And so forth.
This kind of warfare was not a pickup game.
Throat tight, Hecht said, “We need to hammer out some way to enforce good behavior. We can’t have dukes and barons and their contingents dropping out to plunder along the way. Monestacheus Deleanu isn’t the weakling that Anastarchios was.”
Monestacheus was the current Eastern Emperor. Anastarchios had been Emperor eighty years ago, when last a Crusader army had gone to the Holy Lands overland.
That crusade had become an exercise in chaos. Too many proud kings. Too many desperate poor. No firmly established command, no detailed preparation, and no overall plan.
Born in shining idealism, the crusade lapsed into ugly adolescence before its tail departed the Grail Empire. The wealthy lords out front bought up local surpluses as they moved. The poor coming along behind had to forage. Which led to plundering. The slow progress, just a few miles a day, left a swath of devastation thirty miles wide. Once into the Eastern Empire it left whole cities destitute or destroyed. Cities home to good Chaldareans who also wanted the Holy Lands torn from the grasp of the cruel Unbeliever.
The Princess Apparent said, “We expect you to make things work better than they did back then.” Her voice was strained. Her hands would not stay still, except when she realized what she was doing and forced them. But that never lasted. “I hear you’ve found Algres Drear.”
Drear had not been hidden.
“Yes. I brought him along. I want you to take him back as chief bodyguard. I’d feel more comfortable with Drear between you and harm.” Having the Braunsknecht close to Helspeth would place indebted eyes near the seat of power, too. Drear owed Hecht.
“I don’t know about chief bodyguard. But I do owe Captain Drear. I ruined his career.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
Flash of anger, quickly shoved aside. “I’m not that girl anymore. Still willful, though. But not ready to drag others down with me.”
“Glad to hear it. The welfare of millions depends …”
“Yes.” Sharp look. Estimation. Calculation. Leaning forward. In a voice meant for no other ears, “Things aren’t going well for my sister.”
Hecht sensed fear. Sparked by his remark about the millions. “How so?”
“I’m not sure. It’s being hushed up. Most of her attendants aren’t allowed out of the Quill Tower. Those who are won’t say anything. And they look grimmer every day. One thing’s certain. The baby hasn’t come. That wouldn’t be kept secret.”
“I see.”
“My sister can get ugly when she’s upset. Which explains the moods of her people. They’ll feel the sharp edge of her rage first.” Helspeth told the story of her winter exile. “If it hadn’t been for Ferris Renfrow I’d have died of hunger or exposure. And not because of Katrin’s malice. Not entirely. Malice put me out there. But when she wasn’t angry anymore she just forgot me.” In an even softer voice, “My sister isn’t sane, Commander. And she’ll get worse every time she’s disappointed.”
Hecht glanced around, turning too quickly. His wound presented him with shooting pain.
“Are you all right?” Frightened concern.
“I moved too much, too fast. They tell me pain is a good teacher. I’m not sure. If I’m not hurting I’m not paying attention. How much do you trust these women?” She had, after all, been keeping her voice down.
“They’d overlook an indiscretion.” Said with timorous challenge. “But nothing political. They all have husbands and lovers.”
As he forced pain-born tension out of his muscles Hecht felt Helspeth’s real meaning. Her women would not retail gossip but matters political were fair game? Strange, these people.
Helspeth said, “I can’t find Ferris Renfrow.”
“Nor can I. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Wonder? Not so much. If you grow up here you’re used to Ferris Renfrow, the unpredictable apparition. It frustrated Father no end. But Renfrow was never missing when it really counted.”
Hecht saw Heris seldom and the Ninth Unknown never, these days. He did communicate, via pendant, often. They had nothing to report about Ferris Renfrow, either. They said they were working on it.
Hecht felt starved for information.
He had access to more and better intelligence than anyone, possibly saving Renfrow, but remained painfully aware that there was much that he did not know.
Intelligence was like opium. The more you tasted, the more you wanted. The craving could not be satisfied.
The session never slipped the bonds of propriety. But it did go on. Helspeth always had another question. Hecht began doling out bits of thinking he had not yet shared with Titus, also to prolong their encounter. Before they did part, Helspeth suggested that they make an evening briefing part of their schedules. So that, when Katrin returned, she would find her crusade developing perfectly.
Hecht’s men worked long days. They drilled. They performed weapons exercises. They performed fatigue duties. They helped clear snow from thoroughfares. They were involved in restoration of the city fortifications and a study of its arsenals and emergency stores. The latter, as in so many cities not recently threatened, existed mainly in wishful thinking. Shortages had sparked several scandals already. No names of consequence surfaced, naturally, so punishments were draconian.
Mostly, the Commander wanted his men seen. Wanted everyone aware of them constantly. He wanted potential villains conscious that a new factor had to be reckoned with and that factor was beholden to the Ege sisters.
He did not want to be lord of a praetorian guard. The politics of the Grail Empire, however, pressed him into the role of Imperial shield and hound.
He accepted that because he wanted to lead the next crusade. Which, if the Empress had her way, would be the biggest ever.
Katrin meant to buy her way into Heaven.
Loyalties blanketed Hecht in layers. He was several people, the created become most real. He forgot Else Tage completely for long stretches, as Else Tage had forgotten Gisors. Duarnenia and a childhood with Rother and Tindeman Hecht usually seemed more real. He rehearsed that past every day. And each time he talked about his boyhood new details accreted.
Alten Weinberg enjoyed a quiet winter. Weather in the Jagos was terrible. Not so in the capital. People remained content to mark time. Men of standing told Hecht that Alten Weinberg had not been so quiet since the heyday of Johannes’s power. A popular effect. But that could change when Katrin came out of seclusion.
Helspeth’s ladies were not as tight-lipped as she predicted. The heightening tension between the Princess Apparent and the Commander of the Righteous was the object of considerable delicious speculation. Nothing had happened yet, but, oh, what about tomorrow?
Privately, several Electors petitioned their God to make it happen — publicly enough to compel official notice.
The instruments establishing the Ege line as the Imperial succession just might be overturned if the Princess Apparent got caught in something sordid with a base-born, foreign-born soldier of fortune.
Crueler realities, filthy of tooth and claw, prowled the shadows of tomorrow. The first would come shambling out long before the first thaw.
22. The Chosen: The Wounded God
From the nethermost orient to the eastern shore of the Shallow Sea a grand migration was under way, though the families, clans, and decimated tribes braved the heart of winter. The Windwalker was hurt and distracted, somewhere far away. There might never be another chance to escape.
Few were welcomed. Resources were strained everywhere. Often there was fighting more bitter than when the Chosen were war slaves of the winter lord.
The empire of Tsistimed the Golden was an exception. Refugees were welcomed where willing to become subjects, so great had been the Empire’s losses fighting the Windwalker.
Tsistimed seethed continuously. Those near him feared he would suffer some final outrage and succumb to fatal apoplexy. The Ghargarliceans were pushing ba
ck. They had recaptured several cities where the nomads had demolished the walls. The kaifate of Qasr al-Zed remained defiant, scorning all ambassadors and executing merchants and traders caught scouting.
Never had Tsistimed known such difficulties. He railed against his commanders like a spoiled child, till the more thoughtful began to wonder if it was not time to decide which son ought to succeed.
Winter, though, was time to rest and recover. Tsistimed himself had to wait out the season. He came to terms with reality.
He had been through this before, early on, on a smaller scale. Time and patience were the remedies. He could await a new generation of warriors. Meantime, former enemies could fill the holes in the ranks. Most of his warriors had ancestors who had been his enemies.
The refugees were willing. They were too hungry to scruple.
***
A mountain of ice calved off the south shore of eastern Andoray, knocked loose by savage tidal bores roaring back and forth through the Ormo Strait. Sliding away, the berg exposed acres of stony beach. The monster toad crawled onto that, now more a two-legged transition between tadpole and adult. The withered god lay motionless, most all strength gone. And did so more than a month.
Kharoulke had escaped the sea. Continued existence remained problematic. He drew power out of the ether at about the rate he consumed it to remain viable.
Darts of silver-tainted iron remained at work throughout the Windwalker, blessing him with their poison.
Kharoulke’s great advantage was his bulk. It would take him an age to perish, even in his current dire circumstance.
Smaller Instrumentalities — those quick and clever enough — streaked in and carved off bits of foul god flesh. The small eating the great, rather than the reverse. Familiar in the middle world but unseen before in the Night.
Vigorously engaged in resisting the embrace of the ultimate, the Windwalker became ever more intimate with the time-point where he was engaged in the awful struggle. Being thus tied and preoccupied, a fragment of his consciousness opened to happenings in that one present and one particular world.
He sensed the movements of his enemies. He could follow those. But he did not have the power to act. His emotions were like those of a man who had been buried alive.
He made no headway recovering. And, because time participated in an inevitable progress, summer would come.
Warmth, even just to the point of surface thawing, was no friend of a winter god.
23. Lucidia: Shamramdi
The Mountain honored the martyr Ambel by standing in for him in the wicked dives of Shamramdi. He drank in taverns belonging to Antast Chaldareans, for whom wine consumption was no sin, and whose customers were mostly Believer sinners in disguise. He whored in brothels high and low, a vice he had indulged at no time before, even when young. He had a wife …
In truth, he had no idea what had become of the woman. He had not seen her since his last approved visit to al-Qarn, years ago. His agents in al-Minphet reported nothing. He suspected they were making no effort. They would not care. Women were of no consequence. Plus, getting close risked bringing them to the attention of er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen.
***
Tonight, his fifth in Shamramdi, Nassim was drinking in a place with an unpronounceable name. Its signboard showed faded keys, dice, and a strange fish. The managing family spoke numerous languages, few of them well. Nassim communicated good enough to keep the wine coming. Coins did most of his talking.
He did not like the wine. It lay sour in his mouth.
The great question tonight was why he went on when he loathed the wine and was ashamed of what it did.
He persevered. Alone. In Ambel’s memory. Though there was a young man in shadow across the way who seemed inclined to flirt.
An alternative accepted by many Faithful. Nassim Alizarin was not among them. The idea repelled him. Nor was he capable of wrapping his mind around the sophistry involved in justifying the act.
The Written proclaimed homosexuals an abomination in the eyes of God. They were to be slain wherever discovered, preferably by stoning. Yet across the Realm of Peace it was acceptable for an older man to relieve his needs by using the body of a boy. Shamramdi had its male brothels. Even holy men indulged. No stones got thrown.
Nassim drank wine and was glad his comrades from Tel Moussa were not witnesses. Though they, more than most, would understand.
Ambel, really, was nothing to him. A boy he had known only by name before he went off to assassinate Black Rogert. A boy who, in the normal course, might have fallen anyway, before his time in the field ended. Whose loss, in that event, would have touched the Mountain no more than that of any other warrior.
The flirt did not become discouraged. The Mountain first thought the lad had no idea who he was trying to attract, then decided that the opposite must be true. There was villainy afoot. More appealing and much more likely targets were available.
The wine, however, encouraged Nassim to play along, to find out what was up. Which might have suited yon blackguard just fine, Nassim having failed to consider the full range of possibilities.
As soon as Nassim began to feign taking the bait, he found a drunk settling at the low table, crossing his legs. He came armed with a bottle of wine, mugs, and an aggressive personal aroma. He mumbled an unintelligible self-introduction as he flung a hand into the air and beckoned someone the Mountain could not see. Nassim was in no mood to squabble about sharing space. Sharing was expected in a crowded public house.
He watched the newcomer pour wine, studiously creating identical portions. His desert clothing was filthy. It boasted fresh dust over the filth. His headwear suggested generations of insects had nested and feasted there. The man had lost his right eye and, apparently, could not afford a patch to conceal the resulting scar. He grinned at Nassim.
Fate had not been kind to his teeth, either.
A brace of rogues as tasty as the first sat down. The one-eyed man offered Nassim a cup, grunting as though unfamiliar with the local dialect.
The flirt, who had started toward Nassim, decided to turn his attention elsewhere. He changed course.
The one-eyed villain tossed his hand up, as though to another acquaintance. And, in a cultured whisper absent any influence of wine, said, “You should be more cautious, Nassim Alizarin. We can’t always watch over you.”
The flirt headed for the exit. The one-eyed man muttered, “Tears will be shed in al-Qarn.” He poured more wine. After a while, he said, “The lord Indala will see you tonight.”
***
The Mountain was surprised. The famous Indala al-Sul Halaladin was as short as rumor claimed. And as old, though he bore his years with grace.
He looked every inch the lord and champion he was said to be.
He was, reputedly, fiercely insistent on his dignity, yet would set status aside entirely once convinced you accepted that dignity. In the Mountain’s instance he dispensed with formalities immediately.
“Sit, General. Make me understand the circumstances in which Rashid and his brothers found you.”
Indala’s dignity must be honored absolutely, here. Nothing but honest, straightforward truth would do. So Nassim told it, without embellishment, analyzing himself, sparing himself nothing.
“So, after the fact, you see yourself the same as the man by whose order your son was murdered.”
Nassim bowed his head.
“Despite all the obvious differences between the situations.”
“Acknowledging those seems like self-justification.”
“I understand.” Indala contemplated his folded hands. “Often the choices that affect the least number of people are the ones that trouble us most.”
“Exactly. Which makes acceptance all the more difficult. How many men have fallen since I took charge of Tel Moussa on your behalf? It must be more than three dozen.”
“Fifty-three dead or missing,” Indala told him. Revealing another facet of the character that made him the most
honored chieftain of Qasr al-Zed. He would know most of their names, tribes, cities, and how they had died, too. If the stories were not greatly inflated.
“It was his idea,” Indala said. “He volunteered.”
“Yes. But I knew what he was giving up. And I let him do it anyway.”
Indala again contemplated his hands. When his gaze rose it was piercing. “Tell me, have you been damaged permanently? Can you go on? Can you send other mothers’ sons into the fire between Heaven and Hell? Will you hesitate in the critical instant when hesitation could be fatal?”
Nassim understood. His future depended on his answer. And Indala would be unerring in tasting his sincerity, or lack thereof.
“I am Sha-lug.” And, though he suspected Indala understood perfectly, he clarified. “I’ll come through this. It won’t fog my mind nor stay my hand when the arrows are in the air.”
“Well said.” Then, “Just a moment.” A man had appeared. He looked like young Az with three decades added. Indala gestured, giving him permission to approach. He came, whispered into the sheikh’s ear. Indala nodded. Nassim thought he was unhappy behind his aplomb.
Indala said, “I’ll send instructions before I retire.”
The message bearer bowed his way out. Nassim thought he lacked enthusiasm.
Indala said, “That was interesting. Gherig has a new castellan, Anselin of Menand, younger brother of Regard, King of Arnhand. He arrived at the head of a great troop of westerners, most of them Brotherhood of War.”
Nassim had nothing to say, other than an unhappy grunt.
“It would seem you worry them, General.”
“I doubt they think that much of me.”