The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“My lord, we are ready.” Out of breath, Ediki stopped beside him with the two-score volunteers, First Son’s turncoats, the men who had once been slaves. They were tough, but the run and the climb had winded them. Were they strong enough to do what he needed?

“You know what risk you run,” he said. “You know what will happen if you fail?”

“We know, my lord. We know what you have promised us. It is worth the risk. We have no love for those who ground us down.” Ediki spat on the corpse that lay next to Stronghand’s feet, a blond youth not so very old; his chin had been smashed in by an ax-blow, but it was the spear thrust that had disemboweled him that had killed him. “They are not even my kinfolk—these ones. They came from over the sea.”

“Just as we did,” said Stronghand.

“No offense meant, my lord,” said Ediki as the other Albans murmured. A few of them, like Ediki, were short and stocky, with dark hair and brown eyes, but the rest had the height and pale coloring of the Albans. “But it was the Albans who drove my ancestors into the hills and the marsh in the long ago days.”

“They raped my mother,” Erling said suddenly in the way of a man meaning to prove himself by displaying his anger. “I’m a bastard, and a slave woman’s son. You are the only man—” He hesitated as if seeing Stronghand for the first time. After so much time spent among humankind, Stronghand knew what disturbed them most about his appearance: the claws thrust out from the backs of his bony hands; the scaled copper of his flesh; his black slit eyes, the braid of coarse white hair, and the jewels that flashed when he bared his teeth. So like a man and yet not a man. Erling recovered himself and floundered onward. “—the only lord who has offered me anything but chains and the bite of his whip.”

“So I am,” Stronghand agreed. “And so I promised. Let the slave become the master, and the master become the slave.”

Half a dozen of his soldiers hurried up from below, carrying mail and bloody tunics and open-faced helms taken off the dead men. “Put on what you can,” said Stronghand, “and take your places. We haven’t much time.”

His army had all crossed over the dike and arrayed themselves according to his plan, a third kneeling in staggered ranks just below the crest, a third running back to invest the palisade and manor house, and the others split onto either flank. An entire hundred crept back into the forest under First Son’s command, backtracking.

He knelt beside Ediki, letting the old man conceal him with one of the rectangular Alban shields. His Alban volunteers now wore the outward garb of the men who had once defended the dike.

Two banners bobbed into view, fluttering with the sun’s light streaming across them: the queen’s stag and its attendant boar. No wolf’s head glittered among the host, but a man rode at the forefront wearing a helm ornamented with the tusks and snout of a boar. His army came in good order, well disciplined and confident. He estimated there were five or six hundreds of them, enough to inflict real damage if it came to a pitched fight. They could see from the dirt churned up by the passage of the Eika army that a large force had moved across this ground ahead of them.

Erling stepped forward and waved his arms. “Make haste!” he shouted. “Brothers, move quickly! My lord, I pray you, beware! A small pack of the beasts are hiding in the forest the better to ambush you, to scare you off and make you think they’ve taken the dike. The rest have swung up along the dike toward the fens. We held them off, but we haven’t long before they attack again.”

The other Alban volunteers moved up alongside him, an easy target for arrows if the Alban host distrusted their tale. It took courage to place themselves so nakedly in the line of fire.

“Make haste!” they cried. “Make haste! We need reinforcements!” For an instant, for a year, for the space of ten breaths, Stronghand wondered if the Alban lord with his boar’s head helmet would take the bait.

Then First Son played his hand—axes and spears clattered against shields to create a host of noise rising out of the woodland. These Albans didn’t yet understand that the RockChildren attacked in silence.

The lord shouted a command; his banner dipped and rose to signal the advance, and the host broke forward at a run, making haste, and their tight formation came undone as one man outpaced another, as they raced for the safety of the ramparts.

Stronghand bared his teeth. Behind, he felt as much as heard the murmur of his army tightening their grips on their weapons.

When the first of the Albans came over the top, awkward as they climbed and winded and thinking that their brothers awaited them, they hadn’t a chance.

In the end, after the slaughter and with the sun sliding down beneath the western horizon, they took the boar’s head alive. He was a man of indeterminate years, lean, hard, and cunning by the look of him, not easy to subdue. He was too proud to curse at his fate and too clever to waste his breath begging for mercy or modesty when Stronghand’s soldiers stripped him. He wore luxurious garb under his chain mail, a padded tunic chased with gold thread, the gold armbands worn by Alban lords, a pair of gold necklaces, and silver rings and bracelets, a rich haul by any measure. In his time he had survived three wounds, long since healed, but on this day only his right hand was bleeding from a stroke that had knocked his gauntlet off. His shield was almost hacked in two, but it had fared better than the four young men who had died in a last attempt to break him out of the battle and escape toward the fens.

The Alban volunteers gathered to look him over. They had the look of starving dogs waiting to feed but held back by the chains of fear—because they feared this scarred and battle-hardened nobleman who stood stripped to his shift before them, barefoot, unarmed, and entirely at their mercy. Nonetheless Stronghand could smell their fear, a perfume as rank as old meat.

“The young should not die to save the old,” observed Ediki solemnly as he examined the four corpses sprawled at the foot of the noble lord.

“I am the queen’s uncle, called Eadig, Earl of the middle country and Lord of Wyscan,” said the noble to Stronghand, as if Ediki had not spoken. He took no notice of the former slaves. “What ransom will you take for me, raider? How may I ransom those of my soldiers who still live?”

Stronghand raised both hands, palms up, in a gesture he had seen used among humankind. “Your fate is not mine to judge. I have promised certain of my lords that they may enslave any man among the survivors.”

Eadig’s arrogant gaze skipped over the branded faces of Ediki and the others, ranged farther afield to encompass the Eika now looting the dead or settling down for the night’s bivouac within the safety of the palisaded manor. “You have lords among you? I thought you were like the wild dogs who hunt in packs and devour everything they meet.”

“Then you do not understand us. Yet what we are should not concern you. You have lords among your own kind, Eadig, for you were once one among them. Now, here are others. I name them for you, because you must know at whose hands you will suffer mercy, or justice. Here is Lord Ediki of Weorod—”

“Eadwulf is lord of Weorod!” cried the nobleman indignantly. “My cousin’s niece married him five years past!”

anners bobbed into view, fluttering with the sun’s light streaming across them: the queen’s stag and its attendant boar. No wolf’s head glittered among the host, but a man rode at the forefront wearing a helm ornamented with the tusks and snout of a boar. His army came in good order, well disciplined and confident. He estimated there were five or six hundreds of them, enough to inflict real damage if it came to a pitched fight. They could see from the dirt churned up by the passage of the Eika army that a large force had moved across this ground ahead of them.

Erling stepped forward and waved his arms. “Make haste!” he shouted. “Brothers, move quickly! My lord, I pray you, beware! A small pack of the beasts are hiding in the forest the better to ambush you, to scare you off and make you think they’ve taken the dike. The rest have swung up along the dike toward the fens. We held them off, but we haven’t long before they attack again.”

The other Alban volunteers moved up alongside him, an easy target for arrows if the Alban host distrusted their tale. It took courage to place themselves so nakedly in the line of fire.

“Make haste!” they cried. “Make haste! We need reinforcements!” For an instant, for a year, for the space of ten breaths, Stronghand wondered if the Alban lord with his boar’s head helmet would take the bait.