The Gathering Storm

  The clouds drew in darkly. A chill wind blew up from the south as a mist began to fall, trailing off at intervals only to spatter down once again, inconstant and irritating.

  “Another one!” shouted the cleric riding at the front of their party. He’d been chosen for this duty because he could speak Wendish. “Ho! Well met! Are there any folk living here?”

  As they rode into a new clearing, they saw a scattering of huts, an empty chicken coop, a small roofed paddock, a trough half full of water, and an abandoned plow sledge. Four stakes pounded into the ground at the four corners of the paddock bore animal skulls, one sheep, two horned cattle, and something that looked remarkably like a dog with a patch of skin and pale fur hanging from the muzzle. Dried plants had been woven into the eye sockets, and a tangle of tiny carved wooden figures dangled down from the gaping jaw on a leather strip.

  Rage barked once. Sorrow whined.

  “Some witch has sullied her hands with magic workings and amulets,” said Arcod. “No wonder they were struck down by God’s anger.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Alain. “Perhaps they were only trying to protect themselves.”

  “Then they should have called for a deacon or a frater, not this unholy weaving and binding.”

  Their party did not tarry but rode past nervously. There was not even a carrion crow in sight. Alain heard no birds at all. Once the clearing lay behind them, Ildoin looked back at Arcod, who was riding at the back of the group, before judging it safe to speak to Alain.

  “I’m glad your hounds are with us. It fair gives me the creeps, it’s so dead and quiet here. I wonder where all the farming folk have gone.”

  “Fled, most like,” said Alain. “Gone to find kinfolk who will take them in. If anyone will take them in. Didn’t you pass this way just a fortnight ago?”

  “In rain and wind,” agreed Ildoin, scratching his stubbly chin. Like the other clerics, he was letting his beard grow rather than struggle to keep it shaven on the march. “We were housed and fed hospitably enough. By Vespers we should come to a little river where there’s a village. They put us up for one night. When we came north, the murrain hadn’t reached them, although we brought them rumor of it from what we’d seen on our journey south of the river.”

  “I wonder where the birds have flown,” said Alain, “and what they’re so afraid of that they’ve stopped singing.”

  The village had a tiny wood church, a mill, and six houses in addition to the dock where a ferryboat was tied up, but it had no people and not even dogs or chickens. Every door had a wreath of plants and carved amulets hanging above the threshold, but these protective measures had not spared the inhabitants. There was no sign of any living thing.

  They hurried through the commons and down to the riverside. The hounds were skittish, sniffing the air as though they sensed danger but could not place its locus. The sturdy ferry rope should have ridden taut between the deeply driven posts on either side of the narrow river, but it had been cut. The near end flapped in the current, dancing in water running high with spring rain and distant snow melt. Alain dismounted and drew the cut line up to shore. The end had frayed with the beating it had taken in the river, leaving a sodden mass of splitting rope in his hands. To cross the river they would have to row, or swim. He examined the silent village while Arcod sent two pairs of men to reconnoiter. The hounds would not sit. Rage growled low in her throat. Sorrow whined nervously.

  “There’s a trench dug out there.” Ildoin pointed to a patchwork of fields beyond the outermost house. “It looks fresh.”

  “Mayhap there’s a shovel to be found—” said Alain.

  “No need to probe so closely,” said Arcod. “You and I and the lad will go. The rest can stay here to watch over the horses.”

  Leaving the other clerics in the road, Alain, Ildoin, and Arcod walked out across four unplowed fields laid down in long strips, to the fifth field, which was still stubbled with the remains of last autumn’s wheat. The smell hit before they got close enough to see what the long mound of fresh dirt concealed. The stench of burned flesh was made worse by the stink of putrefaction. Ildoin gagged as all color washed out of his face. Arcod covered his nose with the tip of his sleeve.

  “Rage! Come!” Alain commanded, but she sat down at the edge of the field and whined, head cocked in the direction of the men waiting by the horses.

  “It is the murrain,” said Arcod as Sorrow got the top layer of dirt dug away. The smell of burned flesh billowed up from the trench. Sorrow nosed among the tangled, scorched legs of sheep with strips of skin still hanging from bone. The poor sick creatures had been burned in haste and buried before the job was properly finished. But the hound scratched, seeking another scent that teased and eluded him. As the dirt spilled down on either side, maggots swarmed out of the earth, a writhing mass of them that scattered to safety and vanished back into the disturbed earth. At the sight of them, Ildoin staggered back, fell to his knees, and vomited onto the ground.

  Sorrow uncovered a boot. It still had a foot in it. Sorrow nosed at it, then gripped the leather toe in his teeth and threw it sideways. It tumbled over to reveal a gaping putrid wound where the foot had been hacked off at the ankle. Bile churned in Alain’s stomach, but he forced himself to probe for the rest of the body. No person deserved to be thrown out like rubbish.

  “God help us,” said Arcod, looking stricken and white. He hung back, unwilling to get any closer.

  “I can dig better if you would give me your staff,” said Alain. “I don’t really want to dig for the rest of the corpse with my bare hands.”

  Arcod seemed not to have heard him. “What manner of brute chops up a man as if he were a cow?” He was shaking so hard that his death grip on the staff was the only thing keeping him upright.

  Ildoin was still retching, hands gripped over his stomach as he moaned. He stared at the mutilated foot. “Oh, God.”

  Rage barked and with a nasty growl padded back toward the village before stopping short, hackles raised.

  Alain rose, suddenly alert. “I pray you, Brother Arcod. Such brutes might still be lurking nearby. We should leave this place. Now.”

  “Now!”

  The strange voice came from a distance, muffled but imperative.

  “Who calls?” Arcod started around to stare back toward the village, raising his staff.

  Too late.

  An arrow buried its point in the neck of one of the clerics waiting on the road. He fell backward in a graceful curve that bent, and bent, time drawn out so that one breath seemed to hold for an hour or a year, and then his body collapsed all at once to hit the ground limp and dead. The other men shouted and grabbed for staves and short swords, but the bandits had the advantage of surprise and cover.

  The whistle of arrows made a horrifying accompaniment to one who stood so far away as a helpless witness to the massacre. It happened so fast. A second man went down as he turned to see what the shouting was about. A third tried to mount but had five arrows in his back before he settled into the saddle. Two clerics ducked behind horses and tugged on the reins, running toward the river, but a swarm of men, a score at least, tumbled out of the mill and the church to pursue them. Others took aim from the tower and the upper story of the mill.

  A pair of bandits standing on the road gestured toward the three men stranded out by the incriminating trench.

  “Where are the rest of our brothers?” gasped Ildoin. “We heard no cry of alarm.”

  “They’re dead or captured.” Alain ripped the staff out of Arcod’s hands, who stood like a fish out of water, mouth agape, stunned. “Take Brother Ildoin and run for the trees. Get back to the manor. Alert the lord, let him send out men at arms—”

  Arcod did not move. Six men brandishing weapons headed at a trot toward Alain and his companions.

  “Go! Someone must live to tell the tale! Go!”

  “What of you, Brother Alain?”

  “I’ll try to give you time to escape.”

&nb
sp; Still, Arcod hesitated.

  Alain shoved him toward the trees. “Go!”

  One staggering step led to another, and a third. Arcod caught Ildoin’s sleeve and yanked him up.

  “Run, Brother!” he wept. “Run!”

  They tripped and stumbled over the trench and sprinted across the fields toward the woods. Alain hadn’t the luxury to watch them go, to make sure they reached the woodland and weren’t killed by some other lurking bandits. He had to face the enemy.

  One of the clerics made it out onto the dock before being cut down. Miraculously, only one of the horses was injured. Now, having won the valuable mounts and pack animals, the company of bandits seemed to lose their sense of purpose. One man, swathed in a cloak, kept bending down over the fresh corpses with a flask in his hand. The others milled about stripping the bodies and emptying the saddlebags—except for the six men who loped across the fields toward Alain.

  He steadied the staff in both hands and whistled the hounds up next to him. Against archery, the hounds would perish. But he knew they would never abandon him, and after all this time he doubted they would outlive him. It was strange to feel so calm.

  He had to give the others enough of a head start.

  “Down.” Whining, Rage and Sorrow lay down on either side of him. “I pray you, Lord of Mercy, Lady of Justice, let my comrades escape.”

  He lifted the staff and held it horizontally above his head, gripping the haft with both hands, to show he meant no threat to them. The bandits slowed, and two put arrows to the strings of their bows, but he could see that besides these two bows the men carried the crudest of weapons—staffs sharpened to a point at one end, spears tipped with stone blades.

  “Well met, brothers!” he cried. “Thank the Lord and Lady that you have rescued me from these prating clerics!”

  He took two steps forward before giving the hounds a second command. “Stay.”

  He kept walking.

  The six men stopped, four of them bunched and the other two—with the bows—hanging to either side as flankers.

  “I pray you will let me join your brotherhood,” Alain continued as he approached them, staff still held above his head, his pace measured and his voice clear. “I have longed to escape my life of servitude to the church.”

  “Come no closer!”

  He could not tell which spoke, although at this distance their ragged garb and pinched faces were easily visible. One—no more than a lad by the look of his skinny legs and narrow hips—ran back to the village while the others kept weapons raised.

  “Come no closer,” repeated the leader among them, a dark-haired man wearing a torn tunic, filthy leggings, and bearing the scars of shackles on his wrists. He had warts on his nose. “Wait there, or we’ll shoot you.”

  “Truly, you’re right to trust no man. It’s a hard world, as I’ve seen myself. It seems that those who have, hoard to themselves, and the rest of us are left to fight over the bones.”

  Some of the men nodded in agreement; the leader kicked the one nearest him. “Stop that, you dolt. We’ll see what Father Benignus has to say. He is the master of life and death.”

  Said so flatly, in the tone of a man weary beyond measure who has seen such things that he no longer doubts the power of evil, the statement made Alain shiver. There was about these men a choking miasma that could not be seen or heard or smelled but only felt, and not only because they had blood on their hands from their most recent killing.

  “Is he so?” Alain knew he had to stay calm in order to convince them that he was a fugitive eager to join their company. “I’m always happy to make the acquaintance of a man with power.”

  “Here he comes,” said the leader. He scratched at his nose, and then his fingers found other work tugging at his straggly beard and twining the wispy hair between his fingers. Father Benignus rode a fine mare fitted out with well-made bridle and saddle but his clothing was no richer than that worn by his band of cutthroats except for the handsome leather gloves that concealed his hands and a gray cloak tied around his shoulders. His cleric’s robe, cut away for riding, was stained with blood and other, unidentifiable substances, the long sleeves were frayed, and the hem was ragged. The boots on his feet had the scuffs and discoloration of ill use or, perhaps, leather buried and disinterred after too many days beneath the dirt. He wore a broad-brimmed hat that shaded his face although it wasn’t sunny enough to warrant such a covering. A gauzy veil, like that worn by beekeepers, had been sewn to the curve of the brim, and its filmy drape made it impossible for Alain see his face.

  He pulled up but did not dismount as the leader spoke to him in a voice too low for Alain to hear. This mysterious creature might have him struck down with a single word, yet Alain faced him without any sense of fear although certainly a sickly air clung to Father Benignus rather like a halo reversed that emanates with the stink of evil rather than goodness. He tossed the staff to the ground. Behind him, the hounds did not move, awaiting his command.

  “Your face is familiar to me,” said Father Benignus finally, addressing Alain. His voice was a soft, slurred tenor. “What is your name? Where are you from?”

  “I am called Alain. I come from Osna village, a free town under the protection of the counts of Lavas.”

  “The hounds,” said Benignus. The twitch of his shoulders suggested surprised recognition. As he raised his head to examine Rage and Sorrow, Alain caught a glimpse of a pale, mottled face, but as quickly the veil slipped back into place. “I have seen those hounds before in the company of a lad who was a prisoner of Biscop Antonia. He was a companion to the heretic frater who was called Brother Agius. Are you that boy?”

  “I am that one.”

  Although two men had arrows trained on him, his hands were steady. If he died, he would cross to the Other Side where Adica was waiting for him there where the meadow flowers bloom. But his mantle of calm was beginning to burn away under the itch of curiosity.

  “What are you, Father Benignus? How is it that our paths have crossed before?”

  “You will not recognize me. I was cursed, used ill by those powerful enough to discard me when I was of no more use to them. Their indifference and greed scarred me. But I have not forgotten what they taught me. Thus you find me here.” He gestured toward the dead village, the silent woodland, the fresh trench, and the men who, done with their scavenging, made ready to ride with their newfound gains. “I journey now in better and more honest company than I found myself with before among the most noble courtiers and holy church-folk, back when I believed that the Lord and Lady would protect me from evil. Bartholomew says you were a prisoner of these clerics. Is that true?”

  Alain smiled. “If it were not true, would I say so now? You have me at your mercy.”

  The noise the other man made was difficult to interpret, especially since Alain could not see his expression.

  “Bring him,” said Father Benignus to Bartholomew. “But kill him, and the hounds, if he tries to escape.”

  2

  THE wound ought to have killed him, but he still breathed. His chest rose and fell in a shallow, erratic rhythm. In that first awful moment she had actually been able to see shattered ribs and the dark fist of his heart pulsing, but already the jagged tear filmed over as the body knit itself together. The wound was so raw and so deep that she feared touching it would only break it open, but she cut strips from his tunic in any case to make a pad and lightly cover the gash. She washed around the wound with river water, but the cold shock did not revive him.

  Finally, she risked stepping away to gather sticks and rushes from the brush that grew alongside the river. She hadn’t got far when she heard the heavy tread of one of the griffins, and she dashed back to Sanglant just in time to find the female griffin stalking close, lifting a claw to rend his helpless body in two. She leaped between them, raising her sword.

  “Mine!” she cried. “He is mine! Don’t touch him!”

  The griffin huffed in surprise and retreated. Two feat
hers shook loose from its wings as it backed away, and these she grabbed and tucked into her quiver. The fire she had first called hadn’t entirely died away. Bits of burned grass spun in the air. A fine ash settled on her clothing and hair before the last of it was dissipated by the wind.

  At last her hands stopped shaking enough that she could bind rushes and grass and twigs into little torches. After she laid a sixth torch beside her, she seated herself next to Sanglant. The griffins prowled at the edge of her vision.

  When she concentrated, emptying her mind of all that distracted it—and that was quite a bit—she could believe that she saw the glamour of the spell woven into his flesh and blood and bones. His mother had bound a great working into his body to protect him from harm and to grant him unnatural powers of healing. Now, as in the past, he would suffer agony because of it, but he would also, probably, survive as he had survived a half dozen times before from fatal wounds taken in battle. In the realm of Jedu she had lived through death a dozen times, dealt at his hands. She had seen him struck down.

  Yet this was not the reunion she had expected.

  The sun set. The sky turned red-orange and darkened to a hazy purple before the first stars appeared with the waxing quarter moon already near the zenith. A few clouds concealed patches of the sky, but she could see most of the span of the heavens, the most beautiful sight in all of creation. Had it only been seven or eight days since she had left Verna, torn away by her kinfolk? Yet what she had seen of the landscape surrounding her tallied in no way with any place she had ever visited—and she had traveled more widely than most: Aosta, Kartiako, Aquila, Salia, Varre, and Wendar. According to her father’s lore, broad grasslands lay east beyond the border counties, many months’ ride into the wilderness. Sanglant could not possibly have traveled so far in seven or eight days.