by Kate Elliott
“I don’t understand.” But perhaps she was beginning to. She said it more to keep him talking, to hear his voice. She had thought never to hear that voice again.
“He couldn’t be killed because he didn’t have a heart. He hid it. He—” Then he halted as suddenly as if he had lost his power of speech between one word and the next.
“It’s done,” she said quickly, to say something, anything, torn as she was between the promise of this intimacy he had thrust upon her and her complete ignorance of what manner of man he now was and how much he might have changed from the man she had fallen in love with in besieged Gent. “It will have to do, unless you’d like me to comb it out, for I hope I still have my comb in my pouch.” Then she flushed, cursing her rash words; only mothers, wives, or servants combed a man’s hair if he did not do it himself.
Instead of replying he stood and turned—but not to look at her. Belatedly she turned as well when she heard the crashing in the trees. Another party approached.
The soldiers were already kneeling. She was too stupid, too astounded, to do so, and only at the very last moment, when the king broke from the trees, did she drop down as was fitting.
The king strode forward and stopped dead some ten paces from the prince. There was silence except for the rushing mutter of the stream and the gurgle of water tumbling over the fallen log—and an echoing whisper from the king’s retinue, who followed him out from the trees and stood staring at the scene before them.
The sun eased below the highest trees. All lay bathed in the mellow glow of midsummer’s late afternoon, the opening hour of the long twilight. As the silence drew out, the warbler quieted but now other birds, made bold by the quiet, began to call and sing: a thin “zee-zee-zee” among the treetops and the monotonous “chiff-chaff” song in the scrub. A woodpecker fluttered away, rising and swooping down and rising again, yellow rump a flash against the green foliage. Liath still held the knife in one hand and a last hank of Sanglant’s hair in the other.
At last the king spoke. “My son.” It had a harsh sound, startlingly so, but when she saw the tears start from his eyes and course down his cheeks, she understood that the harshness stemmed from the depth of his remembered anguish and the fresh bloom of joy.
He said nothing more, but he removed his finely embroidered short cloak from his own back, unfastening the gold-and-sapphire brooch, and wrapped it around Sanglant’s shoulders with his own hands, like a servant. This close, Liath could see his hands shaking under the weight of such a powerful emotion: the incredible and almost overpowering pain of seeing alive the beloved son he had thought dead.
Sanglant dropped abruptly to his knees, exhausted or overcome by emotion, and laid his damp head against his father’s hands in the way of a sinner seeking absolution or a child seeking comfort.
“Come, son, rise,” said the king raggedly. Then he laughed softly. “I have already heard many stories about your courage on the field and how you rallied troops who had fallen into disarray.”
The prince did not look up, but when he spoke, there welled up from him so much enmity that the force of his emotion alone might have felled an entire company of Eika. “I would have killed more of them if I could.”
“May God have mercy on us all,” murmured Henry. He took Sanglant by the elbow and helped him rise. “How did you survive?”
As if in answer—the only answer he knew how to give—Sanglant turned his head to look at Liath.
5
THE hounds smelled him coming first. They broke away from Alain—all of them, even Sorrow and Rage—to bound down the hill with happy barks, their tails whipped into a blur. Beyond, a company of mounted soldiers approached the ruined camp. Alain picked his way down through the dead and dying to meet Count Lavastine.
Along the ramparts where Eika dead lay in heaps and the few survivors dug among the corpses to find any wounded who might yet have a hope of living, Alain handed the ragged standard to Lavastine. “I thought you must be dead,” he said, then burst into tears.
Lavastine raised one eyebrow. “Did I not say I would return to you through the Eika host and meet you here? Come now, son.” He took him by the arm and led him down, away from the terrible work yet to be done, stripping and then burning the dead Eika and giving a decent burial to the hundreds who had fallen. The river plain beyond held a scene just as dismaying to look upon: as if high waters had overtaken the fields and ditches, washing in a flood tide of corpses and depositing them in eddies or along invisible streams where strong currents had once flowed.
“Good Cheer is dead.” Alain choked back tears in order to have breath to confess his weakness. “And the good captain besides. I lost Graymane. We were overtaken by Eika. So few are left—”
“That any are left is astonishing. Now, Alain, do not speak so. We will settle the captain’s widow very richly, I assure you, and mourn him as he deserves. And you see, Graymane was found on the field and returned to me unharmed. As for Good Cheer—” He busied himself patting the hounds, rubbing his knuckles into their great heads, and letting them lick him as they jumped around and, finally, settled down around him. Was there a tear in his eye? But a wind had picked up from the river and the spark of moisture vanished—or was only a trick of the light.
Now those who remained of Lavastine’s infantry came forward to praise Alain and speak of his great feats in driving back the Eika when all was lost, how he had single-handedly struck down a huge Eika princeling, how he had shone in battle with an unearthly light, surely granted to him by the Lord’s Hand.
Alain was ashamed to listen, but Lavastine nodded gravely and set a hand possessively on his son’s shoulder. Only Lord Geoffrey fidgeted, for he had also dismounted and now attended his cousin.
“We must ride to where the king sets up camp,” said Lavastine. “We have much to accomplish.”
“Isn’t this work enough?” Alain gestured about them.
“That we killed Bloodheart and routed the Eika? It was what I hoped for, and indeed all has fallen out as I wished.”
“As you wished, cousin!” Lord Geoffrey stepped forward. The remnants of Lavastine’s cavalry, some hundred and fifty men when they had marched onto the river plain two days ago, loitered behind him. Alain counted not more than thirty men as blood-spattered and dirty as was Lord Geoffrey himself.
Lavastine’s face was smeared with dust and on one cheek ragged circular cuts and a ring of tiny bruises tore the skin where his mail coif had been crushed into his face. He found an empty helmet on the ground and set a boot up on it. The wind skirled through his hair and made the Lavas standard rustle and rise briefly, as if the black hounds embroidered there had taken a scent. He picked a twig out of his light beard and with an expression of distaste tossed it to the ground. With the wind came the scent of blood and death. In the air carrion crows circled, but there were too many soldiers still roaming the field seeking out wounded or stripping Eika of their mail skirts for the birds to land and feast.
“Not my good soldiers,” said the count, musing. “Their lives I regret, as I always do. But we took Gent without Henry’s aid. Thus it will be my privilege to present Gent like a gift to Henry when we meet.”
“What ambition is this?” demanded Geoffrey.
“Not ambition for myself. For my son.”
No one would have missed Geoffrey’s blanch, but he made no reply.
“My army took Gent,” continued Lavastine. “That gives me a claim to it.”
“But surely the children of Countess Hildegard will inherit these lands,” protested Alain.
“If she has children. If they have survived the winter with the Eika raiding in their lands. If her kin are strong enough to sway the king in his judgment. But if Henry is beholden to me, Alain, then why not take Gent—which you will recall lies within his purview—and grant it to Tallia as dower? Thus it will come into our hands, as part of the marriage settlement—or the morning gift, should she make one to you. Remember, Alain, as the daughter of a
duchess it is her right to gift you, as the son of a mere count—” Here any waking soul could hear the irony. “—with a morning gift. Although you may, of course, gift her with some smaller token as well. Is that not so, Geoffrey?”
Geoffrey simply gave a curt bow in acknowledgment, since his wife Aldegund’s lands and inheritances were of a higher degree than any he could expect to receive—unless he inherited, as he had once hoped to do, the county of Lavas from Lavastine.
“Many a blood feud has started when a bride and groom of equal rank tried to outdo each other in an elaborate morning gift. It can be considered an insult for a noble of lesser degree to make a richer gift to his newly-wedded spouse than that which she gifts him, if her position and kin are superior to his. That is why we will not ask for Gent outright. But through Tallia we can still make a claim on these lands and on our rights to a portion of the tariffs taken from the merchants and the port.”
They made a ragged procession, thirty riders, perhaps sixty infantry, but a proud one. In this way in the long lingering twilight of midsummer they picked their way across the battlefield to the place where the king had set up camp. The royal banner snapped in the evening breeze from atop the king’s pavilion.
In front, tables had been set up and on them a victory feast laid out—such as it was: mostly mutton and beef from some among the many herds of cattle and sheep which under the protection of the Eika had flourished on farmlands gone to pasture in the past year. But there was also bread, not too stale, brought from Steleshame, and a few other delicacies preserved for such a moment. A king must reward his followers, especially on the field after such a triumph.
With Alain at his side, Lavastine knelt before the king and brashly, even presumptuously, offered Gent into the king’s hands—Lavastine’s to offer because his troops had won through at the gates. But Henry had anticipated Lavastine. The chair to the king’s right sat empty, and it was to this chair that Henry waved the count, giving him pride of place.
An unfamiliar man with a thin, haunted face and bronzish skin sat to the king’s left. He was dressed as richly as any noble there, and Alain heard the servingfolk whisper that this was the king’s lost son. Instead of the gold torque marking royal kinship, he wore a rough iron slave collar around his neck. He did not speak.
To Alain was given the signal honor of standing at the king’s right shoulder and pouring him wine. From his place, Alain could see—and hear—the nobles arguing among themselves, made irritable by hunger and the relief of a battle won at great cost.
From her place to the right of Lavastine, thrust out from her usual seat of honor, Princess Sapientia complained to her distant cousin, Duchess Liutgard. “He stole my glory!”
“That’s not how I heard the tale! I heard your entire flank crumbled … and that he arrived in time to rally your forces when you could not!”
Of Sapientia’s adviser and Liath’s tormentor, Father Hugh, there was no sign. Liath stood in the shadows next to one of her fellow Eagles, a tough-looking woman who came forward, now and again, to whisper messages received from scouts into the king’s ear. Liath had an arm draped around the shoulders of a straw-haired young Eagle Alain recalled from the battle at Kassel. She and her companion surveyed the assembly as if to see who was missing.
Henry’s army had taken light casualties, all but the flank commanded by Princess Sapientia which had apparently had the misfortune to hit a ferociously vicious Eika attack when they had come between a retreating princeling and his ships.
Besides Lavastine and his cousin, there were few noble survivors of the army Lavastine had brought to Gent. Lord Dedi was slain; Lady Amalia’s body had not yet been found. Lord Wichman had been pulled, alive, from a veritable maelstrom of corpses, the detritus of his final stand, but he lay sorely wounded in a tent and it was not known if he would live. Captain Ulric, of Autun, had won through with most of his company of light cavalry intact.
But it was the fate of the common men, nameless and unmentioned in this assembly, which gnawed at Alain. Raised in a village, he knew what grief would come to their homes in the wake of this news, all invisible to the sight of the great lords who marked it as a victory. Who would till their fields? Who would marry their sweethearts now? What son could take the place of the one who had fallen, never to return?
There was still light to see as platters were brought and set before king and company, but in the background the first torches were lit. The moon had risen in the east above the ruins of Gent, and now as dusk settled over the land, the moon spilled its sullen light over the distant fields where the nameless dead lay, men and Eika alike.
A platter was set down before the king and his lost son.
Without warning, the prince bolted down the food as if he were a starving dog let free with the scraps. Gasps came, and giggling—quickly stifled—from the assembly. From behind, dogs began to bark and howl furiously, and in answer the Lavas hounds, which had been staked out some way off, growled and barked in challenge.
At once, the prince leaped up. Grease dripped from his lips. The king placed a hand, firmly, on his sleeve. Alain felt such a terrible surge of pity for the prince that he moved between Henry and Sanglant and made much of pouring more wine so as to draw attention to himself and away from them.
That was all it took. With an effort made the more obvious by the way his hands shook, the prince commenced eating again, only very, very slowly and with such painstaking care that anyone would know he could barely stop himself from gobbling down his food like a savage.
“Your Majesty,” said Lavastine, catching Alain’s eye and indicating with the tilt of his head that the young man could now move back. His ploy had served its purpose. “With great cost to myself and my people, I have freed Gent from the Eika and killed the creature who held your son prisoner for so long.”
“So you have,” said the king, with some difficulty turning away from his son to regard the count.
“We have spoken of a match between my son and Lady Tallia.”
“You are frank with me, Count Lavastine.”
“I always will be, Your Majesty. You know what I want and what I have paid to gain it.”
“But do you know what I want,” responded the king, “and what I need from you in order to achieve it?”
“Nay, Your Majesty, I do not know, but I am willing to listen….”
The king glanced up at Alain. “A good-looking lad. I have heard great praise of his courage and skill at arms this day. That he held that small hill against such a tide of Eika is incredible. I have no objection to a marriage between him and my niece Tallia … if it is accompanied on your part by an oath that you and your heir will support me faithfully in all my undertakings.”
Before Lavastine could reply, the prince stumbled up from his chair and fled into the darkness. The king made to rise.
“Nay, Your Majesty,” said Alain, who had a sudden idea of what was wrong. “I’ll go after him, if you permit.”
The king nodded. Alain followed.
He had not gone six steps when Liath appeared beside him.
“What happened?” she whispered, as anxious as a hound in a thunderstorm.
“It’s nothing serious,” he said quietly, gentling her with a touch on the arm. “It’s best if I go alone. Do you think he would want you to see him when he’s not well?” Here he trailed off.
After a moment she nodded and returned to her post.
Alain and a few men-at-arms found the prince just beyond the edge of camp, vomiting. When he had done, he began to shake, resting on his hands. “Ai, God,” he muttered as if to himself. “Don’t let them see me.”
Alain ventured forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. At once the prince started up, growling, just like a dog.
“Hush, now,” said Alain firmly, as he would to his own hounds, and the prince shook himself and seemed to come to his senses. “If you’ve been starved, then you can’t put rich food in your stomach all at once, or at least, that’s what
my Aunt Bel would say.” He still winced when he said the name. “She who used to be my aunt,” he added to no one except his smarting conscience.
“Who are you?” said the prince. He had an oddly hoarse voice which made him seem stricken with grief when in fact he was likely only exhausted and ill. But he had calmed enough now to wipe at his mouth with the back of a hand.
“I am Lavastine’s son.”
Dogs began to bark again, and the prince lifted his head to scent, then started back and became a man again. “God have mercy on me,” he muttered. “Will I never be rid of the chains Bloodheart bound me with?”
“It is the collar.” Why he spoke so freely Alain did not know, only that—unlike the king—this half wild prince did not awe him. “As long as you wear it at your neck, then surely you will not be free of Bloodheart’s hand on you.”
“As long as I wear it, I am reminded of what he did to me. I am reminded of what I was and what he called me.” His voice was so bitter. Alain ached for him, and what he had suffered.
But even Alain was not immune from curiosity. “What did he call you?”
The prince only shook his head. “I’ll go back now. I won’t forget this kindness you’ve shown me.”
They returned to where the king sat sipping at his wine and the company ate with the self-conscious assiduousness of people who chafe with curiosity but know that their regnant will not tolerate questions. The prince sat with exaggerated care and with even more exaggerated care sipped sparingly at the wine and ate the merest scrap of meat and bread. But sometimes his nostrils would flare, and he would lift his head and search into the assembly as if he had heard a whispered comment that angered him. The rest of the feast passed without incident. They ate lustily and drank without stinting on what was left of the wine.
“You acquitted yourself well, son,” said Lavastine afterward when they had retired to a tent commandeered from lesser nobles in Henry’s train. “I am proud of you. Ai, Lord, Prince Sanglant is more like to one of the hounds than to a human man. But I suppose it is his mother’s blood which stains him.” He scratched Terror’s ears and the old hound grunted ecstatically. Alain tended the gash that had opened up Fear’s hindquarters. He had already bound up Ardent’s leg and washed the cuts on Sorrow and Rage. Steadfast was asleep, while Bliss waited patiently for his turn under Alain’s hands.