by Glen Cook
“That is fondly to be hoped,” Renfrow said. “Unfortunately, the reality may not be so promising.”
“Meaning?”
Renfrow glanced at Algres Drear. As always on public and ceremonial occasions, Drear was within arm’s reach of Helspeth. ‘Time will tell, Princess. I have to leave. Take care of her, Captain.”
In an eye’s blink Renfrow vanished. Look away, look back, the man was gone. “How does he do that?”
Helspeth asked.
“And at his age. Sorcery? Or is he even human?” Drear respected Renfrow but did not like the man.
Points he had striven to impress upon his charge.
“What do you mean, at his age?”
“Just that he’s been around forever. Doing the same work. Steering the Empire. Subtly. Some think he engineered your father’s election. And the Act of Succession, too.”
“Father did say that Renfrow knows all the secrets. And isn’t reluctant to use them.”
“Lucky you’re too young to have secrets.”
“Lucky me. Like I’ve ever had a chance to do something I’d want to hide.” Her women were closing in, to separate her from her desperado chief bodyguard. Reputations were at risk.
Katrin’s court was undismayed when the Empress closeted herself with three priests, without benefit of chaperone. When priests had worse reputations than any other variety of man. Their opinions shifted dramatically when Katrin announced that she would rectify her father’s error by shifting the Empire’s support from Viscesment to Brothe.
If that was not enough to poleax the Imperial aristocracy, Katrin then announced a pilgrimage to the Mother City. Where she would be crowned by the Patriarch himself.
Algres Drear observed, “The Grand Duke must be apoplectic.” While packing.
“I can’t see Hilandle having that much imagination. This was his fault. He could have been here. But he wanted us to think the Empire can’t function except at his pleasure. He thought an Ege daughter would swoon. Katrin’s as clever as Mushin was. More so, maybe. She isn’t shy about revealing her contempt for those people. But she shouldn’t have shown her independence that way.”
Drear grunted. Helspeth’s women were close by. As always. Eavesdropping. Some would report to the Empress. Others would inform the Council Advisory.
The Imperial nobility included a pro-Sublime faction. Sentiment against Sublime appealed to a larger bloc of folk more exalted and emotionally committed.
When her household was ready Helspeth sent for permission to return to Plemenza.
Lady Chevra approached nervously. Her expression would not remain fixed. One moment it was worried, the next sheepish, after that maliciously triumphant.
“Yes?” No doubt the old cow brought bad news. She wanted to do right but could not help taking joy in the misery of others.
“Her Majesty denies your request. You are to join her pilgrimage to the Mother City.”
“We’re enjoying a change of plan, Captain Drear.”
Drear nodded.
“Coordinate with the Empress’s people. We can reduce costs if we make the progress through the Imperial cities of Firaldia.”
Lady Chevra was unhappy. The girl she wanted to torment had taken disappointment without a whimper.
Helspeth Ege would not whimper or whine. Ever. Not for Grand Duke Hilandle, not for the Empress Katrin Ege.
There was a positive side. To assert his influence the Grand Duke would have to follow Hansel’s girls into the heart of Firaldia. Which he loathed. In that land no one knew who he was. Nor cared.
In that land, she reflected, lay Brothe. Where the Captain-General of the false Patriarch’s armies made his headquarters.
She felt a rush of excitement.
This might not be so bad after all.
“Are you all right, Princess?” Lady Delta va Kelgerberg asked. “You just turned red as a beet.”
Her breath had gone shallow and wheezy, too.
The Grand Duke did not give the new situation adequate thought. He favored himself too highly to accept defeat by the Ege bitch.
He plunged into an intemperate rush south from Alten Weinberg. He should reach Firaldia in time to quell the chit’s insanity. She would not get down on her knees in front of that pox-ridden Brothen boy-lover, Sublime V.
Hilandle’s party numbered forty-three to start. It began to dwindle almost immediately. A half dozen disappeared at Hochwasser. Swearing, he drove on into the Jagos range. Into a fierce, unseasonable snowstorm.
Some wanted to den up and wait. But the band did not have enough provisions. They had to turn back or press on.
Several turned back.
Thirty-two pressed on.
One day of biting cold cracked the sense of obligation of more of the Grand Duke’s companions, who turned back to Hochwasser. Where the troops Lothar had begun to gather still awaited instructions.
While they lived off Imperial stores.
In the deep night, with snow swirling like sudden ivory embers in the light of small fires, the camp wakened to screaming. Four men had sentry duty. Three could not be found. The other had seen and heard nothing but the screams.
No one got any more sleep.
The snow stopped next afternoon. The accumulation showed no sign of melting. The Grand Duke’s party climbed above the tree line. They had only what firewood they could carry.
There were no inns, hostels, or way stations. Those had been abandoned. Even the Imperial post remount stations stood empty. A couple of small castles held out, supporting the post. They would not open their gates. The Empress’s party had picked their bones already.
Another night brought more screams.
Wrapped in blankets, shaking in the cold, his sword bared upon his lap, the Grand Duke crowded the only fire and fought to stay awake.
Omro va Still-Patter, the Protector, was a loathsome old man today. In his youth he had been bold and fearless. He had spent three years in the Holy Lands and two with the Grail Order knights converting the savages of the Grand Marshes. Age might be gnawing his bones and his tolerance for discomfort, but it had not stolen his capacity for staying calm in the face of terror.
Screams startled Hilandle awake.
They came from just a dozen feet away.
He jumped up, both hands gripping his sword.
Something came at him. Something he saw only for a moment. Something huge. Something carrying a bleeding man. Something insectile, like the biggest walking stick that could be imagined, with more legs.
Its bulbous eyes seemed filled with fire.
It thrust a claw at Hilandle. The Grand Duke met the thrust. The grasper separated from the limb and fell.
A second tore at his blankets, his armor, and left shoulder. The collision flung him aside.
In the instant of contact torrents of thought smashed into Hilandle’s brain. A fraction seemed quite rational. Almost philosophical. From a mind that observed and cataloged. But overriding that was madness, founded in hatred, bloodlust, and a compulsion toward revenge unending, with a thousand images of murders past and hoped to come.
Then it was gone, still dragging its prey.
Sprawled in half a foot of bloody snow, stunned, trying to push the cruel visions away, the Grand Duke banged his nose on the severed grasper, which continued flexing.
“Hartwell,” he gasped at the first man to arrive. “Find something to put this in. I want to take it along.”
“Your Lordship?”
“I didn’t stutter, man. That may tell us something about that thing.”
The monster did not return. Not then.
To Hilandle it seemed he lay there for hours, mind ensnared in the thing’s blood madness. In truth, it was minutes. One of his grooms began cleaning his wound. “Did you see that thing?” he asked the man.
“What thing, sir?” Hilandle did not insist on formality in she field. Which surprised his enemies. They considered him a pompous, self-important stiff.
“T
he monster.”
“No, sir.”
“It was like …” A vengeful god. But he could not say that. There was only one God. And He was not a gigantic, ugly carnivorous bug. “It was one of the Instrumentalities of the Night. One of the Great Devils, surely.”
The groom, Horace, appeared unconvinced. Despite the screams, the bloody snow, and the absent companions.
Twenty-three men moved on next morning. The missing left little evidence that they ever existed. Except equipment and possessions abandoned because there was no one to carry them.
The Grand Duke and his men pressed on, often cutting the day’s travel short where there was no certainty of reaching a defensible campsite before nightfall. He was furious all the time, in constant pain from his wound. He was falling farther and farther behind the Ege chits. And he continued to lose men.
Twelve men, one the Grand Duke, reached the friendly foothills of northern Firaldia. Hilandle told his closest surviving associate, “Remind me, after we recover. The most pressing problem facing the Empire today is the thing we just survived.” He winced. Any thought of the monster made him tense up.
And his wound hurt worse than its constant ache.
Discovering that the Ege bitch had not suffered at all crossing the Jagos did nothing to improve his temper.
Nor was he cheered by the news from the Connec.
10. Caron ande Lette: Flood Tide
News seldom reached Caron ande Lette in a timely manner. Few travelers came through. The little the Raults knew of the world came to them courtesy of messengers jogging up from Antieux.
For Raymone Garete the saw about absence and hearts grown fonder was an understatement.
Socia alternated between excitement at so much attention and fright because Raymone was so intense.
Emperor Lothar had been dead a month before word came.
“This isn’t good,” Brock said seconds after a courier delivered the news. Brother Candle suspected Brock had reflected on the possibilities from the moment that sickly boy took the ermine.
All the west had.
“I can’t see any good coming of it,” Brother Candle confessed. “This news will trigger all kinds of mischief.” Because no one, anywhere, believed that Johannes’s daughter could pull on the black boots and show the iron hand.
Brother Candle knew nothing about the girl. Catherine? Something like that. But he had roamed the world long enough to grasp the essence of human nature.
All those people starting to wind the engines of conspiracy eyed reality through a fog of wishful thinking.
Expecting the world to conform to their imaginings.
Reality enjoys harpooning self-delusion.
Usually silent, Thurm Rault observed, “Interesting times are sure gonna get more interesting.”
Brock said, “We need to put out more patrols. Trouble out of Grolsach is a sure thing once they hear the news. Thurm. Spread the word to the hamlets. The peasants need time to get ready. And we need to get their provisions safely in here.”
“Will they go for that?”
“I hope they still trust me.” Chaos had come close to prevailing during his absence. “I should’ve left you here.” The people did not understand why he should be so completely subject to the whims of Tormond IV. The Mad Duke was almost mythological at this remove from Khaurene. Count Raymone was more real. Mainly because he had helped destroy Haiden Backe.
A less traveled, more ignorant and inflexible people Brother Candle could not imagine. That the Maysalean Heresy had taken root in a single generation was an amazement.
The Path did present a vision sharply at odds with the routine despair of everyday life.
The Raults prepared. The people joined in reluctantly. The threat had to be exaggerated. But what harm in making ready?
“Your layabouts are grumbling,” Brother Candle said one morning, on the parapet. Facetiously. “If it didn’t take so much effort, the peasants would revolt.”
Almost true. The Connec was generous, even here. People did not have to drudge and scratch from dawn to dusk every day of the year to barely subsist. Human nature being what it was they thought being asked to do anything extra was grossly unfair.
“Here comes Socia, riding like all the Instrumentalities of the Night are after her.”
They might be. The gentler sort. The peasants kept reporting strange lights and odors.
Socia always rushed when she rode. Brother Candle thought she was overdoing it this time. Feeling compassion for the horse.
The girl joined them, puffing from the climb. She reported all in a gush. “It’s starting, Brock. We ambushed some Grolsachers up by Little Thysoup. They were scouting.”
Brock said, “Little Thysoup would be a waste of time. What have they got out there? A few scrawny chickens and a three-legged dog?”
Socia resumed, “There were four of them. A family, I guess. There was a fight. They wanted to get away.
We didn’t let them.”
Brock started to ask about prisoners. Brother Candle said, “There’s one. A child.”
Several peasants, all women, drove the prisoner toward the stronghold gate. They had ropes around his neck. And were not being kind.
Peasants seldom were when given a chance to express anger normally kept in check.
The prisoner was a child. A boy. Eleven at the oldest. He was injured, terrified, pale, and shaking. Tear tracks streaked his dirty face. He had just witnessed the brutal killings of his father, his grandfather, and his uncle.
“Show a little gentleness,” Brother Candle suggested, iron in his voice. Socia nodded, thumped back downstairs. Brock and the Perfect followed at a pace in keeping with the capacities of an older man.
Socia was not all blood and ferocity. When Brother Candle reached the forecourt behind the gate he found that she had separated the prisoner from his captors. She was examining his wound. The boy shook so badly he could barely stand.
Brother Candle said, “Get some soup into him. Just broth, to start.” Signs of starvation were there, though not advanced. “Move him somewhere warmer. Give him some wine and wrap him in blankets.”
Brock said, “Put salve on those rope burns, too. How bad is he, otherwise?”
Socia replied, “One shallow cut, shouldn’t need sewing. A lot of bruises and scrapes. They beat him.”
Brock turned to the cowed peasant women. “Good work, ladies. But this is only the beginning. You need to do two things more. Make the dead out there disappear. Then warn all the farms to prepare hiding places. And let me know immediately if anything else happens.”
Brock had no worries about being able to handle the raiders if he knew where they were. His people were a match for ten times their weight in hungry Grolsachers worn down by travel.
“How do you suppose they got here?” Brother Candle wondered.
“They walked, Brother. If they had horses they would’ve eaten them.”
“I meant their route, Seuir. The direct way would be across Imp or Manu. That would raise alarums.”
“Then I expect they’re taking the long way, around the west end of Ormienden. Through Arnhand, with the connivance of the Arnhander nobility.”
“It could be a plan that kicked in when the Emperor died.”
“Could be. We’ll ask. Socia. How soon can our guest talk?”
“Depends on how much you care about his health.”
“Let him worry about his health. He won’t stay healthy if he doesn’t talk to me.”
Brother Candle murmured, “You can’t scare him, Brock. He’s already too terrified to think. And he can’t see anything left to lose.”
“Do you ever get tired of always being right?”
“Not often. Though that’s a very Count Raymone thing to ask.”
“Socia. Mother the boy. Sweet-talk him. Bring him around so we can open him up.”
***
A SECOND SKIRMISH OCCURRED FOUR MILES WEST OF Little Thysoup, in the evening. It involved a
n indeterminate number of Grolsachers, who suffered only because the alert from Caron ande Lette had reached the area shortly before. Peasants, armed no better than the invaders, fought back.
Four Connectens died. The raiders left four of their own behind. Those who escaped were all injured.
Brother Candle and Socia Rault took turns sitting with the boy. He called himself Gres Refello. His terror never faded completely but he believed a Perfect Master when Brother Candle promised no further harm would touch him. He had Seekers After Light in his own family. Nor did he possess the guile to lie to save countrymen he did not know.
When questioned, he answered. Mumbling.
“Must be a lot of them coming,” Brock Rault said over supper. There had been several more incidents.
The grand hall of Caron ande Lette contained leading men from the surrounding country, the Raults, Brother Candle, a courier from Antieux, and Seuir Lanne Tuldse, who had brought up a handful of fighters after hearing that there were Grolsacher raiders north of him. These men were eating whatever they could grab. Free food was not common.
The grand hall was not large. Caron ande Lette was not large. The grandest thing about it was its wall.
“I need a little quiet,” Brock bellowed. “The Perfect Master spent the morning with the boy we caught yesterday. You need to hear what he has to say.”
Wearied by life, tempted by despair, Brother Candle abandoned his cluttered platter and rose. He was not in the mood for roast hare.
“The Seuir is correct. A lot of them are coming. But not in any organized fashion. Most are bringing their families.” Which meant having women and children underfoot when the bloodshed started. “They’ve been promised land and plunder by Anne of Menand. Arnhanders, in general, have decided that, religion aside, the Connec is properly part of Arnhand. Sublime has encouraged this belief. Arnhand is letting the Grolsachers pass through. They’re providing supplies to any Grolsachers who swear allegiance to Anne and to the Brothen Church.
“The boy isn’t sophisticated enough to understand any of that, except on a personal level. But there are broad implications for everyone in the west.” Brother Candle did not tell them he thought Anne of Menand was positioning herself to be the mother behind what she hoped to make the most powerful monarch in the Episcopal world.
