“No! No!” She flung herself down beside his body. “You aren’t dead! I don’t allow it!”
A numbness took hold of Anna. She no longer felt she was here, up to her knees in dirt and roots and crawling things and slimy, hot ash, but only watching herself and the others from a distance. Thiemo and Matto were gone. There was no possible way they could have survived the collapse within the tunnels, and even if they had somehow miraculously been spared, they had no way to climb free because the stone crown here was destroyed and thereby their path to the outside world.
As for the rest of them, they had traveled, all unknowing, a great distance. They could be anywhere. Any when, if what Hathui and the others predicted was true. If time ran both swiftly and slowly within the crowns.
They stood gasping and weeping in a desolation, no longer able to distinguish sky from mountain because of the shroud of ash. It was growing cold. A wind moaned down from veiled heights. A glimmer of light flashed around them. A breeze curled around Anna’s shoulders before kicking up dirt in a line that led straight to Blessing, who was still sobbing and shouting by Heribert’s body, slamming her fists into his chest over and over while the rest stood too stunned and overwhelmed to move.
For an instant Anna thought a pale shimmer of light illuminated the frater’s slack face, pouring over him as water pours over rocks in a stream. Blessing shrieked and scrambled backward. Heribert’s body jerked. His eyes snapped open. He sat up, folding forward and coughing dirt out of his mouth. He wiped dirt from his face and, wondering, shook it from his hands.
“Where?” he said hoarsely. “Where is he gone, the one I have been waiting for? His husk is here, but he is lost.”
They all stared at him.
“You were dead,” said Jonas.
“Was I?” he asked. He got his feet under him, slipped once, and Blessing dashed forward and helped him stand.
“I said you couldn’t die! I did! I did! You’re not dead. Are you?”
He covered his eyes with a hand. Blessing clung to his other arm, wiping her filthy face on his tattered sleeve.
“The rest are dead,” said Berthold suddenly. “Ai, God.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” said Jonas desperately.
Berthold shook his head. “I know!” he said bitterly, gesturing toward the fallen stones and sunken hill. “It was in God’s hands, not ours. We’ll die if we stay here. My lungs hurt. There’s nothing to drink. This ash covers everything. I can’t tell if it’s day or evening or morning. I don’t know where we are, but we must leave this valley and find a place of safety.”
Brother Heribert turned, still awkward as he gained control of his limbs. He stared at Berthold for a while as if sorting through what possible meaning his words might have. Anna was still too numb to speak, but she did notice how very blue his eyes were, startlingly so in contrast to his pale, dirty face. She’d never noticed his eyes before.
“I know how to leave this valley,” he said, his voice still hoarse, not really like Heribert’s voice at all. “Follow me.”
2
IVAR had never experienced rain like the downpour that drowned them now. If he turned his head up, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. He and Erkanwulf huddled under the spreading boughs of an oak tree in the great forest called the Bretwald as the storm churned the path first to mud and then into a stream of boiling, frothing water. They had nowhere to shelter, no one to beg for help, and plenty of trouble keeping their mounts from bolting.
“Look there!” cried Erkanwulf, shaking as he pointed.
Out in the forest lights bobbed, weaving among trees obscured by the pounding rain and the curtain of night. The young soldier took a step forward, meaning to call out to them, but Ivar grabbed his cloak and yanked him back against the tree.
“Hush, you idiot! No natural fire can stay lit in this downpour! Don’t you remember who attacked us before?”
“Ai, God! The Lost Ones! We’re doomed.”
“Hush!”
It was too late. The lights turned their way.
“Come on!” Ivar splashed out onto the path, jerked up hard when his horse refused to budge. He grabbed the reins with both hands and yanked and tugged and swore, but in an argument of weight, the horse won, and it refused to leave the shelter of the tree.
“What do we do?” gasped Erkanwulf.
“Abandon the horses.”
“We can’t!”
“Is it better to be dead?”
The lights wove a new pattern, circling in toward their prey, and he heard a shout, a very human shout, and then the most horrifying and peculiar and inhuman sound that had ever assailed him.
“What is that?” Erkanwulf whispered.
A beast’s vast cry rolled over them. The sound made Ivar’s heart freeze, and Erkanwulf’s mount reared up, then slipped and staggered sideways, dragging Erkanwulf with it away down the slope.
The gale hit so hard and unexpectedly that Ivar actually was blown off his feet, and only his mount’s stubborn footing saved him from washing away down the foaming canal of water that the path had suddenly become. Wind cracked through the forest, splintering trees everywhere. Trunks crashed to the ground, giants falling to earth. The noise was a hammer, its echo ringing on and on as he cowered on his knees under the oak tree. All he could do was pray. Boughs shaken loose tumbled everywhere. Leaves whipped him in the face.
A crack splintered through the howl of the wind. A huge branch split off the oak tree and plummeted to earth, striking Erkanwulf’s horse on the head. The beast went down as if flattened. Erkanwulf slipped in the mud as the reins jerked taut, and somehow got caught under the horse’s shoulder as the ground gave way.
Ivar crept over to Erkanwulf, but because of the slickness of the mud and the angle of the ground and the thick tangle of branches and leaves, he couldn’t budge the horse. The poor animal was dead, killed instantly.
The gale roared past and faded, although the treetops still shook and danced. It was no beast after all, merely an unnatural blast of wind. The rain eased a little.
“Ah!” Erkanwulf managed something like a grin; his face was a smudge against the darkness. “It hurts!”
“Damn. Damn.” It seemed everyone he traveled with ended up in worse trouble after knowing him!
“I should have known better,” continued Erkanwulf through gritted teeth. “I had a cousin who was killed by a falling branch in a windstorm. Ah! Eh! Leave it be a moment!”
Ivar got to his feet and wiped moisture from his brow, trying to clear his sight. His hair was soaked. His leggings sagged and slid as the strips of cloth loosened, and his boots made a stropping sucking sound with each step as he came around the tree and peered into the darkness.
The lights were strung out not twenty paces from him. He shrieked because he was so surprised, and pressed the ring Baldwin had gifted him to his lips, praying.
“Who are you?” called a voice out of the night. It spoke Wendish.
“I’m just a messenger. No one who means any harm. My companion is hurt. I think his horse is dead. I can’t shift it off him. I pray you. Help us. Or leave us alone.”
The lights circled in like wary dogs and resolved into lanterns cunningly protected from the rain by caps of bronze and walls of a bubbly glass that made the flame within dance in weird distortions. Hooded figures carried the lanterns. There were four of them, whether men or shades he could not tell because they wore cloaks drawn tightly around their bodies. Most strangely, they were all barefoot.
“Have you any weapons?” their leader asked. “Throw them down, if you please. We don’t mean to hurt you. We’re not bandits, not like those we’re hunting.”
“I can’t fight one against four!”
“If you won’t throw down your weapons, we’ll leave you here in peace, but we won’t help your companion.” There was a pause as the one who spoke raised his lantern higher to get a look at Erkanwulf and the two horses, one down, one holding still with head up and eyes
rolling white. Erkanwulf had either fainted or was playing at it. “Good mounts. Pity about that one, but if it’s dead or broke a leg, it’ll make a good stew.”
“Who are you?” Ivar didn’t dare surrender his precious weapons to bandits.
“We’re King Henry’s men. We got a charter some years back to keep this road through the Bretwald free and clear. He made us free of service to any lord or lady. We’ve kept our word to him. That’s why we were hunting bandits. There was a problem a month back. Honest folk got attacked. It’s not a good time to travel.”
“Aye, Martin,” interjected one of his companions. “And no better to be standing out here in this rain and storm, you lackwit! What if that wind comes howling back and kills the rest of us like it killed that horse? This rain and storm are bad enough, but that gale was something out of the Abyss! I’m not waiting out here any longer! If there’s just two of them, they’re scarcely that mob of bandits what set on those merchant wagons, can they be?”
It was a woman who spoke, and a woman who set down her lantern with a grunt of disgust and walked over to the fallen horse’s head and knelt beside it, pulling back one eye. “It’s dead. Here, you!” She gestured impatiently to Ivar. “Come help me get your friend loose.”
She was strong. Together, they shifted the shoulders of the horse enough for Erkanwulf to scoot free. When her hood fell back, Ivar saw she was young, with old scars on her face suffered in a battle or a burning.
“Ahow!” yelped Erkanwulf, but although bruised and in a great deal of pain he stood on his right leg and gingerly moved all the joints in his left one by one—hip, knee, ankle—even though his ankle hurt so badly he couldn’t stand on it. The curve of the ground had kept the horse’s full weight off him, and the dense cover of leaf litter and debris had offered enough cushion that he evidently hadn’t broken anything.
The horse, however, was quite dead.
“If we leave it out here,” said the one called Martin, “the wolves will eat it before we can get back to butcher it. There’s a fair bit of riches in that horse!”
“It’s my horse!” said Erkanwulf. “Given me by Princess Theophanu’s steward!”
Martin had the confident bearing of a young man accustomed to working all day at things he was good at. “A princess’ steward, eh? Is she one of King Henry’s children? I can’t recall them all. We’ll put you up until your leg is better, and make a decent trade to you for what we take of it. We could use horsehair. No one in the village owns a horse. The froth meat’ll go bad if it isn’t used at once. And the wolves’ll take it all if we don’t get moving. We’ll have to cut it up and hang it after.”
Although he, too, was no older than Ivar, he acted as the leader, gesturing toward his other two companions. “Bruno, you take the injured one, put him on the horse, and lead them back to the village. Tell Nan we’re coming, and then come back yourself with sacks or netting, whatever you can find. The cart. I’m sure Ulf and Balt will help you.”
“I don’t like to be separated from my comrade,” said Ivar.
Martin shrugged. There wasn’t threat in the gesture, just reality. The light on his face showed good health and clear eyes, and he had a way of examining Ivar that made Ivar want to grin, although he wasn’t sure why. “We’ll need your help here. Two to hold the lanterns and keep their eyes open for wolves, and two to cut. Uta and I will do the cutting, unless you’ve skill in that direction.”
“I’m better with a sword.”
“That’s how it looks to me,” agreed Martin. “It’s why we approached you so cautiously. You’re noble born, I’d wager, but I don’t think this fellow is.”
“Oof!” swore Erkanwulf, accidentally putting weight onto his left foot. “Ai! That hurts.”
Ivar’s mount had to be led aside and calmed, and when he was ready, Erkanwulf got a heave up into the saddle.
Bruno shied away from leading the horse. “It’s so big! What if it steps on me?”
“I can ride this fellow well enough,” said Erkanwulf to Ivar, although it was clear that pain was biting deep. “He and I get along just fine, you know. Let’s go, I pray you.”
Bruno led them away, a single lantern swinging to and fro in rain and darkness.
“You’re not feared of bandits attacking them?” Ivar asked as they faded into the stormy night.
“Not in that direction. It’s past here to the east where there’s been trouble. Anyway, I don’t know what to think. I’ve never stood a storm like this one. It’s not natural. Only a fool would stay out in weather like this.”
Ivar laughed, and Martin grinned, handing him the lantern.
The fourth in their group was a speechless lad whom Uta and Martin never referred to by name. While Ivar held the light as steady as he could, the others got to work, with the lad alternating between working and holding a light.
“Think we can hang it?” Uta asked.
“Don’t trust those branches,” said Martin, looking upward at the rattling mass of oak boughs. The wind kept steady and strong, and the rain beat over them. “Can we shift it up on its back?”
In the end they used rope to tie up its hindquarters a bit. Uta cut the hide from anus to throat, the insides of the legs and a circle above the fetlock, all done with surprising speed and gentleness. No intestines spilled. With Martin’s help she peeled the hide off and finished the cut at the neck. The nameless lad set down his lantern and rolled the bloody hide up so it would be easy to carry.
“There!” said Uta, pointing down the road with her dripping knife.
A trio of lanterns approached, resolving into the youth called Bruno and three men, one trundling a handcart, one carrying a pair of baskets lined with canvas, and the third hauling a net and a handsaw.
“What damage at home?” Martin asked.
“Roof tore off the new weaving shed,” said one of the older men, “but all else held. Still, it’ll be the Enemy’s own work to clear up when it comes light again.”
They looked Ivar over as if they thought he might have had a hand in the destruction, and then got to work. Blood melded with rain on the ground. The hot smell of intestines, finally freed by a deeper incision, cut through the chill night air and the scent of rain as they captured them in one of the baskets. They pulled out the precious inner meats. Working quick and dirty as the rain continued to fall, they dismantled the horse into manageable pieces.
“I’ll be glad to get out of this,” said Martin as they got everything loaded up and balanced. They were leaving nothing behind.
It was an oddly cheerful procession, although it was so cold and miserable. Ivar could not talk; he was too tired. The others laughed and joked as they squelched along, sticking frequently in mud, cursing and swearing as they dug out the wheels for the third time, stumbling and once losing the kidneys entirely when the nameless lad lost hold of his side of one basket. But Uta groped around in the underbrush and found them both, gleaming wetly, still warm. The carcass steamed in the cold air, its soul dissolving upward, if horses had souls. Had the scholars at Quedlinhame ever discussed such a question? Ivar could not remember. His old life seemed impossibly distant. All he knew now was that his feet were numb and his nose was running and there was an unfathomable amount of debris fallen just within the halo of the lanterns although fortunately no great trunk had fallen across the road.
A dozen folk waited for them at the gateway of a palisade dimly seen in the murky night. A cluster of buildings huddled within its safety, but it was too dark to note more than shapes scattered across a clearing. He was hustled into the blessed warmth of a long hall while his companions took the carcass elsewhere to hang. Erkanwulf sat on furs beside the hearth fire, talking to a wakeful child crouched beside him.
“Ma!” The child called to a woman who had led Ivar in from the gate. She pushed back her hood to reveal a face more handsome than pretty. She had an infant bundled against her chest in a sling. “He says he was at Gent! Just like Da!”
“You’re out o
f Gent?” asked the woman in surprise.
“Nay,” replied Erkanwulf, “I was only there one time, when there was a big battle. That was years ago. I was just a lad.”
“My husband was a refugee out of Gent. Mayhap after that big battle you speak of, the one with the Dragons.”
“They all died!” cried the child happily. “All those Dragons! All but one! That was the captain. Nothing can kill him!” he added confidingly to Erkanwulf. “He’s a great warrior, the best who ever lived.”
Ivar was too cold and wet even to work up a smoldering burn at the mention of Prince Sanglant, that most noble and attractive of creatures. It just didn’t seem important.
Erkanwulf smiled at the child, then nodded at Ivar. “You’re a sight, my lord cleric,” he said with a mocking lift of his head.
The woman stopped dead, and turned to Ivar with her jaw dropping open. She had all her teeth and good, clean, healthy eyes. Her grip, when she caught his elbow, was uncomfortably strong. “Are you a churchman? We haven’t had a deacon, or a frater even, out our way for years and years. We’ve been wanting….”
Laughing, Martin and Bruno came into the hall, pausing in the dug-out entryway to take off their boots.
“Martin!” she called, and Martin looked up at the sound of her voice and grinned at her. What they shared, Ivar felt as a joyful presence, like the perfume of the first meadow flowers of spring, that penetrated even in this dank and fetid winter hall. The hall had stood up to the gale; the presence glimpsed in their shared gaze had withstood the storms of life. “This one is a cleric! Maybe he could give us God’s blessing on our marriage.”
“Surely we have God’s blessing already,” said Martin as the child ran over to him and leaped up into his arms, cuddling there.
“Hush!” She made a sign with her hands, and spat, and then looked embarrassed. “Begging your pardon, my lord cleric. Old ways die hard. I mean nothing by it. But it’s bad fortune to say what might attract the evil eye. Would you do it? We’ve nothing to offer but a place to sleep and something to eat and drink for as long as you must bide here until your companion is healed and you can go on. And these unnatural rains end. Can you speak God’s blessing over us? We’ve been handfasted these six or seven summers but never had God’s blessing spoken over us.”