Sandivar said: “But time works against us. A watch of half-wolves slew we on yon side of the Frorwald three nights ago; some wolves of course have this battle escaped; not long will it be until Albrecht knows that something is afoot and moves against you directly, Hagen, with his army—and against us.” He turned to Helmut. “Thus, while you slept have we taken the liberty of sending emissaries to those trusted lords who joined Hagen in his protest and who are loyal to the blood of Sigrieth.”
“You see,” said Hagen, “Albrecht has a mighty army of half-wolves. And, we learn, the barbarian Kor will also act in concert with him. That means he can crush us each and all in detail, unless we can rally an army almost on the instant. Now, your father had a mighty army and one right well trained. But Albrecht broke and ruined it, replacing men with half-wolves…”
“Which may be his worst mistake,” snapped Helmut. “For surely those ex-soldiers have a score to settle…”
“Aye. Right many of them have taken service with local lords—those to whom I’ve sent my emissaries. Others have drifted into civil life or joined the bands of outlaws with which the country is now plagued. But if the word got out that Sigrieth’s son had returned and begged all old soldiers of his father to join him in revolution against the half-wolves…”
“Think you they’d come?”
“They’d flock like crows to corn, if Sigrieth’s standard once again were raised and amnesty guaranteed for the crimes with which Albrecht has saddled and outlawed so many…”
“So be it. We’ll gather then our lords and their fighting men and send out the word where all the outlaw bands may get its wind. In the total, given time, how badly think you we’ll wind up outnumbered?”
“By three to one, at least.”
“Not bad,” said Helmut casually. “Longer odds have I fought against and won. And ours will be trained soldiers. Sandivar. Canst rally also any animals more, as you did against the wolves?”
Sandivar shook his head. “The bears and boars were sorely wounded yesterday; nor have other creatures stake in this outcome. You know that animals do not, like men, fight and kill for ideas, but only for food and home. No, this is a matter for men.” He looked at Helmut narrowly. “As I persuaded the King Boar and Bear to fight with us, so now you must persuade the lords and ex-soldiers of Boorn. They are not boars or bears, but men; and if they judge you also man enough, will rally to your standard. But if they find you wanting, perhaps their nerve will fail—and so our enterprise. All this, however, is a matter for you alone, in your meeting and addressing of them. Here all hinges on one fighting man’s assessments of another; and no sorcery or witchcraft can take the place of that.”
“Such gamble do I welcome,” said Helmut calmly. He arose, went to the window, pulled back the hangings, and looked out. “Now, I must put myself in Albrecht’s head and think with his brain.” Staring out at the bright meadows, littered with the carcasses of wolves which only now were being cleared away by Hagen’s people, he was silent for a space. Then he turned.
“If I were Albrecht, I would not be hasty.”
“What mean you?” Hagen asked. “If he moves fast, he can crush us each, one by one, before we rally.”
“Aye,” said Helmut. “There is that consideration. But I think he will see the matter in another light.” Coming back to the table, he took a bit of meat. “Some news he has, or will receive, that a man with a morning star where his right hand should be has killed a small detachment of his half-wolf civil guard and has also defeated the Black Wolf and her Frorwald wolves and raised the siege of Markau. But who is this one-handed man, and what is it that he wants? If Sigrieth’s bastard, then sorcery must also be feared, for Helmut was but a stripling when Albrecht cut that right hand away, and that scarce half a year. And if not he, then who and why?”
“Either way,” said Hagen, “he’ll smell revolution in the air.”
“Aye. But there is an old saying from before the Worldfire: who sups with devils must use a long spoon. Albrecht has already supped too deeply with the devil. Kor’s forces has he rallied on his border. Should he whip his own army away to deal with treason here, can he trust Kor not to fall upon him from the rear, alliance or no alliance? No, he is tied to Kor, must watch him every moment, and thus is hampered. So we have time. Just so much as it takes to get the barbarians to move; no more.”
“That time can I judge now,” said Sandivar. “I have, in an art I have, seen beyond the Jaal. The barbarians are massed and ready. So is Albrecht’s army. But it will take Kor some days to move his legions across the river to a rendezvous they have set at Grancsay and more time to move them south. The wild oxen that they ride are not fast travelers.” He rubbed his bearded chin. “We have a week, perhaps ten days.”
“Aye, if I have judged aright. But surely that’s what Albrecht will do—gather intelligence, find what and who moves against him, join forces with the barbarians, then move south as planned, and crush whatever rears its head in opposition by sheer weight of numbers. He is no fool, to try to fight on two fronts when he can have Kor as ally and not enemy. Meanwhile, more couriers, on the fastest horses left to you, good Hagen—these to spread the secret word in town and village and in the coverts of the outlaws. All haste, and perhaps we have a chance…”
Rested, his blood surging with impatience, Helmut strode the walls of Markau. Beyond, flocks now grazed hungrily in fields grown rich with grass during the siege; the peasants still hauled to a place far from the town the hundreds of wolf carcasses with which the plain was littered; below where Helmut stood, children played and laughed outside the wall as had not been possible in weeks. Farther away, over the Frorwald’s darkness, kites and ravens still circled and swooped.
Soon, thought Helmut, the lords would be coming in. His eyes searched the horizon greedily for the sight of pennons and the glint of sun on armor. And would they stand behind him in a fight against such long odds? Then a voice from below snapped his train of thought: “Good prince…”
Nissilda stood there, with two handmaidens. The gown of clinging blue was changed for one of green, and, if anything, she was lovelier, for it was a smoldering green, like the deepest, most unknown parts of the sea. “Aye, m’lady?” Helmut said, and leaped easily to the ground, cloak swirling. He bowed. “Your servant…”
“You walk a great deal…”
“Waiting. Only waiting for your father’s friends to join us…”
“Could you not as well wait and walk in a garden?”
“Aye. No doubt I could.”
“Then let me show you ours—poor now, ravaged by the crush of animals penned within our gates during the siege; but I will explain to you what it was and what we shall make of it again.”
“Aye, m’lady,” he said. “Would be an honor.”
“Then will you offer me your arm?”
He hesitated; she was on his right. Then he did; and she slipped hers through it and let her small hand rest on the cold steel of the morning star quite as if it were natural flesh instead. They walked together, thus, the handmaidens dropping far behind.
Though worse for wear, the garden drowsed in afternoon somnolence and was fragrant with the perfumes of roses crushed and tulips trod upon. And there was a maze of high, clipped hedge wherein two could walk side by side and lose themselves, or at least be unobserved.
Nissilda, as if she had not just missed destruction in the siege, talked lightly, of small and happy things. Helmut watched the way her eyes shone as she caressed a blossom that had survived intact or caught sight of some especially gorgeous butterfly circling over a flower bed. Her laugh had a trill that stirred something in him almost lost and forgotten, but did not quite wake it up.
When they had completed a circuit of the garden, she said, “I hope soon it will be lovely once again, as it was before.” Her body brushed against his. “Do you like lovely things, my prince?”
“Sometimes I think I do, m’lady. When I see you touch a flower. But always something comes between. I have told you and so has Sandivar: to reclaim my kingdom, a great price I pay—that I shall never really smile, laugh, nor love again.”
She looked up at him. “Oh, pshaw,” she said. “What foolishness.”
“But it is true. Within me is a deadness…”
“No man’s so dead but what the right woman can bring him back to life. For that is what women are, my prince—life. It comes from us, and we tend it till it’s grown, hold, suckle, nourish it. Women are specialists in life, as men are in killing one another off. And this I will say to you: show me a man convinced he cannot love, and every woman in the country will attempt to prove he’s wrong. Your condition, to a woman, is not a disability, only a challenge.”
“A challenge?”
“The greatest man can present to woman; and no woman could e’er turn it down. I think, my prince, that though you be a great warrior, still you have much—” she broke off then, as from the high keep of the castle, its great and battlemented towers, trumpets chorused with silver throats. Helmut dropped her arm, whirling. Again the trumpets blared, and once again; and from the keep there came a shout: “The great lords come! They come, they come!”
With a trace of bitterness, Nissilda said: “Aye, my lord, now leave me. Well I know, man’s business comes before woman’s, war always before love.”
“Aye,” said Helmut. “With your permission.” And he strode quickly toward the city gate.
They came from leagues around, the counts and barons of the countryside, the lords of Boorn, Hagen’s neighbors and his allies when he had petitioned Albrecht in the court of Marmorburg. There was old Count Bomas, tall and thin, with eyes like ice, of whom it was said he had once executed fifty barbarians taken in battle at Yrawnn with his own hand; and there was Baron Linzze, short and dumpy, his face drink-flushed, who once had broken the phalanx of the Eastern Tribes with a wild and reckless charge of cavalry. There was Baron Luukah, not much more than Helmut’s age, who yet had to prove himself in combat; and there was a host of others—the strongest, fiercest, most independent nobles of the land, their throats full of Albrecht’s misrule; and yet, no new-hatched ducklings these, to follow blindly where someone else led or incur penalties without first weighing them. When, in the Great Hall of Markau, much wine had gone around, only one or two of them were drunk. The rest, keeping themselves close-checked, waited for Helmut and Hagen to speak.
Hagen spoke first, “My lords,” he said, standing at the head of table, “you have not come here blind. Not one of you but knows that here’s returned the great Sigrieth’s bastard, Helmut, next in line to throne, had not Albrecht usurped. You know by now, as well, of his victory over wolves that held us siege. Full intelligence have you of Albrecht’s alliance with the dog-eater and barbarian Kor and his determination to move south. And of the state of Boorn under Wolfsheim’s rule—well, need I speak? You’ve seen men subserved to half-wolves, betrayal planned of our neighbors to the south; and aye, before that, regicide and regicide again. Boorn, the world’s savior, has turned world’s outlaw. I think we must oppose ourselves against that; and must find a standard under which to rally. My own life, honor, and fortune pledge I to him who lifted what might have been the last siege of Markau, and whose likeness to that father we all loved is startling. He sits here by me now, and would have words with you of great import; and so I give you Helmut, bastard of Sigrieth, prince of Boorn, and bid you listen closely to his case.”
Helmut arose, in his chain mail and dress shirt, with the morning star, on which all eyes were riveted, polished and gleaming, and Rage scabbarded at his side. “Good lords of Boorn,” said he. “In my own name I cannot call upon you; only in my father’s. Of me, you have no knowledge; or if any, only as a child. And that, maybe, not long ago. Yet, by sorcery, as I think you all have heard, my growth has taken place, and that along hard lines. Ten years have I spent in study of the art of warfare, and my teachers were the best that ever bestrode this earth since it was cooled and formed into a solid ball. Battles have I fought in, and honors have I won; but none that you have ever heard of. Still, I ask your liege. Not in my own name, but in the name of Sigrieth, late king of Boorn, and in the name of mankind. For if Boorn is not saved for mankind, then goes all the world over to Albrecht’s bestiality and Kor’s barbarity. Not to sit on the Marble Throne of Boorn in Marmorburg nor to vaunt myself do I ask your help. But only to save our beloved land and the world’s light; and should, in that fight, I die—and the fight be won—then my death would be more than welcome.”
His eyes ranged around the table. “You have known the father. All of you have had favors from his hand and may have done him some. What claim he had upon you, I now ask, but can’t enforce. You have been oppressed; you know what awaits your people and your world. If you will give me men and swords to fight for Boorn’s freedom, then I will give my life, if that is what it takes. Risk I have to offer you, and liberty. Or safety and slavery can you choose by doing nothing. That choice is yours. I am no talker. God willing, I am better fighter. Thank you all.” And he sat down.
For a long moment there was silence. Then the young Baron Luukah, untried in war, stood up. He was one of the few there who were in their cups. Batting his eyes, he frowned at Helmut. “But I can remember you,” he said thickly. “As… child. Not long ago. Jush little boy.”
“Aye, m’lord,” said Helmut. “But I have lived some years since then.”
“No.” Luukah shook his head violently. “No, jush a striplin’. You can’t expect me, a baron, to follow somebody so mush younger…”
“I am not younger, m’lord, but some one or two years older, now,” said Helmut. “And with spurs I have won in battle.”
“No! Don’ believe it. Trick some kind.” Luukah stepped backward over the bench, out onto the floor of the hall. Suddenly he drew his sword. “If you not… child, less see you disarm me. Not with that morning star—I mean with sword.” He waved his blade. “C’mon… C’mon…”
“Sit down, Luukah,” said someone wearily.
“No,” the lord insisted, “’F gonna follow man into battle, want proof he’s better man…”