Chapter 13: The Road to Regensburg

The dawn came grudgingly, a pale smear of grey behind the clouds, and with it the cold that settled into Aldric’s bones like a judgment. He had not slept. The wolf’s howl had lingered in his ears long after the fire died, and now, as he pulled himself into the saddle, his breath plumed in the air and his thoughts churned with the stubbornness of a mill wheel.

Gerold was already mounted, his scarred face unreadable beneath the rim of his helm. He handed Aldric a heel of bread and a strip of dried meat without a word. Aldric took them, chewed mechanically, and tried not to think about the vineyards of the Vosges—the way the autumn light fell on the rows of ripening grapes, the weight of a full wineskin in his hand, the absence of emperors and their schemes.

“We should reach the Danube by midday,” Gerold said. “The road is passable, but the frost has made it treacherous in places.”

“How fitting,” Aldric muttered. “The road to my ruin is treacherous.”

Gerold did not reply. He never did when Aldric spoke of ruin. The Saxon had learned long ago that his master’s complaints were as constant as the wind and about as substantial.

They rode east, away from the snug warmth of Aachen, away from the palace with its marble columns and its ceaseless murmur of intrigue, away from Rotrude’s knowing smiles and Hildegard’s unreadable ones. The countryside grew wilder as the morning wore on—stands of oak and beech giving way to pine, the fields shrinking to thin ribbons of cultivation that hugged the riverbanks. Aldric found himself studying the land with the eye of a man who would rather be anywhere else. The drainage here was poor. The soil was thin. A proper irrigation channel could—

He stopped himself. That was how it began. That was how every catastrophe had begun, with a clever thought that should have been left unthought.

“My lord is thinking,” Gerold observed.

“My lord is trying not to think,” Aldric corrected. “There is a difference.”

“Is there?”

Aldric did not dignify that with an answer.

By the time they reached the Danube, the sun had broken through the clouds, casting a weak, watery light across the broad river. The water moved swift and dark, swollen by autumn rains, and Aldric reined in at the ferry landing to watch it pass. There was something hypnotic in its motion, something that promised escape if only one had the courage to climb into a boat and let the current carry one away.

“The ferryman will take us across for a few deniers,” Gerold said. “Or we can ride upstream to the ford. It’s longer, but safer.”

“Safer,” Aldric repeated. “I have come to distrust that word. Every time someone promises me safety, I find myself deeper in the Emperor’s service.”

Gerold shrugged. “The ferry, then.”

They crossed without incident, the ferryman a stooped, silent man who took their coins and said nothing, and by early afternoon they were on the eastern bank, riding through country that grew increasingly unsettled. The villages here were smaller, the people more wary. They had heard of the Saxons, of the wars that had reddened the northern marches, and they looked at Gerold’s scarred face with a distrust they did not bother to hide.

Aldric noticed. He said nothing, but he noticed.

As the light began to fail, they came upon a small monastic settlement huddled against the edge of a forest—a cluster of timber buildings around a stone chapel, with a wall of rough-hewn logs that spoke more of protection than piety. The abbot, a thin man with the hollow eyes of one who had seen too many winters, welcomed them with cautious courtesy. He offered them a place by the fire, a bowl of thin broth, and a silence that seemed to hang over the place like a shroud.

“You travel toward Regensburg?” the abbot asked, his voice carrying the faint accent of the eastern marches.

“We do,” Aldric said, dipping his bread into the broth.

“You will find the road crowded,” the abbot said. “The Emperor’s summons has gone out across the realm. Every lord who can ride is making his way to the assembly. They say the Saxons are stirring again, that Widukind has broken his oath and taken up arms.”

Aldric’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. “Widukind? That is old news. He was subdued years ago.”

The abbot shook his head slowly. “Old news, perhaps, but old wounds do not heal easily. The Emperor has been too long in the south, dreaming of crowns and glory. The north remembers its dead.” He paused, and his hollow eyes met Aldric’s. “I pray you are not riding into a war, my lord.”

Aldric set down his spoon. The broth, which had been warm and comforting, now tasted of ash. Charlemagne’s campaign had been moved forward, the courier had said. The Emperor was assembling his host at Paderborn, not for a coronation, but for war. And Aldric, who had schemed only to be left alone, was riding directly into the heart of it.

Gerold spoke for the first time since they had entered the refectory. “We ride where we are ordered.”

The abbot looked at him, at the scars that mapped his face, and nodded. “We all do, son. We all do.”

That night, Aldric lay on a straw pallet in a bare cell, staring at the timber ceiling and listening to the wind moan through the cracks. His mind, traitor that it was, would not be still. He thought of Hildegard and her arithmetic, of the price of a crown that had not yet been struck. He thought of Rotrude, watching from the shadows of Aachen, her eyes bright with schemes she did not share. He thought of the Emperor, that towering figure of flesh and will, who saw through every ruse and turned every idle wish into a weapon for his realm.

And he thought of the road ahead—to Regensburg, to Paderborn, to whatever fresh catastrophe awaited him there. The path of least resistance, he had told the river, leads into the heart of the storm.

He had been right.

Somewhere beyond the walls, a horn sounded—long, low, and mournful, the call of a host on the move. Aldric closed his eyes, and for the first time in many months, he prayed. Not for escape, not for freedom, but for something far simpler.

Let me survive this, he thought. Let me survive this, and I will never scheme again.

The horn sounded again, closer now, and Gerold’s voice came through the door, rough with urgency: “My lord. We must ride.”

Aldric rose, pulled on his boots, and walked out into a world that had changed while he slept. The sky was red with the dawn, and the road to Regensburg was no longer empty. It was filled with men—armed, mounted, marching east toward the gathering storm. And at their head, a banner he knew too well: the golden eagle of the Frankish king, flying over a column that stretched to the horizon.

The Emperor had not waited for him. The Emperor was already on the road.

And Aldric, Lord of the Vosges, the Idle Lord of Aachen, was about to ride into the middle of his army.