Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

“Riders or foot?” said the prior, squinting into the murky evening beyond the firelit field.

“I’m not certain. They seem to move too quickly for foot. Perhaps one with better eyes should take up the watch. If we could just move these men inside—”

The prior sighed deeply. “The soldiers cannot move without their officers’ orders, so we must await Father Abbot. The newcomers are likely more sad cases like these.”

“But—”

The stocky monk silenced the protest with a warning finger. “Age does not preclude punishment for disobedience, Cosmos. Stay at your post. As the saint taught, good order will carry us through all earthly trials.” He folded his arms and surveyed the field, dispatching the monks here and there as they bustled through the gates.

Perhaps innocent men were not primed to expect trouble when dealing with such ugliness as war. Or perhaps the prior was just a fool. I had soldiered on and off since I was seventeen and knew that unexpected company rarely brought any good. The monks needed to get these men behind the abbey walls.

If I were to avoid any ugly encounters, I needed to be on my way as well. But first I’d get a better sense of where these men had come from, lest I blunder into the war I had abandoned. Almost a fortnight had passed since Wroling Wood. Some other noble boil must have been lanced in recent days to spew commoners’ blood.

A woodcart rattled through the tunnel. I stuffed the pitcher and my alder stick into the bed, gripped the cart rim for a support, and moved into the field. Once we reached the center of the crowd, I extracted stick and pitcher and wandered off on my own, searching for someone who could tell me what I needed to know. I stayed cautious. Little chance any would know me. But if some of these had fought at Wroling, I’d not want it to get about that I’d arrived at Gillarine so much earlier than they.

“Brother, can you help me?” A scrawny man with one arm bound to his chest was trying to roll a bulky comrade onto his side. The pale, slab-sided soldier was retching and choking, half drowned in his own vomit. The heat of his fever could have baked bread.

“Iero’s grace,” I said, narrowly avoiding losing my own supper as the poor wretch heaved again, mostly bile and blood. I set my pitcher on the ground and helped prop the fellow on his side. A cold like deep-buried stone weighed my spirit as I touched him. The gore-soaked wad of rags bound to his belly oozed fresh blood.

“Where have you come from?” I said to the other man, snatching my hands away from his friend. “I’ve heard naught of this battle. Where was it fought?”

The scrawny soldier gaped as if I’d asked him to explain the thoughts of women or the intents of gods. “In the wood.”

“The woods close by here? West beyond the ridge? Or more northerly, near Elanus?”

“A fearful dark wood.” He could be no more than sixteen. “They kept coming at us. Knights. Halberdiers. And the mad ones…screaming like beasts and waving orange rags on their spears.” He shuddered and swallowed a little twisting noise. I’d heard that sound before. Felt it. The terror that sat inside your gut and kept trying to climb out. The fellow didn’t know any more. He’d likely never left his mother’s croft until he was dragged off and told to kill Moriangi.

“Have you a cup or bowl?” I said. “And one for your friend?”

I filled two crude wooden bowls from my ale pitcher. The youth took a grateful sip, and I left him trying to give the bulk of his own portion to his friend. He ought to have drunk both portions himself. The wounded man wouldn’t live past midnight. I’d known it when I touched him, known it with the certainty that always gave me the shudders—a hint of my mother’s bent, I’d always thought, that showed up at random through the years, never biddable, never revealing matters I could do anything about. Control of death and life were beyond any pureblood bent.

On the near side of the field, a blood-slathered Brother Robierre sawed away at a whimpering soldier’s thighbone. Young Gerard sat on the man’s good leg to help keep the poor sod still, his gawking taking in every gruesome detail. Jullian, pale as a mist-dimmed moon, held the glowing cautery iron in a fire they’d built a few steps away. I gave the wretched proceeding a wide berth.

“Iero’s grace.” I approached a hollow-cheeked veteran who sat off by himself at the edge of the field, tending his feet. “Tell me, good sir, how close by the abbey was this terrible engagement? And in which direction?”

“Not so close as to threaten holy folk like you. We fought Bayard the Smith himself at Wroling Wood. The whore priestess of the Harrowers rode beside him.”

“Wroling! But I thought—” I caught myself before blundering into any confession. “I’d heard rumor of a fight there, but days ago. You must have given Prince Bayard a noble struggle.”

He spat and continued blotting his peeling toes with a scrap of dry cloth, pulling off bits of straw he’d used to stuff his boots. “Pssht. Three days’ killing and what’s left of Ardran honor is scattered to the winds. Unless Kemen Sky Lord brings forth this Pretender, the Prince of Brutes will be king in a fortnight, for all the good it’ll do ’im. When the orange-heads finish burning Ardra, they’ll burn Morian, too.”

He was probably right. But I needed to understand his geography. “Here, if you’ve a cup, I can ease your thirst. For certain, you’ve had a long adventure to get here from Wroling. Perhaps you went the long way round and ran into another fight along the way?”

Looking up at last, he wrestled a tin cup from his belt. “Nay, good brother. We’d all be dead if we’d had to face aught since Wroling. If there’d been horses to commandeer, we could have nipped off to these fine walls in three days or less, despite our wounded. But even His Grace and his lordlings lost their mounts there at the end.”

“Prince Perryn unhorsed!” Who’d ever believe the cowardly princeling would get close enough to combat to lose his horse? “He’s captive, now, I suppose. Or dead.”

“Aye, one or the other. At least that’s kept the Smith off our backsides. With noble prey ripe for plucking, he needn’t bother chasing dregs like us. A few unchartered knights is all they’d have to show for taking this lot.”

“But your lord lies just over—” Unreasonably disturbed, I held the pitcher poised above his cup. “Prince Perryn…you didn’t see him taken, then?”

“Nah. But he’s likely squealing in Bayard’s dungeons by now. Pompous prickwit.” The soldier licked his lips and jerked his cup toward the pitcher.

When I’d heard of Prince Perryn’s foiled plot to burn Navronne’s fleet—our only defense against Hansker raiders—because his brother Bayard commanded the ships, I was done with the Ardran prince for good. Who of any mind could wish for either the Smith, the Pompous Prickwit, or Osriel the Bastard to wear good Eodward’s crown? I feared the tales of a fourth brother, a Pretender, were naught but wishing dreams, wrought to hold off a kingdom’s despair.

As I filled the soldier’s vessel, my mind toyed with his news. If Prince Bayard had captured his half brother, the throne was indeed likely his, no matter what Eodward’s lost writ of succession had to say. In Evanore Prince Osriel squatted on the richest treasure in the kingdom—veins of gold to satisfy an Aurellian emperor’s wildest dreams—but most people deemed his sparsely populated domain too small to mount a campaign for the throne.

Over the soldier’s head the forested folds of hill and vale were enveloped in gathering gloom. With Perryn taken, Bayard would never chase down sixty wounded men, a few knights, and a minor lord. But if the Duc of Ardra had slipped Bayard’s grasp, and some pureblood scout had detected royal blood on this rabble’s trail…Brother Cosmos had seen riders on the ridge.