“Whsst!” said the old guard. “That’s an owl! Did you hear it?”
“Is that a good omen?” asked the lad plaintively. “Or an evil one?”
“I’ve not seen feather or beak of a bird these last months,” the old man said, then shrieked and ducked as a huge owl skimmed out of the darkness right over their heads and with a graceful plummet came to roost on the wall. Its massive claws dug into the wood. By lantern light, its amber eyes gleamed boldly, seeming lit from within. The light set off the streaks of white on its breast and the tufted ears.
“What is this?” asked Sanglant.
It blinked.
“Where is your mistress?” he demanded.
But all he heard was the wind.
PART FOUR
THE MOUNTAIN OF THE WORLD’S BEGINNING
XIII
BLOOD
1
WHEN winter turned to spring and the village deacon sang the mass in honor of St. Thecla’s witnessing of the Ekstasis and Translatus of the blessed Daisan, the folk of Osna village met after mass to discuss the summer’s journeying to other ports.
For months Alain had been ill and weak and weary, unable to do more than sleep, eat the gruel Aunt Bel cooked him, and sit beside the hearth dozing with Sorrow and Rage stretched out on either side. He had suffered from the lung fever; a terrible infection had inflamed his right foot; he had battled recurring headaches.
In the end, Aunt Bel’s nursing defeated these afflictions.
Now he walked with only a slight limp as he accompanied Henri to the church in the afternoon. It was cold and, as usual, cloudy.
“We haven’t seen the sun for months,” remarked Henri. “The winter wheat never sprouted. I fear the spring planting won’t get sun and warmth enough to grow if the weather doesn’t change. There’ll be famine.”
“There already is.”
Henri glanced at him but made no comment.
Sorrow and Rage had gamboled ahead. They rushed back, nipping at each other and running in circles. Aunt Bel and her daughter Stancy walked in front of them. Bel’s other surviving children, Julien and Bruno and Agnes, trailed behind, laughing over the antics of Julien’s younger child, a chubby toddler named Conrad but called Pig by one and all for his love of mud.
“Eeuw!” squealed Pig’s older sister, Blanche, now eight or nine. “Eeuw. Pig’s throwing it at me again, Papa! Make him stop! I hate him! He’s awful!”
“Don’t you touch him!” cried the baby’s mother. “If you will provoke him, it’s no wonder he throws mud at you!”
“Do stop, Blanche,” agreed Agnes. “He’s just a baby.”
“Come walk with me, Blanche.” Alain held out his hand, and she ran to him and clutched his fingers. She was a pale, frightened, resentful creature, motherless since birth. The wife Julien had brought home from Varingia did not like her, and Blanche returned the favor.
“I hate that pig stinker,” she muttered, eyeing Alain sidelong to see if he would respond. “And her, too. I hate everyone, and they all hate me.”
He did not respond, although her unhappiness gave him pain. In truth, she was an unlikable girl who struck out at others and bullied younger children. It seemed to be the only way she knew to battle her wounded heart.
He sighed, and she sniffled but kept silent, unwilling to offend the only person who offered her more than perfunctory kindness. His attention strayed. Aunt Bel’s scarf hadn’t lost that particular twist she gave to the knot that made it hang somewhat to the left. Stancy was pregnant again, tired but hale. Her husband Artald was already at the church door talking with several men from the village. Their agitated voices rose as a local woodsman regaled them with a tale.
“It was so quiet all autumn and winter I thought we’d done with these refugees plaguing us,” exclaimed old Gilles Fisher, cutting the other man off. “Yet now they come. We haven’t enough to feed them. I say we gather staves and drive them out.”
“Fotho says it’s mostly women and children and old folk,” objected Artald. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“It was women and children and old folk last year and the year before, too, what with the Salian war going on and on and before that Eika raids.”
“Nay, it was better last year,” said Artald. “Not so many came north, and then only in early summer. They were caught down there in the border country.”
Agnes stifled a sob.
“What’s this?” asked Aunt Bel. “I smell a drizzle coming on. Let’s go inside so we don’t get wet.”