“What can you tell us?” she asked them.
“The usurpers hold the town, but no more territory than that. Even so, my lady, they only have troops enough to garrison the palace tower, although they keep a watch along the town wall and a guard at the gates. Many townsfolk have fled. Those who remain inside send news to us by way of peddlers and whores.”
“What do these tell you?”
“The usurpers expect Duke Conrad and his army to relieve them. I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know they sent messengers west. We killed one man ourselves a fortnight ago.”
“What of my daughter?”
“You know of the sad fate of your heir.”
“So I have heard,” she said grimly. “She stands within the comfort of the Chamber of Light, beyond our reach. What of Ermengard?”
He wiped away tears. “Still held hostage, my lady duchess. Many with her, who refused to run when they saw she was taken.”
“Why does Conrad want Kassel?” Liutgard asked.
“He’s casting a deeper net,” said Sanglant. “Tallia is granddaughter of the Younger Arnulf. She also has claim to Varre twice over. Sabella seeks the throne so long denied her. If necessary, she’ll take it through her daughter’s body—and her daughter is now wed to Conrad.”
“Henry should have killed Sabella after the first revolt!” said Liutgard. “He was too lenient!”
“Wendish do not murder their kinfolk, not even in the pursuit of power,” said Sanglant mildly. “We are not Salians, Liutgard. Thank God.”
Her smile was tight. “I will not hesitate to kill Sabella—or any who plotted the downfall of my house. If Ermengard is harmed—!”
“We must pray she is not.” He turned to the waiting soldiers. “Is it best if we continue on this road, or is there a better vantage from which to spy out the land around Kassel?”
“We’ll guide you, Your Majesty. My lady duchess. Best if you see what they’ve done, meaning to starve us out.”
A trail branched off the main road. On this hunter’s path they pressed through woodland single file. They were tremendously vulnerable, strung out in such a line and with the open vistas of beech forest offering little concealment, but Sanglant trusted to his instincts, and his instincts told him that the old and cunning Sergeant Adalbert could be trusted. At length the sergeant asked king and duchess to dismount and led them via a footpath to a clearing that opened up on a steep hillside where rain and wind had caused a massive slide. Broken trees had tumbled to the base of the steep hill, caught there all in heaps and splintered piles like so much wrack. The hillside had a slick, unstable look beyond the last rank of standing trees.
“Careful, not down there, past this line. That’s where the ground gave way. But from here, if you hold fast to these trees as an anchor, you’ll be safe.”
“God have mercy.” Liutgard had a hand hooked around the bole of a young ash and her feet fixed in the dirt. At the base of the slide, trees of every age and size had smashed into each other, some splintering and the biggest ones crushing the smaller beneath.
“See here, now,” said the sergeant. “There is Kassel. Even from this distance, you can see what damage the autumn storm did her.”
The town of Kassel lay at the foot of the low, isolated hill—more a bulge in the landscape—on which the palace and tower had been erected. The town was laid out in a square with two avenues set perpendicular to each other, dividing the habitation into four even quarters. An old wall, reasonably kept up, surrounded it, but it was obvious from this height that the town had long ago been larger and more densely populated. There was room within those old walls for vegetable gardens and an orchard as well as some pasture for cows, and although in the main part of the town houses clustered one up against the next near the inner gate that admitted folk to the palace hill, along the outer spaces many houses boasted a big fenced-in garden. Old paths and house foundations marked abandoned homes. Middens grew where once folk had lived up against the town wall. There were signs—hard to discern from this distance—that many halls and houses had lost roofs or had their walls smashed by falling timber. The only sign of scaffolding and repair lay along the town wall and up on the tower rise, where a steeply-pitched roof gaped, half covered by canvas.
“Did the damage from the autumn storm spread so far?” Liutgard demanded. “Did they not plant the fields this spring?”
The fields beyond Kassel’s walls should have been green with early summer crops, but they had the reddish-brown stain of highland clay exposed to rain and wind.
