The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  Frederun shrugged. “I’m sorry any man must die. He was no worse than most of them are. He was very young. But I’m glad Princess Theophanu came, seeing that we have no lord or lady here in Gent. That will keep the vultures away.”

  “But not forever.”

  “Nay. Not forever.” As if she had overstepped an unmarked boundary, she rose. “Here, now, sit quietly and wait for me.”

  As soon as she left, shame consumed Hanna. What right had she to torment a kindly woman like Frederun? She pulled herself to her feet and, jaw set against the pain, hobbled across the courtyard as rain misted down around her. She could walk, even if each step sent a sword’s thrust of pain up her hip, through her torso, and into her temple. She could walk even if she could not catch her breath. She could walk, by the Lady, and she would walk, just as Bulkezu’s prisoners had walked without aid for all those months, sick and dying. She was no better than they were. She deserved no more than they had received.

  She was staggering by the time she reached the barracks, and for some reason Folquin was there, scolding her, and then Leo was carrying her back to a stall filled with hay. The smell of horse and hay made her cough. A spasm took her in the ribs.

  “Ai, God,” said Ingo. “She’s hot. Feel her face.”

  “I’ll get the captain,” said Folquin.

  “Maybe they have a healer here in the palace,” said Stephen.

  “Hanna!” said Leo. “Can you hear me?”

  She choked on hatred and despair. Dizziness swept her as on a tide, and she was borne away on the currents of a swollen river. She dreamed.

  In her nightmare, Bulkezu savors his food and guzzles his mead and enjoys his women, and even the gruesome wound is healing so well that folk who should know better turn their heads to watch him ride by. How dare he still be handsome? How can God allow monsters to be beautiful? To live even in defeat?

  Or is she the monster, because despite everything she still sees beauty in him? Wise, simple Agnetha, forced to become his concubine, called him ugly. Surely it is Hanna’s sin that she stubbornly allows her eyes to remain clouded by the Enemy’s wiles.

  A veil of mist obscures her dreaming, a fog rolling out of marshy ground beside which she glimpses the pitched tents of the centaur folk. Sorgatani walks through the reeds at the shore of the marsh. The fog conceals the world, and she knows that something massive is creeping up on her, or on the Kerayit princess, but Hanna cannot see it, nor does she sense from what direction it means to attack.

  A woman appears, shifting out of the fog as though a mist has created her: she is as much mare as woman. Green-and-gold paint stripes her face and woman’s torso.

  Sorgatani cries out in anger. “I have fulfilled all the tasks you set me! I have been patient! How much longer must I wait?”

  “You have been patient.” When the shaman glances up at the heavens, her coarse mane of pale hair sweeps down her back to the place where woman-hips meet mare-shoulders. “That lesson you learned well. The elders have met. Your wish is granted.”

  “We will ride west to seek my luck?”

  The centaur shifts sideways, listening, and after a moment replies. “Nay, little one. She must suffer the fate she chose. But we are weak and diminished. We cannot fight alone—”

  She rears back, startled by a sharp noise, the crack of a staff on rock. “Who is there?”

  The hot breath of some huge creature blows on Hanna’s neck, lifting her hair. She feels its maw opening to bite. Whirling, she strikes out frantically with a fist, but when her hand parts the mist, she stumbles forward into the salty brine of a shallow estuary, water splashing her lips and stinging her eyes as reeds scrape along her thighs.

  She is alone, yet she hears a confusing medley of voices and feels the press of hands as from a distance, jostling her.

  “It’s the lung fever. She’s very bad.”

  “Hush. We’ll see her through this. She’s survived worse.”

  A woman’s voice: “I’ve boiled up coltsfoot and licorice for the congestion.”

  “I thank you, Frederun.”

  Each time she strikes ax into wood and splits a log, she swears, as though she’s trying to chop fury and grief out of herself, but she will never be rid of it all.

  Better if she lets the tide sweep her onward through the spreading delta channels of the lazy river and out onto a wide and restless sea. Yet even here, the horror is not done with her. Fire boils up under the sea, washing a wave of destruction over a vast whorled city hidden in its depths. Corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again as the sea floor rises.

  A phoenix flies, as bright as fire. Or is it a phoenix at all but rather a woman with wings of flame? Delirium makes the woman-figure appear with a familiar face. Is that Liath, come back to haunt her? Is she an angel now, flying in the vault of heaven, all ablaze? As the creature rises, she lifts the slender figure of a man and two great hounds with her. But their weight is too great and with a cry of anguish and frustration the Liath-angel loses her grip on them and they fall away, lost as the fog of dreams rolls across the sky to conceal them.

  Hanna falls with them.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s delirious most of the time, Your Highness.”

  “Will she live?”

  “So we must pray, Your Highness.”

  II

  THE ACHE OF AN OLD WOUND

  1

  “HANNA?”

  Someone held a light close to her face. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned away from the harsh glare.

  “Hanna.” More insistently.

  She smelled horse on his tunic. A breeze tickled her ear, and she cracked open one eye and realized that it was not lamplight but sunlight that lit the chamber. She lay in a neatly appointed chamber with a second rope-frame bed opposite hers, a table and bench, a chest for clothing, and several basins set here and there about the room, five on the floor and two small copper ones on the table. Through open shutters she glimpsed an apple tree in bloom.

  Ingo knelt beside her bed. “Hanna?”

  She grunted, reaching out to grasp his shoulder, not sure if he were real or another vivid dream like the ones that plagued her. Even moving her arm took an effort. She was terribly weak, but she could breathe without pain. “You’re really here,” she said, mildly surprised that her voice worked.

  “Aye, indeed, lass,” he replied with a crooked grin. He wiped a tear from his cheek. “I’ve been here many a day over the winter, but you didn’t know it. We’ve all watched over you. I thank God that you look likely to live.”

  “Ah.” All she remembered was the dreaming, although she knew that long stretches had passed in which she was intermittently aware of the struggle it took to draw a single breath, of fever and chills washing through her as though she were racked by a tidal flow.

  “Listen, Hanna.” He took hold of her hand. “We’re leaving Gent. Princess Theophanu is marching with her retinue to Osterburg. Duchess Rotrudis has died at last. The princess must go there swiftly to make sure the old duchess’ heirs don’t tear Saony into pieces.”

  “Yes.” She had a vague recollection that Prince Sanglant had given her a message to take to his sister, and an even mistier memory that she had, perhaps, delivered it.

  “We leave after Sext. Today.”

  Her head throbbed with the effort of thinking. “How long?”

  “A week or more—”

  “She’s asking how long she’s been sick,” said a second voice from the door.

  “Folquin?”

  He hurried in to kneel beside her, and suddenly Leo and Stephen pressed into the room as well.

  “Captain said that until she’s stronger—” began Stephen hesitantly.

  “She might as well know from us.” Folquin’s shoulders were so broad that they blocked her view out the open window. He bent close to her, setting a huge hand on her shoulder as gently as if she were a newborn bab
y. She didn’t remember them all being so large and so very robust. “You’ve been sick with the lung fever all winter. You almost died. It’s spring. Mariansmass has come and gone. It will be Avril soon.”

  Her mouth was so dry that her tongue felt swollen. Still, she managed to smile despite cracked lips. The passing of seasons meant little to her. It was just nice to see their familiar faces, but exhaustion already had its grip on her again. She wanted to sleep. Yet would she be abandoned once they left? Ingo and the others had rescued her from Bulkezu, after all.

  “Who will look after me?”

  “There’s a good woman here, by name of Frederun. She’s been nursing you all winter. She’s head of the servants’ hall here at the palace. Princess Theophanu thinks well enough of you to leave her good companion, Lady Leoba, as lady over Gent. You’ll travel to Osterburg once you’re strong enough to ride. We’ll see you soon, friend.”

  They fussed over her for a little longer before being called away, but in truth she was relieved to be able to rest. She’d forgotten how exhausting they were, yet she had an idea that they hadn’t always seemed so, back before her illness, before Bulkezu.

  Days passed, quiet and unspeakably dreary. Her hip had healed, but even to stand tired her and walking from her bed to the door and back again seemed so impossible a task that she despaired of ever regaining her strength. Her ribs stock out, and her abdomen was a hollow, skin stretched tight over hipbones. Some days she hadn’t the will to eat, yet Frederun coaxed her with bowls of porridge and lukewarm broths.

  The passing days became weeks. Avril flowered, and with it the feast day of St. Eusebē, when apprentices sealed themselves into service to a new master. She had recovered enough that she could walk to a chair set outside in the sun, in the broad courtyard, and watch as a dozen youths were accepted into the palace, seven years’ service in exchange for a place to sleep and two meals every day. Lady Leoba herself came by to speak with her, and Hanna even managed to rise, to show the new lady of Gent proper respect.

  “I see you are healing, Eagle.” The lady looked her over as carefully as she might a prized mare whom she had feared lost to colic. “My lady Princess Theophanu hoped we could join her by the Feast of the Queen, but I’ve sent a messenger to let her know we’ll be delayed until the month of Sormas. It was a lad who said you had deputized him as an Eagle. He went by the name of Ernst. Do you remember him?”

  At first she did not, but when Lady Leoba gave her leave to sit down again, a hazy memory brushed her: the village, the thunderstorm, the eager youth Ernst. For some reason, tears filled her eyes. She didn’t cry as much now but that was only because the world seemed so stretched and thin that it was difficult to get up enough energy to cry.

  “Hanna?” Frederun appeared at her side. She had sent the new apprentices to their duties in stable, hall, kitchens, or carpentry. Dressed in a fine calf-length tunic worn over a linen underdress, she looked quite striking with her bountiful dark hair caught back in a scarf and her cheeks rosy with sun. “You look tired again.”

  “I’d like to go back to bed.”

  “Nay, you must take three turns around the courtyard first. Otherwise you’ll not get stronger.”

  Hanna did not have the stamina to resist Frederun’s commands. She did as she was told, because it was easier to obey than to fight. Yet, in fact, she did get stronger. The invalid’s spelt porridge soon had a hank of freshly baked bread to supplement it, and infusions of galingale and feverfew gave way to cups of mead and mulled wine. Light broths became soups, and soon after that she could eat chicken stewed in wine, fish soup, and periwinkles cooked up with peas. By the beginning of the month of Sormas she took her meals in the servants’ hall rather than alone in her room. Gent remained peaceful, a haven, but its quiet did not soothe her. She did not care to explore the city and kept to herself within the confines of the palace compound. Those like Frederun, who tried to befriend her, she kept at arm’s length; the others she ignored. When young Ernst returned late in the month of Sormas with an urgent summons for Lady Leoba, Hanna greeted his arrival with relief. It was time to move on.

  Leoba and her retinue rode out the day after Luciasmass, the first day of summer. Fields of winter wheat and rye had grown high over the spring, turning gold as summer crept in. Gardens neatly fenced off from the depredations of wild creatures and wandering sheep stood around hamlets sprung up along the road. Children ran out to watch them ride by. Some enterprising farmers had planted apple orchards to replace those chopped down during the Eika occupation, but these were young trees not yet bearing fruit. As they rode south along the river, fields gave way to pasturelands and a series of enclosed fields of flax and hemp near palisaded villages built up in the last two years to replace those burned by Bloodheart and his marauding army. The cathedral tower remained a beacon for a long while as they rode, but eventually it was lost behind trees. Settlements grew sparser and children more shy of standing at the roadside to stare.

  Ernst insisted on riding beside her. “I’ve never seen such fine ladies as those in the princess’ court! Do you see the clothes they wear for riding? All those colors! I’ve never seen so much gold and silver. God must truly love those to whom They grant so much wealth. I have so much food to eat that every night I have a full stomach! Sometimes I’m allowed to eat the leftovers off the platters the noble folk eat from. I had swan, but some spice in it made my tongue burn!”

  He sat a horse well. It hadn’t taken him long to learn, but his simple belief in the glamour of an Eagle’s life would prove a more stubborn obstacle to overcome. She kept silent, and eventually he shut up.

  The warm days and cloudless sky of Quadrii did not cheer her. Each league they traveled seemed much like the last, although there was always something new to look at and plenty of folk willing to offer them a meal of porridge and bread in exchange for news. The local farmers and manor-born field hands had heard rumors of bandits, cursed shades, and plague, but hadn’t seen any for themselves, nor had any of them heard until now of the great battle at Osterburg. Again and again she felt obliged to repeat the story. It was her duty, after all.

  Would it have been better to have stayed in Gent, safe behind bland walls? Yet she had grown tired of the friendliness of Gent’s servants and of her caretaker, Frederun. Everyone knew Frederun had been Prince Sanglant’s concubine when he’d wintered over in Gent the year before, on the road east; they spoke of it still, although never in Frederun’s hearing. He had given her certain small tokens, but she had stayed behind, bound to the palace, when he had ridden on. The prince had had a child with him, but no one knew what had happened to his wife, only that she had, evidently, vanished when the daughter was still a newborn infant.

  What had happened to Liath?

  When she closed her eyes, she saw the fever dream that had chased her through her illness, the hazy vision of a woman winged with flame whose face looked exactly like Liath’s. At night, she sought Liath through fire, but she never found her. King Henry, Hathui, even Prince Sanglant no longer appeared to her Eagle’s Sight, and Sorgatani came to her only in stuttering glimpses, clouded by smoke and sparks. It had been so long since she had seen Wolfhere that she had trouble recalling his features. Only Bulkezu’s beautiful, monstrous face coalesced without fail when she stared into the flames. Even Ivar was lost to her, invisible to her Eagle’s Sight although she sought him with increasing desperation. Had her sight failed her? Or were they all, at last, dead?

  She felt dead, withered like a leaf wilting under the sun’s glare.

  Rain delayed them. “It will ruin the harvest,” Ernst muttered more than once, surveying sodden fields, but Hanna had no answer to give. She had seen so much ruin already.

  After twenty days, they rode into Osterburg under cover of a weary summer drizzle that just would not let up. A gray mist hung over the fields, half of them abandoned or left fallow after the trampling they had received from two armies but the rest planted with spring-sown oats and barley and a s
cattering of fenced gardens confining turnips, peas, beans, and onions. Stonemasons worked on scaffolds along the worst gaps in Osterburg’s walls, but although there were still a number of gaps and tumbled sections, the worst stretch had been repaired. Inside, the streets seemed narrow and choked with refuse after so many days out on the open road.

  Stable hands took their horses in the courtyard of the ducal palace. She and Ernst walked at the rear of Lady Leoba’s escort as they crowded into the great hall, glad to get out of the rain. A steward, the same stout, intelligent woman who had met the Lions outside Gent, escorted them up stairs to the grand chamber where Princess Theophanu held court.

  Despite the rain, it was warm enough that the shutters had been taken down to let in the breeze. Theophanu reclined at her ease on a fabulously padded couch, playing chess with one of her ladies while her companions looked on in restful silence. Two women Hanna did not know but who bore a passing resemblance to the notorious Lord Wichman fidgeted on chairs on either side of Theophanu; it was hard at first glance to tell which one was more bored, irritable, and sour.

  “Ah.” Theophanu looked up with a flash of genuine pleasure. “Leoba!” They embraced. Theophanu turned to address the women sitting to either side of her. “Cousin Sophie. Cousin Imma. Here is my best companion, Leoba. She is out of the Hesbaye clan, and was married last summer to Margrave Villam.”

  “But isn’t she dead yet?” asked the one called Sophie, with a leer. “How many wives has Villam outlasted?”

  “Nay, it will be a test of the Hesbaye and Villam clans to see which one can outlast the other on fourth and fifth marriages,” retorted her sister.

  Leoba colored, but Theophanu drew her attention away, making room on the couch for Leoba to sit beside her. “How fares Gent?”

  “Well enough. A spring sowing of oats and barley was put in on the fallow fields. The winter wheat and rye crop has flourished. There are four excellent weaving houses. Each one produced enough cloth over the winter and spring that there is surplus for trade. The market brings in folk from three days’ walk away. Merchants have sailed in from as far as Medemelacha. They pay the regnant’s tax willingly enough. The year the city lay under Eika rule hurt their custom and their routes to the east. There’s to be a harvest fair that will likely bring folk from a week’s walk. Gent is a prosperous place. I have brought five chests of coin and treasure to give into your coffers.”