever entertained, every ill he had wished on another, every greedy urge he had fulfilled. It knew the depths of his unseemly passion for Liath and how he had allowed lust to smother his decent affection for Hanna, who had never turned away from him, even when he had treated her badly. It recognized how far he had fallen into debauchery among Prince Ekkehard and his cronies. But it also saw his efforts to preach the truth of the sacrifice and redemption of the blessed Daisan to the city folk in Gent and to the village folk in the marchlands. It saw how he had aided his friends on the battlefield and helped the wounded Lions to safety. It witnessed, through him, the glorious flight of the phoenix, and for these things it forgave him his sins.

“W—why should they protect us?” he stammered when he found his voice.

“Lions are God’s creatures,” said Sigfrid. “They’re waiting here.”

“Waiting for what?”

“I don’t know.”

Rain spattered down and ceased. The lions paced back and forth, obliterating the tracks of the wolves. Their steady movement, weaving in and out but never coming close, made him so sleepy that he swayed on his feet, started awake, then drifted off again.

And found that it was dawn. Light stained the east, and from this outcropping he saw forest falling away into a deep cleft rank with trees and rising again into wooded hills. To the south he saw the edge of a tidy clearing that suggested a settlement, perhaps the fields of Hersford Monastery.

Sigfrid had found a spring in the rocks and drank deeply as the others woke, stretched, and came to slake their thirst. Ivar walked forward, but the ground betrayed no trace of what he had seen in the night. He saw no prints of wolf and certainly nothing like the massive paw prints that lions of such a size ought to have left behind them as evidence of their passage.

Gerulf came up to him. “I see you’ve noticed it as well. That looks to me like the monastic estate. We’d best strike out at once, so we don’t have to spend another night in the forest.”

“Alas, Lord Baldwin,” Dedi was saying back by the spring as Baldwin staggered up, still half asleep but no less handsome for looking quite rumpled, “it was quiet enough this night, although your stout friend Ermanrich quite bent my ear the whole time we were on watch with so many astounding tales that I don’t know what to think.” He paused, as a thief might pause to listen before grabbing the jewels out of their resting place in a nest of silk. “I fear your lions chose not to pay us a call, eh?”

There was a scuffle, broken up by Hathumod with a sharp whack to each of their behinds with a stick.

Gerulf grabbed Dedi and hauled him aside. “You’ll be polite, Nephew! This man’s a lord.”

Dedi muttered a comment under his breath.

“I did too see lions!” retorted Baldwin. “No one ever believes me.” Ivar examined the ground again but the only prints he saw were his own boots. “It’s said that the Enemy brings strange visions at night,” he said.

“So may God, my lord,” replied Gerulf, “but it’s hard for mortal man to tell the difference between the one and the other. Saw you anything on your watch?”

Ivar didn’t have the courage to speak of what he’d seen, nor did Sigfrid mention it.

IX