02 - Sacred Flesh

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  Recht waved his soft and uncallused palms about. “Yes, yes. Please get to the point, sir.”

  Angelika approached, calling out to Franziskus, telling him to get his behind moving.

  “Then, I must be blunt in order to be brief,” said Franziskus. “Throughout their journey to the Holy Mountain, might one posit that large numbers of pilgrims will be dropping dead?”

  Recht coughed. The prioress choked. Beautiful, auburn-haired Devorah blinked her liquid eyes.

  “Ah, what you say is, I reckon, indelicate but true.”

  Angelika clunked Franziskus’ heavy pack at his feet, making sure that it landed on one of his toes. Franziskus did not flinch.

  “You coming?” Angelika asked him.

  “In a moment.” He turned his attention back to the prioress and the advocate. “I have a possible solution. Not necessarily one I endorse, mind you. It requires a degree of, ah, moral compromise you’ll likely want to avoid.”

  Angelika raised an eyebrow, her interest piqued.

  “I am unsure,” the prioress said.

  “We are desperate,” the advocate replied.

  Franziskus nodded. “Very well. Excuse us while we discuss the matter.” He took Angelika by the elbow to lead her away. She picked up Franziskus’ pack and dropped it into his arms. They walked out of earshot, back to the fallen log.

  The pilgrims watched them. Franziskus meekly gesticulated. Angelika gave him an incredulous look. He ran his fingers through his heroic tangle of hair. She jolted forward, laughing.

  The prioress placed her hand on the advocate’s shoulder. “How can we be sure that this is not an elaborate ruse, to lure us to a throat-slitting?”

  “I’m open to any other suggestions you might be harbouring, Mother Heilwig.” As he said this, Recht leaned slightly forward in hopes of making out a word or two.

  Young Devorah spoke. Her voice had a papery tremor in it. “The young man, mother.”

  “Yes?” said Heilwig, forbiddingly.

  “Where do you think he is from? I cannot place the accent.”

  “I could not think to guess,” harrumphed Heilwig.

  “Stirland,” said the advocate. “Rural nobility, I’d venture.”

  Devorah sighed.

  “But a scoundrel, to be sure, to be out here in this land of blackguards and exiles, instead of at his family estate, or serving in the army.”

  Devorah cast her eyes toward the hem of her habit, which trailed all the way down to the mucky ground, her toes nowhere to be seen.

  Angelika clapped her hands together and rapidly strode toward them, the glint of business in her eyes. Franziskus followed, looking slightly queasy.

  “Very well,” said Angelika, addressing the prioress. “I agree to your terms. But I won’t put up with any carping—you must agree to this with open eyes.”

  “Agree to what?” blenched the prioress.

  “I haven’t told them yet,” Franziskus explained.

  “Told us what?” the prioress demanded.

  “Ah,” Franziskus said. “My friend here makes her living as a, ah, she recovers…”

  “I loot battlefields,” Angelika said.

  “Ah, yes,” said Franziskus. “That is what she does. She steals, one might say, but only from those who have already lost their lives. I don’t condone this, but am nonetheless sworn to her service. Normally, Angelika has occasion only to sift the pockets of men slain in war, who are plentiful in these parts. But, in exchange for your solemn agreement not to hinder her in any way, she—and I—will accompany you to Heiligerberg and do our best to get you up its slopes.”

  The prioress squinted her left eye shut. “Hinder her from doing what?”

  “He is hoping not to have to spell it out,” said the advocate.

  “Hinder me,” Angelika interjected, “from looting the corpses of any expired pilgrims we may encounter during the trip.”

  A silence descended, interrupted only by the distant cawing of crows. Crows were also plentiful in the Blackfire Pass.

  “Including our own?” the prioress asked.

  Angelika gravely nodded.

  “And what is to stop you from hastening our demises, that you might relieve our mortal husks of worldly goods?” She fingered nervously at the silver dove dangling between her matronly breasts.

  “If you don’t trust me, I understand. As a rule, it isn’t smart to trust people you happen to bump into in the Blackfire Pass.”

  “I assure you,” Franziskus submitted, “that Angelika does not mug, waylay, or otherwise rob the living. Her ethic forbids it.”

  “Ethic?” Prioress Heilwig sputtered. “You expect us to entrust our fates to the moral code of a corpse looter?”

  Angelika shrugged. “You’d sooner trust yourselves to the mercy of Shallya?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hands on hips, Angelika studied the pilgrim’s wrecked cart. She bent down to study its underside: it was one of the axle mounts, not the shaft itself, that had broken. Without oxen to pull it, it did not matter if the cart could be repaired. But Angelika could tell from the pleading faces of the milling pilgrims that they expected her to at least think about it. She did not relish the idea of leading anyone, much less a helpless throng of prayer-chanting incense-burners. Still, it would not be right to turn down the fee they’d offer—a hundred crowns justified a great deal of aggravation. Certainly, she could go to the mountain on her own, searching for deceased pilgrims in need of looting, but by gathering a swarm of penitents around her, she’d be giving herself cover against any still-breathing idolaters who might otherwise take offence at her activities.

  Mostly she was looking at the cart to give herself time to think. She decided that she would wring the maximum possible obedience from them if she made herself hard to please. Her charges were eager to do so. She would be distant, stern, forbidding—just as she was with Franziskus. In fact, it was as if she’d now saddled herself with fifteen additional Franziskuses. Or worse—Franziskus, at least, could swing a sword with passable effectiveness.

  She turned to face them. “Enough lolly-gagging,” she called, as if she’d been the one waiting for them. “We’ll assign shifts to see who’ll be first to pull the cart.”

  Each of the fourteen gathered pilgrims—except Krieger, who lay unconscious on several layers of bedding over a flat bit of rock nearby—looked studiously away from her. Angelika had no intention of having anyone pull carts, but she wanted to get the arrangement off on the proper foot, by making them all feel they’d disappointed her.

  “We won’t be able to organise ourselves if you keep clucking around like geese,” she called, slapping her hands loudly together. “Into a line, into a line!”

  The more genteel pilgrims, such as the prioress, the advocate and the physic, stared up at her in offence and astonishment. Others, including the novitiate, Devorah and the pudgy-faced man who’d fought against the orcs with a hayfork, doddered unquestioningly into a ragged formation. “That means all of you. Even those of you who are prioresses of abbeys at Gasseburg!” Heilwig bustled into line beside young Devorah, quacking her discontent.

  Angelika marched stiff-legged along the line of pilgrims, as she had seen sergeants do when they reconnoitred the scenes of imminent battles. “Your lives will depend on your quick and unthinking obedience to my commands,” she informed them. “I’ve no desire to be your boon companion. But I must know who you are—or rather, what you can do to further the survival of this group. You’ll answer the questions I put to you, and only those questions. Do you understand me?”

  A mumbling ensued.

  “Do you understand me?” Angelika cried. This was a question she had often heard shouted by sergeants. It was an unfair question—of course they understood, they were simply too cowed to answer—but unfairness seemed central to good discipline, and Angelika planned to dole it out in generous quantities.

  Finally the group managed to gather its collective composure and nod to Angelika—yes,
they understood. She stepped close to the fat man who’d fought the orc. Still mimicking the sergeants she’d seen, she stepped uncomfortably close to him, jutting her nose just an inch from his face. He smelled of berry wine and bacon grease.

  “You there!” she shouted, sending him flinching backwards. “Who do you think you are?”

  “A-a-a-a-a,” he stammered.

  “Who?”

  “A-a-a-a-a,” he repeated.

  She stomped on his foot.

  “Altman Gerieht!” he cried.

  “And you are what?” Angelika asked.

  “What?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I-I-I’m a bailiff.”

  “You were reasonably brave against the orc.”

  “Uh. Thank you.”

  “Yet you’re afraid of me.”

  “A-a-a-a-a…”

  “That shows good judgement.”

  “Uh. Thank you.”

  “What do bailiffs do?”

  “I m-manage the lands of a lord named—”

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking to you. Bailiffs push people around and make sure minor tasks get accomplished. Is that correct?”

  “A-a-a-a-a.”

  “Well then you’ll be useful to us. I anticipate giving you many orders.”

  She approached the next pilgrim in line. He was a thin, hollow-chested man with curly black hair and wide eyes. Large, round ears framed his face. Eyes darting, he fidgeted with the collar of his plain penitent’s robe. The garment was new, it gave away no hint of rank or status. Angelika looked at his hands: they were clean and soft. She checked his feet. From beneath his robe poked a pair of fine and well-worn boots, freshly re-soled. Angelika glanced down the line; all but a few of the pilgrims were wearing sandals, or flimsy shoes better suited for day-to-day wear. This one’s boots, on the other hand, would stand him in good stead during a difficult mountain climb.

  He swallowed. “I won’t be intimidated,” he said, the pitch of his voice uncontrolled and flutey. “We are the ones hiring you. You should be snapping to our orders.”

  He flinched, as if expecting Angelika to hit him.

  Instead she lowered her voice. “What is your name?”

  “Kirchgeld. Ivo Kirchgeld. I am a man of some religious importance, as are many others here, and it defeats the purpose of a pilgrimage, which is to bind us closer to the world of holiness and virtue, if we are to be subjected to irreverence and disrespect on the—”

  She stopped him. “Do you want to get up the mountain alive, Ivo?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question!” he cried, his pitch wobbling up several notes. He added emphasis by pointing his forefinger into the sky. “Naturally the entire point is to survive the pilgrimage. But surely this can be accomplished without bullying and insults.”

  “Oh, shut your flapping mouth.” This was another of the pilgrims, clad in a grimy shift. He had stepped out from the line to gesticulate at Ivo. He was stooped and worn from a life of toil. His head was bare, except for a last vestige of flour-coloured hair that ran from ear to ear, along the back. “Even if the putting on of airs was more important than getting us safely to Heiligerberg, you, Ivo Kirchgeld, have got the least reason to. Put on airs, that is to say. You’re nowt but a cheat and a charlatan, and if anyone deserves a measure of irreverence and disrespect, it’s you.”

  Compressing his face into a mask of quivering outrage, Ivo took a darting step at the older man, who held his ground and his composure. Ivo checked his fellow pilgrims for signs of sympathy. Detecting none, he snorted like a horse and retreated. The careworn man laughed and threw up his hands.

  “Tell me who you are,” Angelika said.

  The old man responded with a quick, sardonic bow. “Jurg Muller, and as my family name suggests, I’m a miller, from a long line of millers. An honest trade, not like his.” Again he pointed at Kirchgeld.

  “Which is?”

  The miller held his little patch of frostbitten grass as if it was a stage and he was a performer on festival day, declaiming the feats of Sigmar in the village morality play. “He styles himself a pardoner. Says he’s specially licensed by the gods to wash away offences, sins, even taints of Chaos.”

  “Taints of Chaos I never claimed to cure!” Ivo howled, jumping out of line again. Angelika sidestepped, so that the two men had a clear path to one another, if they really wanted to fight.

  “You strongly implied it!” scoffed the miller, turning showily away from him.

  “No! No! No! You falsely inferred it!” The pardoner advanced and laid his hand on the miller’s shoulder. The miller swatted it away. The pardoner turned to Angelika to plead his case. “He styles me a charlatan, but I tell you the contrary is true! I trace my family line back further than any miller. Mine goes all the way back to Sigmar’s time and it was that mighty deity himself who granted the first Kirchgelds the right to raise funds for the building of temples and the acquisition of ceremonial finery.”

  “Tell her,” said the miller, “how you raise these funds.”

  “It is no secret,” Ivo said. “It is a source of pride! It is by the selling of minor indulgences—forgiveness for acts of a minor nature which might otherwise stain one’s soul in Sigmar’s fiery eyes.”

  “Blasphemy!” spat Prioress Heilwig.

  “A false doctrine!” cried another of the pilgrims, crooking an objecting finger into the air.

  “At worst, it is controversial.” Ivo inhaled a breath, ready to launch into a new speech.

  “Quieten yourselves—all of you!” Angelika commanded. She shoved Ivo the pardoner back into line. Then she glowered at the miller until he too retook his place.

  She paced down the line. “If I’m going to lead this pilgrimage, you have to know that there are two things I won’t tolerate.” She reconsidered for a moment. “Actually, the list of things I won’t tolerate is extremely lengthy. But at the top of that list are squabbling, and religious squabbling. I don’t care if the selling of indulgences is doctrine or blasphemy. I don’t care if your ancestor met Sigmar, or if Shallya herself appears to you on rainy autumn nights. Just because this is a pilgrimage, it doesn’t mean I have to put up with a lot of god talk. Do you all understand?”

  The prioress harrumphed and then nodded. The others nodded with her. Angelika was not sure where Franziskus had situated himself, but she could nonetheless sense his disapproval.

  Having successfully cowed her new charges, she kept the rest of the introductions curt and businesslike. In addition to those she’d already met, she found among the pilgrims a friar, a widow, a merchant and a monk. The short, bald fellow with the nut-brown skin, who had held off one of the orcs, introduced himself as Richart Pfeffer. He made his living as the owner of a smallholding of land in the southern province of Averheim. The gnarled, salty-tongued old man who’d forced the hilt of his club down the runty orc’s throat identified himself as Ludwig Seeman, a retired sailor.

  Last man in line was Waldemar Silber, the fancy-robed man who’d briefly joined the fray to drag the wounded Thomas out of it. His long hair gave a dashing air to his hawkish face, which also boasted dark, deep-set eyes and a majestically pointed nose. Fetching streaks of silver ran through his hair and the neatly clipped little beard that adorned the mere tip of his sharp chin. In other circumstances, Angelika might have found him pleasing enough to bed, at least until Silber announced that he was a summoner. This seemed to be yet another minor position within the large and complicated hierarchy of the Sigmarite church.

  Except for the obvious fact that the post called for the wearing of a lush peacock robe, Angelika was not sure precisely what a summoner did. And she didn’t know whether summoners were fully ordained priests, or mere lay functionaries—not that she would have understood the distinction, anyway. She didn’t give two figs. Doubtless she would have this explained to her in exhausting detail at some point during the journey.

  “The cart can’t be repaired,” she said, raising her voic
e to make sure everyone could hear. A wind was whipping up, that rustled the branches of the pines and spruces covering the slopes around them. A gust seized the lawyer’s cap and sent it swirling; he bolted awkwardly after it. “The cart can’t be repaired,” Angelika repeated. “So you’ll be carrying your gear from now on. Go into the cart and get only what you absolutely need. Whatever you take, you’ll have to carry on your own back—unless you can fool someone else into lugging it for you. And no matter what weight you think you can heft for hours at a time, I can promise you: you can truly only carry half that much.”

  Their faces fell and Angelika was panged by secret sympathy. She thought of her own network of hiding places throughout the region, each of which contained little pouches of gold. Priests and their other piety-mouthing ilk were forever railing about material belongings, and how one ought to pretend that they were worse than worthless, but Angelika believed the opposite. Possessions were infinitely more dependable than people. To be forced to abandon one’s hard-gathered goods was to suffer a genuine wound that no moralist could ever hope to understand. “If orcs are coming back, we’ll hear them long before they arrive. We can run then.”

  The pilgrims went off to sort through their packs. Angelika sidled up to Franziskus. “I never should have agreed to this. I allowed myself to be conned into it by someone much more subtle than he looks.”

  She saw Ludwig carelessly toss a couple of new shovels from the cart, discarding them to get to items of greater interest. “Someone take the shovels!” she called. “We’ll need those,” she added, under her breath, “for the digging of graves.”

  Franziskus worked up his best cheery expression. “We can do it, Angelika. We just have to think very carefully before we give instructions.”

  “We?” She snorted. “It’s not you they’re all looking at, with their doe eyes.”

  “You’re the one who took charge, who slew those orcs. You’re the one they want to trust.”