The Gathering Storm (Page 291)

He gestured to the trio of men who followed at his heels and they opened leather bags and poured out a treasure trove of armor, pieces large and small as well as two complete suits of mail. The prince picked up a shoulder piece stamped with a dragon rampant and turned it in his hands. A gold tabard had been washed and mended, but many small tears and cuts obscured the black embroidery that adorned the front. Last of all they set down a shield; its rim had splintered and half of the middle had been stove in, but it was still possible to make out the remains of a dragon rampant matching that on the tabard and the shoulder piece.

“There’d been a battle, my lord prince,” said the blacksmith. “This is what we found.”

“Dragons!” His skin burned where he touched the armor, and he dropped the shoulder piece as though it had scorched him. Bile rose in his throat. He had lived as a beast among the bones of his faithful Dragons for a year; he had discovered their remains and the leavings of their armor in the crypt at Gent. His sight dimmed as he struggled to prevent memory from overwhelming him.

“Ai, God! Look at that sky!”

Thunder cracked.

“Hold on to the tents!” cried Captain Fulk in the distance as soldiers raced among the tents. “This should blow through—”

A wall of dark cloud, almost green, bore down on them. Wind whipped the tops of trees, and the folk waiting on the open ground ran for lower ground. Many threw themselves down on the earth as the wind roared over them, and even Hathui crouched and bent her head, tugging her cloak up to protect her face, but Sanglant stood.

The world might cast a thousand arrows at him; his enemies might raise winds and storms to slow him down, but as the gale streamed around him, as the awning strained at ropes held by soldiers, he braced himself against the onslaught and let the blast of rain scour him. Wind screamed. Hail drummed across open ground as people cried in terror, horses neighed, dogs barked, the griffins screamed in challenge, and the wind howled on and on. The storm boiled over them like a huge wave.

He had faced worse; and would face worse still. Hail peppered his head and chest. It had been too hot to wear his cloak, and he had nothing but his tunic to protect him, but he minded it not. The storm broke free the regrets and cautions that infested his heart.

He missed Liath bitterly, but he had done the right thing, the only thing. He must strike south and strike quickly. Free Henry, and then turn his sights north to restore peace to the land. If Henry remained a prisoner in Aosta, Wendar could never be at peace, no matter who pretended to rule there. If Wendar was not at peace, then he and Liath could never live at peace.

The storm blew past as quickly as it had come in, leaving the land strewn with branches, leaves, torn canvas, lost clothing, and every manner of weeping and wailing and shouts as folk picked themselves up and ventured to measure the damage, then cast themselves back on the ground as the female griffin launched herself into the air with a thunder of wings and flapped off on the trail of the storm.

Hathui had thrown herself flat to the ground when the griffin sprang, and now she unbent and rose with a sheepish grin, helping up the blacksmith whose stalwart nerves had been undone by the sight of that beast leaping into the sky. The man had fallen into the pile of armor, whose polished iron surfaces were now scumbled by damp leaves and streaks of grass and twigs and even feathers. Pellets of hail had fallen in between the pieces, collecting in hollows on the ground.

“Whew!” said Johann. “That was a strong one! We had a blow last month that near tore down the houses. And look there! Beasts ride the wind. Some folk say the end of the world is coming. Can’t say I blame them.”

“Make ready.” Sanglant bent to pick up the shoulder piece. The rain had cooled the iron; it didn’t burn him now. “Take this armor. Build your houses as sturdily as you can. A storm is coming, Blacksmith. You and your people must be strong to survive it.”

It alone of all the daimones bound into service in the vale had not fled on the day when its elder cousins had come calling with a conflagration that had set even the heights of the mountains on fire. Though the thread binding it to Earth had been severed by the edge of a griffin’s feather, although it was free to escape back to the sphere that had given it birth, it had remained to haunt the buildings and the orchard.

As a lower form of daimone, it had little memory and less will, easily bound and easily trained, more like a hound than a man and yet unlike because it was a creature whose aetherical body could not be touched by earthly ills and earthly mortality.

Yet its captivity had altered it, given it a semblance of human memory and will beyond that granted to its cousins. It persisted here, it waited, although it had forgotten what it waited for: A familiar touch. A familiar voice. A familiar presence. It lingered among the burned-out ruins.