The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“I won’t leave you!” she said predictably, but Rosvita only smiled and tried not to groan as she started forward. She ached everywhere. She was already exhausted.

“This way,” said Diocletia, heading into the brush.

“What about Sister Hilaria?” protested Heriburg.

“Come along,” said Diocletia, not waiting for them.

They had not gone more than a hundred paces when they stumbled out from under the cover of the wood into an olive grove where, under the light of the moon, Hilaria stood facing a brace of men armed with hoes and a trio of silent dogs standing at alert.

“I can take them,” muttered Hanria.

Hearing them, Hilaria raised a hand although she did not turn. “I pray you, Sister Rosvita, come forward. These speak no language I know. Perhaps they are Arethousan.”

They were not, nor did they appear to recognize that tongue when Rosvita begged for aid. They had the look of farmers, stocky and powerful, and when they beckoned, Rosvita felt it prudent for their party to follow. Perhaps Hanna could dispatch them, but Mother Obligatia could not flee if anything went wrong.

Yet as they walked behind the farmers through the grove and then between the rows of a small vineyard, twisting and turning on a well-worn path, Rosvita did not feel that their captors were precisely suspicious but only wary. They neither threatened nor barked, not even the dogs. The path brought them to a village, no more than ten houses built with brick or sod in a style unknown to her together with a building whose proportions she recognized instantly: this squat, rectangular structure looked more like a barracks than a church, but by the round tower at one end and adjoining graveyard, she knew it was an Arethousan church.

A bearded man wearing the robe of a priest with a stole draped over his left shoulder waited on the portico of the church attended by a score of soldiers. Torches revealed their grim faces. The priest wore a Circle of Unity at his chest with a bar bisecting it, the sigil of the Arethousan church.

“I pray you, Holy Father,” said Rosvita in Arethousan, stepping forward once their party came into the circle of light and the others had set down their burdens. “Grant us respite and shelter, for as you can see we are holy sisters and brothers of the church, like you, who seek a moment’s rest before we go on our way.”

“You are not like me.” The priest’s upper lip turned up with disgust as he looked them over. He had curly hair falling in dark ringlets almost to his shoulders but this angelic attribute did nothing to soften his sneering expression. “You are Daryans. How is it you butcher my language, woman?”

She knew her grammar was good, but he seemed determined to remain unimpressed “I am Sister Rosvita, educated in the Convent of Korvei. I pray pardon if I torture the pronunciation of your words.”

“Just as your people torture the words of our blessed Redeemer and blight the Earth with every manner of heresy. Only among we Arethousans have your false words been strangled and killed. Sergeant Bysantius, what shall we do with them?”

The sergeant had the look of a typical Arethousan, short and stocky, with black hair and a swarthy face, but he had a shrewd expression as he assessed them. He was obviously a man accustomed to measuring the worth of the soldiers he meant to send into battle. “There’s a Daryan army out there, Father, commanded by the usurper and the false mother. How are these few Daryans come here? Did they lose the army that shelters them? If so, how much ransom might we receive from the usurper to get them back?”

“Best to take them to the patriarch in Arethousa,” said the priest.

Sergeant Bysantius’ gaze rested on the pallet and Mother Obligatia’s frail form. “Just so,” he said finally. “We’re pulling out tonight. I haven’t the men to fight a force as large as that one.”

“Surely a dozen good Arethousans can slaughter their entire expedition! They are the feeblest of nations. The lord of Arethousa is the only lord who has stout soldiers and command of the sea.”

“True enough,” agreed Sergeant Bysantius, but there was something mocking in his tone that made Rosvita like but distrust him. “I’ll take these prisoners to the lady of Bavi and she can send them on to the patriarch. What of you, Father? Do you stay and fight?”

“My people expect me to stay. Not even the slaves and murderers who make up the Daryan army dare strike down a man of God! Take what you came for, and go!”

“Very well.” Bysantius turned away and gave orders to his men, who dispersed about their business.

“What did he say?” asked Hanna, and the others crept closer—as much as any of them dared move a single step—as Rosvita told them what she had heard.

A cart rolled up, and after loading sacks of grain, two barrels of oil and two of wine, and a cage of chickens into the back, the soldiers made room for Mother Obligatia’s pallet, braced among the sacks in a way that would, Rosvita noted, offer the old abbess something resembling a more comfortable ride. It appeared that in addition to the provisions, the sergeant had come for recruits. As his party formed up, they prodded into line two frightened young men whose mothers and sweethearts, or sisters, wept in the doorways of their huts.

A pair of soldiers jogged into the village from the direction of the olive grove.

“Sergeant! There’s a patrol of the Daryans, coming this way!”

“Let’s be off, then,” said Bysantius. He had a horse. The rest walked, and so did Rosvita and her companions, trudging along the dusty road at a numbing pace, their way lit by the torches the soldiers carried, until at dawn the sergeant had pity on Rosvita and the coughing Ruoda and allowed them to sit in the back of the cart. Their party moved not swiftly but steadily, pacing the ox, yet as Rosvita stared back down the road up which they’d come she saw no armed band pursuing them. The countryside was sparsely wooded, and quite dry, although the ground was brightened by a spray of flowers.

“It must be spring,” said Ruoda quietly, voice hoarse from coughing. “How long did we walk between the crowns?”

“Three or four months. I don’t know the date.”

The girl sighed, coughed, and shut her eyes.

“Sister Rosvita.” Obligatia was awake; she too examined the road twisting away behind them, the sere hillsides, and the pale blue sky. “Do you think we have escaped the skopos?”