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“We’re going, Anna. Come.”
“Where are we going?” she asked before thinking, and then winced, because she ought not to ask. She ought only to obey.
But the lady took no notice. She answered the question tolerantly. “We are going to Novomo. It’s a dilemma, whether to wait here for the army to return or to go after them, knowing that the tides within the crowns might bring us to cross without meeting. Yet I just don’t know. I must act. I must find Blessing, now that I know she is alive. And you’ll take care of her when we’ve found her.”
“We’re going to Novomo?” She felt wooly-headed. “But that’s where the army went. They’ll capture us.”
“Maybe not, Anna. I have allies now, among the Ashioi.”
“How can you have allies, my lady? Do they mean to join Prince Sanglant’s army, if he is king now in Wendar, as I heard? Yet, if they do so, won’t they be traitors to their own kind?”
The lady had already turned her head to look toward a sight Anna could not see. She replied, but her thoughts seemed already half a league away. “Not that kind of ally. We do not deal in land and gold but in something more precious to us. Something I have that they want, and that I am willing to share.”
“What is that, my lady?”
Seen in profile, she grinned fiercely, and the dim room seemed suddenly brighter. “The secrets of the mathematici.”
2
DIE EICHE was a huge oak tree with a massive trunk and a canopy of branches so wide and thick that grass did not grow beneath it. The crossroads was not precisely a village except for the straggle of houses built here because of a decent strip of arable land and the chance to house travelers in exchange for coin or goods. This hamlet, too, had been abandoned, but a large company had camped here recently. The interiors had been ransacked, and boards pried out of walls to throw onto campfires. Several animals had been killed, skinned, and eaten; their remains were scattered. Ortulfus weighed a scapula in his hands. With a finger, he traced the marks of a knife where it had scraped the bone. A single fresh grave stood in the shadow of the surrounding forest, beside a crop of young oak sprouting where there was no shade to kill them.
The company rested, exhausted more by fear than by the slow pace. Father Ortulfus sent monks with buckets to the nearby stream. A pair of lads offered to lead the horses to drink as Ivar and Baldwin examined the roads from this safe distance. The broader path, most traveled, struck southeast along the route made by the stream, while a grassier way pushed straight east into the trees.
“We must ride the fastest route,” said Baldwin. “Don’t you think that’s what Biscop Constance would want us to do?”
Ivar studied Father Ortulfus, who was still examining the scapula. “Have you horses at Hersford, Father? Ours are spent, although rest will improve them. If we could give you ours in exchange for fresh mounts, we could make better time.”
“Some horse met a sorry fate in the stewpot,” said Ortulfus, tossing the charred scapula back into a fire pit. Its impact sent up a sputter of ash and soot. “We have donkeys, oxen, a pair of mules, but no riding mounts. I’m sorry.”
“Have you a smith, then? It would help them to be reshod.”
“That we do. Brother Adso came to us from Alba two years ago, fleeing the Eika invasion. He has a touch of the old magic in him when it comes to farriery.”
A child coughed wetly. An old woman crooned to a restless baby. A trio of girls ventured as close to the three men as, they dared, staring longingly at the handsome cleric, who seemed oblivious to their presence. The brothers came back with buckets three quarters full and began ladling out water to the parched company.
Baldwin leaned against Ivar and bent his mouth to his friend’s ear. “I’ll just go to the horses now. They’re staring at me.”
Without looking back, he crossed the road and walked over to the stream to supervise the lads, who seemed to know what they were about and needed no actual supervision.
It came without warning, except perhaps for a catching of breath within the woodland, as though all creeping and crawling ceased among the creatures who lived and died there. Of birds, he heard no sound. Nothing, and then the slap of feet, pat put pat put, someone loping in an easy rhythm.
Both of the dogs, lying on the ground, came to their feet and barked, as startled as everyone else.
It burst out of the forest and jolted to a halt, surveying their ragged company from a safe distance. It had a round shield painted with yellow-and-red dragons twined and twisting each around the others. It had ice-white hair pulled back in a ruthless braid, no strand left free, and its skin gleamed as though molten gold had coated its figure. It wore no tunic or jerkin, only a painted cloth tied around its hips. It held a spear in its right hand, and this weapon thumped once, twice, thrice, four times onto the ground, like the abbreviated knock of a woodpecker.
Then it turned and ran back the way it had come.
The villagers erupted, leaping up, shouting, crying, some running into the forest and others pressing children toward the grassy path that led through the trees to the monastery, still a half day’s walk away according to the abbot.
“God have mercy,” said Father Ortulfus, staring after the vanished creature. He was pale and, in truth, he was angry. “After all this, can we not be spared? These poor suffering innocents?” He turned on Ivar. “They have followed you!”
Ivar choked. His gaze was caught by Baldwin at the stream, turning to look at them because he was puzzled at the commotion. From across the road and a little upstream, Baldwin had not seen the Eika scout but only the turmoil that spun out from its appearance. He lifted a hand to query Ivar.
“Forgive me,” said Ortulfus, grasping Ivar’s wrist. “I spoke in anger. This calamity is not your doing.”
“I pray you, Father, there is nothing to forgive. Do what you must. We’ll hide in the forest and hope they do not see us. I would offer to draw them off, but we must reach Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad before they do.”
Ortulfus sketched a strange pattern at his chest. “In the name of the Mother and Son,” he murmured, “be blessed as you go on your way.”
