The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Here,” he said, “let me.” He slid off the log before she could say more than a startled protest, and the watching children shrieked and scuttled backward, but the Brat only scooted away, not running, as he crouched beside the wide-mouthed pot. The top layer of grain was indeed contaminated by monstrous black kernels grown to twice the size of the regular kernels. He sifted them through his hands into the basket, but the farther down he got, the cleaner the grain became until there wasn’t a trace of black rot.

“Look at that!” The Brat had slid closer by degrees and now she peered over his shoulder and whistled with awe. “Nary a bit wasted! That’ll be enough flour to get us through to harvest, after miller and lord take their tithe.”

“Brat!” Uncle called, and she hopped up, poured all the grain back into the pot, covered it, and hoisted it up to haul back to him.

Chickens came over, pecking for the discarded grain, but he shooed them away and swept dirt over the black grains. They looked evil to him, although he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen black rot before, just never so heavy. Indeed, staring through the hazy day toward the fields it seemed to him that the entire field was poisoned by black rot, as thick as flies on honey, and he heaved himself up and walked, weaving because he really was getting light-headed from hunger, out to the fields and down those long strips brushing his hands over the heads of rye. They tickled his skin. Black grains tumbled to the earth like rain.

Harvest tomorrow, or next week—wasn’t that what the girl had said? He couldn’t recall. The dogs followed him patiently down one strip and up the next and after a while he remembered that the villagers had promised to feed him and he wandered back through golden fields unstained by rot into the hamlet. Here he found a wooden platter waiting for him with a cup of sweetened vinegar that made his eyes open wide, a cup of onion soup, and an entire half a loaf of rye bread, very dry so probably some days old, but by soaking it piece by piece in the soup he softened it and gulped it down. It sat like a lead weight in his stomach, the vinegar fizzing and bubbling, the onion burning, and he was suddenly so tired that he had to lie down. He crawled over to the stables where he would feel more comfortable with the animals, but of course what animals the villagers kept were out grazing in the pastures, so he found a filthy pile of straw for his bed and slept.

2

THE griffins could take the cold, but they didn’t like the elevation, and despite the uncanny number of trees blocking the road and rockfalls whose shatter-trail had to be cleared before the wagons could pass, it was the griffins who slowed them down most.

“It were a warm, wet winter,” said their guide, an old Avarian man called Ucco who had crossed the pass at least fifteen times in the last twenty years, leading merchants out of Westfall and southern Avaria who had slaves, salt, and Ungrian steel to trade in northern Aosta. “That makes the avalanches worse, mind you. If it’s cold, it don’t melt. But it weren’t so bad earlier this year, for I crossed back in Quadrii with a Westfall merchant who’s been trading Ungrian slaves for Aostan spices and cloth. I don’t know where all this rockfall come from, or how these trees come to fall. It weren’t here two month ago.”

“Might there have been storms?” the prince asked. “We got hit by a dozen strong storms out of the south. I lost a dozen men, and saw a village flattened by wind.”

“Nay, not so I recall except that one thunder boomer in Cintre that blew a bit of snow on it off the peaks. But for that, it hasn’t rained much the last two months. See how the streams are low. Look at all that bare rock on the heights. Where’s the snow? That’ll bring drought, mark you. Drought this summer already, and drought this autumn, and worse to come if there’s not snow this winter.”

He was a voluble man accompanied by an exceedingly pretty granddaughter who seemed delighted to flirt with a noble prince who was, once again, without his wife. It was at times like this Sanglant missed Heribert most, but in truth Hathui proved a stronger fence; she had a hard gaze and a way of snorting with laughter that suggested amusement at the foibles of mankind.

“The men have cleared the trees away, my lord prince,” Hathui said now, riding up to him where he waited on the road. She eyed the granddaughter, rolled her eyes, and went on. “Two were felled by axes. You can see the bite of a blade in their trunks.”

“Bandits?” he asked.

“No bandits up here, my lord,” said the old guide, “unless they’ve come north from Zuola because of hard times there. No man winters up here. That’s a death sentence.”

“The monks winter over at St. Barnaria’s Pass.”

“Well, they ain’t rightly men, are they? Clean-shaven like women—begging your pardon, my lord—and women can take the cold better, that’s for certain.” He patted his granddaughter fondly. She was a sturdily built girl of no more than fifteen or sixteen years with the thick buttocks and legs of a person who hikes and climbs every day. She smiled at Sanglant, displaying remarkably even, white teeth, sign of strong stock. Hathui snorted. He flushed and hastily turned his attention to other things, tilting back his head to survey their route.

They had reached the pass’ summit yesterday after struggling through a complex warren of stones cast across the road in stages that had seemed to be the remains of three different rockfalls. Now the road wound almost level at the base of a barren valley, which they had mostly climbed out of before this latest barrier had brought the vanguard to a halt. They had crossed through a land of rugged mountains capped with bare rock which dropped down on this side in north-facing slopes where green alder bushes grew along the furrows and alpine rose on the higher slopes where water did not collect. There were no patches of snow on the slopes at all, not even in the shade. According to Ucco, they had come three quarters of the way across and tomorrow would start their final descent through the foothills of Zuola and, beyond that, down through steep valleys onto the northern coastal plain of Aosta.

“Is it possible they know we are coming?” he asked, eager to discuss war rather than lust.

“They might know,” Hathui admitted reluctantly, “if it’s true Wolfhere betrayed us.”

“We must suppose that he did. To believe otherwise is folly.”

Her frown was answer enough to a question she didn’t like the sound of, no matter how many times it bowed before her. “Wolfhere is a good man,” she insisted.

He shrugged. Behind, the male griffin huffed, and Sanglant dismounted.

“We’d best stop for the night,” he said, wiping his forehead. There hadn’t been rain for weeks. Even Ucco had difficulty finding enough drinking water for their entire army and all their stock.

“I’ll let Captain Fulk know, my lord.” Hathui reined her horse away.

The male griffin was limping, and even the female—bigger and stronger—suffered from the altitude.

“I didn’t think they’d hurt like this just from climbing,” said Sibold, standing clear of the huffing griffin as he watched the prince approach. “They never seem to catch their breath.”

“Domina hasn’t flown once since we reached the mountains,” said Sanglant. Lewenhardt had shot a bear yesterday and Sanglant fished a hank of meat out of a barrel and walked right up to the griffin so that it fed out of his hands. He respected the sharp curve of its beak, but more and more he had come to think of Argent as a cross between his horse and a jessed eagle. Though it loomed larger than a warhorse, and could send him flying with a swipe of its foreclaws, it never did, and he felt easy around it now, although Domina still held herself aloof. After Argent fed, he stroked its downy head-feathers until it rumbled with pleasure deep in its chest, rather like a cat. Still, its breathing was labored, and it huffed twice more, too much like the dry cough of a man who has caught a fever in his lungs and can’t squeeze it out.

o;Might there have been storms?” the prince asked. “We got hit by a dozen strong storms out of the south. I lost a dozen men, and saw a village flattened by wind.”

“Nay, not so I recall except that one thunder boomer in Cintre that blew a bit of snow on it off the peaks. But for that, it hasn’t rained much the last two months. See how the streams are low. Look at all that bare rock on the heights. Where’s the snow? That’ll bring drought, mark you. Drought this summer already, and drought this autumn, and worse to come if there’s not snow this winter.”

He was a voluble man accompanied by an exceedingly pretty granddaughter who seemed delighted to flirt with a noble prince who was, once again, without his wife. It was at times like this Sanglant missed Heribert most, but in truth Hathui proved a stronger fence; she had a hard gaze and a way of snorting with laughter that suggested amusement at the foibles of mankind.