At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  She took it, but she did not bother to read it. It was not as though it would hold revelation. “We will need to have a rider afoot before day’s end, then.” But she was not yet done with lecture. “And does this priest have something to do with your dark knight?”

  Walthere all but choked on his rage, so one of his fops danced in along the high road. “My lady, please. This is hardly the place.”

  “And who is our dear priest at least?” she countered, thrusting the note back at Martel.

  “Bishop Hargrove of Tennesburg. A gracious half-wit, and a giving suckle of the patriarchal teat. It’s said he likes a good drink.” The fop shrugged. “Not a bad man, but he is a fiery one for the circle.”

  “They did it without question or concession,” Walthere snapped. “That is not done, not without an emperor to do it.”

  Charlotte looked at him crossly. “And it is hardly unexpected. So father, as you have often counseled me: chew on it. It is. As is another priest’s crowning. Send them your acceptance and be done, and all the while, turn to that which you lock away, before it turns its hand to us. Mind your cultivation: it’s a weed you watered, and a weed will choke another weed down as sure as any flower, should that weed suddenly thrust itself amongst the wrangling. I cannot be the only one to whom she speaks.”

  “No one asked you to.”

  “Someone has to.”

  Martel squirmed from one foot to the other. “Lord, lady, perhaps this is a discussion best held elsewheres.”

  “You get the tongue on you, child. I do not particularly like it.” Walthere swatted at Martel, and the fop had the sense to skitter out of their path. “For too long you have been playing the wild part, and that will not suit. Not now. But if it appeases you, I will make that climb, if you see to that damnable letter, and to Sara. Her mother bleats at me daily with her worries and I will not have her locked in her room much longer. Get her out.”

  She scoffed. “And Lothen? Would you have me cuddle up with his bladesman next and see to it he gets his proper sunlight as well?”

  The cane shook when Walthere’s fist closed against its head. “Be silent and do your duty. That is one thing well in hand, so don’t you mind it. It was your aunt that set him to that and he has been rightly dealt. If you must learn something it is this: learn the hearts of the people to whom you speak before your actually open your lips. He will be attending our empress again in short time, and Lothen will be joining Gerold with his tutors. Martel! You have the men?”

  “Aye, highness. A squirrely lot, and not a one of them Idasian, and I swear one or more of them may eat the kitchen from under us but—”

  “Squirrely.” Walthere snapped the word and, only when Martel shrank, did he twist it into a barking laugh. “Squirrels are ones to talk.” Then he twisted back to Charlotte, and by then the mirth was already gone. Yet he reached out all the same and put a hand against her shoulder. She was surprised by the warmth of it, even through her shawl. He was sweating. “I trust this is agreeable?”

  She bowed her head. “I will see it done, father. And if I may…?”

  “There is more?” She could hear the tension in him, and she aspired to make her voice quick, lest his mood change anew before all the words were out.

  “I wondered if we might see to a tutor for the girls, as well.” She dared a glance up to measure his reply, but saw only stone there, and cast back down. “The Matairs, I mean to say.”

  “They are well, are they not?”

  “They are,” she said, though in truth they were not.

  Kana, the little Matair, was all tears and longing. She spoke of her father and her mother and asked for little else. Charlotte could not bear to be around the shrill of it. Anelise, the youngest of Kasimir’s daughters, was another matter. She watched her niece and guarded her dearly, but to others she was about as icy as Charlotte herself. What she found a virtue in herself, however, was hardly met the same in another. The girl was rebellious, and worse, she was smart. If she was not already twisting at the window screws and tapping at the panes, Charlotte would be terribly disappointed.

  “But I fear the days of silence will not do them, or us, well. They need something to better occupy their day. Only so much joy can be had from pulling at a soldier’s beard. Children are difficult enough inherently. One needs not fuel the fire.”

  Walthere seemed to consider the idea a moment before he gave his consent to it. She thanked him for it and hoped that would be all, but his hand remained on her shoulder, and neither stirred. After a moment, he leaned close and laid a kiss upon her cheek. Were she anyone but his daughter, she might have mistaken it for a kiss of death. The other was just as stunning.

  “I have not thanked you for all of it, child. Know I do appreciate your efforts. If you do so well with them as you have with the Empress and with that Matair boy, well…”

  She did not know what to say. So all she said was: “I will try my best, ser.”

  “I am sure you will.” His thumb rubbed at her and she thought he might say something more, but then he was moving past her, to other matters. His fops scrabbled at his heels, and the guardsmen picked up their blades and followed. When she looked back at them, she caught Martel in turn looking back at her, face scrunched in confusion.

  For a moment, she stood there in the hallway, pondering how to proceed. Too much at one time. The hairs of her head still tingled where her father had touched her. An Iruwen walks out of the mists of time, and father kisses me. If this was one of those signs of the gods people so liked to get on about, she was certain it took wiser souls than her to read them. She looked up into the stoneworks, wondering. If you could make our enemies so dysfunctional as we, then this tune might play itself out to the quick. If only she were a bird, life would be simpler, it was true. Yet this, troubles on troubles, were what set her to her best. A breath to steady herself, and she was off—she had not the time to wait for Dartrek. Their enemies would surely not.

  Their enemies had a kingdom to wield. Maker help them, they had but lies and assassins and madmen, and none of these were a fortress. The only recourse was to attack.

  Chapter 6

  Rurik watched the sunlight curl through the fans of the maidenhair leaves, the branches lively and brown even in the twisting shade. Petals spiraled to the sound of the wind’s sighs. The trees towered over all, even the town’s walls, nestled between rocks as old and moss-covered as they. At a time, men might have gathered beneath their boughs to ponder those secret things only peace could breed.

  Yet even at noon, the camp was restless.

  The sights passed. The notions with them. Rurik and Berric hastened to the general’s call.

  Riders had probed the lines at dawn. They wore no colors and they fled when spied, but their intent was not in doubt. With the coming of spring and the indecision of their embassy, the Effisians were gauging them, and only a single train of new supplies had arrived from the west.

  While the foraging parties roamed farther and farther afield, some men had resolved to boil their own bootstraps in order to supplement their hungry bellies—a fate typically befalling only those sailors too long at sea.

  Another octave of this and they would not be fit to fight. They needed to move. No one doubted it. The only question was where.

  Tessel and his council were discussing that very topic as Rurik loomed. As usual, the mass of men—and it was a mass, for Tessel had been ever enthused to the notion of hearing the reports and representatives of all beneath his banners, making for a great many aggrieved nobles and many more bemused captains—met in the gardens behind the church, where some semblance of privacy had been reserved. Annoyed and expectant stares flicked Rurik’s way as he skittered to a stop among them. They turned away again as quick, briefly mollified by a salute and a fleeting explanation. He had been sent for his brother. He returned alone.

  Fortunately, Tessel had greater matters on his mind. Of the host that clung to his words, three men had been drawn into his
closest council, the rest hovering at the outskirts like children peeping in the window. Baron Pordill and Lord Marshall Othmann represented the titled folk, and though they could not have stood further apart in personality, they were the souls to whom Tessel most had to answer.

  Othmann—who never let the rest of them forget it—was the man who, by all rights, should have held the power that Tessel wielded, while Pordill was a respected and experienced leader, and the highest ranked man afield, Othmann aside. Joining them was the largely silent specter of Vogel, a severe man whose most defining feature was the paralysis that had seized his left side as the result of a riding accident. He was commonborn, he could not even read, but he stood most valued to Tessel for his worth to the men and the wealth of his knowledge of all things war-like. Unlike some, though, he only spoke when he had something to say.

  The conversation, such as it was, had changed remarkably little since Rurik had left.

  “I say we move south,” Pordill said. The only silver-haired officer left in the wake of the Emperor’s death, this man, with his habits of soft speech, seemed more the attending grandfather to this mass of men. Though his sigil was a black goat, there were reasons some called him the “Black Sheep” behind his back. No few among the camp would have stabbed the man that so insulted him, though. “We have heard no more of Ernseldt. Our soldiers arrived. It’s all we know. We should join our forces, sack Cardase, and press from there.”

  “Cardase has been under siege for months, even if Ernseldt remains. There will be no victory in its stores,” Othmann countered. Months of rationing had done the lord marshall as well as everyone else, and his skin had begun to take on an almost bony, emaciated sort of sheen. He also spoke softly, but harshly.

  “A point,” the Bastard added, “and even if there were, how much longer might we last for it? We starve at half the numbers we would have if our two armies joined. No city in the land could feed us. We would only be forced to break anew, and further.”

  “Aye. But that’s true regardless. The land lies barren. The Effisians want it that way. These people barely feed themselves. They can hardly feed us as well.”

  The Bastard spared a studious look for Othmann, and Rurik shared it. It was not usual for the man to part with wisdom—even if he possessed it. “Then what would you suggest?”

  “Back and forth we have danced this issue of where to push, where to keep this fight alive. Well I tell you this, and I mean no offense—ludicrous, is all it is. Salvation lies only in the north, Kyler. We broke the crag-hoppers at sea for just this reason. The fleet can do what the wagons cannot. Reach the sea, and they will see us fed. I have letters to the plenty from Turgitz, telling of our men along the coast, and I tell you they live in paradise compared to we.”

  They drifted gradually as they spoke. Tessel, though a man of many qualities, had never found patience among them. He preferred his discussions in the open air for that very reason—it allowed him the opportunity to move, to pace, to work out the tension that might otherwise burst undesirably. Rurik found it an amusing enough quirk—a steady contrast to his father, who had always been something of a statue. Others found it less endearing.

  They halted again under the boughs of one of the great, crooked trees, Tessel nodding to himself all the while.

  “It is funny to me, Othmann, that you always speak so of such letters, yet never until these meetings of ours.”

  Othmann scoffed. “I bring matters to attention when those matters are of import, and you have made it clear the method by which you like to discuss. One does not trivialize councils of war with every scrap of personal correspondence.”

  “Up to our arses in it,” Berric muttered into Rurik’s ear as he shuffled for a better spot among the crowd.

  This was not the first quarrel over the matter of letters. Though the army recognized Tessel for its leader, both the court and the nobility back west had made it plain whom they assumed was in charge. Rumor said Othmann was hiding things from Tessel. Knowing the man only made that more believable.

  “No,” Tessel added after a sour moment. “No, I think not. We press north, but we will continue east as well.”

  “East!”

  “Yes, Othmann, east. This journey was the Emperor’s will and testament, and I’ll not shirk it now that he has passed.”

  Pordill and Othmann shared an anxious glance, and Pordill was left licking his own lips in the aftermath. “A noble gesture, to be sure, but if I might?” Tessel inclined his head, and Pordill pressed on. “Lend me two companies and I will head to the sea myself, and take us back supplies. If you are intent upon Mankałd, from there I can sail them down the Ipsen, to wherever you may camp.”

  Before Tessel could reply, Othmann all but snarled. “Already the horse prince watches our camp. You think he will not piece together your plan when you ride from here? They will follow you, and once they know we are bogged down by siege, they will see those supplies razed on the river. They have logjams there, dams and bridges to block all but the smallest craft, and they have proven they are not above clogging the rivers to deny us. There is a reason we do not already use those bloody streams.”

  “It could simply divide their attentions,” Pordill said. “They haven’t the men for two fronts if they suppose we shall divide and conquer.”

  “Too much of a gamble. If we do not—”

  “Enough. I have heard enough.” Tessel nodded again, more severely, before he turned to face them all. “We will continue to Mankałd. This is not to be debated. Vogel, you will see a bird sent for Anscharde every night until the wagons break through, that they may be aware of our progress, and our intent.”

  The thin captain, swallowed as ever in his oversized tunic, hastily assured the general it would be done. Tessel, however, was already swiveling on another of his captains—a sparsely-haired giant of a man and a soldier-priest whom Rurik readily despised. One of the growing multitudes of Farrens that seemed to be clamoring to Tessel’s confidence.

  “Narve, you will dispatch orders to each of the company captains, and to the lords. We will divide the army before we march. Stagger things out. Five armies. Three in front, like curling wings; one in reserve, trailing; the fifth remains here, to guard any trains. Count Pordill, you are welcome to whatever men you wish for your expedition north—you tell it true, we need that food if we are to make the press, there is no way around it. Vogel, you will lead the left wing, Othmann you will lead the right, while—”

  “Excuse my impertinence, but this is ludicrous,” Othmann snapped. Tessel’s own words petered out into icy silence. Rurik all but groaned. Up to our arses indeed. “We starve, and you seek to press us deeper into enemy terrain? These farcical hopes aside, on what do you expect us to march, exactly?”

  “Your patriotism, clearly,” Tessel jibed.

  Several of his captains let out low, if uncertain chuckles. Rurik was not among them. Nor was Vogel. “In this, I must agree with the marshall,” Vogel grumbled. “We couldn’t support ourselves. It could take the lord count more’n a oct to return, even if the fates be kind to him. Leszek would harry us the whole way, and we’d wear ourselves into the dirt.”

  Berric elbowed Rurik in the side. “Well that’s a piss of a thing, when Vogel takes the marshall’s side. Portent, I’d say.”

  “Of?” Rurik asked quietly, trying not to be heard over the arguing generals.

  “Drakkons and hellspawn, most like.”

  “What of the messenger? Does not Leszek seek peace?” another of Tessel’s captains asked. This started a certain amount of murmuring among the assembled. In the wake of the embassy for peace, many now dared to hope on it.

  “No,” Tessel answered with practiced certainty. “Would that it were so. Merely his father. Leszek would heed no peace of ours and I fear his countrymen would more readily follow him than any of his father’s decrees.”

  Peace with Mordazz and his deeps, would be more like. Rurik had to fight down the scowl his face wished to form.
If anyone could find Leszek, let alone reason with the man, he was sure the soldiers would name him Assal incarnate. The Effisian prince was a devil made flesh, and he fought for his land as the old stories said men should. They could conquer every Effisian stone from west to east, but if that man still drew breath they would never own Effise. Peace. Would that we were so lucky!

  “Leszek’s nothing but a kuree turd,” Othmann spat. “But you, Kyler. You ignore the obvious. Word of those messengers should have been sent immediately for Anscharde! Even the prospect of peace…and what of the summons from our own court? You and half this army should be headed back for the border by now. We should not even be having this discussion, in truth. Not you and I.”

  The words struck a chord that set Rurik ill at ease. The others shifted uncomfortably—disquieted by the marshall’s lack of decorum, but also every bit as eager to know the answer. Rurik twisted an anxious glance over his shoulder, that he might look to the guards following twenty paces at their backs.

  Do your ears perk to this, friends? The letter to which the marshall referred—the letter Rurik had watched Tessel smile down on—had been quietly tucked away after its reading. Tessel had shared its contents only with Rurik and his fellow captains, seeking to keep Othmann and his nobles from the truth. But somehow they had found out anyway.

  Doubtless, it had not been the only letter. That would have implied trust. And it is the duty of a soldier, Rurik’s father always said, to trust no one when the steel stirs.

  Tessel met the man eye-to-eye, unflinching before the challenge. “The court’s words were, as intended, put to me for weighing and interpretation. As commander here, it is my purview to decide what is best for the army. If we break now, the Effisians will roll back all the gains we made over the course of the last year, and come next spring, we will have nothing to show for it. We have an opportunity to strike now, to subjugate Effise and restore it to the Empire’s care, so that they too may have the joy of Imperial decrees.” His lips curled, mirthlessly. “I will return to the court when the Emperor’s will is done.”