Child of Flame

A messenger came from the vanguard: the Eagle, representing the king’s ear, must ride in the front. With trepidation, Hanna left her good companions among the Lions and rode forward to take her place, as circumspectly as possible, beside Brother Breschius.

“Stay near me,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll do my best to keep you out of their way.”

“I thank you, friend.”

The gates were opened and they advanced into the city. The townsfolk greeted Bayan and Sapientia and their ragged army with cheers, but Hanna noted that the streets weren’t crowded despite this welcome. She wondered how many had already fled west into the march of the Villams.

Biscop Alberada met them on the steps of the episcopal palace, dressed in the full splendor of her office and wearing at her throat the gold torque that signaled her royal ancestry. A number of noble ladies and lords attended her, including one dashing man who wore the peaked cap common to the Polenie. The biscop waited until Princess Sapientia dismounted, then descended the steps to greet her and Prince Ekkehard. With such precisely measured greetings did the nobles mark out their status and territory. Had it been King Henry riding into Handelburg, the biscop would have met him on the road outside of town. Had it been Margrave Villam, come to pay his respects, Alberada would have remained inside so that he had to come in to her.

Sapientia and Ekkehard kissed her hand, as befit her holy station, and she kissed their cheeks, the mark of kinship between them. It was not easy to see the resemblance. Alberada was older than Henry, fading into the winter of her life. In the year since she had presided over Sapientia’s and Bayan’s wedding, she had aged noticeably. Her hair had gone stark white. Her shoulders bowed under the weight of her episcopal robes.

She turned from her niece and nephew to greet Bayan and acknowledge the other nobles, those worthy of her immediate notice. Hanna could not tell whether she meant to greet Bayan’s mother, hidden away in her wagon, or ignore her, but in any case by some silent communication the wagon was drawn away toward the guest wing.

If Biscop Alberada noticed this slight, she gave no sign. “Come, let us get out of the cold. I wish I had better news to greet you with, but troubles assail us on every side.”

“What news?” asked Sapientia eagerly. The long march had made the princess more handsome; what she lacked in wisdom she made up for in enthusiasm and a certain shining light in her face when her interest was engaged.

“Quman armies have attacked the Polenie cities of Mirnik and Girdst. Girdst is burned to the ground. Both the royal fortress and the new church are destroyed.”

“This is sore news!” exclaimed Lady Bertha, who stood to Sapientia’s left.

“Yet there is worse.” It began to rain, a misting drizzle made colder by the cutting wind. “The Polenie king is dead, his wife, Queen Sfildi, is a prisoner of the Quman, and his brother Prince Woloklas has made peace with the Quman to save his own life and lands. This we heard from Duke Boleslas—” She indicated the nobleman standing on the steps above. “—who has taken refuge with his family in my palace.”

“Who rule the Polenie folk, if their king is dead?” asked Bayan.

Evidently Duke Boleslas could not speak Wendish well enough to answer easily, because Alberada replied. “King Sfiatslev’s only surviving child, a daughter, has fled east into the lands of the pagan Starviki to seek aid. Shall I go on?”

Bayan laughed. “Only if I have wine to drink to make the news go down easier. Of wine there is none this past month.”

“Let us move into the hall!” exclaimed the biscop, looking more shocked by this revelation than by the Polenie defeat. Or perhaps she just wanted to get out of the rain, which began to come down in sheets. Her servants hurried away to finish their preparations. “Of course there is wine.”

“Then I fear not to hear your news. The war is not lost if there is wine still to drink.”

Biscop Alberada had laid in a feast worthy of her status as a royal bastard. Because of her kinship with the Polenie royal family, she had been allowed to found the biscopry of Handelburg thirty years ago when only a very young woman newly come to the church. One of King Sfiatslev’s aunts had been taken prisoner during the wars between Wendar and the Polenie fifty years ago, and this young noblewoman had been given to the adolescent Arnulf the Younger as his first concubine, a royal mistress to assuage his youthful lusts while he waited for his betrothed, Berengaria of Varre, to reach marriageable age. In the thirty years Alberada had overseen the growing fortress town of Handelburg, the noble families of the Polenie had all been thoroughly converted to the Daisanite faith in a right and proper manner.