“Prince Ekkehard was a traitor,” said Den. “I don’t think we should believe anything he said.”
“But he wasn’t the only one who spoke of such stories,” insisted Chustaffus. “Men died because they believed in the redemption. They were willing to die. Takes a powerful belief to embrace martyrdom like that.”
“Or a powerful stupidity.” Surly drained his cup and searched around for more ale, but they had drunk their ration. “I don’t believe it.”
“It wasn’t heresy that saved Prince Ekkehard,” said black-haired Everwin, who spoke rarely but always at length. “I hear he was treated like a lord by the Quman. If that Eagle’s testimony was true, and I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t believe it, then there’s many honest, God-fearing folk who died while Prince Ekkehard ate his fill of their plundered food and drank stolen wine and dandled women, none of them willing to have been thrown into his bed. They might have been any of our sisters forced to please him or die.”
“Prince Ekkehard wasn’t the only one who survived,” objected Chustaffus. “Don’t forget Sergeant Gotfrid of the Lions, and his men. They escaped the Quman, and shades in the forest, and bandits who sold them into slavery before the prince redeemed him. Gotfrid is a good man. He believed in the phoenix. Even that Lord Wichman admits he saw the phoenix.”
“Give it a rest, Chuf,” said Lewenhardt. “If I have to hear about that damned phoenix one more time, I swear I’m going to put an arrow through the next one I see.”
Den, Johannes, and Everwin laughed longest at this sally, but Chustaffus took offense, and it fell to Zacharias to coax the glower off the young soldier’s face. As a slave to the Quman, he’d learned how to use his facility for words to quiet his former master’s dangerously sudden vexations.
“Many a tale is truer than people can believe, and yet others are as false as a wolf’s heart. I wonder sometimes if I really saw that dragon up in the Alfar Mountains. It might have been a dream. Yet, if I close my eyes, I can still see it gleaming in the heavens, with its tail lashing the snow on the high mountain peaks. What am I to make of that?”
The soldiers never got tired of his story of the dragon.
“Were its scales really the size and color of iron shields?” asked Lewenhardt, who had a master archer’s knack for remembering small details.
“Nothing that big can fly,” said Surly.
“Not like a bird, maybe,” said Lewenhardt. “It might be that dragons have a kind of magic that keeps them aloft. If they’re made of fire, maybe the earth repels them.”
“Kind of like you and women, eh?” asked the Karronishman, Johannes, who only spoke to tease.
“Did I show you where that Ungrian whore bit me?” Lewenhardt pulled up his tunic.
“Nay, mercy!” cried Johannes with a laugh. “I can dig up worms enough to get the idea.”
“Someone’s been eating worms,” said Surly suddenly, “and not liking the taste. There’s been talk that King Geza is going to divorce his wife and marry Princess Sapientia. That’s the best way for the prince to get rid of her.”
“Prince Sanglant would never allow that!” objected Lewenhardt. “That would give King Geza a claim to the Wendish throne through his children by the princess.”
“Hush,” said Den.
Captain Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs. Beyond him, poplars swayed in the evening’s breeze where they grew along the banks of a river whose name Zacharias did not yet know. Where the river curved around a hill, an old, refurbished ring fort rose, seat of the local Ungrian noble family. Beyond its confines a settlement sprawled haphazardly, protected by a palisade and ditch but distinctively Ungrian because of the many stinking corrals. Every Ungrian soldier kept ten horses, it seemed, and folk who walked instead of riding were scorned as slaves and dogs. Yet who tilled the fields and kept the gardens? The farmers Zacharias had seen working in hamlets and fortified villages as Prince Sanglant and his army followed King Geza’s progress through the Ungrian kingdom were smaller and darker than the Ungrian nobles who ruled over them. Such folk were forbidden to own the very horses they were scorned for not riding.
All the men rose when Fulk halted by the fire’s light.
Lewenhardt spoke. “Captain. Is all quiet?”
“As quiet as it can be, with the army marching out in the morning.” Fulk surveyed the encampment before looking back over the six soldiers seated around the fire. “I posted you out here to keep alert, not to gossip.” He nodded at Zacharias. “Brother, I come from the prince. You’re to attend him.”
