The Gathering Storm (124 page)

“Very well.” He whistled the hounds to him. They came obediently. They suffered him, but they pined for their master, and so each time he patted their heads he was reminded of his failure.

They walked past the new jetties to the customhouse, an old long hall that had once belonged to a Salian lord, now dead, who had taxed the merchants and sent a tithing to the Salian king while keeping the balance for himself. He hadn’t been well liked. Indeed, his skull was stuck on a post out in
front beside the door, stripped of most of its flesh and trailing only a few tatters of straggling brown hair.

Inside, the hall had been cleared of its old furnishings and transformed into something resembling a cleric’s study with shelves, tables, benches, and a single chair set on a dais. He sat in the chair. The hounds settled beside him, Sorrow draping his weight right over his feet, but he didn’t have the heart to move him.

“Bring them forward.”

All work ceased, clerics scratching and scratching with pens, women and men arguing over the worth of their trade goods, merchants counting by means of beads. They feared him, as they should, but he found their fear wearying. He tapped his free foot, waiting.

Two men were dragged forward. Their hands had been tied behind them; they were cut, bruised, and terrified. Four witnesses came forward to testify against them: they’d been caught north of town in an inlet setting out in a rowboat laden with cloth that had been reported stolen two days before from the house of Foxworthy, a respected merchant.

The thieves begged for mercy. They were young, they were dirty, and they looked hungry and ill-used, shorn of hope, but the penalty for stealing trade goods from the merchant houses was death and all men knew it. He called forward the scion of the house, a middle-aged man with red hair and beard dressed in a fine linen tunic whose border was embroidered with fox faces half hidden amidst green leaves.

“What is your wish in this matter?” Stronghand asked. “They do not deny the charge. Do you wish to make a claim against them?”

The merchant considered thoughtfully. “There’s always need of labor in the mines, my lord. If they are sold to the mines, then I will take whatever price they fetch as recompense for the crime. The cloth was recovered in good condition. No permanent damage was sustained by my house.”

“Very well.”

Rage heaved herself up and nudged his hand. He remembered the mines. He wanted those mines. But not yet.

Not yet.

Patience had served him well. It would have to continue to
serve him. If he moved too quickly he would overreach and lose everything.

The criminals wept, but they had sealed their own fate by becoming thieves.

“Bring the other man forward,” he said, feeling the curse of impatience draining into him, although he fought it.

Where was Alain?

Sorrow barked, just once, like a greeting, a demand for attention. Rage whined.

There
!

He rose, he was so startled, but an instant later realized he was seeing things. It wasn’t Alain at all; it was the shadows within the hall that had tricked him. This was an older man of middle years, dark hair well streaked with gray, who walked forward between an escort of two soldiers. He looked nervous, but he had a proud carriage and an alert gaze. If he was shocked to come before an Eika lord, he showed no measure of his surprise on his face.

He knelt before Stronghand as though he were a petitioner, not a prisoner. He spoke Wendish, not Salian. “I am called Henri, my lord. My sister is a householder in Osna Sound. I carry her goods to market once a year. We came late this year due to the troubles, and I find myself held as if I am a criminal although all my dealings among the merchants here have been fair and perfectly ordinary. I pray you, my lord, I am a simple man. No merchant complained of the goods I traded. I had quernstones, very high quality, and good quality wool cloth woven in my sister’s weaving hall. That’s all. I am taking home wheat and salt in exchange. Nothing more.”

He looked at the hounds, expression clouded with doubt, and after a moment tore his gaze away from them to meet the dark eyes of Yeshu. He nodded, to show he was done speaking, and waited for the translation to begin.

“Have we met before?” Stronghand asked in his perfect Wendish.

The man started visibly as if he had not thought an Eika could form human words. “I-I think not, my lord. Many years ago Eika burned the monastery near our village.” He stammered again, realizing that he might have offended. “The-the count as was then drove off another group of invaders that
year. He captured one of them, rumor said, but the creature later escaped. My foster son was at Lavas Holding at that time, but we heard the story from others. I’ve met no Eika face-to-face. Not in all my years.” He twisted his fingers through his beard in an anxious gesture, realized that he did so, and lowered his hand. “My lord.”

“Have you heard other news of Eika this summer? Have you heard news of Duke Conrad? Of the Salian war?”

His hands were clenched, and he nodded in a manner so suggestive of resignation, of a man who has given up hope of a successful enterprise, that Stronghand felt a stab of compassion. “In truth, my lord, we at Osna have been beset by our own troubles for the last year or two. We’ve heard nothing of the world.”

“What troubles have plagued you?”

“Harvests have failed. It’s rained too much. There’s no trade at our little emporium, none at all these last two years, although we showed signs of prosperity before. Refugees from the Salian wars have overwhelmed us. There were four murders in the village last year. Unthinkable!” He shook his head. “Lads have gone off to join the war and never returned. Laborers beg for a crust of bread. There’s been a sickness among the outlying farms and among the poorest—they call it ‘holy fire’ because their limbs burn and the poor afflicted souls see rivers burning with blood. Our new count has deserted us. He hides in his fortress, fearing enemies on all sides. Some say he’s not our true count, that the rightful heir was disinherited, cheated of his place.”

“Do you think that’s true?” asked Stronghand, intrigued by the man’s complex expression which grew yet more grim, leavened by sadness.

“Nay, my lord. If any man cheated, it was him who claimed to be the rightful heir. Yet I’ll not say the new count has courted God’s favor either, for his folk fare ill in these days.” He shifted on the plank floor, setting his left knee on the floor to give his right a rest. “I pray you, let me go. I am no spy. I have no grand knowledge to reveal to you. If we eat once a day, we count ourselves fortunate. It’s true we’ve heard tales of troubles along the coast and seen sails passing, but they did not stop. I sailed south this year to Medemelacha because
we have become desperate. I pray you, my lord, let me return home.”

“Let him go on his way!” said Stronghand brusquely. The man’s speech had shaken him, although he wasn’t sure why. “I see nothing suspicious in his arrival here. Are there any here who have a complaint of him?”

There were none. The man was known as one of those who traded once a year at the market, bringing in a few goods from the countryside which lay north up the coast. He had always dealt honestly over the many years he had come to Medemelacha. He had only been detained today while loading his small boat to leave, because it had occurred to someone that he was a foreigner and might therefore be a spy.

“He has nothing of importance to tell us. Go!”

The man hurried out, although when he reached the doors, he glanced back toward Stronghand. As if in answer to an unspoken question, Sorrow heaved himself to his feet and barked again, and he and Rage trotted over to the door as if in pursuit. The sunlight streaming in through the doors hid the man in that haze of light as soon as he stepped outside.

“Osna Sound,” Stronghand murmured. He whistled, but the hounds did not return.

Because he was seated, others came forward to press him for a decision on trifling matters, disputes and arguments that a strong council ought to have disposed of. Yet they tested him; they wanted to know if he was as clever as rumor made him out to be. He had to listen, to ask questions, and to judge.

Yet the name teased him as petitioners came forward and retired in pairs, as trios, in groups, now and again a single person. A disputed fence that marked the border between two fields; a bull that had gored a child; stolen apples; a knife fight between feuding suitors.

Osna Sound
.

He had heard the name before. Wasn’t that where Alain had come from? He wasn’t sure; he didn’t know the Varren coast well, not as he had learned the Eika shore and the settlements and roads and landscape of Alba or the fields around Gent. In Varre, when he had been captured, he hadn’t been quite awake; he had only vague memories of those days when he was little more than a ravening beast like his brothers. The
cage had changed him. It had woken him, and Alain’s blood had quickened him, and since then he had been plagued by this restlessness, this lack of peace, and yet he could not wish for it to have transpired in any other way.

“Where is that man’s boat laid up?” he asked Yeshu when the tide of petitioners ebbed.

“Which man, my lord?”

“The one from Osna Sound who was brought forward to be questioned.”

“Most of the local merchants beach their boats up by the north wall, my lord. By the mill. They do most of their trading at Weel’s Market.”

“Go find him. bring him to me. I’ve a mind to visit this market and see what goods he brought with him.”

He rose, and his escort gathered behind him as he strode to the door. He hadn’t asked the right questions. He had missed an important clue. Had this man known Alain? Hadn’t he said his name was
Henri
? For a long time Stronghand had assumed that Alain was the king’s son, for the king of the Wendish was called Henry, but Alain could not be both a king’s son and a count’s heir, could he?

He had let himself be distracted. He had failed to follow the scent when it was right before his nose.

Where had those damned hounds gone?

At the door, a large party of Rikin brothers hailed him cheerfully. A short, plump woman stood authoritatively in their midst, one hand slack at her side and the other cupped at her waist. It was clear these fierce Eika warriors followed her lead, although they towered over her and might have crushed her with a single blow of an ax.

“My lord prince! I bring a message of utmost importance. I pray you, let me speak.”

The sun dazzled him. He turned aside to stand under the eaves. “Deacon Ursuline!” The world tilted; a cloud covered the sun

as the waters stream around him, but he has to walk against the current because his hands are bound and they are dragging him through the flowing river of blood that burns so brightly that the heat forces tears from his eyes
.

The blood is everywhere, drowning the land. Its rushing
roar obliterates every noise. No matter how loudly he cries out, how he shouts or sings, he cannot hear himself. He cannot hear anyone, only the river’s furious flood and the rumbling tremor that afflicts the earth beneath him where pebbles slip under the soles of his feet and he slides and slips, dancing to keep upright.

Buildings rise around him and through an open doorway he sees into the interior of a dim chapel. A lord lies there with a steadfast hound curled asleep at, his head and terror at his feet. He fights free of his captors and darts into the church, flinging himself weeping against the lord, but no human flesh embraces him. He is all stone
.

Everything is stone or fire
.

“Get him out of there! He profanes the holy chapel.”

“Madman,” they cry.

They drag him outside and pour water over him
.

Ai, God. It burns
.

Coarse brushes scour him until his skin bleeds. Everything is bleeding. The world is bleeding
.

There is a man sitting in a chair with a child beside him, a girl, sweet-faced and quite young, but the blood had got into her bones and she turns red. She is burning
.

He struggles to reach her, to save her, but they pin him down and beat him
.

“It is him,” says the man. “So am I vindicated. Let all the folk who have whispered under their breath see what he has become. He lied about his birth. He tried to cheat my cousin. He has now tried to assault my daughter, who is the rightful count. Put him in a cage. Restrain him, so that he can’t hurt anyone. Let an escort be assembled. I will make the folk who scorn to bend their knee to my daughter see what he truly is.”

“My lord?”

He fell, caught himself, dizzy, and his claws extruded as he slammed a fist into the log wall, thrusting deep. He stuck there a moment, and only after he shook his head did he wrench his claws out of the wood.

“My lord prince?” she asked again.

“The light blinded me,” he said. “I walked too quickly from inside the hall into the open air.”

His head rang with the sound of that roaring, the unceasing
stream.
I know where he is
! It was difficult not to shout aloud with joy and triumph.

“Are you sure you are well, my lord?”

He attacked with questions, to give himself time to recover. The scent of blood had been so strong. The hallucination had almost subsumed him.

“What brings you to Medemelacha, Deacon Ursuline?” he asked. “I am surprised to see you.”

“No less surprised than I am to be here, my lord. I was sent at the command of OldMother.”

This was staggering news, but he knew better than to let his amazement show by any gesture or expression. “What message do you bring, Deacon?”

Yet his heart raced, and he could scarcely quiet his trembling limbs. Alain was at Lavas Holding. Now he could sail to rescue him, and do it quickly before worse harm was done to him. What had sent him mad? Why was he being punished in this way? Or was it punishment at all? There were other plagues abroad; they spread among humankind as maggots in rotting flesh. No man, or woman, was immune. Alain had wandered into places where he might well have taken sick.