by Ben Blake
*
Word of that was all over the city. Baruch heard the story twenty times a day in the streets, in shop doorways and outside taverns, from youths sitting on the edge of the fountains and grey-haired women clucking their tongues by the grocers’ stalls. The killing was more than two months old, but so far the gossips hadn’t lost their taste for the tale.
“The Rielle is only seventy miles away,” they said. “And there’s an All-Church army there. It could be here in a week.”
He and the soldiers with him pointed out that it couldn’t, even if it was ready to set out at once. Ten miles was a decent day’s march for an army, if provided with good roads across level fields, and friends along the way. In hostile territory, or hills and valleys like the Aiguille, six or seven miles would be about the best that could be managed. Besides, that Crusade army would have to cross the Rielle first, and on barges that would take a long time. If it set out for Mayence today, it might possibly arrive in a fortnight. It couldn’t be much sooner.
“Anyway,” he told a man with stained forearms outside a dye shop, “the army was raised to go to Tura d’Madai. The Crusade there is in trouble, I hear. Too much fighting and not enough men. There’s word that the Madai might try to retake Jedat this year.”
“There are never enough men,” Leutar said as they strolled away. “It was just the same when I was there.”
“I wouldn’t mind if the Justified got a bloody nose though,” Athar put in. “I don’t mean I want to see them beaten,” he added hastily when Baruch cocked an eyebrow at him. “Just… knocked about a bit.”
“You tend not to get ‘knocked about’ on a battlefield,” Baruch said dryly. Athar hadn’t yet been sent away from Sarténe to fight, but that didn’t really excuse the romantic view he had of war. The lad’s tutors and arms masters ought to have taught him better than that, out on the farms and estates. “It’s not like a drunken scuffle outside a wine shop. In battle you get dead, or crippled for the rest of your life. Or the other man does.”
“We shouldn’t be dealing with drunken scuffles anyway,” Leutar grumped. “That’s the Watch’s job.”
Baruch nodded. It was true, but that made no difference. “Too much trouble and not enough men.”
Leutar nodded reluctant agreement. A vivid, puckered scar ran down the side of his neck and vanished under his leather vest; Baruch knew it extended all the way down to his ribcage. A pair of good healers among the Faithful in Tura d’Madai – the Faithful of the All-Church, that is – had saved Leutar’s life, when it seemed the Adversary must surely claim him for his own. Beside him, Athar seemed even more fresh-faced and naïve than ever.
The trouble was that the Hand of the Lord had men here, those who had gone on Crusade to Tura d’Madai and returned, and others who were not yet fully trained. That meant they found themselves being corralled into doing whatever work there was to do, when the Margrave found he needed warm bodies for one thing or another. The Lord Marshal shouldn’t let it happen. The Hand of the Lord was meant to dedicate itself only to fighting: that single-mindedness had made it the most feared of the Orders, among the Madai. Its soldiers should not be reduced to breaking up brawls in the streets.
The Hand did still fight, of course. Over five thousand men were still in the East, fighting the endless, draining struggle against the Madai. Some three hundred men were down in the south of Alinaur, trying without much success to clear out the remnants of the Jaidi from the mountains. Some of those craggy fastnesses were the same ones from which the last free men of Alinaur had defied the Jaidi, two centuries before. The men of the Hand probably didn’t appreciate the irony in that. They only fought at all to keep the Basilica happy, and stop anyone looking too closely at the state of religion in Sarténe. For generations they had been risking their lives, and losing them, in the name of a religion and a Saviour in which they had no faith, and now one man in the broad-brimmed hat might have ruined all that careful work with a single ill-judged blow, because now the All-Church was looking closely. It wouldn’t like what it saw.
And young fellows like Athar knew more about patrolling city streets like Watchmen than they did about battles. None of them could be relied on in combat until they had lived through it.
Perhaps he would benefit from a tour of Alinaur. Rumour said the Jaidi had chosen a khalif for themselves, somewhere in those bony mountains, and if that was so they were likely to be more unified than they had been for a long time. At any rate, Tei-jo warriors knew their trade, and when cornered they fought like ferrets in a sack. After a dance or two with their curved swords, Athar would come back wiser and less prone to romance, and with a scar or two to show off to the ladies. If he came back at all.
Well, it was several years since Baruch had seen a battlefield. The wound that had removed the top of his left ear had long since ceased aching even in cold weather. He only remembered it now when he noticed the white flash in his hair the injury had left him. It wasn’t right, that a man should have a witch’s streak when he was thirty. It made him look old.
Baruch wiped his brow. None of the three soldiers wore armour, but summer had come on strong in the past couple of days, and the street air was heavy with heat. “I think we deserve a break. What do you fellows say to quarter of an hour in a taproom with a cup of wine?”
“I know a good place,” Leutar said. “The Languorous Nymph. It’s on Old Palm Street, next to the pie shop. The one with the Temujini panelling on the windows at night.”
“You always want to go there,” Baruch grinned. “But you’re a soldier, all right. Always thinking about the next meal, aren’t you?”
Leutar shrugged. “They’re good pies. Especially the beef.”
“Fresh?”
“Listen close and you’ll hear them moo.”
“Good, then,” Baruch said. “The Languorous Nymph it is, and a quick bite of lunch after. And don’t tell the Lord Marshal. Right, Athar?”
The young man put on an innocent look. “Tell him what? We’re not going to do anything.”
There was hope for the lad yet.
The three men made their way down the avenue, staying under the shade of the palm trees when they could. People thronged the street, most of them shoppers hurrying to or from the market, though some gathered in doorways or by fountains to mutter about the army that still waited beyond the river Rielle. The ships of the Glorified should be assembling now to take those men to Tura d’Madai and put an end to all this nervousness, but there was no sign of them and unease fed on itself and grew. The only people who seemed calm were the outlanders, easy to spot in the crowds: here a Jaidi’s dark face, or there the paler skin of a Cailevi. Maybe they knew they could pack their goods on a ship and leave if war really did come, or maybe they were just more sensible.
The three men crossed Musicians’ Square, a wide plaza with a round pool in the middle, in the middle of which stood a statue. Not the usual effigy of a mounted warrior with sword raised, or one of the All-Church’s multitude of saints: this was simply a man with a lute in his hands, fingers plucking at the strings. On the plinth beneath it was an inscription, written in plain letters;
For every song of joy, there must be a song of sorrow.
“We Sarténi,” Luthien had said, the first time he saw that, “have melancholy souls, don’t you think?”
Singers and harpists lined the edges, a careful ten paces apart, each with an upturned cap or a tin on the ground in front of him. A musician could play in the square without a license, which gave newcomers to Mayence a chance to make their name before they paid the guild fees. After that they gained entry to the inns and banquets which saw so much of the city’s life, and where they could establish themselves. If they were any good. A couple of men lounged at the edges of the square, their fine clothes identifying them as agents looking for the next great talent to enter the city. They eyed the musicians without much interest. Apparently the next great talent was still on the road. Baruch winced as they passed a fla
utist who missed a third of the notes, and kept stopping to frown at his instrument.
“It ain’t the flute’s fault,” Leutar told the man pleasantly. Baruch managed to stifle his guffaws until they were past.
Every second-rate village fiddler wanted to make a career in Mayence. Every piper or warbler in homespun clothes with pig shit on his shoes, the crack-fingered gittern players and tone deaf piano-thumpers; all of them came here to seek their fortunes. A musician who gained a reputation in this city could name his fee all across Sarténe, and these days beyond it. The temptation was enormous. Unfortunately it blinded many people to the truth, which was that they’d lose a musical contest with a wooden plank.
It was the same with poets, and playwrights, and god only knew what else. Some of the writers could barely string two words together, and stammered when they tried to declaim. Baruch had heard the Academy had a similar problem with its students. Noble fathers who wanted their sons to be properly educated sent them to Parrien, where half of them eyed the quills as though afraid they would bite. Luthien taught there now and didn’t seem to mind; he smiled when Baruch mentioned it, and said that every youth had the right to an education. Even so, the faculty was talking about bringing in an entrance exam, so the terminally thick-witted wouldn’t hamper the students who really could learn.
Still, among all the dross that clogged the squares and the classrooms, there was some genuine talent. Quite a lot of it, in fact. A surprising number of mud-footed farmers really could write, or sing, or solve fiendishly difficult equations without creasing their brows. Baruch remembered one man who had been able to tell you what day of the week it was on a given date fifteen years ago, or fifty, or five hundred for that matter. Those nobles whose sons failed so miserably were often irritated to find that a bumpkin from some forest clearing sailed through problems as though born to it.
“I wonder,” Luthien had said, “if we could send people out to the villages and test children somehow. Find the more gifted among them and bring them here younger, say when they’re twelve. It’s a shame that so much talent goes to waste. I hate to think of a youth with the mind of a philosopher living his whole life in a muddy shack, and never learning to write.”
That was Luthien all over. Sometimes it was hard to remember him as he’d been in Tura d’Madai, still stained with blood – never his own – as he wolfed a haunch of meat and chased it down with wine drunk straight from the bottle. Once he’d stained the pages of a book – and been horrified at himself for it – by absently propping it open with a slice of pork, so he could use both hands to eat. These days he lived on nuts and chickpeas and drank fruit juice, while musing over the theological implications of the indivisibility of God. And Luthien himself was one of those village children; without the Crusade to Tura d’Madai, he would likely still be knee-deep in the mud of his father’s fields, and watching for herons flying south so he knew when to plant the barley.
The three men moved down Waggoner’s Way, keeping to the raised walk at the side of the street. Carts rumbled past to their left, mostly empty and leaving the city at this time of day, though a few came the other way loaded with sacks of grain and clay jars filled with olive oil. Just after sunrise it was the other way around, the street choked with incoming wagons, their drivers shouting curses as they tried to manoeuvre their way past one another in the crush. There was a collision almost every day. This morning a cart carrying peaches had overturned, spilling ripe fruit across the street, where it was quickly pocketed by passing citizens who were more readily opportunistic than helpful. The driver had been all but weeping with impotent rage as he saw his profits scattered and lost, and the men in the carts trapped behind hardly less angry.
Halfway down the Way, a stray tendril of incense tickled Baruch’s nose, and he looked up at the church on his right. An All-Church priest stood at the top of the steps, swinging his brass censer from side to side as his voice rose and fell in sonorous rhythm. His white robe was bordered with vivid red, like blood. The doors stood open to reveal a shadowy space within, and the rearmost wooden pews. The priest’s gaze fell on the soldiers and his voice faltered, just for a moment, then resumed a little louder than before.
“He doesn’t like us much,” Leutar observed.
Baruch grunted. “Not many of them do.”
They never had, but it had been worse since Rabast was murdered by the banks of the Rielle. Baruch had been on guard at the gates of the Margrave’s mansion when the priest arrived, and had taken a dislike to him from the first glance. It wasn’t really anything Rabast had said, just the man’s general attitude – two parts arrogance, one part stupidity, mix well and serve. Sometimes you met men like that. A lot of them seemed to be priests.
But the clergy of the All-Church did not like it when one of their number was killed, and they were looking for someone to blame. Priests were supposed to be inviolate, protected by God, so they could walk the highways and byways of the world without fear. Take that away and there would be places the priests could not go and that, to them, was unacceptable.
The three men turned left at a crossroads, watched over by a fifteen-foot bronze horseman in full armour, the mark of the cross on his shield and a torch held in an upraised hand. This time it was a classic All-Church image, a devout soldier bringing the light of God to heathen lands, and the pose was ridiculously noble. At least, it was until a pigeon perched on the statue’s helmet shifted and deposited droppings on his shoulder. Baruch grinned to himself. Mayence kept a few All-Church symbols on show in the streets, intended – like the soldiers of the Hand fighting in Alinaur and Tura d’Madai – to keep the Basilica from asking too many suspicious questions. The statue would be cleaned before morning, but it was amusing to see the Church’s sculpture befouled.
Baruch wasn’t sure that token gestures such as the statue were very important any more. The Dualists worshipped out of doors whenever they could, in the full glory of creation rather than shut inside a drab stone hall, but they needed somewhere to go when the weather was bad. Their round temples outnumbered All-Church chapels by two to one now, and all of them were packed every day while the chapels struggled to fill two rows of pews. Someone in the Basilica was sure to notice that in the end, however myopic the All-Church might be. Maybe someone already had, and the snooping presence of Rabast was the result of it. Baruch lost his smile. If that was true, the murder of the hapless fool was more likely than ever to bring serious trouble, and soon.
A hundred yards along Old Palm Street they reached the Languorous Nymph. Tables lined the street outside, at which men sat enjoying the sunshine with their cups of wine and ale. An Elite sat in his green robe with a cup of fruit juice on the table before him, talking with two men built like blacksmiths but who wore light silk shirts, the sort favoured by nobles and the wealthier merchants. Over the taproom’s door was a carving of two overlapping circles, the arc of each one passing through the centre of the other: the mark of the Duality. Two forces of equal strength, forever locked together. The same symbol adorned the walls of every circular temple, though nobody told the All-Church priests what it meant. It was the basis for the reversed circle on the shields of the Hand of the Lord, and in all the years Baruch had spent in the Order, he’d never met a single All-Church believer who seemed to realise what the design really was.
“Wine or ale?” he asked the others as he reached the bar. Out of the sun the air was noticeably cooler, a sure sign that summer hadn’t elbowed spring aside quite yet. “I’m buying.”
“Heaven preserve us!” Leutar exclaimed. “Is the world coming to an end?” Athar burst out laughing.
Baruch scowled at them.
The barman finished serving a quartet of labourers and came over, pausing to snag three cups from beneath the counter. Baruch ordered wine for all of them and dug in his pocket for coins.
“Excuse me,” someone said behind him, and he turned.
The speaker was a youth of about sixteen, his brown hair and farmer’
s clothes heavy with dust. Obviously he’d been travelling, and either had not had time to wash or else was plain lazy. He wore a short sword at one hip, hardly more than a long knife, and something in the way he stood made Baruch think the lad wasn’t used to carrying it. Still, it was unusual for anyone to wear a sword inside the walls. Baruch frowned at him. “Yes?”
“I noticed your hair,” the youth said. “Your white streak. Is your name Baruch Caraman?”
The frown deepened. “Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Japh. I have a message for you, if you’re Baruch.”
“I’m Baruch,” he said. “Give me the message.”
The lad shifted his feet. “Uh, I was told to ask you something first. To make sure you’re really Baruch.”
“Of course he’s Baruch,” Leutar said irritably. “What game are you playing, boy? Give him the message.”
Baruch stared at the youth. This was very strange, both in that the lad had a message for him, and that he was so secretive about it. Maybe Japh was one of the young idiots who thought warfare was all honour and secret codes. Or maybe the Lord Marshal knew Baruch’s habit of taking a quick unofficial break after all, and had sent a message to him at the taproom. Not that old Darien had any right to complain about another man’s drinking, with the warm smell of brandy always heavy in the air of his office. Probably that was why he allowed his men to work as constables when they ought to be preparing for war.
“Then ask,” he said at length.
Relief flooded the lad’s face. “Uh, thank you. I was told to ask you this: what did the Madai call the pig farmer?”
His first thought was what on earth? Baruch had no idea what the lad was talking about. He stared at Japh in bafflement. And then all at once he knew, the memory bursting on him like sand and grit flung in his face. He could smell the desert, here in the common room of a tavern in Mayence in the spring, air heavy with heat and burning rock, and see the knot of Madai youths huddling in a far corner to point fingers as the man they so feared walked by.
“That’s him,” the remembered voice said in his mind. Baruch could see the speaker’s face now, thin and drawn, and grimy with dust through which large eyes stared at the soldiers. A boy with too much to fear and not enough to eat. “The man who slaughtered Cammar a Amalik at Gidren Field. They say he can’t be killed, and they call him –”
“The sand scorpion,” Baruch said. His voice was hoarse. “They called him the sand scorpion.”
Japh nodded and reached into his shirt. “That’s right. This is from him.” He withdrew a folded paper and handed it to Baruch. A thick, shapeless blob of wax held the letter closed. “He’s back.”
“Back?” Baruch repeated. He felt as though he’d been hit between the eyes. “Are you telling me Ca –”
“He said,” Japh broke in, “that it would be best if nobody knew, for the moment. The letter explains, I think.”
“Explains?” He made an effort to calm himself. His hands were trembling, and he held the letter carefully in both of them. “I see. Er, how did Ca – how did you know to find me here?”
Japh shrugged. “I asked your commander. He said you usually spend a few minutes at a tavern during your duty, and this one was on your route for the day. So I waited. I was almost certain it was you as soon as you walked in. A man with half an ear and a white streak in his hair above it, I was told.” He stopped suddenly. “Uh, sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.”
So old Darien knew about the illicit cups of wine after all, then. Suddenly that didn’t seem to matter very much. Baruch took a deep breath and broke the wax seal. His hands were still shaking. He unfolded the paper and saw the familiar, slanting script, and knew before he read a word that the boy was right, and Calesh was back in Sarténe at last.
Baruch,
Your friend the sand scorpion has returned, and is with our comrade from the north. Forgive the secrecy; it’s necessary, though I can’t explain in a letter. Something is happening and I need your help. You’ll remember the windmill on the ridge above my father’s old farm. Meet us there as soon as you can. Tell nobody. I would not ask, my friend, if it were not of vast importance. I think you know that. We shared a great deal in the east. Believe me when I say this is a greater thing than all we have done before.
I also want you to meet my wife.
You have always held my trust. I hope I hold yours.
There was no signature. Baruch didn’t need one: the style was right, as well as the handwriting, both exactly as he remembered them. The writer was Calesh, beyond doubt. He was home, six long years later than his friends, time spent in the endless sand and stone of Tura d’Madai. There had never been anything to draw Calesh back; no family, no home, no memories softened into nostalgia by the passing seasons. For him the Order was a haven, and a reason to make a new beginning in another land. Calesh had not gone to Tura d’Madai in the name of God, either the Duality’s or the Basilica’s. He’d gone in the name of forgetfulness, and if he found rebirth along the way, so much the better.
For Baruch the Hand was wife, mother and sons, all the life he needed or wanted. He often said I am married to the Hand, a coarse soldier’s joke that even he didn’t find very funny any more. But it was true. He had never needed anything else to make him happy.
Yet now Calesh was back, and with a wife at his side as well. Baruch had always thought his friend was even less likely to marry than he was himself. His fingers tightened, making the parchment crackle, and his knuckles began to turn white.
You have always held my trust. I hope I hold yours.
There was never any doubt what he would do.