Blood and Gold

by Ben Blake

  *

  “How did they do it?” Calesh muttered to himself. He was sitting in his saddle on a ridge of rock overlooking Parrien from the west, spyglass to his eye and trained on the town. “How did they get here so soon?”

  Raigal Tai frowned at him. “But you wanted to come here to see. You must have known they’d get here this soon.”

  “I wanted to be here when they arrived,” Calesh said, not taking his eye from the glass. “And I got here early because I don’t like unpleasant surprises. But I didn’t expect this.”

  He had prepared for the worst, in other words, without expecting it to happen. It was one of the things a good captain did, Luthien knew. Another hallmark of skill in a commander was the ability to move troops quickly, to reach an unexpected place at an unexpected time, and the man in charge of the All-Church army certainly seemed to have that gift. Calesh had done the same, but all he had here was three hundred Hand cavalry. They had come to watch, not to interfere. Ahead of them a wooden bridge ran over a deep, rocky ravine, carrying the road into the farms around Parrien. Calesh wouldn’t let them cross.

  The town wasn’t going to hold for long. The walls were too low, and hadn’t been properly maintained for years. What was the need? There hadn’t been any real danger of fighting here since the Jaidi threat was at its height, two hundred years ago. Since then all Sarténe’s wars had been fought on other men’s land. So the walls were weak, and so was the will of whoever was in authority. A strong leader would have shut the gates against that horde of refugees, trapping them outside where their only hope was the doubtful mercy of the All-Church army. Inside they would need food and water, straining the resources of the fence past breaking point: outside, they would just get in the way of the besiegers. It was cruel, and condemning men to such suffering might well doom a man to an eternity of torment when he died, but that was war. Luthien could consider practicalities with a clear mind and ice in his veins, and still have room in his heart for the compassion of his God.

  If Riyand had done his job properly the walls might have been strengthened by now, the gates buttressed with wooden beams and weapons stocked in towers and on rooftops. None of that had been done, Luthien knew, and there was no point now in wishing it had.

  “The Glorified are at the back again,” Calesh said. His tone was almost absent, as he told the others what he saw while his mind judged and calculated and assessed. “Afraid to get blood on their nice grey cloaks, I suppose. I can’t see many Justified. There are a lot of regiments from outside the Orders, but most of the men at the front are Shavelings.”

  “Perhaps their commander is too,” Amand suggested.

  “Very likely,” Calesh said. The spyglass panned across the field as he spoke. “For a Crusade called against good church folk, the Basilica will have wanted one of its own men in charge. Someone it could rely on. But most Shavelings couldn’t move an army this fast. You know what they’re like.”

  “Spend too much time praying and not enough organising,” Amand said.

  Calesh snorted. “Praying, and wasting time polishing armour and ironing cloaks when they should be drilling. But this man must be different. I wish I knew who he was.”

  The Order of the Basilica was to lead the crusade, then. Luthien supposed Calesh was right: they should have expected that. This was a war aimed at destroying what the All-Church called heresy, and they would want their own men at the forefront, white and gold uniforms bright under the God’s sun. The Shavelings were not as well trained as men of the other Orders, and certainly they were less well equipped, but they were fanatical in their devotion. Luthien suspected that their leaders believed an excess of zeal made up for imperfect methods and chipped swords. The trouble was they were often right.

  Abruptly Calesh leaned over to pass Luthien the spyglass. “You have a look. See if you can spot something I’ve missed.”

  He took the glass, but for a moment Luthien didn’t put it to his eye. He nodded towards Calesh’s belt. “My memory might be playing a trick on me, but I think I’ve seen that horn before.”

  “Your memory isn’t playing tricks,” Calesh said. His fingers went to the horn, narrow-necked ivory banded with greening copper that matched his armour almost perfectly. “You’ve seen it.”

  Raigal Tai craned around, trying to see past Calesh’s saddle. Luthien ignored him. “It’s the battle horn of Cammar ah Amalik.”

  “That’s right,” Calesh said, as Raigal chuckled. “I thought it deserved blowing, one more time. It won’t be today, though.”

  “Amalik was an enemy,” Luthien said mildly.

  “Amalik,” Calesh said, equally soft, “was a better leader, and a finer man, than anyone likely to be swaggering around under those banners across the field. Are you going to look or not?”

  Luthien took off his spectacles and put the spyglass into the socket of his eye, peering at the sprawling All-Church army. His mind was elsewhere though, drifting through memories while his eye was left to scan the field unattended. He was surprised by how little Calesh had changed. Oh, much was different about him in some ways, but here at the edge of battle he was just the same, exactly the man Luthien remembered from the past.

  In Tura d’Madai he had been called the Sand Scorpion. Both armies used the name, as did the common people caught up in the endless maelstrom of the war. By the time you saw the barb coming it was already too late to dodge, they said. Part of that was because he was in the Hand of the Lord, the only one of the military Orders to concentrate exclusively on battle. The Shavelings were preachers and tax-gatherers as well as fighting men. The Glorified were sailors and marines, and the Justified had their oft-denied corps of assassins and their endless, single-minded pursuit of political power. But all the Hand’s soldiers were trained simply to be soldiers, equipped with the best steel from the forges in Samanta, and drilled until their muscles were like corded rope. It was said that a fighting man of the Hand was expected to be able to march for two days and nights without a break, and then fight a battle at the end. Many of them could. Many of them had.

  But there was another reason why Calesh was such a good leader, and that was simply him. He understood war, was suited to it in a way that few men were, and all of them – ironically – seemed to view it as an ugly necessity, rather than finding any glory in it. They saw the moonshine for what it was. Cammar ah Amalik had been like that, if the stories were even partly true. He had borne the adulation of his men and the common folk of Tura d’Madai, but he’d borne it as a burden, not something to be treasured or embraced. Calesh was the same way, immune to the siren song that promised fame and renown, and he was capable of a ferocious work rate besides. Added to which he possessed the intangible ability to encourage other men, to inspire them, and he had luck. Every general needed luck. Without it, energy and talent meant very little.

  Luthien pushed such thoughts away and concentrated on the view through the eyeglass. The nearest cavalry units of the All-Church army were sweeping around Parrien now, closing the road that ran out to the west, and to where the three friends sat in their saddles and watched. The three hundred men behind them seemed scant protection against the mass ahead. Nobody seemed to have spotted the Hand yet, but that wouldn’t last.

  Further away, serried ranks of Shavelings were parading across the fields. North and east of Parrien the plain spread perfectly flat, but the farms now were lifeless, almost barren. Every field was bare, every chicken coop empty. No pigs snuffled and snorted their way through orchards. The land had been stripped, except here and there where hands had not been available to clear a field before the army came. Warehouses within Parrien would be bulging with grain sacks and barrels of salted pork. Nothing that could be moved had been left behind. And it wouldn’t matter at all if the wall could not be held.

  Baruch could have helped here, Luthien thought as he turned the spyglass towards the town itself. He was the most dependable of the four old friends, solid and thorough, and he had a flair for organ
isation that was just as much a gift as Calesh’s ability to inspire, or Raigal’s indomitable good spirits. But such a talent could only be used in one place at a time, and the key to this whole war was, Calesh believed, the defence of Mayence. If the city held then Sarténe held. Luthien agreed, in fact, which meant Baruch was needed more there than here. Parrien would have to manage as best it could alone.

  They all knew what that meant, though nobody spoke of it. Parrien was being thrown to the wolves, abandoned because it could not, in truth, be defended. There were not enough men, and not enough time to rebuild the wall now Riyand had thrown two months away with his dawdling. That was the hard reality, and so Calesh was trading space in exchange for time. Let the All-Church have Parrien, if it cost them a week to capture the town and then to prepare for their next move. Use those dearly bought days to assemble more soldiers from the outlying areas, and perhaps to hire mercenaries from Alinaur or give the Hand soldiers there time to come north. Use it to train merchants and labourers well enough that they could take their places in the line. And then dig in, and let the All-Church either throw its men onto carefully planned defences, or lay a siege and see which army began to starve first, the one outside the walls or the one within.

  Luthien scanned the walls, tracked the spyglass down to the harbour… and then swung back, squinting. It only took a second to be certain.

  He lowered the glass and handed it back to Calesh. “Check the north gate. I think the All-Church has broken in already.”

  His best friend stared at him in shock. It was a moment before Calesh seemed to remember the spyglass and put it back to his eye, peering across the plain to the walls of Parrien. He was silent for a long time, and then spat out an oath of such bitter ferocity that Luthien actually flinched. He hadn’t heard language that foul since he left Tura d’Madai.

  “Some dumb son of a bitch must have been asleep at his post,” Calesh snarled between his teeth. “What kind of fool doesn’t pay attention at the start of a siege? He can’t have dozed off with all this going on.”

  “Might be a traitor,” Raigal Tai rumbled. “Or more than one. Not everyone in Sarténe is a Dualist.”

  That was true. Men shifted uncomfortably in their saddles behind the three friends, but it was true. Half a dozen men might have been enough to seize a gate tower and hold it for long enough for the army to reach them, if they were well organised and they timed it right. Such things had happened before. But still, someone in command was careless not to have the towers buttoned down tight early, or else a captain on the spot was lax, or perhaps both. It only needed one weak link for a chain to snap.

  “The same thing could happen in Mayence,” Calesh said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to consider that.”

  “You can’t throw people out of their homes for fear of something they might not do,” Luthien said quietly. He put his glasses back on and pushed them higher up his nose with one finger. “You can’t, Calesh. Not if you want any part of your soul to remain untarnished.”

  “You’re the one who chose to polish his soul,” Calesh answered. “Mine never did gleam all that much.”

  Luthien smiled. “Yes, it did.”

  His friend raised his eyebrows but didn’t reply. Ahead, a squadron of Justified cavalry peeled away from the main body and rode towards the bridge, pennants flying from their uniformly slanted spears. It seemed the watchers on their ridge had been noticed. Saddles creaked behind Luthien again as the soldiers checked weapons and armour.

  “Commander?” Amand said, not far away.

  Calesh didn’t turn his head. “Wait. They’re no threat.”

  Fifty Justified horsemen were indeed no threat to six times as many Hand of the Lord. The approaching riders apparently reached the same conclusion as soon as they came close enough to recognise the black and white armour of the men on the ridge. They reined in, and one man went galloping back to the main host with dust flying from his horse’s hooves. All-Church soldiers were still pouring across the fields to encircle Parrien, a tide of them that stretched all the way back to the horizon. It wouldn’t be possible for the Hand to remain on this ridge for much longer.

  “I think the north gate has fallen,” Calesh said. He was still peering through the glass. “The All-Church got there very fast. Looked planned to me, so maybe there really was a turncoat inside. My heart and eyes, I hoped the town would hold for longer than this.”

  Luthien couldn’t see, without the eyeglass to help his vision, but he didn’t really need to. Once fighting had begun at the gate towers the end was almost inevitable, unless the defenders could overwhelm their antagonists and shut the portcullis again. That wasn’t likely, and evidently it hadn’t happened, at least not in time. Parrien had fallen in less than an hour. It would be an unpleasant place to be a Dualist in the days to come.

  A second contingent of Justified cavalry was approaching the bridge, this one much larger than the first. Luthien put their numbers at about five hundred, including the earlier squadron, which fell in as the newcomers reached it. It was too many for the Hand to face, he knew. They might win, given their superior quality, but the cost would be too high when they needed to conserve their numbers for the campaign ahead. Luthien had always been able to observe and calculate such things at speed, and though it was a battlefield gift he would have been happy to lose, it seemed it remained with him.

  “They’re not going to talk,” he said to Calesh. “They’ll cut us down if they can. We ought to leave.”

  “Not yet,” his friend replied. Raigal Tai pulled that great axe from its loop and hefted it in one hand.

  “Commander?” Amand said, for the second time.

  This time Calesh nodded. “Yes, I think so. Give the order.”

  “Helmets on!” Amand bellowed. He was a natural field sergeant, efficient and tough and very, very loud. “Make sure your sword is loose and your prayers are spoken. Archers, stand by for my word.”

  “Archers?” Luthien said.

  Calesh nodded. “Something we learned in the desert. Almost all our men can handle a bow now.”

  The Justified came closer. Their lines rippled as they changed formation, moving from long rows to a narrow column six men abreast, able to cross the bridge in good order. They did it flawlessly, a difficult manoeuvre accomplished with drill yard precision. Their pace began to pick up. Luthien felt his heart jump with remembered excitement, and hated himself for it.

  Hooves hit the bridge. The Justified were charging now, pounding over the boards at a full gallop, and the first of them came back onto solid earth in moments. The Hand of the Lord tightened ranks and waited for orders.

  “Now,” Calesh said.

  Seventeen

  True Belief

  “We’re inside the walls,” Amaury said, as though Sarul couldn’t see as much perfectly well for himself. “It was the Order of the Basilica which broke in first. Driven on by zeal, no doubt.”

  Sarul was careful not to react to that last, laconic comment. It was sometimes difficult to be sure when Amaury was being sardonic, and when what might be sarcasm was actually no more than the Rheven general’s flat farmer’s vowels. Uncertainty was not a thing to which Sarul was accustomed. He didn’t care for it very much, but he did know it was important to make the other man unsure of him, too. So he kept his expression blank and his eyes on the town, and waited for Amaury to speak again.

  The two men were standing at the open front flap of the command pavilion, which had been hastily set up by a crew of servants as soon as it was safe. Sarul thought it had been safe from the start, actually, but if Amaury wanted to be cautious that could be allowed, for the moment. Let the general make some decisions now: that would make it easier to overrule him when it mattered. From the pavilion they could look over the wide fields that stretched the mile to Parrien’s walls. The Sarténi had swept the fields bare, leaving nothing for the All-Church army but useless stalks and empty chicken coops. That might be a problem in time, but not now. If the food
ran out men could always be ordered to fast, to purify their souls for the scourging to come. It would even be good for them.

  Sarul didn’t think Amaury would object. The squat general might have an unfortunate tendency towards sarcasm, and he wore a square black beard that would be more suited to the eastern churches with their bizarre concepts of the image of God, but he knew his task here. Marshal the army and do what the All-Church Legate, which was to say Sarul, told him to do. Even a thick-witted soldier ought to be able to manage that.

  And if he could, then here was where this obscene Dualism would begin to die. There had been long years when Sarul had wondered whether it was God’s plan to allow the heresy to fester like a pus-filled boil, or a plague sore that turned slowly black with gorged blood. After all, God had allowed it to fester for years before the Basilica even became aware of it, growing like a malign tumour under the All-Church’s skin. Sarul had tried not to let himself think that way, had prayed daily for the strength to continue his struggle to bring these misguided people back into the embrace of the mother Church, but sometimes treacherous thoughts had whispered in his head despite all he could do. He had doubted, that was the heart of it: oh, sweet Heaven, he had doubted. As time went by he prayed more and more often, gaining a reputation among the clergy of the Old City for extreme piety. That image was enhanced by the ferocity of his constant, untiring exhortations against heresy, and the need to cleanse the stain.

  Those things had brought him to the position of Hierarch, to be taken when old Antanus died at last. He could be sure of that now. And they had brought him here, to this pavilion overlooking Parrien, where the cleansing would begin. He thought now that God had kept Antanus alive for so long, little more than a husk through which breath whispered ever more faintly, to give Sarul time to wipe away the heresy before he took up his destiny as the Lord’s regent on earth. Already men would be setting flames to that God-cursed Academy, where so many false beliefs had been taught as though they were pure fact. He was pleased: in that nest of evil they had taught only the wisdom of serpents.

  It was very hard not to laugh with joy in fact, though Sarul was not a man much given to laughter. But a hot, savage delight thrummed in his chest, in his very soul where only God could see it. He felt as though his body was lit from within by a holy flame.

  A messenger dashed up and handed Amaury a folded sheet of paper. The general opened it and read, while Sarul pretended not to notice. Let the man imagine he was in charge here: there would be opportunities to disabuse him, in time. It would all be the same in the end.

  “My captains say the streets of Parrien are so thronged they can’t tell who is who,” Amaury said in his flat country vowels. “With your permission, I’ll order all civilians to be held until we can ascertain which of them are Faithful and which are not. When the town is secure we can –”

  “No,” Sarul said.

  He had wondered if God meant for the heresy to flourish. He would wonder no more. He was here, the army was here, and it was time to end it. Those people in the town were heretics and shelterers of heretics, collaborators in blasphemy and apostasy. They would claim to be faithful, loyal sons of the All-Church, all of them, to a man. The truth was that they were all guilty. Those who had stood aside and done nothing while evil flourished in their midst were no more to be forgiven that the apostates themselves.

  The avengers had come. Sinners would not be forgiven.

  “My lord?” Amaury asked.

  “Kill them all,” Sarul said. He heard the surety enter his voice, that rich and sonorous tool that God, in his wisdom, had bestowed upon him. “Kill them all. God will know his own.”