The Gathering Storm Read Online Free Page B

under the command of Bulkezu. Only Bayan’s wits had saved the army from a catastrophic defeat. That terrible retreat toward Handelburg with a battered army had been the best of a bad year. It had started going worse once they had reached Handelburg, where Biscop Alberada had condemned Prince Ekkehard as a heretic. Sapientia’s jealousy had made Hanna a target, too, and so she had ridden out with Ekkehard and the other excommunicated heretics into winter’s heartless grip.
    Better not to think of what had happened next, if she could speak the words without listening to what she was saying. Better not to think of the Quman invasion of the marchlands and eastern Wendar that had caught her in its net. Better not to think of the destruction Bulkezu had inflicted on the poor souls unfortunate enough to stand in the path of his army. Plague and misery had stalked them, and only after much suffering had she caught a glimpse through fire, with her Eagle’s Sight, of the war council held by Bayan and Sanglant. Was it she who had persuaded Bulkezu to ride to the city of Osterburg? Or was it God who had inspired her voice? Outside Osterburg, on the Veser River plain, Sanglant had defeated the Quman, but Bayan had been killed in the battle together with so many others, including Lord Hrodik. The Lions had been particularly hard hit, losing fully a third of those left to them, two proud cohorts shrunk to one.
    She had to stop; the effort of speaking was too great. The crowd stood shocked into silence at her litany of war, famine, drought, plague; disease, heresy, and countless villages and towns destroyed.
    Theophanu lifted a hand, a gesture as casual as a lazy swipe at a fly. “All of which,” she said, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone although no trace of emotion blotted her smoothly handsome face, “are not unknown to me. We saw each other last at Barenberg, Eagle, where I was helpless to combat theinvaders and had no recourse left me except to pay them off temporarily. I am glad you survived your captivity.”
    Hanna really looked at her then, seeing in her dark eyes, steady gaze, and firm mouth the mark of a personality not tumbled every which way by the prevailing wind. “That is not all, Your Highness. Indeed, according to your brother Prince Sanglant, that is the least of it.”
    Theophanu had the intelligence of a churchwoman, hidden at times by the inscrutable eastern temperament she had inherited from her mother. She rose to her feet before Hanna could continue. “My brother speaks, I believe, of a sorcerous cabal whose plotting will destroy Wendar and bring a cataclysm upon the land.”
    “That is so.” Surprised, Hanna lost track of her laboriously memorized words. “If I may have a moment, Your Highness, to collect my thoughts….”
    A fit of coughing seized her.
    Theophanu waited her out before going on. “Do not forget that I was at Angenheim when Sanglant came with his child and his mother. I heard him speak. Yet I heard nothing to make me fear sorcery more than I already do. It seemed to me that he spoke rebellion against our father, the king. Perhaps he does not know his own mind. Perhaps his mother’s blood taints him—”
    “Or it is a madness set on him by the witch he married?” said one of her courtiers.
    “Perhaps,” replied Theophanu so skeptically that it took Hanna a moment to realize that the “witch” they spoke of was Liath. “But if a cataclysm does threaten us, then surely our enemy are the Lost Ones, not those who would protect us against them. I cannot believe that my brother acts wisely in this case. But I am grateful to him for sending me what remains of the Lions who marched east last summer. Why did he not come himself?”
    “When I left him, he meant to escort the body of Prince Bayan to Ungria, Your Highness. From Ungria he intends to journey farther east into the lands where sorcerers and griffins may be found.”
    “Can such stories of the east be true?” demanded the