Mortalis dw-4

by Robert Salvatore

  Marcalo De'Unnero was rarely intimidated. With a nod to his many watching followers, he strode across the courtyard to stand before the two visiting masters. "If you had better announced your intentions, I could have better prepared the abbey," De'Unnero remarked casually, almost flippantly.

  "Perhaps we would be better served in your private offices," Master Machuso said softly.

  "Why so, Master Machuso?" De'Unnero loudly replied.

  "We have come on official business of the Abellican Church," Master Glendenhook said firmly, "sent by Father Abbot Agronguerre himself."

  "Ah, yes," De'Unnero replied, walking about, glancing up at his friends and followers lining the courtyard wall. "And how fares the new Father Abbot? I trust that my in absentia vote was counted."

  "Recorded and noted," Master Machuso assured him.

  "And still Abbot Agronguerre counted more votes than did Abbot Olin?" De'Unnero asked, again loudly; and his words made Glendenhook glance about suspiciously, for he understood that De'Unnero's announcing that he had voted for Olin would bolster his popularity among the brethren of St. Gwendolyn, who had many ties to Olin's Entel abbey.

  "Indeed," Master Glendenhook added dryly. "Agronguerre of St. Belfour was well supported by many different factions within the Church. Thus, he is the rightful father abbot, whose word initiates canon law. Now, good Master De'Unnero, may we retire to a more private setting and conclude our business efficiently? "

  "I doubt that your business and my own are the same," De'Unnero replied.

  "My business concerns you," Glendenhook insisted.

  "Then speak it plainly!" De'Unnero demanded angrily.

  Glendenhook stared at him long and hard.

  "You have come to inform me that I am recalled to St.-Mere-Abelle," De'Unnero stated, and several of the gathered St. Gwendolyn brothers gasped.

  Glendenhook continued to glower.

  "And what of my appointment as abbot?" De'Unnero went on. "Sanctioned, or not? Not, I would guess, else how might I be recalled? "

  "You were never appointed as abbot of St. Gwendolyn!" Master Glendenhook shouted.

  "What say you, brethren? " De'Unnero was calling out before the visiting master even finished the declaration.

  "Abbot De'Unnero!" one young brother cried; and then others joined in, howling their approval for this man they had accepted as their leader.

  Master Machuso came forward and took De'Unnero by the elbow-or at least tried to, for the fiery master yanked away from him.

  "Do not do this," Machuso warned. "We are sent with the strictest of orders and backed by all of the power of St.-Mere-Abelle."

  De'Unnero laughed at him.

  "Master De'Unnero is not your abbot!" Master Glendenhook called loudly, addressing all the gathering. "He is needed in St.-Mere-Abelle, in the court of the new, of your new, Father Abbot." "While we twist," cried one young brother.

  "A new abbot will be appointed presently," Glendenhook assured the man, amid the murmuring of discontent. "You have not been forgotten, nor is your plight of minor concern."

  "Of no concern at all, then?" De'Unnero was quick to quip. Glendenhook just looked at him and sighed profoundly. The crowd about them began jostling then, some brothers coming down from the parapets, others hanging back but shaking their fists. Glendenhook looked back, to see his escorts from St.-Mere-Abelle shifting nervously and glancing all about-until they saw him. He gave a nod and produced a gemstone; and all of his brethren-except for Machuso, who started praying-did likewise.

  "You are a bigger fool than even I believed, if you allow this to continue," Glendenhook said quietly to De'Unnero. "Did you think that Father Abbot Agronguerre would not anticipate this from you?"

  "Fio Bou-raiy, you mean," De'Unnero said coldly; and he was not laughing, not smiling at all. He held up his hand, and those brothers who had begun to approach stopped in their tracks. The tense pose held for a long while, Glendenhook and De'Unnero staring, staring, neither blinking. "Do not do this, I beg," came Machuso's soothing old voice.

  De'Unnero broke into a chuckle, a sinister, superior, and threatening sound. "You have come for St. Gwendolyn," he said, "and so she is yours. You have come for Marcalo De'Unnero, but he, I fear, is not yours. No, Master Glendenhook. I see the road before me, the path where I might preach the true word of God, rather than the petty and self-serving proclamations issuing forth from St.-Mere-Abelle. My path," he said loudly, moving out and reaching with his voice for his many followers, "our path," he corrected, "is not within the shelter of a secluded abbey, oblivious even or the cries of those dying of the rosy plague right outside our doorway. No, our path is the open road, that our words might reach the ears of the needy peasants, that they might find again the course of righteousness!"

  Cheers went up from every corner or the courtyard, and Glendenhoofe and the others from St.-Mere-Abelle could only watch and groan. Glendenhook tried to appeal to the brothers of St. Gwendolyn, but De'Unnero's words drowned out his, in both volume and impact.

  Finally, an outraged Glendenhook looked back directly at De'Unnero his eyes full of hatred.

  "You came here seeking the abbey, and so St. Gwendolyn is yours," De'Unnero said innocently.

  "Do not do this," said Glendenhook, and his tone was nothing like the begging, pleading words of Master Machuso, but one dripping with threat. "You go against Church doctrine here, walking a dangerous road." "And who will rise up against me?" De'Unnero asked. "Against us? Your friend Fio Bou-raiy, the lackey of gentle Agronguerre? The King? No, brother, we recognize the truth of it all now. We understand that the Church has stepped from that truth, and we will not be deterred from the righteous road."

  "Master De'Unnero!" Machuso cried, horrified.

  "Join with us!" De'Unnero offered suddenly and apparently sincerely, "before all the world is fallen into darkness. Help us put the Church aright, and thus end the misery of the plague."

  Glendenhook stared at him incredulously.

  "Now is the time for action and not words," De'Unnero insisted.

  "You believe the plague to be a punishment from God?" Glendenhook whispered harshly.

  "On a deserving populace," De'Unnero growled back at him, "on those who have forsaken the truth."

  "Absurd."

  "Obvious," De'Unnero countered. "I see it, and they see it." He swept his arm about to encompass the gathered brothers of St. Gwendolyn. "We know the truth and we know the source-and no edicts from Father Abbot Agronguerre will sway us from that path."

  "You cannot-" Master Machuso started to say, but Glendenhook knifed an arm across the older man's chest, bidding him to be quiet.

  " You risk the wrath of Father Abbot Agronguerre and all the masters of St.-Mere-Abelle," Glendenhook warned.

  "And you, Brother Glendenhook, risk the wrath ofMarcalo De'Unnero," De'Unnero said evenly, moving right up to the man, his posture and the set of his eyes and jaw a poignant reminder to Glendenhook of the reputation of this monk, Brother Marcalo De'Unnero, widely accepted as the greatest fighter ever to walk out of St.-Mere-Abelle, ever to train in the Abellican Order. "Which of us, then, do you believe in the worse situation?"

  The question obviously unnerved Glendenhook profoundly. The man held a gemstone in his hand-a graphite likely, or perhaps even a lodestone. But he'd never try to bring up the magic, De'Unnero knew with confidence, because Glendenhook realized that De'Unnero could kill him with a single, well-placed blow. No, Glendenhook would never find the courage to take such a risk.

  "Take your abbey and be glad that I deemed our path to be out there," De'Unnero said quietly, staring unblinkingly with each word. "We are beyond you now, all of us. We will follow the true course of the Abellican Order, that perhaps our actions will inspire others-even Master Glendenhook, perhaps-to walk beside us."

  "You have gone mad," Glendenhook remarked.

  "As much has been said of many prophets," De'Unnero was quick to respond. He held up his hand, then, and all about him hushed. "To th
e road!" De'Unnero demanded with a powerful signaling movement, and the brothers of St. Gwendolyn gave a cheer and led the way to the front gate.

  "If you try to stop us, you may prove victorious," De'Unnero said calmly-too calmly! "But I warn you that I will come for your throat first and foremost." He finished and lifted one arm, revealing that it was no longer a human arm but the paw of a great tiger.

  Master Glendenhook watched De'Unnero and nearly every one of the remaining twenty-seven brothers of St. Gwendolyn walk out of the abbey gate soon after, all the brothers bending to scoop up flowers as protection against the plague.

  And then they walked away, from St. Gwendolyn and from the Abellican Church.

  And so on that day, the fifth day of summer in God's Year 828, the Brothers Repentant were conceived, led by Marcalo De'Unnero, the former abbot of St. Precious, the former Bishop of Palmaris, the former abbot of St. Gwendolyn, and the greatest warrior ever produced by the Abellican Church.

  Chapter 25

  Summer Heat

  What news from Palmaris?" Duke Kalas asked, sitting astride his short and muscular pinto To-gai-ru pony. King Danube, riding a taller snow-white gelding, turned to regard the man, but it was Constance Pemblebury, trotting her chestnut up between them, who was first to answer.

  "Is it midweek already, then?" she asked sarcastically, for they all knew well that the week had Just begun. "Is not that question normally reserved for midweek and the end of the week? "

  Duke Kalas glared at the woman, but Constance only laughed and kicked up an even swifter pace, outdistancing her fellow riders across the manicured, hedge-lined field behind Castle Ursal.

  "I have heard not a word from our friends in the northern city," King Danube replied to the original question, "nor do I care."

  "Nor should you, my King," said Kalas. "The folk of Palmaris are a difficult lot, and made all the harder by their recent experiences in war and in civil strife. If you commanded me back to the place, I would renounce my title of duke of Wester-Honce!"

  That made King Danube raise an eyebrow, but he merely nodded; for Kalas had made it quite clear to him from the very first day he had returned to Ursal the previous winter that he had no intention of going anywhere near the wretched city of Palmaris again.

  "Still," Danube remarked, "I do wonder about my legacy."

  "Your legacy?" Kalas asked incredulously, purposely dramatizing his surprise. "You defeated the demon dactyl and the demon Markwart, who overran the Abellican Church. You-"

  "Let us not exaggerate the role that I played in either event, my friend," Danube said. "Indeed, I understand that I will be thought of fondly in decades hence, but there are other matters that I see before me now. Perhaps the strife in Palmaris, and much of the discontent that often rumbles about Ursal's avenues, is the result of too many people too close together. We both know, after all, how disagreeable some are by their very nature."

  He ended with a chuckle, and so Kalas joined in.

  "Perhaps it is time for us to consider the expansion of Honce-the-Bear's borders; and in that regard, Palmaris might prove a very important location," King Danube reasoned.

  "The Timberlands? " Duke Kalas asked doubtfully.

  " Impossible, by treaty, and I do not mean to leave a legacy as one who dishonored his word," King Danube replied. "But there are many places in between Palmaris and the Timberlands. The Church has recognized this small town-Caer Tinella by name, I believe-and with the mood of the folk in the north, perhaps we should look in that direction, as well."

  "I pray you do not act rashly," Kalas said, "or hastily. The north is much glamorized today because of yesterday's events; but in the end, it remains a savage and untamed place, filled with savage and untamed folk."

  "I hear well your words," said King Danube, "but I'll not leave Palmaris without a proper and strong baron at this time."

  Kalas' expression dropped and his shoulders sagged.

  "Oh, not you, my friend," King Danube said with a laugh. "Nay, even if you were so inclined, I value your advice too much to send you back across the kingdom and away from my side. But there is another Duke, recently returned to my court, whose province actually extends beyond Palmaris to the north and the west."

  "Tetrafel," Kalas easily reasoned. "But is he recovered? "

  "Nearly well enough, I would say," replied Danube. "He has even begun talking of rewriting his lost journal, though I doubt that any of the maps he draws from memory will prove of much use to future expeditions. But if our Duke is determined to immerse himself in his work, then what better place for him than Palmaris? I will allow him to spend the season in Ursal, recovering, and then I will afford him a strong contingent of supporters for his journey, and in truth, I doubt that Abbot Braumin will prove too difficult to manage."

  Duke Kalas nodded and even managed a smile, but given his own experience in Palmaris, he doubted those last words strongly.

  The hamlet of Juniper in the rolling green hills of southern Honce-theBear, the county known as Yorkey, was a quiet and unassuming community. Not an old cluster of houses, Juniper traced no deep roots into the past but was, rather, a fairly new community, a place where any settler might step right into the highest social circles, and where new folk were not generally treated with suspicion and derision.

  Thus, many of the less acceptable wanderers of southern Honce-the-Bear found their way to Juniper, to a place even they, the unwanted, the different, might call home. That made Juniper a growing community, and, when the brothers of St. Gwendolyn mentioned the place to De'Unnero, a prime target for the Brothers Repentant.

  They came one wickedly hot late-summer afternoon, in a line single file, heads down, dressed in their thick woolen Abellican robes with the hoods pulled low, chanting, chanting for forgiveness of their sins and for the sins of all the men in all the world.

  De'Unnero led the procession to the small town's central square, the brothers forming a semicircle behind him as he threw back his hood and began his cry to the people. "I am Brother Truth!" he declared. "Hear my words if you value your life and your eternal soul!" Like any other town in Honce-the-Bear in God's Year 828, entertainment was not often found, and a charismatic speaker was a rarity indeed. Soon, the entire village of Juniper had turned out to watch the spectacle.

  And what a show De'Unnero and his fanatical followers gave them! The self-proclaimed Brother Truth spoke of the sins of some unnamed man in some unnamed community, and one of the brothers ran forward, stripping off his robes so that he was clothed only in a white loincloth, and prostrating himself on the ground before De'Unnero.

  Another brother rushed up with a short, three-stranded whip, and on De'Unnero's orders, proceeded to give the prone brother twenty vicious lashes, drawing deep lines of blood on the man's back.

  On and on it went, with De'Unnero's followers, the Brothers Repentant, accepting the sins of the world into their own flesh and blood, and then beating those sins away.

  When at last, after more than three brutal hours, De'Unnero's cries diminished, when every Repentant Brother had shed his blood and tears, the show was over. But to the crowd, that was unacceptable; and now, on De'Unnero's cue, it was their turn to proclaim their sins, and more important, to proclaim those sins of their neighbors, openly.

  And the Brothers Repentant went at the offending peasants with even more vigor than they had lashed each other.

  When two men were accused of an "unnatural friendship," they were beaten into unconsciousness and then publicly castrated. When a young boy was accused of stealing a neighbor's chickens, De'Unnero forced the boy's own mother to cut off his hand. And she did it! Because the folk of Juniper knew of the rosy plague and did not doubt this holy Abellican brother who had come to them to tell them why the plague had arisen, and more important, how it could be put down.

  The last order of business in Juniper came long after sunset. The Brothers Repentant were still in the public square, completing their ritual with an orgy of self-flagellatio
n, when De'Unnero spotted a dark-skinned Behrenese among the onlookers. The heathen was dragged forward to face the fierce master. "Who is your God?" De'Unnero demanded.

  The man didn't answer.

  "Chezru?" the master asked, naming the deity of the Behren yatols. "Do you fall to your knees to worship Chezru? "

  The man didn't answer, but he was trembling visibly now, as De'Unnero walked around him, slowly, scrutinizing his every aspect.

  "Deny him," De'Unnero instructed the man when he came around to face him squarely once again. "Publicly denounce Chezru, here and now, as a false idol."

  The man didn't answer.

  "If you'll not do it, then you have already answered my first question," De'Unnero said slyly. "Denounce Chezru, I say! Name him as the betrayer of souls."

  One of the other Brothers Repentant rushed up, as if to tackle the man, but De'Unnero held him back.

  "We see the plague growing in our lands," the master explained to the frightened dark-skinned man. "We know its source: the errant course of worship. Denounce Chezru now, I warn you, else you reveal yourself as a heretic and, thus, a sire of the plague."

  That last statement seemed to bolster the poor Behrenese man. He took a deep breath and looked evenly at De'Unnero. "You beseech me to abandon my soul to save my flesh," he said in his thick Behrenese accent. "That I cannot do."

  "Hang him!" came one cry, but De'Unnero stifled it, and all subsequent ones.

  "Where are his people?" the master asked loudly. Then he had his answer; and he was pleased to learn that an entire enclave of Behrenese were living on an old farm just outside Juniper.

  "Bring him," he instructed his Brothers Repentant, and the Behrenese man was dragged away. On went the procession, through the night, torches in hand. They encircled the large farmhouse and saw the frightened facesold folks and children included-peering out at them through the windows.

  De'Unnero ordered the Behrenese out of the house, but they refused.

  "Who is your God?" he called to them. "Do you serve the Abellican Church or the Chezru chieftain of your homeland? "