The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

All this Hanna saw in glimpses, shapes lost in darkness. Dust swathed the sky behind them, veiling half the sky. It was, horribly, a new moon, so dark that the eerie glow of dozens of fires within the city walls, darkened and intensified by the pall of dust, made the place glow like a furnace, the forge of the ancient gods who had once ruled here. Maybe they had returned to wreak their vengeance at last. Maybe God had punished the interlopers.

She took a turn at the cart, pushing until she thought her hands would fall off, teeth gritted as she followed the bobbing lamp held by Jehan. No one had ridden the mounts yet. Without saying as much, they all agreed to save the strength of the poor beasts for later. None of them ate. Hanna wasn’t sure if they had provisions, even water. Her throat ached.

The night wore on endlessly as they took turns pushing the cart and, later, spelling themselves with a ride on the mule. Soon they left the refugees behind and made their solitary way along the deserted road. After a time, the ground sloped up. They had reached the foothills. Pausing partway up the first slope to catch their breath, they all turned to look back the way they had come. Fortunatus pulled the blanket back so that Sister Rosvita could see and held a lamp aloft beside her.

Darre was burning, not just the city itself but the plain all around, the glow of bonfires where people camped out and, closer in to the walls, lines of funeral pyres. Most strangely, to the southwest, in the mountains, the air was spitting sparks. She shuddered. The earth rumbled and stilled beneath her feet.

“Where do we go?” asked Fortunatus. “We can’t cross the Alfar Mountains this late in the year.”

Silence greeted his words. Even Hanna did not know what to suggest. She and Fortunatus had led them this far, but they had come to the end of a rope spun from impulsiveness, courage, and loyalty. Once Hugh discovered in what direction they had fled, he would pursue them.

She shivered as a cold wind drifted down from the highlands.

Rosvita stirred, stretching her limbs. “Listen,” she said in her croak of a voice. “Listen.”

They listened, but they heard only the night wind. Even the noise of the city had fallen behind them.

“We must go where they cannot follow, and pray that we will be given shelter.” With some effort she raised herself on her elbows. Her hair had gone utterly white, startling even through the grime of the dungeon. “We must go to the Convent of St. Ekatarina. Mother Obligatia helped us once before. If she still lives, I pray that she will aid us again.”

4

ON that morning when Hathumod and her companions left Hersford Monastery, the whispering hadn’t gone away with them. For days and weeks after they left, as autumn lingered and winter gathered its strength, their heretical words endured like a ghostly presence among the inhabitants of the monastery and estate. Doubt haunted the monks and the laborers. Many scoffed, but others whispered of signs and miracles, of a phoenix, of lions, and of seven innocent and holy sleepers lost beneath a hill.

Although Father Ortulfus delivered more than one furious sermon on the dangers of heresy, even he could be found at odd intervals consulting books in the library or standing lost in contemplation at the edge of the forest, seeming to stare, as Sorrow had that night, at an unseen threat—or toward a promise.

XII

A CALF IN WINTER’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE

1

IT was a dreary ride in horrible cold weather from Hersford Monastery to Autun. Ivar lost count of the passing days as their escort prodded them grimly along. Once they were forced to spend a week locked up in a freezing outbuilding at a convent because ice floes made a river crossing impassable. Once Prior Ratbold came down with such a bad fever that they had to bide in the stables at an isolated monastic estate while the prior thrashed in delirium, but by the fifth day he sweated out whatever evil humors plagued him and within two weeks felt strong enough to set out again. No one else got sick.

At Dibenvanger Cloister, Sigfrid almost got his tongue cut out a second time when he squeezed through a gap between boards—he was the only one small enough to fit—and sneaked into the novices’ house to preach for the whole evening before Prior Ratbold noticed he was missing.

“A fox among the chickens!” the furious prior roared. “The only way to stop him is to make sure he can’t speak!”

The mild-mannered abbot of Dibenvanger Cloister dissuaded Ratbold from any violent acts and sent them on their way the next morning, but not before coming himself at dawn to counsel the wayward prisoners.

“Do not despair, friends,” he said quietly. “You are not alone.”

These mysterious words lifted Ivar’s spirits as the days wore on.

Yet when at last they descended into the Rhowne Valley, a fit of melancholy swept over him. The painful anticipation wore him out. How would Biscop Constance rule at their trial? Would she be lenient or severe? Would they face excommunication? Even death? It seemed impossible to hold onto resolve through bad times as well as good.

The Rhowne Valley was rich country, well populated with prosperous holdings and verdant estates. Even blanketed by snow the roads and fields had a tidy look to them, well traveled and well tended. Biscop Constance shepherded a thriving flock.

A bell hung under a thatched awning by the ferry crossing. Prior Ratbold rang the bell. The rest of them dismounted and led the horses around to keep them warm while, on the other side, the ferryman emerged from his cottage, surveyed their distant party, went back into his house, and came out a while later to haul the ferry across by a cable strung over the broad river.

It took three crossings to get them all across. While he waited, Ivar brooded.

Gerulf and Dedi went over with the first load. The two Lions had developed a friendly banter with the monks who were their guards; three of the monks had been in the Lions before they’d retired from war and the world and dedicated their lives to the church. Despite their misgivings about the heretical charges set on Gerulf’s and Dedi’s heads, they still respected former comrades. It was its own form of kinship, based not on family ties but on shared service to the king. They’d fought, seen comrades fall, suffered and marched and remained faithful.

Prior Ratbold, a younger son of a noble house, had no such reason to treat his charges kindly. His family had no connection to any of theirs, and their families weren’t important enough to matter to him. To Ratbold, they were sinful heretics, nothing else.

Maybe Ivar’s sister Rosvita could have helped him, had she wished to, but she wasn’t here. And his father had long since contrived to get rid of him. The old familiar desolation washed over him as he clutched the railing of the ferry in the last group to go across. Brownish-green waters swirled beyond his boots. A big branch thudded against the side of the ferry, rocking them and disturbing the horses, before the river’s grip carried it on.

Everyone had deserted him. His father had never cared for him, not really, and he’d been an infant when his mother had died. To his brothers and sisters, he was a nuisance, the red-haired baby who got in their way. Hanna had ridden away to become an Eagle. Liath had tempted him and then abandoned him for the embrace of a prince. Yet his life had been good before Hugh had come to Heart’s Rest. He had a memory of how much he had once hated Hugh, a feeling like holding a burning blade in your hand. Hate had felt good once. Now his hate streamed away with the river’s water, flowing downriver to the sea.