Ordination

by Daniel Ford

  “And you lot,” Allystaire said, pointing to the gathered mercenaries; of the score that had occupied the camp when the Arm and the Shadow set upon it, less than a dozen survived, and now two fresh bodies were leaking dark blood into the ground. “You will walk, in pairs, in separate directions. You will take with you no weapons, no gold, no silver, but such water and bread as you can carry. And everywhere that you go, you will speak of what you saw today. Of your gravekling and your band bested by the Arm and the Shadow of the Mother—of two against a score. Of the two untouched and your score halved. Go now before I change my mind.” Wearily raising his bloodstained sword, he added, “Any man who stands here still when a quarter of a turn has passed will be standing a head shorter.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Bandying Words and

  Standing Watch

  Some short time later found Allystaire and Idgen Marte leading the villagers, such mounts as the mercenaries had, and Torvul’s wagon loaded with supplies and abandoned weapons back towards the road. The dwarf walked beside them as they led their own mounts, having given over the board of his wagon to the village girls. They’d walked in an awkward silence, Allystaire slow and pained and Idgen Marte impatiently; Torvul simply swung along beside them on his shorter, stouter, yet seemingly tireless legs. Finally, the dwarf broke the silence.

  “What gives you the right to simply go lopping off heads after the fighting’s done, oh mighty knight,” he asked sardonically.

  “It is naught to do with any right,” Allystaire replied, exhaustion seeping through his words. “It has to do with justice.”

  “Seems to me justice is something for justiciars or magistrates or assizes.”

  Allystaire stopped and turned to face the dwarf, though he leaned a bit on Ardent’s shoulder as he did. “The last assize I attended, dwarf, was headed by the same priest who hired those brutes and tried to establish a temple of the Mother he could put under his own thumb. He ordered that a man who came to give evidence be scourged from the town. Then he forced a woman I widowed to give me back a piece of a gem that was worth more than anything she owned. If that is justice, it is unknown to me. If taking the head of a man puts anyone in chains is not, then I am happy in my ignorance.”

  “I don’t deny that the man had it comin’,” Torvul said. “Just that there’s a proper way—”

  “The proper way to deal with a man like that is to put him in the freezin’ ground,” Idgen Marte snapped, spitting to one side of the track and giving the reins that rested in her hand a jerk, leading her horse away from them. “So long as it gets done, it’s proper.”

  “You don’t even need to think on it?” Torvul looked from her retreating figure back to Allystaire, who grabbed his own reins with a weary sigh and started trudging forward again. He was silent a moment as he pondered the dwarf’s question; in the stillness of his mind and the enervation of his body, with the weight of his armor digging pain into his shoulders, the voice of the Goddess flashed across his thoughts. I would not have chosen a man of less conviction. The remembrance, if it was, or the reminder, as he hoped, sent a thrill through his limbs and renewed his energy a bit.

  “No. I do not,” Allystaire replied. “The Mother will not suffer such a man to live with those crimes on his hands. I would be no true paladin if I did otherwise.” He walked on for another moment, and added, “Justice, I think, is less about the trappings—an assize, a court, a magistrate, oaths, and evidence—those are for the law. The law decides a fact, or creates one to suit its needs, and it says if this fact is true, however superficially, a man is punished accordingly. Justice looks at the harm done and the man who did it. Mayhap it considers what else he has done in the world, what else he is likely to do, what made him do what he did. The man whose head I took was a strong man, and in his strength he sought the suffering of others. Justice, for his particular crimes, meant death.”

  “You don’t lack for confidence, I’ll give you that.”

  “Faith is not mere confidence.”

  Torvul snorted and fiddled with some of the pouches clipped to his jerkin.

  “Come now, alchemist,” Allystaire said, turning and taking up his reins once more and slowly, painfully setting off down the path after Idgen Marte. “After what you have seen today, will you still quibble and snort when I speak of faith?”

  “That Rede fella had faith, too. And the Sea Dragon priests who supplied his weight have faith, of its own stripe. And so too does every dicer and player at cards when he invokes Fortune on his latest wager. What sets your faith apart, besides it allowing you to squeeze a giantkin’s arm into slime and drag straight answers out of a crooked old dwarf? What about your faith means you get to decide that a man deserves death?”

  “Spare me the rhetorical puzzles and the traps,” Allystaire replied with a snort of his own. “The Goddess did not grant me these Gifts so that I would let them rest idle. I will not wring my hands and worry whether I should act or I should wait for the approval of a magistrate answering to a lord, who answers to a baron, who answers to no one.”

  “Who do you answer to?”

  “The Goddess. Idgen Marte. Mol. Myself.”

  “Who the Cold is Mol?”

  “The Voice of the Goddess. A lass of eleven summers. Going on a hundred.”

  “Still sounds like what a baron might say.”

  “Ask yourself what I have to gain by all this. What gold do I earn? What glory?” Allystaire spat into the track and slowly, carefully, hauled himself up into Ardent’s saddle, the stallion snorting as if he sensed his rider’s annoyance. “Enough. Enough, for good and all. I will bandy no more words with you. Where I find suffering, I will end it. Where I have come too late, I will make such amends as I am able. I can do nothing less.” He turned the horse’s head to face the rear of their short column, touched his heels to the destrier. With a gathering of thick muscles, Ardent clopped away, hooves loud even on the crude dirt track they followed, and soon the paladin was a fair distance from the dwarf.

  Torvul grunted faintly and continued on, shaking his head lightly. “Could probably do more,” he said, to no one in particular. Certainly none of the villagers took any notice of him—their bemused focus remained on Allystaire as he rode among them.

  * * *

  They camped halfway back to Grenthorpe on a relatively flat piece of land hidden from the road by a thick stand of trees; with Torvul’s wagon set at an angle, their fire and camp were almost entirely hidden. The village youths fell quickly asleep while Idgen Marte, Allystaire, and Torvul spoke near the small fire, for which the dwarf had provided a metal brazier that concealed most of its light. From the road they were all but invisible; nevertheless, Idgen Marte kept rising to her feet and pacing and staring through the trees.

  “Sit. Rest. No one is following us,” Allystaire called quietly to her for the fourth time. “And if they are, we have all their weapons,” he added, tossing a thumb toward Torvul’s wagon. “What would they do if they found us?”

  “Were I any o’them I’d’ve pissed myself lifeless after what you did to their gravekling,” the dwarf offered. The jug of ikthamaunavit lay cradled in his arm. “Just psssssh,” he said, waving a hand in front of his legs, which were stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. “Till my kidneys popped.”

  “I am flattered,” Allystaire replied, trying in vain not to grin a little. Then his attention moved back to the pacing Idgen Marte, and he called to her again, “Come back. Sit. What is bothering you so?”

  With a heavy sigh, she turned back toward the small, sheltered fire and squatted in front of it, her scabbarded sword trailing in the dirt. “I don’t like what Rede told us. Why would the priest of Braech take an interest in the Mother—so much so that they’d back them for a temple in Londray?”

  “Never knew worshippers of the Sea Dragon to scheme so damned much,” Allystaire agreed. “It is not usually the
ir way; direct challenge is. They value conflict, yes, but also courage.”

  “None o’yer human gods make any sense. I mean they make more sense than those northern elves, what with tramping all over a land made of endless grey and white—if ice can be called white. Blue sometimes, maybe. Anyway, there ain’t no freezin’ green up there and yet it’s all a religious elf’ll talk of. Green this, Green that. And let me tell you,” the dwarf said, sitting up straight, his voice dropping deeper as he raised one long finger to point to each of them in turn, “it’s not a mistake that all those Green worshippers are up there where they can’t be talking to decent folk. It’s purposeful. Where they belong, freezing and starving.”

  Allystaire and Idgen Marte exchanged a quick glance, then turned to Torvul.

  “What in the Cold are you on about, dwarf?” Allystaire said, while Idgen Marte lowered a knee to the ground and watched Torvul carefully.

  The dwarf shrugged and lifted his jug again. “Nothin’. Back to the matter at hand. These Braech-types, they’re just after getting’ what they can because it’s there and someone else might get it if they don’t, yes?”

  “And what of dwarfish gods,” Allystaire needled gently. “What wisdom would they have?”

  “There aren’t any dwarfish gods. Not so’s you’d understand,” Torvul replied, his tone shifting from genial drunk to belligerent drunk, and back, at the speed of his words.

  “Fair enough. Commune some more with the gods of the bottle then,” Allystaire said. He turned to Idgen Marte, who finally sat down, though she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I think I made an enemy in the Choiron Symod, back in Bend. He did not seem a man like to let a slight rest.”

  “So is this just about you, then?”

  “Not at all. I think it is about the Mother. I think maybe Braech, or His Church, fears Her. Fears what we will do for Her.”

  “There’re only two of us,” she pointed out, shaking her head, her braid brushing against her back. “What threat can we pose?”

  Torvul chuckled and toyed with the cork of his bottle, then thumbed it loose and tossed it away into the darkness. “You two’re plenty enough threat. Murder kings, you had even the bare bones of a plan. Topple empires. Maybe found one.” He laughed sharply, a little drunkenly, and tapped the bottle he held with loose fingers. “Cold help us all you two get that idea in your heads, start a dynasty, raise terrifying children together. You lack somethin’ though,” he frowned, holding up a finger to bid them wait while he first raised the bottle to his lips for another big nip.

  As he lowered the bottle, the upraised finger tapped against the side of his head. “Brains. S’what you’re lacking. If the only plan you can ever come up with is walk straight at ‘em and count on pounding ‘em into jelly, well, there’d be a lot of dwarfish generals who’d approve of the way you think. And every single freezin’ one of ‘em is dead. Dead as a played out ore vein.”

  “Your poi—” Allystaire started, but the dwarf cut him off with a sharp gesture of one flat hand.

  “My point is that a half-decent schemer will best you, and with little enough effort.”

  “I am not a subtle man. I have no time for schemes, and have never known one that was good for stopping a hammer blow.”

  Idgen Marte had been chuckling helplessly during the dwarf’s prating, but cut in now. “Stop it, the pair of you. We need to decide what to do next, after we return this lot to Grenthorpe.”

  “We keep following the map,” Allystaire replied.

  “Been doing that for almost two months now, and we’ve not found—”

  “We follow the map.” Allystaire’s tone brooked no argument.

  “What map?” Torvul sat up a bit straighter and set aside his mostly empty jug of spirits.

  “None that you need to see. The map has Londray on it, aye? Then we make for it, stopping as needs be on the way.”

  Idgen Marte flopped to a seat on the grass and rested her forehead in one hand. “And what if they’re waiting for us there? Or on the way?”

  “I told Symod to get out of my way once. I will tell him again,” Allystaire said solemnly. Then he leaned forward and put a hand on Idgen Marte’s shoulder. “Faith. He will not stop us. He cannot.”

  Idgen Marte raised her head and her eyes shone for a moment in the dim, guarded firelight. She started to say again, “Near two months and we’ve not found—”

  Allystaire cut her off a second time. “Faith,” he repeated. “We do not labor in vain. Nor will we find a fight we cannot win. If the Sea Dragon Himself should find us on the road, I will shatter his jaws and you will rend his belly.” He waited a moment and said, “Aye?” with a slight tilt of his head.

  She smiled, an expression he could barely see, nodded and patted his hand, and murmured, “Aye.”

  He stood up. “To bed with us, then. Well, to bed with the two of you. I will take the first watch.”

  “I’ll join you in it,” Torvul said. “Got a potion I aim to drink. Keep me from bein’ hungover. Just means I stay up a few more turns.”

  “Why in the Cold would it mean that?”

  “Horrible nightmares. Just horrible. Side effect. Know what a yumunavith is? Eh?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ve never been chased by one down a dark mineshaft that ain’t been properly shored up. Like I said. Horrible.”

  In a few moments, Idgen Marte had scurried up a tree with her hammock and the dwarf returned from his wagon clutching a small bottle that smelled foul from three yards. He raised it to his lips and took a large gulp, with no apparent trouble swallowing it. He sealed the bottle, tucked it into one of his many pockets, and drifted over toward Allystaire’s shadow. “You out to declare war on the Church of Braech?”

  Whether the potion worked or not, Allystaire wouldn’t have wagered, but the dwarf’s voice was less thick with drink than it had been moments before. “Not if I can help it, no,” he replied tiredly.

  “They may not be giving you a choice.” The dwarf sniffed, spat, and stamped his feet as if putting feeling back into them. “They can bring a lot of force to bear. Lot of warriors eager to gain Braech’s favor. Lot of priests they say have his powers of will, or weather, or sight. And there’s the Berzerkers. Heard of ‘em. Never seen ‘em.”

  Allystaire’s memory flitted to the assize back in bend, to the terrible weight that pressed down upon his mind and even his body; he was briefly chilled by the thought. “The Berzerkers I have not seen. But I have met such a priest, I think. He told me Braech favored me and wanted my service.”

  “I can see why he would,” the dwarf remarked thoughtfully, strolling up to Allystaire’s side and once again uncorking his foul potion. From mere feet away the stench was almost overpowering, but the dwarf sipped it resolutely before sealing it again. “Braech favors bold action, strength, and resolve. Whatever you lack, Sir Allystaire, you’ve got those. Still, I suppose he was surprised to learn your services were already, ah…engaged, as it were.”

  “At that moment I had not yet met the Mother.” Allystaire reflected a moment. “I was already serving Her, mind. I just did not know it.”

  “Well that doesn’t make any damned sense.”

  “Makes perfect sense from where I stand.”

  “Now that’s going to require—”

  Allystaire turned to the dwarf and shook his head, waved one hand dismissively. “No it is not. Ask Idgen Marte if you must. She is the storyteller, not I. There will be plenty of time on the road tomorrow. Now, we walk and we watch. Aye?”

  “You walk, I’ll watch. My legs are too old and besides, I can perch up on the wagon with my bow and have a good view.”

  “How are you going to shoot anything in the dark, if it comes to it?”

  “You don’t know much about dwarfish bows, do you? Dark is no obstacle. Heh.” Torvul walked off toward his wag
on, chuckling. “Dark. As if that mattered,” he muttered to himself. Allystaire thought he caught the word savages as the dwarf’s dim outline merged with the darkness of the surrounding trees.

  Then, with the shuttered fire the dimmest of glows behind him, the paladin began walking a slow circle around the camp and the sleeping folk within. He could feel Idgen Marte’s presence above him in the trees, though she was sleeping, and he fancied perhaps he could hear Torvul occasionally sighing atop his wagon, or adjusting some piece of his gear. Mostly, though, he watched the darkness around them with careful eyes, shield and hammer at the ready, while six young men and women slept peacefully for the first time in days.

  Allystaire had stood many a watch during his days on campaign, but none that he could recall felt so much like what he ought to be doing, rather than simply what he was doing; there was the fire and those who slept near it, there was the darkness surrounding them, and between them, the paladin.

  CHAPTER 31

  Interlude

  The Marynth Evolyn hurried through the central chamber of the Temple of the Sea Dragon. Her steps were not as measured nor as calm as when last she had walked underneath the statue that loomed in its center, and her sea-green robes were muddied near to the waist. She shivered as the bursting waves brought a chill promise of the winter to come. Nearly two weeks had passed since she and Ismaurgh had fled the paladin at the camp outside Grenthorpe, on foot and with little to provision them. She did not pause to reflect upon the statue of the Dragon Rampant, the Lord of Waves, Father of Storms, Master of Trade and Accords. She barely eyed it as she hurried down the corridor, fighting off a sudden urge to kick one or both of the figures that followed her into the crashing waves beneath them.