“Good Cheer is dead.” Alain choked back tears in order to have breath to confess his weakness. “And the good captain besides. I lost Graymane. We were overtaken by Eika. So few are left—”
“That any are left is astonishing. Now, Alain, do not speak so. We will settle the captain’s widow very richly, I assure you, and mourn him as he deserves. And you see, Graymane was found on the field and returned to me unharmed. As for Good Cheer—” He busied himself patting the hounds, rubbing his knuckles into their great heads, and letting them lick him as they jumped around and, finally, settled down around him. Was there a tear in his eye? But a wind had picked up from the river and the spark of moisture vanished—or was only a trick of the light.
Now those who remained of Lavastine’s infantry came forward to praise Alain and speak of his great feats in driving back the Eika when all was lost, how he had single-handedly struck down a huge Eika princeling, how he had shone in battle with an unearthly light, surely granted to him by the Lord’s Hand.
Alain was ashamed to listen, but Lavastine nodded gravely and set a hand possessively on his son’s shoulder. Only Lord Geoffrey fidgeted, for he had also dismounted and now attended his cousin.
“We must ride to where the king sets up camp,” said Lavastine. “We have much to accomplish.”
“Isn’t this work enough?” Alain gestured about them.
“That we killed Bloodheart and routed the Eika? It was what I hoped for, and indeed all has fallen out as I wished.”
“As you wished, cousin!” Lord Geoffrey stepped forward. The remnants of Lavastine’s cavalry, some hundred and fifty men when they had marched onto the river plain two days ago, loitered behind him. Alain counted not more than thirty men as blood-spattered and dirty as was Lord Geoffrey himself.
Lavastine’s face was smeared with dust and on one cheek ragged circular cuts and a ring of tiny bruises tore the skin where his mail coif had been crushed into his face. He found an empty helmet on the ground and set a boot up on it. The wind skirled through his hair and made the Lavas standard rustle and rise briefly, as if the black hounds embroidered there had taken a scent. He picked a twig out of his light beard and with an expression of distaste tossed it to the ground. With the wind came the scent of blood and death. In the air carrion crows circled, but there were too many soldiers still roaming the field seeking out wounded or stripping Eika of their mail skirts for the birds to land and feast.
“Not my good soldiers,” said the count, musing. “Their lives I regret, as I always do. But we took Gent without Henry’s aid. Thus it will be my privilege to present Gent like a gift to Henry when we meet.”
“What ambition is this?” demanded Geoffrey.
“Not ambition for myself. For my son.”
No one would have missed Geoffrey’s blanch, but he made no reply.
“My army took Gent,” continued Lavastine. “That gives me a claim to it.”
“But surely the children of Countess Hildegard will inherit these lands,” protested Alain.
“If she has children. If they have survived the winter with the Eika raiding in their lands. If her kin are strong enough to sway the king in his judgment. But if Henry is beholden to me, Alain, then why not take Gent—which you will recall lies within his purview—and grant it to Tallia as dower? Thus it will come into our hands, as part of the marriage settlement—or the morning gift, should she make one to you. Remember, Alain, as the daughter of a duchess it is her right to gift you, as the son of a mere count—” Here any waking soul could hear the irony. “—with a morning gift. Although you may, of course, gift her with some smaller token as well. Is that not so, Geoffrey?”
Geoffrey simply gave a curt bow in acknowledgment, since his wife Aldegund’s lands and inheritances were of a higher degree than any he could expect to receive—unless he inherited, as he had once hoped to do, the county of Lavas from Lavastine.
“Many a blood feud has started when a bride and groom of equal rank tried to outdo each other in an elaborate morning gift. It can be considered an insult for a noble of lesser degree to make a richer gift to his newly-wedded spouse than that which she gifts him, if her position and kin are superior to his. That is why we will not ask for Gent outright. But through Tallia we can still make a claim on these lands and on our rights to a portion of the tariffs taken from the merchants and the port.”
They made a ragged procession, thirty riders, perhaps sixty infantry, but a proud one. In this way in the long lingering twilight of midsummer they picked their way across the battlefield to the place where the king had set up camp. The royal banner snapped in the evening breeze from atop the king’s pavilion.