“My mother had only boys,” retorted the Lion, “but we none of us gave her reason to be ashamed. Come now, give this loyal Eagle something to eat.”
Grudgingly, the woman did so, a fresh piece of pork spitted on a twig. The Lion handed her a round of flat bread, coarse flour mixed with a paste of dried berries, their usual rations when all else was gone. It was still warm from baking.
“Thank you,” she said, not quite knowing how to respond to his kindness except to identify herself. “I’m called Liath.”
“I’m known as Thiadbold. You’re the Eagle who rode in from Gent,” he added. “We remember you. Those of us who serve the king, and who don’t have noble kin—” Here he grinned. He had a shock of red hair and part of one ear missing, the lobe sliced cleanly off and healed now into a white dimple. “—must watch out for each other as we may. Will you drink with us?”
The camp of Lions, sited near the king’s tent, was much reduced. The first King Henry had commissioned ten centuries of Lions. In these days, at least five of those centuries served in the eastern marchlands, protecting market cities and key forts from the incursions of the barbarians. Two Lion banners flew at this camp, marking the two centuries who marched with the king. But even considering those men who stood watch at this hour, Liath could not imagine that more than sixty men out of two hundred had survived the final battle with Lady Sabella.
“I can’t,” she said with some regret. She was not used to sitting and chatting in the company of soldiers—or anyone else, for that matter. Even some of the other Eagles thought her aloof and had told her so, being by nature an independent group of souls who had no reluctance to speak their minds when in the company of their own kind. “I stand watch tonight.”
He nodded and let her go.
In the woods beyond she heard the bleating and lowing of livestock, kept well away from the tempting fields. Some soldiers, too, had been commandeered from those recalcitrant Varren lords who had fled home after Sabella’s defeat and hoped to avoid the king’s notice. These sat sullen in their own camps, watched by the king’s men. A few brace of young noble lordlings and a handful of their rashest sisters had come along as well, some as hostages, some for the hope of war and booty at Gent or farther east in the marchlands. At least some of these had gear and horses but, all in all, Henry’s army had lost much of its strength.