The warrior monks joined their lines and passed between a tavern and a whorehouse, entering the narrow cobbled confines of the inner town, where the ground rose and fell and streets meandered and divided and joined in a bewildering warren that only the native could navigate. Here it would be hard for a foreign army to fight, and boys of the town would play at ambushing enemies with slings long before they reached fighting age. Wood and wattle and daub buildings, from which plaster and whitewashing cracked and peeled, leaned toward each other, or extended their garrets across to meet with others and form dark tunnels beneath. Wives threw the contents of chamber pots into the street or pails of dirty water. Kites and crows flew into walls as they tried to escape the marching men, leaving off their pecking at the refuse, among which pigs snuffled, while matted mongrels glared and growled and backed into shadowy spaces, snarling to display their yellowed teeth. The sound of singing came from one window in the local dialect, and from another the sing song language of the far east questioned one of the guttural languages of the south. A woman and man argued; the man roared, visible in the open doorway, and then a pot smashed into the wall behind him while the woman screamed about bastard children. Through this and more they marched, agilely narrowing their ranks in narrower streets, then widening them when they emerged into wider lanes or open squares, splitting their ranks at one intersection and re-joining them at another, relishing the familiarity of the terrain and proud in the knowledge that with that familiarity and the discipline of their order they could quickly crush any invading force.
Eventually they reached the Quarter of Blood, named for the Monks and their blood red armour, mark of their god, and convenient disguise for true blood in the heat of war, so that enemies might not know if they were injured. The quarter itself was separately fortified from the rest of the town. As they approached the gatehouse a group of young girls ran off squealing and giggling to their sisters or mothers, who came out with fearful looks on their faces. Anxious eyes watched the passing Crimson Monks as they marched into the open spaces of the quarter, so different from the town beyond. They congregated in the central square, misnamed because circular, with its great statue of the god of war, a giant gorging on a handful of human flesh, some armoured men, some unarmoured, some women, even children, for War spared none in his appetite. The statue towered higher than even the towers of the gatehouse through which they had entered, a ghastly warning to any foolish enough to try and take the quarter by force of this most terrifying of gods which the monks served. Waiting around the statue and streaming from the adjoining streets were many women, looking for the familiar faces which would tell them their lovers had survived this most recent war. When they spotted the men they feared dead they smiled, and ran to them, and only now did the discipline of the men break down, the ranks fragmenting as some women threw themselves on their lovers with wild abandon, wrapping legs around waists, buttocks supported in the men’s hands, while others shyly called out and waited for their man to come to them. Many cried, and not only the women. The Nuns of Love also came out from their convent, nestling beside the chapter house of the Monks of War.
The grand chapter house of the Monks of War was the quadruple towered western gate of the city’s fortified walls. From it extended the quarter’s streets like the spokes of half a cart wheel. Families and servants, and the many businesses that served the needs of the wealthy order resided here. The businesses here paid no duties, neither did the order’s merchant vessels in the port; and this and many other privileges marked the favour of the duke, whom the monks served above all other paying customers. Mercenaries but with a difference, honour bound as no other mercenary forces were to their patron. They would fight for others as mercenary forces, but never against the dukes of Vrong Veld.
A remarkably beautiful woman approached Jasper. Her raven black hair fell straight all the way down her back. Her eyes were like the rarest creamy jade, and slanted gently upward at the outer edges. Her high cheekbones were delicate and her nose straight above the sensually thick lips of her small mouth. Abbess of the convent of Love. Like all nuns and abbesses of Love she always wore a gossamer thin dress as a habit which seemed to reveal more than it concealed of her exquisite body, which was lithe, with the slim shapeliness of her far eastern heritage. She had been brought as a child slave along the great trading route to the east, the Silk Sea, that washed between the shores of the cold Northern Steppes and the kingdom of Vrongwe. In the markets of the port she had been bought by the duchess and given as an offering to the Temple of Love. The suvkena, the high priestess of the Vrong Veld temple, had freed her, then fascinated her with a skilful combination of seduction and power. The abbess had once said with self-mockery to Jasper that she too had been seduced. She, to whom no man could say no, had not been able to say no to the suvkena of the Vrong Veld Temple of Love, and had quickly joined the Convent of Love. Hwe Li now placed her hand against his chest, her long, elegant fingers playing a gentle drumbeat that uncannily matched the beat of his heart.
“The warrior returns,” she said. As always he could not be sure whether the description was ironic or sincere. No man could make him doubt his prowess. Only Hwe Li. And yet, he never felt weak with her. The heat of his passion for war in her found another passion; stronger than war, stronger even than the lust for blood when the battlefield resounded with clashing iron and steel all around. He took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely, and she folded her body into his, as if her contours were the perfect image of his need.
When they parted he said, “My lady, may War ever protect the House of Love.”
“May Love ever satisfy War.”
Formalities over, he asked her, “Don’t you ever get cold in that? Even in the snows of winter you wear the same.”
She looked mysterious, saying, “Love warms my body like Sun warms Earth,” then smiled at his serious look, adding matter of factly, “It’s a spell. A very simple one really.”
“It would be handy on a winter campaign.”
“I must teach you then.”
“Always I have more to learn from you.”
“No more than I from you.”
“I can’t stay long, we march tomorrow.”
“But I will have the pleasure of your company tonight?”
“I must speak with the duchess first. Duty before pleasure.”
“Then I wait upon the pleasure of the duchess.”
He called over a groom. “Prepare a palfrey for me.” The groom ran off, darting dextrously through the ranks of warrior monks, now swelled by the townspeople and the porters who had followed them from the quay. Some of the warhorses were arriving now too, looking slightly worse for wear. They would recover their land legs like the men, soon enough. Pages led them to the stables to be fed and watered and fussed over by grooms.
Chapter 35: Jasper: Vrong Veld
Jasper rode out along the causeway, which was barely wide enough for a cart to traverse. The waves crashed against the causeway, throwing plumes of salty foam into the air. On the other side the waters of the harbour were calm, except for the push of the rising tide. Ships rocked gently by the docks, their masts tilting side to side, and small fishing boats were sailing in with their catch, or hoisting full nets from their holds onto the docks, spilling multi-coloured piles on the wooden planks for sorting. Jasper crossed the last of the wooden bridges. These arched over the parts of the causeway which had not been artificially raised above the high tide sea. They could function as natural moats if the bridges were destroyed. The eminence of the ducal island rose before him, the bright white of its limestone cliffs not visible from this angle. A short way ahead a gentle slope climbed before abruptly zigzagging as the rise steepened. High above the causeway, the path arrived at the barbican of the castle’s outer curtain wall. From the harbour and the sea the black granite of the curtain walls contrasted strangely with the white of the limestone, and from the foot of the climb the soaring towers of the keep seemed to reach all the way to the
clouds, like the gloomy black fingers of a buried ancient giant trying to bring down the lowering sky on mortal heads.
The path up, like the causeway, was narrow, only more so. From the bottom of the slope only a single horse could ride up, and no more than two men abreast could walk this way. Then, when it zigged before zagging, it narrowed even further between a precipitous drop and a limestone cliff face. Any lesser horseman would dismount at this point and lead his horse up past the bends of the path, or tether his horse below, but Jasper, with the knightly equestrianism of the Monks of War, stayed in his saddle. At the top he hailed the gatehouse. Seeing the tabard of the Crimson Monks the sentries saluted him as he passed. The drawbridge was already down over its pit of spikes and the portcullis up, since it was impossible to reach this point without having been visible for several minutes.
He passed through the outer bailey to a second gatehouse in the first inner curtain wall, then through the middle bailey to a third in the inmost curtain wall, beyond which lay the inner bailey and keep. Both outer and middle bailey were packed with the wooden buildings of the lesser castle servants, so numerous as to form a small town in themselves, but no houses leaned in rickety senility toward each other here as in the town below. Everything was well ordered, with the prim neatness of proud officialdom. Every house and hall and kitchen and stable and mews and coup was well maintained, every groom, cook, baker, scullion, laundress and turnspit liveried in the black and gold of the dukes Vrong Veld. Every garden, whether of vegetables or herbs was laid out in neat rows, and clearly demarcated from adjacent buildings. Where the buildings were more sparse, freshly scythed lawns abounded, watered in the drier months from huge cisterns which lined the curtain walls at equal intervals. A mill, driven by a mule tethered to a wheel, turned throughout the day, grinding the grain needed to supply the bakers to feed the populous ducal household. Whatever the defensive function of the baileys had once been, they now served as the locale of a bustling community of service and its own domestic needs. There were even a jail and pillory for punishment and humiliation of servants guilty of misdemeanours, and an execution block for more serious malefactors.
In the inner bailey were the great hall, connected to the guard chamber and presence chamber, and beyond them the withdrawing chamber and private ducal apartments – all built only the last century in more fashionable style than the gloomy ancient keep – and the service buildings for them: banqueting hall, kitchens, bakery, infirmary, herbarium and chancery; chapels, dedicated to many gods, but especially to that eternally inseparable couple, the goddess of Love and the god of War. At one end were the guest chambers, for high ranking visitors and others especially favoured by the duke and duchess. All these buildings were arranged around a series of courtyards in the southern fashion. Beyond the hall complex was the pleasure garden, now bursting with summer colour, a fountain spurting at its centre, and beside it the zoo, with its odd menagerie – of lean white furred mountain lions from the Dividing Range, black bears from the northern forests, leopards from the jungles beyond Kemet, and many beasts for which Jasper could not name or even guess the origin, like something that looked vaguely like a horse, but with legs and neck so long it stood as tall as a tree. Behind them all the keep soared, intimidating, gloomy, and no longer used for anything but stabling, storage, garrison and treasury.
Across the grass bailey the liveried servants ran to and fro about their various tasks. Jasper dismounted and handed his reins to a waiting groom, who bowed and led her away to away to the stables. Though Jasper, like all Monks of War, had renounced family connections when entering the order, so that formally he had no noble rank, the people of Vrong Veld, and especially the castle, treated the warrior monks with the same automatic respect they would the minor nobility.
He strode through the courtyard and entered the hall. Some courtiers milled about. Men at arms lined the walls, wearing tabards bearing the arms of Vrong Veld over black chain armour, girded with golden pommelled swords in black scabbards and holding halberds with black shafts and gold plated tips. Two stood with halberds crossed at the far end. A minor vassal of the duke, tall, plump, with a pate as bald as a tonsured monk’s, was trying to argue his way past the guards. They stood impassive, blocking his path.
“But I’m fifth cousin to the duchess. Family!”
They ignored his pleading, but raised their halberds to allow Jasper passage, then lowered them again as the fifth cousin spluttered in protest, “why do you let him in?” In the guard chamber others luckier than the cousin submitted to searching for hidden weapons and waited patiently for their turn. The guards at the far end parted their halberds for Jasper and he entered the presence chamber.
On the walls hung tapestries along which marched generations of dukes of Vrong Veld, all the way back to the possibly mythic founder of the line. A dozen guards, attired like those in the guard chamber and great hall lined the walls. The ceiling was a field of black across which bounded golden harts. The ebon throne was upholstered in sable velvet and canopied with sable silk, both, like the ceiling, overleaped by tiny golden harts. While others would here bow to the empty ducal throne before addressing the duchess, Jasper’s order bent the knee to none but their god. He did, out of the formal politeness learned in his youth, bow slightly to the duchess, who sat in a plain but comfortable looking seat beside the throne. Beside her stood the chancellor and a scribe.
Duchess Alma was a small woman, with little of the grace of form expected of high born ladies but rather, a sturdy, almost muscular build. She was of southern heritage, being originally a princess of ancient Kemet, dusky skinned with small quick dark eyes that could appraise a man with a glance, thin lips and a delicate chin that concealed a will of iron. Her hair was plaited to hang down on either side of her face, surrounded by cylindrical meshes of silver, and a slender circlet of gold divided her high brow in equal dusky parts, while gossamer woven with tiny sparkling jewels of all imaginable kinds was pinned to the crown of her coiffure and cascaded with rainbow brilliance down the back and sides of her hair. Her gown was of sable samite threaded with patterns of gleaming gold, images of nature and the hunt, bloodhounds and hawks, roe deer and hares, and bordered with wild roses and their thorns. Though she was not unattractive, Jasper reflected, not for the first time, that she was more thorn than rose.
She waved away the chancellor and scribe, then commanded the guards to leave.
When the others had left the presence chamber, Jasper addressed the duchess, “Your Grace, I come willingly.”
“Not as bidden?”
“I choose to come, hearing of your wish.”
The duchess smiled. “It’s well for me that the redoubtable Monks of War always choose what I would wish.” He smiled in his turn. Then her expression became more serious. “I know some of my lord’s plans. Much is afoot in the capital, and Augustyn’s scheming finds its counterpart in Amery’s own.”
“I understand he needs me.”
“I fear he may have greater need than he realises. Augustyn is not a man to trifle with without consequences. Amery is proud, and he’s right to be, but with so much ambition, and so much to be gained or lost in the capital at the end of the mad king’s reign…I fear he may wager the future of his heir against the hope of a crown for his own head. Perhaps he will only lose his own head, but with that maniac usurper on the throne, and the upstart scion of a silk merchant who put him there whispering in his ear, a grimmer fate may await us.”
“You think he aims so high?”
“I know my husband, and he’s always confided in me. But now he’s wary. He’s right to be. Messages can be intercepted. And even if he plotted nothing, the king is mad. He will see treachery in a sycophant’s sweet murmurings. But still, despite his too incomplete information to me, by hints I guess at his plans. And you’re to be part of these?”
“You’re asking me? I only do as I’m told.”
“A commander of the Crimson Monks follow orders now?” She raised an eye
brow in mock amusement.
“Only from the master of our order, who only submits to the arkon of War, who is the voice of our god in this world. But the master has not yet instructed me that the arkon commands me not to do as the duke wishes.”
“Semantics.” Her eyes crinkled with a smile that did not reach her lips, and yet, there was falseness in that smile all the same. The depths of her eyes spoke more of barely restrained anger and pride than amusement. “Tell me.” Her tone was commanding, not uncommon in her but rare when addressed to Jasper.
Having no detailed information yet, he thought it unwise to antagonise the duchess, so simply told her the truth, “He asks me to march on the capital. He doesn’t tell me why.”
Her small dark eyes observed him carefully and she leaned forward on her seat. Most would be discomfited by such close scrutiny from the redoubtable duchess. But as much as Jasper respected her strength of will he was not most men. He stared back with cold impassiveness. There was tension in the air between them, then she sighed and leaned back.
“You would tell me, of course.”
“Of course, Your Grace…unless the duke asked me not to.” He allowed himself a slight smile, too slight to turn his scar into a leer.
She laughed then, but there was little warmth in the sound. “Such loyalty without submission! You are a rare ally, monk.”
Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar Page 34