Crown of Stars

“I am not.”

“Yet here you are. Well. Lavas may be yours again, and more besides. Men are all the same. Easily teased to attention by a glimpse of treasure. Is that not so, Conrad?”

“So the church teaches,” he said without looking at her, as if the shadows of the forest hid something he needed to see. “There’s something out there,” he said in a changed voice.

A sentry called out a challenge just as he spoke. A second call alerted the camp, but as the soldiers jumped to their feet and servants hustled to the safety of the wagons, pale figures wandered out of woods with hands extended, murmuring the familiar refrain.

“I pray you, noble one. Have you food?”

“Just a corner of bread for my child, I pray you.”

“God’s mercy, help us. Any that you can spare.”

“Beggars!” said Sabella, retreating. “Captain! Chase them off.”

Alain walked after her. “Surely you can spare your leavings for these poor creatures. They are harmless, and suffering.”

“Chase them off!” she ordered.

Conrad fell back into the circle made by his retainers, all of whom had drawn their swords. “Be on alert,” he called.

“They may be a distraction, I’m thinking.”

The beggars faltered before they entered the camp, seeing the weapons. Children sniveled, held tight against their mothers’ hips, and all weeping, adults and small ones alike. They were afraid, and yet again and many times one of the half-naked, starving beggars would look behind toward the deeper darkness of the forest as if wolves were driving them into the light. From back in the camp Alain heard Atto cry out, and the sound of a scuffle.

“Stand ready!” Conrad’s voice carried easily; he meant unseen others to hear him. “We’ll slaughter them, my good fellows, and let the maggots clean their corpses.”

“Nay! nay! I know these folk!” Atto’s voice was a wail. “How comes it my kinfolk beg here in the wilderness? They live but a day’s walk from Helmsbuch, cousins to us. I beg you! I beg you! Do not harm them! They are innocent!”

Soldiers clattered into position. Shields fell into line to protect the ranks if arrows flew from the woods. A horn called twice. Horses whinnied nervously.

“Step back!” called Conrad to Alain.

But it was Conrad and Sabella’s soldiers, standing with their backs close to the fires, who were easiest to see. In the darkening twilight, Alain knew he appeared as no more than a shadow. The undyed linen-and-wool clothing of the beggars and their exposed limbs made them conspicuous, but he was cloaked by the fine dark colors of his clothing, by his gloves and boots, and by his dark hair and darker hounds. He was not at risk, not as the beggars were, caught between the noble company and whatever pushed at them from deeper in the woods.

He stood in silence, hearing the scrape of feet, the muttered comments of the soldiers, the nervous laughter of one of the lordlings, the tick of a branch clacking against another, the snuffling of horses, and the thump of a spear haft against the ground. A child whimpered. In the distance, an owl hooted, and he threw back his head, surprised, and listened as hard as he could. As he breathed, he caught the inhalation of the world and the slow trembling and settling of air as the earth cooled with the onset of night. Under the trees waited the wolves who hunted in this night, concealed by underbrush and broad tree trunks and the uneven carpet of the ground with its low rock dikes and knee-deep hollows. The outlaws were a sturdy, cautious band, and he listened carefully, counting each man’s breath: thirty-eight in all—no, there was the thirty-ninth, behind the bole of an ash. Not enough to attack a company some three times greater and better armed unless a cunning intelligence led them, but he smelled and sensed no such mind among their number, not unless it was hidden from him.

“Stay,” he said to the hounds He walked into the trees, as silent as death, and came up behind each crouching man out of the darkness and lay a hand atop each head, each one so unsuspecting that the touch made him freeze in terror.

Alain said only, in a whisper, each time, “Go. Do not prey on the weak and helpless any longer.”

They ran, a scattering of footsteps as the first he touched fled, and then the second. The sound turned briefly into a tumult, like a shower of hard rain, and pattered away into the depths as the last of them bolted. He waited, but all he heard were cautious shouts and answers coming from the camp as Conrad and Sabella shifted their sentries farther out to probe the darkness, and the quiet misery of the score of beggars abandoned betwixt the company and the wild.