The Gathering Storm (58 page)

“I pray they will, but it’s in God’s hands now. I’ll sit up and watch over them.”

The children were exhausted with grief and fear and went to their beds without complaining. The farmer insisted on spending the night outside with his precious sheep.

“I’ll sit the first watch with him,” Alain said to Ratbold.

The prior nodded. Because the night was fair, Ratbold rolled himself up in a blanket under the shelter of the nearby
trees, but the farmer sat meekly on the ground, all vigor gone out of him.

After a long silence, the man said, “Is it hopeless? Will your herb-craft cure them? I am ruined….”

“I do not know.”

He was helpless, as he had told Prior Ratbold. It had been easy to remain at the monastery as the season changed; the round of work never ceased; the hunger of his fellow lay brothers for companionship and comfort never ended. The destitute and desperate always found their way to the gates, those who could. Those who could not suffered where they were. There was nothing he could do. He hadn’t even been able to save Adica.

He, too, sheltered a blight on his soul. He, too, was penned in, waiting only to die. He was imprisoned and might bide on Earth for long years, if God were not merciful, long years remembering Adica’s sweetness and the light she brought with her, that was her essence. The smell of meadow flowers.

It would have been better to walk in company with her down the path that leads to the Other Side.

Yet how could he bear to leave the world, which was so beautiful? Even here, on this deathwatch, the night blossomed around him. A nightjar churred. The hazy cloak of air thrown across the sky hid half the stars and pricked the others into unexpected brilliance. Sounds unfolded beneath the canopy of trees barely stirred by a lazy breeze: the breathing of the ewes, the skittering of a mouse, the ticking of a bug, the distant tumble of a stream. The shadow of a bat swooped past; an owl cooed. Grass tickled his fingers where his hand lay slack on the ground, and he felt a tiny body creeping into the shelter of his hand as an owl glided past, seen swiftly and then gone into the trees. A minuscule tongue tested his skin. He sat very still so as not to scare the mouse away. The wind rustled in the branches and the grass swayed and whispered, playing along his wrist and hand, telling him a story of lands far away, lost to him once….

The last patrol to return brings the long-awaited news. North lie fens where the tree sorcerers hide their secrets and where the Alban queen has fled to rebuild her power. On an island
land isolated in the middle of that wasteland of water and reeds rests a stone crown. But the marshland swallows strangers foolish enough to venture in without a guide.

“We will find a guide,” says Stronghand, indicating that they should go on with their report.

Hefenfelthe is only one among the queen’s many strongholds. Other hill forts guard the tracks that lead north through hostile territory now swarming with Alban war bands and a growing Alban army, called together to resist the invader. If the Eika army marches, it will meet with heavy resistance. They will have to fight every step of the way, and that is even before they reach the impassable southern margin of the fens.

“I do not fear the Albans,” he says to his soldiers, “nor do you. Yet fighting along the roads is not the only way to conquer a country. I respect the dangers posed by the marsh, but I do not think it impassable. Is there no river we can sail up? Does the water in these fenlands not drain into the sea
?”

The fens drain northward; this much the scouts observed, but they did not scout the fens themselves or journey north beyond them once they confirmed the rumors of the queen’s sighting. Other voices chime in with their own observations. Eika have raided sporadically along the Alban coast for generations, and it is well known that a great wash of water dominates the middle northern coast. Yet how many rivers spill into this drainage none know, nor have any Eika navigated those channels. They might sail up a hundred rivers and streams and still not find what they are looking for in such a maze of waterways and bog.

“We can send scouts,” he says, “but we cannot wait for their report. The Alban queen cannot be given enough time to consolidate her position. We must march overland and strike them from the south, through the fens.”

Ironclaw shakes his head. “Did you not hear what they said? The Albans will fight us every step of the way through country they know like their own hand. They are dogs, loyal to their queen. They will bite and nip at us all the way.”

“Do you fear them?”

“No! No! No!” protests Ironclaw, seeing he has lost face by expressing caution. “We are stronger, but we lack numbers. The Albans will never lay down their arms.”

“Will they not? Is Hefenfelthe not alive with Albans working in the forge, rebuilding this tower, and plowing the fields?”

He glances at Papa Otto, who bides quietly among his advisers. He has never forgotten the words Otto spoke to him long ago in a tent shelter beneath a bitter winter wind driving ice along the rock face of a cove. That day seems long ago to him now, back in the days before Fifth Son of the Fifth Litter took the name Stronghand, before he became chieftain over Rikin tribe and defeated his enemies at Kjalmarsfford. Long ago, but no less vivid in his mind’s eye.

“I have no choice but to serve you,” the slave Otto had said. Hate had burned in his expression, but he had been helpless to act against the master he loathed and despised.

Stronghand lifts his head to scent the spring wind. His dogs lie in a restless mass around him; they stir and wiggle and yip, eager to run. Most of his troops are eager to run. Victory at Hefenfelthe has not tested them, only sharpened their zeal. They chafe at their restraints.

Yet it remains true that the Eika are few, while humans are many. But the Albans, like the Eika and all their human brethren, keep slaves, war captives, the destitute, the unfortunate, the weak, and the helpless. The ones born into servitude.

The ones who hate their masters.

“We will march,” says Stronghand, raising his staff. Wind moans in the bone flutes and rattles beads and finger-bone chimes. “We have other allies, who do not yet know they are waiting for us.”

A tickle against his fingers woke him, and he started up.

Stronghand would help him! It came clear as suddenly as a blast of light banishes darkness when fire catches tinder and blazes up. Memories burned into his mind’s eye made sense as they had not before, when he could neither think nor make sense of the nightmare he had glimpsed through the heart of the spell woven by Adica and the others. The Eika were born that long ago day, created out of the supernatural melding of humans, great standing stones, and dragon’s blood.

Stronghand would listen, and believe.

He was halfway up before he remembered to check under
his feet. The mouse was gone. He rubbed his eyes as he glanced up to gauge the position of the stars. How long had he slept? How soon could he act?

“Brother Alain!” Ratbold stumbled up from his crude bower at the edge of the woodland, scratching his stubbled chin and looking mightily irritated. “You did not wake me! Where are the sheep?” He halted as Rage growled at him, startled by his aggressive movement toward Alain.

The disk of the newly reborn sun gilded the eastern tree-tops with a tender clove-pink glow. The fog that weighed down Alain’s soul dissolved as though the rising sun were burning it off.

“God curse him!” Ratbold strode to the center of the meadow; only prior and lay brother stood where the sheep had suffered. Flat patches of grass betrayed where the stricken sheep had lain in their illness. They hadn’t gone far, or long ago. “That damned man has stolen his sheep away!”

“Wait, Prior. I hear them.”

Hidden by the trees, the farmer was laughing, calling out. “Come along! Come along now! Look how they walk!”

Farmer, children, and lambs gamboled into the clearing, the ewes trotting among them under the supervision of the steadfast dog. Ratbold was too astonished to scold them. He rushed over, ignoring the yapping sheepdog, and brusquely examined the hooves and mouths of the ewes. The lambs scattered as he moved among them. The children and the dog rushed around, dog barking, children screaming with delight, as they chased the lambs back from the woodland edge. Light clouds scudded in from the east, shadowing the sun; a shower misted the scene, moving off as quickly as it arrived, and the sun came out from behind the clouds.

“Impossible,” cried Ratbold, checking each of the ewes in turn.

“I said it was not the murrain!” shouted the farmer triumphantly. “Just a fungus. A rot. Cured now! Cured! Once I got them out of the mud.”

“Impossible,” repeated Ratbold.

But true.

Ratbold insisted they remain at the standing two more days to make sure the disease did not reoccur. He believed in the murrain, and he feared that without his supervision the outbreak would spread.

Alain chafed, eager to return to Hersford, but he recognized the farmer’s needs as well. No need to wait fruitlessly when so many spring chores needed doing. Because of the threat of murrain, the local oxherd would not bring his oxen for plowing, so they had to laboriously turn over the earth for the garden by hand. For three days they worked, sweating despite the cool weather, and in the evenings Alain told the children stories and taught the two eldest a little from his meager store of herb-craft, so they might add to their larder and soothe simple illnesses that afflicted them. Three days passed and the sheep showed not the slightest sign of lameness, blistering, or sores. The children’s rashes healed.

It was with a lightened heart that he set out at last beside Ratbold.

“Why did you not wake me that night?” Ratbold asked when they reached the main track and turned toward home.

“I fell asleep, Prior. I pray, grant me your pardon. I meant to wake you.”

“Nay, never mind it. You need no pardon from me.” Ratbold remained distracted as they strode along. He wielded his staff like a weapon, whacking off the heads of thistles as they walked. “That night I dreamed I stood in a high hall waiting for the king to hear my case.”

“The king? Not the abbot?”

“Nay, the king, for I was dressed in the garb of a soldier, as I once was in the king’s service.”

It seemed long ago that Alain had himself stood before the king. Henry had ruled against him, had disinherited him and stripped him of the county gifted to him by a dying Lavastine, but had shown mercy by granting him a position in his own humble Lions. Alain uncovered no anger in his own heart, remembering that day. He only hoped that Lord Geoffrey was proving to be a good steward over Lavas county, that his daughter, and heir, would prove as wise a count as Lavastine had been in his time. That he had failed Lavastine pained him; only that.

“What case did you bring before the king in your dream?”

“I know not.” Ratbold’s habitual frown was set as strongly as ever on his face although his disapproval in this instance seemed turned on himself. “All I did was wait my turn, like a man standing on the knife edge of the Abyss who knows not whether he is meant to fall into the pit or rise to the Chamber of Light. Then I woke. You know what happened next. I should have known. I should have trusted in God.”

They walked for a while without speaking. The peace of the morning sank over them. Here along the track they might have been the only two people in the wide world, alone except for the robins and a flock of honking geese flying north. Birds sang out of the depths of the forest, but the trees were silent, untouched by wind. Water dripped from branches. Shallow pools lay in perfect stillness in basins and ruts cutting across the wheeled track. The hounds padded along with ears raised, listening, alert, pausing now and again to lap up water.

“Why do you stay at Hersford Monastery, Brother?” Ratbold asked at last.

“You took me in when I was desperate and alone. Isn’t that reason enough? But I cannot stay any longer. I know where I must go next. I must find the one who will believe my tale and help me.”

“Alas,” murmured Ratbold. “So we are served for our lack of faith.”

“What do you mean? I, too, had a dream that night, Prior. Do not blame yourself or the others. Why should you? How can it be that any sane man could believe the story I told you when first I came? I can scarcely believe it myself, although I lived through it. Yet I know it is true, and that I must act—I don’t know how, or what I can do. Perhaps nothing. But I must act. I must try. I cannot bear any longer only to stand and wait.”

Ratbold missed a step, staggering, but righted himself as Alain paused to help him. “Let me go with you, Brother.”

“Go with me?” The request astounded him because it was so unexpected.

“I will serve you—”

“What can you mean? Father Ortulfus depends on you, Prior Ratbold. He can’t administer the monastery without
your help. I must go alone. I mean to journey into lands held by the Eika.”

“The Eika! Will you become a missionary?”