“We took her measure, my lord, when we served her in Autun. We know her for what she is. But there’s war in Salia now. Our borders are at risk. Captain Ulric may no longer be barracked in Autun. He may have been sent southwest to fight. Or he may refuse to help us now. Maybe he’s done as much as he’s willing to do to aid Biscop Constance. I don’t know. Duke Conrad is fair to soldiers. He’s a good man to fight for.”
“Surely you know Captain Ulric well enough to know what’s in his mind! He sent you to aid me, after all.”
“We’ve been gone for months. Things have changed.”
They rode in silence for a while along the path that cut through woods. Ash and sycamore swayed softly among oak and beech and hornbeam. It was cloudy, as always these days, and cold and dry. The rains of last autumn had evidently poured all their moisture into the earth in the space of a month or so of incessant rain, Over the winter there had been little snow, although the clouds never lifted, and in time the roads had dried enough for Ivar and Erkanwulf to set off again from their refuge in the Bretwald.
“I didn’t like leaving,” said Erkanwulf after a while.
“What? Your village? They didn’t treat you very nicely.”
“Nay, not them. You see why I left! No, I liked that steading in the Bretwald. They were good, decent, kind people. That’s the kind of place I’d like to settle down, not that I’m likely to.”
“What do you mean? Settle in Bretwald?”
Erkanwulf was about the same age as Ivar, not as tall, and lanky in the way of a young man who never quite got enough food as he could eat growing up. He was tough—Ivar knew that—but he shrugged like a man defeated. “If I leave Captain Ulric’s company, I’ll have to go back to my village and let my mother make a marriage for me. Who else would have me? I’d be an outlaw if I left the place I’m bound to by birth.”
“They took in strangers in the Bretwald.”
“That’s true. Refugees from Gent. I liked it there, with no lord holding a sword over their head and telling them what to do.”
“Until bandits realize how wide that road is, and attack them who have no lord to defend them.”
“They’d need more hands, then, wouldn’t they? A man who had some experience fighting would be of use to them.” Erkanwulf brooded as they moved through the woods. No birds sang. Except for the murmuring wind and the soft fall of their horses’ hooves, there was no sound at all. The quiet made Ivar nervous. He hadn’t felt quite right since that terrible night when wind and rain had battered them and killed Erkanwulf’s horse. They had commandeered the old nag Erkanwulf rode from a village whose name Ivar had already forgotten. Those folk hadn’t greeted them kindly, but they’d offered them shelter and given up the old mare in exchange for some of Princess Theophanu’s coin. Those villagers didn’t love the Wendish either, and with King Henry gone so long from his usual progress around the countryside, they saw no reason not to turn their hearts toward the old stories of Varren queens and kings who had once ruled these lands without any Wendish overlord telling them what to do.
A long time ago, so it seemed, he had been young and thoughtless. He smiled, thinking back on it. Perhaps not so long ago. But so much had happened. He had been thrown headlong into a world whose contours were more complicated than he had ever imagined as the neglected youngest child of the old count up in Heart’s Rest.
“For all I know, my father is dead by now, and my brother Gero become count in his place.”
Erkanwulf glanced at him, his expression unreadable. “What has that to do with us? My lord?”
“Nay, nothing. I just thought of it. I just thought how the world is changed, as you said yourself. Not just because of that storm or Biscop Constance’s imprisonment, or any of those things, but because I left my father’s estate and journeyed farther than I ever expected to go. I can’t be that youth that I once was. When I think of how I was then … I don’t know. It’s just different now. We’ve chosen our path. We can’t go back.”
“Huh. True enough words.”
“What do you think we’ll find in Autun?” Ivar asked.
Erkanwulf only sighed. “I hope we find what we’re looking for. Whatever that may be.”
2
IT snowed the morning they crossed the river on the ferry and moved into a straggle of woodland near the southern gate of Autun. They stumbled over two corpses half hidden under branches and mostly decomposed. Skulls leered at them, so they moved on. In the ruins of an old cottage abandoned among the trees, they stabled the horses with fodder and water, tying their thread-worn blankets over the animals’ backs. After that, they trudged overland to the city walls. No pristine stretches of fresh white snow blanketed the fields. It was all a muddy gray.
They passed several clusters of huts and cottages, shutters closed and doors shut against the cold. No one was about. Once they heard a goat’s bleat; once a child’s weary wailing dogged them before fading into the distance.
Erkanwulf led them first along the river and thence to a postern gate. They approached cautiously, hoods cast up over their faces. Ivar hung back as Erkanwulf strode forward to confront the two men hanging about on guard.
A conversation ensued; he knew them. After a moment he beckoned Ivar forward and without further conversation they were hustled past the gates and into the alleys of the city. Autun was a vast metropolis; Sigfrid had told him that perhaps ten thousand people lived there, cheek by jowl, but Ivar wasn’t sure he believed it. That was an awful lot of people, too many to comprehend. Even Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia’s combined armies hadn’t numbered more than ten or fifteen centuries of soldiers in addition to auxiliaries and militia.
On this late winter afternoon, few braved the streets. In one square a trio of beggars huddled by a public fountain, hands and faces wrapped in rags to protect themselves from the bitter cold. The tiny child’s face was thin from hunger, and he scooted forward on his rump, like a cripple without use of his legs, to catch the copper coin Ivar tossed to them.
“Bless you, Brother!” the mother croaked, surprised.
“Where the phoenix flies, there is hope of salvation,” he said to her.
Her face lit. “Truth rises with the phoenix!” she answered triumphantly. “Bless you! Bless you!”
Unnerved, he hurried after Erkanwulf, who had not waited.