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They all began to argue with a passion that showed they had quarreled over this point many times in the last few days. At last the scarred woman pounded her cup on the table until the rest fell silent. She turned to Hanna.
“What do you advise, Eagle?”
They looked at her expectantly, and she thought she had never been offered a heavier burden than the one implicit in their gazes. She didn’t know how much weight they would give her opinion, and yet any words she said now might make the difference between life and death for them.
o;We meant no offense by closing our gates,” said the scarred woman who acted as spokeswoman for the council. The scars looked recent, two slashes on her chin. “Not that we don’t trust the king’s milites, mind you, but we’ve had trouble recently with armed bands. Better to be safe. War’s coming, they say.” The council members nodded. The girl brought a fresh pitcher of mead and refilled cups all the way around the table.
“What kind of armed bands?” asked Hanna. Some of the words the woman used were unfamiliar, and her accent was a bit odd, although once she got used to the hissing it was easy enough to understand. “Bandits? Barbarians?”
“We’ve Salavii neighbors, it’s true, but it’s not them we’re worried about now. Just four days ago a wild group of young men come from the west claiming to be noble sons of Saony. There was trouble, and it weren’t pleasant. They did that to three of the girls here in town that isn’t right, begging your pardon, Eagle, and one of our lads got knifed in the bargain. But Lady Fortune smiled on us. Just when things were about to get ugly, Margrave Judith rode up with a host, why, surely as large as yours and perhaps larger, for she had more horses and riding men. She turned them out with a sharp word!” The others at the table nodded as they, too, remembered the incident. “But the damage was done. Poor young Hilde hung herself at the old oak tree two nights ago, and there’s some who want to cut it down because of evil spirits. It’s the place where our old mothers used to leave offerings to The Fat One—” Here, at a sharp gesture from one of her comrades, she smiled nervously and gestured to the servant to bring forward bread. “But that’s none of your worry, Eagle.”
“Of course it is my worry,” said Hanna. “If bandits are plaguing you, or even noblewomen’s sons, then King Henry will wish to be told of it.”
“What can he do?” asked one of the men bitterly. “The leader of them wild boys claimed to be the king’s nephew. What will he do? We are nothing to the king.”
“It’s true that you’re no blood kin of the king’s, friend. But you live under his protection, and if he lets wild young men, even his nephew, take what they want and harry as they will among those folk who look to the king for protection, then he might as well hand the whole of his treasure over and set aside his crown. The king does not tolerate disobedience, even from his nephews. I’ve seen civil war, my friends, and I know that King Henry will not tolerate any behavior that cuts into his authority. No more would you let your own young children run roughshod through your house, overturning the tables and throwing the apples out to rot.”
They nodded, seeing the wisdom in this answer.
“What was his name, who was leader of that warband?” But they didn’t know, or wouldn’t answer. They were still afraid. The bread steamed when she broke it open. “Well, then, what of Margrave Judith? Did she say where she was marching? What road did she take when she left here?”
“East and south, she said,” explained the scarred woman. “She was going at the summons of the king’s daughter, so we heard. That’s how we know war’s coming. There’s been fighting. Some say the wing-men are coming. We’ve spoken of building a second palisade. Is it true they cut off people’s heads?”
It took Hanna a moment to figure out who the wing-men were. “I’ve heard that story,” she said cautiously, not wanting to scare them. And yet, what chance did this village have against a host of Quman warriors? They had built a stout palisade and a good steep-sided ditch further fortified by stakes at the bottom, but there weren’t all that many of them. “I rode with Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan, her husband. They defeated a host of Quman, but it was only an advance force.”
“Should we abandon our homes and go west?” demanded the man who had spoken before.
“Nay, Ernust,” retorted the scarred woman. “If we leave, then those damned Salavii tribesmen will just move in and take our village, and never give it back!”
They all began to argue with a passion that showed they had quarreled over this point many times in the last few days. At last the scarred woman pounded her cup on the table until the rest fell silent. She turned to Hanna.
“What do you advise, Eagle?”
They looked at her expectantly, and she thought she had never been offered a heavier burden than the one implicit in their gazes. She didn’t know how much weight they would give her opinion, and yet any words she said now might make the difference between life and death for them.
“The Quman move swiftly,” she said at last. “If you’re caught on the road, you’ll all be slaughtered. The rains have been bad enough that the roads are terrible in any case. It took us three days to get this far from the fortress of Machteburg, and you’ll find no closer refuge than that. I think you’re better off building a second palisade hard up against the ditch, and bracing for a siege. If your Salavii neighbors are good Daisanites, you might try to ally with them to protect yourselves—”
But that was more objectionable even than the thought of dying at Quman hands. True, the Salavii had converted ten or even twenty years ago, and they weren’t particularly belligerent even as more Wendish settlers moved into what had once been exclusively Salavii territory—their Wendish overlords saw to that—but everyone knew that they were dark, dirty, different. Their daughters were whores and their sons rams. They talked a funny language and were too stupid to learn Wendish. They couldn’t be trusted. Worst of all, when the church had finally sent a deacon to minister to the region, she had established her parish by the Salavii village instead of in the perfectly fine little church they had built here in expectation of her coming, and she walked here on Hefensdays and LadysDays to lead Mass and preach a sermon. It was a terrible insult.
Hanna had a fair idea that it was wise of the deacon to stay closest by those of her flock who were most likely to stray. But she wasn’t about to tell these people that, not when their anger roiled in the longhouse as acrid as smoke from the hearth fire.
“I pray you, friends,” she began, raising her hands for silence. “These are difficult times, and we must pray to God to give us guidance. But if there is nothing further I can do to help you, then we must march on so that we can join up with the host of Princess Sapientia. If Margrave Judith has joined them with a host as well, then perhaps the Quman need never reach your village at all, and you can get on with your harvest.”
“If there is a harvest with all this rain,” the talkative Ernust began. “We haven’t had more than ten days of sun this summer—”
The distant blare of a horn drowned out the rest of his complaint. The startled servant girl dropped the pitcher, and it hit the corner of the table, cracked, and spilled crockery and fragrant mead all over the packed earth floor. Every head turned toward the sound.
Hanna was already on her feet and headed toward the door when the others began talking, calling to her, begging to know what the horn symbolized.
“It’s the call to arms,” said Hanna, and then she got outside and ran toward the gate.
“What are they talking about now?” Ivar reined up next to Baldwin, who had for the first time in the two days since they’d left the fortress of Machteburg fallen back from his favored position riding beside Prince Ekkehard. Right now, the prince was conferring with the captain of his new escort, a dozen light cavalrymen who had agreed to ride with him as far as Prince Bayan’s encampment, which according to the last report lay somewhere to the east.
“I think they’re agreeing that there’s nothing worse than trailing an army,” said Baldwin.
“It would be worse not to be trailing an army,” retorted Ivar. “The enemy could be anywhere out here, so they said at Machteburg.”
Ermanrich, mounted on a sway-backed gelding which had seen better days, only snorted. “We won’t be trailing them for long from the looks of it.”
