Linguid practically jumped back from Lawrence.
If the world of the nobility was a small one, the world of mercenaries that were paid to fight for them was a small one as well. Could they escape from this? Even if he said nothing, if they went through Katerina’s things, there would be nothing left to do.
“They made important enemies left and right, and finally their leader was hung on suspicion of being a pagan. No matter how you reckon it, there’s no way she’d turn into a friend of the Church.”
“I-is this true?!” said Linguid, his voice sounding like a strangled chicken.
The man looked askance at Linguid’s irritating voice and then hefted his spear threateningly. “Just ask her yourself.” He grinned and not only because he had probably earned himself a bonus.
His eyes burned for revenge – no – for the chance to kill someone strong, someone whose glory was in the past.
“S-so? Is this true?” Linguid demanded as he looked at Fran.
Fran looked down and said nothing. There was no evading this. Fran’s appearance and characteristics were unmistakable.
Lawrence directed his gaze at the cottage, then spoke.
“I’m sure the angel knows the truth.”
“Wh-what? What do you…” Mean, Linguid was going to finish, but he didn’t get the chance.
Fran swatted away the spear that was pointed at her like it was a fly.
Lawrence was just as impressed as anyone. It was easy enough to describe, but with a spearpoint at one’s belly, actually doing it was not nearly so easy. It took either long experience or else a deep and abiding faith greater than any fear.
Fran took a step forward, and Linguid staggered back, perhaps able to feel the implacable something within her.
She took two steps forward, and Linguid took three back, and the man whose spear she had slapped away again pointed it at her.
“Fran Vonely, aren’t you?”
Instead of answering him, she removed her hood. “And if I say I’m not?”
Her movement when pushing the spear aside and walking forward had been so natural that the man had not been able to react immediately. Fran looked back at him and smiled.
“The villagers called this faithful nun a witch simply for their own meager profit. And now these sly nobles are paying their gold to have her dubbed a saint, this time for profits far vaster. And here, this landlord would destroy all trace of her just to build a water mill to satisfy his own piddling avarice. What do you think of this – of all of this?”
The man seemed not to understand what was being said, and Linguid looked at her as though she were God herself, here to deal divine justice.
Fran very distinctly smiled and then looked at Lawrence. He had no idea what she was trying to do.
He did know that very soon Holo would appear atop the waterfall, there to terrify all present. Lawrence considered that and decided to try to stop Fran.
But he was not in time – perhaps it was Katerina’s power.
“My name is Fran Vonely. Am I a saint? Or am I a witch?” She was directing her hellish sermon to the farmers from the village, most of whom had been rounded up for this duty. She projected her voice with perfect clarity. “You all know what the right thing was.”
The murmur that arose was the sound of all assembled swallowing nervously.
Most of the soldiers there were residents of Linguid’s land and knew perfectly well what they were doing. Spending their days trapped between pagan and Church beliefs, it was the faithful who always suffered the most – and who always had the most to fear.
“You’ll know for certain when you do. After all, the angel is always watching.”
There was a sound like a whistling wind – it was the sound of the man thrusting his spear without so much as a word.
He scattered the snow and cleaved the air, trying to pierce Fran.
The speed of the movements was far beyond anything Lawrence the traveling merchant could hope to stop. Very clearly, he saw the tip of the spear sink into Fran’s side.
“You witch!” the man screamed, pulling the spear back and preparing for another thrust.
“Stop–!” Lawrence shouted, trying to leap at the man, but he was too late.
But the spear only grazed the top of Fran’s shoulder, slicing her robe.
This was no miracle. A loosed arrow went into and back out of the man’s right leg.
“–Ngh!”
The man crumpled to the snowy ground, looking at his leg in disbelief, at a total loss for words. It was one of the villagers that had loosed the arrow – a hunter, by the look of him. Faces were full of fear, breathing ragged, rough.
Everyone feared death. But Fran had sparked that fear anew.
“Protect the saint!” someone shouted.
A skirmish began immediately, and it was unclear who was an ally and who an enemy.
Chaplains had nothing but words to wield on the plain of battle. Just as they could give courage to those whose legs were weak with fear, they could comfort those whose death was nigh.
There were many here who feared divine punishment for having gathered around Katerina’s cottage to harm the forest and lake where the angel’s legend lingered. And true to her reputation as the black priestess, Fran had controlled them with her words.
Though her left flank was soaked in red, her expression had not changed, and she faced the landlord and spoke. “See for yourself what the truth is.”
Lawrence thought Linguid was about to nod, but he just fell right on his backside. Such was the force of Fran’s character.
Fran turned on her heel and began to walk.
“Wh-where are you–” Lawrence knew it was a foolish question, but he was unable to stop himself from asking.
Enough blood was seeping from the wound in her side that she stained the snow red with every step. She neither turned around nor stopped, but she did answer: “To see the angel myself.”
Lawrence could not clearly hear her over the clamor of the fighting, but he understood what she meant. More than anything else, he felt the power of the faith that fairly radiated from her back.
At this late hour, it was neither hope nor delusion but pure conviction that drove her to bear witness.
He took an unthinking step, reaching out and putting his hand on his shoulder, but not to carry her back to the cottage and bandage her wound.
“Do you hear it?” Fran asked. Her voice was weak, perhaps from blood loss, and thanks to the noise around them, Lawrence asked her to repeat herself.
“It’s the howl of a beast.”
Lawrence shivered. He looked over his shoulder, knowing exactly what her words pointed to.
With animalistic roars, the men fought. Whatever their goal had been, they swung swords and spilled blood. Questions of Church or pagan were meaningless; they were each of them beasts, fighting only to preserve their own lives.
The sound, their voices, combined in a bestial roar, mixing and echoing into the sky.
But why had Fran mentioned it? Was it to mock them? Out of contempt? Or a cold laugh at this, the true nature of the world?
As Lawrence held Fran up and helped her walk, he finally realized. He had not imagined it. And it certainly had not been Holo. He recognized the sound. It reached his ears, a low howl: Oooooooooo.
At that moment, Lawrence remembered what Holo had said, that the lake was surrounded by mountains like a bowl. That the human notion of the mountains answering a shouted call was the product of their foolishness, she had said.
And then he remembered what Fran had told him in the cottage – that the water could overflow and powerfully.
Those two were the keys.
Lawrence looked up.
Next to the waterfall, like a shadow of the forest, he saw Holo’s great form. She hesitated at the unexpected developments below.
Their eyes met; Lawrence nodded.
Holo leapt up atop the waterfall.
And howled.
; The very air shook, the branches of the trees swayed, the surface of the water rippled.
Fran had told the landlord to see for himself what the truth was.
But the sight of Holo at the top of the falls, teeth bared as she bore up the moon and howled a long, long howl, was a sight both divinely awesome and monstrously terrifying.
Even Fran was rendered speechless.
Would the outcome be good or ill? Holo herself had been dubious and unwilling to emerge. But Lawrence had faith and convinced her that things would go well.
And here was the evidence. Her howl echoed across the landscape like a vast bell struck by a mallet.
Fran stiffened, and in the midst of all that, she murmured something.
“… It’s coming.”
Just as the howl subsided–
All Lawrence could hear were the breaths taken by the men, each frozen in place by Holo’s gaze as she looked down imperiously at them all.
And then it reached their ears – the low, low rumble. The distant sound of an advancing army. The sound of heaven’s footsteps.
Most lost their nerve and began to look around desperately.
The sound soon subsided.
And then nothing happened, and there was silence.
Someone pointed up at the waterfall. “H-hey, the monster, it’s gone!”
“Did we really see anything…?” another murmured.
Lawrence knew they had, and Holo had not hidden herself to try to make them think otherwise. She had just perfectly guessed what Lawrence and Fran would do.
One of the soldiers called out. “The waterfall!”
With those words, the water of the fall slowed to a trickle. And then, an instant later, the trickle disappeared into a great wave.
The wave surged, swallowing everything in its path, then crashed into the rock at the tip of the waterfall that divided its flow in half, spraying into the night sky as though to wash the moon itself clean.
What happened next was impossible to explain to anyone.
The divided force of the wave caused great twin sprays of droplets to jump into the air, glittering whitely.
And it was so cold.
The spray turned to ice, illuminated by the moonlight.
The great volume of water falling into the splash pool made a peculiar sound, like the beating of great wings.
Blown by the wind, the frozen spray flew into the sky.
This was the legend of the angel.
“… Miss Fran!” Lawrence could not help but call out her name, holding her as she fell to her knees. Her face was peaceful, but her eyes were fixed elsewhere – somewhere far, far away.
Fran slowly reached her hand out and spoke one word. “Beautiful…”
Those of the men who saw their own ugliness threw down their weapons and fled. Others fell to their knees, ashamed at their own faithlessness.
And the only one among them with true conviction turned her face to the sky, reaching for the beauty there.
The angel ascended to the heavens.
Droplets of ice glittered in the hem of the moonlight.
Epilogue
“And then what happened?!”
Hugues’s large body pressed in close, and Lawrence shrunk back in spite of himself. He pushed the man back with his hand, which made the art seller seem to come to his senses.
Hugues sat back down in his chair, and fidgeting with his clothes, he repeated the question. “So, then what happened?”
“And then the village accepted the legend of the angel as true and most definitely came to believe in Katerina’s sainthood. So that was that. However…” Lawrence sipped the mulled wine he had been offered before continuing. “… Neither the villagers nor the landlord can very well claim they saw both an angel and a monster, so they’ve decided to pretend to the rest of the world as though the whole thing never happened.”
“Ah, I see… I see.” Hugues leaned back in his chair like a boy listening to an adventure tale. He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. Heaving a heavy sigh, he seemed finally at ease.
“You seemed calmer when we actually returned,” teased Lawrence, which Hugues opened his eyes at and laughed.
“You go into a trance when things turn serious like that, after all. Still, so that’s how it all happened… When you brought her back here, I couldn’t help but wonder what had wounded Miss Fran so grievously.”
In point of fact, in Taussig the hunters and mountain men had put forth an all-out effort to tend to Fran’s wounds. The reason they had returned before she was fully healed was that the villagers would not stop fussing over her. Holo, who so hated being worshiped as a god, was delighted to discover someone who loathed attention as much as she did.
It had been three days since they had taken Fran and put the village of Taussig behind them. They had arrived in Kerube the previous night and had all immediately made for their beds – save Lawrence, who Hugues dragged downstairs to explain the events in Taussig.
“But what was behind the angel legend after all?”
Lawrence popped a piece of honeyed fruit into his mouth before answering. “An avalanche.”
“An avalanche?” Hugues repeated, stunned.
“That’s right. A huge volume of snow from the mountainside slid into the lake, making a gigantic wave that crashed into the waterfall. The sound of the heavenly army’s march was actually the sound of rushing snow.”
“S-so then, what about the beast’s howl?”
On this point, Lawrence himself was not entirely certain. But of all the possibilities, he chose the most likely one. “That was how it sounded after bouncing off of the lake. An echo, you see. This time it came from the sound of the men fighting. I’m sure sometime in the distant past there was some similar disturbance that caused it.”
Of course, the climax had been Holo’s voice, he added.
It made an amusingly good story, though – the sound of a battle calling down an angel. Going by Fran’s guess, it might have originally been the sound of a strong wind echoing off the mountain that first caused the avalanche.
Yet given his way, Lawrence liked the first story better.
“The world certainly is full of wonders.”
“That’s certain enough,” said Lawrence with a rueful grin, and Hugues’s shoulders shook with mirth.
“Still, if everything’s settled now, perhaps I ought to visit Taussig myself sometime. Though I doubt I’ll be as brave or bold as Miss Holo,” Hugues joked.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
The question of who it would be at this late hour was soon answered.
Hugues stood from his chair with a chastened grin and walked over to the door.
Unlike the wilderness where you could sleep where you liked and make noise where you liked, within the town walls there were rules regarding the hours when candles could be kept burning. With buildings raised so close to one another, a stray flame left burning in one could easily set another alight.
It seemed the town guard had noticed the light coming from the candle on the table.
“Well, then, I’ll take my leave,” said Lawrence to Hugues’s back as he stood up. If he waited for Hugues to return, he had the distinct impression that they would simply move to another room where he would be pressed for more stories, so he decided to make his retreat while he could.
He took his cup of mulled wine with him and climbed the stairs.
The steps creaked under his weight, and he followed the handrail to their room.
From the entrance, it looked like a small and rather poor building, but farther inside it became clear that it was a perfectly respectable four-story trading company.
Normally in trading companies, the higher in the building you were, the lower your status, so Lawrence and his companions being housed on the second floor was proof of Hugues’s respect for them.
Making his way to the room where Holo and Col were sleeping, Lawrence noticed a sliver of light leaking into the
hallway.
It was standard for burglars to enter from the second floor.
Lawrence peeked into the half-open door and saw that it was Fran’s room.
“Yes?” His peek was immediately noticed.
She was human but well used to traveling alone and a world apart from a mere town girl.
“I saw the light and thought there might be a burglar.”
Fran was sitting in her bed. A smile played about the corners of her eyes. “They say when caught, a burglar will always claim to have been trying to catch another burglar.”
It was the sort of story that was swapped over drinks, but considering what they had just been through, it seemed appropriate.
“It’s cold.”
“You should soothe fresh wounds with cold and old ones with heat.”
It seemed a rough method but probably an effective one. Lawrence preferred not to need the knowledge in the first place, if possible.
Chaplain – Fran had that title.
“I had always thought to end my travels once I saw the angel.”
Blue moonlight streamed in through the open window, and her body itself seemed about ready to turn into light motes and disappear.
She was luridly wrapped in bandages around her middle and over her shoulder, and the fever she had borne in Taussig had broken. And yet not once had Fran appeared even slightly weak.
Had she been unable to manage at least this much, she never would have been employed as a chaplain, responsible for the faith and morale of an entire troop.
“By travels, you mean…?” Lawrence asked.
Fran chuckled slightly. Perhaps it was a bit embarrassing for her. “I was a girl obsessed, I realize now.”
She had planned to die.
The bloodstained scriptures and the letters pressed between the pages.
Fran’s determination to find the legend of the angel could also have been called an obsession.
If those with claws and fangs are the first to die, then she truly might have been the very vanguard. And it was precisely that quality that had finally led her to the angel. But what she had thought at the end of her journey, Lawrence did not know. He did not know, but her face was beautifully peaceful now.
“We still haven’t gotten that map from you,” Lawrence prodded, which Fran turned away at, pouting.
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