King's Dragon
“I am Sabella’s prisoner, not her ally.”
“How can I know—?”
Distantly, that awful shriek rose again on the wind, followed by a strange muttering, like calls of triumph and moans of defeat melded together, like a battle gone to rout.
The frater grunted in anger, grabbed her arm, and yanked her bodily off the horse. She hit the ground hard enough to jolt her and scatter her wits. The animal shied, but he jerked down on the reins and, while Hanna was trying to pick herself up, threw himself over the saddle and swung his leg over. Kicked the horse, hard, and with robes flapping up around his thighs, he rode at a gallop off toward the battle. Lady! He was barefoot!
Panting, Hanna heaved herself to her feet. In the woods, two forces had met and blended together: she caught sight of the red dragon of Saony. Friends, then, but as soon as she thought it, she heard shouting.
“Lavastine’s riders are coming! Turn round! Turn round and face them!”
Ai, Lady! What had Hathui said? An unhorsed Eagle is a dead Eagle. The frater, and her horse, were long gone. Still clutching her spear, Hanna ran for the shelter of the wagons.
4
THIS is what it had all meant, of course. Alain saw that now with a clarity obscured only by the screaming of men and the milling of soldiers lost, frightened, and running, or caught up in the brutal and numbing work of slaughter.
Henry’s soldiers—those caught by the guivre’s glare— were like so many trussed pigs, throats slashed while they squealed. This was not battle of the kind sanctified by the Lord of Hosts, who did not falter when He was called upon to wield the Sword of Judgment. This was a massacre.
Alain knew it was wrong, knew it in his heart. The guivre screamed in rage, trying to break free, beating its wings frantically. Sabella’s first rank of horsemen moved steadily up the hill, their progress slowed because it was so easy to kill Henry’s soldiers, because they had to scramble over the dead and dying and over horses collapsed onto the grass. On the far right flank, a melee swirled, back and forth, but the standard of Fesse wavered and began to move backward.
Above, about half of the century of Lions had begun to march forward to meet Sabella’s army. The rest either could not or would not march. And behind them Henry sat on his horse, unmoving. Was he waiting and watching? Or was he already caught in the guivre’s eye?
The mounted soldiers opposite Lavastine’s forces were trying to turn Lavastine’s soldiers back so they could punch in to aid Henry’s center. Alain ran, fought his way through the back ranks of archers and spearmen who had fallen back after the first skirmishing. He shoved, and Rage and Sorrow nipped and bit to make a passage for him, toward their sisters and brothers, the black hounds who attended Count Lavastine.
Alain reached the count, who was sitting back from the front lines, waiting and watching the progress of the battle. Alain grabbed his stirrup and pulled hard. Lavastine stared down at him. There was no sign in his eyes that he recognized Alain.
Desperate measures for desperate times. He prayed for strength to the Blessed Lady. Then he grabbed Lavastine’s mail coat and tugged as hard as he could.
Because the count was not expecting it, he lost his seat. Alain shifted his grip to the count’s arm and pulled him right out of the saddle. Lavastine fell hard and lay still.
And a spear pinched Alain between the shoulder blades. He dropped to his knees and fumbled at his neck as he turned his head to look up and behind.
It was Sergeant Fell. “You know me, Sergeant!” Alain cried. “You know the count is acting strangely. This is wrong! We shouldn’t be here!”
Fell hesitated. Lavastine’s captain fell back from the front lines, seeing the count unhorsed. All at once the hounds surrounded Alain, growling and driving everyone back. No one dared strike them. Alain found the rose and drew it out.
“I pray you, Lady of Battles, come to my aid,” he breathed. And he brushed the petals of the rose over Lavastine’s pale lips, just below the nasal of his helmet.
Beyond, he heard the clash of battle. Here he was protected, caught in an eddy, surrounded by a black wall of hounds. Sorrow licked Lavastine’s face, and the count opened his eyes. He blinked and passed a hand over his helmet as if feeling it there for the first time. Then he sat up. Alain grabbed him under the arms and the hounds parted to let Sergeant Fell through. Together, Alain and the sergeant pulled Lavastine to his feet.
“What is this?” demanded Lavastine, staring at the chaos around them, his front rank of fighters pressing against the fighters from Saony. Fesse’s banner was retreating. In the center, Sabella’s banner moved up and farther up and came against the banner of the Lions. The guivre shrieked. The Lion banner toppled and disappeared from view. Henry, surrounded now only by his personal guard, did not move.
The captain pressed his horse through the knot of hounds and men, who parted to let him through. Sergeant Fell let go of the count and grabbed his horse’s reins before it could bolt. The guivre made all the horses nervous, and they shied at every harsh call and scream.
“We are marching with Sabella, against Henry,” said the captain.
“We are not!” cried Lavastine. “All of my men, withdraw from the battle.”
This command raced through the ranks like wildfire. Lavastine mounted his horse and pulled back, and step by embattled step his soldiers withdrew from the battle until the captains of Saony’s line realized what was occurring and, at last, let them go.
But Henry’s center was broken. Sabella was halfway through the Lions and still Henry had not moved. As Lavastine’s soldiers cleared the field, Alain stood his ground and their retreat eddied around him and ebbed until he stood among the dead and watched Saony’s cavalry wheel and turn to aid their king. He watched the guivre twist and turn, still battering against the wind and against its shackles, watched its baleful glare sweep across the ranks of Saony’s soldiers. Watched as half of Sabella’s company split off to strike at this new threat.
A few arrows and spears cut through the air from the ranks of Fesse’s troops to slide harmlessly off the guivre’s scaly hide and fall to the ground. The grass was empty around the guivre; Sabella’s soldiers, though protected against its gaze, gave it a wide berth. Not one soul had come within reach of its claws, circumscribed by the length of the chain that fettered it to the iron cage.
Slowly, Henry’s soldiers were cut down or retreated up the hill toward the king—for their final stand.
The rose fell from Alain’s suddenly nerveless fingers. He could not stand by and watch anymore. He could not judge the rightness of Sabella’s grievance against Henry. But he knew it was not right that she win by these means, as horrible as they were. Lackling had been murdered to gain Lavastine’s support. Henry’s soldiers could not fight, so as to pit honest strength against honest strength, but were scythed down like wheat.
He ran across the field, stumbling on corpses, jumping over men who writhed or struggled to drag themselves to safety. He ran toward the guivre, and paused only once, long enough to take a sword from a noble lord’s slack and bloody body. He did not even register the man’s face.
But another figure reached the guivre before he could. Someone else, riding a dun-colored horse. The man flung himself off the horse and slapped it on the flank. The horse bolted away.
And the frater—for it was Frater Agius, Alain saw that now as he ran, knowing suddenly that he would come too late—walked without fear into the circle of the guivre’s talons.
Its cry was as much delirium as fury, but it stooped and plunged. Half-starved and long since driven wild by captivity and the torment of its wasted and suffering body, it took the food offered it.
Agius vanished under a flurry of metal-hard wings and sharp talons. The guivre lowered its head to feed.
Henry’s army—what was left of it—and Henry himself came to life. With cries of rage, driven almost to a frenzy by what they had witnessed and been helpless to prevent, they charged and hit Sabella’s line, which
had fallen out of formation as they took the hill and killed their easy prey. The soldiers from Fesse and Avaria regrouped and slammed into Duke Rodulf’s stretched-thin line. Saony’s troops fell back, reformed, and drove for Sabella’s faltering center.
Alain ran for the guivre. Already the first of Sabella’s men, shocked and not yet recovered from this reversal, stumbled backward past him. He ignored them, though Sorrow and Rage nipped and barked, protecting him so no man tried to stop him.
Why would any man try to stop him? The guivre loomed huge, this close, a stooped shape that was yet as high as two men, one standing on the other’s shoulders. Sun glinted off its scales, and it fed with the rapacity of a creature who has been denied pleasure for too long. Alain came up behind it, thought of striking but did not. It remained oblivious to him. He heard the crunch of bone and—Ai, Lady!—a horrible moan that pitched up into a strangled wail and was abruptly cut off.
He circled the great beast. Worms fell from its diseased eye to slither away on the ground. From this side it could not see his approach. And anyway, it was too busy feasting.
He raised the sword just as he heard a warning cry behind him and then a cry from farther away: “Hailililili!” and the thunder of hooves and shouts of dismay, carrying Rodulf’s name on the wind, and again and again the cry of “Henry! For King Henry!”
He brought it down with all his strength on the creature’s neck. It screamed aloud, deafening him, and lifted its great and ugly head from what remained of Agius. Lifting, casting first to its sighted side and then slewing round the other way, it beat its wings, sending him tumbling forward underneath it. It was an ungainly thing, not meant for the ground; it had only the one set of talons and wings.
It clawed for him, missed, because it could not see him, tottered, because it was so ill and could barely find its balance. Alain stumbled back and righted the sword, turning it so the blade pointed up. His heel met resistance and he fell to one knee. Glanced behind himself.
The guivre had opened Agius at the belly, to feed on the soft entrails. Horribly, the frater’s eyes caught on and tracked Alain; he was still alive.
The guivre screamed its fury and found its footing. Its shadow covered them, Alain and the dying Agius.
But, of course, as the old tales told, every great beast has its weak spot. Alain did not hesitate but plunged the sword deep into its unprotected breast.
Blood fountained, pouring over him like the wash of fire. He let go of the sword’s hilt and jumped back, grabbing Agius and tugging him as the guivre writhed in its death throes. Spitting and coughing, blinded by the stinging, hot blood, he stumbled backward, dragging Agius. The guivre fell and the impact jarred Alain off his feet. He collapsed on top of the frater. The guivre shuddered, a great convulsion, and was still.
Agius breathed something, a rattling word and then another. Alain bent, eyes streaming, his hands smarting. A body slammed up against him, and then Rage was licking his face and hands. He tried to chase her away. He could not chase her away and concentrate on Agius.
“Free the white deer,” whispered Agius. “Ai, Lady, let this sacrifice make me worthy of Your Son’s example.” His eyes glazed over and he shuddered once, like the guivre, and died.
Sorrow nudged up against Alain. The hound had something in his mouth. Rage licked Alain’s eyes clean of the guivre’s blood and Alain blinked into sudden brightness and made sense first of all of the field lying washed by the sun’s light and the chaos ranging there: Sabella’s banner fell back and farther back yet. All the weight of victory had shifted. With the death of the guivre, their standard, Sabella’s soldiers had lost heart and now they turned and fled.
A thorn cut Alain’s cheek, a thin prick. He started back to see Sorrow carrying the rose in his mouth, brought from the other side of the battlefield. Its petals had darkened to a deep blood-red, as red as Agius’ blood that yet leaked onto the ground.
Alain dropped his face to his hands and wept.
XIV
THE PROMISE
OF POWER
1
ROSVITA could not concentrate when she was waiting. She paced up and down in the feasting hall that adorned the palace built by the first duke of Fesse some eighty years ago. Now and again she walked over to the great doors that opened onto a beautiful vista of the town of Kassel, lying at the foot of the hill on which the palace had been erected. A huge gray-blue stone capped the lintel of this monumental doorway. When Rosvita stared up, she saw tiny figures and patterns carved into the stone, their outlines blurred by age.
In the town below, a few bedraggled streamers still decorated the streets. When Henry and his army had marched in, the town of Kassel had been recovering from the raucous Feast of St. Mikhel, celebrated four nights before. Though the biscop dutifully spoke out against several of the local customs, even she could not prevent the usual festival which involved a young woman riding through the streets of Kassel clothed only in her hair—or in this case, in a gauzy linen undershift, some attention being shown to modesty—while the townsfolk closed their shutters and pretended not to watch her go by. After this procession everyone trooped out of doors and drank themselves sick. Rosvita was not sure exactly what had happened in the original story to force the poor woman to ride out in such a humiliating way, only that St. Mikhel was by a miracle supposed to have clothed the hapless virgin in a light so blinding it protected her from the stares of the heathen and the ungodly.
“It is said,” said Princess Theophanu, coming up beside Rosvita to stand in a splash of sunlight, “that this stronghold was built on the ruins of a Dariyan fortress which was itself built on the ruins of an older palace whose great stones were set in place by the daimones of the upper air.” She indicated the huge lintel.
“Like the stone circles,” said Rosvita, thinking of young Berthold. “Though some say they were set there by giants.” That was what Helmut Villam had said, that day when they had explored the old fallen stone circle and Berthold had still walked alive in the light of day. Ai, Lady, this sorrow she must bear with her. But she could not allow it to drag her down. “Come,” she said, turning to Theophanu. “We will read from the book I was given by the hermit, Brother Fidelis. In this way we may reflect upon the life of a holy woman while we wait to hear from King Henry.”
She turned back into the hall, where light and shadow played among the thick wood pillars and in the eaves far above. No fire burned in the hearth this day; it was warm enough that only cooking fires in the kitchen house needed to be lit. Servants dressed in tabards sewn with the gold lion of Fesse lingered nervously beside the side doors. One brought wine forward, but she gestured for him to take it away. She was not thirsty.
Young Ekkehard had fallen asleep on a bench. His gentle face and sweet profile reminded her bitterly of Berthold Villam, who was lost to them now. Ekkehard was a good boy, if a little too fond of carousing late into the night and singing with the bards who traveled from one great court to the next.
“It is just as well,” said Theophanu, coming up beside Rosvita.
“What is just as well?”
Theophanu nodded toward her younger brother. Of all Henry’s children, Ekkehard looked the most like his father: golden-brown hair, round face, and a slightly arched, strong nose. At thirteen, he was lanky and tall and a bit clumsy except when he was playing the lute, but so—it was said—had Henry been at that age before he grew into the broad and powerful stature of his adult years. “It is just as well,” said Theophanu, “that Ekkehard loves music and the pleasures of the feast more than he does the promise of power.”
Rosvita did not quite know what to make of this bald statement.
Theophanu turned her dark eyes on Rosvita. “Is that not the source of Sabella’s rebellion? That she is not content administering her husband’s dukedom? That she wants more?”
“Is greed not the source of many sins?” asked Rosvita.
Theophanu smiled innocently. “So does the church teach, good sister.”
Theophanu was old enough to have her own retinue, and yet her father kept her close by his side, just as he kept Sapientia beside him rather than giving her a title and lands to administer. Did Theophanu chafe at this treatment? Rosvita could not tell. Was she angry that her sister had been allowed to accompany Henry to meet Sabella on the field and been given her own command? That she had been left behind when truly she was larger and stronger and more fit physically for the exertions of battle? Theophanu’s expression and her inner thoughts on these matters remained unreadable.
Rosvita unwrapped the old parchment codex from the linen cover in which she had swaddled it and turned carefully to the first page. Brother Fidelis’ calligraphy was delicate yet firm, betraying the lines of an older age in the loops and swirls of the occasional fillips of ornamentation he had allowed himself as he wrote. A Salkian hand, Rosvita thought; she had examined many manuscripts and books over the years and come to recognize various quirks and telltale signs of specific scribes or of habits learned in certain monastic schools.
She touched the yellowing page with reverence, feeling the lines of ink beneath her fingers like the whisper of Fidelis’ voice, coming to her as from down a long tunnel, through the veil of years.
Theophanu sat beside her and waited, hands clasped patiently in her lap. Rosvita read aloud.
“‘The Lord and Lady confer glory and greatness on women through strength of mind. Faith makes them strong, and in these earthly vessels, heavenly treasure is hid. One of this company is Radegundis, she whose earthly life I, Fidelis, humblest and least worthy, now attempt to celebrate so that all may hear of her deeds and sing praise in her glorious memory. The world divides those whom no space parted once. So ends the Prologue.’”
Rosvita sighed, hearing Fidelis in these words as if his voice echoed through the ink to touch her ears. She went on. “‘So begins the Life. The most blessed Radegundis was of the highest earthly rank—’”