“A whisper like the ranks of the dead approaching,” he said, and she looked at him, puzzled, and only then did he realize he had spoken his thought aloud. “A taste like the eve of battle.”
“Is that what makes you restless as a prowling dog? Not just those dark clouds? Will we fight Conrad today?”
“He’s sent no herald, made no attempt to parley.”
“Sent no word of my daughter,” said Liutgard bitterly.
“It makes me wonder what his intentions are. But, in truth, there is another scent on the wind, and I’m not sure what it is.”
“Where is Theophanu?”
“Close. See, there.” He pointed to the southeast. “That color on the ridgeline. There.”
She squinted, then shrugged. “I don’t see it. Only the trees along the hills.”
“My archer Lewenhardt caught sight of it yesterday. I wouldn’t have noticed it myself, but his eyes are sharp. I believe that is her banner, set up to alert us.”
“Too far for us to see.” She stared and stared, shook herself with a measure of impatience and frustration, and shifted her gaze back to the encampment draped in a semicircle about the valley of Kassel, one which girdled all roads and tracks.
“That’s as close as she can come, with Conrad and Sabella in her path. If we could coordinate our attack, we could strike from two sides. At this juncture, neither army has an advantage. If I judge correctly, Conrad and Sabella have numbers about equal to our own.”
“The margraves should have marched with us.”
“Yes, I suppose they should have. Gerberga will wait it out in Austra and come to claim what she can from whichever is left standing.”
“Gerberga can go rot! It was Waltharia I was thinking about.”
“She sent three centuries of men, all she could spare. Think how many she lost—her own husband—when she sent a troop south with me.”
Liutgard did not appear so much aged by the long campaign but hardened, made mirthless. She had laughed more, once upon a time, and she had been wont to cast quotes into her banter—she could read—lively lines from the poets or homilies out of the mouths of the church mothers. “I, too, lost many milites in Henry’s wars, Cousin! Yet I stand beside you. Even Burchard went home.”
“To die.”