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“A miracle!” said a second.
Heribert returned in time to hear this comment. “Nay, there’s no sorcery or miracles involved,” he said, somewhat disgustedly. “All Dariyan forts were built to the same plan. One cistern always lies in the central square, marked by a woman dressed in a skirt hung all around with lightning bolts and carrying a water lily. Usually, in forts that were inhabited for a lengthy period, an entire network of rain spouts and channels leads rainwater into that central cistern, and—”
Because he seemed ready to go on indefinitely, caught up by his passion, Sanglant interrupted him. “Let me taste the water first.”
A rope and bucket were found. When a soldier brought him the half-full bucket, Sanglant dipped a hand in the cool water, sipped, and let the taste of it wash over him. No taint of poison or foulness burned him. The water smelled fresh, and had been covered for so long and so tightly that no animal had fallen in to poison it. “I judge it safe to use, Captain.”‘
“Truly, that will save us labor, Brother,” said Fulk, eyeing Heribert with new respect. Captain and cleric went aside, and Heribert began pointing out to him certain features of the fort. Zacharias left camp to wash himself in privacy. Blessing stirred and woke from her nap, and Sanglant unwound her from the sling as the soldiers built up a good fire and brought out their equipment for mending torn cloaks and tunics. The cooks roasted the six deer they’d shot in the course of their march that day.
In this manner, they settled down for the night. Sanglant fed Blessing a paste made of pulses and goat’s milk, sweetened with honey that the soldier Sibold had stolen from a bee’s nest two days ago, although the poor man still had swollen fingers, the price he’d paid for this prize.
“Da da!” Blessing said in her emphatic way. “Da ma ba! Wa! Ge! Ge!” She wriggled out of his lap and grabbed his fingers, wanting to walk. In the past ten days she’d gotten so steady on her legs that she could now run, and did, whenever he wasn’t holding on to her or she wasn’t in her sling. She was so used to the soldiers that she would run, screaming with excitement, to any one of them, as her father chased her, and hide behind their legs. This had become part of the nightly ritual of the war band. Once she had exhausted them in this way, she presided, from her father’s lap, over the singing that followed dinner. Every man there knew a dozen tunes or twenty or a hundred. Blessing babbled along enthusiastically, and although she couldn’t quite clap her hands together to keep time, she waved them vigorously.
When she finally slumped into her father’s chest, eyes half closed, he called Brother Zacharias over to him and questioned him closely about Bulkezu and the Quman. The frater had managed to wash the worst of the dirt off him, although his clothing still stank. He had the accent of a man born and bred in the east among the free farmers, those who had settled in the marchlands in exchange for land of their own and the protection of the king. Of the Quman, Zacharias had a slave’s knowledge, incomplete and sketchy, but he noticed details and he knew how to talk.
“Maybe it’s best we ride east,” said Sanglant finally as Fulk and Heribert listened. “Sapientia will not like this news of our father’s marriage to Queen Adelheid.”
“It’s a long road to the east,” observed Heribert.
“All roads are long roads.” Blessing had fallen asleep on his chest. He bundled her up in the sling, off the ground so no crawling creature could bite her. The others rolled themselves up in their blankets. From farther off he heard sentries pacing on their rounds, their footfalls light on packed earth. He could not sleep. His hand still smarted from the prick of the thistle.
Jerna’s aetherical form fluttered down beside him, rippling like water. She curled herself as a veil of protection around the sleeping bundle that was Blessing. Perhaps, like an amulet, she did protect the baby. Blessing had not taken sick for even one day since Jerna began suckling her, nor was the baby troubled by fly or mosquito bites like the rest of them. Hot sun did not make her dusky skin break out in a rash, nor did she seem to mind the cold. She was growing so fast that every man there knew it was uncanny and abnormal, although none spoke a word out loud.
Maybe he was a fool for letting an abomination nurse her. Perhaps it wasn’t wise. But what else could he have done? He had made the only choice open to him.
So be it.
3
AS King Henry’s army lurched and toiled up the pass, Rosvita found herself for the fifth time that day at a standstill behind a wagon. This one had gotten stuck where its wheels had broken through an icy crust to bog down in mud beneath.
Fortunatus reined his mule up beside hers, and sighed. “Do you think it was wise of King Henry to cross the mountains this late in the year?”
“Speak no ill of the king, I pray you, Brother. He marches at God’s bidding. You see, the sun still shines.”
So it did, however bleak and wan its light seemed against a backdrop of dark clouds, cold mountainside, and a cutting wind. Soldiers and servants hurried forward with planks and sticks to coax the wagon out of its mire. Soon a dozen of them had gathered around the stricken wagon, arguing with each other in the tone of men who have had their endurance tested to the limit.
“Shall I speak to them, Sister?”
“Nay, let them be unless it comes to a fistfight. But you may take the reins of my mule, if you please.” As she had done the other times they had halted in this manner, she dismounted from her mule to give a few words of comfort to a wagon’s load of soldiers so stricken with the flux that they were too weak to walk.
“Let us pray, friends,” she said as she approached the wagon, although in truth most of the soldiers were too delirious with fever to hear her words. The wagon stank of their illness, for these were the poor souls who no longer had the strength to hoist themselves off the wagon and stagger off the path before voiding their bowels.
It took her perhaps four steps to walk from her mule to the wagon. Only for that long did she turn her back to the pass up which the army struggled.
The wagon driver had a cloth tied over most of his face to mask the stench of sickness, but even so, she saw his eyes widen in terror as he looked past her. She heard it first as a rumble, a crackling thrumming roar that obliterated distant shrieks and warning calls.
“Sister!” cried Fortunatus. “Ai, God, we are overtaken!”
She turned back. She hadn’t turned away for longer than it would take to count to ten, but in that brief span the sun had vanished under a curtain of white descending off the mountains. For an instant, the sight so disoriented her that she imagined them overwhelmed by a deluge of white flower petals.
The blizzard hit without warning. She had time only to grab at the wagon’s side, to brace herself. Fortunatus flung himself down from his mount and yanked on the reins of her mule. Then the storm swallowed him, and smashed into her.
She could not even hear the moans of the ill soldiers. Wind lashed her and snow blasted her. Pebbles caught up by the wind peppered her back as though a giant was hurling them against its enemies. She groped her way along the wagon until she shouldered up against the protecting bulk of the oxen. Luckily, she wore gloves, but even so her fingers stiffened where they clutched at wood and harness. She had to keep her back to the wind in order to breathe.
For an endless time, as the warmth ebbed out of her, she just held on.
By the time the wind slackened enough that she dared look up, snow drifted knee-deep around her legs and her feet had gone numb. Through the furious snow she could barely make out shapes staggering along the road. They were no longer marching south, up the pass toward Aosta. Now they fled north, down the pass, back the way they had come.
