Gwen shook her head. “It may have as easily been the fall, my lord. His heart had stopped, and I labored to make it begin to beat again.”
“Heart attack?” Rod took a closer look at the knight. “He’s middle-aged—and he’s let himself sag out of shape.” He shook his head, looking up at Gwen. “There was no way I could tell that. He had his helmet on, and the visor was down.”
“In truth, thou couldst not,” she agreed, “and anything thou hadst done to stop him, might have hurt him this badly.” She lifted her eyes, gazing into his. “Yet, my lord, I misdoubt me an ‘twas any action of thine that did strike him down. He had ridden too many miles in harness.”
Rod nodded slowly. “Whoever sent him out to lead a troop in full armor, at his age, must’ve seen him only as a thing, not a person. Who…? No, cancel that. Of course—who else? Alfar.”
“We will tend him, milady.”
Gwen looked up, and saw the sergeant kneeling across from her.
“Sir Verin is old, but dear to us,” the soldier explained. “How he came to this pass, we know not. We will tend him.” He lifted his head, showing haunted eyes. “Lady—what have our bodies done, the whiles our souls slept?”
“Naught that is any fault of thine.” She touched his hand, smiling gently. “Trouble not thine heart.”
Geoffrey darted up beside her. “Mama! There are children! May we go play?”
Gwen looked up, startled. “Why…”
“We’ve got company,” Rod explained.
A short while later, the parents sat around a hasty campfire while the children played nearby. The Duchess sat, shivering in spite of the sun’s midday warmth. Gwen had fetched a blanket from Fess’s pack and wrapped it around her, but the poor lady still shivered with reaction. She gazed at the children, who were winding up a raucous game of tag. “Ah, bless them! Poor mites.” Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “They know not the meaning of what hath happed.”
“Thou hast not told them, then?” Gwen said softly.
The Duchess shook her head. “They know what they have seen, and no more.” She looked up at Rod, a hard stare. “And I will not tell them until I know.”
Rod stared back, and nodded slowly. “Why not? Your husband could still be alive. It’s even possible that he’s well.”
The Duchess nodded slowly, maintaining the glare. But she couldn’t hold it long, and her head dropped.
Nearby, the children collapsed in a panting tangle.
“Nay, but tell!” Cordelia cajoled. “Didst thou truly see the evil sorcerer?”
“Nay,” said the youngest; and “We saw naught,” said the eldest. “Naught save the inside of our keep. Mother penned us there, and would not even let us go so far as the window.”
“Yet thou didst come in a coach,” Magnus reminded. “Didst thou see naught then?”
The boys shook their heads, and the youngest said, “We knew only that Mother bade us follow her down to the courtyard, and placed us in the coach. Through the gate house, we heard the clash of arms afar off; yet she drew the curtains closely, and bade us open them not.”
The oldest added, “We could hear the rumble of the wheels echoing about us, and knew that we passed through the gatehouse. Then the portcullis did crash down behind us, and the noises of war began to grow nearer.”
Geoffrey’s eyes glinted.
“Then they began to grow fainter, till they were lost behind us,” the eldest went on, “and we heard naught but the grating of the coach’s wheels.”
The youngest nodded. “When at last we did part the curtains, there was naught to see but summer fields and groves.”
The Duchess pressed her face into her hands, and her shoulders shook with more than shivering. Gwen tucked the blanket more tightly around her, murmuring soothing inanities. She glanced at Rod and nodded toward the children.
Rod took the cue. “Uh, kids—could you maybe change the subject?”
“Eh?” Cordelia looked up and took in the situation at a glance. “Oh!” She was instantly contrite. “We are sorry, Papa.” She turned to the other children, catching the hands of the Duchess’s sons. “Come, let us play at tracking.”
The fatuous look they gave her boded well for her teen-aged future, and ill for Rod’s coming peace of mind. But they darted away, calling to one another, and Magnus hid his face against a large tree, and began to count.
The Duchess lifted her head, turning it from side to side in wonder. “They so quickly forget such ill!”
“Well, yes—but you haven’t really told them the bad parts,” Rod said judiciously. “For all they know, their father’s winning the battle. And can you really say he didn’t?”
“Nay,” she said, as though it were forced from her. “Yet I did not flee till I looked down from the battlements, and saw that the melee had begun to go against him—even as we had feared.” Then she buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders heaved with sobbing. Gwen clucked over her, comforting, and Rod had the good taste to keep quiet until the Duchess had regained some measure of control over herself. She lifted her head, gazing out over the meadow with unseeing eyes. “When first the reeves began to bring us tales of villages suborned, we dismissed them with laughter. Who could come to rule a village, whiles its knight stood by to shield it? Yet the first tale was followed by a second, and a second by a third, then a fourth, then a fifth—and ever was it the same: that a sorcerer had made the people bow to him. Then it was a witch who forced the homage, with the sorcerer’s power supporting her; then a warlock.”
“How’d they do it?” Rod asked. “Did the reeves know?”
The Duchess shook her head. “They had heard only rumors of dire threats, and of barns bursting into flame, and kine that sickened and fell. Yet for the greater part, there had been only surliness and complaining from the peasants, complaining that swelled louder and louder. Then the witch or warlock stepped amongst them, and they turned with joyful will to bow to him or her, and the sorcerer whose power lay ‘neath. My lord did bid one of his knights to ride about his own estates, and visit the villages therein. The knight returned, and spoke of peasant mobs that howled in fury, brandishing scythes and mattocks, and hurling stones. When he charged, they broke and ran; yet when he turned away, eftsoons they gathered all against him once again.” Her mouth hardened. “Thus were they bid, I doubt not.”
“Sudden, rabid loyalty.” Rod glanced at Gwen. “Would you say they didn’t really seem to be themselves? The peasants, I mean.”
“Nay, assuredly not!” The Duchess shuddered. “They were as unlike what they had been, as May time is from winter. Such reports angered milord, but not greatly. They angered his vassal, the Baron de Gratecieux, far more; for, look you, the greater part of Milord Duke’s revenues was yielded to him by his counts, who gained theirs from their barons. Yet the barons gain theirs from their knights.”
Rod nodded. “So a knight’s village resisting payments is a little more serious to the baron than to his duke.”
The Duchess nodded too. “He did implore Milord Duke for arms and men, which my lord did give him gladly. Then rode the Baron ‘gainst the sorcerer.”
She fell silent. Rod waited.
When she didn’t go on, Rod asked, “What happened?”
The Duchess shuddered. “Eh, such reports as we had were horrible, in truth! The Baron’s force did meet with a host of magics—fell creatures that did pounce from the air, fireballs and rocks that appeared among them, hurtling; arrows that sped without bows or archers, and war-axes and maces that struck without a hand to bear them. Then peasant mobs did charge upon them, howling and striking with their sickles. Yet far worst of all was a creeping fear, a sense of horror that overcame the Baron’s soldiers, till they broke and ran, screaming hoarsely in their terror.”
Rod met Gwen’s eyes, and her words sounded in his ears alone: I count a witch-moss crafter, and the warlock who doth hurl stones ‘mongst us; and there be witches who do make the weapons fly. Yet what’s this creeping horror?
Rod could only shake his head. He looked down at the Duchess again. “What happened to the Baron?”