by Dragon Lance
“The empress?” asked the man, his brow furrowing. “Since when does she give a damn what the divisions of Ergoth do?”
The comment brought red to Vinas’s dusty cheeks. “Right, then. I’ll join you, and add to your complement twelve of my own finest horsemen, as well as the colonel of my griffon cavalry, bringing along whomever she chooses. My second, Gaias, will get the troops settled here, and see about mustering up a festival to celebrate our arrival.”
“No need,” said the cavalryman, gesturing to colored tents being set up within the castle courtyard. “Commander Maximus is already seeing to it personally.”
“Better yet,” said Vinas. He proceeded to unfasten Courage’s lead line.
Gaias turned and calmly said to him, “It may be another trap....”
“Don’t worry. I’ll outnumber them on the ground and in the air,” Vinas said, as though soothing a fretful parent. “If you like, you can have a war wizard track us.” He led Courage toward the cavalry.
Then in a martial tone, Vinas added, “Gaias, take the army, minus your twelve best riders, into the fort. Give Commander Maximus my regrets for being detained. I’ll make it up to him on my return.” He checked the saddle cinch and mounted Courage.
“Yes, Commander,” said Gaias.
*
Courage eagerly plunged along the forest path. He seemed happy to abandon the slow march. Vinas crouched low over the stallion’s neck, ducking away from the reaching branches along the trail. The other warriors followed.
Vinas knew their quarry. A peasant mob had attacked a three-man outpost, run off the guards, and taken the store of weapons. The outpost stood at the far eastern edge of Ergoth. Its official role was to protect the nearby villages, but its true purpose was to watch the west trade road, tax anyone who passed by, and harass anyone who defied its authority. Whenever three men proved not enough, they would send one of their pet crows off to Solanthus for aid. This time, the message tied to the crow’s talon read: “Peasant attack. Overrun. Send Erghas and cavalry.”
Captain Erghas was the black-bearded cavalry officer who had met Vinas, and now rode close at his heels.
Night was falling, quick and hard. Cold came with it. The riders saw the world as only cavalrymen do, charging in a dusty mass through a dark and silent plain that trembles beneath them.
“Ahead!” cried Erghas. He was pointing – must have been – but Vinas could not see the direction. He saw little but the fast-bobbing head of Courage, the mane whipping his face and the tumbled ground below.
There it was. The forest opened up ahead, giving way to parchment-colored plains. A few trees clung to the land in ragged groves, but otherwise it was a place of low-sloping hills and grass and horizons.... Except for one harsh vertically, which jutted with indifference up from the rolling land. The outpost was like a sore, a blemish. Tiny black creatures milled around its base, seeming to talk or sleep or picnic there. The rebel mob encircling its prize.
Vinas’s heels did not even touch Courage’s flanks, but the steed redoubled its pace and pulled away. Vinas whooped excitedly, but stayed low beside the horse’s whipping mane. The mob either felt the tremor of vengeful hooves or heard Vinas’s cry, or both. The figures along the base of the tower slowly began to move, shifting toward the tower, drifting away, or breaking apart to run for a nearby copse. Vinas headed Courage toward those in flight. He would give Erghas the glory of recapturing the tower. That was his right, at least. Vinas would round up the stragglers.
He drew his sword and directed Courage off the beaten trail and across the sea of grass. The heads of grain cracked loudly. Courage rose up a round-hipped hill, plunged down into a creek belly, and shot up the other side. He gained speed as he leapt from peak to peak across the rippling plain.
The rebel figures materialized as frantically fleeing peasants. Though they retreated in terror, their arms still clutched the spoils of their riot – axes, clubs, swords, bows, quivers.
Vinas passed the first rebel, then charged by two more. Courage would be alongside the main group in moments. Vinas guided the stallion out in a long, hooking movement to encircle the front line.
The tatter-clothed brigands either stopped running to stand and fight, or turned around to flee the other way. None dared cross the path of Courage. They seemed to think him a magical creature whose very hoofprints were dangerous.
Vinas, sword brandished high and ready to strike, came closer to the mob and shouted, “Halt where you are, and you will not be hurt.”
A man-sized blur rushed Courage’s shoulder, a club raised.
Vinas whirled and, between heartbeats, struck the man’s head from his shoulders. The body slid wetly down to the ground. The hooves of the stallion trampled it underfoot. Vinas brought Courage under control. More in shock than anger, he shouted, “Down, to your knees, or the same will come to you!” The other rebels knelt as one, so quickly and so heavily that the dry ground shook.
Off in the distance, Vinas could see with satisfaction that Erghas’s forces had easily captured the tower. No horses were down. The cavalry was circling the tower, rounding up the mob.
Things were well in hand. Vinas, heart still hammering in his throat, lowered his dripping sword and took a moment to wipe his blood-drizzled face. He looked down at the trampled body. It looked more like a boneless effigy, old clothes stuffed with straw.
“What a waste,” Vinas cursed. He spit red into the twilight. He nudged Courage toward the spot where the man’s head and club lay. But it wasn’t a club. It was a loaf of bread, long and baked in a hard crust.
A loaf of bread? thought Vinas. Why would lawless rebels wield bread instead of weapons?
Courage planted his hooves. Vinas dismounted and went over to examine the red-speckled loaf. He kicked it irritably, and its crust shattered as it rolled away. “Dead for stealing bread,” he hissed.
His boot tapped the victim’s head. When the gaunt, old thing rolled over, he saw and knew the eyes. It was Festas.
“Thank you, Sir Warrior. Festas and his poor family bless your name.”
It was the old man, the first person to whom Vinas brought provisions that blizzard night so long ago. Festas had been stealing the bread that had been taken as tax from him. He had been bringing back food to his family’s mouths.
Vinas backed numbly away.
Where were all the young dreamers? Where were the soldiers decked out like plainsmen? Where were the young Vinas Solamnuses?
They are dead, came the thought to his mind. They are all grown up and dead.
His bitter reverie was interrupted by the roar of hooves. He looked up and saw them falling, the peasants who knelt for him. They clutched bread and jerky and wine bottles to their breasts and looked toward him with abject resignation as the black horses rushed past and the gray steel sheared off their heads.
*
“She could have struck no worse blow to me, Gaias,” said Commander Solamnus.
Vinas slumped in a velvet chair beside the roaring fire of his suite. The silent company of his comrades, his friends, surrounded him. Luccia, Titus, and Gaias, all watched their commander and struggled for something to say that might appease him.
The grime of the road and the stink of blood had been washed away in hot baths. Now instead of scarred armor, they wore robes of silk and vests of brocade. There had even been a boy who came in to trim and file the commander’s nails, to carefully pry away the last flecks of blood from his fingers.
Vinas angrily looked at his soft, clean nails. “It was an ambush all right. But she didn’t hide assassins in the brush, or marksmen, or monsters. She hid only me out there. The old me. The one she had fallen in... the young believer who would have betrayed any allegiance for truth, for love. Well, here’s the truth. I am the champion of a brutal, corrupt empire that I once opposed with every fiber of my being.”
Gaias watched his commander and, behind the gray mask of his beard, blinked inscrutably.
Luccia tried to smi
le, but she looked wan and defeated. “Surely she could not have touched off a peasant uprising.”
“Yes,” spat Vinas. “First it was a military attack, but that we could defeat easily. That is what armies are meant for. Then, she sent armies of ghosts and lies against our minds. She made us walk through a slaughterhouse at Caergoth and march into a viper’s den of deception at Thelgaard. When we defeated even those attacks, she came against me to wound my very soul.”
“You are tired, Vinas, and rightly so,” rumbled Titus. Of its own accord, his hand strayed to the flask of rejuvenant he had mixed and blessed for Vinas, although the commander himself had turned it down. “Perhaps you should beg off the festival tonight and get some rest.”
Vinas eyed his friends, one at a time. “You don’t believe me, do you? You all think I’m overwrought.”
“Overtired,” Titus corrected, his head slightly cocked.
Luccia broke in, “I can see how the empress might send scouts against us. Might even use lies and magic to destroy fortresses. But how could she make you cut off someone’s head?”
Vinas snorted. “She only had to assemble the mob. I did the rest. How am I to fight this war? Every time my sword strikes, I will not see a traitor, a rebel, but a starving peasant. She’s stolen my very soul. How can a commander command, lead, fight, without a soul?”
“We do it every day,” mused Gaias, more to himself than to Vinas. “It’s an easy enough thing. You grip your sword; you cut a neck. It is no more complicated than that.”
“It used to be,” Vinas muttered.
Luccia said, “Well, if you aren’t going to get some rest, you may as well go to the festival. You are the guest of honor, after all.”
Vinas was suddenly on his feet, his muscular frame a whirl of fine clothes. “Let’s go. Killing gives me an appetite.” He reached the chamber door, flung it wide, and shouldered his way through the too-small frame.
The night beyond was cold and bright, cold with a wind out of Qualinesti and bright with bonfires and magelight. The artisans, traveling prestidigitators, and shysters had been invited into the castle courtyard to entertain the soldiers. The shantytown people glittered in clothing designed for nighttime revelry.
The fine clothes of Vinas and his companions drew a host of beggars. A juggler drifted near, a set of tin begging cups whirling before his black, waxed mustache. Whenever a cup landed in his left hand, he held it out, pleading for donations. Each cup already held plenty of coins that rattled as they tumbled through the air, but did not spill forth. Vinas saw little of the clever act. He noted only the man’s solid frame, soft with eating.
Beggars do better in this empire than do honest peasants, he thought. Then, peremptorily, he said, “No,” and distractedly pushed the man away.
The push made the man’s three cups clatter to the cobblestone, gold and silver raining to the ground. That accident proved beneficial to Vinas. The loose coins provided diversion for other night vermin whose injuries and deformities seemed less than debilitating as they swarmed across the courtyard. They clustered over the coins, thick as maggots. The spill also made shysters give the grumbling commander a wide berth, lest they lose their night’s take.
“Maybe the poor aren’t such innocents,” said Vinas, sucking in a breath of the cold air. “I feel better already.”
Gaias’s eyes looked concerned. “That’s the spirit.”
Vinas did not seem to hear. “It’s war, damn it. Someone has to die. If people are too stupid to get out of the way of a swordsman on a charging horse —”
“Just so,” said Gaias exhaustedly.
“Better,” Vinas said to himself. “I feel much better.”
The group walked. The clamor of beggars faded away behind voices, laughter, and audacious claims from painted mouths. It was a carnival of flesh. There were smoking meats and frothy ales, glass baubles that pleased the eye, smooth-hipped women whose leggings revealed all too much to hungry eyes, sword swallowers and fire-eaters, private grotesqueries for public viewing....
“There are no innocents,” Vinas continued. This was not a discussion but a soliloquy. Gaias offered no response. “The only innocents are the young dreamers, as I once was. They usually make matters worse, not better. How many evils have been done by those who try to force the realm of ideas onto the world of reality? Many, many evils.”
He shook his head bitterly. “They hadn’t taken just bread, just food. They’d taken weapons. And I’m sure they would have used them on me to get away. It’s war. Pure and simple.”
“Simple, at least,” said Gaias quietly.
Vinas paused, then looked up as though noticing Gaias for the first time. “Let’s go. I want none of these foul diversions. I just want food and drink and sleep. Off to the great hall.”
*
“Attention, please. Attention,” called Captain Erghas of the cavalry unit.
He stepped up on his table. His voice barely succeeded in breaking through the din of the hall and its long tables crowded with soldiers. The shouts and guffaws were silenced by a two-fingered whistle.
“Thank you for your attention. I have something of an extended toast to make. You all have no doubt heard of Commander Solamnus’s fighting prowess and courage —”
Hearty and genuine applause answered.
Vinas, warmed by the applause and by brandy, stood and bowed in thanks. The ovation grew all the louder. Caught up in the mood, Vinas said, “Yes, my courage. My horse Courage couldn’t be here tonight, for the kitchen was all out of oats —”
Roars and “hear, hears!” followed him as he sat down.
Erghas waved away the noise. “We have all heard stories, but today I saw the courage and prowess —”
“And Courage!” someone shouted amid laughter.
“I saw the courage and prowess in action. I saw the man who will save the empire. No less than that While the rest of us rushed in to take the tower, to win the share of glory, this man rode out to bring home the stragglers. Oh, he was no gentle shepherd, coddling his wayward flock. No. He meted out summary justice, killing the first one who tried to win by him, and thereby cowing the rest.”
The captain’s voice echoed in the hall, no longer fighting murmurs and chuckles.
“And though killing is the quickest and surest and greatest of a soldier’s rights on the battlefield – especially when dealing with traitorous vermin – this man spared nearly half of the criminals.”
A murmur went through the crowd.
“Patience, friends. Yes, the rabble deserved death for what they had done, and I said so to the. commander. But he replied to me, ‘What good is making this ground a graveyard, if there is no one left to go back and tell the others the tale?’”
As applause rang through the hall, Vinas turned in consternation to Titus and Gaias and hissed, “I said no such thing!”
The wise Gaias said, “History will say otherwise.”
“And so,” finished Erghas, “I toast our commander, who will not only wade into the slaughter of Vingaard, but will also curb those who struggle, and round them up for the empire.”
The crowd stood. The roar of their voices was matched only by the pounding of boots. Even Gaias got to his feet and added his applause and hoots to the ovation.
Only Vinas Solamnus was left sitting. He listened in mute dread to what he heard.
These men would slay anyone I ask them to, he thought miserably. Even the emperor himself.
Meus Pater
I have come to personify everything that is wrong with this empire. My followers invent fictions about me to fill the gap between what I am and what I ought to be.
Just today, a murder I committed was recast by my followers as swift and righteous vengeance. Even in the act of lying to themselves and each other, they believed the lie. Only I – and perhaps Gaias – remember the truth. The murder.
What have I become?
For so long, Father, I considered you a weak man. You were once a believer, but
in time settled into the posture of constant contradiction and compromise. What I did not understand is that no posture could be more difficult. The man who can bargain with corruption and death on all sides and yet remain committed to something higher, that man is truly great.
Part III
JUSTICE
Interlude
One Month Hence, 14 Sirrimont, 1199 Age of Light
Naked, Phrygia huddled in the lich’s scrying cauldron. Her living flesh and bone and blood would be the conduits for Caitiff’s darkest, most powerful casting yet.
He stood above her, stripped of robe and magical guises. Even his dead flesh was gone. Only bones remained. His skeletal form pulsed with bright red fire. Words of ancient necromancy were hissed from his fleshless teeth. The flames that danced across his bones deepened from scarlet to crimson to azure. They gathered, swirled around his pelvis, rose up his spine and ribs, and spun in a sorcerous crown around his skull.
His incantation became an ecstatic shout. With each word, a tongue of fire formed in his mouth, shot through his maggot-scoured teeth, and lashed out at the empress.
The flames darted into her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Phrygia cried out in shock and pain. A pulse of lavender fire awakened in her chest. More flames struck and the lavender light grew brighter. It shone from her heart.
It was her passion that would send this evil spell across the miles to Vinas. It was her lust to corrupt him and dominate him utterly that would at last accomplish the task. Empowered by an ancient elvish lich, she would convert him to her side and together they would rule all of Ansalon, all of Krynn.
When the casting was complete, sorcerous power would rush out from Phrygia and vault halfway across Ansalon. It would enter the heart of a commander who had already been seduced by evil. This moment of ecstasy would transform him forever, making him an instrument of evil. It would make Vinas Solamnus forever hers.
And he would not even realize the change had occurred.