A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  Ground lifted under their feet; they met a stone retaining wall about waist-high, and then scrambled up the steep slope. Whatever it was that grew there was tough, only giving a little under their boots with a ripping sound and a sharp green smell, but it was slick with rain and liquid mud from the soil below, and they had to bend double and pull themselves up with their hands as well. It was a relief to stop when they ran into the stone and concrete of the wall, to rest against the rough surface and let their hearts slow; the bad part of that was that it made him feel how the rain sucked heat out of his body. Even with the rain and the dead blackness of an overcast night, he still felt conspicuous in his black outfit against the whitewashed wall; a little light leaked out from the arrow-slits in the towers above, enough to make out his hand in front of his face.

  Of course, my eyesight isn't of the best. Thank God for hard contacts, what?

  John Hordle muttered something about hoping the monks could haul them up, but the expected knotted rope or Jacob's Ladder didn't appear. Instead their guide drew his dagger and pounded sharply on the wall in some sort of signal, with a dull clunk sound that made him think the pommel was made of lead. And there was something a little wrong about it even so …

  "Be ready," the Mount Angel warrior said as he stepped aside.

  A chunk of wall about four feet tall and three wide slid up soundlessly, with a smoothness that argued for counterweighted levers. The five of them went through into the gaping maw behind, Hordle swearing mildly at the way it cramped his huge form; as they passed the door, Nigel saw that it was stone and concrete covering a plate of steel. When the last of them passed, it sank back into place with a sough of displaced air, arguing for a nearly hermetic seal; more steel sounded on steel as bars went home with a chunk sound. Then a lantern was unshuttered. It was dim enough, but almost painfully bright to eyes so long in the darkness, showing a short arched tunnel leading to a tubelike spiral staircase rising upward. Two men in mail shirts with shortswords on their belts stood by a spoked wheel set into the side of the tunnel; they nodded in friendly fashion.

  The round, unremarkable face of the third figure, carrying the lantern, was framed in a visored sallet helm much like the one Nigel Loring ordinarily wore himself, but he could have sworn …

  "I am Sister Antonia."

  Well, well. It is a woman. I wouldn't have expected it of Catholics, and rather old-fashioned ones, from what I've heard.

  "Do you wish to see the abbot at once? You must have all had a very hard day."

  "Thank you, Sister," Nigel said politely, smoothing his mustache with one finger.

  The young woman's smile was charming and showed dimples; she wore a dark robe over what looked like three-quarter armor: breast-and-back, vambraces, tassets, mail sleeves.

  "But if he's available—" the Englishman went on.

  "Certainly, Sir Nigel. And to answer your question, I'm a Sister of the Queen of Angels Monastery, which has always been closely associated with Mount Angel. Please follow me, sirs, ladies."

  Nigel shrugged, slightly embarrassed—assuming something that looked odd was odd had become a habit since the Change—and did so. Sister Antonia picked up a poleax in her other hand and trotted tirelessly upward despite the weight of her gear, which the Englishman knew from long personal experience would be considerable. Motion made the lantern sway, casting huge moving shadows in the tall stairwell, and the echoes of their rubber-soled shoes and the nun's hobnails provided a background of squeak and clatter. The effort of his own seven-story climb was welcome, warming him a little in his sodden clothes and squelching shoes. The concrete walls themselves were dry and smooth, and the soil around them probably well drained; this was obviously recent work, not more than a few years old. He wondered how the hilltop community managed for water.

  Cisterns, I suppose, he thought. And possibly deep wells with wind pumps, boreholes would do if they had to go down four hundred feet or better from the hilltop. They certainly have some good engineers.

  After an interminable time they came out into large dim cellars used as storerooms, stretching off into the distance. They were piled with sacks of grain and dried peas and beans, barrels of beer and wine and salt pork and beef, plastic trash containers recycled to hold sharp-smelling sauerkraut, flitches of bacon and hams hanging from racks, and great banks of metal office shelving supporting glass Mason jars of preserved fruits and vegetables and meats. Then they went up a much shorter flight of metal stairs and through an iron grillwork door and into a ready room-cum-armory, with poleaxes and crossbows racked around the walls. A sparse four armed men and two women sat at a table that could have seated twenty; Nigel smiled to himself at the sight of their stifled yawns. Military boredom seemed to be a universal characteristic, although most soldiers he knew wouldn't have a breviary open to pass the time. The guards nodded silently, gravely polite.

  "You must be cold and hungry," Sister Antonia said. It was the first time she'd spoken since greeting them, but it had been a calm, friendly silence. "Please, this way."

  Another flight of stairs and they were in what he suspected had been the Abbey before the Change, rooms modern-seeming but plain, dim except for the one lantern and occasional gas night-lights burning on wall brackets, turned down low behind their glass shields. Unlike the guardroom they were far from empty, but the people in them looked to be ordinary civilians, not monastics, many children and young mothers among them, asleep—not surprising given the late hour—on improvised pallets. There was a surprising absence of clutter or mess or smell, and Nigel knew from bitter experience how hard that was to avoid when you crammed displaced people into unfamiliar surroundings.

  "This was our guesthouse," Sister Antonia said. "These folk are refugees from our outlying villages and farms."

  Which confirms my guess … probably the town itself is full to the gills, if the surplus is here.

  "Baths here, Sir Nigel, for you and your men. And in the next room for you, Lady Astrid, Lady Eilir. Then something to eat, and Abbot Dmwoski will be pleased to speak with you."

  The bathrooms were literally that, with a row of big tin tubs, and all the plumbing post-Change, with pipes running from methane-fired boilers. Water steamed, and Nigel sank into it gratefully, flogging himself with raw willpower to keep from letting the infinitely welcome warmth soothe him into sleepiness. Alleyne and Hordle were much more cheerful, but then they were still a few years short of thirty. Hordle gave a snort of laughter when water splashed onto the tiled floor as he lowered his huge, hairy, muscular bulk into the largest tub and found it a very tight fit.

  "Never 'ad much to do with monks," he said meditatively. "Even the Crow-ley Dads." That Anglican order had grown spectacularly in England since the Change—several hundred times, relative to the surviving total population. "Eilir says this lot have a good reputation. Certainly the one who showed up when we had the brush with the bandits and Sir Jason … "

  "Father Andrew," Alleyne put in.

  "He was a good sort. Tough as nails, mind you, but not mean with it. And the militiamen with him, they were just farmers and cobblers or what-'ave-you, but they liked him—couple of them knocked back enough to let their secrets out, if you know what I mean. They had nothing but good to say of Abbot Dmwoski."

  Alleyne nodded thoughtfully. "They must be fairly formidable to have lasted this long, though, Father. They're right between Molalla and Gervais. This fort would be invulnerable to anything but paratroopers, but they had to survive long enough to build it, and hold onto the lands around it."

  Nigel called up the map in his mind; Gervais to the west, Molalla to the east, both slightly north of the monastery and its lands, both the seats of Association barons from the second Change Year. This place had been in the pincers, since the Protectorate first organized itself.

  "And they've been very cooperative so far," he said. "But the proof of the pudding, and all that."

  "Speaking of which, I could do with some pudding," Hordle said. "Or a cru
st, come to that."

  Nigel had been conscious of hunger; that brought it home, a sharp, twisting pain in his gut. They stayed in the hot water just long enough to soak out the bone-chill of a long, hard day spent wet and cold; he suspected that the two young men lingered a little for his sake. Robes and sandals were offered as their clothes were taken away to be cleaned and dried; the light gear in their packs was stowed in another set of plain rooms, these with beds and woolen blankets, jug and table, and a crucifix on the wall of each; then they were led to a refectory.

  That was a long, dimly lit room with trestle tables and benches and a reader's lectern. Nobody was there but themselves and an exhausted-looking squad who were probably the night watch, and a teenage boy minding the hearth; a big pot simmered quietly in the fireplace over a low bed of coals, and everyone ladled themselves bowls of thick lentil stew with chunks of salt pork and onion in it, and took fresh brown bread and butter and cups of some hot herbal infusion that tasted acridly pleasant. Nigel smiled quietly to himself as he spooned up the stew; hunger really was the best sauce, something he'd learned a very long time ago. That was the only thing that made much of what a soldier had to eat tolerable, and this was far, far better than a good deal of what he'd choked down in various bivouacs.

  When they'd finished an older monk came to their table, a man with swept-back silver hair that still had a few blond streaks in it, round glasses, a square chin and an elaborate pectoral cross on the breast of his black robe.

  "Abbot Dmwoski?" Nigel asked, though he'd expected someone younger from the descriptions.

  Behind him Astrid coughed tactfully. The monk gave her a nod and smile, and then shook his head.

  "I'm Father Plank, Sir Nigel, the prior here. I was in fact the abbot, but I resigned a week after the Change, since the office obviously required a younger and more vigorous man with different skills—this way, if you please."

  He had the same soothing air of trained calm as Sister Antonia, and he led them through the guesthouse, through new-looking cloisters, and into an older building with a red-tiled roof in the same comfortable silence. There was a smell of clean soap and incense and candle-wax, and once in the distance a musical chanting—Gregorian, perhaps Verbum caro factum est, though it was hard to tell precisely. The office at the end of their travels showed gaslight under the door; within it were plain whitewashed walls, bookshelves, filing cabinets, a desk, chairs, and an angular painting of the Madonna and Child before which another man in a black robe knelt, his eyes closed, rosary beads moving through his fingers as his lips moved. The Englishman noticed that a bedroom let off this office, visible through a half-open door; small, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, and starkly furnished with an iron cot and a small chest of drawers. The only other furniture in it was an armor-stand and a rack for sword, helmet, poleax and metal gauntlets.

  Eilir and Astrid made a silent gesture of reverence towards the icon; so, to his surprise, did John Hordle. He was a little less astonished when the big man gave him a wink, and Eilir tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. Dmwoski rose gracefully, despite his stocky build; that was apparently all muscle.

  "Forgive me," he said when the introductions had been made; his hand was as sword-calloused as Nigel's own, and possibly stronger. The accent was General American, with a slight hint of something rougher beneath it. "Time for private prayer has been scarce lately."

  He indicated the chairs with a wave of the hand, nodding in friendly fashion to the two young women who'd been here before, and the older monk sat quietly beside his desk.

  "Father," Nigel said, a little awkwardly, and uncertain how to begin.

  He'd been a courteously indifferent member of the Church of England like most men of his class, profession and generation, but despite the religious revival that had swept the survivors in his homeland during the terrible years, he'd never become comfortable with men of faith.

  Even my darling Juniper makes me a little uneasy at times. But they were here to sound the ruler of Mount Angel out, to evaluate him as well as to make an offer of joint action.

  The abbot's eyes were blue like those of his guest, but paler. They had a net of fine lines by their corners, and suddenly he was convinced that the man had come late to a cleric's calling; those were marksman's eyes. Nigel judged him to be around forty, or perhaps a little older if the tonsure in his coal-black hair was part-natural. A strong, close-shaved jowl was turned blue by a dense beard of the same color.

  "A pleasure to meet you, Sir Nigel. I hope your needs were seen to?"

  "Very well indeed, Father," Nigel said. "In fact, better than at many a five-star hotel I've checked into after a hard trip—less fuss, less babble and more real comfort."

  The abbot's square, pug-nosed face split in a chuckle. "Ah, Sir Nigel, there you hit upon one of the worst temptations of the monastic life."

  "Temptations?" Nigel said, surprised and interested.

  "To men of discernment, my son, a mild and disciplined asceticism is far more comfortable than a surfeit of luxuries, which are a mere vexation to the spirit," he said. "As a soldier, I expect you understand; a monastic order and a military unit have that in common."

  Nigel's eyebrows rose. "I do indeed, Father Dmwoski. And you seem to have combined the two rather effectively here."

  This time the smile was a little grim. "Needs must. The Rule of St. Benedict and of course ordinary duty both enjoin us to take extraordinary measures for our flock in times of trouble. We had this position—secure even before the walls—nearly two hundred strong young men at our seminary here, the good Sisters in town, everything was falling apart and what needed to be done to preserve something from the wreck was obvious, if terrible … And there are precedents—the Templars and Hospitalers, the orders that ruled Rhodes and Malta, the Teutonic Knights … "

  "No criticism implied!" Nigel said, recognizing a defensive tone when he heard it, and a little surprised to hear it from a man who struck him on short acquaintance as stolidly self-sufficient.

  But at least he isn't a burning-eyed fanatic for the Church Militant. I don't know what sort of commander he makes, but I think I like him as a man.

  "Your pardon," the abbot said, with a self-deprecating gesture. "I'm afraid it's a slightly sensitive subject. I was a soldier myself, before I made my profession as a monk here. Not that long before the Change, as it happens."

  Nigel grinned. "I suspected as much. But after all … Think of Bishop Odo on the field of Hastings—as it happens, some of my ancestors were there with him. And doesn't the Bible say: Benedictus dominus deus meus qui docet manus meas ad proelium et digitos meos ad bellum!"

  The abbot laughed wholeheartedly, yet with a rueful note below it. "Be careful, Sir Nigel, or I'll start suspecting you're the devil who can quote Scripture! Yet I became a monk and a priest to pray, and to seek God, to find forgiveness for my sins, and to serve His servants, not to wage war, and certainly not to exercise secular authority. Priests advising and criticizing politicians is one thing, priests becoming rulers themselves is altogether another. There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any. Even the greatest popes of the Middle Ages weren't up to governing laymen with any credit to themselves or the Church, and I most certainly am not."

  The older monk shook his head at his superior. "I'm afraid our holy abbot is still a little resentful that we propelled him into that chair after the Change; and he bellowed like a bull when we insisted on his elevation to a bishopric. We had to nearly drag him to his consecration as bishop."

  "There's the example of St. Martin of Tours," Dmwoski said dryly.

  "And as his spiritual counselor I've told him several times not to confuse the virtue of humility with a sinful reluctance to take up one's cross. God obviously sent him to us just before the Change for a reason."

  The abbot shrugged. "Hopefully someday we can return to a life of prayer and labor … ordinary labor, that is. Now, with regard to
your plan, Sir Nigel, we have the general outline—"

  "It's actually the Clan Mackenzie's plan, Father," Nigel corrected politely. "I'm one of the Chief's military advisors, no more. And of course the CORA contingent has agreed as well, and the Dunedain Rangers."

  The abbot nodded. "I have every confidence in Lady Juniper's abilities … and in her advisors, and in Lady Astrid and in … what do they call them these days? The Cora-boys?" A broader smile. "Sam Aylward and I have gotten on very well over the years. We have some things in common."

  Nigel felt a small knot of tension relax in his chest; this was a man he could talk to, and probably persuade. "I realize this is a great risk to ask of you."

  Dmwoski spread his hands. "Much must be risked in war. Yes, we have an impregnable fortress here, but if the Protector's men conquer everything outside, we will eventually starve. Not soon, we've been storing up supplies since we started building the walls, but eventually. And precisely because these walls are impregnable, they can be held by a small force. Allowing all our troops to be pinned down here waiting would be foolish … if there are allies sufficient to give us some chance of using them decisively outside."

  "And if the Protector is very foolish, Father," Astrid Larsson said unexpectedly.

  The abbot's slightly shaggy eyebrows rose. "You think he will be, my child?"

  "He's a wicked man, and an arrogant one," Astrid said. "The two often make a smart man do stupid things. Oft evil will will evil mar."

  "True." Dmwoski sighed. "But I have my flock to think of, their children, their lives, their homes and farms, all of which I risk by defying the Protectorate. For that reason, I considered taking his offer of full internal autonomy under his suzerainty, with only a modest tribute to pay—a generous offer, on the face of it."