Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “You have a point, Ally. Which is amazing enough in itself,” she added. But then she shook her head, and one hand unconsciously stroked the side of her throat. “But you don’t know what you’re saying when you tell me to make music.”

  “As you would have it,” he said with a slight shrug. “I will speak on it no more.”

  “See that you don’t,” she teased. “Now let’s see if we can’t slog through the snow back to our beds.”

  “I mean to stay,” Allystaire said, shaking his head lightly. “There is space and much to do in the morning. And the folk still bear watching.”

  “Have it your way. Stone floors or a wall to sleep against; you fear comfort the way other men fear pain.” She turned and disappeared from his view before he could offer a warning about the snow that she probably didn’t need.

  CHAPTER 10

  Rest and Foundation

  The Temple was still quite warm when the hard light of a winter dawn broke through the windows that surrounded the altar.

  Allystaire snapped awake when that light reached his eyelids, sat up, and stretched.

  The popping of joints in his arms and back awoke at least two people sleeping a few feet away.

  With a sigh he pushed himself to his feet, and began tightly rolling the furs that had made up his bed. He looked to a pile a few feet away that had already been left neatly stacked.

  What is that boy after, Allystaire wondered. He headed for the door. There was no need to pick through the crowd, as he’d slept at the very edges.

  He put his hands on the wood of the door, expecting to have it open through a good deal of snow, though he hoped it hadn’t drifted. He gave it a quick hard shove, and nearly fell forward as it opened without resistance.

  Allystaire gawped for a moment; whatever snow had fallen on the steps was gone. The path leading deeper into the village was likewise clear, as was the Temple field and the recently dug grave.

  “You hadn’t really thought that through,” Gideon said. Allystaire turned to find him leaning against the wall. “The grave, I mean. It filled up with snow. I took care of it. And you are letting the heat out of the Temple.”

  Quickly, Allystaire shut the door and stepped outside completely, shivering and wishing for the cloak, gloves, and hat he’d left inside. “What did you do, exactly?”

  “I cleared the snow away so the folk could move about the village. So that the burials could happen. It would’ve taken turns to do it otherwise, even if everyone worked at it together.”

  “How…” Allystaire’s surprise drew the word out far past its single syllable.

  “I moved some, melted some,” Gideon said.

  Allystaire stared at the boy, trying to gather his thoughts. “I hoped you would avoid obvious displays.”

  “It was the practical thing to do,” Gideon protested. “And it was easy.” He looked out over the partially snow-covered landscape. “It is harder, sometimes, not to change things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gideon frowned. “I have come to see the world differently. I…all of it is in flux, all is change. You probably see things as fixed. Immutable. Even the snow, well, it can be moved, but until the weather warms, it is here. A fact. Like the walls of the Temple are a fact.” He looked back up to Allystaire, shaking his head, eyes a little unfocused. “There are no such facts for me. All I see is change. The potential of it, the possibilities. I could melt all the snow that fell in the Barony if I had the right vantage point.”

  “And you would flood villages situated on rivers that could not take so much melt so fast,” Allystaire said. “You are frightening me, lad.”

  Gideon lowered his eyes and sighed. “I don’t mean to. I won’t take rash or thoughtless action simply because I can,” he said. “I promise. But to clear the snow this morning seemed too practical not to do. I was trying to help.”

  “I know. I am not angry, Gideon. Impressed. Awed, mayhap, by the scale of what you say you might do.”

  “There are limits,” the boy added quickly. “I can’t, I don’t think, transmute metals, which will please Torvul, as he has said that turning lead into gold would be blasphemous.”

  “Is that not what alchemists do?”

  “Base human superstition. Rampant ignorance,” Gideon said, dropping his voice as low as he could and practically gargling the words, doing a passable impression of Torvul’s rock-grinding voice.

  Allystaire laughed. “Do not mock him. He is a good friend, for all his grumbling.”

  “He is brilliant,” Gideon said earnestly. “I’m not sure everyone realizes it.” The boy knotted his brows. “Have you stopped to think on how many crafts he has mastered? It is unusual even for a dwarf.”

  “And then at the battle there was…” Allystaire frowned, trying to find the memory from when the world was going dim and dark as the Battle-Wights overcame him. “Stonesinging. That is what the sorcerer called it.”

  Gideon’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t heard that. The Dwarfish Stonesingers were something the sorcerers truly feared. Perhaps their only fear. But the art was lost, or so I had read.”

  “Well, mayhap he found it again. Ask him later, if you could. I should like to know.”

  “He needs to be allowed some rest. He drove himself too hard during the battle. He didn’t allow himself to sleep for over a week, kept dosing himself. He’ll keep doing that if we keep asking it of him.”

  “We all need a rest,” Allystaire said. “And after today, we can have it. Come on, lad. I am cold and there is work to do.”

  * * *

  In truth there was less work to do than Allystaire had expected, since Gideon had also taken the time to move the bodies into place.

  Gideon also offered to move Renard’s stone. Allystaire refused. Which is how he now found himself staring hard at it where it lay outside the smithy, wrapped in a blanket secured with thin rope, and the sledge he’d used to haul it there nowhere in sight.

  Gideon stood next to him, bottom lip curled uncertainly.

  “Remember to lift with your legs,” Allystaire said, as he squatted and wrapped his hands under the edge of stone.

  “Would you feel better if I made you an invisible sledge and you could drag it that way?” Gideon offered quietly.

  “No,” Allystaire muttered darkly, as his arms and legs began to strain against it. Slowly, groaning, he pulled it clear of the ground.

  By a few inches.

  He took a tottering step forward, unable to fully extend his legs, face set in a rictus of absolute exertion. He took another step, and another.

  And then the stone floated out of his arms.

  Allystaire nearly fell face-first, caught himself with an outflung arm. As he stood he turned angrily to Gideon, only to find the boy looking at him with stern disapproval.

  “You can’t help anyone or get any work done if you injure yourself trying to engage in a foolish gesture, the symbolic nature of which would be lost on most anyone but you,” Gideon said. “And while I realize that any injury you do yourself may be temporary, given your Goddess-given Gifts, I would also suggest that this is a task you cannot manage yourself. She created five of us for a reason, Allystaire. Would you stand by and watch me labor at a task that endangered me when you could help?”

  “No,” Allystaire said. “I suppose I would not.” His face stung with anger, though he knew the hand of wounded pride when he felt it. And he knew well how to ignore it.

  “Then let us put this in place,” Gideon said, “and get dressed for the ceremony.”

  * * *

  “Does it not get terribly cold in that in this weather?” Gideon asked, as he watched Torvul help Allystaire put on his gleaming armor. The lad sat on Allystaire’s bed in the Inn, while the alchemist and the paladin stood in the center of the room.

  “Not if the man wearin
g it knows what he is about,” Allystaire said, as he pulled a buckle tight. “And I do. Make sure there is no contact of skin and steel, make sure your gambeson or arming clothes are warm. And do not, no matter how much the elder boys in training dare you, lick your armor.”

  Torvul chortled as he adjusted the greaves. “A classic! I once got an old rival’s tongue stuck to a wagon wheel for the better part of a turn. Stones Above, he swore the worst kinds of vengeance, that he’d find everything crafted by my family and destroy it, that kind of thing.”

  “Odd sort of vengeance, that,” Allystaire said. A last buckled was pulled tight, and he sighed. “I feel wrong without shield, hammer, or sword. Unbalanced.”

  “I’m working on it,” Torvul said, his voice taking on an aggrieved tone. “You’ll not be happy till I invent an elixir that does away with sleep altogether.”

  Allystaire eyed the dwarf as he stood up. “Everyone needs a rest after today. You most especially, Torvul. I have an inkling of how far and how hard you pushed yourself during the battle, and I suspect you continue to do it. A new hammer and a new shield are trifles now. If I need a sword or another weapon, then doubtless I can take one from those we have captured. Goddess send that I will not, till spring. Beyond. Forever, if we can manage it.”

  “We can’t,” Torvul said. “And you know it. And I’ll push myself precisely as far as I need to. If I haven’t got half a dozen projects going I’ll get bored anyway,” the dwarf said, waving his hands dismissively. “I’ve got to go find my robes and figure out what I can wear under them so I don’t freeze.”

  “The Temple in half a turn,” Allystaire said.

  “Yes, yes,” the dwarf said as he stumped off.

  Allystaire took a look at the helm that sat on a table, decided better of it. He did grab the long woolen scarf he’d found among his things when he’d woken up. “Gideon, who made this?”

  He shrugged. “One of the villagers? I don’t know. They seemed to have stores of the things as soon as winter really came upon us, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to see that we do not lack such things.”

  “Remind me to thank them,” Allystaire said. “I have not done that enough,” he murmured.

  He clattered down the stairs, Gideon in his wake. When the Arm and the Will, the former in his mirror-bright armor, the latter in his blue robes, began their walk towards the Temple, they drew attention. Some folk were already gathering, but many found themselves swept up in the wake of two of the Goddess’s servants.

  When Allystaire and Gideon arrived, they found Mol, Idgen Marte, and Torvul arrayed on the steps of the Temple and a crowd gathering around them. Some knots were instantly identifiable. The Thornhurst militia had turned out in what passed for uniforms. Mostly arming jackets supplemented by bits of armor, with golden sunburst badges sewn on or worn around the arm, and numbering not quite two dozen now, they shouldered spears or bows with a precision that would’ve done credit to many more professional soldiers.

  A knot of Oyrwyn soldiers, armored but not armed, stood apart. Garth stood out amongst them, not only for his blond braids and his height, but for the green-enameled scale armor he wore. Audreyn stood at his side, swathed in a too large bear-fur cloak that Allystaire instantly recognized; it had belonged to their father.

  Landen’s men, and Chaddin’s too, were all in attendance, but, by design or inclination, the militiamen and the Oyrwyn soldiers both stood between them.

  And the rest, in one large crowd, lining the path and milling about the field, were the people of Thornhurst. The people Allystaire and Idgen Marte had saved from slavery, the people who had flocked to the village in the fall when word of the Mother had been spread by their deeds.

  As Gideon and Allystaire passed them as they lined the road, murmurs ran amongst them. Gloved and mittened hands reached out to touch them. Not to impede them, or to take anything—just to press a hand to his armor, or the boy’s robes, and then move away. No one shoved, no one yelled.

  He strained to hear the murmurs, caught only fragments. Stillbright. The Will. Dragon. Giant. Saved us. Sorcerers.

  The murmuring melted away as he and Gideon reached the edge of the Temple’s steps. Torvul, Mol, and Idgen Marte descended to meet them. Allystaire felt a moment of necessity drawing near, felt the stares of the crowd behind him. He closed his eyes and had a deep breath and briefly, intensely prayed.

  Goddess, let me be the man they deserve. Let all of us be the heroes they believe we are. Let me find the words today. Let my hopes for peace, and for those who will follow after me, not be in vain.

  Allystaire felt a hand slip into his, on the bare skin of his left palm where Torvul had modified his gauntlet. He looked down at Mol, who smiled solemnly up at him.

  “You have long since proven yourself, Allystaire,” she murmured. “You, most of all, are precisely what we believe you are.”

  Allystaire started to shake his head slightly, but Mol frowned and held up a hand. “I know what you would say. You’re wrong. What you think is asked of you alone is asked of all of us together. Together we will be what the people of this village—and beyond—need.”

  “They will look to you,” she went on. “They will always look to you, and the four of us shall always stand with you. Years from now, when all of us have gone to our rest with the Mother, men will still look to you. They will sing songs and tell stories, and measure themselves against Sir Allystaire Stillbright. They will remember you, Paladin; they will call you the Hammer of the Sun.”

  “The people need more than a weapon and a name to shout, Mol,” Allystaire started to protest, when Idgen Marte cut in, laying her gloved hand on his pauldron and leaning her head close to his.

  “A hammer can build as easily as it can destroy, Allystaire. Your words,” she said. “Go. Serve them in grief once more, and then build your knightly idea, Sir Stillbright.”

  Mol gestured, the five of them turned. Behind them, the crowd had gone utterly silent, the collective weight of their expectation hanging in the air like their clouding breath.

  Allystaire stepped forward, and began walking to the graves. The other four filed along behind him. Once again, the people parted for them, hands extended, whispering and murmuring.

  He stopped when he could see the shroud-wrapped bodies lying in the opened graves, the one by itself, covered stone at its head, the others laying in a common grave.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he began. “People of Thornhurst and the Mother. And guests,” he said, eyeing for a moment the different factions of Delondeur men, the Oyrwyn, and catching sight of the white-silks, silverfox-fur, and gold that marked the Archioness of Fortune, lurking at the far edge of the crowd. “I come before you once more to grieve with you. We have laid too many folk in the ground together. I hope, Goddess do I hope, that this is the last time we send so many to the next world at once.”

  He stopped and stared at the graves again, at the prone, stiff forms filling them. “I wish I could give all of them back to you. I would trade my life for any of those who lie before us. Words like this ring hollow to those mourning. There is little I can do to ease that sting. Grief is forever. I know this as well as most, I think.

  “Yet the grief and the pain we carry must not weigh upon us, crush the resolve out of us. We will let it carry us forward into the work that still needs to be done. Thornhurst is safe, for now. And I would see us make it a haven for any who want refuge from the fighting that will resume when the snows melt.”

  Allystaire paused, trying to gauge reactions. He saw some heads bent, shoulders rocking in quiet sobs, saw some bleak faces turn grim when he mentioned the fighting.

  “I promised you when we consecrated the Temple that the fighting I speak of, the wars of pointless succession, the mindless pursuit of space on a map, were over for you. I meant it. We have here, as our guests, those who will begin to help us make it so,” Allystaire sai
d. When he did, he looked pointedly to Landen, Chaddin, and Garth. The latter was too distant to make out his expression. Landen seemed impassive. Chaddin frowned.

  There was a murmur in the crowd, an angry ripple, when he said “guests.” Some in the crowd turned towards Landen and her men; one of the militiamen took a step in their direction.

  Allystaire raised a hand. “Hold. Please, listen to me. Yes, many of you do not like hearing them called guests. I know. They came here under arms, sought to destroy your home and raze your Temple. And in another life I would see all of them hanged.

  “But the Mother calls us to mercy. The Mother offers us redemption. They were badly led, blinded by bonds of blood and ancient loyalty. I would offer them mercy in the hope that they can earn redemption.”

  That ripple got briefly louder, angrier. Cries of “my husband” or “my son.”

  “Landen and her men,” Allystaire said, “were led here by a man they trusted wrongly, a man they loved. Love itself can never be a sin. You have heard this, from me, from Mol. I have heard it from the Goddess Herself. We know it to be true. Yet when that love, when that faith is used wrongly by its object, who is at fault? The man who led them here told them that a false Goddess and foul sorcery sought to overthrow everything they thought was right, proper, and natural in the world. The Baron Lionel Delondeur did that. And he has paid for it. Should those who followed him out of love continue to pay for his sins? I say no. The Mother calls us to be better to one another than that. To kill in earnest defense of our homes and families cannot be a sin, but to hang men who are willing to repent would stain our hands with blood. And there has been enough death. Too much. On that, my friends, please tell me that we agree.”

  Allystaire could feel the anger drain out of them slowly, like wine trickling from a nearly-empty skin. These folk are too spent to be too much of anything for very long, he thought.