Lord of the Silent Kingdom

  Brother Candle said, “I have carried the message through the Altai on occasion. I spent a winter there once. Not up in one of those drafty old ridgeline strongholds but down in a valley where the people know how to handle the weather. And it was still curdled misery.”

  More discussion. All the men had spent time in the Altai last summer, readying strongholds for the day when the failure of the weak Connecten state left Seekers at the mercy of a merciless, rapacious Brothen Episcopal Church. They were not ignorant of the harshness of the mountains. It was that harshness they had embraced when they chose the Altai as their final refuge.

  ***

  “SO THAT WAS DEMOCRACY IN ACTION,” SOCIA SAID AS she and Brother Candle walked back to Scarre the Baker’s.

  “It was, yes.”

  “I see why it’s an uncommon way of making decisions.”

  “Some would say that the fact that nothing gets done is the strength of the process. People get too busy arguing to go make trouble.”

  The girl expressed her opinion with a contemptuous snort.

  Day after day the men of Khaurene marched out of the city. Eventually, the streets seemed naked. Those who stayed behind remained in their homes, praying, suffering from escalating tension.

  Brother Candle felt more tension than ever he had before. Duke Tormond had decided to do something.

  At last. And no one cared if it was the right thing. An entire country exulted because it was something.

  He did not go out where he could hear rumors and misinformation from the field. He could imagine it.

  Inept bands of poorly trained men, under inexperienced captains, would rush around trying to catch enemy scouts and foragers and would get beat up in the process. Skirmishes between larger units would carpet the fields east of Khaurene with fallen heroes. The truth would not be seen because the little disasters would be scattered. At some point, the Khaurenese mob would force the Captain-General to choose between withdrawal and showing Khaurene the truth about warfare.

  Brother Candle was not without hope. Isabeth’s knights could provide experienced leadership. The Connectens would enjoy a big advantage in heavy cavalry. Plus, Tormond had reenlisted thousands of mercenaries and had found knights willing to serve for pay. Numbers would not favor the Patriarchals.

  ***

  SOCIA WAS DISTRACTED. SHE COULD NOT DO THE WORK Scarre demanded. Fortunately, there was less call for Scarre’s product. But he anticipated a spike in demand when the hungry soldiers returned.

  Brother Candle worked dough and roamed his memories, revisiting a thousand regrets. When the time came he knew there had been a battle before anyone brought the news. And he knew that it had not gone well. “Socia. Time to go. Get your things.”

  The streets were no longer empty. Everyone seemed to be pressing to the northeast, desperate to learn the fates of those they held dear. Wailing and panic were endemic. If the disaster was a tenth of what rumor claimed, Khaurene would never recover.

  Those coming in now were men who ran before the fighting started. They had to tell stories that made their cowardice appear less foul. Rumor fed off that.

  Though Brother Candle had spoken to no one but Socia he found himself at the head of a column of Seekers including all the regulars from the Archimbault meetings. The Archimbaults brought Kedle. They were not open to arguments about leaving her behind. In just days they had become convinced that Khaurene was doomed and the Society, backed by the Patriarchal army, would purge the city of heretics, Unbelievers, and adherents of the Viscesment Patriarchy.

  Brother Candle told himself he was worried about the pregnant woman’s welfare, not the chance that she would slow the party’s flight. Told himself and wondered.

  Fear stalked him. Gnawing, rationality-devouring fear. Partly because of his fall from Perfection. But just as much because of the presence of things of the Night.

  They were always there, now. Always just round the corner, or just out of sight over the shoulder. For some, that was no problem. Those of a deeply superstitious nature lived in that reality always. But for those who wanted to live in a rational, orderly universe the waxing influence of the Night was an aggressive spiritual slime mold gnawing the mortar from between the foundation stones of existence.

  Kedle’s husband did not join the exodus. Soames was one if those excited thousands who had marched out confident that righteousness must prevail. Without being eager to go. He had gone because it was expected.

  Kedle was sure she would not see him again. That if only one Khaurenese fell out there, that one would be her Soames.

  Brother Candle told Socia, “Here’s your chance to be a big sister. Help the girl handle this.”

  Raulet Archimbault’s attitude was as bright as his daughter’s was bleak. “The boy will catch up. He’ll be fine. He knows the evacuation plan. Hell, he may get there before we do.”

  Getting there was an exercise in profound misery. More so than the flight from Patriarchal captivity.

  Though enemy patrols were fewer, the risk of butchery at their hands had worsened. The Khaurenesaine would suffer terribly for its defiance.

  The band of Seekers was large enough to defend itself from brigands and small troops of Patriarchals.

  And had several times. A third of the company perished on the road. Night things tracked them all the way, first to Albodiges beside frozen Lake Trauen, then onward along the precipitous trail up the Reindau Spine to the fortifications called Corpseour.

  News overtaking the band was disheartening. Connectens in general had plunged to the bleakest, most hopeless of despair.

  Kedle’s baby came early, while they were on the road. It was not an easy birth. The women feared she would not survive the bleeding. There was a worse fear among the men.

  The birth drew the Night like a corpse draws flies. Even the learned, like Brother Candle, could not fathom why. He suspected, though, that it was just curiosity about intense pain and emotion.

  The baby, named Raulet after his grandfather, was healthy enough. And arrived without birthmarks, a caul, deformities, teeth already developed, or other evil portent. To the great relief of the travelers.

  Corpseour had been built along a knife edge of a ridge. Near vertical drops fell away to both sides. The path up from Albodiges was the only approach. That was watched over by outworks capable of laying down heavy missile fires. Corpseour had existed as an ultimate refuge since before man learned to write.

  It had been used a hundred times across the ages, though not since the disorders following the collapse of the Old Empire. Maysaleans had been refurbishing the fortifications for some time. Defenses had been improved. Stores had been laid in. Most of all, cisterns had been deepened and expanded. Each time an Altaian stronghold had fallen in the past, the cause had been thirst or treachery. Little could be done to prevent treachery. That last tiny seed of lust, greed, or terror hidden deep inside a man’s secret self, that made him willing to betray, just could not be known till it quickened. It might exist in every soul, awaiting the right conditions to sprout.

  The overarching strategy of the Seekers was to outlast their enemies. Sublime V had passed away.

  Without a Patriarch of his obsession driving a Connecten Crusade the wider interest should fade.

  Arnhand and Santerin were preoccupied with one another. Santerin had the upper hand. Charlve the Dim was said to be in the early stages of dementia. Meaning there should be little threat from the north.

  The Patriarchal Office for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy ought to wither and die, too. It had no backers amongst the leading candidates for succession.

  Cold and miserable as he might be, Brother Candle thought hope might return with the distant but inevitable spring.

  Practicing his secondary profession of watcher atop the wall, Brother Candle stood in the highest lookout of Corpseour and surveyed his harsh new world. Mist filled the valley to the east. Snow clouds concealed everything beyond. That direction showed nothing but u
nreadable gray. Visibility was little better to the west. What was not covered in snow was weathered gray stone or scattered, weary green vegetation. A couple of villages lay partially obscured by wood smoke not moving because the air was deadly still.

  Socia joined him. The girl looked tired and older than her years. Incessant dejection had ground her down. “What are you looking at?” There had been nothing different to see since they arrived. Just a little more snow every day.

  “The future.”

  “Pardon?”

  “All our tomorrows look like that.”

  “You do need to go off to one of your Masters’ secret places for a spell.”

  “Want to know a secret, Socia? There are no secret places. Unless you count hideaways like this. They exist only in imaginations of those who fear the Path.”

  “There’s somebody down there.”

  Specks of humanity marked the trail. Maybe refugees. Maybe someone bringing news. Maybe just men who made the climb each day to clear the trail of ice and to bring yet more water up to the cisterns.

  “There’s still spring,” the old man said. “A new year always holds promise.”

  There was the hardest part, these days. Encouraging others when he had so little optimism left himself.

  20. Artecipea: The Unanticipated Crusade

  The Captain-General was reviewing inventory lists payrolls. Scut work was the biggest part of his job.

  “How the hell do one hundred fifty-eight crossbowmen use up eight barrels of bolts in one engagement?”

  “They kill a lot of people,” Titus Consent replied. Sounding mildly amused.

  He was, Hecht knew. Consent thought he was becoming a miser.

  “Sure. But you’d think they’d get more of the bolts back after the dust settled.”

  “They probably missed twenty times for every hit. Those bolts aren’t going to be recovered. Unless you put a thousand men out to glean the battlefield.”

  “Phooey. I’ll make the Khaurenese buy me fifty new barrels when we take the city.”

  Consent smiled without being amused. It was an open secret: The Connecten Crusade had run its course.

  When elected, the new Patriarch would discontinue the war gainst heresy.

  Reports had the balloting deadlocked. None of the Five Families could muster even a significant minority backing for their Principatè. All they could agree on was unity against the non-Brothen candidates.

  Neither the Brotherhood of War nor the Society had backed a candidate yet.

  Principatè Delari had garnered the second biggest plurality in the initial poll, to his complete consternation. Hugo Mongoz was the front-runner, a compromise candidate who could be counted on to die soon. An interim figurehead to fill a role while the Collegium worked out a real succession. The Five Families could stomach Hugo Mongoz for a year or two.

  “Messenger from Antieux,” one of Hecht’s lifeguards announced.

  “No doubt Ghort whining for more money. Send him in.”

  A road-weary, dirty, damp courier entered, accompanied by Redfearn Bechter. The room was the warmest in the fortress, Camden ande Gledes, which stood a scant twenty miles from Khaurene. It commanded both old roads from the east.

  Bechter presented a one-sheet estimate of the damage suffered by the Khaurenese and their allies. The fallen numbered more than fifteen thousand. Thousands more had been captured. The fools had fielded an army with no centralized command. Hecht had given them no chance to overcome that disadvantage.

  “Good, with the Navayans. Some important catches there.”

  Bechter nodded. Hecht turned to the courier. “Yes?” The man behind the mud was one of Ghort’s most trusted.

  “The Colonel wants you to know he’s been recalled. The City Regiment has been ordered back to Brothe. Never mind that they’re in pay. The orders came from the city senate but were signed by Bronte Doneto. Colonel Ghort says the senators are scared there’ll be major disorders after the election.”

  Hecht surveyed his staff, saw raised eyebrows. “Does that mean they expect another foreign Patriarch?”

  “Colonel Ghort said, ‘When he asks if they’re going to pick a non-Brothen, tell him the guy in Viscesment, Bellicose or whatever, is running a strong fourth. And he’s excommunicate.’”

  “I see.” Hecht reflected. “How soon will he move?”

  “He’s already started. The orders gave him no wiggle room Doneto knew Ghort.

  “Do the people inside Antieux know?”

  “Of course.”

  “Any idea how much longer the election could take?”

  “Maybe ages. There isn’t much bribe money floating around. Extra funds got burned up financing the Calzir Crusade.”

  “Get some hot food and some rest. I’ll have something for you to take back when you go.”

  Bechter led the courier out. Hecht asked the air, “What does this mean to us?”

  Consent said, “You’ll have to reinforce Sedlakova. Leaving us too thin here.”

  True. Losses had not been great and desertions refreshingly few but, still, there had been a sizable turnover. Hecht had little reason to trust the locals and defeated mercenary who wanted to join up.

  Consent said, “We have to decide what we want to get done before a new Patriarch comes in.

  Everything will change once he does. He won’t share Sublime’s obsessions. He may fire us all to save money so he can afford to commission monuments to himself.”

  That was the future Hecht feared and expected. Few in the Collegium shared Sublime’s obsession with eradicating heresy and recapturing the Holy Lands.

  Hecht said, “We’ve been on borrowed time since Sublime died. Being aggressive hasn’t gained us much.

  Sure. A blood triumph. Heroic in proportion. It’ll be talked about for years. But it wasn’t decisive. It just taught the Khaurenese to stay inside their walls. Send somebody over there tomorrow. Demand a huge fine and a commitment to root out the heretic What we’ve been asking for all along. Tell them they have no time to talk about it. Start pulling in the patrols, foragers, and raiders, so it looks like we’re going to attack. Let it out that we have Society friends inside waiting to help us.”

  “Your point being?”

  “Maybe they’ll bite. Maybe they’ll bribe us to go away. But once we have everyone together we’ll move back to Castreresone.”

  Duke Tormond did not surrender. Did not offer to accept terms, despite Khaurene’s suffering. The Captain-General was not surprised. Even the hotheads over there should see that their best course would be Duke Tormond’s traditional strategy. Just sit and wait.

  The Patriarchal army had exceeded the easy reach of its logistical support, in country desolated by fighting, in the midst of the worst winter the Connec had ever known. It lacked the backing of a distant, obsessed Patriarch. Its commanders were not driven by fanaticism, which was not lost on the snoops and note takers of the Society.

  Khaurene had only one worry. Treachery.

  Plots failed regularly. The plotters were, usually, outsiders who had entered Khaurene to escape the Patriarchals. So they claimed.

  The Captain-General faded quietly, taking valuables but doing no great damage to homes or fortresses or public works.

  Madouc asked, “You want something to happen to that asshole?”

  He meant a Society bishop who had just left, after raging at the Captain-General for not furthering the Society’s agenda.

  “Not at all. I just turned it all over to him. He can do whatever he wants, any way he wants, now. I won’t interfere.”

  “You figure he’ll get shit on. Right?”

  “The Connectens are a patient, long-suffering people. But they’ve passed the point where they’ll tolerate him and his kind.”

  “Good. Those crows need a lesson in humiliation.”

  “You had a reason for seeing me?”

  “I need to put more men around you and keep them closer.”

  “Please! I’ve alread
y got men unlacing my trousers for me when I need to use the latrine. Why?”

  “The last courier brought a letter from your uncle. He told me to be especially vigilant for the next two months. There will be a serious effort to destroy you.”

  “My uncle?”

  “The author said. Lord Silent? Or is someone playing tricks?”

  “Possibly. I’m never sure how to take him. He’s actually more like a great-grand-uncle. If he says be more although, we have to pay attention. Like it or not.”

  “I didn’t know you had any family, sir.” A hint of suspicion, there.

  “I don’t. In a blood sense. Lord Silent is a distant, secretive relative of Principatè Delari. He’s part of that family’s adoption of me.”

  “One must confess a certain curiosity about that.”

  “One must, mustn’t one? I don’t get it, myself. I think somebody saw something in a chicken’s entrails.”

  Hecht had just sunk into sleep, in his down bed in the keep of the Counts of Castreresone, first night back. Titus Consent burst in, accompanied by four of Madouc’s lifeguards.

  “What the hell? It can’t wait till morning?”

  “I don’t think. The populace may have heard by then. It could cause trouble.”

  “All right. Let’s have it.”

  “We have a new Patriarch. Pacificus Sublime.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t know why he chose that reign name. He used to be the Fiducian, Joceran Cuito.”

  “A front-runner before Sublime died but not a name we’ve heard much since. What happened?”

  “King Peter showed up. And spread a lot of money around.”

  “The Five Families are fit to be tied, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know about that. There wasn’t much more to the message. But this could mean trouble here.

  Castreresone belongs to King Peter.”

  Hecht avoided the obvious counterargument. “Put patrols out. Tell them not to start anything but to be ruthless if they’re provoked.”

  “Letting that word out should do wonders.” Hecht treated everyone fairly, by his lights. But he was not merciful toward those who defied him. The Castreresonese would understand. “Can I get some sleep, now?”