by Danny Macks
“Where is this true king now?”
Pretending to be dead.
If Chad could touch the sword without harm, he could claim to be king, at least temporarily. He was tall and strong and his lineage was well known. If the true king didn’t want the job, no one would contest it. And wasn’t the job of the Winter Champion to prepare the way for the king?
Chapter Fourteen – Approval of the Church
Jeb returned to the campsite with several rabbits in the early morning light when he saw Inius signing with a grey ethereal, out of sight of the bargemen and their morning preparations. “Who’s our guest?”
“Jeb, this is the Grey, tutor to the kings of Kibus.” Inius didn’t sign when he spoke. “I’m not sure what he is trying to say, I’m not good enough with his language but I think he is saying that war is brewing.”
“He’s an old ethereal,” Jeb said, signing automatically as he spoke, “but he’s not the Grey. He’s lying to you.”
I fear the problem is with translation, your majesty. Your servant simply misunderstood. I am a grey: an elder among my kind.
Jeb glanced at Inius, but the older lord seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the ethereal’s rapid signing.
“Call me Jeb. This is -- Lord Ravnos.” Jeb didn’t know a sign for Inius. “What do they call you?”
The one you call Nimbus called me Shade.
“Shade?” Inius asked, again without signing. “Isn’t that a bit like naming a dog 'Dog'?”
“It’s a nickname,” Jeb said. “They don’t use signs when talking to each other, so it makes sense for their nicknames to be well known signs. It's simpler for everyone involved than ‘His Eminence Shade of Cormeum, High Priest of the Nirvanist Church, Grand Auditor of the Vault of Tualias.”
Inius drew his sword. “You’re a corry?”
Put away your sword, child. It cannot harm me. My message is unchanged: Cormeum prepares for war.
“What was that?”
“He said put away your sword,” Jeb said to Inius before turning his attention back to Shade. “If Cormeum is going to war, why warn us?”
I am warning all the lords in the hope that they will rise up against you and your seneschal and prevent this calamity.
“King Oberon isn’t my seneschal.”
Oberon has been poisoned. The one who calls himself Prince Pious rules in your name. By your own kingdom’s rules, a lord is responsible for his liegemen.
Somebody else was trying to shove Jeb into a corner. Making him responsible for problems other people could handle better. “Go away.”
Shade stiffened. You are not my king.
Jeb took a slow calming breath. “My apologies. What I meant to say was thank you for your message and we will give your news all due consideration.”
Shade bowed and faded from view.
“How much of that did you understand?”
“Every tenth word or so. Most lords know a few military signs and all this Shade needs to communicate is ‘war’ and ‘east’ to get a reaction.”
“He said he did it to foster an uprising against the king.”
Inius scratched his chin. “Then he doesn’t know us very well. Threat of invasion would galvanize the lords to work together, not start a civil war.”
“Cormeum has a council instead of a king, correct? What if all this was to get the council to work together? We prepare for war and they react to our preparations.”
“We, m’lord?” Inius grinned. “How long have you been talking to ethereals? I’ve never seen anyone’s hands move that fast.”
“Most ethereals can’t sign. They don’t communicate with each other that way, It’s easier to fetch someone like the Grey, who can sign, when they want to talk to a human, instead of learning for themselves.”
“You’re dodging the question, your majesty.”
“If you think signing makes me king, you haven’t spent much time around the Merchants Guild in Erroll City on market day.”
*****
The weather turned overcast and the morning chill that had become a part of the season didn't depart by midday. After the meeting with Shade, Inius was thoughtful and uncharacteristically silent on the boat. To satisfy the lord’s curiosity, Jeb taught Inius several common merchant signs and a few, lesser-known signs, but he still kept catching Inius staring at him and Midnight, frowning.
Inius’ gaze reminded Jeb of the way people used to look at him before his parents died. With nothing better to do, he watched the two massive draft horses pulling the barge easily along the well-worn track beside the river. He didn't like boats and he decided he didn't like being cargo more. He felt useless.
A voice pulled him from his reverie. “How tall is she, thirteen hands?”
“Fourteen,” Jeb replied curtly.
Courtesy, Inius signed from the other side of the barge.
Jeb nodded and turned back to the boatman. “I’m told his breed average that size. Since the colt is a firstborn, he might grow to be a touch smaller. How big are yours, Orin, isn’t it?”
Orin nodded and smiled at the two huge draft horses on the shore, slowly pulling the nearly empty flat-bottomed barge upstream. “Twenty hands each. Sometimes we haul cargo north. This is nothing for them. There’s a village up ahead. Tomorrow, we’ll stop there before sundown.”
Jeb saw Inius still watching him, sighed and joined the lord at the barge’s rail. He contemplated the water instead of his lord, gathering his words. Inius needed to understand. “How much do you know about immanence?”
“I must admit I am not very religious …”
“Humor me,” Jeb interrupted. “What does immanence mean?”
“At its base, the term means that the holy infuses the mundane -- that the soul infuses the body.”
Jeb nodded and skipped a stone out of his pocket across the water. “Which is why the king’s sword will char the blood of a living person, but not harm a corpse.”
“Other than hack it apart the usual way,” Inius jested.
Jeb smiled politely, but didn’t think he could ever laugh when talking about that blade. “And what if the soul is lordly or a guild master? What effect does that have on the body?”
Inius considered the question before answering. “I disagree with the church here. The prevailing wisdom is that immanent souls improve the bodies they inhabit, but anyone who has bred animals knows that breeding plays a much bigger role. I think of the dead as competing for bodies. Immanent souls, being stronger, gain first pick the way stallions will push aside other horses at the feeding trough.”
“However it happens, the stronger the soul, the stronger the body that soul inhabits.”
“I don’t see where you are going here.”
“I named my horse Midnight because he is black, not because he is the Midnight,” Jeb lied. “He’s clever and I adore him, but he’s a garron -- and a little one at that -- not a massive charger. No matter how he acts or what tricks he learns, the church, the lords and the people will never accept him as the Winter Stallion. Thinking that way is heresy.”
“You didn’t strike me as religious.”
“I’m not. My parents were executed for heresy, during the Peasants Revolt. They saw a boy child with the body of a girl and thought it meant something good.”
“Your parents died over you, and that's when you gave up on the crown.”
“I can’t be king. Just like he can’t be a charger.”
“For a sixteen year old, you seem awfully certain about what you can and cannot be.”
Jeb shrugged. His chest was hurting and he didn’t want to talk any more. “Just don’t sell Midnight at the capital or do anything with us ‘for our own good’, okay?”
“I’m not your lord. Wulf Thesscore is.”
“Baron Thesscore will respect my wishes.”
Inius hmmed and fell silent.
*****
After Shade’s visit, the nightmares began again. Jeb was used to his nightmares -- ban
dits, snow, starving people, and the black death of the King’s Sword, with the blade itself never visible. He’d had them his whole life and he never cried out or thrashed in his sleep.
Inius, on the other hand, woke sobbing. But whatever he dreamed about, it wasn’t war: he never woke primed for a fight. Jeb never asked what Inius dreamed about. Courtesy would demand he talk about his own dreams if he did.
Chapter Fifteen – Love for the People
Jeb gazed ahead but couldn't see the village. The sun was low enough in the sky that they should be close, just past a batch of trees on the same side of the river as the tow horse path. But beyond the trees, he couldn't see the tell-tale smoke of cooking fires.
In the distance, on the opposite shore from the village and the draft horses, a woman in a ochre-yellow dress came running down the shore toward them, waving her arms.
“Rager! There’s a rager in the village!” she yelled when she was close enough to be heard.
The man with the draft horses stopped and looked back to Orin, who let go of the tiller and let the current pull the boat to the shore away from the woman. Inius leapt for his armor and Jeb rushed to help him.
“Stay on the boat. I need to deal with this.”
“No, m’lord. If a rager finds the boat, surrounded by strangers is the worst place for me to be.”
Inius scowled at Jeb, but nodded curtly and Jeb helped him dress.
Once armored, Inius grabbed the tiller and the boat slowly headed back out into the current.
“The ropes aren't long enough to reach the far shore,” Orin said.
“Get me as close as you can.” Inius looked to Jeb. “How well can you swim?”
Jeb gasped. “You’re wearing fifty pounds of armor!”
Inius nodded. “And I would find it inconvenient if I had to pull you out of the river too.”
“That’s as close as I can get.”
Jeb dove into the river and swam as hard as he could. Maybe he could find a branch or log that he could use to help pull Ravnos out of the water. He looked back as he reached the shore and saw Ravnos kicking madly with both hands on the handle of his floating poleaxe and Midnight in the water behind him. The boatmen were fighting to keep hold of Mother.
“Let her go!” Jeb yelled. Mother swam faster than her colt and the encumbered lord. All three reached the shore at about the same time.
“The bigger this crowd gets, the less I like it.” Inius trudged up on the shore, breathing heavily.
“The Songs don’t affect horses.” Jeb had never actually met a rager, and didn't know anyone who had, and he wasn't sure where he had heard it, but he knew it was true. Maybe he had dreamed it.
“I’m Gloom-lord Ravnos and this is my manservant, Jeb. What's your name?”
The woman looked from Jeb’s wet chest, muttered, “manservant?” then, at normal volume said, “I’m Peony, m’lord.”
“Yes, manservant,” Jeb growled back.
“I believe you owe my man an apology.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“The rager, m’lord?”
“Yes, Jeb. We will table this for now. Stay behind me, you two.”
Inius found a path back toward the village and followed it, sloughing water as he moved and his armor pressed on the garments underneath. Jeb and Peony fell into step several yards behind him with the horses trailing behind them.
Jeb had heard stories about ragers, people whose life had taught them snippets of the Rage Song then compelled them to spread that hatred until people killed each other and finally killed them. He had dreamed of them too, but like his dreams about the King's Sword, they never contained the actual Song, only its effects.
“How do you put up with him?” Peony asked quietly. “He seems awfully full of himself.”
Jeb considered the armored lord ahead of him. She was right. Lord Ravnos worked him like a horse -- had actually called him Horse -- and he was always so damn superior. A reasonable person would have simply stepped off the boat and taken the main road into the village instead of travelling the hard way just to show off. Jeb only now realized how much he had always secretly loathed Inius. His hand drifted toward his dagger. If he was quiet, the insufferable ass would never see it coming.
Midnight smacked Peony to the ground with both forehooves then started hopping on top of her body, driving her bloodily into the dirt. Jeb hadn't realized she was softly humming until the sound abruptly cut off.
Ravnos rushed to intervene and Jeb stepped in the way, drawing his knife.
“Stay away from him, you bastard!”
Ravnos sang and the hatred oozing through every pore of Jeb’s body suddenly evaporated with the first note. He moved to step around Jeb, but Jeb held up a hand, stopping him. It was too late. Peony was dead.
Midnight continued mutilating the corpse with his hooves.
“I thought horses were immune.”
“I think they are,” Inius said, “or he would have stopped when I sang.”
When her head finally cracked open under his blows like a bloody melon and grey stuff oozed out, Midnight stopped jumping on Peony’s body. He trotted to his mother with his tail high, but she backed away. Unconcerned, he rolled in the grass and she eventually calmed enough to walk over and start grooming him.
“Why did Peony warn us?”
“To split us up and work on us a few at a time. To direct her Song so that no one attacked her. After anyone most capable of helping had departed the barge and taken the road on the opposite shore, she would have been free to sing to the men on the boat after we left. When you attacked me, I’m certain she would have run away before the victor could turn on her and gone back to the boat to get more ‘help’.”
“What did this to her?”
“Rape, a lost love, a painful moon-time.” Inius shrugged. “We may never know, and it does no good to worry about what cannot be changed. There may be more than one rager. Given my Song’s ability to neutralize Rage, how about I guard your back instead of the reverse?”
Leading the way into danger, without armor, was foolish, but Jeb knew he couldn’t forgive himself if he did nothing. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was bait rather than heroic as he proceeded the lord and horses toward the village.
Jeb smelled rancid rotting flesh and heard the buzzing flies before he saw the first body, by the bridge that led back across the river into the village. The corpse was facedown with two crossbow bolts in its back and maggots moving through the flesh.
“Somebody is wasting ammo,” Inius said as he opened his visor and pulled down his gorget. Jeb scowled, but saw Inius scanning the area, looking anywhere but at the body, and swallowing as if fighting not to retch.
“These bolts hit their target. Wouldn’t a miss be a waste of ammo?” Jeb jested.
“When you can, glean your bolts. You never know when you will need them again.”
The putrid corpse was too far gone to identify if it had been a man or a woman. Jeb pulled the bolts out of the corpse with a wet, sucking sound and wiped them on the grass.
Inius vomited. “Good man,” he said as he wiped his mouth. “Let’s see if we can find the crossbow those bolts belong to.”
“Weak stomach?”
Inius didn’t look embarrassed or even concerned. “Given how old that corpse is, I think you’ll vomit too, before we're done. There’s no shame in that. I got it out of the way, first.”
*****
The search for survivors quickly became a catalogue of corpses, most of them dead from more horrific tortures than a crossbow. Inius kept a distracting dialogue through it all. While most of the deaths had been horrific, the body count was low enough that Jeb started to have hope of survivors. Jeb's stomach empted and he was reduced to coughing up bile before they reached the last building, a church at the top of a small hill.
Jeb heard the buzzing noise from within before he reached for the door. Inius grabbed the handle and held it closed.
&nbs
p; “There’s no need to go in there. There’s no survivors here.”
Jeb glared at Inius and yanked the door open. “I need to see.”
The church was lined with pews, but had a wide aisle that led to several steps and the statue of the god-king.
The statue was faceless and nine feet tall with a crown on his head and his hands resting on a jeweled sword. Above the man, a dragon hovered with outspread wings and an intertwined sun and moon hung above the dragon. The holy king: man, spirit and god. Around the statue and on the pews, in various states of dismemberment, lie the bulk of the village's population.
“They came to the king for sanctuary, and died for it.” Jeb wasn’t sure he had said it aloud, or just thought it. In the depths of their rage, no one had hacked at the statue, although they had fought close enough to the base to splatter blood on the king’s feet.
“Righteous rage is no different than any other type,” Inius said, following the direction of Jeb’s gaze. “No matter what they thought about each other, they died convinced the spirit of the king was on their particular side.”
Jeb nudged a corpse near the door with his foot and a cloud of flies flew into the air. “There's no holy-dragon spirit. The king who believes in his own infallibility is a fool.”
Inius backed away as the flies swirled around Jeb and out the open door. “A heretical comment, but not that unusual, given your upbringing and King Oberon’s growing dementia. Overall, ‘endure and trust in the holy spirit’ is good advice. Short term problems do often get better on their own. But a royal wasn’t needed here, spirit or otherwise. This isn’t the king’s fault. These people lacked only one thing or they would have survived.”
“A squad of trained soldiers?”
Inius shook his head. “One person able and willing to do the right thing, instead of succumbing to his emotions.”
Jeb snorted. “Are you saying peasants are too emotional? They did this to themselves?”