For once, Liath was paying attention. “Goslar has a small palace.”
“At Goslar. Is there more, Eagle? Sent she a message? What does she intend?”
“Nothing more, Your Majesty. Nothing she told to me, anyway.” He was a good rider with an easy seat, but very serious, pacing alongside the king. If he meant his remark wryly, Sanglant saw no sign of it.
Liath fell out of line to ride with the young man back along the cavalcade to the supply wagons. Sanglant listened as they moved away. It was always easy for him to catch her voice out of the multitude.
“When was it again that you first met Hanna? At Darre? Not earlier, then? You never met her before—did you ride east with Princess Sapientia? Oh, I see.”
Her words faded into the creaks and clops and chatter of the procession.
Liutgard, at his right hand, glanced back, and he did as well. Although scouts, and a vanguard, rode in front, most of the progress rode behind him, a line of four riders abreast twisting back into a landscape of woodland, open ground, and the occasional farmstead. Half of these small estates and humble holdings were recently abandoned. One had been burned and looted. He and Liutgard had ridden somewhat forward of his other companions, who were bogged down by the incessant palaver of Sophie and Imma. The Saony twins always rode more slowly when they started in on one of their long harangues. They were, as always, being egged on by their bored brother. Their voices had a shrill tone that carried easily above the clatter of the army.
“Did you see Gerberga’s face when Sanglant brought Ekkehard back to her? She was red. Red! To think of it!”
“How humiliating to find your husband has run off with your sister.”
“At least,” remarked Wichman, “neither of you need worry about that! No man would possibly run to either of you.”
“How dare you! As if you could hope for better—!”
“You’ll be murdered by the brother or husband of some poor woman you’ve raped, Wichman.”
“Before or after I am installed as margrave of Westfall?”
“An insult to us, Sophie!”
“It is! It is! To offer him a margraviate, and us—nothing! Not even respectable husbands but only second and third sons of minor lords!”
“I had hoped,” Sanglant said to Liutgard in a low voice, “that they would run to Conrad, but I fear they mean to stick.” He grinned.
She did not. “I pray you, Cousin, forgive me for speaking bluntly.”