On the feast day of St. Tiana the Joyous, holy martyr of the town of Bens, a messenger rode in. Alain looked up from the shed where he had been stacking bundled hay from the second crop cut on the south quarter.
The man had a dirty white rag tied around his head, covering his right eye and ear. Old blood stained it brown. His clothes were worn out, patched with the remains of other hose and tunics. When he dismounted next to the hall, he walked with a limp. It took Alain that long to recognize him as Heric, the brash young soldier of midsummer. His entire aspect was muted now.
Alain leaned against the low fence that hemmed in the open side of the shed and listened as Heric delivered his message in a vivid, penetrating voice to Chatelaine Dhuoda and her shadow cleric, the frater. People gathered to hear the news.
“The campaign is done for the season. The winds are changing. The Eika have sailed north back to their own ports for the winter. All along the coast they attacked. But here at the end three Eika ships bottled themselves up the Vennu after the tide had gone out. They built themselves a stockade, but the count begged for the Grace of Our Lord and Lady and led the attack. We stormed it!” He slapped a fist onto his other, open hand, grinning for the first time where he had been grim before. “Even their dogs gave way before us, and they more ferocious than their masters, for they would gladly eat any person who fell within reach of their teeth.” His audience murmured appreciatively at this gruesome detail. He went on. “But this time we slaughtered them Eika like sheep. Though it’s true they have tough hides. Hard as leather and gleaming like they was forged in a blacksmith’s furnace, not born from a decent mam like the rest of us. Those that ran out onto the flats got caught as the tide come in, and their ugly dogs with them!”
“I heard they was shapechangers,” said Cook, who had status enough that she might press to the front. “Half fish.”
Heric shrugged. The brief note of triumph died in his eyes; now he only looked weary. “They drown as well as we do. If any swam away, well then, I never saw them go. We took a captive, a prince of their kind. Lord Geoffrey wanted to kill him, but the count in his wisdom said we’d do better to give his kin someone to ransom than someone to avenge. They’re bringing the barbarian back, in a cage, with the count’s hounds tied to the bars, so no one can get in nor the barbarian out.” He shuddered and drew the Circle of Unity at his breast.
Chatelaine Dhuoda glanced about the fortress yard, marking each listener who loitered to hear the messenger’s tale. “How soon will his lordship arrive?”
“Within a fiveday. They were marching hard behind me. It was a long summer, and too much fighting. We’re all anxious to be home.”