The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 320

Sergeant Bysantius’ gaze rested on the pallet and Mother Obligatia’s frail form. “Just so,” he said finally. “We’re pulling out tonight. I haven’t the men to fight a force as large as that one.”

“Surely a dozen good Arethousans can slaughter their entire expedition! They are the feeblest of nations. The lord of Arethousa is the only lord who has stout soldiers and command of the sea.”

“True enough,” agreed Sergeant Bysantius, but there was something mocking in his tone that made Rosvita like but distrust him. “I’ll take these prisoners to the lady of Bavi and she can send them on to the patriarch. What of you, Father? Do you stay and fight?”

“My people expect me to stay. Not even the slaves and murderers who make up the Daryan army dare strike down a man of God! Take what you came for, and go!”

“Very well.” Bysantius turned away and gave orders to his men, who dispersed about their business.

“What did he say?” asked Hanna, and the others crept closer—as much as any of them dared move a single step—as Rosvita told them what she had heard.

A cart rolled up, and after loading sacks of grain, two barrels of oil and two of wine, and a cage of chickens into the back, the soldiers made room for Mother Obligatia’s pallet, braced among the sacks in a way that would, Rosvita noted, offer the old abbess something resembling a more comfortable ride. It appeared that in addition to the provisions, the sergeant had come for recruits. As his party formed up, they prodded into line two frightened young men whose mothers and sweethearts, or sisters, wept in the doorways of their huts.

A pair of soldiers jogged into the village from the direction of the olive grove.

“Sergeant! There’s a patrol of the Daryans, coming this way!”

“Let’s be off, then,” said Bysantius. He had a horse. The rest walked, and so did Rosvita and her companions, trudging along the dusty road at a numbing pace, their way lit by the torches the soldiers carried, until at dawn the sergeant had pity on Rosvita and the coughing Ruoda and allowed them to sit in the back of the cart. Their party moved not swiftly but steadily, pacing the ox, yet as Rosvita stared back down the road up which they’d come she saw no armed band pursuing them. The countryside was sparsely wooded, and quite dry, although the ground was brightened by a spray of flowers.

“It must be spring,” said Ruoda quietly, voice hoarse from coughing. “How long did we walk between the crowns?”

“Three or four months. I don’t know the date.”

The girl sighed, coughed, and shut her eyes.

“Sister Rosvita.” Obligatia was awake; she too examined the road twisting away behind them, the sere hillsides, and the pale blue sky. “Do you think we have escaped the skopos?”

“I pray so. Perhaps the priest put them off. Perhaps Henry’s patrol believed that it had been Arethousan soldiers all along and gave up the chase.”

“In whose hands will we find safety?”

Rosvita could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”

They marched inland at this leisurely pace for three days, stopping each night in another village where they gathered new provisions to replace what they ate as well as a pair or three of reluctant recruits. Once an old man spat at the sergeant, cursing in a language Rosvita did not recognize. Gerwita screamed as Bysantius stabbed the offender, then left his body hanging from an olive tree, a feast for crows.

“I wonder if we would have found more mercy at the hands of the skopos,” said Hanna that night where they settled down to sleep in a cramped stable, enjoying the luxury of hay for their bed and cold porridge and goat cheese for their supper.

“Learn the artifices of the Arethousans and from one crime know them all,” muttered Fortunatus.

The sergeant kept a watch posted on them all night, and in the morning they set out again.

Today Sergeant Bysantius gave up his horse and during the course of the morning walked beside the wagon.

“So, Sister,” he said, “how comes the usurper to these lands? Why does he wish to rob us of what rightfully belongs to another?”

“You must know I cannot speak in traitorous terms of my countryman and liege lord. I pray you, do not press me for information which I cannot in good conscience give. Even if I knew it, which I do not.”

He grinned. He had good teeth, and merry eyes when he was smiling. “The Daryan soldiers that come marching in that army weren’t just of the old city where the heretics will burn. They say the new Emperor of Dar is a northern man, an ill-mannered barbarian.”