by Paul Hoffman
“Perhaps his soul had gone bad. Evil is always at work, Your Grace. He had perhaps taken pleasure in the just punishments meted out to the acolytes. It has been known before, I think.”
The High Redeemer grunted. “How did he get hold of a girl out here?”
“As yet I have been unable to find out. But he had many keys. You and I alone would be permitted to ask questions of a Lord of Discipline. It will take time.”
“He couldn’t have done this without help. This could be about more than beastliness—it might be a heresy.”
“The thought had occurred to me, Your Grace. There are twenty of his cronies in isolation in the House of Special Purpose. The more senior deny—so far—that they knew anything, but the ordinary Redeemers admit they created a further cordon around the convent under Picarbo’s orders by sealing up farther layers of corridors so no one would suspect anything. The convent was already completely isolated from the Redeemers, after all. No one was ever supposed to see the brides’ faces. Picarbo disguised their activities in and out of the place by moving the kitchen and laundry used for higher Redeemers inside the cordon. Everything goes in and out by a great drum. Because Picarbo had the Lord of Vittles and the Master of the Laundry as part of his little set of heretics there was no problem drawing off food or anything else.”
“But we’re opening up the old corridors by the mile. Molloy would have found them sooner or later.”
“Unfortunately the Master of Reclamation was one of them.”
“My God! That sanctimonious pismire Molloy was helping turn the Sanctuary into a whorehouse?” The High Redeemer lay and gasped at the horrible enormity of it all. “We need a purging, we need Acts of Faith from here to the end of the year . . . we must disem—”
“Your Grace,” interrupted Bosco, “it is by no means clear that uglification was the purpose of this harem. I’m not sure it was a harem at all, more a place of isolation. From what I have been able to decipher from his writings, mad as they are, Picarbo was looking for something, something very specific.”
“What would he find in the bowels of some fat slut?”
“I can’t say as yet, Your Grace. Purging may be required, and a great deal of it, but we should wait until I’ve got to the bottom of this before we start lighting the candles to God.” Lighting candles to God had nothing to do with wax or wicks.
“You watch out, Bosco. You think that you’re the better for knowing things, but I know . . . ” He jabbed a finger at Bosco and raised his voice, “I KNOW that knowledge is the root of all evil. That bitch Eve wanted to know things and that was what brought sin and death down upon all of us.”
Bosco stood up and moved to the door.
“Redeemer Bosco!”
Bosco turned and looked at the shriveled old priest.
“When you bring Cale back here, he is to be executed. And I will issue an order to that effect today. And you forget about digging into that shit Picarbo’s debauchery. You cleanse everyone who had dealings with him. I don’t care if they might be innocent. We can’t take the chance of heresy—burn them and let God sort them out. The blameless will get a better reward of eternal life.”
An observer of the kind on whom nothing was lost might have seen the Lord Militant blink as if he had considered something and made a decision. But it might merely have been a trick of the lack of light. He stepped forward and bent down as if to plump up the pillows around the High Redeemer. But instead he took one of them and placed it carefully and firmly around his tiny old face, all of it done with such speed and so little fuss that it was only in the fraction of a second before the pillow closed over his mouth that the Lord High Redeemer realized the horror of what was happening.
Two minutes later Bosco emerged from the bedroom and saw the tall Redeemer instantly stand up to go into his master.
“He fell asleep while we were talking. Not like the High Redeemer at all. Perhaps you should take a look at him.”
Bosco had not only murdered the High Redeemer, he’d lied to him. He had not told him the true extent of Picarbo’s collection of young women or of his growing suspicions about the aims of the late Lord of Discipline’s disgusting experiments. There would need to be a period of assessment concerning what to do with the women, but in due course they would make an extremely useful pretext for his next move to take complete control of the Sanctuary and an object lesson for Cale on his return.
By the third day Cale had caught up with the Redeemers and had watched them turn west, taking them away from Vague Henri and Riba. And after another day they turned east, which would have taken them dangerously close to the pair. It was while following and hoping they would turn again that the only truly unusual experience of his watch took place.
He was approaching the end of one of the Scabland hillocks, one that had collapsed and formed a jagged edge. As he turned the corner, he bumped into a man coming the other way. Cale was so surprised he almost lost his feet on the loose gravel, but the man, standing on a steeper section, could get no purchase and crashed onto his back with a hefty thud.
It gave Cale time to pull the knife he had stolen from the Lord of Discipline and stand over the man with him at his mercy. The man, however, quickly got over his surprise at the strange sight and groaned as he started to get to his feet. Cale waved the knife at him to make it clear he should stay where he was.
“So,” said the man with weary amiability, “first you bump into me and now you want to cut my throat. Not very friendly.”
“People do say that about me. What are you doing out here?”
The man smiled.
“What everyone does in the Scablands—trying to get out.”
“I won’t ask you a second time.”
“I don’t think that’s really any of your business.”
“I’m the one with the knife, so I’ll decide what’s my business or not.”
“A good point. May I get up?”
“You’ll do where you are for the moment.”
The man looked as if he’d seen a few odd things in his life, but he was clearly puzzled by the presence of someone so young and so self-possessed in the middle of the Scablands.
“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, boy?”
“Never mind about me, Granddad, you need to be more worried about where you’re going to buy a walking stick all the way out here.”
The man laughed.
“You’re a Redeemer’s acolyte, aren’t you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just that on the few occasions I’ve seen an acolyte they were in rows of two hundred and there were a couple of dozen Redeemers watching them with whips. Never seen one on his own before.”
“Well,” said Cale, “there’s a first time for everything.”
The man smiled.
“Yes, I suppose there is.” He held his hand out. “IdrisPukke, currently in the service of Gauleiter Hynkel.”
Cale didn’t take his hand. IdrisPukke shrugged and lowered it.
“Perhaps you’re not as young as you look. It’s wise to be careful out here.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
IdrisPukke laughed again.
“You don’t compromise, do you, boy?”
“No,” said Cale flatly. “And don’t call me boy.”
“As you prefer. What should I call you?”
“You don’t need to call me anything.” Cale nodded toward the west.
“You’re going that way. Try to follow me, IdrisPukke, and then you’ll see just how uncompromising I can be.” He gestured that he should get up. IdrisPukke did as he was told. He looked at Cale for a few moments, as if carefully considering what he would do. Then he sighed, turned round and went off in the direction Cale had signaled.
For the next twelve hours Cale remained intensely suspicious of the meeting with IdrisPukke. Was he a Redeemer in disguise, for example? Not likely. Too much liveliness of soul came off him for one of them. A bounty
man? Again, not likely. The Redeemers kept things like this to themselves. On the other hand he had killed a Lord of Discipline, a sin of such foulness that they might be ready to do anything to get him back. So it was on this thread that he stayed while he tracked the Lord Redeemers and hoped they would change direction. A day later they did so, heading west again. Usually the hunters would stay that way for at least twenty-four hours. It was time to get back to the others. If he could find them.
Twelve hours later he was on the line they had planned for Henri and the girl to take. But ten miles ahead, just in case. Then he started to walk back down the line to make sure he didn’t miss them, all the while keeping as hidden as he could so that the Redeemers Kleist was supposed to be spotting didn’t blunder into him or he into them. It was only a few hours before he found all three of them standing in a large hollow surrounded by some twenty mutilated bodies, some cut into small pieces. The others saw him from a hundred yards away and waited, without moving, as he walked through the scatter of dead bodies. He nodded to all three of them.
“The Redeemers have gone to the west,” he said.
“Last time I was with mine, they’d turned east.”
Then there was silence.
“Any idea who they are?” said Cale, nodding at the dead.
“No,” said Vague Henri.
“They’ve been dead for about a day, I’d say,” said Kleist.
Riba had something of the same stunned look about her Cale had seen when he rescued her from Picarbo—a look that said: this isn’t happening.
“How long have you been here?” he asked softly.
“About twenty minutes. We met Kleist on the way here a couple of hours ago.”
Cale nodded. “We’d better search them. Whoever did this hasn’t left much, but there might be some salvage.”
The three boys started to search among the remains, finding the occasional coin, a belt, a torn coat. Then Vague Henri spotted something shiny in the sand next to a severed head and quickly brushed the sand away, only to discover it was a brass knuckle duster. He was disappointed, but it was at least useful.
“Help me,” groaned the severed head.
With a cry Henri leapt backward.
“It spoke to me, it spoke to me!”
“What?” said Kleist, irritable.
“The head. It spoke.”
“Help me,” groaned the head.
“See!” said Vague Henri.
Carefully Cale approached the head with his knife and poked it in the temple. The head groaned but did not open his eyes.
“They’ve buried him up to his neck,” he said after a moment of careful consideration. The three boys, familiar with human atrocity, realized now that nothing supernatural was involved. They all looked down at the buried man and considered what was to be done.
“We should dig him out,” said Vague Henri.
“No,” said Kleist. “Whoever did this went to a lot of trouble. I can’t see they’d take kindly to us ruining their efforts. We should leave well alone.”
“Help me,” whispered the man again.
Vague Henri looked at Cale. “Well?” he said.
Cale said nothing, thinking carefully.
“We haven’t got all day, Cale,” said Kleist. By now Cale was looking into the distance.
“No, we haven’t.” Cale’s tone of voice was odd, alarming. The other two looked up, following his flat gaze. At the top of the nearest hillock, about three hundred yards away, a line of Redeemers was looking down at them. Then the line began to move.
The boys, all three of them pale, stood still. There was nowhere to run. Riba moved first, running forward to get a better look at the line of men marching toward them.
“No. No. No,” she said, over and over again.
Vague Henri, white as flour, looked at Cale.
“You drew the small stone,” he said.
Cale stared at his friend, eyes expressionless. There was a moment’s pause, and then Cale took out his knife and walked quickly toward Riba, who was still staring at the line of advancing men. As Cale moved to grab her hair and expose her neck, Kleist called out.
“Wait!”
At this Riba turned round. Cale had lowered the knife, but even in her terrified state she could see that something odd was happening.
“They’re not Redeemers,” said Kleist. “Whatever they are. Best just to let’s see what happens.”
As they watched, more men came over the top of the hillock, but they were on horses and leading behind them thirty more. The riders caught up with the men on foot, who then themselves mounted, and within less than a minute, fifty or so bad-tempered cavalrymen surrounded the four of them. Half of them dismounted and began examining the remains of the bodies. The others, swords drawn, just stared at the four.
One of the cavalrymen looking at the bodies called out: “Captain, it’s the Embassy from Arnhemland. This is Lord Pardee’s son.”
The captain, a large man on an enormous horse nearly twenty hands high, moved it forward and dismounted. He walked over to Cale and without pausing fetched him such a hefty blow to the face that the boy crashed heavily to the ground.
“Before we execute you, I want to know who ordered this.”
Dazed and in pain, Cale did not answer. The captain was about to add a kick of encouragement when Vague Henri spoke up.
“It was nothing to do with us, Lord. We only came on them just now. Do we look as if we could have done this?” Henri thought it best to tell the truth. “We only have one knife between us. How could we?”
The captain looked at him and then back at Cale. Then he delivered a hefty kick to Cale’s stomach.
“Fair enough. We won’t cut your throats for murder—we’ll do it for looting.”
He looked over at the small pile of things they had collected from whatever the killers had missed—a bag, a plate, some kitchen knives and dried fruit as well as the brass knuckle duster. Henri could see that it looked bad.
“One of them’s still alive. We were just about to dig him out,” Henri pointed to the now unconscious man who, more than ever, looked like a severed head in the dust.
Quickly the soldiers surrounded him and began digging at the sand and gravel.
“It’s Chancellor Vipond,” said one of them. The captain waved them to stop and knelt down, taking out a flask of water. Gently he poured a little into the unconscious man’s mouth. He coughed, spitting all the water back.
By now one of the soldiers had brought forward a pair of shovels, and within five minutes they had eased the man out of the sand and laid him on the ground. There was much listening to his heart and checking him for wounds.
“We were going to save him,” said Henri, as Cale looked at the captain malevolently from his pitch in the dust.
“That’s what you say. All I know for sure is that you’re a bunch of thieves. No reason not to sell the girl and kill you three.”
“Don’t be unreasonable, Captain Bramley, darling,” called out a man’s voice from behind a mounted cavalryman’s horse. That he was not one of them was clear from the fact that he did not wear a uniform and that both his hands were tied and hung from a rope knotted to the saddle of the horse in front of him.
“Shut your big gob, IdrisPukke,” said the captain.
But IdrisPukke was clearly not a man to do as he was told.
“Be wise for once, Captain, darling. You know that Chancellor Vipond and me go back time out of mind. He wouldn’t take kindly, I’d say, to you killing three young men who’d tried to save him. What do you think?”
The captain looked uncertain for the first time. IdrisPukke dropped the mocking tone. “He’d want the chance to make up his own mind. That’s for certain.”
The captain looked down at the unconscious man, now being put onto a stretcher with a rolled blanket under his head. He looked back at IdrisPukke.
“One more word out of you and, I swear to God, I’ll disembowel you where you stand. Understand m
e?”
IdrisPukke shrugged but wisely, thought Vague Henri, said nothing. “Grady! Fog!” the captain called out to two soldiers. “Stay close to this gobshite. And if he even looks like he’s going to try and escape, blow his bloody head off.”
10
Captain Bramley just tied the hands of the three boys and let them walk and occasionally run behind the horses. However, as a punishment for IdrisPukke, he kept him tied to a saddle and, in response to his mocking pleas to be allowed to ride in the arms of a cavalryman like the girl, administered numerous kicks for his trouble.
They made camp about half an hour before dark. Riba was left free with the cavalrymen, who were given a bad-tempered warning by Bramley not to touch her. These were hard men who had seen and done much, a great deal of it too unpleasant to tell, but the warning was barely needed for most of them. While some would happily have done mischief to the beautiful young girl, most seemed entranced by her as she chatted and joked with them, artlessly flirting and opening her eyes in amazement at the endless supply of stories that any soldier delighted in telling. Despite a number of sympathetic looks over at the boys, she had been told to steer clear of them and that any attempt to talk would mean she’d be tied up.
Instead they had IdrisPukke as a companion, all four of them chained to the axle of a carriage that had joined up with the cavalry shortly after their capture. The boys had been fed but not IdrisPukke, who was given a kick instead of bully beef and soda bread. They were starving and began to gobble the lot as quickly as dogs.
“What about sharing some of that?”
“Why should we?” said Kleist from behind a stuffed mouth.
“Oh, because I interceded on your behalf when that bastard Bramley wanted to spill your guts onto the oh-so-hungry sands of the Scablands.”
Kleist quickly finished his last mouthful.
“Sorry about that—but thanks for this afternoon.”
The other two were more gracious, even if Cale was only willing to offer his soda bread because he wanted to question IdrisPukke.
Unlike the boys, IdrisPukke took his time over the bread and the small amount of bully beef left by Vague Henri.