she wondered. Did he seek alliance with her, and, if so, to what advantage for her?
'I must go and see about my duties, my King,' Je'howith quickly said. 'I must begin the letters to summon the College of Abbots.' He bowed again and, with no objections forthcoming, hustled away.
Danube watched him go, shaking his head. ' Never am I quite certain where that one stands,' he remarked to Constance, moving close beside her It the taffrail, 'for Church or for Crown.'
' 'For Je'howith, more likely,' said Constance. 'And with his mentor, — Markwart, dead, and the Church turned hostile to his old ways, that path, it: would seem, now lies with the Crown.'
Danube stared at her, nodding, admiring. 'You always see things so; dearly,' he complimented, and he draped his arm about her shoulder. 'Ah, ' my Constance, whatever would I do without you? ' The woman nudged closer, liking the support from the strong man. She knew the rules, knew that by those rules she was not fit to be queen. She trusted that Danube cared for her deeply, though, and while it was friendship more than love, she could be satisfied with that.
Almost satisfied, she reminded herself, and soon after, she led the King to his stateroom belowdeck.
Prince Midalis watched the hefty Abbot Agronguerre come bounding out of the gates, huffing and puffing and wiping the sweat from his brow with a dirty kerchief. The man shook his head repeatedly, muttering prayers. He brought his right hand up before his face, then swept it down to the left and back up, then down to the right and out, the sign of the evergreen, an old, though now seldom used, Church gesture.
Glancing around at the carnage on the field, the Prince understood. Many goblins were down, most dead and some squirming and crying. And many men had fallen as well, the Prince's brave soldiers, most to Midalis' right, and some of the Alpinadoran barbarians, over on the field to the left. Those monks who had come out before the Abbot, had gone to the right almost exclusively, moving to tend their own countrymen.
Abbot Agronguerre surveyed the situation briefly, then looked at Midalis, who caught his attention with a quick wave of his hand. The abbot nodded and rushed over.
'We have allies,' Prince Midalis remarked gravely, 'wounded allies.'
'And will they accept our soul stones?' the abbot asked in all seriousness. 'Or will they see our magic as some demonic power to be avoided?'
'Do you believe-' the Prince started incredulously.
Agronguerre stopped him with a shrug. 'I do not know,' he admitted, 'nor do the younger brothers, which is why they instinctively went to the aid of the Vanguardsmen.'
'Bring some, and quickly,' the Prince instructed, then he turned his mount and started at a swift trot to the left toward the barbarian line. The bulk of the Alpinadorans were on the edge of the field now, and many had gone into the shadows beneath the boughs in pursuit of the fleeing goblins. Several others had been left behind on the open field, wounded.
'Where is Andacanavar? ' the Prince called out, then, trying to remember his bedongadongadonga, he translated. 'Tiuk nee Andacanavar?'
A couple of whistles were relayed along the line, and the giant ranger appeared from the brush, mighty Bruinhelde at his side. The pair spotted Midalis at once and strode over quickly.
'Our debt to you this day is great,' Midalis said, sliding down from his horse and landing right into a respectful bow. 'We would have been lost.'
'Such debts do not exist between friends,' Andacanavar replied, and Midalis did not miss the fact that the man glanced to the side, and somewhat unsurely, at Bruinhelde as he spoke. 'We did not know if you would come,' Midalis admitted. 'Did we not share drink in the mead hall? ' Bruinhelde asked, as if that alone should explain everything and should have given Midalis confidence that the barbarians would indeed appear.
The Prince, taking the cue, nodded and bowed again. 'I feared that perhaps you were delayed by yet another goblin force,' he answered, 'or that our agreement on this morning's tactics had not been clear.' Bruinhelde laughed. 'No agreement,' he started to say, somewhat sharply. 'We could not have hoped to sort through coherent plans,' Andacanavar cut in; and Midalis understood and appreciated the fact that the ranger was trying to keep things calm between the leaders. 'We know little of your fighting tactics, as you know little of ours. Better that we watch you take the field, then find where we best fit in.'
Midalis looked around the field, taking note of the scores of goblin dead, and he smiled and nodded.
He noted, too, that Abbot Agronguerre and several brothers were fast approaching, the abbot looking somewhat tentative.
'You have wounded,' the Prince said to Bruinhelde. 'My friends are skilled in the healing arts.'
Bruinhelde, his expression unyielding, glanced over at Andacanavar; and the ranger moved past Midalis, sweeping the Prince and Bruinhelde into his wake, heading quickly for the nearest fallen Alpinadorans.
'Bandages alone,' the worldly ranger said quietly to Abbot Agronguerre. The two men stared at each other for a long moment, and then the abbot nodded, Agronguerre turned and motioned to his brethren, assigning each a fallen Alpinadoran, and then moved for the most grievously wounded man, who already had a couple of Alpinadoran women working hard to stem the flow of his lifeblood.
Andacanavar, Midalis, and Bruinhelde met him there, the Prince bending low beside the abbot.
'They are leery of magic,' he whispered to his monk friend. 'Better that we use conventional dressings.'
'So said the large one,' Abbot Agronguerre replied, indicating Andacanavar. He ended his sentence with a grunt as he pulled tight the bandage crossing the man's chest, shoulder to rib cage, trying hard to stop the crimson flow. 'For the others, perhaps, but this one will not live the hour without the use of the soul stone, and may not live even if I employ one.'
Both Vanguardsmen looked up then to see Andacanavar and Bruinhelde looking down at them, the ranger seeming somewhat unsure but Bruins; hddewith a determined stare upon his face.
| 'The bandage will not stem the blood,' Abbot Agronguerre remarked | calmly, and he reached into his belt pouch and produced the gray soul s Stone, the hematite, and held it up for the two Alpinadorans to see. 'But I | have magic that-' ' No!' Bruinhelde interrupted firmly.
'He will die without-'
'No,' the barbarian leader said again, and his look grew ever more dangerous-so much so that Midalis grabbed Agronguerre by the wrist and gently pushed his hand down. The abbot looked to his Prince, dumfounded, and Midalis merely shook his head slowly.
'He will die,' Agronguerre insisted to Midalis.
'Warriors die,' was all that Bruinhelde replied; and he walked away, but not before bringing over two of his other warriors and issuing instructions to them in the Alpinadoran tongue.
Midalis understood enough of the words to know that Bruinhelde would not bend on this matter, for he told his two warriors to stop Agronguerre, by whatever means, if the monk tried to use the devil magic on their fallen comrade. The Prince fixed Agronguerre with a solid look then, and, though it pained Midalis as much as it pained Agronguerre to let a man die in this manner, he shook his head again slowly and deliberately.
The abbot pulled away, glanced once at the two imposing barbarian guards, then pocketed the gemstone and went back to work with conventional means upon the fallen warrior,
The man was dead within a few minutes.
Abbot Agronguerre wiped his bloody hands, then rubbed them across his cheek, brushing away his tears, unintentionally leaving light bloody smears on his face. He rose in a huff and stormed away, to the next brother in line working upon a wounded Alpinadoran, and then the next. Midalis and Andacanavar, and the sentries, followed him all the way.
Without a word to his unwelcome entourage and growling with every step, Abbot Agronguerre stalked across the field back toward the fallen Vanguardsmen, pulling out his soul stone as he went, showing it, as an act of defiance, to the Alpinadoran guards.
The barbarian warriors bristled, and Prince Midalis worried that his friend's anger might be starting even more trouble this dark morning; but Andacanavar dismissed the two others with a wave of his hand, then motioned for Midalis to wait with him.
'The monk errs,' the ranger remarked quietly.
'It does not set well with Abbot Agronguerre to watch a man die,' Prince Midalis replied, a harsh edge to his voice, 'especially when he believes that he might have saved that man's life.'
'At the expense of his soul? ' Andacanavar asked in all seriousness.
Midalis blinked and backed off a step, surprised by the stark question. He studied the ranger for a long while,
