Chapter 17: The Road to Regensburg

The snow fell without mercy, a white shroud that swallowed the world beyond the horse’s steaming breath. Aldric hunched in his saddle, his fur cloak crusted with ice, and wondered for the hundredth time whether Hildegard’s scheme was worth freezing to death for.

Gerold rode beside him, a mountain of wool and steel, his scarred face turned into the wind as if it were a mild inconvenience. “We should stop,” the Saxon said. “The horses will founder.”

“The Emperor’s courier did not mention weather,” Aldric replied through chattering teeth. “Only that I am expected at Paderborn by month’s end. A man of my delicate constitution cannot afford delays.”

Gerold grunted. “Your constitution survived the Saxon marches. It will survive a night in the snow.”

“Barely. And only because I had the foresight to pack three flasks of brandywine.” Aldric patted his saddlebag. “A lesson in preparedness I learned from watching you drink.”

They pressed on. The road to Regensburg wound through the dark heart of the Frankish lands, past villages that huddled like frightened animals beneath the storm. Aldric’s mind, as ever, refused to rest. He turned Hildegard’s proposal over and over, seeking the flaw he knew must be there.

*Make the crown too costly to accept.* The abbess had smiled when she said it, that infuriating smile that meant she had already solved the puzzle and was merely waiting for him to catch up. The coronation, she had argued, was not a single event but a web of obligations—oaths, alliances, gifts, and honors that would bind Charlemagne to every lord and bishop who helped him win the imperial title. If Aldric could make those obligations too heavy, the Emperor might abandon the whole enterprise and, in his frustration, grant Aldric his writ of immunity just to be rid of him.

It was elegant. It was absurd. It was, Aldric suspected, exactly the kind of plan that would work precisely because no one else would think to try it.

And yet the writ was not earned. And now the Emperor had moved his campaign forward, and Aldric was riding into the heart of winter instead of the warm vineyards he had promised himself.

“Do you hear that?” Gerold reined in, his hand moving to his sword.

Aldric listened. Through the howl of the wind, he caught it: a high, thin wail, not quite human. “A wolf.”

“A pack, more like.” Gerold’s eyes scanned the treeline. “They’ll be hungry.”

“Then they will be disappointed in me. I am all bone and cynicism.” Aldric urged his horse forward. “Let us not linger for their judgment.”

They reached Regensburg as the last light bled from the sky. The city sprawled along the Danube, its walls dark with ice, its towers lost in the swirling snow. A guard hailed them from the gate, and Aldric produced the Emperor’s seal with the weary familiarity of a man who had grown tired of producing it.

The guard’s eyes widened. “My lord Aldric. You are expected.”

“I am always expected,” Aldric muttered. “It is the great tragedy of my life.”

The garrison commander met them in the great hall, a brisk man named Adalbert who smelled of woodsmoke and impatience. “You ride late, my lord. The Emperor’s courier said you would arrive by midday.”

“I stopped to admire the scenery,” Aldric said. “It was white. Very white. I have never seen anything like it.”

Adalbert did not laugh. “Your quarters are prepared. There is a fire, and food. But I must warn you—the Emperor’s messenger arrived this morning with new instructions.”

Aldric’s heart sank. “New instructions.”

“You are to proceed to Paderborn with all haste. The Emperor has convened a council of the realm’s greatest lords. He means to announce the Saxon settlement.” Adalbert lowered his voice. “And there is talk that the Pope’s legates have already crossed the Alps. They carry letters from Rome.”

Aldric stared at him. The Pope’s legates. That was not a piece of the puzzle he had expected to see so soon. Hildegard’s warning echoed in his mind: *The coronation is not a single event but a web.* If Rome was already moving, then the web was being spun faster than anyone had anticipated.

“The Pope’s legates,” he repeated. “And what do they want?”

Adalbert shrugged. “What do they always want? A crown for the Emperor. A title that will make him the equal of the Greeks. And, I suspect, a promise that will bind him to the Church forever.”

Aldric closed his eyes. The fire crackled before him, but he felt no warmth. Somewhere in the snow, he had heard a bell tolling. Now he knew its name.

It was the bell of St. Peter’s, and it was calling him to Rome.

---

He did not sleep well. The garrison bed was hard, the wind rattled the shutters, and his mind refused to quiet. He thought of Hildegard’s smile, of Rotrude’s watchful eyes, of the Emperor’s booming laugh that always seemed to know more than it should. He thought of the vineyards of the Vosges, buried now beneath the same snow that covered Regensburg, and he wondered if he would ever see them again.

By dawn, a decision had formed in his mind—not a plan, exactly, but the shape of one. He rose, dressed, and found Gerold already awake and sharpening his sword by the fire.

“We ride for Paderborn,” Aldric said.

Gerold looked up. “That is what the Emperor ordered.”

“Yes. But we ride with a purpose.” Aldric sat across from him, lowering his voice. “The Pope’s legates are moving. If they reach Charlemagne before I do, the coronation will proceed on their terms. Hildegard’s scheme—making the crown too costly—will be meaningless.”

“So you will race the legates?”

“I will do better.” Aldric smiled, a thin and dangerous thing. “I will reach the Emperor first and convince him that the crown is worth more than Rome’s promises. I will show him what it will cost—not in gold, but in freedom. And when he sees the price, he will beg me to find a way out.”

Gerold sheathed his sword. “And if he does not beg?”

“Then I will have to think of something else.” Aldric rose, pulling on his cloak. “But that is a problem for the Aldric who survives the road to Paderborn. The Aldric who stands here now only wishes to get out of the cold.”

They rode out before the bells of Regensburg had finished ringing the morning office. The snow had stopped, leaving a world of blinding white and brittle silence. Aldric’s horse picked its way along the frozen road, and Gerold rode beside him, alert and watchful.

Somewhere behind them, he knew, the Pope’s legates were also riding north—through the Alpine passes, past the lakes of Lombardy, toward the heart of the Frankish realm. They carried letters from Rome, sealed with the Fisherman’s Ring, and they carried a dream that had been growing in the West for centuries: a new emperor, crowned by the Church, to stand against the Greeks and the Saracens and all the enemies of Christendom.

Aldric had no such dreams. He had only a writ of immunity, unearned, and a promise he had made to himself long ago.

But as the road wound north and the wind began to rise again, he heard that bell once more—faint, distant, but growing louder.

And for the first time, he wondered if he was riding toward freedom—or toward the forge where the crown was being made.