Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  “I’m here,” he said, “a traveler. The creature you seek passed by some time ago. I and my hounds heard it pass.”

  They hurried forward. They were what he expected: a nervous group of local men armed variously with spears, staves, shovels, and scythes and driven by one scowling big-boned man who walked at the back of the group holding the only sword.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, pushing forward through the rest but halting when he saw the size of the hounds.

  “I’m a traveler called Alain. I hope to find shelter for the night and continue my journey to Autun in the morning.”

  “You saw the beast, yet live to tell the tale?” He indicated the carcass and the bloody muzzles of the hounds. “Pray excuse me, friend, if I doubt your tale. None who see the beast live to tell of it.”

  “Has it killed human folk, then? What manner of beast is it that you stalk? Are you not feared to stalk a creature that will kill you once you see it?”

  Several of them scratched their beards, considering these questions.

  The one called Atto was young, with but a scrap of a beard and an anxious way of glancing from one side to the other. “That’s right, Hanso. We just found the one dead man, and him stark naked and so thin he more likely starved to death.”

  “He’d been gnawed on.”

  Atto shrugged. “Anything might gnaw on a dead carcass. A bear. Wolves. Wild dogs. Rats and crows and vultures.”

  “What about the missing sheep and cows, then?” asked the leader belligerently. “How do you account for those? We must protect ourselves.”

  “And get killed in the bargain?” Atto shook his head. “This is a fool’s errand. I’m not going any farther.”

  “Then you won’t be marrying my daughter.”

  That arrow hit home. That the two men disliked each other was apparent in their stiff posture and jutting chins, in the way the other seven men hung back as if fearing that a fistfight was about to erupt.

  “Try and stop us!” said Atto with a smirk. “We’ll walk to Autun. The lady is taking in men for soldiers. They say she’ll feed any man willing to carry arms in her service. We’ll manage, and you’ll not be able to run after us and drag her back like you did last time. She’s two years older now, old enough to choose for herself.”

  “And pregnant with your bastard!”

  Feet shifted, scuffing the dirt as each changed position. Hanso drew a fist back.

  Rage trotted forward and sat down showily between the two. Her growl drew such a hush down over the assembly that Alain clearly heard the tick of one of last autumn’s dead leaves fluttering down through branches as it fell at long last to earth.

  “It’s settled between us,” finished Atto, flicking an uneasy glance at the hound.

  “It will never be settled,” muttered Hanso. But he lowered his fist and turned his scowling glare on Alain. “What did you see?”

  Alain described the encounter, and the men listened respectfully. “Have any of you seen the creature?” he asked.

  Nay, they had not, but rumor grew like a weed. The corpse of an unknown man discovered by a holy spring. Missing ewes and cows since the autumn tempest that had blown down the trees and torn the roofs off a dozen sheds and houses in the hamlets hereabouts. Both strong ploughing oxen, owned in common by the villagers, gone and never recovered. The roof of their tiny church had cracked and fallen in, and the deacon had been killed. Then noises echoed out of the forest, dreadful cries and frightful coughs. The carcasses of deer, such as this one, had been found along animal trails disturbed by the passage of a huge beast: more than twenty such dead animals and all of them crawling with maggots and worms spat from the monster’s mouth. Two months ago a party of refugees had staggered out of the forest along the path and told of four of their number turned to stone and lost.

  “Yes, but later that night we found them counting the sceattas they’d stolen from their dead companions,” noted Atto sarcastically, “so I’m wondering if they didn’t just kill them and blame it on something else.”

  “You think there’s no beast out there?” Hanso demanded.

  “There’s a beast,” said Atto with that same cutting smirk, “but it’s as likely found in men’s hearts as stalking in the forest.”

  “You’re a fool!” Hanso spat, but he kept an eye on Rage and did not attempt to brawl.

  Some of the other men clearly agreed with this assessment of Atto’s character, but Atto had the good spear and a sarcastic tongue, enough to keep even the furious Hanso at bay. He had the pride of youth and the reckless heart of a young man who is sure of himself, whether or not he is wrong. He had gotten a woman pregnant, and sometimes that is enough to make a man feel that nothing can defeat him.

  “It’s a guivre,” said Alain, noting how their gazes all leaped to him as though they had forgotten he was there. “A guivre will do you no harm as long as you do not injure it. Leave it be, and it will hunt only in the forest. Attack it, and you’ll find yourselves turned to stone.”

  “You’re as crazy as he is!” Hanso spat again, his anger turned easily from the one he could not control to a new object. “Come!” he ordered his fellows. They were staring at Alain as though at the beast itself, and with grumbling and muttering they shouldered their tools and set off back the way they had come, kicking at debris, cursing the rain.

  Atto lingered, studying the hounds. “Those things bite?”

  “They do, if they’re provoked. They’ll defend themselves, that’s all. Otherwise they’re as mild as sheep.”

  He snorted. “A good tale! Who are you?”

  “I’m called Alain. I’m a traveler.”

  “So you said. Where are you from?”

  “Osna. That’s west, at the coast. It’s five or ten days’ walk from Osna to Lavas Holding. I’ve been on the road ten or fifteen days since I left Lavas Holding.”

  “Never heard of it. What are you going to Autun for? To join the militia, like me? If you’ll wait until morning, me and Mara will walk with you. We know part of the way. Not that we’ve ever been there, you understand. Have you?”

  “I’ve seen Autun, yes.”

  “They say it’s got so many houses you can’t count them all. And a big wall, to hold them in. And a cathedral tower so tall that up at the top you can rake your fingers through the clouds. They say it’s a holy place, where the old emperor died, the Salian one. I can’t remember his name.”

  “Taillefer.”

  “That’s right! Are you a learned man? A frater, maybe?” He rubbed fingers through his own coarse stubble. “Nay, you’ve got a bit of a beard. You’d have to be clean shaven to be a churchman. Still.” He shrugged. “Bandits travel in wolf packs, and thieves skulk. So maybe you’re just what you say you are. A traveler. A pilgrim.”

  The hounds had settled down to demolish the dregs of the carcass. Alain had a bag woven of reeds slung over one shoulder, and into this he placed some bones, still messy with bits of flesh and tough tendon strings.

  “Too bad you didn’t get any of the meat,” said Atto. “We could have roasted it. Deer are hard to come by this spring. We’re all afeard to go into the forest, not knowing what we’ll find there. Can’t slaughter what livestock we have left, and even so we had a poor lambing season, no twins at all.”

  “This beast. Has it killed your cattle and sheep?”

  “It hasn’t come into our pasture and byre. Maybe it got those that wandered off. No one’s brave enough to track it to its lair.” He coughed out a laugh as he gestured toward the north. “And I won’t be the one to find out! There’s rough land that way. Deep forest. Wolves, they say. A lake, though I’ve not seen it, and a ravine. That’s where it hides.” He had thick lips, blue eyes, and a funny way of looking at other people, as if he didn’t want to like them. “So they say. They don’t really know. They just talk and talk and do nothing but complain about their bad fortune and how ill luck dogs the village and the frost still comes and the crops won’t grow and how it’ll b
e worse before it gets better.”

  “Perhaps they’re right. Have you seen the sun since last autumn?”

  The comment startled Atto. He glanced heavenward, but there was nothing to see except the canopy of branches and the leaden silver of the sky. “I’m not waiting around. I’m going to Autun, me and Mara. Things will be better there.”

  2

  WHERE the road forked, an impressive barrier made up of downed trees and the detritus of shattered wagons lay across the northeasterly path. Hanna rode at the front of the cavalcade beside Lady Bertha. They pulled up to survey the barrier.

  “That’s been built, however much it might resemble storm fall,” said Bertha.

  “There’s a village down that path,” said Hanna. “I recall it. They welcomed me when I was riding for King Henry.”

  Bertha glanced at her, then at the barrier with branches sticking out at all angles and brittle leaves rattling in the spatter of rain.

  “Seems they’re less welcoming now.” Her gaze ranged farther afield, past the tangle of dense thickets and an unexpected stand of yew that lined the roadside. Farther back one could tell that the field layer lightened where tall beech formed a canopy. Drizzle dripped on them. Everything dripped. Hanna wiped the tip of her nose.

  “Ho! You there! In the tree!” Bertha had a strong high tenor, suitable for cutting through the din of battle.

  Hanna was not more startled than the lad in the yew, who slipped, grabbed branches, and gave away his position where needles danced.

  “We want shelter for the night. I am Bertha of Austra and Olsatia, daughter of Judith, margrave of Austra and Olsatia, may her memory live in peace. I’m sister of the current margrave, Gerberga. I have with me members of the king’s schola. We’ve been months on the road. We’ve traveled north out of Aosta, over the Brinne Pass, and through Westfall. It’s been a long road that brings us at last to Avaria, and Wendar. We need shelter, a fire, and a meal, if you will.”

  The tree was still again, then branches swayed and pitched and a shrill horn call rose on the wind with a blat like that of a frightened goat. The goats in their retinue bawled in answer. Their three dogs barked madly, and Sergeant Aronvald quieted them with sharp commands.

  Bertha raised her eyebrows. She beckoned, and the sergeant—the captain was dead—trotted forward on the skewbald gelding.

  “Be alert,” she said.

  “Yes, my lady.” He called out orders.

  The rear guard moved up to set a shield wall behind the three wagons. The men marching behind Bertha fell back to protect their flanks as the clerics ducked under the bed of the cargo wagon to hide themselves. It was an old routine, honed over months of travel.

  Only a dozen horses remained plus the three stolid cart horses who got the best of the feed because without them they would have no way to pull those wagons. Three dogs trotted alongside, having been adopted by the soldiers as mascots and guardsmen. On the road, they had expanded their herd of goats from three to eleven and acquired stray chickens here and there whose bones and meat leavened the wild onion stew they often ate. It was on stew and goat’s milk and cheese that they mostly subsisted. On their long journey, the horses had fared worst, goats best, and humankind somewhere in between.

  “Beyond this village, what?” Bertha asked.

  Hanna considered. “The village itself is at the end of that path. There’s a small river twenty or thirty leagues downstream, that feeds into the Veser. The village lies within a bend of the river on higher ground, so water gives it protection on three sides. They have beehives. An orchard. A bean field. Oats. Spelt. No church, but a good carpenter and shop.”

  “And this way?” She gestured toward the other fork, which led north-northwest.

  Rain trickled into Hanna’s mouth through her parted lips. “Another day’s ride or more to the palace at Augensburg.”

  “Best to go on, then? A palace sounds more appealing than a village walled with storm wrack.”

  “It’s burned down, my lady.”

  “What’s burned down? The village?”

  Hanna shuddered. “The palace, my lady. It burned down a few years back.”

  “There must be a settlement beside it, a town made prosperous by palace traffic?”

  Hanna shut her eyes. She fought as memories surfaced. She was hot all at once, sweating, but it was only the drizzle hardening into rain. “I don’t know, my lady. There might be.”

  “Did it burn in the conflagration, too? Eagle, what ails you? It’s not like you to—” Bertha was a steady commander, but she had a temper. “Give me the information I need!”

  Hanna discovered that her hands were shaking on the reins, and she had to tighten her knees to hold her horse in one place as it caught her mood. “I pray you, forgive me, my lady.” She spoke in a rush. “That town fell into the path of the army of the Quman. I don’t remember. I don’t know if any survived.”

  A drum of footfalls and a scattering of shouts alerted them that someone lived still in the village beyond. Bertha raised a hand to ready her archers and spearmen.

  Along the path came a trio of hardy men, each armed with the kind of weapons farmers make for themselves: one bore a staff sharpened to a point, one had a staff with a scythe bound securely to one end to make of it a halberd, and the third held an actual iron sword of the kind a lady’s guardsman might wield. He also had a length of board cut into a teardrop shape and fixed to his left arm as a shield, crude but effective and unmarked by any heraldic sigil.

  It was this man who climbed atop one of the logs and regarded them with no smile and no welcome.

  “You can’t come here. We’ve blocked the road.”

  “We need shelter,” said Lady Bertha. “We are loyal subjects of the regnant, good Wendish folk all. I am escorting these holy men and women who served King Henry as part of his schola. We have been months on the road out of Aosta. We ride north to Saony.”

  “You can’t come in,” he said. “You might be carrying the plague. What’s in those wagons?”

  “Feed for the horses. Supplies. Most importantly, we carry with us a holy abbess, aged and weak. She needs shelter and a warm fire against the frost that afflicts us every night.”

  “A plague-ridden beggar, no doubt.” He was a stocky man with the broad shoulders and thickset arms of a man who works every day with his hands. “Or men with animal’s faces, hiding under the canvas. We can’t chance it.”

  “You’re the carpenter’s son,” said Hanna suddenly. “I recognize you. I am a King’s Eagle. I sheltered one night in your village a few years back. Do you remember me?”

  He sized her up. He had dark brown eyes, eastern eyes, they called it in these parts, a memory of raiders out of the east who had come and gone but left something of themselves behind in later generations. He shook his head, and seeing that he did not know her, she pushed back her hood.

  “I was here with four Lions,” she added. “We’d come from the east.”

  “Ah!” he said. “I recall that hair. You’re out of the north, so you said.”

  “That’s where I was born. I pray you, friend, do not forget what courtesy is due to clerics and Eagles. Let us bide just this one afternoon and night. We’ll go on our way in the morning.”

  “No.”

  Lady Bertha pushed Hanna aside. “Give us shelter this one night, and porridge and ale, if that is all you have. In the name of Henry and his son, Prince Sanglant, I command it.”

  He gestured toward her with his sword as if to ward off an evil spirit. “We will not fall for that trick a second time!” “What trick?” asked Hanna.

  His gaze shifted past her face, and she turned in the saddle to see that Sister Rosvita and several of the young clerics had walked forward through the mud to see what was holding them up.

  “These are only a few of the clerics we protect,” Hanna added. “This is no trick. I pray you—”

  “No!” He gestured. That horn call blatted again from deeper within the trees. Feet
clattered on the earth. Branches rustled. “Go on! Go on!” He seemed furious, or near to tears. A scar blazed his forehead. One of his comrades was missing a finger on one hand, and the other was painted with a startling red rash across his cheek and down one side of his neck. “No one will come in. We can trust no one.”

  “I am a King’s Eagle!” cried Hanna indignantly.

  “Where is the king and the king’s justice? It’s vanished, that’s what! You’ll get no shelter from us. We’ll fight if you try.”

  “I’ve never been treated so disrespectfully by Wendish folk! Can it be you are not Avarians after all but creatures of the Enemy come to inhabit the bodies of decent people?”

  “You would know, would you not, who speak of Henry’s bastard son! Spawn of devils!”

  “Aronvald, make ready!” Bertha called.

  The sergeant signaled. The archers raised their bows. The carpenter’s son called back to unseen folk in the forest and out of sight down the track, but he did not move to take shelter from arrow’s flight.

  Sister Rosvita moved up to take hold of Bertha’s reins.

  “Let be, Bertha,” she said in a pleasant voice.

  “They owe us shelter!” said Bertha, but she looked down at the cleric, frowned, and lifted a hand. Archers lowered their bows, but did not otherwise shift.

  “Look at his face,” said Rosvita. “He means what he says. He is desperate, fearful, determined. Yes, your good soldiers will win the skirmish. We are armed in leather and mail and have good iron swords and spears and six fine archers. But what if we lose even one soldier, if even one of my faithful clerics is wounded or killed when we have come so far over such a treacherous road. If we lose this Eagle, who guides us. For the sake of one night’s shelter, I judge it not worthwhile.”

  Bertha grunted an answer, too angry to agree but too wise to object. Hanna fumed, but she, too, said nothing as the soldiers fell back into marching order and they moved on. The villagers gathered on top of the roadblock, staring, until the fork in the road was lost behind the trees and the contour of the road.