Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars #2) 46

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 Eika 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.