by Victor Milán
The late morning was hot; the year’s round of four two-month seasons brought only subtle differences to Spaña, except in the very shade of the lofty Shield Range. Two kilometers west the Grand Imperial Army of Crusade—El Gran Ejército Imperial Cruzador—lay camped by the High Road to rest. Jaume’s expedition had just mounted the pass called Gate of the Winds, through the Copper Mountains that screened out most of the rainstorms blowing from the Channel and made La Meseta one of Nuevaropa’s driest regions.
Like a great blanket woven of men, monsters, and engines, the Empire of the Fangèd Throne’s army lay spread across a dusty dun plain. Skeins of reinforcement, from militant orders and vassal lords summoned from Spaña and nearby Francia to serve their Imperial liege, had expanded it to over twenty thousand strong.
Who now stood in ranks to either side of the gleaming white High Road to await their comrades’ arrival: knights on warhorses and hadrosaurs, glittering House troops, peasant levies slouching listlessly, the grim brown block of the Twelfth Tercio of Imperial Nodosaurs. Beyond them a field full of tents and pavilions sprouted like so many gaudy mushrooms. Even at this distance Jaume could see the open red and gold pavilion where Felipe sat between his army and his camp, flanked by his Scarlet Tyrants in their gorgeous figured breastplates and wind-nodding plumes.
That surprised none of the Companions; the riders who had shuttled back and forth between the two armies the last two days had apprised them of the Imperial cantonment’s location, as they had the Emperor of their approach. A hill or two back, Jaume and his men had stopped to don armor and swap ambler horses for war-duckbills in order to make a properly grand entrance to their Emperor’s camp.
What stopped Jaume and his men with jaws hanging open—and made Jaume’s stomach writhe like a spear-spitted bouncer—was the forest that had sprung up along the Camino Alto Imperial.
No natural trees comprised it. And—as the white-blond Brabanter Mor Wouter de Jong had once remarked, in a different setting—these trees bore strange fruit.
They were gibbets. Some bore crossbars from which blackened bodies hung by the necks. Some were simple poles, with strangely nude-looking bodies tied to them, with their flayed skins flapping like flags above them. Some held wagon-wheels, their victims’ broken limbs woven among the spokes to increase their final agony. Some were no more than pikes, with heads on top. Others, stouter poles impaled men and women. Or parts of them.
“There must be hundreds of them,” murmured Wil Oakheart of Oakheart. “What does this mean?”
“Nothing good,” Florian said.
“I fear I am compelled to agree,” said Manfredo. The Taliano knight managed to speak normally despite the fact his mouth and entire face were no more mobile than a stone statue’s.
Feeling as if his armor had turned to lead around him, Jaume led them down onto the road of horror. Perched atop a tau cross from whose arms two bodies hung by withered necks, a grey-backed flier with a white belly and fanciful yellow and white swirls on its unwieldy-looking crest opened a toothless beak to utter a croak of annoyance at their approach. Spreading wings seven meters wide it flapped slowly away across the scrub-dotted plain.
We were blessed at first, Jaume realized. The wind’s blowing crosswise. But soon enough and too soon, the Companions were riding between the lines of foul trees.
The stink seemed compounded of more than mere rotting flesh. As if misery and terror and degradation each had a reek of its own.
“Some of them are still alive!” Dieter exclaimed. “They’re moving! Oh, Sweet Middle Sister Li, Lady of Beauty, have mercy!”
Tears streamed down his pink cheeks as he looked beseechingly around at his comrades. “Can’t we help them?”
“I think they’re beyond help,” Florian said, without his usual snap.
“But they’re not! Some of them are still moving. Look!”
Though he wished he could not do so—though he wished he could do almost anything else, including die—Jaume did look. And he had to admit to himself the young Alemán knight was right. Some of the bodies showed definite movement.
“Look yourself,” rumbled Ayaks, his face fisted in a mountainside scowl. “Look close and learn.”
He rode Bogdan, his golden morion bull with the cream-colored belly, past Dieter’s sackbut into the ditch beneath a breaking-wheel. Drawing his greatsword from its sheath slung over his right shoulder, he gripped the hilt near the butt. Making sure he and his mount stayed well out from beneath he reached up to prod the swollen body hanging there. With a scream that echoed its occupant’s agony, the wheel turned. The corpse, which was that of a woman, rotated head-down. Her head swung back, opening her mouth.
A cloud of flies with black furry bodies and opalescent green bodies exploded from her with a buzz like an arrow-volley. The maggots and ants that writhed on every square centimeter of her brown, greasy, naked skin fell like grey living rain.
“See where the dead juices dripped, and killed the grass below?” the weeping blond giant demanded. “See that? But someday flowers will grow here. Tell yourself that, boy: someday, flowers will grow!”
Dieter let his helmet drop from the crook of his arm to cover his face with both hands and cry like a lost child.
The arming-squires had ridden up behind, no doubt closer than protocol would normally allow in their eagerness to see what was happening. Jaume half turned his head toward them and without even looking, said, “If you please.”
A brown-haired boy scuttled forward to retrieve the armet. It was Jacques’s squire David, not Dieter’s Wolfram. Presumably the Alemán was one of those now puking noisily onto the crushed pumice pavement of the High Road.
“The world is an abode of ugliness,” the usually taciturn Machtigern said in a voice like an iron wagon tire clattering down a cobbled street. “It’s why we seek Beauty, to find and foster it when we can. To fight for it, even. To restore the holy Equilibrium of the World against the likes of this.”
“O dear, my lord,” someone cried out, “please don’t make us do this thing!”
Chapter 26
Alabarda, Halberd, Halberd-crest—Lambeosaurus magnicristatus. Bipedal herbivore, 9 meters, 3.5 tonnes. Prized in Nuevaropa as a war-hadrosaur for the showy, bladelike crest that gives it its name. Easily bred for striking coloration, like the more-common Corythosaurus and Parasaurolophus; bulkier than either.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“Tour,” a voice hissed from the darkness as Melodía picked her barefoot way through the trees and brush toward the light of a campfire belonging, if her somewhat fuddled brain recalled rightly, to one of her jinete contingents. Tower, in Francés.
“Atout,” she answered, the day’s challenge-and-reply somehow, fortuitously springing to her mind without conscious effort. It meant, “trump card” in the same language.
“Come ahead on, jefa.” That last was a Spañol word for “boss,” which her light-riders affectionately called her in a nod to her heritage/birthplace.
“Why are you Maia-naked?” asked one of the quartet sitting or squatting around the fire, drinking wine from bouncer-skins and gnawing chunks pulled off the scratcher they had roasted over the fire. This one’s name was Magda, Melodía recalled. She was short, barrel-shaped, rode a brown and puce strider, and spoke with an unusual brand of Slava accent.
Melodía frowned.
“I don’t actually remember,” she said.
“Partied too hearty, back at the château, did you?” said Thom. Who was shorter than Melodía, and also younger. She recalled she often wondered how he kept his brown bangs out of his eyes. “We probably shouldn’t offer you any of our wine, then, hein?”
“No, thanks.”
Melodía felt her frown deepen as she tried to remember anything about the evening just past. She usually avoided the sorts of indulgences, alcoholic or herbal, which might account for her lost time. She recalled setting out for the Garden villa after the end of the day’s training and chores. Then, nothing
.
Suddenly a memory seized her and shook her like a rat in a vexer’s jaws. No sight, nor sound, nor smell. Only fear—terrible, sickening, total fear like nothing she had ever known before.
“Jefa?” Magda stood up, black eyes wide beneath her single brow and the black braid wound into a crown above her forehead. “Are you sick?”
“You look as if you’ve seen a Faerie,” rumbled Gustave, still hunkered by the flames.
The fear left Melodía all at once, body and mind. It was as if something pushed it out. Even the memory of it began to fade, as if she’d dreamt it.
“No,” she said. “I’m fine. I must have gotten some bad food.”
“Best go get to sleep, then,” said the last jinete, Catherine, who looked no bigger than a child. “Tomorrow we ride out before the dawn, to see what mischief Count Raúl’s up to.”
“You’re right,” Melodía said. She gave up trying to recall her evening, and immediately felt better. “Sleep will make everything right.”
* * *
Tormented as that dear, familiar voice sounded, Jaume didn’t fool himself that the suffering that elicited it could approach that of even the luckiest of the poor ones who hung dead and stinking around them. His muscles, already wound like lute strings, cranked another twist tighter. He held up a steel-gauntleted hand in front of his face. How strange, he thought, my sinews don’t rip themselves free of the bone. It seemed almost unjust.
He turned toward the cry. “My dear Brother Jacques,” he said.
And stopped. Nuevaropa’s most renowned wordsmith could find, for once, no words.
Despair reddened and deepened the lines in Mor Jacques’s prematurely aged face. Jacques, the Brother on whom he relied most of all for the sheer, unaesthetic grind-work of keeping the Order running as an organization in the field. The last of men Jaume might’ve expected to protest. Should it have been the first? he wondered.
Camellia sidestepped on her vast hind legs and tossed her round-crested head, snorting nervous music at the smell of rotting meat. Spilt man-blood didn’t alarm her in her marrow as that of her kind would. But she knew its scent drew big meat-eating dinosaurs as surely as it did eye-harvesters and ants.
“Jacques,” he said, “honored friend and advisor. What is this you ask of me?”
The Francés knight wagged his head over his breastplate like a wet dog clearing its ears. His graying flapped lankly at the back of his care-denuded skull.
“Spare me, O Lord,” he said. “Spare us. I beg you. This is abomination. It’s evil, Captain. If we travel down this road, don’t we make ourselves a part of this ugliness?”
“What else do we exist to fight against?” asked Florian, in a quieter tone than customary.
Jacques waved steel fingers at the awful maggot-writhing dangling things that had been born and grown up and lived as men and women.
“What else have we sacrificed so much to oppose?” he asked. “Shed sweat, shed blood, shed limbs and eyes and youth and hope? Lost brothers, lost friends—lost lovers? Please.”
Jaume made him meet his friend’s tear-filled brown gaze. “I can only ask again: what do you want me to do?”
“Lead us away from here.”
This voice was calm and firm. Jaume looked to its source. It surprised him perhaps more than Jacques’s outburst.
“We are ordered to present ourselves to our Emperor for service,” Jaume said. “Loyalty and love as well as law bind us to this duty. Do you ask us to defy that, Brother Manfredo?”
“Yes,” the Taliano said. His beautiful head was high, his jaw squared. “This is crime. Such wholesale murder by torture violates the Empire’s own laws as well as the Creators’ clear edicts in the BOOKS OF THE LAW.”
Jaume let his chin hand fall to the sun-heated steel of his cuirass for a moment. He felt the slightly rough texture of the white enamel that coated it against his chin. He drew in deeply and sighed.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “You’re all of you right.”
He raised his face to the stinking breeze.
“I cannot deny the truth of what you say,” he declared, pitching the words to carry past his too-small circle of Companions on their vast and colorful steeds, and their squires, even to the mailed ranks of Brothers-Ordinary horsemen waiting patiently behind. “I can’t gainsay you. Yet I must tell you this: I mean to ride straightaway down this very highway of horror, and make my due obeisance to my master the Emperor.”
“But what of our duty to the Lady?” Jacques said.
“What about our duty to preserve the weak and the innocent from the arrogance of birth and might?” asked Florian.
“What about the Rule of Law?” said Manfredo.
“Those are real things we must uphold,” Jaume said. “Important things.”
He nudged Camellia several tail-swaying steps forward so he could turn her without her knocking into anybody else’s mount. Then he faced them all from the front, as was his place, even in this. Especially in this.
The Companions’ reaction was plain enough: pain on every strong and beautiful face. Of the squires, the half who weren’t still puking into the ditch on either side of the road were green-faced, lips trembling and eyes streaming. The gendarmes, the Ordinaries, kept a watchful air.
Some, like Coronel Alma and his friend the dinosaur master Rupp von Teuzen who sat his horse as always rigidly upright beside him, served Jaume and the Lady because they had found their place upon Paradise, and this was it. They would serve like loyal dogs, or like the gorgeous monsters on whom von Teuzen lavished such expert, tender care. Others served out of hope of so distinguishing themselves as to win elevation to the élite ranks of the Companions themselves—as Florian had. Others were in it for adventure, or hope of loot, or simply pay.
And he must persuade all of them, from the most mercenary Ordinary to his Brothers-Companion of spotless character. At least, most of them, he knew: for in the end, Beauty meant nothing unless grounded in the real world. Or he would prove himself unfit to lead his Order, or serve his uncle as Champion, or carry the polished tyrant forearm-bone baton of Condestable Imperial.
Lady, how I wish I could lay those burdens down.
He had to fight to keep from frowning, then. Never let it be said Jaume of the Flowers was a coward, he reproached himself. Even if such thoughts prove it true, at least have the pride not to show it!
“This is crime,” he declared with all the trumpet-strength he could give his noted golden voice. “This is evil. I tell you only what all of you see in your eyes and hearts.
“And—may I remind you all, that in serving Beauty, we also serve the holy Equilibrium?
“I have sworn an oath. So have we all. We serve Church and the Empire, as well as the Emperor’s person. And the Lady. Is it the part of Beauty to turn away from our duty—freely assumed and oath-consecrated—when it becomes unpleasant?”
He drew his longsword, the far-famed Lady’s Mirror, and waved it at the corpses festering on their gibbets.
“How can we redress this evil by running away from it, my friends, my comrades, my Brothers? I cannot deny the clear evidence of all our senses: the Empire has strayed from the path of Beauty, of righteousness. Of its own Law, and that of our Creators. Who, if not us, shall lead it back?”
Some of his Brothers had begun to nod, their beautiful faces furrowed in thought. At least I’m getting through to them, Jaume thought.
“And I mean”—he let his voice ring out with all its strength and purity—“to dedicate all my efforts, body, mind, and soul, to resorting it to the path of Beauty, and restoring the sacred Equilibrium!”
And with his left hand he traced in air the circle-and-S pattern of the taiji-tu, the symbol of holy Equilibrium. The others mirrored him.
But Machtigern scowled. “Captain,” he said, “isn’t that getting close to the bad Imperial advisors’ rationale Falk and his fellow Princes’ Party traitors used to excuse their treason?” His countrymen’s rebellion h
ad wounded the Alemán knight deeply. That sore still festered.
“He’s not wrong, though, our Captain Jaume,” Florian said. “We all know Felipe’s led by the voice he heard last. I will swallow my pride—and even my conscience—to help our Captain make sure his own voice is heard.”
“Thank you,” Jaume said. “Thank you as well, Machtigern. Thank you all, for hearing me—for following me this far. Even if none ride a step further at my side.”
He lowered his sword and paused to give the words time to soak in. To calm himself he drew a deep abdominal breath from the diaphragm, as prescribed by the Holy Exercises. But the torture his thoughts denied him even the momentary peace of meditation.
“And there you have the choice,” he said, “plain as I can lay it forth. Make it as you will—as you must. For my part, I will combat this ugliness in the name of Beauty. Even though it makes me fully complicit in this inexcusable breach of Law.”
“I cannot,” Manfredo said, meeting Jaume’s eyes squarely.
Jaume made himself hold the other’s look for as the better part of a minute blew down the breeze. Then he nodded.
“I selected you, my friend,” he said, “I selected each every one of you, as my Companions—and your Brothers confirmed you—first and foremost because of your integrity: the content of your soul. If that integrity does not permit you to continue, I honor you and your choice. I absolve you from your oaths and hold you blameless. And Brother Bernat, let the chronicle you so assiduously keep reflect that any of those who choose to part ways with the Order now, do so in all honor, and accord with the highest aspirations and traditions of the Companions of Our Lady of the Mirror!”
