“I am not Henry’s heir. I am not even Taillefer’s great grandchild. I am the daughter of a minor noble house, nothing more.”
“That strangely makes me think of Hugh of Austra, who would not have cared one whit for the daughter of a minor noble house, if that is all you were.”
“Ah! That was a cruel blow.”
“So it was intended to be. I grieve for Blessing. No one does more than I do. I admit I didn’t always like my sweet girl, but I always loved her. Love her. If she is dead, Liath, if she already died, then we made the right choice.”
“I saw her.”
“You are blind in your Eagle’s Sight. What was this vision, then? True, or false?”
“I believe it was true. I saw Blessing. I saw Li’at’dano. I think I saw Wolfhere. I saw a vision of you, when you took in the Wendish refugees who had fled Darre. Henry’s schola, most of them.”
“That’s right,” he admitted. “It might well have been a true vision.”
“Or it might have been a dream. I might only have wanted to see her so badly…. It seemed so real. I saw her arguing with a youth, a young man—”
“Thiemo? Matto?”
“I never saw him before.”
“Might it have been the past you saw?”
“Nay—she was the age she was when we left her.” But not yet as old as in that terrible vision when she had seen Blessing held prisoner by Hugh. “It was the present, or the future. I’m sure of it. It means she lives.”
“If that is so, and if Gyasi brings her back to us safe and alive, then we made the right choice.”
“What if she dies because one of us did not go to her?”
“Then we will be responsible. How else can we judge? What else can we do? Each day I must choose, and some may die, and some live, because of decisions I make.”
“Ah, God. It is no good task. So many are already dead.”
“And yet more would be dead, if you had not confronted Anne and killed her. You know it is true.”
“It is true,” she said reluctantly, “but I feel no triumph in victory.”
“That is because we gained no victory. All we managed was no defeat.”
“I met a party of farmers in Aosta. After the griffins rescued me from Zuangua. These farmers had lost their homes to the windstorm. Passing troops had stolen what remained of their stores. No doubt it seemed fitting to that lord and his army to do so, for he must supply his own in order to fight.”
“So he must, but he will not eat the next year if all those who farm for him die of starvation.”
One of the knots plaguing her stomach relaxed. “I suppose that is only one tiny injustice among so many great ones. Yet it makes me think of words Hathui once said: ‘The Lord and Lady love us all equally in Their hearts.”’
“That being so,” he murmured in reply, “why did God make Wichman the son of a duchess and Fulk, who is in every way his superior as a man, the son of a minor steward without rank or standing except that which I give him? Why did I live when all my faithful Dragons died?”
“The church mothers have an answer to all these questions, else we would fall endlessly into the Pit for wondering.”
“What is their answer?”
“I can quote chapter and verse, but in the end, their answers are all the same: Humankind cannot know the mind of God.”
“As dogs cannot know the mind of their master, although they strive to be obedient?”
She laughed.
“I must acquire a pack of loyal hounds, who will sit at my feet and growl at the faithless and remind me of how untrustworthy courtiers can be. Poor things.”
“The dogs, or the courtiers?”
“Do you remember my Eika dogs? What awful creatures they were, not dogs at all, truly. Yet I miss them in one way. I never had to guess their intentions. I could always trust them to go for my throat if they thought I was weakening.”
She hesitated, and he felt the tension in her and turned to kiss her cheek. “Say it. Do not fear me, so that you think you must hold your tongue.”
“Very well, then. Must you be king? With the dogs always circling around?”
“I must,” he said, taking no offense at her question. “Alas that my father is dead. I wish it were otherwise.”
“He has other children.”
“They are not fit. Sapientia you know. Theophanu is capable, but she is too reserved and hasn’t gained the love and support of those she would need to lead. Ekkehard is too light-minded. Henry’s children by Adelheid are too young, and anyway they will receive little support in the north if Adelheid were to claim the Wendish throne for them. They may hope to inherit Aosta if they have survived the storm. Nay, let it be. Henry wished for this for many years. Now it has come to pass. I am his obedient son.”
But because she lay so close against him, she felt his tears.
4
SOON the Arethousan army, in retreat, began to meet refugees on the road. As Hanna tramped along behind the wagon to which her new guards had tied her, she studied the folk huddled at the side of the track. Like most Arethousans, they were swarthy and short, with broad faces and handsome, dark eyes. The women displayed a voluptuous beauty that fear and poverty could not yet disguise. They carried bundles on their backs and sniveling children in their arms. Some pushed handcarts piled with belongings. Now and again she would see a man holding the halter of a donkey. More often a family had two or three scrawny goats tied together on a single lead. Once she saw a bloated corpse, but it wasn’t obvious how the man had died.
They stood silently as the army passed. After a time she began to think they were like the mosaics seen in churches in Darre, figures with kohl-lined eyes and magnificent robes frozen forever against a backdrop of open woodland. Only once did she hear one speak.
“I pray you, I’ll do anything for a piece of bread for me and my child.” A skinny young woman clutched a slack-eyed, emaciated child to her hip as she twitched her rump awkwardly to attract the notice of the soldiers.
Bysantius strode forward before any man could step out of line. He slashed at her face with the quirt. She cried out and retreated up the slope through dry grass that crackled around her. A man emerged out of the woods from behind a stand of prickly juniper. He was tugging up the drawers under his tunic as he sauntered back to join the rest, but before he’d gone three steps a woman appeared.
“You never gave me what you promised!” she shouted.
He didn’t even look back. “I took what you offered, whore!”
Men sniggered, but glanced nervously toward their sergeant.
Bysantius stuck his quirt into his belt and drew his knife before the soldier could step down onto the path. “Pay her what you promised.”
The soldier—he was young and cocky—pulled up short, eyeing the knife. “I’ve nothing to pay her. I eat what the rest of us do, when it’s handed out at night. I’ve no coin, as you ought to know, Sergeant. I’m to be paid with land.”
“Then you’re a thief.”
The column staggered to a halt as soldiers poked and pulled at each other, turning to see the confrontation.
“Thieves are punished with death, by the lord general’s order. Any man who takes without permission is a thief.”
“Here, here,” said the man, extracting a crust of bread from his sleeve, “no harm done.” He turned, tossed the bread at the woman, and hurried back into line, his face red and the rest hooting at him. The woman scrabbled in the dirt and, scooping up the crust, ran away into the woods.
“Get on!” Bysantius added a few curses, sheathed his knife, and strode up the line brandishing his quirt.
Hanna, too, had stashed away a bit of her last night’s meal, nothing more than a bit of dry cheese, the last cut off a round. She fished it out of her sleeve and hissed.
“Tss! Here, you!” The young woman with the child had been weeping, huddled on the hill. Hanna tossed the cheese at her, but the wagon jerked forward and she stumbled to her knee
s and then scrambled to get up before she was dragged, and by the time she got herself stable again, she had lost sight of mother and child.
She was, therefore, doubly hungry that night, but as she ate the thin gruel out of the pot she couldn’t regret what she had done.
“Mind you,” said Sergeant Bysantius, coming over to crouch beside her, “the infant will die a day later rather than sooner. You’re just prolonging her misery.”
“Perhaps not. You can’t know what will happen. Why are all these refugees on the road?”
He scratched his neck. It was a mark of the general’s respect for the sergeant that he had been given command of the rear guard, but the dry and dusty conditions, the constant kick of dust all day long, had caused his skin to rash. “Nothing good, I’m thinking,” he said. “Nothing good.”
Years ago she, Liath, Hathui, Manfred, and Wolfhere had ridden east into the rising sun, traveling toward Gent. On that ride she had seen streams of refugees fleeing the Eika invasion. They had come on carts and on foot, leading donkeys or carrying crates that confined squawking chickens. They had hauled children and chests and sacks of withered turnips or baskets filled with rye and barley. The road, damp with rain, had churned to mud under the crush of so much traffic. Yet, despite their desperation, those Wendish refugees had not had the despairing, hopeless look of Arethousa’s wretched, fled from what every man and woman in the army referred to always and only as “the city.”
For days, stories passed up and down the line, but in the end even these rumors and purported eyewitness accounts could not prepare them for their first sight of “the splendid daughter of the sea,” the great capital city of the empire of Arethousa. Chained to the wagon, Hanna could not see as the vanguard of the army reached a distant rise. The entire unwieldy column staggered to a halt as the men in the front seized up and the ones behind pushed forward to clamor for news.
That news swept through them like wind. She leaned against the wagon’s tailgate with eyes closed and let the rush pour over her. It was so good to rest.
“… only the walls survived …”
“You’re a fool to believe it. Have you seen?”
“Nay, but it’s what they’re all saying!”
“So did the refugees, poor cattle. Doesn’t mean they’re right. A giant wave! Tssh! Let’s go—”
“Stay in line!” The sergeant’s quirt struck, variously, wagons, flesh, and the dirt. “Stay in line! Don’t break ranks!”
She opened her eyes. The soldiers leaned forward like hounds straining at their leashes, quivering, anxious, eager to race forward. But they held their ranks. A rider in the red tabard that marked the imperial scouts galloped back along the line of march and pulled up beside Bysantius.
“General Lord Alexandros desires your attendance at a council,” said the man. “I’m to command the rear guard in your absence. He says to bring the Eagle.”
The rider looked around, seeking her, but because days of dust had veiled her pale hair, he didn’t mark her. He dismounted instead and handed the reins to Bysantius, who smiled grimly and shouted at the guards to unlock Hanna’s leg irons.
Her new guards were called Big Niko and Little Niko by the other soldiers, although the two were the same height. They were phlegmatic fellows who made up in attention to detail what they lacked in conversation and wit. They untied her from the rope that tethered her to the wagon, then unshackled her ankles. It felt strange to walk without the chafing on her legs, without the weight, without the cubit’s length of restriction clipping her stride. Bysantius swung onto the horse, then extended a hand to help her up behind him.
She disliked his closeness. He stank, but no doubt she did as well. Given the conditions in which they had marched, anyone would reek. That he didn’t smell worse was remarkable. He was, without question, a powerfully built man. She tried holding onto the cantle, but as they started forward her awkward seat behind the saddle forced her to cling to his belt. Her head, shoulders, and breasts pressed against his back. Mercifully, he said nothing about the intimate nature of their position. He had enough to do to press forward along the line with soldiers calling to him for news at every step. Here, so close to the city, the way was broad, paved in the center with wide, dusty lanes to either side for additional traffic. What remained of forest sat far back from the road and then only to the south. North was clear-cut, the sloping land studded here and there with clusters of sad hovels now overrun with refugees. Folk stood in doorways, watching mutely as the army passed. If they owned livestock, their animals were well hidden. She heard not even one chicken’s squawk or a goat’s complaining bawl. Uncounted fresh graves lay in ranks behind each village and along the roadside.
The road led up a long incline and at length they reached the height of the rise where Lady Eudokia and the general had halted with their close companions. All faces were turned toward the east. Besides the shifting of feet and the occasional protest of a horse held on too tight a rein, there was no sound except for a soughing whisper that might be the surf.
Bysantius let out his breath all in a hissed sound. He was rigid. His broad shoulders hid half the view, but by craning her neck to peer past his back she saw a wash of cloudy sky that blended into the glitter of a distant sea and, beyond it, the contours of another land lying away across the narrow strait. Off to her right, slopes ran down to a coastal plain and the sea, but the crowd to her left concealed the sight they all stared at.
“Sergeant Bysantius!” General Lord Alexandros’ voice cracked the silence.
The sergeant started, shaken out of his stupor. He turned parallel to the shore, and she saw everything.
The land beyond was a jumble of muted colors, a formless wilderness without trees or houses. The general waited just where the road began to pitch and wind away down toward a peninsula jutting out into the winter-gray sea waters. The promontory had a rounded gleam, ringed by pale stone and paler spume where water rolled up against the shore. The rugged lines of its heights and valleys confused her, while at her back she heard groans and tears from the folk gathered on the road. Many fell to their knees and beat their hands on the ground.
“What catastrophe has overcome us?” said the general, his voice little more than a scrape.
The curtains that screened the exalted lady’s litter from the sun and prying eyes had been thrown back so Lady Eudokia could see the full sweep of the scene. Her lips were pressed tight, but she did not weep. Beside her, her nephew picked at his nose as he whistled tunelessly under his breath, scuffing his feet, knocking his knees together, and otherwise behaving as though he wished they could get moving before he died of boredom.
“Only sorcery could encompass so much destruction,” she said. “But see. The walls are intact.”
“In a manner of speaking.” He wiped tears from his face. “A man’s heart is intact when his beautiful mistress sends back the bracelets and baubles he has given her and takes up with another man, but he is ruined nevertheless.”
“Men are slaves to their desires, it is true. He is ruined, but he is not dead, and in time he will forget her. This is a bad analogy, Lord General. Think rather—we must rebuild, because the one who rebuilds will rule those who are grateful for the restoration of what was lost.”
“Arethousa was not built in a day, exalted lady.”
“No use waiting, then. We must inventory what remains, and what manner of workforce we have at our disposal, and what stores survive to feed our army and the people. If God is merciful, this winter will be mild.”
“If God is merciful, there will be rain, and the sun will emerge from behind these damned clouds! How can you not weep?”
“Tell me my tears will build a palace, and I will weep. Let us build and plan our revenge, even if it is my nephew’s children who must lead our armies into war. We must act quickly in case any of my cousin’s partisans have escaped. We must take control of the city while there are none to resist us.”
This time the general almost did
break down, but with an iron will he controlled his body, his expression, his voice, and his entire being. “That is not a city. That is a ruin. Ai, God. My dear wife.”
The words sparked connections in her mind. What had bewildered her came clear. The peninsula was covered not by rocky terrain and fallen stones but by a vast city so huge that she had not recognized it for what it was. Its walls ringed the shoreline. Double walls made a skirt across the headland. What splendor these ruins might once have possessed she could only guess at. They were too big to comprehend, and the extent of the destruction staggered her because it made no sense. She traced the distant lines that marked the ground but could not measure palaces, churches, houses, or stables in the jumble. From this distance she saw nothing she could recognize as rooftops, no spectacular domes, only stair steps of tumbled stone in heaps and mounds that she had at first mistaken for natural formations.
Surely this was an ancient ruin. Not even the gale wind could have destroyed so much and on such a scale. It was difficult to grasp, much less hold onto, their grief. It all seemed so remote, no more than an idea they had all long clung to.
“A wave drowned all, so we have been told,” said Lady Eudokia. “How can any wave be large enough to overwhelm the city? It must have been some other thing, a spell perhaps, rising out of Jinna lands. Rising off the sea.”
“Look there!” said Bysantius, pointing.
A gauzy mist was rising off the strait. Wisps of fog wafted up out of the ruins as the breeze blew in off the sea. Fog rose every place there was water. It seemed the ruins were awash, because the mist thickened, poured upward, and advanced inland toward their position as a wall of white like a towering wave off the sea. It swallowed the ground, the view, the sky.
“God save us,” muttered Bysantius, but he held his position.
General Lord Alexandros drew his sword.
“Leave off,” snapped Lady Eudokia. “Put me down, you fools. Bring me my chest. Let me see what I can do to dispel this unnatural mist.”
No natural mist moved in such a manner. Hanna twisted to look behind her. Men backed away, making signs against evil. Her ears popped, and the few dogs remaining among the army began barking. As the fog advanced on a strong wind off the sea, the beasts tucked tails between legs and ran. Their fear, like a shower of arrows, struck throughout the ranks.