by Kate Elliott
He would have wept at their loyalty, but he had no tears.
Bloodheart was still howling in rage, shouting at his priest, calling the Eika to silence, to stillness, so that they could hunt for the hideous creature that had escaped from the shattered chest. The mob stilled, broke, and parted.
In this way, abandoned for more important prey, Sanglant was left alone. Pain washed like water over him, the flood tide swelling to its height as black hazed his vision and he struggled to remain conscious, then ebbing to reveal every point of scalding pain in his body.
He heard the breath of the dogs, those panting out their last breaths and those few which still remained upright. The last six stood around him in a protective circle to face their common enemy. Surrounded by this fortification of dogs, he lay there breathing shallowly and waited for the blinding pain to end.
5
HE could not quite manage to open his eyes. But he knew he was surrounded by bodies strewn about him like so much refuse. Some few of the dogs were still alive, and they growled when any movement sifted near him. It was so hard to wake up and perhaps better not to. Perhaps it was better to slide unresisting into oblivion.
Ai, Lady. Would he be admitted to the Chamber of Light? Or was he, because of his mother’s blood, condemned to wander the world forever as a bodiless shade?
In the distance or in a dream, he heard the flutelike voices of the Eika speaking in Wendish, two voices accompanied by the mocking, harsh counterpoint of Eika calling and crying out in their own rough tongue. Some few of the words he now knew. In his dream he recognized more than he ever had before, but that was the nature of dreams, was it not?
“I have seen this army in my dreams.” This in fluent Wendish.
“No better than dog, why dare you speak so before the great one?” This in the Eika speech.
“My dreams are more honest than your boasting, brother! Do not toss aside the gifts the WiseMothers give you just because they are not made of iron or gold.”
“How can I believe your dreams are true dreams, weak one?” This from Bloodheart.
“I am stronger than I look, and my dreams are not just true dreams, they are the waking life of one of the humankind. He marches with this army, and as he marches, I march with him, seeing through his eyes.”
One of the dogs nudged him, testing for life, and he gasped so loud the echo of it split his skull with pain, but no sound came out of his mouth. Blackness fell. For an endless time he drowned in a black haze of unrelenting pain that spun and sparkled like the knife which had been driven countless times into his body. Finally the darkness lightened to an early morning gray. Glints of light burst here and there in the limitless mist.
The veil parted.
The woman appears young and is certainly beautiful. She wears a fringed skirt sewn of leather so thin and supple that it moves around her with her movements like a second skin. A double stripe of red paint runs from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. Her hair has a pale cast, though her complexion is as bronze-dark as his own; drawn back from her face, it is bound behind her head with painted leather strips nested with beads, trailing a long elegant green plume. A wreath of gold and turquoise and jade bead necklaces drapes down her chest almost to her waist. She wears no shirt or cloak, only the necklaces, concealing and revealing her breasts as she shifts.
But for all her beauty and fine grace, she works patiently toward a brutal goal: with a curved bone tool, she is shaving stout lengths of wood into spear hafts. Obsidian points lie on a reed mat nearby with rope heaped beside them.
Does he make a noise? She looks up as if she has heard him and in that instant as a sudden lance of sun cuts down through trees to pierce across her shoulders, flashing on her necklaces, she sees him.
“Sharatanga protect me!” she exclaims. “The child!” She flinches away from the sight, drops wood haft and bone tool, and gropes for the stone points lying on the mat.
“It is not yet time for him to die,” she mutters to herself, although he can hear every word clearly in a language he ought not to know yet understands perfectly. Grabbing one of the thin blades, she lifts it and raises it high above her and cries in a clear, strong voice. “Take this offering, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband. Give life back into his limbs.”
She drags the blade across her palm. Blood wells, dripping down the length of the cut to spill into the air and she shakes the hand out, blood spitting toward him. Behind her, a voice calls a sudden frantic question. A touch of moisture spatters his lips, dissolving there, and as the harsh taste spreads to the back of his throat, the veil closes in a swirling pattern of grays and sparkling stars.
“I know you,” he whispers.
But his voice was lost in the snuffling of dogs, and the touch of familiarity drifted away on the last tendril of mist. Stillness hung like the weight of stone in the vast nave of the cathedral.
Terror hit with sudden force. Had he died? Had he seen, beyond the veil of the living, one of his own kinfolk or only a soulless shade caught forever in the memory of life?
He had always thought his mother’s curse protected him from death. Ai, Lord, it wasn’t true. It had never been true. He had only been lucky.
If this could be called luck.
He strained, listening, but heard nothing except the dogs. Had everyone gone away? Had they deserted the city, leaving to raid downriver into the heart of Wendar? How long had he lain here, dying and living again?
The footsteps that neared him came as soft as a breeze sliding through dead leaves scattered on the forest floor.
Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.
He twitched but could not move his hands. His dogs growled, menacing their visitor. The smell of rancid meat hit him hard, gagging him, and he swallowed convulsively. He heard the damp slap of meat thrown to the floor and suddenly all the dogs skittered off, nails scraping the floor, and they fought over the remains. The footsteps eased closer. He lay there, paralyzed and unprotected, working his throat as if the movement would spread to his numb hands and allow him to defend himself.
He managed to open his eyes just as the slender Eika princeling who wore the wooden Circle crouched beside him. The Eika’s movements had the easy arrogance of a creature who has the confidence of perfect health.
“Are you going to kill me now?” asked Sanglant. He was surprised to hear his voice, faint and hoarse. He struggled to lift a hand, to shift his shoulders beneath him, and felt the merest tick in his neck. One hand flicked up, the one with the unbroken wrist.
But the Eika princeling only blinked. His copper-melded face wore no human expression. He had eyes as sharp as obsidian blades, thin nostrils, and a narrow chin. His ice-white hair was itself as bright as the sun that glanced in through the cathedral windows. His thin lips remained set, considering. “No. You are my father’s challenge, not mine. I only want to know why you are still alive. You are not like the other Soft Ones. They would be dead by now of such wounds. Why aren’t you dead?”
Sanglant grunted. The pain was bitter and would remain with him for some time, but he was used to pain. He got an elbow to move and, with a second grunt, heaved himself up onto the elbow. He stared down the Eika, who merely appeared … curious? Sanglant was himself curious.
“What was it?” he whispered. “The thing in the chest.”
The Eika glanced toward the dogs, but they still munched on the bones. One raised its head to growl at him, but as no violence seemed imminent, it turned its attention back to scrounging for the last scraps of meat. “Don’t all the leaders of your people carry the trophy of their first kill with them?” He lifted a copper-scaled hand, turning it slowly to display the tufts of bone claw, filed and sharpened to points, that sprouted from his knuckles. “That is the mark of the strength of their hands.”
“That was his first kill?” Disgust swamped him, and he briefly forgot the pain under a spasm of nausea.
�
�So it is with all of us. Those destined to mature into men must prove their manhood by killing one of their nest-brothers. Don’t you do the same?”
“It wasn’t dead. It ran.”
The Eika flashed a sudden and startling grin, white sharp teeth glinting with bright jewels. “What is dead may be animated by sorcery. So Bloodheart protects himself against his sons and any others who might attempt to kill him.”
Sensation had returned to his legs and he got one heel to move, sliding under him. His broken wrist was stiff but whole. “Protects himself? How?”
“It is the curse we all fear, even the greatest chieftain.”
“A curse on you all,” muttered Sanglant under his breath. He jerked over, fist swinging.
But the Eika laughed and nimbly leaped out of the way as the dogs, alerted, bolted away from their food and rushed the princeling.
“Stop,” said Sanglant and the dogs sat, yipped irritably, and returned to the scraps. “Did you come to strip me of what little I have left?” He could move enough now to indicate his tattered clothing.
The Eika recoiled. “No Eika would want such things so foul. Here.” He kicked at something on the floor and the brass Eagle’s badge skidded across the stone and lodged against Sanglant’s thigh. Dried blood caked his skin—or at least, the dirt that grimed his skin. He was all dirt and stink except where the dogs had tried to lick him clean. The tatters of his undertunic were translucent, almost crystalline, because they were soaked with months of sweat. What remained of his tabard had so much dried blood and fluid on it that flakes fell off with each least movement and the cloth itself was stiff with grime.
The Eika princeling stared, then shook his head as he stepped away. “You were the pride of the human king’s army?” he demanded. “If you are their greatest soldier, then no army they bring can be strong enough to defeat us.”
“No army,” murmured Sanglant, the words bitter to his ears.
“Even the one that has now camped in the hills toward the sunset horizon cannot possibly be strong enough to defeat us.”
“Is it true? Has King Henry come to Gent with an army?”
“Henri,” mused the Eika, naming the king in the Salian way. Without answering, he walked away.
“Ai, Lady,” murmured Sanglant, crawling to his hands and knees. “How long has it been? Lord, have mercy upon me. I am not an animal to roll in my own filth. Spare me this humiliation. I have always been Your faithful servant.” He tried to get to his feet but did not have the strength. One of the dogs wandered back and, seeing his weakness, nipped at him. He barely had strength to slap it back, and it whined and slunk away, snapping at the other dogs who came to trouble it for its own sign of weakness.
What had he done wrong? He had been so sure that Bloodheart kept his heart in the wooden chest; it was the obvious place. It was the only place. But Bloodheart had said: “The heart you seek lies hidden among the stones of Rikin fjall.”
Ai, Lady, he was only grateful that the cathedral was empty, that the Eika had left. That way they could not see him humbled. That way they could not see him weep with pain as he struggled to stand upright like a man.
XIV
A SWIRL OF
DANGEROUS
CURRENTS
1
LORD Wichman’s deacon sang Mass every morning, and that morning she closed with her usual prayer: “From the fury of the Eika, God deliver us.”
That morning after Mass, Anna paused beside the tannery to catch a glimpse of Matthias, as she did every morning to remind herself he really was still alive.
Not well, perhaps, but alive. He spoke no word of complaint; he never once said that his leg ached him although he could scarcely put weight on it. How he had broken the calf bone she never knew. He wouldn’t speak of his captivity among the Eika. He had suffered terribly from fever and swelling after his rescue, but in the end he had recovered although the leg had healed crookedly, with an unnatural skew to it, ugly and discolored. Now he limped like an old man, leaning heavily on a stout stick, and had to brace himself on his good leg and prop his weight on a stool while he scraped hair and the residue of flesh from skins draped over a beam of wood. He had a delicate hand at this labor and could do it quickly, and for that reason had been allowed back at the rebuilt tannery despite his crippling injury. For his work he was fed twice a day.
Anna slipped away before he saw her; he didn’t like her to forage in the forest, but with her gleanings and the scraps given Master Helvidius for his songs and poetry, they had survived through winter and early spring. Now, as spring ripened into summer, the first berries could be harvested, mushrooms gleaned from damp hollows, and all kinds of plants collected in glades and meadows and in the shade of trees. Certain bugs were edible, too—and, Anna had discovered, if you were hungry enough, they could be quite tasty.
Little Helen had grown but never uttered an intelligible word. Master Helvidius complained incessantly but, with a steady if sparse diet and a rough bed to sleep in every night, he had grown stronger and had less need of a stick in order to walk than did Matthias.
It was Matthias who worried Anna the most. “That I survived is a blessing from God.” That was all he would say on the matter.
Outside the palisade she hurried down paths that led west through fields where men and women labored in the hot sun. Many of them—male and female alike—had stripped down to breechclouts for comfort’s sake; there was little place for Godly modesty under the sweltering sun. Anna would gladly have shucked her tunic, but in the forest she needed its protection against burrs and bugs. The heat and recent rains, though, meant that nature’s bounty prospered, and indeed Lady Fortune smiled on her this day. She found sweet berries and a trove of mushrooms. She collected fennel, parsley, and onion grass as well as moss for bedding. By midday her wandering brought her to the westward road.
The wide track lay quiet at this hour, pleasant and bright. Little traffic moved in and out of Steleshame these days although Mistress Gisela often talked of the great days of Steleshame, before the Eika had come to Gent, and how nobles had sheltered in her longhouse and merchants haggled over the fine cloth woven by her women. No one, seeing Steleshame now, would be reminded of these past glories. Anna herself was not sure if Mistress Gisela was telling the truth or only a story, as Master Helvidius told stories. But Master Helvidius’ stories were all true, or so he claimed; it was only that they had happened so very long ago.
Anna stood in the sunlight. Such moments of peace came rarely and were to be savored as long as the threat of the Eika hung like a sword over them all. Anna supposed that eventually the Eika would mass an army and wipe out Steleshame completely, for the Eika were as numberless as flies supping on carrion. Lord Wichman rode out each day to harry the Eika, but he had lost perhaps a third of the men he had come with, and while young men from distant villages had joined him in the hope of sharing in the spoils, he could not hope to hold off the Eika forever—not when he was a mortal man and his foe not only a savage but an enchanter into the bargain.
But what point in dwelling on such horror? She sighed and opened her eyes to survey the roadside with pleasure.
No one had gleaned here along the verge of track and wood. She found tansy growing in abundance, and this she pulled and bundled, for it could be mixed with the rushes strewn on the hall floor to drive away fleas. She found nettles densely packed along a ditch, their feet sodden in standing water. Swathing a hand in cloth, she plucked as many leaves as she could stuff into her bursting shawl. Then she bundled up her skirt, tucking it under her belt, and picked dandelion leaves and bistort. These, and delicate clover, she heaped into the folds made of her skirt.
Humming tunelessly, she did not at first hear what she ought to have listened for. She felt it first through the soles of her feet where they pressed against the pleasantly coarse dirt: the thrum of an army, marching. Too late she heard them, the creak of armor, the hum of voices, horses blowing and the sudden warning bark of dogs. The Ei
ka had circled all the way around Steleshame and now approached from the unprotected west.
Clutching her treasures to her, she bolted for the shelter of the trees.
“Hai! There! Child!”
The voice called, a human voice, and she hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder.
“Never hesitate,” Matthias always said.
But for once, Matthias was wrong.
She lurched to a stop, spilling a few stalks of tansy, and stared.
“How far to Steleshame, girl?” asked the voice, but it was no phantom but a real flesh-and-blood man outfitted in a leather vest and a thick leather cap. He carried shield and spear. There were many more with him. She was too astonished to reply.
Soldiers. Led by a noble lord who was mounted on a fine gray horse, they advanced without fear and only the lead file even noticed her as they marched past where she stood, balanced on the lip of the ditch of nettles. Three banners flew before them: two black hounds on a silver field; a red eagle; a gray tower surmounted by a black raven.
An army had come at last.
That night neither she, Matthias, nor Helen could get into the hall to observe the great nobles, for such a press of folk stood there, some of them soldiers newly marched in, others residents of Steleshame who wanted to catch a glimpse of the noble lord and his son, that they had to go stand by the corner of the great hall and listen through the gaps in the wall to the gathering within.
Amid the buzz of a feast, Anna could hear Helvidius intoning the now-familiar phrases from the Heleniad.
“Now the guests of King Sykaeus fell silent, and each one turned to face Helen. In this way they waited intently for her to speak, to tell the tale of her sufferings and of the fall of Ilios.”