King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

Aldegund’s mouth trembled but she did not give way to tears. Lord Geoffrey’s two children by his first wife were taken away. Lavastine sheathed his sword and glanced at Alain, marking him with some confusion. Then he shook his head and stiffened, losing all expression. He snapped his fingers and the hounds, swarming together because they were tied to the leash, approached him, licking his fingers and fawning at his boots. He took the leash, turned, and with no further speech to anyone left the great hall.

They celebrated the Feast of St. Sormas at the holding, but it was a somber feast. Only Lavastine and his men-at-arms ate at the banquet tables, served grudgingly but without protest by the servants of Geoffrey and Aldegund. Geoffrey was confined to the tower cell and Aldegund and her retinue to the loft upstairs.

In the morning Lavastine allowed the women to leave with only enough food for the fiveday’s journey east into Wendish lands, where lay the estate of Lady Alberga, young Aldegund’s mother. It was a pathetic procession that set out—Aldegund, the infant, and her two kinswomen, as well as the wet nurse and only two serving-women. How could anyone be expected to know she was a lady, with such a paltry retinue? Aldegund was not even allowed to keep her own horses but had to ride on the back of a donkey.

Geoffrey was not well enough to travel; the wounds he had sustained from the hounds were bad, although likely not mortal. He was left in the care of frater, with orders that he vacate the holding as soon as he could travel.

Lavastine appointed a chatelain from among his own serving-men, a man born of free parents who had placed himself in the count’s service in hopes of gaining something more than the youngest son’s share of his parents’ farmstead. If Sabella’s rebellion turned out to her advantage, this man might well find himself steward of a good holding. If it did not …

But as Alain watched wagons of provisions trundling out of the holding—vegetables and legumes taken from the storerooms, shields, good spearheads and strong wooden shafts, a few swords, old helmets and new, cloth for tunics and tabards, milled grain, leather, and five small coffers filled with the silver and gold that constituted both Geoffrey’s movable wealth, brought to the marriage as his groom’s gift, and Aldegund’s portion of her family’s wealth—he saw how Sabella improved her chances of winning the throne by this victory.

They marched south through the borderlands that had once separated Wendar and Varre and which were still lands that had as many hands in one pot as the other. At two holdings they found enthusiastic support, and Lavastine took on twenty-four more men as soldiers, though they marched under their own captains.

But over the next ten days they took over three holdings whose noble lords and ladies professed loyalty to King Henry. Not one of these holdings, after they saw Lavastine’s retinue and heard his blunt speech, resisted. All of them kept their lives but lost fully half of their movable goods. Lavastine’s supply train grew longer and longer, and the five coffers of silver and gold and gems grew to nine.

Soon they reached lands loyal to the duke of Varingia, and they turned westward, back into Varre, to find and join Sabella’s army.

“So were Lady Sabella’s followers stripped of their lands and wealth after her rebellion failed eight years ago,” said Master Rodlin one night when he came back from tending to the horses. He was obviously deeply troubled; otherwise he rarely spoke to Alain and certainly not to confide in him.

Alain had fed and watered the hounds and tied them under a wagon for the night. There they lay, five of the eight who remained—Fear, Bliss, Ardent, Steadfast, and Good Cheer, their eyes open and unwinking, staring at him and at the snapping fire. Now that Joy was dead, old Terror slept in Lavastine’s tent, and Alain let Rage and Sorrow run unleashed beside him because he could now trust them to do as he wished and leave people alone.

Alain wanted to speak. He wanted to say, “Is it any fairer when Henry’s supporters are divested of lands or riches that have been held in their family for generations?”

But he did not speak. He dared not. They would think he sympathized with King Henry.

He did not. He knew nothing of Henry except the name, not truly. Nor did he sympathize with Sabella. How could he, knowing what he did of Biscop Antonia’s actions and Sabella’s willing complicity in them?

He had a great deal of time to think, and think he did. Of course foremost in his heart was God, Our Lady and Lord, and after them his own kin, his father Henri and Aunt Bel and his cousins. But he had left his family far behind, in distance if not in his heart.

It was said often enough in Osna village that Count Lavastine was a godly man, asking fair taxes in exchange for the protection he offered the little port. Because so many merchants lived there, Osna was a target for raiders from all sides, sea and land.

But the protection of the counts of Lavas had served the village well over the years since the emporium there was established in the time of the Emperor Taillefer. No freeholder in Osna village except those who managed their fortunes very badly indeed had ever been forced to indenture themselves in exchange for payment of outrageous rents or taxes. That was the sort of thing the noble lords did in Salia, for they were very greedy there. Not one soul in Osna village had ever had to sell one of their children into slavery in order to meet their debts or taxes; but Salian slaves, children born to free or once-free parents, were brought to Osna every summer and sold to families in the lands nearby or shipped onward, to ports farther east.

So that must be his duty. It was the only thing he could sort out from the impossible confusion of his thoughts. He would stay beside Lavastine, as much as he could, as much as he was allowed to. Was that the sign the Lady had meant for him? Was it Her hand that had brought him friendship with Lavastine’s hounds, which in its turn allowed him to remain close to the count?

It must be so. Agius thought he was Lavastine’s bastard, but why would a noble lord send his bastard off with a freeborn man and not put the child directly into the monastery, if that was his intent?

Biscop Antonia perhaps thought he was the fruit of a Midsummer’s Eve seduction, gotten on a human girl by the shade of an elvish prince. But how could a dead creature, elvish or not, get a living woman pregnant?

And the Eika prince had misunderstood his words completely and thought he was King Henry’s son!

No. He could just imagine what Aunt Bel would say about such fantasies! “The Lady and Lord act for a reason,” she would say. She was a good, practical woman, and to her, as to the deacon of Osna village and the other householders, God worked in practical ways and rewarded those who were faithful, hardworking, and pragmatic. Of course Aunt Bel knew that God worked in the world and that angels might light in modest homes or saints walk abroad to save the weary and forsaken. She would not doubt Alain’s rose, or the vision he had seen at the old Dariyan fort.

But she would expect Alain to be made humble by these experiences, not proud.

“Why would these things happen,” she would ask, “if there is not a task for you to accomplish, lad?”

It was the only answer that made any sense to him: He was the only one who knew and believed Lavastine rode to war not because he supported Sabella but because he was ensorcelled.

He did not know what else to do but watch over him. That must be his task.

2

WOLFHERE returned from Freelas after fourteen days. He brought bitter news.

Eika raiders had laid waste to the monastery at Sheep’s Head and then sailed eastward to join an army of their kind. Already, as rumor told the story, this very army had besieged the great port city of Gent, gateway to the rich heartland of Wendar and the birthplace of King Henry’s great-grandfather, Duke and later King Henry, the first of that name. In Gent’s cathedral the first Henry’s son, known as the elder Arnulf, had married his seven-year-old daughter Adelheid to Louis, the five-year-old child king of Varre. The elder Arnulf had, of course, made himself their regent. For good measure, he had betrothed Louis’ infant sister Berengaria to his heir, Henry’s father, the younger Arnulf. That King Louis of Varre had died young, and without leaving an heir, was simply the Lady’s and Lord’s Grace in granting fortune to Arnulf’s house. That Berengaria had died in childbed some years later only sealed the issue. To the Wendish kings, Gent itself symbolized the passage of Varre’s noble house and its right to rule Varre into Wendish hands.

“We must ride east,” said Wolfhere, “to Gent, to see for ourselves the truth of these rumors. King Henry dares not ride north unless he must, not now. There are too many whispers about the doings of his sister, Lady Sabella. Some even say she is speaking rebellion outright. What a bitter thing it is, that she should cause so much trouble now, when we need our armies so badly here in the north.”