Night Blooming by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

it.”
    “All of Italy has bad air,” said Alcuin. “Not even the Pope can escape it.”
    “And the Longobards suffer from it, too,” said Comes Gutiger. “As many of their soldiers die as ours. It is a great misfortune.”
    Rakoczy nodded; he had seen the ravages of the bad air—the mal aria—from the shores of the Adriatic and Aegean Seas to the western reaches of Spain. He made a gesture to ward off misfortune. “Who can escape the dangers of pestilence?”
    “The man with a fast horse,” said Comes Gutiger.
    Alcuin shook his head. “No. When a man’s hour is come, nothing will avail to save him. The end comes for all of us, and it is beyond our reckoning to know the hour. Who shall live and who shall die is in the Hands of God.” He touched his pectoral crucifix through his pluvial. “Let the physicians do their best, it is God Who will decide.”
    “Amen,” said the Comes.
    “Amen,” Rakoczy echoed.
    “You must see that there is Heavenly favor in age,” said Comes Gutiger, determined to make the most of his opportunity. “God has given Great Karl many, many years and kept him hale. And you, Bishop Alcuin, you have lived long. This is surely a sign of God’s love of you.”
    “Today I am not so certain as I am on days when my joints don’t hurt,” said Alcuin, and laughed at himself. “But I think where life is long, God is good.”
    Rakoczy thought back to his centuries in the Temple of Imhotep and the thousands upon thousands he had watched live and die there, and found himself now, as he had become then, unable to turn away from pain he could alleviate. He took a deep breath. “I do not offer this for any reason more than it is fitting to alleviate suffering where it is possible: I have among my things an unguent that may ease your hurts. When we stop for the evening, I will give you a vial of it.”
    “After prayers, I will thank you,” said Alcuin. He looked over at Comes Gutiger. “It is a hard day when the leagues are so long in passing.”
    “It would be harder still if this company were larger.” He nodded to the carpenta. “We can go no faster than the oxen.”
    “It is the way of traveling,” said Rakoczy.
    “For many,” said Comes Gutiger. “It is the plan of Great Karl to have all his army’s carpenta, plaustera, and carruca drawn by horses. They will speed the march of his forces.”
    “Horses will need more food than oxen. And better food than oxen require: horses cannot subsist on thistles and dry grass; that could make your campaigns more difficult. You may have to carry your own grain and hay,” Rakoczy pointed out. In the Year of Yellow Snow, when the frost had killed all the spring grass, the Avars had lost more than half their herds for that reason.
    “There is truth in what you say,” Comes Gutiger admitted. “But it is fitting that the army move more quickly than the enemies of Great Karl. Horses are faster than oxen.” He glared at Rakoczy, daring him to contradict this military truth.
    “Oh, I have no disagreement with you on that point,” said Rakoczy, his voice level. “I only observe that there is a risk such strategy.”
    “Um,” said Comes Gutiger.
    “Let us have no discord,” Alcuin interjected. “We all travel at the Will of Karlus, and it is mete that we do so in comity and good-fellowship.”
    Rakoczy ducked his head compliantly. “I have no desire to incite ill-will, good Comes,” he said, and added, “Being foreign, I may sometimes transgress, but that is not my intention and I ask your help in rectifying my errors. Should I do anything that offends you, tell me at once, that I may offer you an apology. I have been shown only cordiality since I came into Franksland, and I would be ungrateful to return that with anything but couthy ecomania.”
    “So you tell me,” Comes Gutiger said curtly, inwardly dismayed by Rakoczy’s concessions. He had anticipated a sharp defense, not this smooth talk.
    “A most elegant sentiment,”