Crown of Stars

A drum of footfalls and a scattering of shouts alerted them that someone lived still in the village beyond. Bertha raised a hand to ready her archers and spearmen.

Along the path came a trio of hardy men, each armed with the kind of weapons farmers make for themselves: one bore a staff sharpened to a point, one had a staff with a scythe bound securely to one end to make of it a halberd, and the third held an actual iron sword of the kind a lady’s guardsman might wield. He also had a length of board cut into a teardrop shape and fixed to his left arm as a shield, crude but effective and unmarked by any heraldic sigil.

It was this man who climbed atop one of the logs and regarded them with no smile and no welcome.

“You can’t come here. We’ve blocked the road.”

“We need shelter,” said Lady Bertha. “We are loyal subjects of the regnant, good Wendish folk all. I am escorting these holy men and women who served King Henry as part of his schola. We have been months on the road out of Aosta. We ride north to Saony.”

“You can’t come in,” he said. “You might be carrying the plague. What’s in those wagons?”

“Feed for the horses. Supplies. Most importantly, we carry with us a holy abbess, aged and weak. She needs shelter and a warm fire against the frost that afflicts us every night.”

“A plague-ridden beggar, no doubt.” He was a stocky man with the broad shoulders and thickset arms of a man who works every day with his hands. “Or men with animal’s faces, hiding under the canvas. We can’t chance it.”

“You’re the carpenter’s son,” said Hanna suddenly. “I recognize you. I am a King’s Eagle. I sheltered one night in your village a few years back. Do you remember me?”

He sized her up. He had dark brown eyes, eastern eyes, they called it in these parts, a memory of raiders out of the east who had come and gone but left something of themselves behind in later generations. He shook his head, and seeing that he did not know her, she pushed back her hood.

“I was here with four Lions,” she added. “We’d come from the east.”

“Ah!” he said. “I recall that hair. You’re out of the north, so you said.”

“That’s where I was born. I pray you, friend, do not forget what courtesy is due to clerics and Eagles. Let us bide just this one afternoon and night. We’ll go on our way in the morning.”

“No.”

Lady Bertha pushed Hanna aside. “Give us shelter this one night, and porridge and ale, if that is all you have. In the name of Henry and his son, Prince Sanglant, I command it.”

He gestured toward her with his sword as if to ward off an evil spirit. “We will not fall for that trick a second time!” “What trick?” asked Hanna.

His gaze shifted past her face, and she turned in the saddle to see that Sister Rosvita and several of the young clerics had walked forward through the mud to see what was holding them up.

“These are only a few of the clerics we protect,” Hanna added. “This is no trick. I pray you—”

“No!” He gestured. That horn call blatted again from deeper within the trees. Feet clattered on the earth. Branches rustled. “Go on! Go on!” He seemed furious, or near to tears. A scar blazed his forehead. One of his comrades was missing a finger on one hand, and the other was painted with a startling red rash across his cheek and down one side of his neck. “No one will come in. We can trust no one.”

“I am a King’s Eagle!” cried Hanna indignantly.

“Where is the king and the king’s justice? It’s vanished, that’s what! You’ll get no shelter from us. We’ll fight if you try.”

“I’ve never been treated so disrespectfully by Wendish folk! Can it be you are not Avarians after all but creatures of the Enemy come to inhabit the bodies of decent people?”

“You would know, would you not, who speak of Henry’s bastard son! Spawn of devils!”

“Aronvald, make ready!” Bertha called.

The sergeant signaled. The archers raised their bows. The carpenter’s son called back to unseen folk in the forest and out of sight down the track, but he did not move to take shelter from arrow’s flight.

Sister Rosvita moved up to take hold of Bertha’s reins.

“Let be, Bertha,” she said in a pleasant voice.

“They owe us shelter!” said Bertha, but she looked down at the cleric, frowned, and lifted a hand. Archers lowered their bows, but did not otherwise shift.

“Look at his face,” said Rosvita. “He means what he says. He is desperate, fearful, determined. Yes, your good soldiers will win the skirmish. We are armed in leather and mail and have good iron swords and spears and six fine archers. But what if we lose even one soldier, if even one of my faithful clerics is wounded or killed when we have come so far over such a treacherous road. If we lose this Eagle, who guides us. For the sake of one night’s shelter, I judge it not worthwhile.”