Brother Candle wondered if King Peter considered this a rehearsal for Sublime’s beloved Crusade to the Holy Lands.
Maybe. There was something going on. Peter had been doing well in Direcia, often allying himself with a lesser Praman prince to overcome a strong one. Why suddenly shift attention and key resources to fighting overseas? Peter was honorable, and dedicated to his God, but there had to be more to this than honor and love of his Queen’s brother.
The Connectens boarded reluctantly. The Unbeliever sailors wore strange garb. They gabbled in a dialect that was a cousin of Connecten but so weird it went over the heads of soldiers taking ship only to avoid having to walk six hundred miles.
No one knew yet where they would debark. Sublime and Johannes Blackboots had not finalized their plans. Or, if they had, word had not been relayed to the troops.
Count Raymone paused beside Brother Candle. “Time to work up your nerve and go aboard, Master. They’re already singling up the lines.”
Brother Candle sighed. His few possessions were aboard. He was not eager to follow. His reluctance was shared by his companions, each a respected cleric volunteer. Every religion in the Connec was represented in the expeditionary force, including Connecten Praman slingers from Terliaga. Their presence baffled Brother Candle more than did that of several dozen supposedly pacifist Seekers After Light.
The Plataduran Pramans made everyone uneasy. The Chaldareans could not understand why they were allied with Peter against their religious brethren. Though Chaldarean fought Chaldarean every day, across the Chaldarean world.
Brother Candle’s companions were the men who had gone to Brothe.
Count Raymone had accomplished marvels in carrying out his orders from the Duke. Although he was in Castreresone when told that he would move his force by sea, he reached Sheavenalle before the Direcian fleet arrived.
***
THE JOURNEY WAS BROTHER CANDLE’S FIRST ABOARD ANYTHING bigger than a ferryboat and his first on salt water. It was also his first aboard a platform that rolled and bucked and plunged on even the clearest, calmest day. A platform that never stopped creaking and groaning, muttering and moaning, not for a second, nor did it ever fail to make the horizon stand up at strange and terrible angles. The smell was unlike anything he had experienced before, combining barracks, stable, tar and caulk, sea, and frightful cooking, in a mix that ought to revolt the scavenger gulls following the fleet.
The sailors told him he was being too sensitive. Taro was a new ship. She had not yet begun to develop real character. The cooking generated the worst odors. The ship’s cook served no one but the Plataduran crew. Everyone else cooked on the main deck, amidst the mob, the working sailors, and the daring robber gulls. There was no hot food when the seas roughened up. The Platadurans did not trust Connecten landlubbers not to set the ship on fire.
Sailors feared nothing so much as fire at sea.
The journey was more than just physically uncomfortable. Brother Candle was conscious constantly of the proximity and curiosity of lesser elements of the Instrumentalities of the Night. That was unnerving. Life in antiquity must have been equally uncomfortable. Man had come a long way with the slow task of taming the world.
His touch did not yet lie heavy on the sea.
Off the coastal island of Armun, the one-time summer resort of Brothen emperors, Brother Candle gathered the religious spokesmen for the Plataduran crew and the Terliagan slingers. He was distracted. Armun was far south of Brothe, not far north of Shippen. Meaning they were off the coast of Alameddine, approaching that kingdom’s frontier with Calzir. And the fleet showed no sign of turning inshore.
The amateur Praman priests remained wary but Brother Candle had worn them down some by insisting that he just wanted to learn.
“I’m wondering where al-Prama stands on the Instrumentalities of the Night. They never cooperate with dogma. They revel in contradicting doctrine.”
These Praman chaplains were not inclined toward philosophical discussion. They were practical men interested only in supplying minimal spiritual support to men working far from home. They could perform the basic sacraments of their faith. And that was their limit.
Brother Candle held an abiding interest in the old eternal questions. Did the minds of men create the gods and the lesser things of the night by shaping the power from the Wells of Ihrian and elsewhere? Or did the Instrumentalities of the Night feed upon that power to establish belief in the minds of those who beheld them?
The chicken or the egg riddle, some called it.
The debate often devolved into speculation about what the world would be like if there were no Wells gushing raw magical power. For Brother Candle that was a question easily answered. The Wells of Ihrian were not the only wellsprings of power, just the biggest and most concentrated. There were numerous smaller, remote wells where the power leaked into the world, though the flow there was more often a seep than a gush.
The calculations of generations of sorcerers found that 70 percent of the supernatural power entering the world did so within the Holy Lands. It was a big, strange world deeply scarred by the power, habitable because the power kept the ice at bay. The world grew darker, colder, and stranger as you moved away from the magical leaks, into the bizarre realms of legend. There were further, more troublesome questions. If human imagination created the gods and the vectors of the night, then who created Man?
Brother Candle could not conceive of a world without sentient beings to appreciate the Instrumentalities of the Night.
The Praman priests were laypeople. They saw sophistry as the work of the Adversary. They had learned the truth when they were young. No preacher who was a heretic within his own false faith would seduce them with Hell-born free thinking.
Brother Candle discovered that these Pramans believed pretty much what most Chaldareans believed. The significant point of conflict was who got to claim responsibility for the glorious revelation. The Holy Founders from Chaldar in the Holy Lands? Or the later Founding Family, from Jezdad in Peqaa?
One Praman observed, “The real contention is idol worship.”
“Idol worship?” Brother Candle asked. “I’m a long way separated from my Episcopal childhood but I don’t remember any idols.”
“Chaldarean churches are filled with them.”
“Those aren’t idols. They’re statues. Images of the Founders and the saints, not the Founders and the saints themselves.”
“They’re graven images. Isn’t that an idol? By definition? Not the god himself but an image of the god that’s there to remind everyone that the god is watching?”
“Not being an Episcopal anymore, I can’t argue effectively. Maybe Bishop LeCroes can explain the difference.”
Brother Candle had lived long enough to be skeptical of dogma. Dogma reflected the human need to believe there was something bigger and more meaningful than the mayfly individual. That there was a cosmic plan.
Horns called across the water.
The Platadurans signaled between ships using a variety of horns where other navies used signal flags or drums. The Navayan navy had adopted the same system.
The admiral of the fleet was Plataduran. The commander of combined armies was King Peter, who had invited himself along because he did not trust Firaldians. Especially not Firaldians from Brothe. And, least of all, any Firaldian who was the latest in a line of false Patriarchs. Despite his support for the Church as an institution.
Peter’s great talent was flexibility. He adopted methods and tools that worked. That included a Patriarch who was not legal but who did control the power of the Church.
The Platadurans and Navayans believed Peter would conquer all Direcia in his lifetime. Many of the peoples of Direcia looked forward to his success.
“What’s happening?” Brother Candle asked as sailors flew around, taking in sails. Taro was a broad-beamed, long bireme, like most of the Plataduran fleet. She could fight if necessary but was intended for commerce. She did not normally put
out oars while on the deep water, unless becalmed. Sails were Taro’s preferred means of making headway.
A Plataduran told Brother Candle, “The captains have been called to a meeting aboard Isabeth.”
The great lady of the war fleet was named for Peter’s queen. The armada reduced speed and closed in. The ships dropped anchor and launched boats that carried the captains and leading soldiers to the flagship.
***
THE SHIPPEN COAST WAS LIKE NOTHING BROTHER CANDLE had seen before. Smaller vessels ran inshore to either hand of a fishing village named Tarenti, which possessed a small but deep harbor. Veteran Navayans isolated the town. Transports headed in to unload.
The same happened at other minor ports. Brother Candle was only marginally in the know. The plan seemed to be to deny Shippen’s resources to mainland Calzir. Which should not stand up long if Shippen’s produce was not available.
King Peter and Count Raymone meant to subdue an island more vast than half the kingdoms in the Chaldarean world. With Connecten and Navayan forces combined numbering fewer than four thousand men. The Platadurans would not fight ashore.
Brother Candle’s military experience consisted of having been present at the Black Mountain Massacre. He did not understand that Shippen need not be conquered in its entirety in order to keep its resources from reaching the mainland. Local resistance ended quickly. Historically, Shippen never sustained a fight once an invader gained a solid foothold. The working population did not care who was in charge. The arrogations of the ruling classes had no abiding impact on everyday life. As long as the mines produced copper and silver and the fields and orchards yielded surpluses of grain and fruit. The weather was usually favorable and there had been no natural disaster since a series of volcanic eruptions in pre-Brothen antiquity.
The great disasters in Shippen’s past were the handiwork of Man, sometimes a war but more often a demonstration of excess by some sorcerer self-deluded into thinking that he could master the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Only the most brilliant minds could convince themselves that they were capable of exempting themselves from the Tyranny of the Night.
***
BROTHER CANDLE AND TARO’S CONNECTENS NEXT WENT ashore at Caltium Cidanta. The town stank of decaying fish entrails. Clouds of shrieking gulls swirled overhead. Caltium Cidanta had no modern significance. In antiquity it was important, though. It was from Caltium Cidanta that the Colpheroen general Eru Itutmu left the Brothen Empire to go defend his homeland, Dreanger — after he and thousands who believed him to be a god spent a generation plaguing the adolescent empire. Eru Itutmu killed a quarter million Brothens but suffered defeat, both in Brothe and at home. Those early Brothens were stubborn. They fought Eru Itutmu for decades, and conquered every ally Dreanger found anywhere around the Mother Sea. Far memories of Eru Itutmu were all Caltium Cidanta had to recommend it. Bishop LeCroes grumbled, “This place is like every other damned town on the island. There aren’t any boats. There aren’t any men younger than sixty or boys older than twelve. And the women come in three types homely, homelier, and homeliest.”
Brother Candle chuckled. “I’m just a simpleminded heretic, Bries, but I picked up the notion somewhere that we’re supposed to treat the local females the way we’d want our stout Connecten wives treated. Not to mention that celibacy is part of your job.”
“You’re a major pain in the fundament, Candle. A total fun-killer.”
“I do what I can.” The real point was, there were no women of breeding age, however liberal your outlook.
LeCroes grumbled, “Anything female that might tempt a sinner, including ewes and nannies and sows, is hiding in the mountains.”
Occupation of Caltium Cidanta and its environs was anticlimactic. The sole casualty was a Terliagan slinger who broke a finger while showing off to some local boys. Those villagers still in place betrayed no overt resentment. They did demonstrate a healthy wariness.
Brother Candle sensed a high level of resignation.
“It’s part of the culture,” the Plataduran chaplain assured him. He had come ashore because he was familiar with the Shippen dialect “Shippen has been invaded a lot. The people know they’ll get through it.”
“Yet they’ll go out pirating.” The fact that they would had nothing to do with how they responded to occupation. The piratical inclination existed because of the island’s history.
Most invasions had begun with pirate types who came to plunder and found little worth carrying away. But they did find Shippen to be a good place to hide from their enemies.
The Plataduran chaplain indicated a hazy indigo line of teeth. “If the boys get an urge to misbehave they’ll have to jog all the way over there. They’ll lose the mood by the time they get there.”
***
THE OCCUPATION OF SHIPPEN PROCEEDED WITHOUT FANFARE or much conflict. Nobles of standing had gone over to the mainland to resist the Unbeliever’s attack there. They added to and shared in the privation and misery enjoyed by those who served in the armies of God.
On Shippen, natives and occupiers lived comfortably and harmoniously. The Connectens helped bring in the harvest. The women returned from the hills, a few at a time, bringing their livestock. The Connectens were not impressed. The joke went that Calziran women explained why Calziran men had picked a fight with Chaldarean Firaldia.
Brother Candle pitched in. And talked about his own beliefs. Local Pramans found him amusing. Native Chaldareans, a third of the population, thought the Maysalean Heresy might be on to something.
Brothe, the Episcopal Church, and the Patriarchy were not beloved of Shippen’s Chaldareans.
Brother Candle wished Bishop LeCroes considerable distress. The Bishop was out of his element, a chaplain without a flock. The Connectens off Taro were all Maysaleans, Terliagans, and Episcopal Chaldareans who favored Sublime V over Immaculate II. “I’m not trying to cause you misery, Bries.”
“I know. I dug my own grave when I decided I’d rather sail with a friend. If I had any sense I’d lay down in it and stop whining.”
“Buy a donkey and catch up with Count Raymone.” It was evening in Caltium Cidanta. Brother Candle was sampling the local vintage, which was surprisingly good. His expedition was turning out to be a vacation from life.
On Shippen the fact that there was a war on, that men were dying as great religions strove to resolve their relative merits in trial by combat, no longer seemed due much interest.
There was a dearth of determined true believers on both sides, on that island. No one demonstrated any special interest in making sure his God would be the sole survivor of the contest.
***
BROTHER CANDLE ENJOYED HIS TIME ON SHIPPEN THOROUGHLY, loafing and debating nonsense with anyone who felt like bothering. Elsewhere, though, if overly dramatic dispatches could be credited, cataclysms were being brewed.
No one on Brother Candle’s side of the Strait of Rhype much cared to find out what those might be.
30. Alameddine and Calzir
All things move slower and take longer. In most cases they also cost more. The Grail Emperor hoped to push through the Vaillarentiglia Mountains in time to distress the Calziran harvest. Only a few of Vondera Koterba’s companies made it. A handful of Imperial scouts went with them. They were feeble but had little difficulty fending off the few ragged, undisciplined Calzirans they encountered. They encountered none of the dreaded Praman sorceries they had heard about since childhood.
Calzir’s political landscape was as chaotic as elsewhere in Firaldia. Several minor warlords offered to change sides if they could retain their holdings. That availed them nothing. Sublime did not want Unbeliever allies.
The Lucidians and Dreangereans dealt harshly with Calzirans they suspected of unstable loyalties.
Forces like Else’s Brothen City Regiment, swollen to more than four thousand men, with attendant animals and hangers-on, were much delayed. Practicalities and political infighting hamstrung progress.
r /> Else and his staff performed miracles of organization and training. Their efforts received universal kudos. Even Ferris Renfrow offered the occasional grudging nod during brief respites from spying on Calzir.
No matter how well prepared the City Regiment became, it never marched. The orders to do so never came because of squabbling on high.
Similar petty behavior hampered volunteer formations throughout the Patriarchal States.
The Five Families all wanted more than a fair share of what might be gained in Calzir. On a lesser scale, the Patriarch, the Collegium, the Brotherhood of War, and every city raising forces, were equally driven by greed. There was so much confidence in a Chaldarean victory that none of the players concerned themselves about the cost of impeding progress.
***
“MY PATIENCE IS EXHAUSTED,” ELSE SAID. “WE HAVE TO GET away from these insane, overgrown children.”
“And here we go,” Pinkus Ghort told him. The occasion was a small, private staff meeting more than a month past the target date Hansel had set for first operations. “We send the ready companies south now. One a day. Titus has the transit stuff set. It’s going to fall apart if we don’t use it.”
“Interesting.” Moving single companies was something Else could do without getting approval from a dozen interfering Brothes. “How long before the bigwigs start squawking?”
“That’ll depend on who’s paying attention. Renfrow ought to catch on first. But he spends most of his time in Calzir. Spying. The Deves down there have been producing some great intelligence. But they’re getting nervous. We’re taking too damned long. The Lucidians and Dreangereans have gotten real active, lately. The Deves are scared they’ll figure out what’s going on and deal harshly with the infidel community.”