A Mighty Fortress

by David Weber

  “Desperately needed sustenance, is it?” She cocked her head, deliberately seeking the reassurance of comforting routine. “Should I assume from the fact that you were forced to resort to liquid sustenance that Mistress Dahnzai was somehow incapable of providing you and your crony with sandwiches?”

  Lyzbyt Dahnzai had been the house keeper in charge of Holy Archangels Triumphant’s rectory even longer than Ezmelda Dobyns had held the same post at Saint Kathryn’s. Over the years, she’d become adroit at the care and feeding of Father Zhaif, and probably almost as good at bullying him into taking care of himself as Dailohrs and Mistress Dobyns were at chivying Hahskans into doing the same thing.

  “As a matter of fact, we did supplement our liquid intake with a wyvern breast sandwich or two,” Hahskans acknowledged.

  “Good. In that case perhaps the two of you stayed sober enough to actually get something worthwhile done,” his wife observed, and he chuckled as he climbed the stairs and folded her into his arms.

  She was stiff, for just a moment, and he felt another spasm of sorrow as he recognized the tension which had tightened her muscles. Then she relaxed, leaning her cheek against his chest and putting her arms around him in a tight hug whose strength said all the things she hadn’t allowed herself to voice.

  He bent over her, tucking the top of her head under his chin and raising his right hand to stroke her hair ever so gently. After so long together, he knew there was no need for him to apologize or explain—that she knew exactly what had impelled him, driven him, to the stance he’d taken. She didn’t like it. In fact, she’d argued with him when he’d first told her he intended to acknowledge Archbishop Klairmant’s and Bishop Kaisi’s authority. Not because she’d had any great love for Manchyr’s previous bishop or for Bishop Executor Thomys, because she hadn’t. But she had been afraid of where Hahskans’ inner anger at the Church’s corruption was likely to take him. And she’d been more than a little afraid his decision would find him branded a traitor to Corisande as well as to Mother Church.

  Yet despite her concerns, despite her very real fear for the husband she loved, she’d argued neither long nor hard. Perhaps that had been because she’d recognized argument was futile. That, in the end, he was going to do what faith and conscience demanded of him, no matter what. He thought it was more than that, though. Her concern was for his safety, not the product of any rejection of his beliefs, for she shared those beliefs. She might be less passionate than he, more willing to work by increments rather than confront the whole mass of the Church’s corruption head- on, but she recognized that corruption. She knew as well as he did what a travesty of God’s original intent the Church had become.

  Which didn’t make her one bit happier at the thought that he and Zhaif Laityr, whose Reformist zeal was every bit as deep as his own, had been coordinating their sermons for the coming Wednesday.

  “I’m sorry, love,” he murmured into her ear now, and her embrace tightened further. “I don’t mean to distress you, but—”

  “But you’re a stubborn, determined, passionate, pigheaded lunatic of a Bédardist,” she interrupted, never lifting her cheek from his chest, and produced a laugh that was only slightly wavery around the edges. She stayed where she was for another moment or two, then leaned back just far enough to rise on her toes and kiss his bearded cheek.

  “I can’t pretend I didn’t know that when you proposed. Although, now that I think about it, the pigheadedness, at least, has probably gotten a bit more pronounced over the last few de cades.”

  “I imagine it has,” he said softly, his lively brown eyes warm with affectionate gratitude.

  “Oh, I’m sure it has!” She looked back at him, gave him one last, affectionate squeeze, and then let him go. “I assume that despite your present drink-befuddled condition you’ll want to transcribe your sermon notes before you come to bed?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he agreed. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. And Ezmelda left a plate of ham sandwiches in your study. Just in case hunger should threaten to overcome you again, you understand.”

  “And a tankard of beer to go with it?” he asked hopefully, eyes laughing at her.

  “And a pitcher of cold water to go with it,” she responded severely. “She and I were of the opinion that you’d probably have had sufficient beer while ‘contemplating weighty matters of theology’ with Zhaif.”

  “Alas, you were probably right,” he told her, reaching out to touch her cheek lightly.

  “Then go—go!” She made shooing motions with both hands. “And don’t stay up all night,” she admonished as he started down the stairs once more.

  The better part of two hours later, Hahskans leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes lightly. Those eyes were no longer as young as they’d once been, and although Ezmelda Dobyns kept the lamps’ reflectors brightly polished, their illumination was a poor substitute for daylight.

  And it’s not exactly as if you had the best handwriting in the world, either, Tymahn,he reminded himself.

  Which was true enough. Fortunately, he was just about finished. He wanted to let the thoughts roll around in his brain for another day or so before he put it into final form. And there were a couple of scriptural passages he needed to consider inserting. As a general rule, he tried to avoid weighting his sermons with too much scripture, yet—

  His thoughts chopped off abruptly as the heavy cloth bag descended over his head from behind.

  Total shock immobilized him for a single heartbeat . . . which was just long enough for whoever had managed to creep so silently into the study behind him that he’d never heard a thing to jerk the throat of the bag tight around his neck. He started to reach up and back, arching to fling himself out of the chair, then stopped as cold, sharp steel touched his throat just below the edge of the bag.

  “Make one sound,” a voice hissed in his ear, “and I cut your fucking throat right now!”

  He froze, heart racing, and someone laughed quietly. It was an ugly, hungry sound.

  “Better,” the voice said, and he knew now that there were at least two of them, because it didn’t belong to the man who’d laughed. “Now you’re coming with us,” the voice continued.

  “No.” Hahskans was surprised by how calmly, how firmly, the word came out. “Go ahead and cut, if that’s what you’re here to do,” he continued.

  “If that’s what you want,” the voice said. “Of course, if that is what you want, we’ll have to cut the throat of that bitch upstairs, too, won’t we?”

  Hahskans’ heart froze. “Didn’t think about that, did you?” the voice sneered. “Not so cocky now, are you, you fucking traitor?”

  “I’ve been many things in my life,” Hahskans replied as levelly as he could with a knife at his throat and terror for his wife in his heart, “but never a traitor.”

  “I see you’re a liar, too,” the voice grated. “Now there’s a surprise! But either way, you’re coming with us—now.” The knife pressed harder. “Aren’t you?”

  Hahskans was silent for a moment, and then he made himself nod.

  Tymahn Hahskans had no idea how long he’d sat bound to the chair.

  He had only the vaguest notion of where he might be. They’d brought him here in a freighter’s cart, hidden under its canvas cover with the blinding bag still over his head. He didn’t think they’d hauled him around long enough to actually leave the city, although he couldn’t be certain of that. He’d thought about crying out, despite the fact that it was unlikely anyone would have been wandering about the capital’s streets to hear him at such a late hour, but his captors had gagged him after they’d bound him, and the voice with the knife had squatted beside his head the entire time.

  From the sound the cart’s wheels had made when they finally reached their destination, and the noise of what had sounded like heavy sliding doors, he suspected he was in a ware house somewhere. There were enough of those still standing idle and empty in the wake of the Charisian siege, and this one h
ad seemed quite large. Large enough, he felt confident, that no one outside its walls was likely to hear anything that went on inside it.

  He’d spent his time silently reciting scripture. The familiar passages helped, yet not even they could dissolve the cold, frozen lump in his belly. The nature of his abduction, and the threat against Dailohrs, told him entirely too much about the men behind it, and he was only mortal. There were limits to the amount of fear even the strongest faith could nullify.

  No doubt they were leaving him here, abandoned and alone, to let that fear work upon him. He wished he could say the strategy wasn’t working, but—

  A door opened suddenly behind him. He stiffened, muscles tensing, then blinked painfully against the light as the bag was snatched off of his head at last.

  The light, he realized a moment later, wasn’t actually as bright as it had seemed to his darkness- accustomed eyes. It took them a few seconds to adjust, and then his gaze focused on the wiry, brown- haired, brown- eyed man standing facing him with his forearms folded across his chest. The man was probably at least twenty years younger than Hahskans, with a severely scarred cheek. It looked like an old burn, and even now Hahskans felt a twinge of sympathy for what ever sort of injury could have produced that deep and disfiguring a scar.

  “So,” the scar- faced man said, and Hahskans’ sympathy evaporated abruptly as he recognized the voice from his study, “have you been enjoying a quiet little meditation, Father?”

  His sneer turned the clerical title into an obscenity, and Hahskans felt his own eyes hardening in response.

  “As a matter of fact,” he forced himself to say calmly, “I have. You might try it someday yourself, my son.”

  “I’m not your ‘son,’ you fucking traitor!” the scar- faced man snarled. His arms unfolded abruptly, his right hand falling to the hilt of the ugly- looking knife sheathed at his belt.

  “Perhaps not,” Hahskans said. “But any man is a son of Mother Church and God . . . unless he chooses not to be.”

  “Like you,” the scar- faced man hissed. “I’ve chosen nothing of the sort.” Hahskans met the other man’s ugly, hating eyes as steadily as he could.

  “Don’t lie to me, you bastard!” The scar- faced man drew a quarter inch of blade out of the sheath. “I’ve sat in your fucking church myself. I’ve heard you spewing filth against Mother Church! I’ve seen you licking the arse of the Shan- wei- damned Charisians and those gutless wonders on the ‘ Regency Council’!”

  “ ‘None are so blind as they who refuse to see,’ ” Hahskans quoted quietly.

  “Don’t you dare quote the Writ to me!” The scar- faced man’s voice rose sharply, but Hahskans simply shrugged as well as he could, given how tightly bound to the chair he was.

  “That’s why it was given to us,” he replied. “And if you hadn’t stopped up your ears and closed your eyes, exactly as Langhorne had in mind when he gave us that passage, you’d know I’ve never ‘spewed’ a single word of ‘filth’ against Mother Church. I’ve spoken only the truth about her enemies.”

  The knife hissed out of its scabbard, and the scar- faced man twisted the fingers of his left hand in Hahskans’ hair, yanking his head back. Keen- edged steel pressed his arched throat once more, and the other man’s lips drew back in an ugly, animal- like snarl.

  “You are her enemy!” he half whispered, eyes blazing with hatred. “Every time you open your mouth you prove it! And you drag others with you into heresy and apostasy and treason!”

  “ ‘For it will come to pass that the wise man will speak wisdom to the fool, and the fool will not recognize it.’ ”

  Hahskans had no idea how he managed to get the words out as he stared up into that hate- filled glare. It was part of the same passage from The Book of Langhorne he’d already cited, and for an instant, he thought his captor was going to slash his throat then and there. In fact, a part of the priest hoped he would.

  But the scar- faced man made himself stop. He twisted the hair in his left hand hard enough to make Hahskans hiss with anguish despite all he could do, then threw the captive’s head to one side and stepped back.

  “I told them you wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to say,” he said then, calmly, almost caressingly. “They thought you might, but I knew. I’ve listened to you preach, you worthless son- of- a-bitch. I know exactly what kind of—”

  “That’s enough, Rahn.”

  Hahskans hadn’t heard the door open again behind him, but now he turned his head and saw another man. This one wore the purple habit of the Order of Schueler and a priest’s cap with the brown cockade of an under- priest, and Hahskans’ stomach muscles clenched as he saw him.

  The newcomer looked at Hahskans in silence for several seconds, then shook his head.

  “Young Rahn can be a bit impetuous, and his language is often intemperate, Father Tymahn,” he said. “Nonetheless, he does have a way of cutting to the heart of things. And, deep in your own heart, I’m sure, you realize even now that everything he’s said is true.”

  “No, it’s not,” Hahskans replied, and there was an odd serenity in his voice now. “You—and he—can shut your eyes if you choose. God gave you freedom of will; He won’t stop you from exercising it, no matter how you may have perverted your own understanding of His truth. But the fact that you choose not to see the sun makes it no less bright.”

  “At least you remember the words of the Holy Writ, I see.” The Schuelerite’s smile was thin. “It’s a pity you’ve chosen to turn your back on its meaning. ‘I have established His Holy Church as He has commanded me, and I give it now into your care, and the care of your fellows, chosen of God. Govern it well, and know that you are my chosen inheritors and the shepherds of God’s flock in the world.’ Langhorne gave that charge to the vicarate, not to me, and most assuredly not to you. When you raise your voice in impious attacks on the vicarate, you attack Langhorne and God Himself!”

  “I do not,” Hahskans said flatly, the words measured and cold. “In the very next verse, Langhorne said, ‘See that you fail not in this charge, for an accounting shall be demanded of you, and every sheep that is lost will weigh in the balance of your stewardship.’ Vicar Zhaspahr and his friends should have remembered that, because somehow I doubt God will forget it when their time comes to face Him. I am not He, to demand that accounting, but I am a priest. I, too, am a shepherd. I, too, must one day give my accounting, and I will lose none of my sheep for a ‘Grand Inquisitor’ so lost to corruption and ambition that he casts entire realms to fire and destruction on a whim!”

  The Schuelerite’s eyes glittered, yet he was more disciplined than the scar-faced man. His nostrils might flare, and anger might darken his face, but he made himself draw a deep breath.

  “Shan- wei can entrap men in many ways,” he said coldly. “And arrogance of spirit, the sheer vanity that sets your own intellect higher than God’s holy word, is one of the most seductive. But Mother Church is always prepared to welcome home even the worst of sinners, if their repentance and contrition are genuine.”

  “Or if the Inquisition tortures them long enough,” Hahskans returned grimly.

  “Sparing the flesh and losing the soul is scarcely the path of godly love,” the Schuelerite said. “And in your own case, Father, you’ve done enormous damage to Mother Church. We cannot permit that. So we offer you a choice. Renounce your heresy, your lies, your false accusations and vile assault on the very foundations of God’s creation in this world, and Mother Church will once again embrace you.”

  “You mean you want me to stand in my pulpit once more and lie.” Hahskans shook his head. “I won’t. You and I both know I’ve spoken nothing but the truth. I won’t renounce it at the command of someone who continues to serve the filth and corruption festering at the heart of the Temple.”

  “Schueler knows how to deal with Mother Church’s enemies,” the Schuelerite said ominously, and Hahskans surprised both of them with a short, sharp bark of laughter. It was a sound of contempt, no
t humor.

  “Do you think I didn’t already realize where you were headed?” He shook his head again, his eyes defiant. “I know what your master in Zion did to Archbishop Erayk, and I know the true reason he did it. For myself, I have no love for the Empire of Charis, but the Church of Charis knows God’s enemies when it sees them. So do I. And I know who I choose to stand with.”

  “You speak bravely now,” the Schuelerite said coldly, softly. “You’ll change your tune soon enough when you realize Shan- wei will not stretch forth her hand to save you from God’s just wrath.”

  “I may.” Hahskans made no effort to hide the fear both of them knew was coiled at his core like some frozen serpent, yet his voice was steady. “I’m only a man, not an Archangel, and the flesh is weak. But what ever may be about to happen to my flesh, I will face God unafraid. I’ve done only what He commanded all of His priests to do. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes along the way. All men do that, even those called to His ser vice. But in this much, at least, I’ve made no mistake, and you and I both know that’s the true reason I’m here. You have to shut me up before I do even more damage to that whoremonger Clyntahn.”

  “Silence!”

  The Schuelerite lost his temper at last, and his open palm smashed across Hahskans’ face. His arm came back the other way, backhanding the bound priest, and Hahskans grunted in anguish as he tasted blood and more blood erupted from his nostrils. Only the cords binding him to the chair kept him in it.

  The Schuelerite stepped back abruptly, rigid arms straight down at his sides, and Hahskans spat a thick gobbet of blood on the ware house floor.

  “So telling the truth about Clyntahn is a worse crime than ‘betraying’ Mother Church, is it?” he asked then, his voice thicker as he was forced to breathe through his mouth.

  “You profane God’s very air with every word you speak,” the Schuelerite told him flatly. “We cast you out. We commit you to the outer darkness, to the corner of Hell reserved for your dark mistress. We expunge your name from the children of God, and strike you forever from the company of redeemed souls.”