“She led a rebellion …” They listened with rapt attention as she told them the tale.
“What does the king look like?” asked the daughter from her station by the hearth. With her hair bound back and a shawl over her head, she looked modest and quiet, but her voice was bold. “Is he very grand and terrifying?”
“He is a man of good height, noble in bearing. He is merciful in his judgments, but his anger is as fierce as that fire you tend.” Then, because she saw many pairs of eyes glinting from the alcoves, child and adult alike, she went on to tell of the king’s progress and the noble lords and ladies who rode with him. She told them of the places she had passed through on her way here, places they would never see and had never heard of: Augensburg; the elaborate palace at Echstatt; Wendish villages much like this one; the Sachsen Forest; Doardas Abbey; Korvei Convent; the market towns of Gerenrode and Grona; the city of Kassel, where Duchess Liutgard herself had interviewed her about the proposed expedition to Gent to drive out the Eika.
“I’ve heard of demons called Eika.” Godesti’s brother had just come from checking on the animals. He hunkered down by the fire to listen. A small child crept from her bed and slunk into the shelter of his arms. “But I thought they was just stories.”
“Nay,” she said, “I’ve seen them with my own eyes. I saw—” Here she faltered.
“What did you see?” demanded the son, creeping up beside her, face alight with interest.
So she told them about the fall of Gent, and somehow, telling it to these simple farming folk whose farthest journey was to the market town two days’ walk from here, it became more like a tale of ancient and noble deeds told a hundred times on a winter’s night. Somehow, telling the tale drew the pain out of it.
“Ai, the prince sounds so brave and handsome,” breathed the sister by the hearth.
Her young brother snorted. “That would be a cold lover for you, Mistress Snotty Nose, too good for your suitors.”
“Now, you!” said Mistress Godesti sharply, chucking the boy under the chin. “Hush. Don’t speak ill of the dead. His shade might hear you.”
“But all souls ascend to the Chamber of Light,” began Liath, then stopped, hearing a whispering from the alcove and seeing a certain furtive look pass among them all.
Mistress Godesti drew the Circle at her breast. “So they do, Eagle. Will you have more cider to sooth your throat? This food is scarcely fit payment for such tales as you have told us this night.”
Liath accepted the cider and drank it down, its bite a fire in her chest. After eating a second helping of stew, she rolled herself up in her cloak near the fire on a heap of straw filthy with fleas. The house cat, as dainty a creature as ever prowled a longhouse for mice, curled up against her stomach, liking the warmth of her body. Waking on and off, restless, she saw one or another person kneeling beside the hearth, a chargirl, an old man, a woman dressed even more poorly than the others, each taking a turn tending the fire through the long winter’s night.
In the morning, in a light fall of snow so insubstantial that little seemed to touch ground, she rode on. Mistress Godesti’s brother walked with her a good hour or more beyond the hamlet into the forest, though she tried to dissuade him because he had no boots, only sandals with cloth tucked in to warm his feet. But when they reached the spot where the autumn rains had washed out the path as it twisted down a thickly wooded slope, she was grateful for his guidance. He showed her where the new cut lay, a detour that switchbacked down a ridge and back to the old road. This far out, there was deadwood aplenty and no felled trees marking where folk from the village came out to get firewood. He made polite farewells.
“Not all in Varre have been so friendly,” she said, thanking him.
“Aid the traveler as you would wish to be aided were you in their place, that’s what our grandmother taught us.” He hesitated, looking troubled. “I hope you know my sister meant nothing by her mention of the dark shades walking abroad.”
“I carry messages for the king, friend. I do not report to the biscops.”
He flushed. “You know how women are. If the old ways were good enough for our grandmother, then—” He restlessly hoisted his threadbare tunic up higher through his rope belt.
“You live close by the forest. Why shouldn’t you see the old gods of your people still at work here?”
This startled him. “Believe you in the Tree and the Hanged God?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I traveled to many strange places with my da and—” She broke off.