King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 205

Alain ran for the guivre. Already the first of Sabella’s men, shocked and not yet recovered from this reversal, stumbled backward past him. He ignored them, though Sorrow and Rage nipped and barked, protecting him so no man tried to stop him.

Why would any man try to stop him? The guivre loomed huge, this close, a stooped shape that was yet as high as two men, one standing on the other’s shoulders. Sun glinted off its scales, and it fed with the rapacity of a creature who has been denied pleasure for too long. Alain came up behind it, thought of striking but did not. It remained oblivious to him. He heard the crunch of bone and—Ai, Lady!—a horrible moan that pitched up into a strangled wail and was abruptly cut off.

He circled the great beast. Worms fell from its diseased eye to slither away on the ground. From this side it could not see his approach. And anyway, it was too busy feasting.

He raised the sword just as he heard a warning cry behind him and then a cry from farther away: “Hailililili!” and the thunder of hooves and shouts of dismay, carrying Rodulf’s name on the wind, and again and again the cry of “Henry! For King Henry!”

He brought it down with all his strength on the creature’s neck. It screamed aloud, deafening him, and lifted its great and ugly head from what remained of Agius. Lifting, casting first to its sighted side and then slewing round the other way, it beat its wings, sending him tumbling forward underneath it. It was an ungainly thing, not meant for the ground; it had only the one set of talons and wings.

It clawed for him, missed, because it could not see him, tottered, because it was so ill and could barely find its balance. Alain stumbled back and righted the sword, turning it so the blade pointed up. His heel met resistance and he fell to one knee. Glanced behind himself.

The guivre had opened Agius at the belly, to feed on the soft entrails. Horribly, the frater’s eyes caught on and tracked Alain; he was still alive.

The guivre screamed its fury and found its footing. Its shadow covered them, Alain and the dying Agius.

But, of course, as the old tales told, every great beast has its weak spot. Alain did not hesitate but plunged the sword deep into its unprotected breast.

Blood fountained, pouring over him like the wash of fire. He let go of the sword’s hilt and jumped back, grabbing Agius and tugging him as the guivre writhed in its death throes. Spitting and coughing, blinded by the stinging, hot blood, he stumbled backward, dragging Agius. The guivre fell and the impact jarred Alain off his feet. He collapsed on top of the frater. The guivre shuddered, a great convulsion, and was still.

Agius breathed something, a rattling word and then another. Alain bent, eyes streaming, his hands smarting. A body slammed up against him, and then Rage was licking his face and hands. He tried to chase her away. He could not chase her away and concentrate on Agius.

“Free the white deer,” whispered Agius. “Ai, Lady, let this sacrifice make me worthy of Your Son’s example.” His eyes glazed over and he shuddered once, like the guivre, and died.

Sorrow nudged up against Alain. The hound had something in his mouth. Rage licked Alain’s eyes clean of the guivre’s blood and Alain blinked into sudden brightness and made sense first of all of the field lying washed by the sun’s light and the chaos ranging there: Sabella’s banner fell back and farther back yet. All the weight of victory had shifted. With the death of the guivre, their standard, Sabella’s soldiers had lost heart and now they turned and fled.

A thorn cut Alain’s cheek, a thin prick. He started back to see Sorrow carrying the rose in his mouth, brought from the other side of the battlefield. Its petals had darkened to a deep blood-red, as red as Agius’ blood that yet leaked onto the ground.

Alain dropped his face to his hands and wept.

XIV

THE PROMISE

OF POWER

1

ROSVITA could not concentrate when she was waiting. She paced up and down in the feasting hall that adorned the palace built by the first duke of Fesse some eighty years ago. Now and again she walked over to the great doors that opened onto a beautiful vista of the town of Kassel, lying at the foot of the hill on which the palace had been erected. A huge gray-blue stone capped the lintel of this monumental doorway. When Rosvita stared up, she saw tiny figures and patterns carved into the stone, their outlines blurred by age.

In the town below, a few bedraggled streamers still decorated the streets. When Henry and his army had marched in, the town of Kassel had been recovering from the raucous Feast of St. Mikhel, celebrated four nights before. Though the biscop dutifully spoke out against several of the local customs, even she could not prevent the usual festival which involved a young woman riding through the streets of Kassel clothed only in her hair—or in this case, in a gauzy linen undershift, some attention being shown to modesty—while the townsfolk closed their shutters and pretended not to watch her go by. After this procession everyone trooped out of doors and drank themselves sick. Rosvita was not sure exactly what had happened in the original story to force the poor woman to ride out in such a humiliating way, only that St. Mikhel was by a miracle supposed to have clothed the hapless virgin in a light so blinding it protected her from the stares of the heathen and the ungodly.