The Armored Saint

by Myke Cole

  Heloise ran outside. Samson and Clodio were standing to either side of the well, talking in the low voice they saved for when they recounted the war.

  “No, I haven’t seen him for at least a year’s span,” Clodio was saying. “He went farther and farther each year, and each time when he came back he was . . . less somehow. A man can lose his grip on the world, can drift beyond it.”

  “Wizardry,” her father said, and spat.

  “No,” Clodio said. “Nothing like that. He just . . . you see terrible things in war.”

  “I know,” Samson said. “I was there beside you. Put my pike between you and Ludhuige’s own shield bearer, if memory serves.” He glanced sideways at Heloise, as if he would have said more if she’d not arrived. “I’ve seen all you have, and done my duty regardless.”

  Clodio shrugged. “You’re a strong one, Samson. Not every man is so blessed.”

  “My strength is the Emperor and His Holy Writ.”

  “Aren’t you pious for one who is so green at the sight of the Order?”

  “The Emperor is divine. The Order are just men. You don’t fault a whole faith just because some of its agents take to brigandage. My faith kept me through the war, and it hasn’t failed me after.”

  Clodio smiled, tapped the hatchet at his hip. “Seem to remember I had a hand in that as well.”

  Samson shrugged. “All things serve the Emperor. This isn’t talk for a young lady, give the kit here, girl.”

  Heloise handed over the mortar and pestle, standing on tiptoe to peer over her father’s elbow as he filled the bottom of the bowl with water from the well bucket, dropped in one of Clodio’s rinds, and set to grinding.

  A moment later he dipped his finger in the paste and held it up, admiring the thick orange coating the tip. He grunted. “It’s not bloodvein, but I won’t deny it’s got worth. How much have you got?”

  “This is just a sample. I’ve got more cached at my camp.”

  “How long are you here this time, Clodio?” Heloise asked.

  “The roundhouse was empty,” the old man answered. “My bedroll’s there until another ranger shoves me off. I’ve custom enough to keep me at least a fortnight. I’ll see you again.”

  “Not at the roundhouse, you won’t,” Samson groused. “Heloise’s got no business in abandoned towers.”

  The sentry horn sounded. “’Ware riders!” came Corbus Tanner’s voice from the tower. “Riders on the southern road! Coming hard!”

  Clodio did not hesitate. He bent, squeezed Heloise’s shoulder and raced for the woods on the far side of town.

  “You’d best be away,” Samson said, “the Order’s no friend to rangers. If it’s them, you’ll want to be gone when . . .”

  He turned, saw that Clodio, quick as a deer, was already lost in the graying thickness of the distant trees.

  “Well,” Samson said, “he’s no fool.”

  Samson turned back to the tower, cupped a hand over his mouth. “Brigands? What do you see, Master Tanner?”

  “Gray cloaks!” Corbus shouted back. “Flails!”

  They held the gates of their enemies,

  Save the Emperor and His nine,

  The Sainted Palantines, mortal men, who alone and unaided,

  Brought the devil low, and each was grievously wounded,

  So that they died, and could not rejoice in their victory.

  —Writ. Cas. IV. 24

  CHAPTER 3: INSOLENCE

  Heloise stifled the urge to reach for her father’s hand again. She’d been brave in the face of a Sojourner today. She could be brave again.

  Samson cursed, cupped his hand again. “How many?”

  “Hard to tell . . .” Corbus shouted back. “All of them, I think.”

  “Come down from there, you damned fool. Stow the spear under the tower. No sense in giving them cause for offense.”

  “And what if we need it?” Corbus panted as he raced down the ladder.

  “Against the Order?” Samson asked. “Pray that we don’t.”

  He turned, snatching Heloise’s elbow and leading her back toward the house as feet pounded toward them. Sigir came first. He carried a tipstaff and his kind eyes were wide and frightened. Barnard was beside him, and Poch Drover and some of the other village men and their wives came running from their cooking fires. Leuba appeared around the side of their house, chicken carcass still in her hands.

  “Well, it seems the village has come to me,” Samson said, stopping.

  “Is it the Order?” Sigir panted.

  “It is,” Samson said. “Hard riding by the sound of it.”

  Corbus appeared from under the tower, paused to strip off his helmet, throwing it back into the darkness and smoothing out his thinning hair. “What do we do, Maior?”

  Basina pushed past Barnard and ran to Heloise, taking her arm and pulling her close. Heloise felt safer and stronger with Basina at her side. She scanned the crowd, taking in Barnard’s sons who had come to stand behind their father, all three Tinker men carrying their heavy forge hammers, huge things that she doubted most men would have the strength to swing. Barnard’s wife, Chunsia, appeared behind them, tiny compared to her giant husband and sons, her hair loose around her shoulders. She’d had no time to don her wimple at the horn’s call.

  Sigir exchanged glances with Barnard and Samson, cast his eyes over the growing crowd of villagers arriving each moment. “Well, everyone’s turned out, it seems,” he said, tossing his tipstaff under the tower. “I suppose we should prepare the expected welcome. Best not court a fight if there’s none brewing.”

  “They were wizard hunting,” Samson said doubtfully. “I told you what . . . what I saw on the road.”

  “They were wizard hunting in Frogfork,” Sigir answered, motioning to the Tinkers, who nodded and added their hammers to the growing pile, “and maybe Hammersdown, but most likely not. They could be coming for supply.”

  “At a gallop?” Corbus asked.

  “A man can ride fast for many reasons,” Sigir answered. “It’s not a call to draw swords.”

  “Bad choices,” Barnard spat.

  “It’s always bad choices. That’s why I’m the Maior, to save your tender hearts the burden of making them. Weapons under the tower. Now.”

  Heloise and Basina clung closer to one another as staves and pitchforks clattered onto the growing pile. “Stupid to throw the weapons away,” Basina whispered to her. “If there’s to be a fight, we’ll wish we had them.”

  Heloise looked at Basina’s strong arms and shoulders, smaller than her brothers’ by half, but still bigger around than any village girl’s and certainly Heloise’s. She pictured Basina fighting to defend her, felt her heart race at the thought. “Sigir says there’s not to be any fight.”

  Basina nodded. “Emperor grant us that he’s right.”

  “Knees!” Sigir called as hoofbeats sounded and Heloise saw the black shapes of riders moving through the darkness.

  Heloise felt her heart race, her blood pounding in her veins as she dropped to her knees, dragging Basina down next to her. It was the second time she’d knelt before Pilgrims that day. The mud was just as cold.

  In moments, a forest of horse legs surrounded them, and she could smell their lathered hides and hear the creaking of their leather harness. She kept her eyes down, but she was careful to count the legs. There were at least ten Pilgrims, maybe more. The horses circled, whinnying nervously, before their leader reined his mount in and leapt off to the ground, spattering mud on Sigir’s legs. Heloise looked up at the bright blue of his eyes and recognized him. He was the Pilgrim from the road, the one who had called her father a liar. Anger kindled in her belly, rose slowly into her chest.

  “Welcome to Lutet, Holy Brother,” Sigir said. “We are blessed to have the Emperor’s Own with us as the day wanes.”

  “It is fitting that we come with the night,” the Pilgrim said. Heloise looked up at him, then. He didn’t look much older than Basina’s brothers, though it w
as hard to tell if he’d a man’s shoulders because of the armor. Armor made everyone look like giants. Heloise could hear the hardened leather pieces scraping against one another as he brought his flail off his shoulder and thumped it into the mud, his blue eyes blazing. “For we have dark work before us.”

  “If any can hold back the darkness, you can, Holy Brother,” Sigir said.

  The Pilgrim nodded. “I am Brother Tone, Hand of the Emperor. You are the Maior of this settlement?”

  “I am, Holy Brother. I am called Sigir.”

  Tone’s ice blue eyes narrowed. “What was your trade and name before you were raised up?”

  “Potter, sir.”

  “Potter . . . I do not know the name. Are all assembled?”

  Sigir didn’t bother to look around. “They are, Holy Brother.”

  The Sojourner turned to take in the crowd. He took a long time of it, looking over everyone while the Pilgrims sat silently behind him, the only sounds the wind sighing in the trees and the horses tugging at their reins as they tried to crop the short, stubborn grass.

  “Subjects of the Emperor!” Tone’s voice was high and thin, but it carried to all. Troupers had come to the village when Heloise was little, and put on a show in the common. They’d had voices like that.

  “It is good to see you here, in proper obedience to the Emperor. It is good to treat His Writ with gravity. It is this which assures His blessing. It is this which keeps His eyes turned toward you. It is through the Emperor’s valor that we are made safe, that the worlds are kept apart. It is through His vigilance alone that the devils are kept from our door. What is the Emperor’s first command?”

  The words came bubbling to the lips of everyone on the common. “Suffer no wizard to live.”

  “Suffer no wizard to live,” Tone repeated. “A simple law. And all the Emperor asks.

  “If your father, your son, or your brother is a wizard.”

  “Cry out to the Order,” the village spoke with one voice.

  “If your mother, your daughter, your sister.”

  “Cry out to the Order.”

  “And the Order shall answer, always. And how shall you secure the Empire until the Order arrives?”

  “Stone them.”

  “You know the words, but do you live them?”

  Silence at that. Heloise felt sick with fear. She could sense that Tone was coming to his point.

  “Soft hearts may wish to save a beloved friend, a sweetheart, a cousin”—Tone leaned forward, the flail’s chain jingling, and lowered his voice to a whisper—“and damn all mankind.

  “I can see!” Tone said. “I can look in a man’s eye and see the gateway there. I can smell the stink of wizardry like others smell sulfur. And I have smelled it! Two we found on the road and put to the question, two criminals who would have sold us poisoned fodder in the hope of slowing our sacred charge. They died hard, all the harder for having the Emperor’s benevolent eye turned away from them. But before their souls passed into hell, the Emperor breathed upon them and found the tiny grain of truth that remained. They told us what we needed to know.”

  Heloise pictured the bodies in their chain wrappings sliding along behind the Pilgrims’ horses. She looked up now, heedless, half-expecting the Pilgrims to dismount and begin swinging their wicked-looking flails among the crowd.

  But Tone only folded his arms across his chest. “The veil is rent. The blight is in the valley, on your very doorstep.”

  A chorus of gasps from all the villagers, muttered cries of “No,” and “Throne protect us.”

  Sigir stumbled to his feet, “Holy Brother, are you certain that . . .”

  “You are rising to do your Emperor’s bidding!” Tone took a step back from the Maior. “That is good. All shall rise and make ready. What is rent, must be Knit. Now is your time to stand in the line, to fill your duties as the Writ has laid them down for you.”

  Tone glanced sidelong at the pile of shadows under the sentry tower, smiled. “I see you have gathered weapons in anticipation of your duty, and that is to be commended. But you will be a Knitting line, not a levy. You will not need them.”

  Sigir looked as if he might weep. Heloise’s heart twisted at the sight of his thick moustache trembling, his normally steady eyes flitting back and forth, like an animal looking for an escape. “Holy Brother . . . are you sure this is . . .”

  “Needed?” asked Tone. “Perhaps I am not sure. Perhaps I should ask for the counsel of an upjumped potter. Or a wheelwright. Are there any goatherds in your number who would care to counsel the Emperor’s Own as to how best to keep the realm safe from hell’s reach?”

  Sigir’s face darkened, but he looked at his feet. “My apologies, Holy Brother. I spoke out of turn.”

  Tone stabbed a gloved finger at him, the flail head jerking, setting the chain jangling again. “Not at all, Master Potter. There’s no harm in questions. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps we should ride on. Perhaps we should leave the blight to spread, until wizardry makes its home in your own benighted hamlet. Perhaps you would prefer we all turn from the hard work of keeping the veil shut, until the rent appears here, and you stand on the wrong side of a Knitting line yourselves. Is that what you want?”

  Heloise could see Samson and Barnard’s faces darken. They were veterans of the Old War, and Barnard’s sons glanced at their father’s expression, setting their own to match. Basina even tensed at the threat, letting go of Heloise’s arm and squaring her shoulders.

  But there were ten Pilgrims, all armed and armored, and who knew how many more were in the column Heloise had seen on the road? Fifty? One hundred?

  And more importantly this: The Order was the Hand of the Emperor. To defy them was to invite the wrath of the Throne itself.

  “No, Holy Brother,” Sigir said.

  “I thought not,” Brother Tone said. “You have a drover?”

  “I am the drover,” Poch Drover said, stepping forward, “and I’ve two boys who know the trade . . . if it pleases you, Holy Brother.”

  “The Emperor provides,” Tone said. “It falls to you to cart the people. I will leave a rider to guide you.

  “There is another matter. The light of the Sacred Throne flies before us, chasing the shadows out of the corners of the valley. We fear one of those shadows may have fallen on your own village. A ranger. A wanderer whose name is written on no village roll, who casts off the Emperor’s protection, trusting to his own power. This is pride, and no mistake, for when a man thinks himself the Emperor’s equal, the gateway to hell opens a crack to receive him. We would speak with him, give him the chance to repent of his ways and return to the village rolls.”

  Heloise swallowed. She flicked her eyes to her father, but his face showed nothing. Clodio was as swift as a deer, as clever as a cat. The Order would never find him.

  “Come,” Tone spoke into the silence. “He’s been here. Do you expect me to believe that a ranger came past your doorstep and didn’t stop for trade? If I look through your larders, will I find freshly sharpened knives? Will I see new pots? Spices in your evening stew?”

  “You might see sharp knives, Holy Brother,” Barnard said. “I’m a tinker.”

  “And I don’t need to remind you who your tinkering serves first and foremost. You have an Imperial vault in your shop, I should hope.”

  “I do.”

  “Then I trust you are hard at work at whatever the Imperial Procurer has tasked you to, and that when we come to collect it, it will be ready.”

  Barnard bowed slightly. Heloise had never seen him so angry.

  “Now, the ranger! Where is he?” Tone’s eyes swept the villagers.

  No one answered. Heloise felt the words creeping up the back of her throat. Who knew what Tone would do if he didn’t get the answers he wanted? Maybe he won’t hurt Clodio. Maybe they just want to talk. But she looked at Tone’s armored shoulders, the flail haft gripped tightly in his fist, and she didn’t think so.

  “This ranger is a heretic!”
Tone said. “A man who mates with other men. Like lying with like, like the devils in hell themselves. You would protect him? We will remember it if you tell us, I will report it to the Holy Father, who will look on you with favor.”

  He stalked among the villagers, looking at their faces, as if he could see the truth there. “Rangers do not plant as the Emperor commanded. They move endlessly, carrying their sin from place to place, seeding blight instead of crops. They are a plague.”

  Heloise felt the anger rising again, as hot and as quick as on the road to Hammersdown, when the Pilgrim had called her father a liar. She opened her mouth to tell him that he should get out of her village, bit back her words, but not before she had uttered a strangled growl.

  Tone’s eyes snapped to her, and Heloise drew closer to Basina, as if a little girl could protect her from a Pilgrim. Tone smiled, squatted in the mud, placed the flail crosswise on his thighs. Heloise could feel her father tense, could see Barnard take a heavy step toward them. Heloise should have been comforted by their nearness, but what could they do against armored men with spiked flails?

  “So, girl? Do you have something to say?” Tone asked.

  The Writ promised dire punishment for liars, so Heloise was careful to tell the truth. “I’ve got nothing to tell you, I swear.”

  “You make your oaths to the Emperor, not to me, for it is He who will judge you on the last day if you lie,” Tone said. He turned to Basina, and as his eyes fell on her, Heloise felt her legs go weak. “And you do lie, I think,” he said. “Well, how about this one? Do you have anything to tell me?”

  Basina’s cheeks had gone dark. Her eyes shone with tears, her chin quivering.

  “There’s no need to cry,” Tone said, reaching out to brush at her cheek. Heloise knew Basina’s tears were born of anger, not fear. “I am only trying to protect you. To protect all of you.”

  Basina turned her face away, swatted Tone’s gauntlet down. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped.

  Startled, Tone rocked back on his haunches, put out a hand to stop himself from falling. “Disobedient . . .” he said, reached for Basina’s arm.