Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  And yet standing there with the sun beaming off his mirrored armor, even as Andus Carek saw and catalogued the faults of the man, soon all he could see was the Paladin. Despite his keen eye for detail it was as if such things as the man’s height, age, and features eluded him. There was a man in there somewhere, but Andus Carek, for all his worldliness, for all that he knew of song and legend and the often slanted ratios of truth and lie that went into them, could only see the hero.

  Momentarily, he was afraid. Andus Carek generally thought of himself as a decent enough person; it didn’t pay to steal from the crowds that fed you, and though he carried a knife on his belt and one in his sleeve, and had a cudgel in his bags, he preferred never to employ them. He knew he’d given the paladin no reason to look askance at him, much less to threaten him. And yet for a brief instant he feared the man. It passed with a calm breath and the realization that what he feared was the possibility of making this man his enemy.

  Andus Carek made a note that, no matter what ends his own moral code might stretch to, he ought never to stretch it too far in front of Allystaire Stillbright.

  Then the name and the significance of it in the armor he was now staring at a reflection of himself in dawned on him, and he laughed.

  “Are you well, bard?”

  The paladin’s voice, now that was a thing worthy of the stories, Andus Carek thought, and it was something apart from his face. It was a voice for a more handsome man; a voice equally at home on the battlefield and the court. Probably not musical, but powerful, resonant.

  “Pardon me, Sir Stillbright,” Andus Carek said, and he bowed low in his best courtly manner. “It is not every day that one is confronted by a walking legend before one has properly broken fast.”

  “We tend to start our days early, Andus Carek,” the paladin said, “which may be why you have not found any food. And a walking legend? I am a man, I assure you.”

  “The armor and the hammer say differently, Sir Stillbright. And I daresay ‘Stillbright’ is less a family name and more of an appellation befitting some act of derring-do.”

  The paladin looked for a moment as though he were about to respond, but thought better of it. “The name is the work of the Mother’s Wit, Mourmitnorthrukacshtorvul.”

  “The dwarf? What do you mean by the Wit?”

  “The same,” Allystaire said, and then smiled. “And surely, Andus Carek, you did not think that the Mother had appointed only an Arm?” The smile faded, and he nodded lightly, never lowering his eyes, excusing himself. “If you will excuse me, I must be off.”

  Andus Carek cleared his throat. “I hope, Sir Stillbright, you would not object to my following behind you. At a respectable and non-interfering distance, of course.”

  “What about breaking fast?”

  The bard smiled. “When songs beckon, the needs of the flesh must wait.”

  “It is a free village. Follow me as you will.” With that, the paladin turned on a heel and walked on, his armor and the hammer at his side flashing in the sunlight.

  When they reached the gate at the southern end of the village’s track, the youth with the prodigious talent for languages was waiting for them, only he’d traded his villager’s garb for a robe and was carrying a long wooden staff. The robe, Andus Carek thought, was the color of a certain kind of sky as dawn had just begun, almost invisibly, to overtake the dark.

  By the time they had walked out the gate, the bard was scribbling furiously on a scrap of parchment folded in his hand, carefully managing both ink bottle and pen in the other.

  A paladin and some sort of wizard prodigy. It was, Andus Carek reflected, almost too much.

  “What is it that the two of you are out to do today, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”

  “Today?” The paladin stopped in his tracks and flexed his hands inside the lobstered steel of his gauntlets—the left example of which left the palm of his hand curiously bare. The bard noted it, reminded himself to inquire, delicately, later. “Today we are trying to end the Succession Strife.”

  Andus Carek hoped he had brought enough parchment.

  * * *

  Allystaire and Gideon’s entry into the Oyrwyn camp drew a fair share of stares and some muttering. Given that the nights were no longer likely to kill them with cold, most of the Delondeur men had moved back to the now properly equipped tent. The sight of Allystaire armored as he’d been during the Battle of Thornhurst sent a larger ripple among them, with a few dashing quickly out of his path.

  By the time they’d reached the central pavilion, Garth and Audreyn had come forward to meet them. The Lord of Highgate wore his own distinct armor, green enameled scales, while Audreyn wore a matching dark green dress, lined with strips of brown fur, and sealskin boots, though she had dispensed with the enormous bear fur she’d been wrapped in during the colder weeks.

  “Brother,” Audreyn said, her tone bright and yet biting. “To what do we owe this visit? They have been infrequent enough.”

  Allystaire sighed, lowered his eyes to the ground. “I am sorry, Audreyn,” he said. “You are right. There are so many things that need doing I could abandon sleep altogether and still lack for time.” In truth, her fairly gentle jibe shamed him, and he felt his cheeks flush a bit. Aside from a few dinners and the odd ride, he’d seen little enough of his sister despite her presence nearby for months.

  She stepped forward and laid a gloved hand carefully on a bracer. “Allystaire, I am used to having only the time with you that the wider world allows me.”

  “I should have gone about changing the world a long time ago, then.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “I should have been more present in your life. No child deprived of her parents so young should have been raised by tutors and a brother she saw for less than half a year. I am sorry that I did not see it then. I am sorry that I made war the dominant fact of your existence for so long.”

  Audreyn stepped forward and slipped her arms up around his neck, awkwardly embracing her brother around his armor. Stiffly and slowly he slid an arm around her back.

  “You did not make it that way, brother,” she murmured to him, then stepped back. “You could not have changed it.”

  “I could have tried. I should have tried. And I am Cold-damn well going to try now.” He slipped his arm from around his sister’s back and looked between her and Garth. “The snows are melting, the roads are clearing. It time for everyone to start moving.”

  Garth nodded, shifted his feet, scales rattling a bit. “I know. I’ve given orders to start breaking down the camp, preparing the horses and supplies for the return. Be a bit tricky figuring what passes to take.”

  “I can help with that,” Gideon offered. “Before you leave, bring me a map. I will mark upon it what roads and trails are clear. Mol can give you some idea of any weather that might change what I tell you.”

  “How are you going to do that, lad?” The knight bent down towards the much shorter Gideon, hands resting against his legs. Garth’s voice was, for a moment, so patronizing Allystaire felt a surge of anger, but he forced it away with a chuckle.

  “My name is Gideon, and I would prefer you call me that,” he replied calmly. “And I will do it by projecting myself into the air using the Will I absorbed when I destroyed the sorcerers Iriphet and Gethmasanar. And if you do not believe I am capable of it—as your tone implies you think I am an idiot child—you are welcome to try and stumble home with no more prospect of reaching it than a drunk trying to board a rocking boat on a moonless night. However, for the sake of your wife, whom Allystaire clearly loves even if he will not say so, I strongly recommend that you listen to my advice.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the furious scratching of Andus Carek’s pen on the parchment flat against his palm.

  Garth looked too surprised to be angry, while Allystaire and Audreyn shared a laugh at his stunned silence. The pale knight’s che
eks colored easily, but Audreyn laid a hand on his armored shoulder and smiled winningly up at him, which seemed to calm him.

  “Gideon is the Will of the Mother, Garth,” Allystaire said. “He is not bound by the same limitations as you or me. If he tells you can do a thing that sounds impossible it is because he can. Trust me.”

  “I will,” Garth said faintly.

  “Now,” Allystaire said, with an air of returning to business, “I am not here to try and kick you off the village land. Yet it is time to be leaving, yes. But tonight, come to dinner. I am sure Torvul can be persuaded to prepare something special. And I have some letters I would like to give you. To take to Wind’s Jaw.”

  “Letters for whom?” Garth’s brows furrowed.

  “We will take them,” Audreyn said, offering Allystaire a knowing look, her brows raised, head slightly inclined. “I’ll explain later,” she muttered to Garth.

  Allystaire offered his sister a smile and the pair of them another shallow bow, the kind where he didn’t break eye contact, more an inclination of his head than anything else. “Lord and Lady of Highgate, if you will excuse me.”

  Garth extended his hand, which Allystaire clasped in a clatter of metal on metal. Audreyn rose up to kiss his cheek, a gesture he returned awkwardly, as if he were unused to it.

  They parted, Gideon sighing in frustration.

  “Patience, son,” Allystaire said. “Many people are going to have trouble taking your words literally.”

  “Where are we headed now?”

  “Landen and Chaddin,” Allystaire said.

  From behind them there was a delicate clearing of a throat. Allystaire turned to find the bard, the fingertips of his parchment-clutching hand pointed upwards, palm out, as if asking permission to speak. Allystaire nodded, looking for a moment at the lines of ink scrawled, neat but too tiny to read.

  “If I may, Landen and Chaddin? As in Landen Delondeur?”

  “Yes,” Allystaire replied. “As in the Baroness Delondeur. And her Lord Magistrate and newly legitimized half-brother.”

  Andus Carek made a quick dash. “And, ah, Will of the Mother…”

  “There are five of us, Andus Carek. She named me her Arm. The Will,” he said, pointing to Gideon. “The Voice, the Shadow, and the Wit make up the rest.”

  “Fascinating. And they are?”

  “You will not miss them, I promise you,” Allystaire said, smiling faintly. “In fact I believe you are well acquainted with the Shadow already.”

  The bard lifted his head from the paper, his dark eyes narrowing, crinkling the skin around them. “Idgen Marte?”

  “The same,” Allystaire replied. “The Voice will be the only child you see going barefoot through the snow. And talking to your horse if she has a mind to. And the Wit, well,” Allystaire’s smile widened. “He will have plenty to say to you. He has plenty to say to everyone.”

  “Why those titles? Why those symbols?”

  “I am not the man to ask,” Allystaire said, then he raised his left hand to forestall the inevitable question he could see the bard forming.

  Andus Carek couldn’t quite help himself. “Why the bare palm?”

  Allystaire’s eyes narrowed. “The questions are becoming burdensome.”

  The bard placed the back of his hand against his lips, nodded firmly.

  The paladin set off again, Gideon at his side and the bard two steps behind and silent once more.

  Allystaire was a good deal less formal when it came to the Delondeur lords. He stuck his head inside their tent, and called out, “Landen, Chaddin. Dinner this evening in the village, if you would be so kind.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode off.

  Gideon looked up at him, frowning. “That was decidedly less cordial than how you dealt with the Lord and Lady of Highgate.”

  “The Baroness Delondeur and the Lord Magistrate are not my sister and her husband, who I have known on his own account since he was seven years old.”

  “One would imagine that familiarity would encourage you to be less formal.”

  “I do not want Landen or Chaddin to think that this meeting is optional.”

  “And you thought if you showed the same attitude to Audreyn and Garth they might bristle?”

  “Not merely that,” Allystaire said. “I owe both of them debts I am not in a position to repay. The least I can do is show them courtesy.”

  “We should strive to do more than the least.”

  “I know, Gideon,” Allystaire replied, pausing and lifting a hand to his face. “I know. I left them under difficult circumstances. I have not been able to…” He shook his head with a sigh, and said, “Enough. Let us go collect the rest of our dinner guests.”

  “Who?”

  “The Archioness. And, I think, one more, though I do not know where to find him.”

  * * *

  Cerisia was perhaps anticipating Allystaire’s visit, given that the door of the room she’d occupied for the winter was open and she was packing.

  She stood, smiled slyly. “Sir Stillbright. I was beginning to think—”

  “I had forgotten you. I have not, Archioness, I assure you. Yet there are many demands on my time.”

  “I know, Allystaire,” she said, her smile expanding and warming her features.

  “I was hoping you would join me for dinner this evening,” Allystaire said. Her eyes widened, just a touch, a careful, optimistic expression. “Along with the rest of the Mother’s servants, the Baroness Delondeur and her Lord Magistrate, and the Lord and Lady of Highgate and Coldbourne.”

  Her expression wavered, but if he hadn’t been watching her carefully he probably wouldn’t have noticed. It was there, and gone, a flash of some kind of hope appearing in her features and then being shoved aside. He was grateful, in that moment, that he’d asked Gideon and Andus Carek to wait in the taproom below.

  “Am I to be shown the road, then?” she asked lightly, her tone making it a jest.

  “The snows are melting. If you want to make the Vineyards in good time, the journey is best started soon.”

  “Am I to go alone?”

  “I have some thoughts on that score,” Allystaire said. “I think that the warband that helped to defend Thornhurst, the Iron Ravens, could be hired to accompany you, if you wished. I also believe that the Will of the Mother can help to make sure that the way is clear.”

  “I don’t suppose it is possible that the Arm of the Mother might escort me himself,” she asked, smiling faintly, her eyes knowing the answer, asking anyway. “Your presence would provide a good deal of negotiating leverage. And it would impress Hamadrian Innadan.”

  Allystaire shook his head very lightly. “You know I cannot leave Thornhurst now. If we can get the Barons to a peace congress, as I have suggested, I will be there.”

  She sighed faintly, rested one hand on her white-gowned hip, the jewelry on her fingers catching the silver and gold threads woven into the fabric. “You are a compelling man, Allystaire Stillbright. And a stubborn one.”

  “You are a compelling woman, and beautiful. I would never deny that. But I am committed elsewhere.”

  “A goddess is not a lover, Allystaire.”

  He tried to keep his face blank, impassive, but he felt color rise in his cheeks, hoped the many weeks spent in the morning sunlight had darkened his skin enough to hide it.

  Cerisia’s suddenly indrawn breath told him it hadn’t. “Truly?”

  He nodded very slightly, unable to meet her eyes for reasons he couldn’t have explained.

  “How?”

  “I am not much of a theologian, Cerisia,” he quipped.

  She laughed lightly, breaking some of the tension, and he met her eyes again.

  “Stop,” she said lightly. “I do not want to compete with a Goddess. Not so literally. And it’s not as if we are doomed lo
vers in some ballad, separated by war and politics and blood. We could have dallied.”

  “I do not think I have ever been a dalliance,” Allystaire said. “I should have liked to try it. Alas.” He shrugged. “I do know, Cerisia, that Thornhurst and the Mother’s folk are in your debt. For what you did in the battle, and for what you will go to do now. If I can repay it, I will.”

  “There are people in the Baronies who worship Fortune as well, Allystaire. And She has not been kind to them these two score years and more. If I can correct that, I should. As for the battle, it was clear that Lionel had become a monster, even before the sorcerers made him one in the flesh. To not oppose him was to endorse him, and that I could not do.”

  “Even so,” Allystaire said, “you will always have the option of the Mother’s refuge and protection. I do not pretend that I can convert you, but Thornhurst and the Temple will never turn you away. In fact,” he said, laughing, “you just bought the village the start of a library.”

  “How did I do that?”

  “The gems you left back in the autumn. I traded them for two strongboxes full of books.”

  “Are there enough lettered folk here to make use of them?”

  “There will be once the Voice is done with them,” Allystaire said.

  She smiled. “The uprising comes on leaves bound in wood and leather. It was much the same in Keersvast once, when the First Captains ruled it like princes. A man or a woman who can read and write is a good deal harder to swindle.”

  “The Old Baron Oyrwyn insisted that all of his knights knew how to read, write, and cipher,” Allystaire said, “for much the same reason, I believe.”