“If you think it beyond your capabilities, we may simply begin with the burning.”
“No, no! That’s fine. We’ll go plant a sword in the Devil’s womb or something like that.”
With that, Sir Leonard spun on his heel and began to trudge down the platform, barely stopping at Armecia’s abrupt cough.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Oh … right.” The knight turned again and regarded the chaplain warily. “How, precisely, do you know that we won’t just run away once you let her go?”
“An excellent point.” The chaplain nodded. With a glance to the altar boy, he gestured to the book in the lad’s hands. “We shall retain the book of spells and divine its meaning. Even if she is proved to be a witch, she shall be powerless.”
“Wait!” Armecia protested. “It’s just a log! A chronicle! I can’t do anything unnatural with it.”
“Well, there was that one time you—”
“Lenny, shut up!” She turned to the chaplain with a look of pleading. “It’s worthless. Let me have it, and you can have something else.” She glanced about the platform before looking to the knight. “Him!”
“Apparently, it is worthy enough of your protest.” The chaplain narrowed his eyes upon her. “And that makes me suspicious … not enough, however, to deny the world a chance to have a taint cleansed from the earth.” He straightened up proudly. “You will find Zeigfreid’s lair to the north. Do be hasty. Taint persists forever, pages, decidedly less so.”
“THE Devil, above all, is a deceiver.”
Though he had ended his declaration with the slightest quiver of his lips, Father Scheitzen’s voice could never be described as gentle; his church made certain of that. Its halls were a vast, granite throat, its door a mouth with wood and steel teeth. What he whispered, the church demanded. When he uttered, the church decreed. When he roared, the church shook heaven and earth.
Heathens and drunkards occasionally mused that the priest owed his entire success to the architecture of his temple. These particular ideas, of course, were voiced far, far away from the church’s great, spired ears.
“He takes many forms,” the priest continued, the sweeping of his robe’s hem an angry hiss upon the floor. “He is the desire and temptation that lurks at the edge of the noble man’s eyes. He is the frailty in our arms, He is the rust on our swords, and He is the hole in our armor.”
Father Scheitzen turned his gaze upward. The afternoon sun pouring through the stained glass painted his face crimson, glazed his eyes to angry black orbs.
“He is the heathen in the south,” he spoke, “He is the barbarian in the north. All these are the Devil’s influence, but these are His subtleties, His deceptions, His lies.”
His neck twisted so slowly that his vertebrae groaned like old iron.
“For as vile as He is, He can merely corrupt, never create. The heathen is merely a man with untrained ears, who has heard the Devil’s silken voice. Should we then condemn so easily? Should we deny all cries for redemption? To do so would be to deny mercy itself.”
Crimson light beat down upon his shoulders and the naked pate of his shaven head. He ceased to have a face at that moment; his countless wrinkles bathed him in an infinite mask of shadow.
“We … I … am not a man without mercy.” He regarded the man before him evenly. “Am I?”
Nitz’s first thought was that men of mercy typically did not wear great spiked maces dangling from their sashes.
Whatever other terrifying features the priest might have, his scarred scalp, his clenched jaw, his huge, brutish arms, ceased to have any effect in the presence of this ominous weapon. Its crimson was far deeper than that wrought by the sunlight; it had seen many heathen skulls caved, countless barbarian bones broken, untold numbers of false priests’ faces smashed.
The blood would never fully wash off it.
“Am I?”
“N-no, Father,” Nitz replied, straining to hide the quaver in his voice.
To have even a foot touched by the shadow of Father Scheitzen, the shadow of a Crusader so famed and noble, would make a fully grown man quiver. Half of the priest’s long shade was enough to engulf a man such as Nitz. It took all he had to keep his legs from twisting over each other.
“I am not,” Father Scheitzen nodded in reply, his neck creaking. “Nor are you.” He cast a glance over the smaller man’s head, toward the towering figure behind him. “Nor, I suspect, is she.”
Nitz followed the priest’s gaze to his companion. Father Scheitzen’s shadow did not yet extend so far as to engulf Madeline. Nitz doubted there was a man yet who had grown tall enough to do that. She did not cast a shadow but rose as one, towering and swaddled in the ominous blackness of her nun’s habit, her head so high as to scrape against the torch ensconced in the pillar she stood alongside.
“Maddy,” Nitz caught himself, “Sister Madeline … is not without mercy, no, Father.” He flashed a smile, painfully aware of the stark whiteness of his teeth in the church’s gloom. “After all, she owes her life to the mercy of others. Who but the church would have a … creature such as her?”
Nitz took private pleasure in the shudder Father Scheitzen gave as Madeline stepped forward.
The torchlight was decidedly unsympathetic. All her face was bared, from the manly square curve of her jaw, to the jagged scar running down her cheek, to the milky discolored eye set in the right half of her skull and the grim darkness in her left. The jagged yellow of her smile-bared teeth was nothing more than a sigh, a comma at the end of the cruel joke that was a woman’s visage.
“Ah, a Scarred Sister. I suspect you may have inadvertently stumbled upon a solution to a problem that has long plagued the Order,” Father Scheitzen murmured, bringing his lips close to Nitz. “There are rumors, complaints of lesser men accompanied by lesser women thinking themselves and each other worthy servants of God. Their mutual weakness feeds off each other, men raise illegitimate children by tainted nuns.” He spared a glancing grimace for the woman behind them. “I trust you and your companion have no such temptations.”
Nitz hesitated a moment to answer, allowing the image of temptation to fill his mind. He had seen what lay beneath the layers of black cloth: the rolling musculature, the scarred, pale flesh, the biceps that could break ribs with an embrace. The thought of succumbing to “temptation” had not, until this moment, crossed his mind; the foreplay alone would shatter his pelvis.
“Of course not, Father,” he said with a timely twitch, “our devotion is to God and his Divine Warfare. Her … unfortunate appearance is naught but a blessing to keep our motives pure.”
“I suspected no less,” Father Scheitzen spoke. “But I did not summon you to my church to question your choice of company.” His scowl deepened; his face went hard. “I have called you here for two reasons: the Devil and your father.”
Nitz bit back a sigh at mention of the latter.
“Their paths frequently crossed, I am told, Father.”
“That is an astute observation.” The priest inclined his head. “Undoubtedly, you have already heard of the countless victories your father dedicated to God. The exploits of him and Fraumvilt, his beloved mace, are legendary. His weapon caved in more heathen skulls than any weapon ever raised in the service of God.” He stroked the hilt of his own spiked weapon with a sort of remorseful lust. “Krenzwuld, my own metal bride, is nothing but a fancy stick in comparison.”
“I am scarcely a worthy judge of mace quality, Father.”
“So it is true.”
Father Scheitzen cast a disapproving glare at the axe strapped to Nitz’s back, sparing two frowns. One for the barbarian weapon itself and one for the fact that it was large enough to threaten to topple the young man.
“I am told,” the priest began, the disbelief in his voice unhidden, “that this … weapon of yours has spilled much heathen blood. Tell me, what is her name?”
His expectant stare caused Nitz to start. The young man’
s eyes went wide, his lips fumbling for the answer. He felt crushed, caught between the Father’s suspicious scowl and the envious glare boring into the back of his head.
“Wolfreiz,” came the unexpectedly deep voice from behind. Sister Madeline inclined a head to the young man.
“My companion is correct,” Nitz said, nodding. “Wolfreiz. I sometimes find myself unable to speak the name, it fills me with as much fear as it does the heathen.”
“A decent, godly name,” Father Scheitzen nodded. “Your father would have approved its title, if not its heritage. He was a true warrior of God; the origin mattered less in the light of the mercy it would bring.” A smile tugged at his lip. “He brought much mercy in the name of God.
“And yet, he was not God. There yet remained a foe he could not destroy.” From the depths of his robe, Father Scheitzen produced a scroll, old and frayed at the edges, sealed with crimson wax. “The Devil Himself.”
“I would hope Father does not find my lack of surprise insulting. My progenitor, as great as he was, could not defeat Our Eternal Foe.” Nitz hesitated, swallowing hard. “Or was Father being facetious?”
Nitz kept his face straight, despite the narrowing of Father Scheitzen’s eyes, despite his huge hand gliding to the hilt of his mace. He had long since grown used to the reaction; Crusaders often displayed such at the mention of words they did not understand.
“… yes. I was.”
Nitz allowed himself to breathe a little.
“Regardless, I speak of the Devil bereft of His trickeries, bereft of His lies and deceptions.” Father Scheitzen stroked the scroll in his hands with the same fondness with which he would touch one of his own scars. “Creatures with no use for subtlety. Evil in its purest, most honest form, if evil is capable of such honesty.”
His eyes were cold stones.
“Dragons.”
“Dragons, Father?” Nitz kept his next thought—that dragons were creatures of myth born out of fear or drunkenness—far from his lips. Crusaders did not like to be questioned.
“A dragon. Specifically, this dragon: Zeigfreid.”
“Zeigfreid?”
“Are you aware of how annoying it is to hear myself repeated?”
“Annoy—No, Father, I was not aware. Please, go on.”
“I shall.” Father Scheitzen thrust the scroll toward Nitz. “This creature, Zeigfreid,” he paused, challenging Nitz, before continuing, “is one of the Devil’s many agents on earth. Have you ever seen such a thing, young vassal?”
“Zeigfreid … specifically, Father?” Nitz took the scroll carefully.
“I see that your humor is much like your father’s chosen weapon,” Father Scheitzen growled. “Blunt and prone to beating people over the head. It seems the branches of your familial tree were twisted.”
“And I can see that Father’s wit is as sharp as the sword that he remains too pure to carry.”
“I have seen a dragon, vassal,” Father Scheitzen continued. “Skin the color of blood, wings that blot out the sun, spewing hell from its mouth … like the Devil Himself, he cared not for whether he slew Crusader or heathen upon the field.”
“Gruesome, Father,” Nitz said, fingering the scroll. “And you would like me to deliver this to a temple worthy of dealing with such a beast?”
“Those were the orders handed down by the Order’s Council of Three,” Father Scheitzen uttered. “But, as I said, I am a man not without mercy and thus, I deliver this scroll to you directly.”
“To me, Father?”
“Of course, vassal. If Zeigfreid proves too much for you, we will certainly deal with him. However, for the moment, I thought it better to offer you a chance to earn Fraumvilt … to honor your father’s memory and strike down the one agent of evil that he could not.”
Nitz swallowed hard, as unsure how to react as he was unsure what the message Father Scheitzen had just delivered to him was. He had been admitted into the vassalry only a year ago, along with every other young man who had proved himself worthy of an honor higher than squire. He had expected, as all vassals did, to deliver messages through battlefields from church to church, not fight agents of evil.
Then again, he reminded himself with a roll of his eyes, I wasn’t expecting to be paired with savage, disfigured brutes, either.
Instinctively, he looked over his shoulder. Madeline’s good eye was big and bright, her smile was broad and ugly. Her scar twitched in time with her cheek. He saw her hand sliding under her habit, long fingers trembling with contained anticipation.
“This scroll”—the priest seized Nitz’s attention—“contains all that we know of Zeigfreid: where we saw him last, where he was heading, what the last known size of his treasure trove was.”
He heard Madeline whimper excitedly behind him.
“Treasure, Father?”
“Would it shock you to learn that, being agents of the Devil, dragons are voraciously greedy?”
“Not entirely.”
“Of course, it goes without saying that once you slay the beast, its hoard goes to the church to finance the struggle against the heathen.”
“Of course, Father. Crusaders need gold.”
“Crusaders need only God,” Father Scheitzen snarled. “Greedy merchants and smiths demand gold for the steel we put to use against the heathen.” He composed himself with a stiff inhalation. “To bring down Zeigfreid, you will need God and steel.” He glanced over Nitz to the titanic axe he wore upon his back. “I trust you can wield that?”
“This?” Nitz suddenly became aware of the weapon’s weight. He had bent his spine in such a way as to balance himself and keep the thing from toppling him over. “Yes, well, rest assured that I can use … uh …”
“Wolfreiz,” Madeline chimed in from behind.
“Yes, Wolfreiz. Thank you, Sister.” Nitz cleared his throat. “Rest assured that I can use Wolfreiz to such an effect that nothing remains standing after it is swung.”
Father Scheitzen grunted in reply. Somehow, Nitz suspected that the priest did not quite believe him. Was it the fact that he could not remember his weapon’s name? Or was it the fact that his physique was offensively similar to that of an underdeveloped milkmaid?
“It is no Crusader’s mace,” the priest replied, “but then, you are no Crusader … yet. That may change after you perform your duty to God.”
Nitz swallowed hard at that. Fortunate, he thought, for it prevented any further words from finding their way to his lips. Instead, the questions stewed at the back of his throat: what did the father mean? Was Nitz to be sent to the Holy Land to continue his father’s legacy? How on earth would he accomplish that? By caving in twenty thousand and two skulls?
Perhaps, he thought, it would be better just to tell the priest everything. No more secrets, no more lies, no more pretending to be the heir his father wanted. All the heathen blood he had shed in his father’s name came from the power directly behind him, not within him.
He sought to say this, but things like honesty and truth had long been tempered out of him, leaving only the hard, unrelenting steel of verse and duty behind.
“May God forgive the hell I leave in my wake,” he uttered mechanically, the church repeating him.
“So say we all.”
FRAUMVILT was contemptuous, Nitz thought, as it stared out through its stone, flanged head to survey the landscape below. The great mace was sickened to its shaft at the sight beneath its unseeing eyes: thatched roofs, rolling fields of green and tan, men holding shepherds’ canes instead of maces, women kneeling beside cows instead of altars.
War was reserved for the Holy Land, blood spilled where God could see it. Here in the kingdoms, men and women died rarely and peacefully, in their sleep, with no one but insignificant sons and daughters to ever know.
“Father would be sick if he could see it,” Nitz muttered.
“Eh?” Maddy took a step forward, and her shadow devoured him.
Father would have been sicker yet to see the size of
her compared to him. Fortunately, God had smiled upon Kalintz the Great, the Bloodied, and sent the lightning bolt that had struck him down and called him back to heaven long before he could live to see how runty his son, his only son, had grown. In this, God was gracious, sparing Kalintz the sight of his son dwarfed by a titanic woman.
And yet, God did not smile upon Nitz. For even then, God had sent his father back to earth in the form of his monument: the heap of stone skulls beneath the plated stone feet that blossomed into a terrible, fearsome stone flower. Fraumvilt was its sole petal, its sole thorn, and the recreation of the mace stared down at Nitz with even more hatred than it did the country below.
“Intimidating fellow,” Maddy continued, observing the statue’s face.
Behind his Crusader’s helm, carved so delicately as to faithfully recreate the visage of the first skull Kalintz had ever crushed, Nitz imagined that he probably frowned.
“It almost makes one wonder what was behind it,” she muttered. He felt her good eye staring into his own skull, trying to crack it open and poke whatever twitching lumps held the answer.
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied softly. “Father never removed his helmet.”
“Never?”
“At least, never around me.” He rolled his shoulders with a sigh. “Nor my mother, if she can be believed.”
“Can she?”
“She was an honest woman, all told.”
“Huh.” Maddy turned her stare back up to the towering monument. “So the greater question would be why they ever fell in love in the first place?”
“They didn’t.” Nitz felt a laugh tickle in his throat. “Procreation is all God demands of the faithful; fresh blood for the war. Love has nothing to do with it.”
“In the north, a man is required to kill no less than twelve legs’ worth of beasts before he can propose to a woman.” She grunted. “Or a woman is required to craft him a fine weapon before she can hope to court him. The product itself, be it meat or steel, is largely symbolic. The dedication required for such a thing is what is demanded. Not from God to man, but from man to woman and vice versa.”
Dragon Book, The Page 20