King's Dragon
“Once you cross into Wendar you will have signaled outright your defiance of my brother’s reign,” said Constance, “beyond all else that has occurred in these last months.”
“So will it be,” replied Antonia with one of her kindly smiles, as if patient with a student who is slow to learn. “Henry waits at Kassel, so our scouts inform us. That is where we will meet. Now, let us pray, and then rest.”
She knelt, and her servants and cleric knelt with her. Constance hesitated, but then, proudly and with the noble air of a woman who will not let adversity beat her down, she knelt as well and joined in the prayer.
That night, Alain dreamed.
The pitch of the boat rocks him, but he does not sleep. There are twenty prisoners, taken to be slaves, huddled in the belly of the boat. They weep or moan or sleep the sleep of those who have given up hope. His cousins took only the strong ones, the young ones, who will give service for a hand of years or longer before they succumb to the winter ice or the predations of the dogs. Some might even breed, but the soft ones’ infants are weak and fragile, not suited to survive. How they have grown to spread themselves across the southern lands is a mystery he cannot answer, nor dare he ask the WiseMothers, for they do not care to hear of the fate of infidels. But did Halane Henrisson not speak of a god and of faith? He touches the Circle that hangs at his chest. It is cold.
Waves slap against the hull and oars creak with a steady beat in the oarlocks as the longship pierces forward through the seas. This music he has heard for all of his life and its cadences are like breath to him. It is a good night for travel on the northern sea.
He stands at the prow, watching mist stream off the waters. He studies the stars, the eyes of the most ancient Mothers, those whose bodies were at last worn away by wind and borne up into the vale of black ice, the fjall of the heavens. The moon, the heart of OldMan, spreads light over the waters.
Once he, too, took his place at the oars. But that was before his father stole the secret of the enchanter’s power and, binding that power into his own body, lifted his tribe and his litter of pups out of the endless pack struggles and made them supreme.
Once he toiled with the others, but that was before his father drilled holes in his teeth and studded them with jewels to mark his primacy. Now, together with his nest-brothers, he leads.
This ship does not belong to his home tribe, but he is marked by the wisdom of the WiseMothers, and his father is a great enchanter and chief of the tribes of the western shore. So these cousins have accepted him as their leader. Of course, he had to kill their First Brother and the dogs’ pack leader, but that is the way of each litter and each tribe: Only one male can lead. The others must bare their throats or die.
Do the soft ones pick their leaders in this fashion? Are they weak because they do not? He does not understand them, nor does he understand why Halane set him free. Compassion is not part of the cruel north. As OldMother once said, the Rock Children would have died out long ago had they succumbed to compassion.
The wind brings the scent of shore to his nostrils. One of the slaves sobs on and on, a whining cry that grates on his nerves. Before, he would have set the dogs on her or cut her throat with his own claws. Now, the memory of Halane stays his hand. He will abide. He will suffer the complaints of the weak.
For now.
The smell of freshwater touches his lips. He licks them, suddenly thirsty, but he will not give in to this need yet. To give in quickly is to build weakness. Behind him, as if catching his thought, the dogs growl. He turns his head and growls back at them. They subside, accepting his primacy.
For now.
He smells a grove of ash and the still, wise scent of oak. They pass forest here as they voyage east. East, to where his father hunts.
The oars beat the sea, sunk steady and deep. The wind whips at his face, and salt spray rimes his lips. From the shore, he smells a hint of charcoal, and he casts back his head and scents, touching his tongue to the air.
Alain woke. He was completely awake, uncannily so, eyes open and already adjusted to the blackness. Rage slept. Sorrow whined softly but did not stir. Beyond Sorrow, the blankets where Agius slept lay empty.
By the light of the coals in the brazier, Alain saw a dark shape kneeling by the pallet on which Constance slept. His heart pounded. Was someone about to murder her?
Almost, he sprang up. But his hearing was keen, this night. He heard their breathing, heard the dry slide of skin against skin as they touched hand to hand, heard them whisper in voices as low as the murmur of daimones on the night air.
“Frederic was involved with Sabella’s first revolt. Why should I trust you now, after what you have done, knowing what I do about your brother?” But her words were entirely at odds with her tone and with the sense Alain had that she held tightly to Agius’ hands, more like a lover than a stern biscop.
“He was discontent. He was very young. He came of age, and my father gave him a retinue but no other duties. His was a rash soul, and it wanted action. You know that is true. So when the rebellion failed, he was disciplined and married off to Liutgard.”
“Do you consider that punishment? Marriage to Liutgard?” Almost, she laughed.
“Ai, Lady. It would have been for me.” Here he choked on the words, they came forth laden with much emotion.
“Hush, Agius.” She stirred on her pallet, and Alain thought she lifted a finger to the frater’s lips, touching him most intimately there.
Alain flushed and looked away. For some reason he thought of Withi, of her shoulders and the white expanse of bosom she had let him glimpse, that day before he followed her up to the ruins at Midsummer’s Eve. He had never touched a woman so.
“You must love God, Agius,” murmured Constance. “Not the world and those who live in it. Biscop Antonia tells me you are involved in heresy. I have no reason to trust her, so I will let you defend yourself to me against such a base accusation.”
“I cannot. I will not. After you were promised to the church instead of to—” he faltered. “—instead of to marriage, I swore I would not rest—”
“You swore you would avenge yourself on your father and my brother. But you must not, Agius. You must let this anger go. There was nothing you could do. There was nothing I could do.”
“My father swore before the Hearth. As did your brother. But Lord and Lady did not strike them down when they went back on their vow. So I knew by this sign that their pledge was empty, for it was sworn to the shadow of the truth. They had listened to the false words of those who presided at the Council of Addai, those who suppressed the truth. So did St. Thecla speak the truth of the end that came to the blessed Daisan. I have seen the scroll that records her words.”
“Where have you seen such a scroll?”
“It is hidden, lest the church burn it and destroy her true speaking, which is shamefully forgotten. ‘Then came the blessed Daisan before the judgment of the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask. And when he would not bow before her but spoke the truth of the Mother of Life and the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, then she pronounced the sentence of death. This he met joyfully, for he embraced the promise of the Chamber of Light. But his disciples with him wept bitterly. So was he taken away and put to the flaying knife and his heart was cut out of his breast.’”
The hush was so deep, and Agius’ voice so low, that Alain thought he could hear the sifting of the coals, red ash burning and cooling to gray.
“‘A darkness fell over the whole land, and then the blessed Daisan gave a loud cry and died. His heart’s blood fell to the earth and it bloomed as roses. There came a light onto the land and to the ends of the Earth, and it was as bright as the garments of angels. By this light Thecla and the other disciples were blinded. And they lived seven times seven days in darkness, for they were afraid.’
“But I am not afraid, Constance. I am not afraid to proclaim the truth. Did the blessed Daisan not say: ‘Be assured I am with you always, to the end of time?’ Did the M
other of Life not give her only Son for the forgiveness of our sins?”
Constance sighed. “Ai, Agius, this is heresy indeed. How can you speak these words? It is a serious charge, to be brought before the presbyter who watches over the order of fraters. Is this what you want? To be condemned as a heretic?”
“It is better to speak the truth and die than to keep silence and live.”
“You are bitter, Agius. You were not like this before.” With an abrupt movement, he buried his head against her chest. He spoke, his voice muffled further by the cloth of her robes. “Forgive me, Constance. I did it to save the life of my niece, for the love that lived between her father and myself.”
“You have always loved too deeply, Agius.” She sighed, her breath catching in her throat. “You know I forgive you. How can I not? You are first in my heart, after my pledge to Our Lady and Lord.”
“Yet you did not protest. You did not rebel, when your brother gave you to the church.”
“I know my duty,” she said softly, stroking his hair.
Agius was, Alain realized, weeping quietly. Constance wept as well, and Alain felt that by licking his tongue into the air he could taste the amalgamation of their tears, each into the other. Perhaps Agius did love too deeply. But was it not written that the blessed Daisan loved the world and all the people on it? Was love not the chief blessing granted to human beings by the mercy and grace of Our Lady and Lord?
Alain could feel their closeness, could taste the heat of their bodies, pressed against each other—and he felt envy. What would it be like to love a woman that much? So much that, if those hints Agius gave were true, he had turned away from the world when it came about that he could not marry her and instead devoted himself to the church as a humble frater, far below his rightful station in life? Would any woman ever weep for Alain? Press herself close against him?
Ai, it was true, that old saying. Envy is the shadow of the guivre, the wings of death. Alain knew shame, for he desired what was not his to have. He had been marked twice, once by the church and once by the Lady of Battles, whose rose he bore.
But he could not help but think of nights in the longhouse when as a child he lay awake, listening, hearing the soft sounds from other beds, Stancy and her husband, Aunt Bel and Uncle Ado, before Ado died. Of all the adults Alain knew, only his father Henri and those pledged to the church did not engage in such congress. Agius and Constance engaged in nothing now more intimate than an embrace, and yet there was so much more between them that it flared like a bright light, like the heat of coals in the brazier.
There was another brazier in the tent, this one placed beside the bed where Antonia slept. Alain glanced that way reflexively, trying not to move or betray that he was awake. But he gasped, more of a grunt, then bit his lip. He did not breathe for the space of five heartbeats.
Antonia’s eyes were open. He caught the glint of dim light against them, eyes glittering in night. Constance and Agius were too caught up in themselves to notice. But he did.
She watched, silent. She appeared to him like a huge yawning maw, sucking in life and air. She watched, he felt, not because she had her own yearnings or because she wanted to spy and thus gain information, but because she was greedy, because like a cat laps up cream or a griffin suckles the blood of its mother, she wanted as much as she could take from them. As if she intended to gather to herself and hoard all that intensity of emotion.
It made him sick, the feeling of her watchfulness.
He shut his eyes and turned his face against the safe, warm flank of Sorrow.
Later, when there was no more whispering, he slept.
2
THEY held council at dawn outside Antonia’s tent. “I still say the battle comes too soon,” protested Duke Rodulf. Obviously this argument had been raging for many days, and he was not quite yet resigned to losing it. “We risk everything by meeting Henry now.”
“Meeting Henry now is exactly what I planned for and wish for,” said Sabella. The odd thing about her voice, as monotone as it was, was the way its lack of emotion lent her an air of stubborn decisiveness. She was not a bright light or a leader of great radiance; she did not even have that brusque impatient authority by which Lavastine had (once) ruled his lands. Like a boulder rolling down a slope, she made no great claims, sparked no great fire, but simply crushed any obstacle in her path. “He has rushed to meet me. He has no great force with him today.”
“Yet according to our scouts he has a greater army than what we have gathered here.” Rodulf frowned and shook his head.
“Not as great a force as the one he will gather, given time to raise levies. Given time for his supporters to raise levies from their lands and march them across Wendar to Henry’s side. No, this is as small a force as Henry will ever wield in defense of his crown. And this time it will not be enough.”
“You are sure of this,” said Rodulf. Of all the various nobles and petty lords in attendance on Sabella, he was by now the only one who still questioned her. She endured his questioning, as she must: He was a duke, her equal in rank in all things except for the gold torque. But Rodulf’s mother’s mother had been a princess of Salia, so in this way he, too, came of noble lineage.
Alain stood behind Biscop Antonia, hiding among her clerics, and watched the council. By now Cleric Willibrod was not alone among the clerics in having a rash and unsightly sores on hands and lips, though he remained the only who picked nervously at them. Only Heribert, as fastidious as any man Alain had ever met, maintained his clean, unstained skin. But as chief among Antonia’s clerics, he kept himself above the actual work; he only supervised the care of the vestments, the making of amulets, the care for the sick in Antonia’s train, and the rest of the multitude of small tasks that accompanied attendance on a biscop.
“I am sure of this,” said Sabella. “Now is the time to act. Now is the time to fight.” She looked at Biscop Antonia; the biscop nodded, answering an unspoken question. Sometimes Alain wondered if Antonia controlled Sabella the way she controlled Lavastine, but even now he saw no sign of such a thing. Sabella and Antonia worked in concert. What grievances, in their inner hearts, drove them to these deeds he could not tell, though he wondered mightily. Sabella’s complaint was the more obvious. She believed she had been deprived of a throne which was rightfully hers. But had not God spoken, by default, when Sabella had ridden out on her heir’s progress and returned without having conceived a child? Henry, on his heir’s progress, had conceived a child, even if it was with as strange a mate as an Aoi woman. Why could Sabella not accept what fate—and God—had decreed for her?
No more than could I, he thought ruefully. Fate— and the God of Unities—had decreed he must enter the church as a novice, and yet here he was, marching to war, seeing more of the world than he had ever expected to, though this was exactly what he had dreamed about.
So did they all ready themselves. Duke Rodulf took himself off to his own troops, and Sabella waited for her horse to be brought to her. The army formed a great cavalcade as it rode east, crossing the El River at a shallow ford and marching up into the highlands. They now moved through the lands that owed allegiance to the duke of Fesse. They were in Wendar.
By bringing troops into lands outside Arconia, Sabella had now crossed the line past which there was no going back. Alain could not help but feel a thrill of excitement. The men he marched beside, the guards and clerics who protected Biscop Antonia and her “guests,”—Constance and Agius—felt it, too. They laughed and sang boisterously and made jokes among themselves, boasting about what they would do with the riches they intended to loot from the bodies of Henry’s soldiers: a spearhead, a good dagger, any kind of armor, shield or metal helmet or leather surcoat or, for a truly lucky man, a mail shirt or a sword.
No matter who won this battle, Alain realized, a great deal of wealth was about to change hands.
At midday the two armies met as if by design. They arrayed themselves on a broad field. Henry’s force took the be
tter position. The field sloped gently upward toward steeper heights beyond, and Henry had ordered his forces so Sabella would have to attack up the hill at him.
But she seemed unperturbed.
“Hai!” she said fiercely and triumphantly to Duke Rodulf, who had dropped back from his mounted soldiers to consult with her. “Look you, at the banners of Henry’s forces, and tell me what you see.”
From this place in Antonia’s retinue, which marched always at the side of Sabella, Alain surveyed Henry’s army. It seemed vast, unnumberable; he had never seen so many people gathered into one place at one time. He could not even count that high, though he heard Cleric Heribert whisper to Antonia:
“Something less than eight hundred men, and perhaps a third of them mounted.”
Alain recognized the dragon of Saony, but the men assembled under the banner of Saony’s duke were no more in number than those who rode in Count Lavastine’s retinue. The eagle of Fesse flew over a more formidable band of soldiers, many of these mounted. One group of these mounted soldiers was massed tightly around a figure wearing a surcoat of white and gold, royal colors; this person must be Duchess Liutgard. A banner also flew for Avaria, and though Alain glanced to where Agius stood meekly beside Constance, he did not think Agius was paying any particular attention to the banner of his father’s dukedom or to that of the woman his brother had married in his stead. Agius was praying. Constance stood calmly, hand raised almost to her throat but resting lightly on her chest, and her lips moved as she spoke—seemingly to herself—the names of the lords and counts and dukes who rode in Henry’s host.
In the center a huge bold banner of red silk fluttered in the stiff spring breeze. Three animals, stitched in gold thread, were displayed in a column on the banner: an eagle, a dragon, and a lion, the signs of Henry’s authority. Even from this distance Alain thought he recognized the king himself, surrounded by a richly arrayed group of retainers.