The gnarled man took a step forward. “No!” Angelika cried. “It’s leaving—let it go!”
The gnarled man took a step back. Its gargoyle features snarled up in purest hate, the big orc continued its withdrawal. It backed away for another hundred feet, then turned and trotted into the trackless pines. Soon it was gone from sight, though the sound of its crashing through the bush resounded for several minutes thereafter.
Angelika crawled down from the cart and made her way to the injured officer. She tore open the remains of his tunic and, with cold and delicate fingers, worked free the damp leather straps of his cuirass, teasing them from their buckles. She pulled the front breastplate free of the quilted padding beneath it. The quilting was soaked through with fresh, bright blood. Angelika pulled her second dagger from her boot and tore through the quilting. She winced, failing to contain her disgust: the orc’s serrated spearhead had torn a sizeable hole in the man’s side, churning skin, muscle, fat and organs into a glistening, gobbety mess.
Pilgrims gathered tight around her. She stretched out an arm and pushed them back. “Give us room!” she demanded. She looked up at them. They were all slack-jawed to varying degrees, vacantly staring at their fallen defender. They showed all the intelligence of a flock of chickens. It was the shock of events, Angelika told herself. “Can anyone here dress a wound?”
A young man dully blinked. “I am a physic,” he said. He shook his head, as if to clear it of cobwebs, then straightened the set of his shoulders, adopting a demeanour of sudden authority. “My name is Victor Rausch,” he said to Angelika, his eyes firmly on his patient. Atop his head roosted a pillbox hat, quilted in turquoise silk and chased with copper-coloured threads. He wore a curiously tailored robe of crushed blue velvet, which was cut like a doublet above the waist; it clung flatteringly to his well-developed pectorals. From the waist down, it flared out like a robe, pulling away from tawny leggings and a pair of pointy-toed boots, their leather dyed the colour of honey.
He knelt over the wounded man, arranging his handsome, open face into an expression of high concern. “Someone please fetch my bag!” he cried.
Immediately the short, bald man with the nut-coloured complexion appeared, lowering the bag into his hand. Victor snapped open its brass clasps and gazed forlornly into its interior. He dropped his voice. “Truth be told, in my home village I am more a dispenser of draughts and potions than a sawyer of bone and flesh. He is badly mangled. I am not sure what I can—”
The wounded man’s eyes popped open. Victor started back. The pilgrims gasped. Victor stammered. “Thomas! I did not realise…”
The ex-officer coughed up blood. “You say I’m badly mangled?” He worked his lips silently, waiting to recoup his breath. “No need to mince words,” he gurgled. “I myself am minced enough.”
Angelika touched the physic’s arm. “You must at least have bandages, and a draught to dull his pain.”
“Don’t waste them on me,” the wounded man mumbled, his voice fading.
Victor planted a hand on his forehead. “We’ve faced many hardships on our journey to this awful place. My supplies are now all but expended.”
Angelika’s shoulders tightened. “But you do have them, yes?”
Victor nodded.
“Then use them.”
The wounded man panted and looked up at Angelika. “What’s your name, girl? Mine is Thomas Krieger.”
Angelika decided to forgive the old officer his use of the word girl; he was, after all, already mortally wounded.
“I’m Angelika Fleischer. My companion here…” she glanced around for Franziskus, but he was hanging back from the herd. “My companion is Franziskus. No surname, I’m afraid. He seems to have lost that shortly before I met him, and never recovered it.”
A sardonic smile began on Thomas’ lips, but it pained him. He clenched his teeth and squinted, pressing solitary tears from the corner of each eye. “Thank you for helping us.”
“It was his idea,” she said.
“I won’t be going on from here. The young physic’s right. The first aid must be spared for those who might be saved by it.”
“You don’t want to be one of those supremely annoying self-sacrificing types, do you?” She turned to Rausch. “Patch him up.”
The physic looked at Thomas; he looked at Angelika. He gulped. He reached into his bag and streamed out a length of cotton.
“It’s a gut wound,” Angelika said, once more addressing the dying officer. “You might linger a long time. It won’t do these frightened souls any good to watch you suffer and squirm. So the physic’s going to truss you tight and dispatch you off to dreamland. Unless you’re so anxious to save on bandages that you’re willing to let one of these people finish you…”
The pilgrims muttered and shifted.
“I would not ask it of them,” Thomas said.
“Then get to work,” she told the physic, thumping him on the back, and rising to her feet. She strode idly to the bodies of the three orcs and kicked at them. It was a first principle of her profession that orcs never had anything good on them, so she did not bother to remove their boots or open their rancid packs. She did, however, yank her dagger from the orcish skull where it had taken up temporary residence.
She bent to pick up a leaf, using it to wipe sticky clumps of brain from the blade. A more thorough cleaning could wait for later.
The matronly woman who’d been hoisted up by the big orc hung back until Angelika’s gruesome task was done. Then she tugged at Angelika’s coat. “I must echo the words of our guardian, Thomas, and thank you, and your friend, for your intervention on our behalf. I shudder to contemplate what would have transpired had you not happened along. I am Prioress Heilwig, of the abbey at Gasseburg.” She was the one, Angelika noted, with the silver pendant.
“Please, stop introducing yourselves. There are too many of you to remember your names, and we’ll soon be leaving at any rate. Soon as I see to it that your young physic hasn’t butchered his task.”
Prioress Heilwig exchanged baffled glances with her fellow pilgrims. There was little of her to see; a habit of brown cotton covered her from head to toe, with only an oval of cloth for her fleshy face to poke out from. Though her garments were modest at first glance, Angelika looked into her cuffs and noted a lining of plush silk. Heilwig’s headpiece folded in on itself elaborately, to form two large wings of stiffened fabric that flew out from each of her temples. At certain angles, it made her look as if she were wearing the prow of a ship. She was in her mid-forties, signs of bygone beauty still clung to her thickening features. “Young woman, your brusqueness perplexes us,” she said. “It is evident that you arrived in response to our fervent prayers. Yet now you not only announce an intention to depart, but do so in a fashion we cannot help but find impertinent.”
Angelika sauntered to the cart. At its head, she saw the deep hoof prints of an ox. “Where did your beasts go?”
“We had only one ox left,” answered the pudgy man, “It shirked its yoke and ran off when the orcs came. I never thought an ox capable of such speed.”
“Should we go off in search of it?” asked another of the male pilgrims.
“Why are you asking me?” Angelika demanded. She softened her tone: “I see why you’d want to recover a thing so precious as an ox, but you’ll likely just get yourselves lost. Most probably it’s dinner for some orc or ogre by now. The Blackfire Pass swarms with dangers, as you may now realise.”
“Yes,” said the prioress. She clasped her hands and gazed up into the sky. “This hostile place has been an even greater test of our faith than we anticipated.”
Franziskus, seeing an irreligious quip forming itself on the tip of Angelika’s tongue, quickly interjected. “You’re far from civilised lands. Where have you come from?”
“We hail from various places, but assembled in Grenzstadt for the journey.” Franziskus knew Grenzstadt, it guarded the Empire’s southern border. He figured hastily; it was about tw
o weeks’ journey from here.
“All of the guardians we hired to protect us have been slain,” Heilwig moaned. “First we were attacked by goblins. Then by bandits. And now this. Thomas was never meant to take up arms for us—he was another penitent, no more and no less. And now it seems as if he, too, has fallen in the cause. Yet we shall pray to Shallya, and in her boundless mercy, I am certain we shall be delivered.”
Thomas groaned as the physic applied the first layer of bandaging to his wound.
“And what wondrous place do you pilgrimage to that justifies a trek through the Blackfire?”
“Surely we are not the first pilgrims you’ve encountered!”
“We’ve been down south for awhile, in the lands of the Border Princes.”
“But certainly you have heard of Heiligerberg, the Holy Mountain?”
“Can’t say I have.”
The prioress indulged herself with a puzzled grimace. “Several leagues south of here is Heiligerberg? Where two thousand years ago, the goddess herself manifested before the girl-child priestess, Pergunda?”
Angelika scratched an itch on her neck. “No, none of this sounds familiar.”
“During the golden era, back when all of these lands were civilised, Shallya set herself down on the mountain and showed her beneficent visage to the faithful. The mountain flowed with rose petals, and all who gained audience with Pergunda were healed, both in body and in spirit.”
“This hell pit was once civilised? That must have been a long time ago.”
The prioress’ face twitched in confused frustration. “It is mildly understandable that you have not heard of the mountain, or its history. But surely you have heard of Mother Elsbeth?”
Angelika managed an indifferent shrug.
“Mother Elsbeth, the most famed and holy vessel of Shallya. Whose miraculous feats of healing are celebrated throughout the southern Empire. Who lifted the plague at Ruren? Who cured the grand theogonist of his congenital pleurisy?”
“I was unaware that the Theogonist was so afflicted.”
“Not the current Theogonist!” Heilwig’s voice trebled. “Nor even his predecessor—you truly know nothing of this?”
“It is a subject I find uninteresting.”
The prioress shook her wattles. Franziskus approached. “Please pardon my companion, your grace. She is an iconoclast, and takes perverse joy in tweaking the pious.”
“But you have heard of her, surely,” the prioress pleaded, grabbing a good hank of Franziskus’ sleeve.
Franziskus nodded. “It is as she says, Angelika. Even the most impious wretches speak reverently of Mother Elsbeth’s great feats of healing.” He turned to the prioress. “But did they not occur decades ago? I was not even sure Mother Elsbeth still lived.”
“She must be quite elderly, now, but Shallya be praised, she has once more begun to grant audience to the faithful. No doubt the dire times we now face have inspired this fortuitous end to her long seclusion.”
“Your tale seems dubious,” Angelika said. “The times are always dire.”
“Dubious?”
Like a crowd of menacing cows, the other pilgrims began to edge around Angelika. She sought out the pudgy man and levelled an icy stare at him. He moved back. The others did the same.
“Are you sure these are not baseless rumours?”
Prioress Heilwig huffed. “I am quite well informed on these matters. Hundreds—no, thousands—of pilgrims now flock to Heiligerberg, to take advantage of this rare opportunity for grace. If it were false, we would see as many disappointed worshippers returning north as are swarming south.”
“I ask because I wonder if the rumours might be a trap, to lure gullible victims. Perhaps this Heiligerberg of yours has been occupied by bandits, and all the pilgrims who’ve come to bow and scrape before your Mother Elsbeth now rot in a common grave.”
A gasp escaped from the knot of pilgrims. They whispered and muttered.
“Now look here,” said one who had not spoken before: a grey-haired fellow in a grand brocaded coat, his head adorned with a plumed cap. He poked a finger at Angelika. “I won’t have you frightening these fine, devout people with gruesome speculations. They may be taken in, but as I am an expert in negotiation and argument, I can easily glean your motives.”
Angelika crossed her arms. “And what motives might those be?”
“You aim to increase your fee, by exaggerating the dangers we face.”
“My fee?”
“Do not be disingenuous. You know very well the position we’re in. We’ve lost our bodyguards, and now Thomas, the only experienced fighter among us, lies dying.”
This last comment aroused a series of dirty looks; the man’s fellow pilgrims made a point of glancing over at Thomas, to indicate that he was still in earshot. The plumed man did not acknowledge them.
“Let me guess,” Angelika said. “You’re an advocate, aren’t you?”
The man inflated his chest and extended the height of his neck, then gave Angelika a peremptory bow. “Stefan Recht, advocate of Pfeildorf.” He proudly smiled. “How did you know?”
“You claimed to be an expert in negotiation, though mostly it was your combination of arrogance and callousness.”
Recht deflated.
“As for a fee,” Angelika said. “Your most recent brush with death has befuddled your senses, all of you. Fee or no fee, I no more intend to accompany you on your pilgrimage than a pig intends to sprout wings and buzz about the spires of Altdorf.”
The prioress flapped her jaw up and down. “But you are needed!”
“Your needs are not my concern.” Angelika turned to leave.
Heilwig quickly seized both of Franziskus’ pale hands in her own, squeezing tightly. “It cannot be. I prayed for rescue, and she came.”
“In fact,” said Angelika, “it is Franziskus who bolted from our position of safety to foolishly endanger himself on your behalf. If your goddess sent anyone to save your skins, it would be him, not me.”
She headed across the floor of the pass, toward their campsite. Franziskus followed her, trailing Heilwig, Recht, and several others behind him.
Walking quickly to keep the pilgrims out of earshot, Franziskus hissed into Angelika’s ear. “Trying to rid yourself of me?”
“You can’t blame me if I persist in trying.”
“We’ve had this discussion countless times.”
“Yet somehow I never get through to you.”
“You saved my life, from orcs bent on sacrificing me. Honour dictates that I extend to you my undying allegiance.”
“That’s why I’ve got to stop saving people from orcs. You can never get free of them afterwards.”
“Please, stop, I beg you!” It was the prioress, who was now standing behind them. Franziskus slopped. Angelika didn’t.
Heilwig reached out for Franziskus’ hands again. He surrendered them to her hesitantly. “You are not an undutiful young man,” she said to him. “We can see it in your eyes. Clearly, this… companion of yours is, ah, rough-hewn. But one would expect no less in a place like this. One might even say that it is a necessary trait for survival.”
“One might indeed say that, your grace.”
“Then you must intercede with her. You two must safely guide us the rest of the way to the Holy Mountain.” She directed a pre-emptive, silencing look at Recht, the advocate. “We are willing to pay what is necessary.”
Franziskus checked Angelika’s whereabouts; she was gathering their packs. “Truly,” Franziskus said, “the size of your purses is not at issue. My companion has, ah, a certain mode of, ah, securing income, and a great reluctance to hire herself out. She’s been dragged into adventures before, you see, and their outcomes have been generally, ah, less than pleasant.”
“You must see to it that, in this instance, she changes her mind.”
Franziskus bit his lip. “I must tell you…”
Franziskus beheld a pair of limpid blue eyes, regarding him frankly
and neutrally. They shone at him from the soft, clear face of a young woman standing a few paces behind the prioress. She wore a habit like the prioress’, except that it was authentically modest, devoid of gewgaws or silky linings. A gently curling strand of auburn hair slipped out of its place in her simple headpiece, draping itself down on her perfect brow. She shyly batted at it, stuffing it back up into her wimple. It fell back down again.
“Devorah!” snapped the prioress. “Do not stand in the young man’s field of view.”
“Franziskus. My name is Franziskus.”
“You’re distracting Franziskus. Please step out of his field of vision while we continue our important discussion.” She squeezed his knuckles together, somewhat painfully.
As gently as he could, Franziskus freed himself from the prioress’ steely claws. “Tell me, Prioress Heilwig,” he said. “You say there are hundreds of pilgrims converging on this spot—this Holy Mountain?”
“Nay—thousands.”
“And this mountain—is it truly a mountain, or is that just a dramatic turn of phrase, as is sometimes the case when legendary places are described?”
The advocate, Recht, broke in to answer the question. “None of us have been there, but I have done careful research, and my understanding is that it is a mountain as jagged and treacherous as any in this awful pass.” He looked around meaningfully at the black crags rising all around them. “I have pondered the point, and at first it seems a peculiar irony, that the goddess of mercy would enjoin her most fervent devotees to clamber up a sharp and treacherous slope to receive her blessing. But then, on further reflection, any person of sense will realise that the difficulty of the climb is the very nub of the point—it is the profoundest test of faith and determination.”
Off in the woods, Angelika had her pack on, and now hefted Franziskus’ in her arms.
Franziskus tugged at the lobe of his ear. “So there are hundreds, even thousands, of pilgrims, scrabbling up the face of this—what was your word?—this treacherous mountain. Most of them like yourselves—ordinary persons of the Empire, unfamiliar with, and unsuited for, this sort of exertion?”
[Angelika Fleischer 02] - Sacred Flesh Page 2