The Gathering Storm

  “So he has,” agreed Constance without a glimmer of sarcasm. “I hope you will accept some wine, Captain, after such a long journey in these hot days.”

  “That I will, gladly and with thanks.”

  “Captain Tammus will show you the way.”

  Ivar remained where he was as the two captains retreated to the doors and filed out with Ulric’s escort behind them.

  All but one.

  As they passed through the doors, Ulric asked Tammus a flood of questions, while behind him the second of his hooded attendants sidestepped without missing a beat and by Ulric’s misdirection managed to remain inside the chamber when the doors were shut behind the other men.

  The stranger cast back his hood and strode forward to kneel before her chair, the movement accomplished so decisively that Ivar had no time to respond before it was done.

  He could have knifed her, but instead he grasped her hand as a supplicant.

  “Your Grace, I have only a few moments to speak with you. I pray you, heed me.”

  She studied him, gaze shifting over his face and figure, and nodded to indicate that she recognized him. “Lord Geoffrey of Lavas. How does your daughter, the young countess, fare?”

  “Ill, Your Grace. Lavas county and all the western lands fare ill, and have done so ever since you were deposed. God are angry. This is our punishment: we suffer drought and untimely rains. Refugees fleeing north from the Salian wars confound us. Bandits have made the roads unsafe. There will be famine this winter. We hear tales of plague and murrain, although thank the Lord and Lady we’ve seen none of that in our lands, pray God that we be spared. There’s even talk that my sweet Lavrentia is not in truth the rightful heir!”

  “How can that be?”

  “Nay, nay, I make no mind of it. It’s only the idle talk of desperate folk.” With a shaking hand he drew the Circle of Unity at his breast. “Another scourge strikes at us from the sea. The Eika have returned! They harry in Salia along the coast. We hear rumors that they are moving inland and north. I pray you, Your Grace. Lady Sabella usurped your rightful place, granted to you by King Henry, the true king. We will support you.”

  “Do I understand that Captain Ulric is your ally in this?”

  “As well as he is able. He was always your true and loyal servant, but he must protect his men.”

  “Yes, he cannot fight Sabella and Conrad with only a single troop of skirmishers. Yet my position is weak, Lord Geoffrey, as you must observe. I am crippled. I rest here as Sabella’s prisoner. It will prove difficult to throw off this yoke. Conrad is a powerful ally, and his ambitions do not accord with mine.”

  Geoffrey had not yet let go of Constance’s hand. “So you see us, Your Grace. My wife’s kinfolk have remained loyal to Henry through many difficulties, but now Lady Sabella has taken my wife’s two children as hostage in Autun.”

  “Even Count Lavrentia?”

  “She remains in Lavas because of the rumors—”

  “Which rumors?”

  He clenched his hands, jaw tight; voice cold. “That the rightful heir lives and waits, wandering in the wilderness until all Lavas cries out for his return. It is said there were miracles—but it’s all lies! Even Lady Sabella sees how precarious the situation is, so Lavrentia remains with me in Lavas while Aldegund and our sons serve Sabella in Autun. Yet Varre suffers under Sabella’s rule. Lavas suffers. And I dare not act against Sabella or Conrad unless we are certain we have sufficient backing to win.”

  She considered him somberly. “I have no means to communicate with those who might support me, and I have no army—only bands of faithful soldiers who need a commander in order to act in concert. What news of Princess Theophanu?”

  “I hear rumor she bides in Gent. I have also heard a rumor that Prince Sanglant rode into the wilderness to raise a great army of savages in order to wrest Wendar from her, or to restore it to his father. But rumor is a fickle lover, as I know well. I do not know what to believe. They say Henry was crowned emperor in Aosta.”

  “Emperor!” For the space of three breaths Constance was too shocked, or angered, to speak. “Surely he commands a great enough army that he might come to our rescue rather than chase dreams in the south!”

  “If only he knew our plight.”

  “If only. I sent an Eagle, but none returned. I have no messengers to send, Lord Geoffrey. You must send one of your people to Gent.”

  “Captain Ulric has offered me one of his men-at-arms as a messenger, Your Grace, but I have come to beg you to write a missive yourself and send one of your people with the soldier, with a message penned in your own hand and sealed with your own ring. Otherwise how can the princess believe us? She must know what Sabella and Conrad hatch between them. She will believe any messages of peace or war to be a trap laid to ambush her.”

  “Emperor,” whispered Constance. “Whether this bodes well or ill I cannot say.” Her gaze had strayed. Now she squeezed Geoffrey’s hand and let it drop, indicating that he should rise. “They will look for you, and if you are discovered here, all is lost. I can write a message, and perhaps, if we are fortunate and God favor our suit, I can smuggle it out to you before you depart in the morning. Captain Tammus has strict directions from Sabella to count our number each evening, as you will see, because Sabella fears precisely what you suggest—that one of these who swear loyalty to me will escape to take news of my plight to my kinfolk. I dare not risk it. The punishment is severe, as we have seen to our sorrow.”

  “Punishment?”

  “I sent a novice to carry word of my whereabouts to Princess Theophanu. She was brought back ten days later and dumped in my courtyard, mutilated and quite dead. Captain Tammus promised the same fate to any other member of my entourage who attempts escape.”

  “I’ll go,” said Ivar.

  Lord Geoffrey started around, as startled as if he had forgotten Ivar was there.

  Constance smiled grimly. “So you have said many times, Brother Ivar. Yet by what means might you succeed when poor Sister Bona died so horribly?”

  “They will not hunt down a dead man, Your Grace.”

  “A dead man!” Geoffrey’s skin washed so pale that Ivar feared the man might faint, as though Ivar’s words had, for him, a deeper and more pernicious meaning.

  “A dead man cannot carry my message, Brother Ivar. What do you propose?”

  “We are prisoners, too, Your Grace. I have considered our situation at length, but it is only recently while in conference with Sister Nanthild that it has occurred to me that we may hold the means in our hands to smuggle out one brave soul. With Lord Geoffrey’s plea, it seems the time may be right.”

  “Sister Nanthild is a wise woman, it’s true, but only God can restore the dead to life once the soul has left the body.”

  “We need only the appearance of death, Your Grace.”

  “I see.” Her gaze held him, and he looked away first, because she saw too deeply and too well. “You are willing to take the risk, Brother Ivar? Knowing that you leave your compatriots behind, under my care, and that it is possible you will never see them again?”

  “I am. These are desperate times, Your Grace.”

  “And you chafe in these bonds, whereas your friends are content enough to rest here after the troubles they have endured. Very well, Brother Ivar.” She held out a hand, stained with ink and heavy with calluses where she gripped her quill, and he knelt before her and kissed her biscop’s ring. “I, too, am desperate. Lord Geoffrey, you must go. Appoint a rendezvous and have your man wait there for five days. If Brother Ivar has not arrived there in that time, he will not come at all. That is all I can promise.”

  That evening Sister Nanthild brewed a concoction of valerian, pennyroyal, and two drops of a milky liquid she called “akreva’s sap.” In the morning, Ivar screwed up his courage and drank the potion in one gulp as Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod huddled next to him, weeping and grimacing.

  “You must take care.” Hathumod’s nose always got brigh
t red-when she cried. “I can’t bear to think of losing you, Ivar, but I know you are doing what must be done. There isn’t anyone else the biscop can trust.”

  “Many she can trust,” said Sigfrid, “but none as strong. Ivar must go.”

  Ermanrich wiped his tears and said nothing, only held Ivar’s hand and, after a moment, walked with him to the fields so that the convulsions would be witnessed by as many guards as possible.

  Ivar hoed for a while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He kept waiting, knowing each tremor that rippled through his muscles would be followed by a harder one. Once a shudder passed through him with such force that he dropped the hoe. When he bent to pick it up, he lost his balance, pitched forward onto the ground, and sucked up a quantity of dusty soil and a shriveled weed just an instant before hooked out of the earth.

  “Ivar!” shrieked Hathumod.

  He spasmed. A hot flood of urine spilled along his legs, soaking into the ground. He tried to rise, but his arms were useless; they would not respond.

  “Plague!” shouted Ermanrich, weeping again.

  Shouts rang in the distance. Shudders passed through his frame in waves, strong at first and then each one receding as his vision blurred and hearing faded.

  In a waking dream he watched the sky pass overhead, a pale blue almost drained white by the heat of the sun. One cloud spilled past and was lost. He was awake and aware, but not really awake, still dreaming, because he could not move at all, could not truly even feel his own limbs or the rise and fall of his chest. Maybe this was what death felt like. Maybe he was dead, and the gamble had failed.

  The ground juddered beneath him as the heavens rolled past above, and after a long contemplative interlude it occurred to him that he was lying in the cart that made runs between the village and the palisade. The shroud covering his body had slipped off his face, and the sun beat down hard. He’d be burned; he knew that much. Sun always burned him if he didn’t keep covered, but he couldn’t move to cover himself and there was some reason he ought not to. Some secret. He had a secret he was keeping.

  “Whist! There! What’s that, Maynard?”

  “A whole cavalcade. Some mighty noble, I wager.”

  “Must be the lady duchess.”

  “Ai, yes, so it must.” Maynard hawked and spat. “So. For her.”

  “Careful. She’d as like ride her horse over you as spare you for the mines, so they say.”

  The cart jounced over the ruts that made the road as the Garters pulled their vehicle aside so the noble procession could pass unimpeded. He heard the clamor of the approach, hooves, talk, a smattering of song, and the rumble of wagon wheels, all wafting over him as the summer breeze did, felt and forgotten and beyond him, now, who was dead. Or so he remembered.

  Sparks of memory clotted into recollection. He was carrying a message for Biscop Constance, written on a tiny strip of parchment that they’d rolled up in a bit of oiled sheepskin and which he now concealed within his cheek like a squirrel storing nuts against the coming winter dearth. He was only pretending to be dead.

  That was a relief!

  “Is that a corpse you’re hauling?” a voice asked.

  “Don’t come no closer. One of the folk in St. Asella’s died a nasty death, and they feared it’s some manner of plague brought up from the south with the soldiers.”

  “God save us! Have they all fallen sick?”

  “Nay, none other. It might only be demons that chewed away the poor lad’s vitals. But they’re taking no chances so we’re to haul him out to the woods where there’s an old church abandoned in days gone. Our deacon’ll say the rites over him there.”

  “Let me see him!”

  This new voice belonged to a woman. Ivar recognized that imperious tone, rankling and sour. A face loomed to one side. It was a woman past her prime, mounted on horseback, seen out of the corner of his vision and after a lengthy gasp of shade—for she blocked the sun—the light blasted him again and he would have blinked but he could not.

  “He’s not breathing, my lady duchess,” said another person. “Ought we to turn aside?”

  “Nay, I do not fear the plague. We’ve had no word of it in this region. No doubt some other ill felled him. Elfshot, maybe.”

  “True enough, my lady. We’ve heard many a tale of shades haunting the woods in greater numbers than ever, bold as you please and afflicting the common folk who do fear even to seek wood and game though they’ve need of it. Do you suppose that’s what felled this young fellow?”

  “It might have.”

  With the easy stream of their conversation flowing past, his thoughts began to coalesce into proper order, although their sluggish pace frustrated him. The Garters would dump him in the wood at an old oak tree where the old gods had once demanded sacrifice. A chapel dedicated to Saint Leoba stood there now, proof against lightning, a boon to the righteous. As he must be, if he meant to carry word of Biscop Constance’s plight to Princess Theophanu.

  “Still, he looks familiar,” Lady Sabella mused, but although she kept talking her voice receded as she moved away, now disinterested. “I don’t see many folk with hair that coppery-red shade. He must hail from the north….”

  The shriek would have made any man jump, except one dosed with a potion that made him more dead than alive.

  “Ivar? Ai, God. Ivar! It’s Ivar! Nay, Lord, it can’t be! Lady protect him! I thought he would be safe!”

  “Lord Baldwin! Come back here!”

  A figure hurtled over the cart’s edge and landed so hard on Ivar that, had he not been paralyzed, he would certainly have betrayed himself.

  “Ivar! It can’t be! Ai, God! Ai, God!”

  Tears poured in a flood. Baldwin clutched Ivar’s hands and chafed them, repeating the same words over and over, crying and groaning, his pretty face twisted with grief. “Ai! Ai! Ai!”

  “Come, Lord Baldwin! This man may have died of the plague. Get off him!”

  “Then I wish I would die, too. And so I would, if it would bring him back! I would share death with him if I could! Don’t touch me!”

  “Baldwin! Come!” Sabella spoke as if to a dog. Weeping, Baldwin tugged a ring off his hand and twisted it onto Ivar’s right forefinger. “Take something of me into the afterlife,” he sniveled. “Ai, God! Ai!”

  “Get him off there,” ordered the lady. “I’ve had enough!”

  Baldwin was hauled off, kicking and shouting, and dragged away while Ivar lay helpless, screaming inside, guts all knotted up with bitter fury and an ugly relief that the charade had passed the direst test of all.

  Baldwin thought he was dead. Baldwin—who had sacrificed so much—would mourn him, although he still lived. Ivar would not suffer, but Baldwin would. The others dared not risk telling Baldwin the truth, not as long as he rode in Lady Sabella’s train.

  Not as long as he slept in Lady Sabella’s bed, whether willing or no.

  “Friend of his, you think?” said Maynard to his comrade.

  “Didn’t look like no brother or cousin, if you ask me. Mayhap they were fostered together.”

  “No doubt. Whist! You stubborn ass! Get along!”

  The donkey brayed a mighty protest, but the cart jerked and they set off again as the sun glared down, burning his skin, scalding his eyes, making tears run from the face of a dead man who wasn’t dead at all.

  But Baldwin would never know.

  5

  THE merchants who lived and traded in the emporium of Medemelacha had wisely surrendered without a fight, warned by their Hessi compatriots that it were better to yield than die, but upstream on the Helde River the duc d’Amalisses had retreated inside a fortified town, seat of his power. By the time Stronghand reached the scene of the siege, Quickdeath had forced a battle by driving prisoners up against the walls at the point of Eika spears and, on their bleeding and mangled backs, swarming the walls.

  The river was choked with corpses as the Eika burned and looted the town.

  “This is not what I intended,??
? said Stronghand when Quickdeath came before him to gloat over his victory. “This town cannot serve us burned to the ground. The fields cannot yield grain if no farmer is left to till and harvest.”

  “But we are rich!” Quickdeath had brought a score of warriors and two score dogs as escort; they shouted and cheered, displaying the baubles, fine cloth, and silver coins they had plucked from the ruins. “And the chief of this town is dead!”

  Bodies dangled from the burning palisade. As the wind shifted, smoke chased away carrion crows come to seek their own fortunes.

  “You are rash.” Stronghand did not rise from the chair where he sat. A choice few of his littermates stood at his back while the handful of chieftains who had joined up with him in Medemelacha kept their distance. Ironclaw stood foremost among them, watching and waiting. The bulk of Stronghand’s army remained in Alba under the command of Trueheart, but in the months since the death of the Alban queen he had sent out smaller groups to strike hard along the coast, casting a net of terror as widely as they could. “We are not yet ready to push inland. If we stretch ourselves too thin, we will break. War bands are more susceptible to ambush than large armies. Your orders were to harry the coast, nothing more.”

  Quickdeath laughed, baring his teeth. “And if I do not wish to heed those orders? Maybe I am rash. But you are too cautious!” He gripped his ax more tightly as his men pressed forward threateningly. If the lesser chieftains chose to stand by and not intervene, then Quickdeath’s party easily outnumbered his own.

  Stronghand did not smile. He no longer needed to make explicit threats, to puff himself up, to make himself appear bigger and fiercer for, in truth, Quickdeath was far more impressive in appearance than he ever could be. “You mistake caution for cowardice because you do not understand it. A cautious man watches and guards, and uses forethought, a skill I do not think you have yet mastered.”

  Quickdeath snorted disdainfully and hefted his ax, knowing he had the advantage in numbers. The blood of his men was hot with victory. Before them, Stronghand seemed so small.