The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  By the time they had dragged him clear, the blisters had disappeared from his arms, neck, and face. A moment later, they were not even red. The men had seen it before, but they marveled still. Some of them said words of prayer, others curses. Their commander was not only the luckiest man alive, he was indestructible.

  Without knowing why, Jaret led his men – not a one had been seriously injured – around to the front of the stable. A few of the soldiers were there, but they were in no condition to fight. They were black with burns, missing limbs, riddled with shrapnel, burning and broken. They crawled, pulling themselves across the ground on their bellies as if they might escape the fire that rose from their clothing, consuming them even as they sought an escape. They were dead already. The best of them would not live through the day. They would die in agony, howling and crying. Death was the best thing the legionnaires could do for them.

  Jaret tried to give the order to spare these men their suffering, to send them quickly to the peace of the Order. The whinny of a horse caught his attention instead. He turned in time to see a trio of officers leap into saddles. Arrows from the two nearest legionnaires took one of them before his horse found its stride. The others were gone, galloping at full rein down the road away from the farm. The legionnaires, arrows notched, looked anxious, as if they hoped to follow.

  “Leave them,” Jaret heard himself say. “Give peace to any who aren’t already dead then find a place to sleep. We’ll stay here for a couple of days.” Even as he said it, he could not believe the words. The men riding away were certain to bring an entire army with them, and it was unlikely to take them two days to do so. He and his men needed to be on the move, needed to be as far away from here as possible before the hunt continued. Yet he found himself walking toward the house like the warlord he used to be rather than the fugitive he had become.

  As he walked, he tried to make sense of what had happened. The oil, he realized. The crossbow bolts had cracked the barrel, started a stream, and the spark had ignited it. It had blown just as the soldiers arrived. The barrels around it, the crates and sacks, had gone with it, spewing nails and wood and fire onto the soldiers. And Jaret and his men had been protected by the bales of hay. It was another miracle, another case of an incomprehensible strategy delivering them unscathed from what should have been a disaster. But it hadn’t been a miracle. It hadn’t been luck. It had been the monk.

  He had thrown the stone, had known what would happen. And the other battles had been the same. In every one – even the one where they’d saved him – the monk had done something. At the time, his actions had seemed inconsequential, silly even. Jaret would not have noticed if not for the oddity, but in each case, he had changed the course of what had followed. Just as today, it was the monk who had turned disaster into victory. Somehow, Jaret had not made the connection until now, but it was there, and it was time for him to understand it.

  He turned to call. The monk was already behind him, matching his stride toward the house.

  #

  Lius wanted nothing more than to sit, but he knew that as soon as he hit the cushion he would be asleep, so he remained standing even as the man who, for a few brief minutes, had been Emperor motioned him toward a chair. He brushed the soot from his tattered robe instead and realized the futility of it. He had been wearing the same garment for ten days now. It was so covered with grime and salt and stink that it could stand on its own. His hands – and face, he was sure – were not much better. He had tried to wash them when there was water, but they never seemed clean for more than a few minutes.

  Always a prissy, particular boy, it may have been the dirt that bothered Lius most about what his life had become. In the Hall of Understanding, cleanliness was an obsession. The Order, as its name suggested, was found in order, in structure, in organization and uniformity. Those who sought the Order’s mysteries were typically compulsive in their need for that structure, and Lius was no exception. If he’d had time to think about it over the past week, the state of his robes, his face, his very life would have driven him insane.

  As it was, he’d had little time or energy to think of anything other than how tired and miserable he was. He was lucky to have survived, to have somehow kept going day after day. In the Hall of Understanding, his most strenuous activity had been lifting heavy books to his desk. The idea of marching through the wilderness at a soldier’s pace had been so far beyond him as to be a nightmare of comical proportions. Yet he had somehow managed it. He had spent the days in an almost meditative state, body no longer connected to mind, pain disassociated, exhaustion irrelevant until a halt was called and he collapsed to the ground in a heap. The soldiers let him be, never asked for or expected his help preparing the camp or the meal. He lived off their hospitality and had not even enough energy to thank them.

  It was only now that he had returned to something familiar that he realized how truly unfamiliar the past week had been. He shuddered as his body seemed to realize what it had been through. He looked at his robe, felt it caked to him, and recoiled from that which had seemed almost normal a few minutes before, as if being covered in filth were normal in the wilderness and only became abhorrent with a return to civilization. Forcing his hands, finally, from his robes, forcing his mind from his trials and exhaustion, Lius turned to the room.

  The familiarity that had initiated his self-repugnance was the sitting room of a fine country manor that appeared to have been abandoned. Though more rural in its stylings, sprawling and less refined, it was similar to the house where Lius had lived as a boy. It suggested that these landowners, similar to Lius’ own parents, were sufficiently successful to be comfortable while still well outside the highest levels of Imperial society, which made it even more surprising that the farm had, apparently, been abandoned. Though he knew nothing of the comings and goings of soldiers, it seemed strange that estate owners and all their serfs and servants would leave their property simply because a company of friendly soldiers had taken up residence.

  But a look around the room showed that it was not the soldiers that had driven the owners away – dust on the table, shutters unopened despite the heat of the day, long dead cinders uncleaned from the fireplace, glass on the floor from a broken window, the stain of mildew below. The house had been abandoned for months. Then he remembered the rumors of uprising that had spread through the Hall of Understanding. Could this house have been attacked? Had the soldiers been here to stop it? Were they passing through or based here permanently?

  Lius was just preparing to trace the threads of the Order, to find his answers when Jaret interrupted. “How did you know to throw that rock?” he asked from the far side of the room.

  He stopped his pacing and stared at Lius so that he felt like his robes had caught fire. Though slightly shorter than Lius and no larger in build, Jaret was as hard as a man could possibly get. His small body was perfectly honed to violence, like a knife that has been sharpened until the very sight of it will cut you. His hair was grey stubble marked with black. Even it looked sharp, standing out from his head and face like tiny spikes. His chest was thick with the stuff. It burst from the gap at the top of the vest, like a grey-black bristle brush. His arms were bare where the fire had scoured him, but there were no burns, only the small circular scars that lined every inch of skin below his neck. Dried blood mingled with the soot that covered his face, the only remaining evidence of a ragged cut on his forehead that was now just another scar. Though he had seen Jaret’s healing power before, Lius still shuddered at the thought of the blisters fading before his eyes, the arm pulling back into its socket, the cut stitching together. Yet even more disturbing was that the terrible burns did not appear to have caused the commander the slightest pain. He had watched his skin char – burns that would have crippled a normal man, would have left the strongest screaming – and had not even flinched, had simply watched as if the fire were a warm breeze on an already hot day.

  And that was only the tip of Lius unease. Seeing a man
who felt no pain, who showed no emotion, was a distraction in comparison to what Lius found every time he read Jaret’s place in the Order. For the thousandth time, he tried to understand the patterns around Jaret Rammeriz. It was like looking into a cave and wondering what passages lie in the dark. The commander existed in the Order, he impacted the patterns around him, but there was no way that Lius could find to predict what his actions would be or to change or influence those actions. He was simultaneously as immovable as a mountain and unpredictable as the creatures that had chased him from the Hall of Understanding.

  “How did you know to throw the rock?” Jaret repeated. Lius expected the commander’s tone to sharpen, his patience to strain, but there was no emotion in his voice now or ever. He looked at Lius with the same steady stare, eyes intense due to their calm certainty rather than hot emotion.

  “I . . . I . . . .” Lius stopped when he realized that he had no idea how to answer the question. Jaret had led his men into seemingly avoidable battles against increasingly outsized opponents almost every day since Lius had joined them. They should have lost men in each of those battles, should have all been dead by now. Lius, of all people, had saved them each time. No one seemed to have noticed, but he had done something in every battle to alter the outcome, but it had been Jaret that had created the possibility for him to act. Coming into the battle today, the best outcome that Lius had seen was that half the legionnaires would die or be seriously injured. Then Jaret had made a series of choices that Lius would have never seen or anticipated, and an opening had been created. Lius had exploited it, but it had been Jaret far more than Lius that had done the impossible.

  “It was not mere chance,” Jaret stated. “You threw that rock knowing that it would create the explosion. So how did you know to do it?”

  “I . . . I read the Order,” Lius said when he could not think of a lie.

  “What is the supposed to mean?”

  “It . . . it is hard to explain.” Lius kneaded his hands and stared at the rug beneath his feet. “I don’t really understand it myself.”

  “Well try.”

  “I . . . I can see . . . can see all the possibilities that exist in a given moment. I . . . it doesn’t make sense, but almost everything that happens is already set in the Order. I can see all those outcomes like a great web spread out before me.” He paused wondering how far he should go, what dangers he was inviting. What could the commander possibly think of him? Lunatic, idiot, blowhard, blasphemer?

  Jaret just stared at him until Lius could not help but continue. “Valatarian called it a tapestry, all the strings of possibility woven together into patterns. And because I can see all those strings, I can – to some extent – see what will happen if I change them. That is how I knew to throw the rock. I could see what would happen if I did, but . . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But it was you that created the possibilities for me to exploit.”

  Jaret stopped his pacing. He held up a hand and stared. Behind his eyes, Lius could see the conflict. He wanted to react, wanted to yell, wanted to denounce the blasphemy of this fallen monk, but something kept him from doing so. Something held him just as it held his emotions. What is happening in his head? Lius barely kept himself from asking the question.

  “What do you see when you look at my place in the Order?” Jaret asked. The question was said with the same certainty as all his orders and proclamations, but his eyes did not agree. They looked confused, lost, overwhelmed.

  He has no idea what’s happening? Lius realized and everything came into focus. Jaret Rammeriz could not be read or controlled because he was no longer a person. He was a manifestation of the Order. He no longer had any control over what he did or said, was trapped inside his own head as nothing more than a spectator. Everything that Jaret had done over the past week had a purpose, was dictated by the Order, was part of a larger plan that not even Lius could see. Even these questions had a purpose, were meant to create an end. Lius stumbled back. He looked at Jaret, expecting impatience. The commander’s body showed indifference, his eyes growing confusion. As a last confirmation, Lius tried to trace the Order around them, looked at all the threads of possibility, but they all disappeared into the same gaping cave.

  “I see a hole,” Lius finally answered. “I see something that I can neither read nor control. I . . . I have not been doing this for long, but I have never seen anything like it.”

  “What do you think it is? What do you think it means?”

  “You are the direct manifestation of the Order,” Lius answered before he thought, almost as if compelled. I was compelled. I am being manipulated now every bit as much as I manipulated the outcome of that battle. For some reason, Jaret Rammeriz needs to understand what is happening to him. He needs to see and accept it. And the Order has chosen me to tell him. “The Order controls your actions directly. I don’t know to what end, but the Order has a plan, and your every action is meant to further it.”

  Jaret seemed shocked. For the first time, he seemed to be in control of his own emotions, as if the Order had allowed the emotional response so he could feel the full implications of what he had heard. “But . . . but . . .” the commander stammered, seemingly struggling with the freedom he had been given as much as the revelation he’d heard. “But why would the Order want me to endanger my men? Why would it compel me to seek fights? Shouldn’t the Order seek harmony . . . peace . . . ?”

  “It is a common misunderstanding,” Lius lunged at the all too familiar fallacy, “that peace is the same as order. The Order is about conflict. It is in constant conflict. Predators kill. Fires destroy. Rivers flood. Weeds overtake gardens. Conflict is everywhere, but it is in balance. It has a purpose.”

  “So you’re saying that my actions, that all these pointless fights, have had a purpose? But why would the Order want to kill all those men today? How could that possibly further Its plan?”

  Lius had to think about that. If he, Lius, could manipulate the Order to change Its outcomes, then who could say what the Order was. Was he now the one defining the Order rather than Its creator? Was he the god? And what about the Xi Valati? What he had done was far beyond anything Lius could manage, and he had hinted that there were others more powerful than even him. So where did it end? Where was the final manipulation? And how did the unreadable, uncontrollable Jaret Rammeriz fit into it all?

  “I don’t know.” Lius finally admitted. “I have only been able to see the Order for a little more than a week, and I’ve been too exhausted to understand what I was seeing most of that time. I cannot track more than a few connections before I get lost. The larger plan, whether that be Hileil’s or someone else’s, is beyond me. But there is a reason. Someone, something, wanted these battles. And they wanted you to fight them in such a way that I could manipulate the outcome, so that your men would not be hurt, so that you would win.”

  “So that at least one survivor would escape,” Jaret added. He paced, rubbing his chin as he walked, other hand held up to keep Lius quiet. This was the commander, the legendary strategist, that Lius had always expected Jaret Rammeriz to be. He stopped, stared at the ceiling, and seemed to calculate. “By the Order,” he whispered. “It wants people to know. The way these battles have gone, word will spread like oil on water.” He paused, and a smile crept onto his face for the first time that Lius had seen. “The Order is making me into a man that the people will follow. It wants me to win. If we just follow it, we cannot possibly fail.”

  Chapter 21

  The 23rd Day of Summer

  Ipid jumped from the desk as if he’d actually been caught in the act of spying, as if it actually mattered if he had. “Enter,” he called as he looked back at Allard Stully’s desk. It appeared that the lord had removed his papers prior to his evacuation, so there had been no political strategies to steal or secret dealings to uncover, but there was a stack of fine, white paper. Ipid inspected a sheaf. As he had suspected, it was one of his. He could not help but feel
a certain amount of pride at that.

  Captain Tyne entered the room followed by an elderly servant with a silver tray. The captain had removed his helm, and his close-cropped hair contained more gray than Ipid would have expected given the brown that still dominated his beard. He saluted and dipped his head. “You requested me, my lord?”

  “Yes.” Ipid stood and placed his hands on the cool, smooth surface of the desk before him. He motioned the servant forward and asked him to leave the tea on a side table. “Please approach,” he ordered the captain, “I don’t feel the need to yell across the room.” As ordered, the captain strode to stand a few paces from the desk. “Captain, I need you to gather all your men and bring them here. This will be your new headquarters. I need you and your men to be able to respond immediately to my requests with every available man.”

  “My lord?” the captain’s mouth sagged. He seemed to calculate. “But . . . “

  “I will not hear that word from you again, Captain. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, bu . . . .” the captain caught himself and gulped. “I am worried about looters, my lord. Large portions of the city are abandoned. Without my men, the looters will have free rein.”

  “Looters should be the least of your concerns, but that leads to the next thing. Please let it be known that people should return to their homes. The threat of attack is past. As long as we meet the terms of surrender, the Darthur will do no more harm to the city.”

  “Yes, my lord. We will put out the word.”

  “Thank you. Now, I will need your men to gather some things for me.”

  “We are at your command, my lord. I was at the surrender, I know the terms. I heard the acting Chancellor turn over control to you.” The last was said with a stammer that Ipid did not like. I just killed the acting Chancellor. I look even more like the monster they expect.