PROLOGUE (28 page)

Now, Alain felt that every eye there turned to measure
him.
Lavastine they had forgiven for the madness set on him by another, but Alain did not think Lord Geoffrey and the others quite believed that Lavastine truly intended to make this unknown and illegitimate boy his heir.

They were all terribly polite as he took his place on his father's right side. That place, the one of greatest honor, had once been given to Lord Geoffrey; of all Lavastine's kin, Geoffrey was his nearest blood relation
—or had been, until Alain.

Lady Aldegund, as hostess, sat on Lavastine's left. After a prayer, she directed her servants to pour wine at the upper table and cider to those at the lower tables. She handed Lavastine the cup that she, as hostess, and he, as honored guest, were to share; he bowed his head and offered it back to her, so she might have the first taste.

"Let us give this toast," said Lord Geoffrey with that same polite smile fixed on his face, "to the newly discovered son and heir of my cousin, Lavastine." He drank and handed his cup to Alain.

Lavastine's men-at-arms toasted heartily, with cheers. From Aldegund and Geoffrey's people the salute was subdued, even perfunctory. Lavastine studied the assembled crowd
—quite fifty people—with narrowed eyes and his habitual half-frown, but he made no comment. He was no fool. He must know that many folk would not gladly accept the illegitimate son over the legitimate third cousin. Servants brought in the first course, a variety of fowl, chickens,
geese, moorhens, and quail, all steeped so heavily in spices that Alain feared he would get sick to his stomach.

"You found no more winter camps?" asked Lord Geoffrey, leaning past Alain to address Lavastine.

Lavastine lifted his cup to lips and made a small gesture with his free hand.

Alain started. "Why, no, Lord Geoffrey," he said dutifully, seeing that his father meant for him to answer, "we found no more. It is not usual for the Eika to winter in these lands."

Geoffrey's mouth twisted into a smile. "Indeed not, Lord Alain. This is the first time we have seen any Eika on our shores after Matthiasmass, and yet my own men burned a winter camp a month ago. Now you bring news that not one week ago you destroyed another. I wonder if the Eika mean to begin a new campaign. What if they want our land as well as our gold?"

"Do they farm?" asked Alain.

Geoffrey blinked. Aldegund took the cup from Lavastine and answered for her husband. She was a year or two younger than Alain, and her first child lay asleep in a cradle upstairs. "I would suppose that savages know nothing of farming. My kin have held estates in these lands since the time of the Emperor Taillefer. All the Eika ever want is gold and whatever other wealth
—slaves, iron, coins, jewelry—they can carry away."

"But why would they want land, if not to farm it?" asked Alain. "Or to pasture sheep and cattle?" He saw at once he had asked the wrong question. He had asked the sort of question Aunt Bel would ask. The other noble folk ranged along the table turned to listen
—to see him make a fool of himself.

He refused to oblige them. And he refused to be ashamed of the common sense Aunt Bel had taught him. "If the Eika are now making winter camps, then we must ask ourselves why they do this now, this year, when they did not before. Isn't it true that there is one who stands as king among them, this Bloodheart? They have always been raiders before. Each ship is ruled over by a separate warleader. Now one Eika unites many tribes, and he has taken Gent, the very city where King Arnulf the Elder crowned his children and laid his claim for them to be rulers over Wendar and Varre together."

The nobles grumbled, forgetting their distrust of Alain when reminded of their grievance at old King Arnulf, grandfather of the current king, Henry. Once, as princes and counts and noble ladies and lords of Varre, they had crowned their own sovereign ruler and fought their own private battles for influence in the Varren court. Now, outsiders in a court dominated by nobles of Wendish blood, they waited, discontent. Some of these men had ridden with Sabella in her rebellion against Henry. Some of these women had sent supplies and gold to enrich Sabella's war chests and maintain her army. Now Sabella was a prisoner and her rebellion ended; Lavastine had pledged himself loyal to King Henry, and in return Henry had acknowledged Lavastine's bastard son as the count's heir.

The bastard son who had to prove himself worthy, in
their
eyes. "Now some of the Eika acknowledge a king," he continued, "while others build winter camps in Varren lands. What does this mean?"

"Indeed," said Lavastine. "What does it mean, Lord Geoffrey? Have you thought on this puzzle, cousin?"

By his expression, Geoffrey clearly had not. He took a gulp of wine to cover his discomfiture and set the cup down hard on the table. A few soldiers, at a lower table, laughed; Lavastine's men, they had seen Alain in battle and now seemed as willing to follow where he led as were Rage and Sorrow and the other black hounds.

I am not worthy.

And yet, if the Lady of Battles had appeared to him and not to the others, was that not a sign of his worthiness? Did he not carry the rose, the mark of her favor?

A servingwoman refilled Lord Geoffrey's cup and lingered just long enough to look over Alain impertinently but with obvious interest; he flushed, suddenly warm. And why shouldn't he be? The hall was certainly warm enough to suit the coldest heart.

"Have you formed some opinion yourself as to the Eika's reasons, Lord Alain?" asked Aldegund with a sharp tinge to her voice, like malice. A sweet-faced woman, scarcely more than a girl, Aldegund had not accepted Alain and, except for her marriage to Geoffrey, Lavastine had no claim over her. Her kin had their own lands and estates, their own connection to Varren nobility and to the Wendish kings. She made a gesture and the servingwoman moved away to tend to other cups.

"I have." His flush deepened as he heard his own words. It sounded so very
—
proud.
But a count's son was allowed some arrogance; indeed, it was expected of him.

"Go on." Lavastine gestured with his cup.

Alain allowed himself a drink of wine for courage
—such very fine wine, carted in from Salia, and so
much
of it— before he continued. "I think Bloodheart means to make of himself a king to rival King Henry, or King Lothair of Salia. But when a king or queen is made, there are always princes who chafe under this rule. Some of these warleaders might not like being under the hand of another Eika, even one said to be a powerful enchanter. Yet if their own people wish to gain Bloodheart's favor, those warleaders and the men loyal to them might be driven out of their own lands because they are rebels. Perhaps that is why they winter here. They may have nothing to go back to."

"It is possible," said Geoffrey grudgingly, finishing their shared cup. His wife sent a servant at once to refill it.

"Is it not just as likely," asked an older man whom Alain identified as Meginher, one of Aldegund's many maternal uncles, a fighting man who had a considerable reputation, "that these winter camps have been built at the order of this Bloodheart?"

"Why do we suppose," asked Aldegund sharply, "that these Eika behave in any manner like ourselves? They are savages, are they not? Why should they act as we do? What do we truly know of them?"

/
know what I see in my dreams.
But he could not speak of those dreams out loud. His father had forbidden it. He bowed his head before her superior wisdom, for though she was young, she was a woman, lady of this estate and fashioned in the likeness of Our Lady, who orders the Hearth of Life. Men were fashioned for rougher work, and though certainly they were usually skilled beyond women in combat and hard labor, everyone knew, and the church mothers had often written on, the greater potential of women for the labors of the mind and the arts. These blessings, like that of childbirth, were granted to them by the grace of Our Lady, Mother of Life.

"We know little of the Eika," said Lavastine curtly. "While we still have good weather, however, myself, my
son,
and these of our men-at-arms who accompany us will patrol the coasts for as long as we can. We will march west to Osna Sound next. The last and worst incursion of the Eika came there two springs ago, as you know."

"Ah." Lord Geoffrey leaned forward with new interest. "There is a village at Osna Sound. Isn't that where you were fostered, Lord Alain? I remember when you came to Lavas town along with the other laborers who owed their year's service."

"You do?" asked Alain, surprised that as important a man as Geoffrey had noticed an insignificant common boy like himself.

But Geoffrey looked down swiftly, and Alain glanced at his father to see that Lavastine had fixed an expressionless
—yet for that very reason intimidating—stare on the other man.

Meginher snorted and turned to his cup, taking a swig of wine. Servants staggered in under the weight of a roasted boar and several haunches of venison decorated with pimentos. Alain could not help but think of Lackling, who had eaten gruel all his life with a few beans or turnips if there were extra. Poor bastard . . . just like Alain, only how different Lackling's fate had turned out to be. He had never been given leave to eat food this rich, except the last scraps taken from the table if he could grab them before they were thrown to the pigs.

"Of course," said Lavastine, relinquishing the cup to his hostess, who had it filled once again with wine, "any person would have noticed your quality at once, Alain, for it was preordained that you take your place among the magnates and potentes, was it not? Twice now you have distinguished yourself in battle." He said this firmly and clearly so that every person in the hall heard him. He gestured toward the captain of his cavalry. "Is it not true, Captain?"

The soldier stood. He, like the others, had bent his knee before Alain four days ago after the battle
—and not just because Lavastine wished them to do so. "I have fought for the counts of Lavas since I was a lad, and I have never
seen anything like this. I remember when the boy killed the
guivre
at the battle outside Kassel. Even so, to see him ride through his first battle as a true soldier, to see him strike to either side with no sign of fear, with such strength, with such fury that it shone from him as if he had been touched by the saints and God Themselves, to see him slay Eika on his right hand and on his left, I could see he had been born to the life of a warrior." The other men
—those of Lavastine's soldiers who had survived the battle-pounded cups and knife hilts and empty platters on the table as they roared their approval.

Alain leaped up. "It was the hand of the Lady of Battles, not my own," he insisted, "which killed those Eika."

"Sit," said Lavastine softly and, as obedient as the hounds, Alain sat.

The others murmured, but Lord Geoffrey made no more comments about Alain's service as a laborer at Lavas Holding, and Lady Aldegund turned the talk to more innocent subjects: the year's harvest, the new wheeled plow, and how the mild summer and autumn presaged a good growing season which would, in turn, presage a rich harvest of taxes. A third course was brought in, veal and lamb spiced with cumin and pepper and other exotic flavors and condiments. A poet, trained in the court chapel of the Salian king and now singing for his supper at the lesser courts of nobles, sang from an old and lengthy panegyric in praise of the Salian Emperor Taillefer as Alain picked at his food.

"As did the mariners of old, I set sail to test my weary limbs against the storms of the sea, to try my ship against the ocean waves. I set my gaze to that beacon which gleams from afar. That light is the name of Taillefer. Look! The sun shines no more brightly than the emperor, who illuminates the earth with his boundless love and great wisdom."

The poet went on in this manner, extolling the virtues of the long-dead emperor while Alain wondered how the noble lords and ladies could possibly eat as much food as they were stuffing into their bellies at this feast. He had gone hungry from time to time
—everyone did—but he had never suffered; Aunt Bel was prosperous enough to be able
to set aside some portion every year against a catastrophi-cally bad harvest. But he had seen the poor who lived from hand to mouth, their children in perpetual want, begging at the church with legs and arms as thin as sticks and faces bleak with hopelessness. In good years, of course, such people found day labor and managed, but in bad years even the prosperous stared into the gaunt face of hunger.

"For although the sun knows twelve hours of darkness, Taillefer, like a star, shines eternally. He enters first among the company, and he clears the way so that all may follow. With heavy chains he binds the unjust and with a stiff yoke he constrains the proud. With a stern hand he teaches the impious to love God."

The servants brought in a fourth course of clear soup together with a bread so white and fine it seemed to dissolve on Alain's tongue.