“Lost, sort of. This dump is a warren upstairs. And totally indefensible. If the people of Antieux come after us, we’re dead. I say
we fill our pockets and run.”
“A couple of faint hearts came back. I guessed right. Antieux is going to wipe out those idiots who charged in there. But I took care of us.”
“Uhm?”
“We’re fixed. We’re Principaté Doneto’s new bodyguards. And our new boss wants us to take him home to Brothe. Now.” Else was stunned. “You’re a genius, Pinkus. An evil genius.” Ghort shrugged modestly. “It was the obvious thing to do. You’d rather be in Brothe. I want to go to Brothe. The Principaté doesn’t want to stay here. He claims he’d rather die on the road than stay. He’s worked up a real strong dislike for the End of Connec. It might go real bad for the Connec if he does make it back and starts blowing in his cousin’s ear.”
“Good. Excellent. And I don’t see how we could be held accountable by the Brotherhood.”
“That’s a real, big-time cluster fuck going on over there, Pipe. And we were ordered to protect Doneto.”
“I’m in. All right. What about the rest of these guys?”
“Some of them want to sit right here and see what happens. They smell plunder. But the smart ones know it’s time to go. Even if our guys come out on top. Because everything has changed. Because now these people, these peaceful fools, these Connectens, will know that the Brothen Church considers them resources that it can exploit. There’s going to be a backlash against all things Brothen. So we need to be somewhere else.”
“You’re probably right. When were you figuring on leaving? And can Doneto handle the stress?”
“I’m thinking we should move out as soon as there’s light enough to see. Unless that mess over there looks like it’s headed this way before that. As for Doneto handling it, we can baby him along for a while. But it don’t matter much if he makes it, I figure. As long as we show up in Brothe with his body, looking like we tried real hard.”
***
JUST PLAIN JOE AND PIG IRON HELPED ELSE STARE AT THE burning city. Else said, “I wish there was some way to fish those idiot kids out of there. If they haven’t gotten themselves killed already.”
“Don’t beat yourself up ‘cause you couldn’t keep them from being stupid, Pipe.”
“Easier said than done, Joe. You seen Bo?”
“Him and Ghort was seeing if they couldn’t find the Brotherhood’s war chest.”
“Of course. I’ll find them. You be sure you’re ready if we need to take off in a hurry.”
13. Near Rhecale, on Arnhand’s Southern Border
Finnboga was first to waken. He was terrified. His mind remained engulfed in the nightmare. It took him a while to realize that he and his companions lay tumbled in a grove of trees in a land unlike any he had seen before. The sun was too bright. The hillsides were covered with tawny brown grass. The trees all seemed old, gnarled, and not evergreen. There was no sign of human habitation. But a paved road slithered through the valley below. An arched aqueduct spanned that valley, three tiers high, in the distance.
Finnboga did not know that it was an aqueduct, never having seen or heard of such a thing.
The twins recovered next. Finnboga watched their horror fade. Sigurdur asked, “Where are we?”
Finnboga responded, “I don’t know. In the realm of the living. Maybe Grim knows. They talked to him.” The horrors of the Hall of Heroes were fading from memory already, leaving only chills and a vague recollection that heaven was not what it was supposed to be.
Svavar and Hallgrim also awakened before Shagot. All five tried to figure out where they were, why, and, most of all, what had happened to them.
Finnboga muttered, “Surrender to the Will of the Night.”
“What?” Sigurjon asked.
Finnboga frowned, baffled by his own remark. “I don’t know.”
They concluded that they must have been out of the world for months. Possibly even for years.
Shagot took much longer to recover. The sun reached its zenith, then sank halfway to the ridgeline behind the band before Shagot was upright and sufficiently in touch to answer questions.
Finnboga asked, “How about it, Grim? You got any idea where we’re at? Or when? Or why?”
Shagot could not see well. He felt like he was stinking drunk. But he was the captain. He was the one the gods had entrusted with the mission.
He was the one who would retain every memory of every horror of their sojourn in the Great Sky Fortress.
Shagot spent a while longer collecting himself. “We should be in the country of the Arnhanders, near a city called Rhecale, in some hills that are still fat with old magic from a time when tribes who worshiped our gods ambushed a big Brothen army. In that valley down there. In those days this country was all forest. There was an altar here. Which is why the gods put us here. This was the closest they could send us to where we need to go.”
“Which would be where?” Svavar wanted to know.
“We have to figure that out. We’re looking for a man. We’ll know him when we find him.” Shagot felt bad. He was lying. But the Old Ones compelled him.
“We have to wait here. An army is coming. We’ll join it and stay with it till we find our man. He’s with another army this one will be joining.”
Hallgrim asked, “How come this guy is so high on the god’s shit list that they snatched us to kill him for them?”
That was not quite the mission. “He might’ve found a way to fight them. They want to get rid of him before he figures that out.” Shagot frowned. There must be more to it than that. “Meantime, while we’re waiting, we have to dig up some holy relics. We’ll need them later.”
Weapons, tools, armor, foodstuffs, anything the gods thought might prove useful, remained scattered all over the slope. Shagot said, “Get all that shit together. Turn this into a fucking camp.” He glanced northward. There was a chill in the air. There was a hint of rain as well. “There should be some kind of tent in that mess. Get it set up. Unless you like sleeping in the rain.”
They did have a fire burning. He did not need to think of that.
Shagot ambled around the hillside, muttering. His meanderings made no sense to the others. They made little sense to him, either, except that he knew the pattern he was supposed to walk. He kept rehearsing it under his breath. Each time he paused, visions of another time filled his mind. He saw strange, wildly hairy men in wolf and bear skins fighting and drinking and sacrificing Brothen captives to their gods. At first, Shagot did not understand their speech, though it shared some sounds and rhythms with his own. They were angry, bitter men, as content to butcher one another in brawls and blood feuds as to massacre the enemy for whom they were waiting.
The ancient language gradually assumed meaning. And Shagot began to understand why these men, dead fifteen hundred years, had gathered to battle the legions of Brothe.
Where Brothens went Brothen culture followed, along with Brothen ideals and Brothen prosperity. Brothens welcomed all gods into their community of deities. Brothens were at peace with the Instrumentalities of the Night. Where Brothens went the old ways and the Old Gods became diminished and softened and, too often, subsumed or, at best, paled into extreme obscurity, recalled only as demons or night gaunts.
Shagot did not understand that this battle had happened centuries before the births of the founding apostles of the Chaldarean creed. He did know that his gods believed that only their meddling in the middle realm kept them strong.
All Shagot knew of the ancient battle were snippets the gods had given him. There were things he did not see. Such as the fact that the tribal priests saw him as clearly as he saw them. He would never know that the biggest factor in the barbarians’ victory was their conviction that one of their gods walked among them.
Svavar brought Shagot out of his reverie. “Come on, Grim. Get something to eat.”
As he gnawed dried meat, Shagot muttered, “The tro
uble was, there was always another Brothen army.” Svavar said, “I’m worried, Grim. It ain’t like you to do so much thinking.” Hallgrim wanted to know, “What was all that stalking around, mumbling and staring at nothing, Grim?”
“I was figuring out where we were going to have to dig. We’ll take care of that tomorrow. Build the fire up. I’m cold to the bone.” The others eyed him strangely but Finnboga tossed more brush on the fire. Once he finished eating, Shagot crawled into the tent and began snoring almost immediately. The others worried a while but, as twilight gathered, they retreated into the tent themselves. They felt the power of the night. It was strong here. This was a place where ghosts would walk and might even talk if a man was fool enough to put himself at risk of having to listen.
Shagot slept a sleep close to sleep of death. He would not remember it in the morning but his spirit returned to the Great Sky Fortress. His companions did not rest well. Strange lights moved around outside. Weird shadows played on the walls of the tent. No one had the nerve to go look.
You did not prosper by tempting the Instrumentalities of the Night.
***
SHAGOT KNEW EVERYTHING THAT NEEDED KNOWING. IT TOOK just half a day to recover the necessary treasures from the graves of ancient priests. Despite the fact that Shagot had slept in. Despite the icy drizzle that fell all day.
“Hang that stuff where the rain can wash the mud off. Good. There’s one more grave that we have to find. The most important one.”
Shagot knew where to dig. The work went fast — until the others saw what lay under the earth. Time had shrunk and shriveled it but it had not decayed. “What is that thing?” Finnboga asked. “It ain’t human,” Svavar declared. “It looks like a giant dwarf without a beard,” Sigurjon said.
It was as tall as a man and shaped like a man but it was wider and much more muscular.
Shagot said, “Get the grave goods out. I need to go through them.” As the others did that, Shagot jumped into the grave and took the corpse’s head.
Svavar asked, “Grim, what the hell is that thing?”
“I don’t know what he was. Something like a man but not a man. A powerful mage. The last of his kind.” Shagot mounted the head on the tip of a spear taken from the creature’s grave, so the drizzle could wash the dirt away. “We’ll need him in order to complete our mission.”
“What mission, Grim? The old folks told us to catch those pansy priests that murdered Erief.”
“Those priests didn’t kill Erief.”
“What?”
“I have that from the gods themselves.”
“Who did, then?” Shagot found that he could not say. And it was not that important, anyway. That had nothing to do with their mission. Shagot retired early, again, and slept for an abnormally long time.
***
SHAGOT INDICATED A TURN IN THE ROAD ONTO A STONE bridge over a nameless creek. “We’ll wait there.”
The band moved to the point indicated, weighted down by the stuff that had arrived with them and the relics they had recovered. Shagot carried the head in a sack. An hour later an old man on a donkey appeared, coming from the south. He spied them as he was about to cross the bridge, which did not speak well for his eyes. He halted. He stared. His mouth fell open. He stared some more. Then he headed back south, spanking his donkey.
Hallgrim said, “He must’ve thought we were robbers.”
Svavar said, “We might ought to keep an eye out for bandits. There’s been almost no traffic the last two days.”
One reason was that, though modern maps labeled the area the White Hills, those who lived in their shadow called them the Haunted Hills. The tyranny of the night remained in full sway in the Haunted Hills. And, lately, travelers reported that the hills had become more active.
There were, as well, rumors of war, coming out of Arnhand, as did the road itself.
Another hour passed. A pair of riders appeared, coming down from the north. Two more pairs trailed them by a hundred yards, out on either side of the road. The lead riders stopped. They gawked.
The Andorayans gawked back. Those soldiers were like none they had ever seen. The outriders eased closer carefully. The Andorayans had placed themselves beside the road rather than in it. Shagot thought that should make it clear they were waiting, not blocking the way. Even Arnhanders ought to be able to figure that out.
At which point Shagot began to wonder how he would communicate with these men. In the past when he dealt with people unable to speak Andorayan he was in a position to bluster and threaten and make himself understood by hurting people who did not do what he wanted. That option would not be available here.
The riders talked it over. One rode back the way they had come. The rest remained where they were, distinctly uncomfortable. “Are they afraid of us?” Finnboga asked. “I don’t know,” Shagot replied. He did not think his bunch looked threatening, if only because they were weighted down with so much clutter. The gods should have sent a few slaves or pack animals along.
An hour passed. The Andorayans ate bad cheese and dried meat. The Arnhanders watched. They did dismount, loosen their saddles, and let their animals graze.
“Hey, Grim. There’s people coming.”
Shagot had fallen asleep. There was no time when he could not use a little more sleep.
Twenty-five or thirty riders approached in a hurry. Shagot wondered, “Does everybody in this country carry his own flag?” The riders all carried long spears with pennons attached. Except for a handful in black, riding among them.
Sigurjon swore. “It’s those damned crows who killed Erief!”
Shagot had better eyes. “No. They’re priests but they aren’t those priests. Even if they were, this isn’t the time to close that account. Erief can take care of that himself.”
The band all stared at him.
“No, I don’t know why I said that.”
“You’re getting spooky, Grim.” Somebody who had to be of superior rank moved closer, accompanied by bodyguards. And the priests. There were four of those. One of them was of exalted rank, too.
Shagot leaned on the shaft of a spear, cheek to cheek with the dead ogre’s head. His brother and the others eyed him nervously because that dead monster bothered him not at all.
With those memories that he did retain it seemed unlikely that he would be squeamish about anything ever again.
The senior priest and senior soldier halted eighty feet away. Shagot began to feel impatient. He could not fathom why those people acted so strangely.
The priests came forward without the soldiers. They stopped ten yards away. They were unnaturally pale. Two shook so badly they could barely keep hold of their reins.
“By the thunder!” Finnboga said. “These guys are shitting themselves just looking at us.”
“Yeah,” Shagot said. “So what are they seeing that we can’t? Why are they scared of us? Hey! Assholes in the slave smocks. What’s your fucking problem? We just want to join up with your army.”
The priests chattered among themselves in a nasal, whining tongue unlike any Shagot had heard before. He asked his companions, “Any of you guys understand them?”
The priests began trying different languages. Probably their best course, Shagot thought. His bunch, between them, might stumble through in two languages beside their own. And one of those would be Seatt because Finnboga’s family used to trade with the witch people of the extreme north, up on the permanent ice.
“Ha!” Svavar said. “That fat, scared asshole just said something that sounded like it might be in Santerin.”
“Hallgrim,” Shagot said. “You were a prisoner in Santerin for a while. Talk to him.” Shagot had a little Santerin himself, but only enough to ask where the treasure was hidden.
Hallgrim said, “It’s Santerin, all right. But it ain’t like any variety I ever heard before. I only get about a third of what he’s saying. They seem to think that we’re demons.”
“Keep him talking,” Shagot said. He was
starting to pull it together. He began to catch up with Hallgrim. But that was only good enough to leave him puzzled.
Why would these idiots pick them out as demons? Because he and his bunch did not understand their bizarre religion? “Start beating on the point that we’re just the opposite. The gods have sent us to join their army.”
“They won’t believe that. Not even if you’ve got a signed letter of introduction from the All-Father.”
“Just keep them talking. Keep telling them we’re here to join their army.”
***
THE ANDORAYANS WERE ALLOWED TO ACCOMPANY THE Arnhander force, which was commanded by the Baron Martex Algres, a cousin of the king of Arnhand. His second in command was Archbishop Beré of Source, the foremost cleric of Arnhand, and in absentia member of the Collegium. The army numbered about fifteen hundred, plus camp followers. Many noble Arnhander families were represented in the force. Its mood was optimistic in the extreme. The army would join up with Adolf Black’s Grolsacher mercenaries in a few days, on the border of the Connec. Then they would sweep through that province, destroying its heretics root and branch. The Duke of Khaurene would himself join them somewhere near Castreresone, after they settled up with Antieux for what it had done to the Patriarchal force sent to stifle the unholy rebellion of its people.
Shagot and the Andorayan band trudged along, always spied upon by several priests, never able to understand what moved these people. Always, at least one of the monitors was something called a witchfinder.
Shagot spent all of his time with the Arnhanders, confused. Their reasons for war made no sense. People were going to die over differences in doctrines between Episcopals and Maysaleans? When anyone old enough and smart enough to tie their own bootlaces could not possibly believe any of the crap put out by either bunch?
The most disturbing aspect of the situation for Shagot, though, was the universal conviction of the Arnhanders that the murder of Erief Erealsson had taken place two centuries ago. Today Andoray, Friesland, Weldence, and far Iceland were united under a single crown. And the official religion there was Chaldarean.