The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Are you praying?” asked Father Benignus.

He shook mud off his hands before wiping them on his leggings.

“We should all pray, Father,” he said, rising. “A storm is coming.”

The veil that concealed the man’s face shuddered as Benignus shifted his seat in the way an exhausted man fears sliding off into the mire. Yet he did not dismount. He lifted a gloved hand and indicated that Alain should follow him.

Bartholomew had waited at Alain’s side all this time, and he trudged alongside, keeping an arm’s length from the hounds.

Alain surveyed the camp. Including the new arrivals, perhaps three score souls sheltered here, although fully a third of them did not bide here of their own free will. They were the ones whose feet were bound so tightly with rope, as a horse is hobbled, that they could only shuffle as they went along on their errands carrying water, milking goats, and grinding grain. All of these captives were women, and there were no children in camp except for some infants bundled against their mothers’ hips and three filthy toddlers sitting on their naked backsides in the mud and squalling like stuck pigs. Stinker, passing the children, swore loudly, slapped one hard, grabbed a second and shook it, and then for good measure slapped the young woman who came running to quiet their terrified shrieks.

“Bitch! These screeching brats can be sold as easily as their sisters and brothers if you sluts can’t keep their mouths shut!”

The rope on Alain’s wrists had been little more than a show of docility. He shook it free now and ran over to place himself between the cringing woman and the stinking, scarred man, who looked eager to crack her across the face a second time. Maybe he was just waiting for an excuse.

“What manner of creature are you,” Alain demanded, “who is such a coward that he must show his strength by bullying those so much weaker than he is?”

Heads turned. Dog-Ears guffawed outright and was kicked by his companion, Red. Bartholomew said a few words too softly for Alain to make out. The captive women around the camp went as still as if they’d been touched by a guivre’s eye, and although none of them looked toward him he was immediately and intensely aware that they all knew exactly what was going on.

“You ass-licking bastard!” roared Stinker, who had the fight he’d been wanting. He lunged.

Sorrow leaped at him, but Stinker had already anticipated an attack, shifting sideways, and thwacked the hound on the side of the head with his staff, laying the poor beast out. Rage bolted back, yipping but not fleeing, and she kept her distance from the staff as she circled with a dog’s measure, looking for an opening. Alain stood his ground, not even raising his arms to fend off the blow. The woman dropped to the ground behind him with a cry of fear and despair. Father Benignus turned. A gust of wind rattled the trees.

“Eloie! Eloie! Isabaoth!” He lifted a hand and crushed something in his fist.

Stinker jerked up short an arm’s length from Alain. His scream cut the air, and his face contorted into a rictus of agony as he twitched and danced, slapping himself silly and groaning and shrieking. His leggings soaked with piss, followed by the stink of his bowels as he voided them, and he gibbered and coughed up blood and finally, mercifully, collapsed in a stinking heap on the earth at Alain’s feet.

Silence settled over the camp. The wind died.

One of the toddlers hiccuped a sob before being hustled away by the woman, herself sniffling and choking down tears. The other two children trotted after her on their scrawny legs. Hobbled women scooped them up and stood trembling, eyes lowered.

Sorrow whined and, with a grunt, padded gingerly over to Alain, who stroked him carefully and found the hardening bruise where the staff had struck him along the shoulder. Rage, still growling softly, loped up to stand beside him.

Stinker had fallen onto his back. The coarse burlap rags he wore had a fist-sized hole burned through the cloth. Alain knelt by the dead man’s shoulders and reached toward the frayed burn.

“Don’t touch it!” gasped Bartholomew. “Only Father Benignus is allowed—” He faltered and glanced up to where Father Benignus sat silent, shoulders bowed as if from exhaustion. Ducking his head, he waited for a blow.

No one moved.

Alain peeled away burned tunic from weeping flesh. Stinker wore an amulet around his neck, and it was this crude binding that had erupted into flame and scorched his skin. He stank, indeed, and not just from the pulpy mess he had voided in his death throes. He had been burned from the inside out.

Alain rose and straddled the corpse, lifting his chin as he looked at Father Benignus. “Is this justice?”

Bartholomew made a strangled noise. What had passed for silence before deepened into a dreadful anticipatory pause, the moment before the executioner’s ax falls.

“What is justice?” replied Father Benignus in a voice so weary it might be called cruel.

He shook the reins and guided his horse forward, halting beside the corpse. With a stick, he fished for the amulet, hooked it, and yanked it hard enough to break the thong that held it around Stinker’s neck. Flipping up the stick, he caught the amulet in his hand and rode his horse toward a wagon covered with a tent to make a kind of house on wheels.

“Bartholomew, bring him. I want no more interruptions.”

“Yes, Father Benignus,” whispered Bartholomew, scratching his warty nose. He did not look at Alain; he sidestepped Stinker’s corpse and shied anxiously away from Sorrow’s growl. “Come, then, you fool,” he muttered in a low voice. “Can’t you see how dangerous it is to keep the good father waiting?”

“Who are these women?” Alain demanded, not moving.

“Fair winnings.”

“No better than slaves, fettered so. What happened to their children?”