King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 118

Manfred ran a finger along his own close-cropped beard. “Eika don’t have beards.”

She laughed nervously. Her hands trembled and she thought her heart would never stop racing. “I didn’t notice. Did Hanna and Hathui escape, do you think?”

He shrugged.

“What do we do now?”

They took the horses to the barracks where the Dragons had stabled their own horses, rubbed them down, and gave them oats; the activity calmed her. She slung her bedroll and saddlebags over her shoulder and followed Manfred up steep stairs that led to the long attic room above the stables where the Dragons had settled in. Fresh straw covered the plank floor, and bedrolls lay neatly lined up along the walls. The smell of horse and stall was pervasive but not overpowering. Men lounged at their ease, dicing, carving wood, oiling or polishing their gear, making small talk. They glanced at the two Eagles, curious, but made no attempt to speak to them.

Was one of these men her kinsman? She tried to examine their faces surreptitiously, looking for some resemblance to Da.

Manfred led her to the far end of the long, low room. There, shutters opened to admit the gloomy light of afternoon. The rain was coming down harder now, but it was already stuffy inside the loft, sticky like summer heat. The prince and Wolfhere sat on bales of hay, facing each other across a table. The prince had a chess set carved of ivory laid out in front of him, eight squares wide, eight across. He toyed with the pieces as he and Wolfhere spoke, picking them up, setting them down in new places: the eight Lions, the Castles, Eagles, and Dragons and—protected by the others—the Biscop and Regnant.

Behind the prince, the only woman besides Liath in the loft sat with the prince’s helmet on her lap. She polished the helmet with a rag. She wore the tabard of the Dragons, and her arms were muscular, her jaw scarred by many small white lines, and her nose looked as if it had been broken and healed wrong.

Manfred hunkered down onto his haunches, prepared for a long wait. Liath knelt beside him. Now and again a cooling mist of water touched her face from the rain outside. Straw tickled her hands. Her nose itched.

“I judge the city can withstand a siege. But my Dragons alone cannot lift the siege, not with the numbers of Eika who have invested Gent. We have no news from Count Hildegard, whether she or her brother Lord Dietrich mean to lead an army to aid us. And you say now the king will not bring an army.”

“I don’t know what King Henry intends, Prince Sanglant. But he may not be able to bring an army here, even if he wishes to.”

The prince picked up a Dragon and placed it between two Castles, as if trapping it there. This close, Liath could study the line of his jaw. He had either just shaved or else he did not grow a beard. But then how could he truly be called a man?

“I have heard these rumors, that Lady Sabella means to gather adherents and ride against King Henry. But she swore before the Biscop of Mainni eight years ago never to trouble the king with her false claims again.”

“So she did,” agreed Wolfhere, “but the Biscop of Mainni is rumored to be among her counselors now. And all three dukes of Varre as well as five counts from Varre have refused to appear before King Henry on his progress.”

“This is certainly grave news, but what am I to tell the people of Gent? Given enough time, the Eika army outside will burn and batter down Gent’s bridges, and when they have done that, they will have free passage up the Veser whether we will it or no. If they sail far enough up the Veser, then it will scarcely matter what the Lady Sabella demands, since the heart of Wendar itself will be at risk.”

“You would counsel your father to consider this the greater threat? But always in other years, Prince Sanglant, the Eika have raided and left, content with whatever gold and slaves they could carry away in their ships.”

The prince glanced out the window, although only rain and the timbered roof of the mayor’s palace were visible. Distantly, Liath heard drums. “This is not ‘other years.’ This is not a raid. Already the envoy for the Eika general has refused Mayor Werner’s offer of ten chests of gold and one hundred slaves as payment for them to leave.”

Wolfhere chuckled suddenly. “I hear two things in your words I can scarcely credit. One is that a man sits as mayor in a city. The other is that the Eika have a general. They are bandits, nothing more, with perhaps a captain to lead each ship, if we can even dignify their packs with such a word. More like the strongest beast who keeps the others obedient by threat of claw and teeth.”

Sanglant turned his head to look directly at Liath. She squirmed, horribly uncomfortable; his eyes were so bright and his features so strange and sharp. He examined her with obvious curiosity for so long that she felt the stares of his men, behind her, on her back, as if they, too, wanted to know what interested their captain. For so long that Wolfhere finally glanced over to see what the prince was looking at.