“They’d need more hands, then, wouldn’t they? A man who had some experience fighting would be of use to them.” Erkanwulf brooded as they moved through the woods. No birds sang. Except for the murmuring wind and the soft fall of their horses’ hooves, there was no sound at all. The quiet made Ivar nervous. He hadn’t felt quite right since that terrible night when wind and rain had battered them and killed Erkanwulf’s horse. They had commandeered the old nag Erkanwulf rode from a village whose name Ivar had already forgotten. Those folk hadn’t greeted them kindly, but they’d offered them shelter and given up the old mare in exchange for some of Princess Theophanu’s coin. Those villagers didn’t love the Wendish either, and with King Henry gone so long from his usual progress around the countryside, they saw no reason not to turn their hearts toward the old stories of Varren queens and kings who had once ruled these lands without any Wendish overlord telling them what to do.
A long time ago, so it seemed, he had been young and thoughtless. He smiled, thinking back on it. Perhaps not so long ago. But so much had happened. He had been thrown headlong into a world whose contours were more complicated than he had ever imagined as the neglected youngest child of the old count up in Heart’s Rest.
“For all I know, my father is dead by now, and my brother Gero become count in his place.”
Erkanwulf glanced at him, his expression unreadable. “What has that to do with us? My lord?”
“Nay, nothing. I just thought of it. I just thought how the world is changed, as you said yourself. Not just because of that storm or Biscop Constance’s imprisonment, or any of those things, but because I left my father’s estate and journeyed farther than I ever expected to go. I can’t be that youth that I once was. When I think of how I was then … I don’t know. It’s just different now. We’ve chosen our path. We can’t go back.”
“Huh. True enough words.”
“What do you think we’ll find in Autun?” Ivar asked.
Erkanwulf only sighed. “I hope we find what we’re looking for. Whatever that may be.”
2
IT snowed the morning they crossed the river on the ferry and moved into a straggle of woodland near the southern gate of Autun. They stumbled over two corpses half hidden under branches and mostly decomposed. Skulls leered at them, so they moved on. In the ruins of an old cottage abandoned among the trees, they stabled the horses with fodder and water, tying their thread-worn blankets over the animals’ backs. After that, they trudged overland to the city walls. No pristine stretches of fresh white snow blanketed the fields. It was all a muddy gray.