The Dinosaur Lords

by Victor Milán

  “I’ll tell them,” Karyl said. “They dislike me already; I might as well start giving them reason. But I still need someone to do this work. I don’t see Emeric in the job. And no one else has given me the least reason to trust him to pour piss from his own boot if the instructions were engraved on the heel.”

  “It’s not the future I’d exactly envisioned for myself.”

  “Then hurry and train up a successor so you can move on to something else. Will you do it?”

  Rob swallowed. “Yes.”

  Karyl clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Come on, then. We’ve lots to discuss with our employers before we can eat. If they let us.”

  Chapter 27

  Lagarto-pescado, fish-lizard—Ichthyosaur. A common type of sea dragon, a swimming reptile resembling a fish, with long, tooth-filled jaws (or, some fancy, the fabulous dolphins depicted in The Bestiary of Old Home); 2–4 meters long; 950 kilograms. Eats fish, shellfish, cephalopods, and occasionally each other. Sailors’ tales notwithstanding, rarely known to attack humans.

  —THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

  The smell met Jaume like a barrier when he entered the tent. It felt like emerging from a cool cloister into a hot and humid night. If the night blossoms outside the ruined temple down the valley had smelled like a corpse rotting in a perfume lake, the man waiting for him smelled like a corpse thrown into a cesspit, with a wheel of lamentably far-gone cheese thrown in to add body.

  “My lord Bishop,” he made himself say politely. He went to the end of the table opposite his guest and sat in a folding wooden chair, on a satin cushion colored cream and butterscotch. Leaning back jauntily, he cocked a leg over one arm.

  It’ll take days of airing-out and half a liter of rose attar to make the place livable again, he thought with bitter amusement. Ah, Uncle, the things I do for you.

  “I will not sit,” his visitor said, as if Jaume had invited him to.

  “Suit yourself. May I offer you food? Drink?” Jaume gestured toward a covered plate and silver water pitcher on the table.

  “Your men offered me refreshments of the flesh,” the Papal Legate said. “I have no need of them.”

  Ever? Jaume was tempted to ask as he took a peach from a basket beside the covered dish. He was glad Florian wasn’t here. He would have said what Jaume was content merely to think. Which would not, in the long run, have made matters easier on the march.

  By the time Jaume and Florian got back to the Companions’ camp, the night had expanded to fill every corner not occupied by separate light: of bonfires, of torches pungent with resin smoke, black and thready. Mor Jacques had intercepted him, worrying up with the latest reports of aristocratic waste and folly: three knights and some number of servants no one bothered to tally, dead in a tent fire caused by drunken roistering idiocy; a peasant’s hayrick deliberately burned, for what passed among the bucketheads as fun. Jaume gave what orders he thought might do some good. For the most part all he could do was listen and commiserate.

  At his pavilion waited Manfredo, looking even graver than usual. Jaume had commanded his three knights to stay outside. He’d had to be brisk about it.

  “How may I serve you?” Jaume asked his guest. He bit into the peach, savoring its flowery sweetness. He refused to give in to ugliness. And anyway, a campaigner who let bad smells spoil his appetite got awfully hungry.

  “You committed what some would judge a grave offense today against Count Ironstar, my lord.”

  “Surely not as grave as those committed by the ones I punished,” Jaume said. “I will not tolerate rape and murder. If Ironstar can’t control his knights, and they won’t control themselves, it falls to me to do so. As Constable I hold the High Justice. I dispensed it.”

  Bishop Tavares stiffened. The Legate was a deceptively slight man, younger than Jaume, with wild black hair, a stinking robe, and grime-black sandaled feet. He wore a necklace of wooden balls, each as big around as a trono, from which hung a green wooden pendant shaped like a wreath. It showed three gold lines: two broken stacked above a solid. It was the glyph of Adán, the Oldest Son, god of manhood, and of mammals, of agriculture, commerce, and wealth. As well as ruination, destruction, and impoverishment.

  “When the Eight created this world, they saw fit to raise certain folk above others, as more suited to rule,” Tavares said.

  “So much is generally accepted.”

  “Those chosen to rule enjoy rights and privileges over those they rule.”

  “And the ruled enjoy rights in turn,” said Jaume. “By Imperial law. As well as the Creators’ word.”

  Tavares smiled thinly through a beard that consisted mostly of neglect. Jaume sized him up as extremely dangerous, in the way of one who never drew steel himself but inspired others to wield it for him.

  “You refer to the words’ obvious import,” Tavares said. “The profane. But isn’t it clear to any truly spiritual man that anything so obvious cannot really manifest divine intent? The pure truth, the holy truth of the spirit—that lies behind the words.”

  “I disagree. I trust my Creators to say what they mean.”

  “Certain nobles of the realm have taken up the burden of prosecuting this just war against evildoers. They must be allowed to exercise their just prerogatives. That’s clearly the Creators’ will, even you must admit.”

  “As long as they confine their prosecution to evildoers,” Jaume said, “we don’t have a problem. We’re crossing loyal lands here, my lord Bishop. How long will they stay that way if we despoil them?”

  Tavares’s eyes blazed. “If they’re loyal, why aren’t they marching with us?”

  “Because, as you point out, we’ve taken on the errand ourselves. I don’t make Imperial policy. My task is to carry it out as best I can. Maintaining order in this army is paramount to that.”

  “No!” Tavares screamed. His sudden fury took Jaume aback. “You must not raise the flock above the shepherd! Your ideas will bring anarchy to the Imperio, as they have to Providence!”

  “Providence?” Jaume shook his head. “I haven’t followed events there closely. But what I have heard hardly smacks of disorder.” In fact the Gardeners struck him as basically hobbyists, harmless and more than a little silly.

  “They turn the divinely ordained order upside down!”

  Putting both hands on the table, Tavares leaned forward. Jaume steeled himself not to recoil from the stink of his body and breath.

  “Such impieties risk bringing a Grey Angel Crusade down on us all,” Tavares said, his voice now sinuous and low. “Have a care, my Lord of the Flowers.”

  Jaume could hardly believe he’d heard the man right. He must be mad, he thought.

  “Grey Angels? No one’s reported them walking Paradise for centuries. Whatever transpires in some small, remote province of the Empire, I hardly expect it will bring them out.”

  “Don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened in our age. The time is coming, my lord. The reckoning approaches. Souls will be judged. Men will have to choose which side they stand on.”

  “Not I. I serve the Lady Bella, and the Emperor. And my men, and the innocent.”

  Tavares’s mouth worked and he squeezed his eyes shut as if in intolerable pain. Jaume watched in fascination that felt almost voyeuristic. His features are so bone-spare, he thought, you wouldn’t think they’d have room to express so much passion. He wondered what went on behind that furrowed forehead.

  “And His Holiness the Pope?” Tavares finally asked, his voice still soft. “He acknowledges the truth: that the Creators’ words are allegory, and that to seek salvation one must look past them to the truth. You’re ordained by the Holy Church. Aren’t you bound to follow where His Holiness leads?”

  “If His Holiness disputes the Holy Law, that every man and woman’s conscience is free so long as they acknowledge the Creators, he can tell me so himself. He has not done so.” For the first time Jaume allowed his own expression to harden. “Nor has Pío seen fit
to confide in me his purpose in sending you to accompany the Army of Correction.”

  “Saving souls, my lord. Only saving souls.” The Bishop sighed. “I don’t envy you, Count Jaume.”

  He waited enough heartbeats to realize Jaume wasn’t rising to that bait. “You have eyes, but will not see the truth. Your obstinacy puts more than your own soul at risk.”

  Jaume didn’t see that that deserved a response. So he made none.

  “And the burden on your own soul must be great indeed,” Tavares said, “given that so many voices within the camp are whispering that you won your baton unfairly, striking a dishonorable blow against a yielded foe. I bid you good evening, Count.”

  * * *

  They found Bogardus sitting in the high-walled courtyard in front of the Gardeners’ villa, beneath a trellis twined with trumpet vines whose orange flowers had shut up shop for the night. He sat on a silk cushion in a chair carved of limestone that showed signs of long weathering. A bevy of young Gardeners leaned forward raptly on stone benches to hear him hold forth. All were women, Rob couldn’t help noticing, and decidedly comely.

  Bogardus smiled when he saw the pair approach. He rose. “Ah, my blossoms, enough for today.”

  Blossoms, is it? Rob smoothed his moustache with a thumb. I wonder if mine host would object if I sniffed a few?

  “But, Bogardus,” whined a skinny brunette in a blue smock, “we’d barely begun.”

  “Of course, dear one,” the Eldest Brother said. “If we talk together for a century, we’ll only nick the surface of deep loam. Beauty is infinite, and so is Truth. Even our little patch we’ve staked out, this Garden of ours, is bigger than a single mind can hold. So contemplate what we’ve learned tonight. Seeds are planted. Let them grow!”

  Bogardus laughed. He had a deep, infectious laugh. The women laughed with him, even the one who’d pouted. They got up and went inside, chattering excitedly about the cosmic insights the Master Gardener had shared with them.

  Watching them go, Rob felt himself frown. Nary a look for young Rob Korrigan, he thought. And nary a whiff of my chestnut-haired beauty, who’s the only bloom I’ve found in this Garden that doesn’t close up tight at my approach.

  Ah, well, perhaps she’s avoiding me. She’s hardly the first.

  As soon as the door closed, their host’s manner turned grave. “I’ve heard what happened today. We saw the smoke from here. Thirty killed or carried off to slavery. A terrible tragedy.”

  He caught the cocking of Rob’s brow. “Does it strike you as frivolous, Master Korrigan, that we sit here in the comfort of our Garden discussing philosophy while such horrors happen nearby? I quite understand. But what can we do? We’re not warriors. It’s why we have you. For us … Paradise turns. Life goes on.”

  He put big hands, pale yet strong, on both men’s shoulders and steered them toward benches.

  “Come, friends,” he said, “refresh yourselves. I’m eager to hear how your first day’s training went.”

  “Well enough,” Karyl said as Bogardus poured them light yellow wine from a silver pitcher. It was cast to resemble a mythical sea beast called a “dolphin,” which much resembled a fish-lizard but possessed unnatural-looking horizontal flukes for a tail.

  “The lads brightened considerably when we gave them a bit of swordplay,” Rob said, emptying his cup at a draft. Bogardus refilled it without even setting the pitcher down.

  “I’ll want to train most of them on weapons closer to whatever tools they’re used to using,” Karyl said after wetting his throat with a sip. “Time’s short.”

  Bogardus nodded. “If the raiders have gotten bold enough to attack St. Cloud, it’s shorter even than we feared. Refugees streamed into town all day. They’re sheltering with families there now, poor souls.”

  “Why haven’t the Brokenhearts raided Providence town, I wonder?” Rob said. “It’s the fattest target by far, even in a country as rich as this.”

  “Everyone fears a city fight,” said Karyl. “It’s all at dagger range, no room to maneuver, with every window an archer’s loophole, every intersection an ambush. And of course, the roof tiles.”

  Rob stopped his cup halfway to his lips. “‘Roof tiles’?”

  “I share our dinosaur master’s perplexity,” Bogardus said.

  “Those tiles up there,” Karyl said, gesturing toward the villa roof with his fully formed but still-pink left hand. “What would you say they weigh?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” Bogardus said. “They certainly look hefty enough, don’t they? They can’t weigh less than five kilos apiece, or so I’d guess.”

  “At least,” Karyl said. “Now think of them thrown down at you.”

  Rob made an O of his mouth. “I see,” Bogardus said.

  “They’ll easily smash an unprotected skull or limb,” said Karyl. “I’ve seen such tiles dent in morions and break shields. They’ll bruise a duckbill where its hide is thickest. And horses and dinosaurs alike panic when heavy things start to rain down on their heads and shatter at their feet.”

  “So we’re protected here despite ourselves,” Bogardus said.

  “Until the marauders grow arrogant enough not to care anymore,” Karyl said. “Or greedy enough. Both will come.”

  In the silence that followed Karyl’s assessment, Rob heard a tenor vihuela being played somewhere inside the villa. Not without skill, he judged, but the instrument had a loose E string.

  “We’ll want to visit the armory tomorrow, to see what’s available by way of weapons and armor,” Karyl said.

  “It’s large and well stocked,” Bogardus said with a relish that surprised Rob. “You should be pleased at what you find.”

  “You mean you’ve not yet beaten your swords into plowshares?” Rob asked.

  Bogardus’s long upper lip pulled longer. “From the outset I’ve tried to steer the Council clear of such conceits. I’ve long known, deep inside, we would come to this someday.”

  He sighed. “Perhaps my own faith in the power of our message is not as strong as it could be.”

  “Nobles,” Rob snarled. “They’ve little regard for truth. Or beauty for that matter, except as a thing to rape and ravage!”

  The other two men looked startled at his sudden vehemence. His cheeks hot, he took a hearty slug of wine to recover his composure.

  “Was your turnout satisfactory?” Bogardus asked after a moment that went on far longer than Rob felt comfort with.

  “I’ll not lie to you,” said Rob, feeling the excellent wine spread its warmth inside him. “It was a trifle on the meager side.”

  “The lords are ordering their tenants to volunteer,” Karyl said.

  Bogardus’s grey eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I told them to do. Please believe me.”

  “I told the men that those who volunteer will be declared free, and have their debts forgiven.”

  Bogardus’s brows shot up. Then he grinned.

  “True to the Garden’s spirit, my friend. Of course, the town lords may see things differently.”

  “The town lords’ country houses are richer targets than villages of huts with thatched roofs,” Karyl said. “And no matter how well fortified, less risky than Providence town. They’d best learn to see things my way before they’re forced to.

  “Speaking of which, you need to send to all the county’s knights and barons and ask for their help. Tell them it’s in their best interest to send it straightaway.”

  “The town lords and country barons are proud, powerful men,” Bogardus said. “What compulsion would you have me use against them?”

  “None at all. Simply tell them assistance works both ways. If they don’t send us men, when the raiders come to burn them in their fine homes, they may expect us to turn out to toast bread on the flames.”

  Bogardus laughed—a trifle shakily, Rob thought. “You are a rare man, Karyl Bogomirskiy.”

  “No doubt,” said Karyl, “that’s just as well.”

  Chapter 28
/>
  Adán, Aidan, Trueno, Thunder—Duke of the Creators: Zhen ☳ (Thunder)—The Oldest Son. Represents Manhood, commerce, wealth and impoverishment, agriculture, and Storms. Also domestic beasts. Known for his expansiveness. Aspect: a handsome man with black hair and brown skin, clad in a green tunic, a dog beside him, his feet hidden in clouds. Sacred Animal: dog. Color: green. Symbol: a green hammer.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  “Your Highness,” the Pope said to Melodía over a golden tureen of strider-tail and vegetable soup. “Certain rumors have reached my ears.”

  For Melodía the usual dinnertime hubbub in the banquet hall was abruptly overridden by ringing silence. Hearing nothing but the drumbeat of her own pulse, she showed Pío an expression that was more pulling her cheeks up under her eyes than an actual smile. The eyes of the courtiers at the great table seemed to sear her skin.

  Nuevaropan culture distinguished nudity from nakedness. Being nude in public could signify ritual, exaltation, an important statement, or even social superiority. Being naked in public was humiliating.

  Despite the fact that she was fully dressed, in emerald silk wound in an X across her breasts and a loose brown and cream silk skirt, Melodía felt naked.

  “Holiness.” The unfamiliar effort of trying to sound conciliatory made Chief Minister Mondragón’s voice grate like horror claws on granite. He sat at the head of the table on Felipe’s right. “One mustn’t believe everything one hears.”

  The Emperor continued gnawing happily on his roasted bouncer haunch and conversing with Duke Falk on his left while grease rolled down his little ginger beard as if nothing untoward was happening. The Pope waved a hand like sticks bundled in a splotched and blue-veined parchment.

  “Rumors persist, my child, that you speak out against your father’s good and wise policy of carrying war to the vipers who nest in the Empire’s bosom.”

  The expressions the conversation had turned on Melodía ranged from disdain through incomprehension to lust. That last came from her always-vexing cousin Gonzalo, who sat a few places down from her with his brother Benedicto hulking beside him.