“All right. I have a friend. A sorcerer. He watches them and keeps me informed. That’s all you need. I’ve avoided the fight because I don’t want it to reflect back on the Empress.” Which was true. Though mainly for show. He had no objection to renewed conflict between the Patriarch and Empire.
“Things are changing. And I’m not comfortable with some of that.”
Hecht shrugged. “We’ll get back to normal once we get to Alten Weinberg.” He hoped.
Consent remained sullen for hours, upset because he was not trusted. Which could lead to trouble someday. Though, intellectually, Titus had to see that trust was not the issue. What a man does not know he can never reveal, no matter what.
Consent came to Hecht later. “I know how we can deal with these people who worry you so much.”
“Tell me.”
“We have a thousand men on the move. Maybe more. Mostly behind us. Why don’t we just sit down and let them catch up? Your villains won’t take on a whole army, will they?” Consent had a hard time believing that Serenity, or his henchmen, would risk angering Empress Katrin by attacking Piper Hecht. But the former Captain-General was adamantly attached to the opposing view.
There was a faction inside Krois that was as stubbornly anti-Imperial as the Anti-Patriarchal faction in Alten Weinberg was stubborn. It had not gotten much voice under the last three Patriarchs. But the new one was not paying attention. The new one had obsessions in another direction.
“You’re right, Titus. Why not just show them so many spears that they’ll just run away?”
***
Hecht entered the Remayne Pass accompanied by key staff, three hundred veterans, and armed with an up-to-the-moment scouting report from Heris.
There were people up ahead. Their intentions were not friendly.
Drago Prosek had found a dozen falcons somewhere. Hecht had not checked their inventory numbers. Prosek put them out front. Random blasts of creek pebbles thrown up the brushy slope flushed the ambushers. Who would have tried nothing against such numbers, anyway. There were scarcely two dozen of them.
Prosek brought prisoners. “Shall I have them put to the question, Commander?” As Hecht had no official title those who dealt with him direct called him whatever came to mind.
“To what end?”
“It might be instructive to find out who hired them.”
“I already know. You’ll be happier being ignorant.”
“You think?”
Titus Consent shook his head slowly. “Silly-ass discussion.”
Hecht said, “You prisoners. Two of you were with us during the Connecten Crusade. So you know where you stand. Remind your friends. And keep it in mind when Mr. Consent talks to you.”
Consent wasted no time. He asked questions. The prisoners answered. They had nothing illuminating to say. They had been recruited by a Race Buchels. Buchels had paid well, half up front.
There was no trace of Buchels. He had gone missing as soon as the smoke from Drago Prosek’s falcons rolled over his position.
Most of the prisoners thought Buchels had worked for somebody in the Collegium. A few picked Anne of Menand. And one liked those nobles in the Grail Empire who did not want the Empress getting any stronger.
Hecht told his inner circle, “Buchels works for one of Serenity’s associates. An idiot who decided to do his boss a favor and eliminate the nuisance Serenity is always grumbling about. An idiot who can’t look past the moment far enough to see that he could start a war with the Empire.”
Heris said the fool’s name was Fearoé Durgandini. She thought that was funny. Durgandini meant “woman of bad smells” in one of the languages she spoke. This Durgandini was the illegitimate son of a Doneto cousin. He was determined to make his mark handling Serenity’s unpleasant chores. Heris suspected that Durgandini operated under deniable orders.
Titus Consent observed, “It doesn’t matter in the end. We’ll go where we have to go. Whoever gets in the way will get trampled.”
There were no more human intercessions. The road was busy now that no monster lurked in the high Jagos. And the season was late. Travelers were trying to get through before weather got in the way. The Night took no more than a normally malicious interest. After a few small punishments it pretended indifference.
***
“Bayard va Still-Patter offered the use of his house, gave me letters to prove it, and I don’t intend to be shy about taking advantage,” Hecht declared as he neared Alten Weinberg. To va Still-Patter retainers sent by the Ambassador’s father to discourage the hiresword interloper from taking advantage of the son’s generosity. “I won’t let my men steal whatever they overlooked last time.”
He faked a light, playful mood. He did not look forward to the incessant politics plaguing every center of power. He was exhausted. Though the threats had been minimal the mountains left him wanting nothing more than to disappear and recuperate.
The pass had been colder than ever for the time of year. And, though the Night itself had shown little interest, someone had sent numerous noxious minor Instrumentalities to make him miserable, presumably in hopes he would turn back.
Heris had been no help.
He had not yet had time to pull off his boots, once inside Bayard va Still-Patter’s, when the invitations and petitions started. He told Rivademar Vircondelet, “You’ve been here a week. You’re rested up and familiar with the local situation. This crap is on you. Anybody wants an audience, tell them to go through the Empress. I work for her. If it’s the Empress, though, say I’m too sick.” Hecht did not strictly lie about being sick.
“Won’t be the Empress, boss. She’s out in the sticks doing what they call a progress. Which sounds like just showing herself off so people know she really exists. At their expense, of course. I hear Johannes started it so he could save on what it cost to run the court. Anyway, we’ll actually have a few weeks where the load stays kind of light.”
“That’s good. That’s real good. It’ll give me a chance to recover.”
He did not like being sick. He could not recall the last time he was really sick.
Titus told him exactly, when he arose, recovered but weak, three days later. Titus had consulted his personal journals. But it did not matter, other than to illuminate the fact that people pushed old seasons of pain out of mind.
“What’s on the schedule?” Hecht asked.
“It’s really piled up while you were loafing, boss. Everyone wants a piece, now that you’re here. Both of them.”
“What?”
“Almost everybody who is anybody is out making progress with the Empress. The elder va Still-Patter is not here to aggravate us only because his gout is so bad he can’t get out of bed.”
“Again, then. That’s real good. I want you all to learn everything about this city while you have the chance. Now. Let’s put me to bed.”
18. Cape Tondur: Andoray
A supernatural wind blew south southwest along the coast of Andoray. Little of the power from beneath the sea made it inshore, where scores of ravenous Instrumentalities prowled the brink of the forever ice, eager for any taste of power, dodging or preying on one another.
For all but the greatest a moment of inattention meant certain destruction.
The most terrible doom was the vast white toad squatting atop a promontory of ice that thrust miles out into the sea. That ice creaked forward a yard or two every day. And lifted vertically several feet. Or more, if the Windwalker caught a lucky gust of power. Or if some desperately hungry lesser Instrumentality strayed within range of the Windwalker’s lightning tongue.
There were human worshippers attendant upon the Windwalker, initially. Cold and starvation took most. Their frozen remains lay scattered around the great toad. Most resembled the Seatt peoples of the northernmost north of ancient times.
Not all the Windwalker’s Chosen elected to perish beside their god. One family took advantage of a distraction on the god’s part to flee into the Ormo Strait a
board a boat found caught in a crust of newly formed surface ice. These fugitives were the first Chosen to shake the mad god’s control. His strength was limited and his attention rigidly fixed elsewhere.
Kharoulke the Windwalker had no room in his divine consciousness for anything but hunger: for the power out there, and for revenge on those filthy come-lately divines who had driven his generation into a terrible captivity.
Middle-world time rolled past swiftly. Those who had known the Windwalker elsewhere did not mourn his absence.
Kharoulke sat at the end of the ice, five hundred feet above the frigid indigo waters of the Andorayan Sea. Only a few miles now separated him from the gateway to the Realm of the Gods. He could see through that. The waters beyond were subtly different. He saw but could not reach. A mighty and dark god he was but he had almost no power left. He could not collect enough more. He might not get there in time to sabotage the restoration of his most hated enemies.
Can a god know despair? Particularly a god who knew what it meant to be imprisoned for millennia?
Maybe not. But certainly something very like despair, which had built in the understanding that Instrumentalities of the Night were not armed with a sense of time like the one so critical to those ephemeral mortals who shaped the gods.
There was no longer any guard on Kharoulke’s back but the dread of him. Among the scattered, frozen Chosen, now miles behind, there were, as well, several Krepnights, the Elect. They had not had the strength to survive the frozen dreams of the god who had imagined them, either.
Something flickered into existence behind the great white toad, was gone in an instant. The same shimmering disturbance came and went a dozen times before the cold and hungry god realized that something not of the Night was very active back where he was not watching.
Kharoulke the Windwalker began to turn. He began to change his form.
Thunder spoke, sharp and businesslike.
A thousand invisibly fast iron and silver needles pierced the god, driving deep into his being. The agony was like nothing he had ever known. It raped away all reason.
Kharoulke continued to change, growing taller and more manlike. The pain worsened. Those needles were barbed. Movement made them cut their ways forward, deeper into the divine flesh. Till they were expelled or absorbed they would continue the hurt and would sap Kharoulke’s little remaining power.
In ragged-ass volley a dozen kegs of firepowder spent their chemical energy, not against the Windwalker but against the ice on which he had begun to shift his bulk.
The Instrumentality made one move too many. A crack zigged and zagged from one explosion site to the next, dashing east to west across the promontory. The ice groaned, grumbled, roared.
The Windwalker boomed in rage, so loud his fury could be heard a thousand miles away. He saw. He knew. He began to shift to another shape, angelic, sprouting a vast spread of white wings. But he was a thing of the most intense cold. He could not change quickly. He did not make this change in time.
The tip of the ice headland descended into the sea. The Windwalker followed, plunging deep into the painful, poisonous indigo water. The agony inside the dark god gained accompaniment over all his surface.
The Windwalker’s thrashing only caused the needles within to do more damage. The storm surge waves he generated were powerful enough to wreck small boats when they reached Santerin’s shores.
19. Lucidia: Border War
Rogert du Tancret could be everything ever accused, twice as dark and twice as ugly. But the man was cunning, and Delphic at anticipating personal danger. He would not be lured into any deadly strait, however tasty the bait. When he could not resist he sent someone else to spring any trap.
Azir asked, “Would the same be true if we took the danger to him?”
The Mountain shrugged. It had been a hard several months. He was exhausted. “I’ve lived too long. This kind of war is a young man’s game.”
“You don’t have to be out here. You could be in Shamramdi right now.”
Nassim grunted. Disagreement. This was the point of the spear. This was where Nassim Alizarin had to be. The Mountain would not die in bed.
The Mountain did hope to die having had his revenge on Gordimer and er-Rashal. Sadly, he saw that goal receding. His mission, now, was to open the way to Tel Moussa. “I wouldn’t fit. I wouldn’t be welcome. The emirs already know everything worth knowing.”
“You’re fishing for excuses to avoid any chance of being given more responsibility.”
That was so near the truth that Nassim had no answer. This boy was sharp. He would be a worthy successor to Indala.
Azir laughed outright. Nassim’s face had given him away. “Sometimes you’re obvious, General. I know your heart pulls you another direction. You have my word, if none other, that you’ll get all the support you need.”
Nassim scowled. The promises of princes … But this prince, if such he could be called, was chosen of Indala al-Sul Halaladin, whose word was as good as that of God. Whose word, being executed slowly now, promised the destruction of Rogert du Tancret.
Azir continued, “Sir Mountain, you are a mighty warrior and a great captain. Your dearest enemies confess it. But your personal skills are questionable. I suspect because one purpose of a Sha-lug upbringing is to freeze the Sha-lug warrior at the age of fifteen.”
“Ah. Now you’re repeating something you’ve heard, not something you worked out for yourself.”
Azir used both hands to gesture like he was a balance scale. Meaning, “Some of this, some of that.” Or, “Six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
Nassim scowled again. This pup was just too damned bright.
The scene was a mountain spring back on the edge of the Idiam. The fighters had fled into the haunted country several times while running from the enemy. Brotherhood warriors were tenacious. Tonight a strong breeze stirred the campfire and tossed sparks up like short-lived stars. It was unseasonably cold. The moon was halfway up the sky and nearly full. Nassim thought it looked like a big wheel of ice with some chips knocked off one edge.
The pup said, “My uncle will send more troops. Militias from the hundred towns and cities he’s enlisted in his hope of liberating the Holy Lands.”
Towns and cities that Indala had conquered, by the spear or the tongue, in the Mountain’s eye. They had enlisted in Indala’s vision as an alternative to fire and sword.
Indala al-Sul Halaladin, as he aged, became ever less tolerant of the narrow tribalism of the Believers.
Nassim did not remind the boy that the westerners believed they were liberating the Holy Lands, too. And that the Devedians had been there before Pramans or Chaldareans. And the Devedians were children of the Dainshaukin, who had come into the Holy Lands two thousand years ago, having been guaranteed possession by a violent, psychopathic deity who occasionally insisted that his followers murder their own children for his glorification.
“General?”
“What?”
“We lost you there. For a moment.”
“The curse of growing past one’s Sha-lug training.”
“Meaning?”
“I was reflecting on the endless torment inflicted on the Holy Lands. And wondering if maybe the wells aren’t closing down deliberately so the land can shake off its human lice.”
“An interesting notion. One so heretical that if you expressed it anywhere but out here, it would get you flogged or stoned.”
Nassim shrugged. That was not going to happen. He was too valuable. For the moment. And he had his own accommodation with God. God did not seem to mind Alizarin’s occasional unorthodox speculation. “Why the manpower largesse?”
“He wants to expand the pool of veterans. And to identify the best warriors. He wants an army of the best when he does move to cleanse the Holy Lands of the western Unbeliever.”
There was more. A lot more, Nassim was sure. He was one small stone in the structure of Indala’s strategy.
The Mountain wou
ld remain pliable. He would trust Indala. He would do his part. He would abide, preparing himself for the moment when it all came together and he could bask in the warmth brought on by the restoration of the balance undone by Hagid’s murder.
Young Az said, “Whatever else happens, our mission will be to inconvenience Black Rogert. Every day. We have to become more aggressive. My granduncle won’t want du Tancret in any position to influence the other Arnhanders. None of them are as fierce.”
Nassim nodded, though at this stage of life he found himself short on lethal ambition. Again, outgrowing that Sha-lug arrested development.
The boy continued, “First order of business, the siege lines round Tel Moussa.”
***
With more men and no special need to husband them, the Mountain harassed Rogert du Tancret constantly. He sent blooded warriors back to Indala. And corpses to Black Rogert. Who got little support from his co-religionists. They had been appalled by his foul behavior.
Du Tancret’s strength declined. Each day a man or two slipped off to take service with some more honorable captain. One who was less likely to get his people butchered.
Falcons often featured in Nassim’s quick strikes, at some point when the enemy was in close pursuit. Crusader horses refused to charge the thunder and smoke.
Nassim found a fanatic young Believer in one of the militia contingents. A boy who wanted to be a hero. A boy determined to win fame. Rogert du Tancret had offered a huge reward for a falcon or a supply of firepowder. Nassim offered the youth an opportunity to become immortal. The youth jumped at the challenge. Though he did not believe he would be martyred.
He was so sure God walked at his elbow he insisted that Nassim promise to take him to the finest taverns and brothels in Shamramdi when he returned from his mission.
Nassim promised.
Nassim Alizarim pursued the forms of religion because that was the politic thing to do. His secret but sincere conviction was that most of his contemporaries were also hypocrites. But the night before the martyr’s big day he lay awake late, begging God to guide him.