Lavastine was leading his people to war.
But somehow this didn’t seem right.
As soon as he could, Alain excused himself from the hall. He made his way to the chapel, ordered Rage and Sorrow to sit, and there he waited by the light of the seven candles that illuminated the Hearth. As he expected, Agius soon arrived to pray. He knelt awkwardly, because Sorrow’s bite still hampered his movement.
“Frater,” said Alain softly. “Do you think it is sorcery?”
Agius made an impatient gesture. He knelt on the bare stone, but he did not rest forehead on clasped hands as he usually did. For once he was preoccupied by the events of the world. “The count might well have deemed this the wiser course. I cannot say.”
“But what do you think?” Alain demanded. “He never showed Lady Sabella such favor when she was here. He avoided all her questions. He made no commitments. And we can’t just plow half the spring fields and leave the autumn-sown wheat and all of that work to—” He broke off. He had been about to say, “to Lackling and the others who aren’t fit for war.” But the words choked in his throat.
Startled by Alain’s vehemence, Agius looked up at him. The frater was revealed, by candlelight, as a younger man than he usually appeared. The candle flame softened his harsh features, and the lines that scored his face blended with shadow to form a smoother profile. They were the lines, Alain realized, of a man who is never at ease with himself. He was probably not much older than Bel’s eldest daughter, Stancy, who had celebrated twenty-five or so Penitires.
“She killed Lackling,” Alain managed at last. “She killed him, and she a holy biscop!” This betrayal was perhaps the worst of all. Only imagine what Brother Gilles, that good gentle soul, would have said had he witnessed such a thing! “And now Lavastine says we will march to war when there’s work in the fields to be done, and he even speaks of fighting against his own beloved cousin! It isn’t natural!”
Agius sighed. “Come, Alain. Kneel beside me. There is much for you to learn about the ways of the world. Perhaps someday you will be allowed to turn your back on the intrigues of the world, as I have sought to turn mine. What the biscop did—” He grimaced as he shifted weight onto his injured leg. Alain crossed hesitantly and knelt beside him. “Be sure that I will report it, if I can. But I may not be believed. She is a holy biscop, ordained by the hand of the skopos herself. Although my word is worth a great deal, there were yet only you and I who witnessed the act. If you were acknowledged, Alain, as Lavastine’s bastard, your word would be worth more.”
But at this moment, seeing the pale face and remembering the flat voice of Lavastine as he had announced his allegiance to Sabella in the hall, Alain was not sure he wished to be acknowledged as that man’s kinsman. Especially if it would bring further notice upon him.
“But nevertheless, Alain, there are many reasons why noble lords and ladies change their allegiances. Many reasons, and few of them good ones. With such games do the great princes while away their days, for they do not turn their hearts and eyes to the Hearth of Our Lady as they ought. They are beguiled by the world and its pleasures. We cannot know that sorcery is the cause of the count’s decision.
“But I know it is!” Alain burst out. “I know!”
Agius raised an eyebrow. He looked skeptical. “By what means do you know? Are you an adept? Have you received training in the forbidden arts?”
Alain resisted the urge to bring the rose out, to show its bloom, to make Agius smell its fragrance. It was not the season for roses, certainly, but the count had a small garden protected from the winds, open to the sun and often warmed by braziers; roses there bloomed early and late. What if Agius, not believing his tale of the visitation of the Lady of Battles, accused him of stealing it?
Or, worse, what if Agius believed him? What if Agius decided that Alain’s destiny was something that he, Agius, must manage?
“No,” Alain said finally, humbly, bowing his head. “I know nothing of sorcery except the stories any child hears and the tales told by our deacon.”
Agius made a gesture of dismissal, turning the conversation away from this discussion of sorcery. “You must wait and see, Alain. But in any case, these matters no longer touch me. I will remain here at Lavas Holding to continue my preaching.”
“You’re not coming with us?” At once, guiltily, he recalled Sorrow’s bite; had he managed the hounds better, Agius would not be injured.
But Agius made no mention of the wound. “I am a frater, bound by my oath to serve Our Lady. Though I have stopped at this holding for a while, I do not serve the count, not as you do. As you must.”
Sorrow, sitting patiently by the door, whined. Alain was reminded of his duties: Master Rodlin would be waiting for him. He rose.
“But, Brother Agius, what if Count Lavastine orders you to follow in his train?”
Agius smiled thinly. “Lavastine cannot order me, Alain. Nor will he try.”
Nor, to Alain’s surprise, did he try. They marched out on St. Isidora’s Day soon after dawn, twenty mounted soldiers and eighty on foot with a train of twenty wagons. Frater Agius did not march with them. Chatelaine Dhuoda also remained behind to tend to Lavas stronghold.
Alain could not be sure whether he was sick at heart or terribly excited. Everything he knew he now left behind. Though he had not seen Osna town for over a year, still, it did not seem in his heart too far away; it was four days’ journey in good weather and was part of familiar lands. Now, familiar lands vanished behind him, setting west. They crossed the Vennu River and marched east through unknown fields and strange hills.
He swung back and forth between these two emotions, dread and excitement, all that first day. But by the third day the intermittent drizzle and the slogging pace of the march dampened his spirits and left him with a persistent cough and a constantly dripping nose. His boots were caked in mud, and by the end of each day his feet and hands were chilled through.
Only during the day, if the sun came out while they were marching, did he feel comfortable. He and the hounds slept under a wagon at night, just outside the tent that was always pitched for the count. This way, at least, he stayed dry. Many of the other men-at-arms weren’t so lucky, and they grumbled.
On the fourth day of the march, while he was watering the hounds at a stream, someone threw a stone at him from the bushes that grew in profusion along the stream’s edge. The stone hit hard enough to bruise his shoulder. He yelped, and there came a snickering from the dense thicket. Then, of course, the hounds surged out of the stream and, growling and yipping, made for the bushes. By the time Alain restrained them, his tormenters had gone, shrieking and scattering away into the wood. He did not see their faces, only their backs; there were three of them.
After that he was mostly left alone, although now and again a dead rat would turn up in his porridge. But because Agius was not there, he had no one to talk to, not really. Master Rodlin treated him politely but coldly, and for the rest, they either avoided him or were too important to notice him. Count Lavastine spoke to no one, except to issue curt orders. Care of the hounds was left to Alain and though the hounds were good companions— and increasingly obedient to his commands—Alain was pretty much miserable through and through by the time they arrived at the stronghold where Lord Geoffrey and Lady Aldegund made their home.
Lord Geoffrey was surprised to see his kinsman, but he came out from the stronghold with the household clerics and his wife’s chatelaine and various of her kin to greet Count Lavastine on the last stretch of road. They walked out on foot, as was customary. Lavastine did not dismount to embrace his cousin.
The bluff Lord Geoffrey looked taken aback. “I beg your pardon,” he said, struggling for words as he examined Lavastine with alarm. “My dear Aldegund is in bed with a fever, but as all the children have had the affliction and recovered from it we do not fear for her. There is a healer with her.” He hesitated on the word healer, as if he meant to substitute a different word and had thought bet
ter of it, then went on. “But the babe born at Lavas Holding is a fine healthy child, almost six months in age now, and has celebrated her first Penitire. There we anointed her with the holy water and gave her the name Lavrentia, as we promised you. What brings you to this holding, cousin? Have you come to celebrate the Feast of St. Sormas with us? And with such a retinue?”
For no one could overlook Lavastine’s entourage. Even Sabella and her great retinue, when Alain had first seen them, had not appeared so obviously battle-ready and intended for war.
“I have come to get your pledge, your person, and your men-at-arms, to join with Sabella.”
Lord Geoffrey started visibly. To Alain, this was confirmation of his own belief that Lavastine was ensorcelled. Surely Geoffrey knew his cousin’s mind on this matter better than any other person might. “T-to join Lady Sabella?” he stammered.
“So I said,” snapped Lavastine.
“But that is treason against King Henry.”
“It is treason not to take up Sabella’s cause against Henry. She is the elder child, the named heir. Her mother was queen of Varre in her own right.”
“But by right of fertility—” protested Geoffrey.
“Sabella has a daughter, born of her womb. By what right does Henry claim the throne? By the right given him by a bastard child born to a creature who cannot even be called a true woman? Is it imagined this creature’s oath, before the assembled biscops, is worthy of being called truth? How can we know Henry got the child on her? How can we trust the male line at all? It is only through the female line we can be sure.”
Geoffrey appeared staggered by this argument. “B—but, cousin. Your own line, your own father … Lavas has for three generations passed its inheritance through the male line.”
“Do you stand with me?” asked Lavastine without apparent emotion. “Or against me?” He raised a hand, calling his troops to order. His captain actually hesitated, he was so surprised by this command.
“I—I—I must have time to think!”
“There is no time to think! You must choose!”
Lavastine urged his horse forward and drew his sword. Joy and Fear loped beside him. Geoffrey was too stunned even to shy aside as the count bore down on him, sword aloft. But Geoffrey’s clerics and retainers were not so slow-witted. Several threw themselves in front of their lord, so that when Lavastine cut down, it was a man in wool tunic and leggings who took the blow meant for his lord; Geoffrey merely cried out in shock.
It was a cleric in the simple robes of a frater who turned and sprinted for the gate. Perhaps he ran for safety. Perhaps he meant to warn those left inside.
Alain could not know. A crossbowman shot, and the quarrel hit the frater in the back. He went down to his knees, for an instant caught in an attitude of prayer, and then tumbled forward into a puddle. Mud splashed over his robes. The water turned a muddy red.
Lavastine rode on past Geoffrey and the knot of men clustered around him, leaving them to the mercies of his men-at-arms. He passed the dying frater. His captain spurred his own mount forward, calling to the other mounted soldiers to follow, and they galloped after Lavastine. Ahead, at the palisade gateway someone was trying to get the gate shut.
“Hai! Hai!” shouted Sergeant Fell, running forward along the line of foot soldiers. “Form up and drive forward at a trot!”
What happened next happened so quickly that afterward Alain could never entirely make sense of it. He surged forward with the other men-at-arms. He could not help but do so. The hounds barked and nipped at the air, scenting battle. Some he restrained, but three more broke away and these tore after Lavastine.
A struggle had erupted around Lord Geoffrey, though Geoffrey’s few retainers could scarcely hope for victory. But they beat about themselves with hands and sticks and their ceremonial spears, even with the lance that held the banner of Lady Aldegund’s kin, a white hart running against a background colored the deep blue of the twilight sky.
Lavastine, backed by his mounted soldiers, reached the gates. What resistance they met there was cursory. How could Geoffrey’s soldiers have ever imagined their lord’s cousin would attack them? But one man had kept his wits about him. One man remained in the lookout tower with crossbow in hand.
Perhaps he meant to shoot Lavastine and his hand wavered. Perhaps he meant exactly what happened. Alain knew of it only because when the crossbow quarrel hit Joy and pierced her heart, the other hounds went wild.
Not even Alain could control them.
Lavastine had vanished into the stronghold. Alain ran. He ran in the wake of the hounds and did not even have to shove his way past Sergeant Fell and through the other men-at-arms; they had scattered when the hounds raged through and began to ravage Lord Geoffrey and his men, the closest targets.
With his spear, Alain beat them back, though in their madness the hounds bit at him. Some of the men he could not save, but he straddled one poor frater with his feet and knocked the hounds away from Lord Geoffrey ten times at least before they growled even at him and then turned and ran toward the stronghold. Their eyes were wild, red-rimmed with the battle madness. Blood and saliva dripped down their muzzles.
What they left behind them was terrible to see, one man with a hand bitten clean off, others with flesh torn to expose bone. One poor lad, the banner bearer, had his throat ripped open. Lord Geoffrey had a number of bites, but he could stand. He swayed; Alain could not tell whether he staggered from the shock of his wounds or from the shock of his cousin’s attack.
To be attacked by one’s own kinsman was the worst kind of betrayal.
Was this the kind of war the Lady of Battles intended him for?
It could not be. Lavastine had always walked the middle road. Hadn’t the count understood that a war between Sabella and Henry would be the worst possible thing that could happen?
At that moment, Alain knew that Lavastine no longer moved and thought under his own free will, whatever Agius might say. Even Frater Agius would have been stunned by this unprovoked attack on Lord Geoffrey, whom everyone knew was Lavastine’s most favored kinsman. Lackling’s blood and Lackling’s life had been stolen in order to give Biscop Antonia the power to steal Lavastine’s heart and will.
“I will stay with him,” Alain murmured to himself, half embarrassed by his own arrogance in stating such a thing. “Someone must protect him.” Even if that someone was a common boy, who was nothing, who had nothing—except a rose that never ceased blooming.
Sergeant Fell sent half of his men ahead to the stronghold, but the brief flurry of shouts and cries that had erupted from inside the palisade walls had already faded. With his other men, Fell cleaned up from the skirmish.
He appeared profoundly uncomfortable as he placed Lord Geoffrey in custody; a frater known to have healing skills hurried forward from Lavastine’s train to attend to the wounded men.
“Hai, you! Lad!” Sergeant Fell caught sight of Alain. “Go on, then. Go on. You must fetch them hounds and tie them up. Think of the children in there.”
Several of the men-at-arms quickly, reflexively, drew the circle at their breasts. For who among them could forget that those very hounds had killed Lavastine’s wife and child? The full story Alain had never heard, since no person in Lavas Holding would speak of it.
“Go!” ordered Fell.
“My wife!” gasped Lord Geoffrey. “The baby!”
Had Alain waited ten breaths longer he would have been too late. It was easy to follow the path of the hound pack: Alain counted two dead men and eleven wounded ones strewn in a ragged line across the broad courtyard. Servants cowered by the well, protected by five of Lavastine’s soldiers.
Lavastine’s horse stood outside the great timber hall that was the lord’s and lady’s residence. At least half of the mounted soldiers had left their horses there and gone on, into the hall, following their count; several terrified stableboys held the horses. Alain ran inside.
The hounds were swarming up the steps that led to the spaci
ous loft above the long hall where the lady and her kinswomen and children and the servants lived. The battle madness was still in their eyes. Alain sprinted and grabbed the last one in the pack by its thin tail, and yanked it backward. It spun, biting.
“Sorrow! Down!”
Of a miracle, it worked. Sorrow sat. Ahead on the steps, hearing his voice, Rage sat as well. But the others flowed upward like water running uphill: impossible to stop unless one is truly a sorcerer, for only by sorcery can such an unnatural act be realized.
Alain took the steps two at a time. He shoved through the hounds and though they nipped at him, they were too intent on their prey to worry about one slender youth in their midst. Lavastine walked forward, sword still raised. He appeared oblivious to the hounds and the threat they posed—not to him, of course, but to the women and children and handful of men who, step by slow step, cowered back toward the far wall of the great hall.
Only two had the courage to step forward. Alain recognized the young Lady Aldegund at once; she was certainly no older than he was, though clearly she was now a woman, no longer a child. Pale and shaking, she took a staff and advanced toward Lavastine, crying: “What is this, cousin? Why have you come in such warlike guise to a hall which greets you in friendship and love?”
She held her six-month-old infant in her arms, the child who it had been suggested might become heir to the childless Lavastine. One older woman, weeping, stepped out beside her, as if to throw herself before her lady, to save her from Lavastine’s sword or the hounds’ bloody fangs.
Alain grabbed tails and flanks, but still they slipped out and charged. They meant to kill her. They would kill her, if no one acted, and likely tear the infant child to pieces.
So he laid about him with the butt of his spear, without thought to the consequences. And he cried out sharply as he beat them back.
“Sit! Down! You will obey me, you beasts! Sit!” Terror had actually reached the lady’s skirts before Alain hit the hound so hard alongside the head that the animal was stunned. But the rest, finally, sat, though they growled menacingly, eyes fixed on the huddled mass of Lady Aldegund’s household.