by Glen Cook
Ghort preened, smug with good reason. “How long can these assholes over here eat grapes and olives and goats? For a while, yeah. But they’re used to bread and fish. They don’t have no fishing boats left. So eventually they’re gonna be eating roots and grass and river mud and, maybe, each other’s babies. How long before they don’t got strength enough left to fight? Not too long. If we show up down there in time to take their fields away or keep them from putting in any spring crops.”
That caused a buzz.
What seemed as obvious as a naked woman in the street at high noon when first Else looked at that map, and which was just as obvious to Pinkus Ghort, was not at all obvious to men heavily vested in a strategy calculated to deliver them personal mastery of some castle or town, following the same strategies that had failed the Chaldarean liberators repeatedly since the Praman Conquest.
Ferris Renfrow asked, “You didn’t see this, Captain Hecht?” With slight weight on the patronymic.
“Did you? No? I did sense that something was there. But I’m from a place that’s landlocked. We don’t think ships. Did anyone here see what Captain Ghort just pointed out?” Softly, Else told Renfrow, “Pinkus wasn’t blinded by what he hoped to steal.”
“Enjoy it while you can.”
The cat was out of the bag. The pig had escaped from its poke. There would be no stuffing them back.
“Excellent thinking, Captain Hecht. Captain Ghort,” Bronte Doneto said. “Inspired and inspirational.”
Ferris Renfrow eyed Else with abiding suspicion.
There had to be a catch, to Renfrow’s way of thinking.
There was a catch. Of course.
This time Calzir would not survive. The intervention of Dreanger and Lucidia sealed Calzir’s fate. Even Sublime’s enemies did not want those vigorous kaifates to establish a bridgehead on the Firaldian peninsula.
Calzir could not be saved. But Else could try to salvage its people. Calzir’s Pramans might survive a quick victory, after little fighting.
It had worked that way in the Connec when Volsard overran the Praman towns. That was how it was happening in Direcia right now. Peter of Navaya never persecuted those who did not resist him, whatever their religion. He was a firm ally of Platadura, which, while remaining Praman, supported him in most of his adventures. Which had caused the inflexible Sublime to bark at Peter more than once.
Peter of Navaya was no more impressed by Sublime’s displeasure than was the Grail Emperor. The Patriarch needed Peter far more than Peter needed the Patriarch.
Sublime had definite ideas about how Pramans, Devedians, Dainshaus, and other Unbelievers should be used in order to make more room for God’s own chosen Episcopal Chaldareans. Sublime’s Church was not a Church Evangelical, it was a Church Militant.
King Peter was mostly indifferent to the Patriarch’s grand schemes.
The key point, Else thought, was that he might be able to steal the bloody option away from Sublime. But only by being the most steadfast and cunning opponent that the Realm of Peace ever faced.
28. Alameddine, Weary Soultaken
I
t took ages to slide down the back half of the Firaldian peninsula, into Hoyal, the easternmost cantonment of Alameddine. Shagot could not stay awake. He was dull and uncommunicative. Life grew harsher. Because they moved too slowly to get away from the scene of any major crime, Svavar did not indulge in activities that might attract attention.
The money the brothers carried became a liability. Low-grade, unemployed mercenaries did not carry double-ducat and five-ducat gold pieces. Men of that despicable level ought never to see such coins.
Prolonged hunger forced Svavar to betray himself. The venue was a crossroad town named Testoli, famous for nothing in the entire history of the world. Testoli lay a dozen miles north of the Hoyal canton, which was mostly wilderness preserved for hunting by the Grail Emperors and Alameddine’s royals.
A dumb response to hunger turned into a stroke of good fortune. The eyes that noted gold in the hands of scum who ought to be strangers to silver belonged to the brigand Rollo Registi, infamous for a league around. Rollo was stupid and unsuccessful in his chosen profession. His band barely managed to survive—by, secretly, herding sheep in the hills over in Hoyal canton. They poached the Emperor’s pastures instead of his game.
Rollo hurried off to collect his henchmen. There were just two of them, in bad health, and not the sort who had friends likely to become upset if something happened to them.
This served Svavar and Shagot well when Rollo and friends attacked them. The Grimmssons took enough copper and small silver off the corpses to complete their journey without attracting further attention.
Svavar did not tell Shagot about the warrior woman who backed them up during the encounter. A kraken of fear now held Svavar in its all-smothering embrace. He, who had been raised by truly terrible parents to deny and defy fear, whatever its source or form.
Any respectable Andorayan of Svavar’s time faced fear with bludgeon in hand. That was so deeply engrained, and so intimately known, that Svavar understood his unmanning could have no mortal cause.
He might not be the brightest light in the firmament nor the fastest frog in the race but he was intimate with the beliefs of his people. He knew the common myths well. Which left him certain that he knew his guardian angel. But his imagination was not wild enough to discern her motives.
She would be Arlensul, first daughter of the Gray Walker. Chooser of the Slain, banished from the Great Sky Fortress for having dared to love the mortal, Gedanke. Now a sworn enemy of the Walker and her kin. A cruel, traitorous worm slithering amongst the Instrumentalities of the Night, starved for revenge.
Svavar still told Shagot nothing. Possibly he believed Grim too much a tool of those who trod iron-shod upon the back of the northern world. Or, maybe, those who had done so in the once upon a times.
Today the Old Ones were considered gone. Fairy tales. Increasingly ill-recalled myth. Andoray, nominally, was a Chaldarean realm now. It acknowledged a Chaldarean ruler.
Still, there were old folks back in the mountains there who were convinced that the advance of the wall of ice was due entirely to that adoption of the southern God. Those fools. Those fools!
A more disappointing horror for the Grimmssons was that the kings of Freisland had succeeded in annexing Andoray. Erief’s efforts had meant nothing in the long run.
Svavar harbored a sour suspicion that history always reduced the works of man to naught, a suspicion that nothing mattered beyond four or five generations.
Grim did not care. Grim was sullen, silent, focused exclusively on his mission when he was awake.
Just guessing, Svavar suspected that Grim’s devotion to sleep was necessitated by his connection to the Great Sky Fortress. It was difficult for the Old Ones to maintain contact from far away.
IN TIME SVAVAR HOOKED UP WITH A MERCENARY BAND CAPTAINED BY A thug named Ockska Rashaki, a renegade Calziran with illusions that allying himself with Vondera Koterba would let him repay a catalog of personal grievances beyond the Vaillarentiglia Mountains. Rakshaki’s band numbered fewer than sixty men, thieves and murderers all. They were the sort who gave all soldiers, and mercenaries in particular, a terrible name.
Svavar felt right at home, except for the language problem. Shagot did, too, when he woke up long enough to see what was going on. Between them the brothers kicked a half-dozen asses and Shagot killed a huge, stupid beast named Renwal who terrorized the rest of the band on Rashaki’s behalf.
Rashaki was not pleased by the loss of his enforcer, but he was a realist. He invested no emotion in his followers.
Ockska Rashaki loved no one but Ockska Rashaki. Ockska Rashaki was interested only in what Ockska Rashaki hoped to accomplish.
Svavar and Shagot settled down to await the arrival of the man they were supposed to kill. He would come, Shagot insisted. And Shagot would know when he did.
It was not to be an onerous wait. Ockska Rasha
ki did not demand much of his followers. And Vondera Koterba did not demand much of Rashaki’s band. They had a smugglers’ pass to watch. Koterba made sure they were fed so that they did not start raiding the Alameddine countryside.
Shagot was content to eat, sleep most of the time, and take the occasional shit. He, like his masters, was content to wait.
Svavar endured. He had suffered the world long enough to know that every misery eventually ends.
These days, almost every day, Svavar saw Arlensul, unnoticed by anyone else, lurking around this camp of men with dead souls. He and she were joined in an unspoken conspiracy.
29. Connectens at Sea and Ashore
I
t was a cloudless day near summer’s end. Gulls swooped and cursed. Harbor water stank. Brother Candle watched Connecten fighters board a dozen big Plataduran ships, the most that could be accommodated at Sheavenalle’s docks. Navayan and Plataduran vessels stood out in the harbor, among coasters and fishermen evicted so the expeditionary fleet could load. Some of those had arrived already engorged with Navayan engineers, sappers, artillerists, and siege specialists.
Brother Candle wondered if King Peter considered this a rehearsal for Sublime’s beloved Crusade to the Holy Lands.
Maybe. There was something going on. Peter had been doing well in Direcia, often allying himself with a lesser Praman prince to overcome a strong one. Why suddenly shift attention and key resources to fighting overseas? Peter was honorable, and dedicated to his God, but there had to be more to this than honor and love of his Queen’s brother.
The Connectens boarded reluctantly. The Unbeliever sailors wore strange garb. They gabbled in a dialect that was a cousin of Connecten but so weird it went over the heads of soldiers taking ship only to avoid having to walk six hundred miles.
No one knew yet where they would debark. Sublime and Johannes Blackboots had not finalized their plans. Or, if they had, word had not been relayed to the troops.
Count Raymone paused beside Brother Candle. “Time to work up your nerve and go aboard, Master. They’re already singling up the lines.”
Brother Candle sighed. His few possessions were aboard. He was not eager to follow. His reluctance was shared by his companions, each a respected cleric volunteer. Every religion in the Connec was represented in the expeditionary force, including Connecten Praman slingers from Terliaga. Their presence baffled Brother Candle more than did that of several dozen supposedly pacifist Seekers After Light.
The Plataduran Pramans made everyone uneasy. The Chaldareans could not understand why they were allied with Peter against their religious brethren. Though Chaldarean fought Chaldarean every day, across the Chaldarean world.
Brother Candle’s companions were the men who had gone to Brothe.
Count Raymone had accomplished marvels in carrying out his orders from the Duke. Although he was in Castreresone when told that he would move his force by sea, he reached Sheavenalle before the Direcian fleet arrived.
THE JOURNEY WAS BROTHER CANDLE’S FIRST ABOARD ANYTHING BIGGER than a ferryboat and his first on salt water. It was also his first aboard a platform that rolled and bucked and plunged on even the clearest, calmest day. A platform that never stopped creaking and groaning, muttering and moaning, not for a second, nor did it ever fail to make the horizon stand up at strange and terrible angles. The smell was unlike anything he had experienced before, combining barracks, stable, tar and caulk, sea, and frightful cooking, in a mix that ought to revolt the scavenger gulls following the fleet.
The sailors told him he was being too sensitive. Taro was a new ship. She had not yet begun to develop real character.
The cooking generated the worst odors.
The ship’s cook served no one but the Plataduran crew. Everyone else cooked on the main deck, amidst the mob, the working sailors, and the daring robber gulls. There was no hot food when the seas roughened up. The Platadurans did not trust Connecten landlubbers not to set the ship on fire.
Sailors feared nothing so much as fire at sea.
The journey was more than just physically uncomfortable. Brother Candle was conscious constantly of the proximity and curiosity of lesser elements of the Instrumentalities of the Night. That was unnerving. Life in antiquity must have been equally uncomfortable. Man had come a long way with the slow task of taming the world.
His touch did not yet lie heavy on the sea.
Off the coastal island of Armun, the one-time summer resort of Brothen emperors, Brother Candle gathered the religious spokesmen for the Plataduran crew and the Terliagan slingers. He was distracted. Armun was far south of Brothe, not far north of Shippen. Meaning they were off the coast of Alameddine, approaching that kingdom’s frontier with Calzir. And the fleet showed no sign of turning inshore.
The amateur Praman priests remained wary but Brother Candle had worn them down some by insisting that he just wanted to learn.
“I’m wondering where al-Prama stands on the Instrumentalities of the Night. They never cooperate with dogma. They revel in contradicting doctrine.”
These Praman chaplains were not inclined toward philosophical discussion. They were practical men interested only in supplying minimal spiritual support to men working far from home. They could perform the basic sacraments of their faith. And that was their limit.
Brother Candle held an abiding interest in the old eternal questions. Did the minds of men create the gods and the lesser things of the night by shaping the power from the Wells of Ihrian and elsewhere? Or did the Instrumentalities of the Night feed upon that power to establish belief in the minds of those who beheld them?
The chicken or the egg riddle, some called it.
The debate often devolved into speculation about what the world would be like if there were no Wells gushing raw magical power.
For Brother Candle that was a question easily answered.
The Wells of Ihrian were not the only wellsprings of power, just the biggest and most concentrated. There were numerous smaller, remote wells where the power leaked into the world, though the flow there was more often a seep than a gush.
The calculations of generations of sorcerers found that 70 percent of the supernatural power entering the world did so within the Holy Lands. It was a big, strange world deeply scarred by the power, habitable because the power kept the ice at bay.
The world grew darker, colder, and stranger as you moved away from the magical leaks, into the bizarre realms of legend.
There were further, more troublesome questions. If human imagination created the gods and the vectors of the night, then who created Man?
Brother Candle could not conceive of a world without sentient beings to appreciate the Instrumentalities of the Night.
The Praman priests were laypeople. They saw sophistry as the work of the Adversary. They had learned the truth when they were young. No preacher who was a heretic within his own false faith would seduce them with Hell-born free thinking.
Brother Candle discovered that these Pramans believed pretty much what most Chaldareans believed. The significant point of conflict was who got to claim responsibility for the glorious revelation. The Holy Founders from Chaldar in the Holy Lands? Or the later Founding Family, from Jezdad in Peqaa?
One Praman observed, “The real contention is idol worship.”
“Idol worship?” Brother Candle asked. “I’m a long way separated from my Episcopal childhood but I don’t remember any idols.”
“Chaldarean churches are filled with them.”
“Those aren’t idols. They’re statues. Images of the Founders and the saints, not the Founders and the saints themselves.”
“They’re graven images. Isn’t that an idol? By definition? Not the god himself but an image of the god that’s there to remind everyone that the god is watching?”
“Not being an Episcopal anymore, I can’t argue effectively. Maybe Bishop LeCroes can explain the difference.”
Brother Candle had lived long enough to be skeptical of dogma. D
ogma reflected the human need to believe there was something bigger and more meaningful than the mayfly individual. That there was a cosmic plan.
Horns called across the water.
The Platadurans signaled between ships using a variety of horns where other navies used signal flags or drums. The Navayan navy had adopted the same system.
The admiral of the fleet was Plataduran. The commander of combined armies was King Peter, who had invited himself along because he did not trust Firaldians. Especially not Firaldians from Brothe. And, least of all, any Firaldian who was the latest in a line of false Patriarchs. Despite his support for the Church as an institution.
Peter’s great talent was flexibility. He adopted methods and tools that worked. That included a Patriarch who was not legal but who did control the power of the Church.
The Platadurans and Navayans believed Peter would conquer all Direcia in his lifetime. Many of the peoples of Direcia looked forward to his success.
“What’s happening?” Brother Candle asked as sailors flew around, taking in sails. Taro was a broad-beamed, long bireme, like most of the Plataduran fleet. She could fight if necessary but was intended for commerce. She did not normally put out oars while on the deep water, unless becalmed. Sails were Taro’s preferred means of making headway.
A Plataduran told Brother Candle, “The captains have been called to a meeting aboard Isabeth.”
The great lady of the war fleet was named for Peter’s queen. The armada reduced speed and closed in. The ships dropped anchor and launched boats that carried the captains and leading soldiers to the flag-ship.
* * *
THE SHIPPEN COAST WAS LIKE NOTHING BROTHER CANDLE HAD SEEN BEfore. Smaller vessels ran inshore to either hand of a fishing village named Tarenti, which possessed a small but deep harbor. Veteran Navayans isolated the town. Transports headed in to unload.