Working God's Mischief

by Glen Cook

  Indala told his companions, “They aren’t going to counterattack, are they? They’re content to let us come to them.”

  Nassim said, “Yes. And tomorrow will be worse. Tomorrow they will have caltrops and tangle cords out.”

  Indala silenced him with a hand sign. “I see that. I’d do that myself, with fresh soldiers in the front lines. While I had food and water I’d stand and let the sea break on my rock. So. What is their long-run intent? Besides refusing to play by our preferred rules?”

  News of the disaster at Shartelle had yet to arrive. The Believers remained confident of the favor of their God and the wisdom of their Great Shake. The outcome, here, might be difficult but the only final result would be victory.

  A distant cousin of Indala said, “The crusaders are protecting their flanks with earthworks instead of cavalry. Their horse aren’t numerous and are being held behind the infantry line.”

  Nassim said, “Their heavy horsemen will fight dismounted the way they did at the battle of the Four Armies.”

  Indala nodded. “Which means they won’t launch one of their massed charges. So. They do hope we’ll exhaust ourselves against a fixed position.”

  Nassim thought they were missing something. Arnhanders were not normally so patient. Their knightly class would not endure inaction. They would demand their chances at glory.

  He kept announcing, “We’re overlooking something. We need to consider their behavior more closely.” But no one wanted to hear him. The situation had to change. Casualties, so far, favored the invaders, who, therefore, had no need to change tactics.

  Indala launched three attacks the next day, first to fix the soldiers on the crusaders’ line, then to rock each flank. The most massive went in from the east, with the sun behind, three thousand horsemen followed by four thousand of the best infantry.

  The other attack was half as strong, its purpose to keep the troops on the western end from reinforcing elsewhere.

  The main attack swarmed into the massed fire of a hundred falcons. The cavalry were obliterated. They could not flee. The infantry blocked the way. The falcons fell silent after only three salvos. Righteous horsemen came out to exterminate the stunned survivors.

  Falcons decimated the lesser attack as well.

  Nassim watched the western knights form for the charge. He said nothing. Indala would fall back, then try to turn in the time-honored fashion. Alizarin anticipated no success. The Unbeliever would be prepared.

  At the command level, at least, the Arnhanders were professionals. Those professionals controlled the rest, who had learned to trust them while campaigning through the Antal.

  The crusader charge scattered those who tried to resist. That resistance was barely strong enough to let Believers of weaker courage make their escape. The baggage was lost. Many horses were lost. Indala’s few falcons were lost, too, most without having been fired. The ambush down the road failed completely. The crusaders knew where it was and waited while light-horse auxiliaries, having advanced by alternate routes, harassed the Believers and kept them from fixing their positions.

  No phase of Indala’s plan succeeded. Each had been anticipated. In every encounter the casualty ratio favored the invaders, usually dramatically.

  Al-Azer er-Selim declared, “The Night itself favors the crusaders.”

  Indala took the survivors into Shamramdi. Despair haunted the Believers. God had averted His gaze again. The imams searched for the cause of His disfavor.

  The Great Shake summoned new levies. He sent to Dreanger for the armies of al-Minphet. And he looked eastward, nervously.

  The Hu’n-tai At would take advantage. Tsistimed the Golden would attack once he learned of the despair of Qasr al-Zed.

  The Mountain saw the frustration eating at Indala, who was safe enough inside Shamramdi. He could hold on there indefinitely—unable to impose his will anywhere outside.

  News from outside arrived regularly. The crusader cordon was porous. That news was never encouraging. Crusaders on the coast had moved on from Shartelle, reducing other Praman towns and cities with no difficulty. The siege of Shartelle proceeded at a leisurely pace, everyone inside and out confident of the outcome. Rumors had the Commander of the Righteous planning to penetrate Peqaa and destroy the holies of al-Prama.

  Nassim Alizarin did not believe that but neither did he want to believe that Captain Tage had taken this as far as he had.

  When would he reveal his Sha-lug colors?

  * * *

  Imams complained that strange things were happening in the holy places. God’s presence could no longer be felt. All sense of consecration had faded.

  Was God truly turning away, abandoning the Believers completely?

  In Shamramdi, as elsewhere where the Believers were besieged, strange evils kept occurring. Few were of great moment but the cumulative effect was debilitating. Key men fell sick. Minarets collapsed. Wells dried up. Vermin got into the granaries. Mortar in the walls washed away in unseasonable showers. A plague hit the horses, killing a third and leaving the rest too weak for battle.

  In Shartelle the Tower of the Bats collapsed. Grain rotted. Plague visited briefly. The besiegers found the hidden aqueduct that brought water down from a built-over, camouflaged spring in the hills northeast of the city. Loss of that resource caused severe rationing.

  A Dreangerean relief fleet assaulted the blockade at Shartelle. The warships were allowed to break through. The cargo vessels fled or were captured. The warships were then lost while trying to break back out. Slaves aboard several somehow slipped their chains and revolted.

  * * *

  The Mountain huddled with his surviving veterans. “The end of the world is near. What shall we do? How shall we meet it?”

  Old Az said, “We’ll meet it as we meet everything. Chin to chin.”

  Bone, on crutches these days, agreed. “This is as it has been Written. We cannot dispute the Will.”

  More of that fatalism that lay behind everything, Nassim thought.

  Bone added, “The Rascal wrote the opening scene. I just hope we can end his tale before ours plays out.”

  There was no good news from the Idiam. The Ansa felt abandoned, though Indala’s indifference was not of his own choosing. Er-Rashal was an apparition of the monster that had been but he forged on, relentless in his determination to raise the dead god and unswerving in his lust for ascension. The Ansa were on the defensive. They would flee the Idiam had they anywhere else to run.

  The Mountain said, “Then let us bridle our grand ambitions and beg for that one boon. Perhaps God will grant us that.”

  Someone muttered, “You would think He’d show more interest in making His enemies weep.”

  Outside, none too distant, masonry crumbled. People began to cry out. That meant that there had been casualties.

  37. The Mother Sea: Pilgrims

  Brother Candle argued that he had lived a long, productive life. He had had a positive impact on the world. He had done his share. It was time the world let him go home to the Light. The Good God had prepared him a place.

  The Widow and the Vindicated did not agree.

  Never had he been so sick for so long.

  Kedle, her henchmen, and the Terliagan seamen all promised that he would get over it.

  They lied. He was still at the rail, still limp, when Darter made port at al-Stikla, on the heel of Firaldia, which was as far east as Terliagans were willing to travel.

  There were pirates in the eastern Mother Sea. Also, the Dateonese and Aparionese were lethally jealous of their monopolies. They even fought one another, constantly.

  There was a long delay at al-Stikla. Passage east, for groups, was scarce and dear. Countless pious pilgrims and bloodthirsty adventurers wanted to get to the Holy Lands in time to participate in the great event of the age.

  At shared prayers Kedle murmured, “You would think that supernatural forces were at work.”

  The Perfect harrumphed. Solid ground had yet to restore
his good temper. “Of course they are! Weren’t you paying attention?”

  Lady Hope had visited Darter several times.

  Kedle blushed. The Perfect noticed and was startled. Was there something physical between Hope and the Widow?

  Oddities suddenly lined up and made sense, then, though he had trouble getting his mind around the situation. That was plausible only on an intellectual plane. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You are too liberal, Master.” Kedle paused. “It’s … I can’t help myself.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.” After his own pause, “She has that effect on me and I’m older than stone, nor ever owned strong appetites.” Kedle’s had been strong from the first. “Just ask the blessing of the Light.”

  Hope was not the only supernatural visitor. The monster bird with the damaged wing sometimes circled while Darter was at sea. Brother Candle thought the ship was being shadowed by something in the water, too. He was too miserable to care much but did mention it to the crew, whereupon the Terliagans grew excited.

  There was no such beast native to the Mother Sea.

  Kedle observed, “We must be caught inside a bigger story than the one we can see.”

  Brother Candle agreed. He had no doubts about that.

  He did wish that the Good God was the sort who stepped in on behalf of his followers.

  Brother Candle did not like being afraid. Being an object of interest to the Night—in particular to those parts of the Night that dogma proclaimed to be unreal—was scary in the extreme.

  * * *

  Kedle found a fat Dateonese transport, purpose-built to carry pilgrims, that had room for the Vindicated. Such vessels reaped grand profits by shifting the pious and ambitious.

  They did not want to accept the Widow. She was bully enough to get her way. The holy man with the tattoos was terrifying, too. His tattoos looked like they could come to life.

  The ship’s master finally took them aboard, though, because the approaches to the Holy Lands had become so dangerous. Consiglieri Reversi Ono must pass along shores where she was likely to encounter pirates, privateers, or warships from Lucidia or Dreanger. Even ships from Aparion and the Eastern Empire could be troublesome.

  * * *

  Brother Candle could not believe it. The passage from al-Stikla east was worse than the first leg. Consiglieri Reversi Ono left shallow coastal waters for a direct run across those deeps where the big waves stalked. Two days out he begged to be put to death.

  Cruel people all, the Vindicated and crew only mocked his misery.

  * * *

  Pirates caught Consiglieri off the south coast of the Antal, just days from the Holy Lands. A swarm of small ships closed in, under the illusion that the Dateonese could be captured easily. Brother Candle was too sick to wonder. Though the seas were minimal he was preoccupied with his misery.

  The pirates soon learned that they had made a lethally bad choice.

  They were not accustomed to having to do much real fighting. Kedle and the Vindicated slaughtered them like the amateurs they were.

  A pirate no older than fourteen came at the Perfect. Brother Candle thought his death was upon him. He was too sick … But his serpents were not. Two came out. The boy went down.

  People saw it happen. The fighting slackened. A man who might have been the boy’s father wailed, charged, and died of lightning snakebite.

  Awed, the pirates began a loud debate.

  Then someone aboard one of the pirate craft howled an alarm.

  A war galley was headed for the tangle. Its sails were Aparionese. More so even than the Dateonese the Aparionese were merciless toward pirates. They hunted pirates down. They destroyed whole villages suspected of harboring pirates.

  There was a particularly dire air about this monster galley.

  Brother Candle could only observe, later, that it was a strange old world, and cruel.

  The galley broke unfamiliar colors. For the pirates escape was improbable already. That warship lay in the hands of the Night, no doubt about that. Kedle and Brother Candle smelled a smell like Lady Hope, only older, heavier, and darker. Hints of shadow swarmed around the vessel. Another ship, in the distance, noted earlier but paid little heed, began to show flashes of light and puffs of smoke. Thumps came rolling across the water. The vessel caught fire.

  Shadows danced round the vessels trying to run from Consiglieri. They brought loud bangs. “Firepowder,” Kedle reported. “Top grade and delivered by sorcery. We have found ourselves somebody really, really bad, old man.”

  “Somebody with a grudge against pirates, perhaps?”

  The galley loomed massive. Her falcons grumbled, hurling shot that ripped away pirate sails, rigging, even a mast. The attack continued till the pirate fleet had been reduced to wreckage, corpses, and derelicts.

  The Aparionese captain came alongside Consiglieri, called a taunting reminder that Dateon owed Aparion a favor.

  Brother Candle recognized several of the men at the other ship’s rail as a bloody Kedle loudly suggested that the Aparionese kiss her sweet arse. Their interference had been neither necessary nor requested.

  The Perfect forgot his stomach. “Girl. Girl child. Dear girl. Kedle. Shut up. You’re insulting the Commander of the Righteous himself.”

  That got through, accentuated by the odor of the Night. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Those standards belong to the Righteous and the Grand Duchy of Eathered and Arnmigal. The Commander is fourth from the left, grinning like he hears every word I’m saying. I saw him closer than this when he was Captain-General.”

  “What the hell is he doing out here?” She waved, making a conciliatory gesture that might be taken for belated gratitude. Then, “Crap. You are telling it straight.” A boy had joined those men. He had been at Mestlé. He had negotiated with Hope.

  The Perfect said, “I expect he’s headed for the Holy Lands. The Enterprise is his show.”

  Kedle growled. “Where is Hope when I need her?” And was startled. The Instrumentality joined the men at the rail yonder. She smiled and tossed an intimate wink.

  The galley began to pull away, moving swiftly under oars.

  * * *

  Hope visited that night. She was low-key, preferring to attract no attention. She crowded into the tiny cabin with Kedle and Brother Candle. The space was too hot and too intimate for the Perfect. She said, “You had a serious encounter today, loves,” with scarcely a hint of accent. “You caught the eye of the Commander of the Righteous. He will be watching.”

  Kedle shrugged, indifferent. Brother Candle, though, caught the resonance of facts unstated beneath Hope’s statement. “Meaning?”

  “He remembered you, Uncle. Kedle, he worked out who you are even before his son told him. He explained why you’re here. He doesn’t know who Kedle Richeut is but he certainly knows what she is.”

  Kedle admitted, “I’m confused.”

  “Understand this, beloved. My whole family is with him, supporting him. They could be here now, in a shadow or in the flame in the lamp, and even I wouldn’t know. So from now on, wherever you go and whatever you do, you may be watched by someone more powerful than me. You don’t want to disappoint them.”

  Obliquely, Brother Candle observed, “You seem more substantial, somehow.” And, therefore, a greater danger to his soul—though she no longer taunted his worldly side.

  The Instrumentality hugged herself, grinned, said, “I made it all the way to the Well of Peace. I’m strong again. I’m young and beautiful. And I talk too much.”

  She was, for a moment, very much like a stunningly bright and beautiful, mischievous fifteen-year-old. But how was that unlike what she had been that first night in Antieux? Brother Candle could not define it but the difference was there. Perhaps it was a lessened malicious cynicism.

  “Oh, my!” For an instant he had pictured her as she had been that night, in alluring mode, but now fully armed with divine power.

  Tinkling laughter. “Dear
Brother, I love thee too well to destroy thee that way. I have warned ye both. It’s time for me to go.” She eyed Kedle briefly, yearning plain. A sigh and a shiver, then she just shriveled into a wisp and was gone.

  Brother Candle stared, silent. The last he had seen was a conspiratorial wink. Kedle said, “I’m going to sleep, now.” Restlessly, no doubt.

  The Perfect went up on deck and contemplated the myriad stars. The sky was cloudless, the air crystalline, the darkness complete. The starscape was astounding. He might fall into it if he did not keep his grip on the rail. In just minutes he counted eleven shooting stars.

  Suddenly, like taking a body blow, he realized that he had not been seasick since that boy’s father tried to kill him.

  Thought conjured the demon misery.

  He groaned and leaned over the rail.

  A dozen porpoises paced Consiglieri, trailing bioluminescent wakes. A large darkness lazed along beneath them. The porpoises were not troubled.

  * * *

  There was an encounter with a Lucidian war galley as Consiglieri neared Shartelle. The galley came on aggressively, but at six hundred yards sheered off and fled away as though her commander was convinced that he had come within a gnat’s whisker of some diabolic Unbeliever ambush.

  “What was that?” Kedle wondered.

  Brother Candle was too miserable to care. He was obsessed with counting the hours till the torment ended. Forever. Never again would he board a ship. He would die first.

  He told the Episcopal captain that, should he have spent his life in error as a Seeker and the Brothen Episcopals had it right, he was bound for heaven anyway. He had done his time in Purgatory.

  The Dateonese crew found him endlessly amusing.

  * * *

  The Connec was hot. The Holy Lands were hotter. Back home the cool of the sea rolled in over the land come evening, making the nights tolerable. At Triamolin the heat of the land rolled out to broil the sea.

  Even Kedle was awed. “And it isn’t yet fully summer.”

  There had been ample warning. Connectens of the noble and knightly classes had made pilgrimages to Vantrad and Chaldar before. Some had tarried for years, helping thwart the villainies of those emissaries of darkness, the Pramans. Many of those veterans were willing to share their experiences endlessly.