by Kate Elliott
And yet perhaps it was too hard to shelter so many here with no rescue for Gent in sight—for surely no one expected the young lord and his retinue to drive the Eika away on their own.
Helen had stopped bawling and now clung to her in silence. She paused on the rise and stared back as the mob of children, hundreds of them, started walking reluctantly, resignedly, toddlers stumbling along in the wake of elder children, thin legs bare to the cold, their pathetic belongings strapped to backs already bowed under the weight. They had so far to go.
Tears blinded her briefly as a glint of sun struck out from a rent in the clouds and shone into the midst of the line of children. She blinked back a blurring vision of a bright figure walking among them, a woman robed in a white tunic with blood dripping down her hands, and then the vision vanished. Anna turned away to look toward the young lord who surveyed this exodus with dispassion.
Master Helvidius hobbled up beside her, so exhausted from the morning’s excitement, his legs buckling under him, that she and Matthias had to half carry him back to the tannery. Little Helen walked beside them singing a tuneless melody, and by the time Master Helvidius and Helen were settled in the shelter of a lean-to set up against the tannery fence, and Matthias sent back to work, and Anna gone out again to the stream to haul water, the line of refugees had vanished from sight.
Only the deserted camp remained.
2
ANNA had never seen a noble lord so close before. Nor had she ever imagined that a table could groan under the weight of so much food. She had never seen people eat and drink as much as these did: Lord Wichman, eldest son and second child of Duchess Rotrudis, his cousin Lord Henry—named after the king—and their retinue of young nobles and stalwart men-at-arms. The young nobles boasted about the battles they would fight with the Eika in the days to come. The men-at-arms, who drank as lustily as their noble masters, were wont to get into fistfights when their interest in Master Helvidius’ lengthy and complicated court poems waned.
It had not taken long after the departure of the refugees for the mayor of Gent—desperate to find amusement for Mistress Gisela’s noble guests—to remember that he had left a court poet out among the refugees and to wonder if the old man had remained behind.
“You’ll go to his summons?” demanded Matthias that next afternoon, amazed and appalled, “after he deserted you here when he took the rest of his servants inside the palisade?”
“Pride hath no place among the starving,” said Master Helvidius. So each evening he took Anna with him to carry his stool and help support him on the long walk up the rise that led to the inner court, and of course Helen had to tag along as well, for there was no one else to watch over her with Matthias working until last light each day. The tanners and smiths and foresters worked long hours and harder even than they had before, for they now had over seventy men and thirty horses to care for, feed, and keep in armor and weapons besides those they had brought with them.
Over the next many days Lord Wichman’s force marched out every day, searching for Eika, fighting a skirmish here, burning a ship there, each feat of arms retold in great detail at the night’s feast. Helvidius quickly became adept at turning the details of these expeditions into flattering paeans to Lord Wichman’s courage and prowess, which the young Lord never grew tired of hearing.
Anna grew equally adept at grabbing half-eaten bones off the floor before the lord’s dogs could get them, or at begging crusts of bread from drunken soldiers. Master Helvidius, fed at the high table, slipped her food from the common platter, delicacies she had never before tasted: baked grouse, black pudding, pork pie, and other savories. Helen was content to sit sucking her thumb in a corner, by the hearth, eating what was offered her; the rest Anna saved in her pouch and took back to Matthias in the mornings—she, Helen, and the poet had to sleep in the hall because once night fell, the gates to Steleshame remained shut.
Sleeping on the floor of the newly built longhall in Steleshame was a more luxurious bed than any she had slept on before. It was never bitter cold inside even as autumn eased into winter and the days grew short and gray. Little Helen got roundness back in her cheeks, and Master Helvidius’ legs got stronger, although he still needed his staff to walk.
“They’ve turned all the lands round Gent into pasture, I swear,” said Lord Henry, Wichman’s father’s sister’s son. He was a young man, not much older than a boy, with dark hair, a fresh scar on his cheek which he wore as proudly as his sword, and a boastful tongue. “There’s enough cattle out there trampling good fields to feed an army a thousand strong!”
“Why have none wandered back to us?” demanded Gisela.
“They’re tended by slaves and guarded by Eika.”
“Do the Eika have so many soldiers still wintering there?” asked the mayor nervously.
“We haven’t ridden close enough to the town to count them,” said Lord Henry, glancing reproachfully toward his elder cousin. “But we might still do so, if we dared more.”
Young Wichman merely belched in reply to this appeal and called for Mistress Gisela’s pretty young niece to fetch him another cup of wine. He had, as Master Helvidius said, “an itch between his legs,” though she didn’t quite understand what that meant except that he pestered the young woman in a way the niece didn’t like, yet no one else seemed inclined to prevent.
Helen had already fallen asleep. Anna curled up beside her, smoke and warmth a haze around them, and closed her eyes while Master Helvidius droned on, his slightly nasal voice intoning the lay of Helen. Neither he nor the young lord ever seemed to tire of the long poem—and what the young lord wanted the young lord got.
“… Now the servants removed the tables, and while the second course was brought, as much talk sprang up among the banqueters as echoed in the hall like the din of battle. But King Sykaeus raised his cup and called silence to the hall. Huge bowls were brought and filled to the brim with wine, and out of these the king himself filled the first cup and this he passed among the company.
“Thus he entreated Helen for the story of Ilios. ‘Fair and noble guest, tell us your tale from the beginning …’”
A dog nosed Anna awake, sniffing her face and licking the dried juice of meat off her fingers. She could tell by the somber gray of light within the hall that dawn was close at hand. Helen lay fast asleep on a heap of dirty rushes, her breath a liquid snore. Helvidius had fallen asleep still sitting, head draped over the table; he would regret that later, when his muscles stiffened.
She had to pee.
She got up and picked her way over the sleeping servants, tiptoed around the men-at-arms who reeked of ale and piss and sweat. Outside, in the open dirt yard, she crept around to where a line of privies had been dug up against one palisade wall, well away from hall and longhouse. The sky grayed toward twilight and the last stars shone faintly, fading into the growing light of dawn.
The stone keep stood like a stolid, faithful servant, its shadow blunt against the lightening sky. Outbuildings were scattered about; she saw a flash of coals, bright red, from one of the open huts. Smiths and tanners worked outside the palisade wall now, so their stink wouldn’t disturb the sleep of the householder, her kin, the mayor of Gent and his retinue, and their noble guest.
Here, by the privies, the noble guest was clearly disturbing Mistress Gisela’s niece.
“I beg you, Lord Wichman,” said the young woman, twisting away as she tried to hurry back to the safety of the hall, “I have much work to do.”
“What better work than what I can give you, eh?”
“My lord.” She tugged out of his grasp and slipped sideways, trying to escape into the gloom. “Forgive me, but I can’t stay.”
Angry, he grabbed at her cloak, jerking her up short. “I hear it said you thought yourself good enough for my bastard cousin Sanglant. Surely you’re good enough for me!”
At first, Anna thought the slow hiss came from the niece, preface to an angry outburst. Then she saw a pale stream of ligh
t trailing above the distant treetops, undulating in languid curves. A great golden beast rose into the sky, and as the sun’s rim pierced the bowl of the horizon, its roar shuddered the air.
The niece screamed and bolted. Young Lord Wichman, still groggy from a night of drinking, gaped at the sky, groping at his belt to draw his sword. He staggered back and Anna shrieked as the dragon, its golden scales more blinding than the sun, flew directly over the holding. Gouts of flame boiled upward into the clouds, the hiss of fire meeting ice. Anna had never seen anything so beautiful or so terrifying.
“Dragons!” shouted guards from the wallwalk.
Lord Wichman sheathed his sword and cursed. His bland face suddenly creased with delight, and he spun and ran toward the stables, shouting. “To arms! To arms!”
The alarm sounded, horn blasts piercing the quiet of dawn.
“Dragons! Dragons!” The cry lifted again as men-at-arms scrambled out of the hall and servants brought horses from the stables.
She had to get back to Master Helvidius and Helen. Ai, Lady, she had to get back to Matthias who, with the other tanners and laborers, slept outside the main palisade in little enclosures sheltered with mere fences, more to keep livestock out than to protect against fearsome beasts. But could anything protect against a dragon?
The huge creature rose sluggishly, each flap of its wings like a sheet of gold thrumming and throbbing in the air. Slowly it banked and turned for a second pass. Before she knew what she meant to do, she ran for a ladder and climbed up to the wallwalk to get a better look. It was madness; ai, Lady, indeed, she was crazy and Matthias would say as much, but even Matthias must be astonished by the sight. This seemed more uncanny, more miraculous, than the daimone chained in the cathedral. She had to get a better look. And perhaps from this angle she could see the tannery.
She had to hop and scramble up, hooking her arms over the top of the palisade and brace herself on the logs, in order to see over. What she saw caught her breath in her throat.
The guards at the gate yelled again: “Dragons!”
But they were not pointing at the sky.
Through the deserted camp, strewn now with the remains of hovels and shelters, littered with garbage and beaten to dirt churned muddy by yesterday’s rain and frozen by the last night’s frost, rode a hundred horsemen. Their helmets gleamed, fitted with polished brass. Their gold tabards shone as brightly as the dragon’s scales, each one marked with a menacing black dragon, miniature hatchlings that rippled and moved as the Dragons approached.
As from far away she heard a man shout in a thin, hysterical voice: “Don’t open the gates! Don’t open the gates!”
Fire sparked from the hooves of the Dragons’ horses as they pounded through the empty camp. There, by the stream, fire leaped into the scatter of buildings that marked the tanning works. Anna screamed, pointing, but it was useless. No one could hear her. No one would hear her.
They weren’t Dragons at all. She saw now the gaping holes in the tabards, the gleam of bone where ragged mail parted to reveal a skeletal jaw or flesh scored deep from a putrefying wound. Empty eyes stared from beneath nasals. Skin peeled away from bone where the morning wind whipped them clean. They made no sound.
Yet they came on.
Months ago she had seen them lying dead in the cathedral crypt at Gent. They were not Dragons at all, only the remains of them, only the memory of that force that had fought against the Eika. What terrible magic had raised them from the dead?
The gates yawned open, and out from Steleshame rode young Lord Wichman and his retinue. They shone as bright as their enemy, and they charged with abandon.
“Anna!”
She fell, caught herself on the lip of the walk, and half slid down the ladder.
“Anna!” Fright made Master Helvidius able to walk without his staff. “Child! Child! Come in! The Eika are attacking! Come to shelter!”
“Where’s Helen?”
“In the hall. Still asleep.” The old poet wept with fear. “Go get her and then come to the keep, but make haste, Anna! Hurry! There’s not enough room—”
“Matthias—!”
“There’s nothing we can do for him! Go!”
She ran across the yard. A spinning ball of flame hurtled past and smacked into the dirt: a torch cast from outside. It guttered and failed, but she heard more torches thunk onto the roofs. Most slid down the slope of roofs, plummeted to earth, and were stamped out, but a few caught and began to burn.
As she came to the great doors that opened into the long hall, she saw Mistress Gisela’s niece slap a ladder against the side of the house. Climbing to the top, with another woman halfway up behind her, she took buckets of water drawn from the well and threw water onto the roof, wetting it down. To the left, half hidden by the bulk of the hall, Anna saw other people struggling to save the old longhouse whose thatch roof had caught fire.
She had to shove and elbow to get inside, for people ran every which way, some in, some out, some no place at all but frozen in terror or dithering in circles. A table had been knocked over; dogs gulped down the remains of food, lapped at puddles of ale.
Helen had retreated to a corner beyond the great hearth and there she sat, utterly silent, thumb stuck in her mouth. Anna hoisted her up to her hips. She was such a tiny thing that she was no burden.
But it was harder to get out than in. The mayor and certain of his servants crowded the door, seeking shelter, and Anna could not fight past them. Their press against her caused her to stumble and fall to one knee, and for a horrible instant she thought she and Helen would be trampled.
Smoke stung her nostrils, and suddenly the cry arose: “Fire! Fire!”
She found a wedge through which to shove herself, got herself to the wall, and hurried down the hall’s length past the open hearth to the far wall where stood the single window, now shut against winter. She set Helen down, dragged a chest over and, getting up on it, pounded the shutters open. Tugging the little girl up behind her, she swung a leg over the sill, and dangled there. Together they dropped, hitting the ground hard just as a shower of embers floated down from above. The little girl began to cry. Anna scuttled backward, jumped up, and lifted Helen to her back.
In this way, with Helen fairly choking her with thin arms vised round her neck, Anna threaded her way through the chaos of the yard up the rise to the stone keep. Inside, the storerooms were pungent with barrels of salted meat, with ale and wine, with baskets of apples and unground oats and moldering rye. Master Helvidius cowered behind a chest, weeping softly. Anna thrust Helen onto his lap and climbed the ladder to the second level. There she found six grim-faced men laying arrows, point down, against the wall on either side of the six arrow slits.
“Here, child,” said one, beckoning to her. “Stack these neatly.” He left without ado, and she hurried to carefully place the arrows in a line, pausing once to lean into the slit and peer out.
Her view gave her a vantage of the ground just beyond the gates. There, in a melee more like the frenzy of market square on the busiest autumn day in Gent, Lord Wichman, Lord Henry, and their riders battled Eika, cutting about themselves, parrying ax blows. A line of men-at-arms struggled forward, shields held high against the press. Eika swarmed everywhere. The huge Eika dogs darted through the swirling fight, ripping and rending. Of the horrible Dragons there was no sign, nor any remains.
An ax hooked over Lord Wichman’s shield, dragged, tugged, and there was a sudden titanic struggle as the young lord grappled with an Eika soldier braced at his horse’s shoulder. Then—sliding, gripped, tugged—he fell from his horse and vanished under a hail of flailing arms.
Anna gasped out loud and jerked back, bumping into the careful rack of arrows. With a clatter, they fell, but the sound was drowned out by a howl sent up from outside—the young lord’s riders had gone mad with fury.
Anna began to cry.
A man shoved her away roughly and began to set up arrows again. A woman called up from below.
“The longhouse is burning! We’re getting a flood of people in here. What shall I do?”
“Squeeze in as many of the young and weak as you can!” shouted the man next to Anna. “But any who are able-bodied must take to the walls. It’ll be slaughter if the Eika get through those gates. Anything they can fling down—anyone who can lift a hoe or spade or shoot a bow or stab with a spear—” He spun round. “Girl! Don’t be hamhanded again. Now set these arrows upright for those who will need them later!”
He climbed down the ladder.
She did as she was told. Such a din of wailing and shouting had arisen from within the holding—the squawking of chickens, the barking of dogs, the screams of horses and men—that she could only stay moving by pretending nothing was happening, by hearing nothing at all. She concentrated on each arrow as she leaned it with fletching upright against the stone wall.
Smoke billowed in from outside, but she could not, dared not, look again out through the arrow slit. A hugely pregnant woman came up the ladder, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead. With a grunt, she heaved her ungainly bulk up over the lip, got to hands and knees, then with a shove from foot and hand got herself up. She stationed herself with a bow by one of the slits. The man whose place she took scrambled down, disappearing below.
Soon, other women and one adolescent boy had stationed themselves by the arrow slits, each with a bow. The boy played nervously with an arrow, rolling it through his fingers. More people clambered up the ladder and cowered, some weeping, some stunned, against the walls and then along the floor until there was scarcely room for anyone to move. And yet more tried to come up, and more yet. Such a noise swelled up from this mass of terror-stricken people and from the battle raging outside that Anna could only hunker down, clap hands over ears, and pray. The sting of burning timber and thatch made her eyes burn, and the fear made her heart thud hard in her chest. Her breath came in gasps.