Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “This is a massive idea, lad. Are you quite sure it’s possible? And if it is, are you sure it’s something you ought t’do?”

  Gideon thought a moment, then gave his head a quick shake, his eyes dropping to the wagon’s smooth, well-aged floorboards. “I am not certain that I can do it, no.” Then he lifted his head to meet the dwarf eye to eye. “But if I can, then I am certain that I must.”

  “Why? What makes you so certain?”

  “Because we are not here to defeat some sorcerers and a single power-mad nobleman in a battle to save some few score souls,” Gideon said. “We are to here to change the world.” He pursed his lips for a moment, and continued on. “The Goddess has said that in this world, power is too often an accident of birth.”

  “The kind o’power you’re talkin’ about would still be an accident.”

  “But it would be more widely distributed,” Gideon replied. “I do not know what causes someone to be born with the ability to exert their Will as magic. I doubt anyone does. A poor child is as likely to be born with it as a rich child.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Change always is,” Gideon replied fiercely. “And what are we here to do, if not change the world?”

  “For the better,” Torvul said.

  “And if someone was born with the gift that allowed them to recreate memory stones, Torvul—a source of heat that requires so no fuel, that’ll never burn down a cottage or kill a child with smoke if a chimney is stopped up, that frees turns out of a crofter’s day spent at monotonous labor—imagine it being available to the poor. Would we not then have changed the world for the better?”

  Torvul lifted a hand. “It’s not true that it requires no fuel. They needed fuel for the makin’ of them, vast amounts of it. They don’t get hot enough to work metals or other crafts. And no one’s Stonesinging a Kiln ever again. But,” the dwarf conceded, turning once again to his mortar and pestle, and beginning to grind again at the substance he’d tipped into it. “You’ve a point. It might do great good in the world. If it were possible.”

  “I feel that it is. I think I cannot do it myself,” Gideon said. “I think it might require all of us. Maybe,” he shrugged, threw a hand out uncertainly, “something else. I know not what.”

  “Well,” Torvul said, “if the Wit and the Will can’t figure it, no one can.” He carefully poured the contents of his stone bowl into the pot that now boiled on his stove. The wagon’s interior filled with a strong, rich scent: rain-turned earth and something powerfully herbal growing from it.

  A silver whisk with a wooden handle so worn it was almost black was suddenly in Torvul’s hands, laying delicately in his fingers, lightly scraping the pot as he gave it three quick revolutions. Then he lifted the pot from the stove, setting it on a small block of stone laid into the wooden foldout table.

  Torvul held his hand over the steaming pot and sung, as quietly as his powerful bass rumble could manage, three quick notes. The liquid inside cooled instantly, the steam dying before its first-risen streamers disappeared against the ceiling.

  “What’re you making?”

  “A little something for the planting. It might be months away but I like to be prepared,” Torvul said. “We’ll have no trouble feeding ourselves through the next year. Stones Above, we’ll have no trouble feeding half the damned Barony if it comes to it.” As he talked, he bent beneath the table and opened a cupboard, pulling free a long-necked, wide-bottomed glass decanter.

  “I see. Is the crystal a bit ostentatious for it?”

  “First, boy, if you’re goin’ to do things, do them with style.” The dwarf’s tool rack produced another silver implement, a funnel, which he set carefully in the decanter’s neck. “And second, it needs to sit in glass for, oh, three days at least. Ensures potency, as the glass is more energy porous than the stoneware I’ll eventually store it in.”

  “You’re making that up,” Giden said flatly.

  “I never would,” Torvul answered, deadpan. Then he touched a finger to the glass and sung another quiet note, held it for a long moment. The liquid inside turned a luminescent green, then darkened.

  “There’s no such thing as energy-porous material.”

  Torvul turned to Gideon, holding up a hand. “You know a great deal, especially for a boy o’ tender years. But ya don’t know everything, and I’m one of the last dwarfs in the wide world who studied with a Master Stonesinger.”

  “Fine,” Gideon said, “then explain.”

  “I’ll do that,” Torvul said, setting his tools back on their rack, sweeping imaginary dust off his table. Then he picked up the balance and roped it carefully into its niche, did the same with the mortar and pestle, then folded up the table against the wall, securing it in place with quick snaps of his wrist. “After I have a drink.”

  He reached for a jug hung from a ceiling hook and uncorked it with the well-practiced flick of a thumb, poured a measure into his mouth.

  Gideon folded his arms and waited.

  “Finally,” the dwarf said with a deep and satisfied sigh. “Now, we’re dealing here with a domestic kind of philtre, yes? It can’t do any harm, and we’re tryin’ to direct its energy wide and far. So we want it t’gather as much potency as it can. By putting it in well-cut glass for some time, we’re allowing in as much of the energy of my home as it can gather. And since my home,” he added, pointing to the wagon, “is set within my wider community now, it’s absorbing a bit of every song, of every bit of magic worked, of all the energy that goes into making this place home. That’ll leak in through the glass. Now,” the dwarf went on, wetting his lips from the jug again, and assuming the tone of a lecturer. “Too long and it’ll start to leak out—since the glass is porous it’ll go either way, once a certain balance is reached, anyway. So after some time has passed, I’ll store it in a tightly sealed earthenware crock. Less’ll leak out of it that way. Very little, in fact.”

  “If this was true, there’d be ways to measure it. Instruments.”

  “There were,” Torvul said. “In the homes. I don’t have them and I don’t know how to make them. I don’t even know what they were, or what they looked like,” he added. “I’ve only got the wisdom passed t’me by a dwarf who was damn near three hundred years old, and that was in between him drinking himself t’sleep and weeping for what he’d lost.” Torvul said, stabbing a finger into the air. “Weeping. A dwarf possessed of tunneling wisdom and the learning and power of a thousands-year-old craft, reduced to a sobbing child. I don’t take what wisdom I did manage to glean from him lightly.”

  “Tunneling?” Gideon cocked his head to the side.

  Torvul grunted, took another swig. “Your folk build up. You say towering. What direction d’ya think we built? Besides,” he added, “think about how much harder it is. What’s stoppin’ ya from building upwards, eh? Air and weight. Try and build down into the earth sometime. Heh.” Another swig. “I think that’s why Master Ochsringuthringolprine wept, really.”

  Gideon said nothing, only raised a brow.

  “Early in his life, he literally moved mountains. The inside of ‘em, at any rate. And as he died, he couldn’t even make a wheel turn without horses hitched to it.”

  The dwarf set the jug down, sighed. “Pardon my melancholy, lad. It’s of no use to anyone.” He eyed Gideon, knitted his cragged brows. “We need t’tell Allystaire of your thoughts.”

  “I know,” Gideon replied. “And Mol, and Idgen Marte. Allystaire is so caught up with his new squire.”

  “Don’t be envious. He’ll teach you anythin’ he’ll teach that boy, and more besides, if you let him. Go along for more of the exercise.”

  “I’ve no wish to be a knight.”

  “I know, and so does he. Yet some running, some work with a staff or a bow, that’ll do you no harm.”

  “I can defend myself.”

  “And y
et I recall some crazy bastard of an Islandman burying his axe in the back of one of the sorcerers and ending him.” The dwarf quickly unfolded the stool Gideon had taken from the bed and set himself down on it. “Did we ever figure out who that was or what he was doin’ there?”

  Gideon shook his head. “No.”

  “What’d you do with the body? Bury it with the others?”

  “Aye.”

  “Far as I know Islandmen believe they need to be buried within sight and hearing of running water,” Torvul said, “if not directly in it. Allows their soul t’travel t’the sea, to Braech.”

  “I did not know that,” Gideon said. “But I was not well versed in the superstitions of the region before being brought here.”

  “Ya’d still call it superstition, boy? Really? I think you’d know better than that.”

  Gideon nodded meekly. “The habits of my raising stay with me, Torvul. I didn’t mean it dismissively. Besides,” his eyes went distant as he thought, “I have been thinking over that moment. I do not think that Islandman needs to fear what awaits him in the next life. Braech’s eye was upon him, but…so was the Mother’s.” He frowned. “I am not sure what to make of Braech’s presence at the battle.”

  “Why?”

  “His servants fear me, and they stayed well away. But I know of your encounters with them prior to finding me. Assassins? Poison? That does not seem His way, from what little I do know.”

  “Well,” Torvul said, crossing his thick arms over his barrel chest, “a screamin’ berzerker chargin’ straight to his death, axe in hand, sounds a bit like the Temple o’the Sea Dragon t’me.”

  “That’s hardly comforting,” Gideon said. “Assassins come singly, or perhaps in twos and threes. But main, brute force could overwhelm us, and quickly.”

  “You sound just like Allystaire,” Torvul grunted.

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Yes and no. It is, in that for all I jibe at him, he’s perceptive. Sees into things quickly. It’s not, because mostly what he sees are the darkest edges of things, the ways they can go wrong, their capacity for harm and horror.”

  Gideon was silent a moment. “If we don’t look for the darkest places, we cannot bring light to them.”

  “Again. Just like him.”

  “That doesn’t make me, or him, wrong.”

  “No,” Torvul agreed. “It doesn’t.” The dwarf stood. “To the Temple then, for the song of dusk. D’ya want t’lay out your idea for Allystaire alone, or have a go at all of them at once?”

  “I’d rather explain it the once,” Gideon said, as he stood, reaching for the coat and hat he’d taken off upon entering.

  “One more thing,” Torvul said as he unlatched the wagon door, letting some of the interior’s gathered warmth out. “If you tell Allystaire what I said about him not bein’ wrong, you’ll regret it. Turn all your hair bright green.”

  “I shave my head.”

  “I can make it grow thrice as fast into the bargain, and melt your shaving knife. You’ll be a shaggy green monster, the terror o’the village lasses.”

  Gideon quickly descended the stairs, Torvul following after, locking the wagon behind him. “Speakin’ of village lasses, boy, are there any—”

  “No,” Gideon said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve not time for that, and it would be too dangerous.”

  “Stop,” the dwarf said, raising a hand. “Mind your own words to me, just this eve. The more you’re connected to the world, the more of your Will you can exert upon it, eh? Didn’t Allystaire say somethin’ to that effect weeks ago?”

  “He did,” Gideon answered. “The more you love the world, the harder it is to tear it to pieces.”

  “Listen to him then,” Torvul replied. “Learn t’love the world. He’ll not thank himself if you turn into who he was before the Goddess found him. And what you just said—well I didn’t know him then, but I think it likely those are the kind of thoughts Allystaire Coldbourne would’ve had.”

  “It doesn’t make what I said any less true. It would be dangerous.”

  Torvul clapped the boy on the back with an open hand, hard enough to just knock his breath away. “World’s dangerous, lad. Love it anyway. Come along then.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Snow Melting on the Green

  No matter how dark the night or how cold the winter, eventually the sun will begin to drive them away.

  And so it did, slowly at first, the snow piled on village greens all over the Baronies beginning to melt. The days when the piles dwindled noticeably were often a time of small celebrations, miniature festivals where chores were eased, barrels were rolled out, and instruments recovered from dusty cases.

  The celebrations focused on the passing of the most dangerous season and the joy of surviving it. A bit of fun before the backbreaking, monotonous work of spring began. Fields would need clearing, plowing, and planting. Fences, houses, sheds, and byres would need repairs.

  But in the Baronies, this first hint of winter’s end had long since brought with it a kind of fear, a breath held all over the countryside. For forty years, spring had brought with it one inescapable fact.

  War.

  * * *

  “Snow’s meltin’ on the green,” Tibult said, standing at the edge of the doorway of the large cowshed he, Mattar, and the others had made their home in for the past month and more.

  Mattar lumbered up behind him. “No green here,” he rumbled. “Just a farm.”

  Tibult turned, wincing as his weight touched down on his still-mangled hip. “It’s a sayin’, Mattar. Don’t have to be a green n’front of us fer it t’be true, aye?” He swallowed. “I think it’s time t’get movin’ again.”

  “I’ll get ‘em up,” Mattar said. “Ya know…we were lucky t’get Waltin this far, I don’t know we’ll get ‘im ‘round the mountains.”

  “We will. Let me go talk t’Jonas, see if he can be persuaded to pass us some bread or th’like.” With that, Tibult swung himself out the door, leaning heavily on the stout stick he’d used as a replacement for the crutch he’d tossed into Londray Bay. His leg and hip weren’t as bad as they’d been on the crutch, but as the winter had passed and he’d taxed himself doing whatever chores he could, along with Mattar and the others with them who could work, he’d felt it more and more.

  Jonas was waiting for him at the door. The old soldier-turned-farmer was looking critically at the horizon, sweeping his grey eyes towards the distant peaks of the Thasryach to the north.

  “’Spect ya’ll be movin’ on now,” Jonas said. His voice was gruff, raspy, ruined by years of yelling orders and smoking from a huge bowled pipe. Even now he was pulling the latter from a pouch at his waist, absently packing it with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Aye,” Tibult said. “Can’t thank you enough for what you done fer us, Bannerman.”

  “Ah, I left that behind me a long time ago. Besides, I was a footman. Never known one o’yer horse troopers t’salute me proper, not matterin’ how green his arse was.” He set the pipe in his mouth, sucked on it unlit. “I was happy t’take ya in. Plenty o’work needed doin’. Still will if ya’ve a mind t’stay.”

  “We’ve got t’be on,” Tibult said, thinking of that one brief taste of healing compassion he’d once had. And in truth, Jonas had been inventing work for them ever since they’d shown up at his farm in the midst of a snowstorm, wearing ragged tabards or old signs, clutching sticks to walk with, and leading Waltin by a rope tied around his waist.

  “T’Thornhurst, eh? Hope yer tales are true then. If ya come back, though, I’ll find work for your hands t’do. Even the blind fella,” he said. “Never seen socks n’long woolens darned so fast.”

  Tibult smiled. “If ya could see yer way clear t’havin’ some extra bread baked—”

  “I’ll do more
,” Jonas said. “I’ll give ya bread, also flour and a big side o’ gammon, a small barrel of good fat and another o’brandy.”

  “It’s too much, Jonas.”

  The older man tsked around his pipe. “No, it ain’t. When ya get there, y’tell this paladin about m’farm and m’family and that there’s good men left in the world, men willin’ t’do a turn for strangers ‘cause they can. And when ya done that…ask his Mother’s blessin’ on us. ‘Specially m’sons. We’ve escaped the press so far…” He trailed off and shrugged as smoke gathered above his head.

  “I know,” Tibult said. “Every spring a father has t’wonder.”

  “Aye. Now go, get yerselves ready. I’ll ‘ave the dray n’horse ready in a bit. You’ll bring it back t’me now, when your hip is better, aye?”

  “I will, Jonas,” Tibult said. “I promise. I swear it.”

  “Don’t swear,” the man said, rolling his lips around his pipestem. “But if ya can get word that ya made it safe, I’d appreciate it.”

  “That I will do.” Tibult extended his hand for a shake. Jonas clasped it and said, “Brother o’Battle.”

  Tibult grimaced lightly, nodded, but only said, “Brother.” Then he turned and began limping back to the barn on his stick. If he could’ve run, he would have. The snows were melting on the green and the roads were clearing, and the paladin and his healing Goddess awaited.

  * * *

  Allystaire, Gideon, Norbert, and Harrys were all running north along the road leading up from Thornhurst when they saw the wagon. Headed south, with a few riders alongside it, trundling slowly along the road, but making progress nonetheless.

  They glided to a halt, Allystaire in the lead, and one by one, dropped the stones from their shoulders, letting them thump heavily on the road.

  “Peddler?” Norbert’s voice carried optimism in it.

  Harrys was hitching at his belt, itching for weapons that weren’t there; instead he bent and hefted the stone he’d just dropped, propping it back onto his shoulder but keeping his right hand bent under it, as if ready to hurl it.