by Dragon Lance
“Yes, you do,” replied Vinas. “But tonight, things have begun to change. I know that the food we have here is only the smallest measure of what is owed to you —”
“We’ve no food to give you – and even less gold,” the man began.
“We ask no payment,” Vinas replied, “only that you take what you need to make it through the winter.”
The door cracked inward, and a thin eddy of snow entered the gold-glowing room beyond. Two old-man eyes, framed by hunger-ravaged flesh, peered out. The man’s white hair looked golden in the firelight. His reply was incredulous. “Make it through the winter?”
“If you need more, we’ll return with it —”
“It’s not that,” replied the man. He opened the door the rest of the way, and looked like a living skeleton in his tattered nightshirt. “I just... I just hadn’t expected that we would make it through the winter.”
“Now you will,” Vinas replied. “Wake your neighbors. Tell them to come out and stock their larders.”
His bare feet stepped out into the snow, but Vinas waved him back. “Don’t trouble yourself, Father. We have boots. We will wake the others and bring the food to all of you. I ask just one thing.”
“Anything,” replied the man, breathless.
“Would any of you have a barn and hay – and use for one of these horses?”
The man fell to his knees in the snow. “Oh, sir, what god do you serve, that I might give praise? And what is your name, great bringer of bounty, that I might ask a blessing on your head?”
Vinas was taken aback. From the time he could first speak, he had known of all the gods in the pantheon, but he had never sought a divine patron, had rarely even prayed.
Gaias’s icy eyebrows dipped in bemusement.
Vinas walked to the man and extended a hand to him, helping him up. He found himself speaking without any idea of what he might say. “I serve no god. I am a colonel of Ergoth, and so, I suppose, I serve only the empire... or, I should say, her people.”
Gaias looked suitably impressed. As for the old man – Vinas could not have seen how the man responded. The skeletal figure leaned, trembling, against the war-painted and barbarously clad soldier.
“It’s all right, Father. The true armies of Ergoth have come. You will see the spring.”
“Thank you, Sir Warrior. Festas and his poor family bless your name.”
Gaias tugged on Vinas’s arm. A furtive flick of the captain’s eyes indicated the open doorway. Vinas glanced toward it, and saw a pitiable sight.
The family clustered there had rheumy eyes, pallid skin, unkempt hair, gaunt arms.... They had a haunted look about them, from the old crone who blinked outward with clouded eyes, to the emaciated child she clutched to her side.
Vinas could not have spoken; his teeth were locked in a vice. All caprice had gone out of this ploy. So had all the joy. This was no longer an extravagant joke at Scipio’s expense, but a relief effort that meant these folk would live, not die.
Vinas felt shame for wearing the same uniform as Scipio.
*
The “plainsmen” had a similar reception in the first five villages. Vinas and his men provisioned each village with enough food to last them through the winter, and with a horse to help them plow and haul next spring. The third village, larger than the first two, asked for a wagon as well as a horse. There were more tears of joy, more criminally underfed peasants.
With each new look of suffering and outpouring of hope, Vinas’s resolve was hardened. He had originally planned to rush through the villages, quickly tossing food to the villagers and speeding away with the blizzard covering their tracks. Now, the heavens were nearly spent. The black impenetrable belly of overcast clouds had thinned to a charcoal gray. Dawn approached, and with it the certainty of detection.
It didn’t matter. When he returned, Vinas would strip Scipio of his commission and take charge of the garrison. The days of extortion were done.
In the deepening dawn, Vinas and his savages reached the last village. This settlement was merely a collection of huts, hunkered down in foot-deep snow. The wagon roiled into their midst, bearing Vinas and Gaias on the buckboard, their four comrades behind, and the last of the food piled in the back.
An arrow whistled past Vinas’s head, an arrow followed by a woman’s voice: “Come no farther, soldiers! You are not welcome here!”
Vinas halted the wagon. He stood, holding the reins. Hoarse from the night of riding, he bellowed between his hands, “We bring food for you!”
“Begone!” the woman replied without pause. “We have no gold, but plenty of arrows.”
“The food is yours. The wagon, and the horses, as well. You need pay us nothing for this.”
The silent pause that followed seethed with distrust. The voice responded, “This is the feeblest trick so far, Scipio.”
“I am not Scipio. We are not his men. We are soldiers of the true Ergothian empire. We’ve come to right the wrong done you,” Vinas replied wearily.
“Who are you, then?”
“Our names are not important. We will hobble the horses and leave the wagon with you. Surely someone in your village can recognize good food when he sees it,” Vinas said. “We will return to Solanthus on foot. The drifts will hide our tracks, so Scipio won’t suspect you. He thinks this the work of plainsmen.”
He jumped down from the buckboard into the snow, motioning the others to follow. They did. The weary band of false plainsmen looked only the more bizarre for their mantels of snow and ice. One by one, they turned to trudge toward the fortress. By Vinas’s best reckoning, it lay nine miles distant as the crow flew. It would be night before they got there.
“We have five superb archers among us,” the woman warned, “in case this is a trick.”
Vinas did not turn, only waving dismissively as they left.
*
Luccia pulled back from the snowy peephole through which she had watched the intruders. She slackened the bowstring of her short bow and let the arrow drop away between her fingers. “Since when do soldiers of the empire dress up as plainsmen, hand out food and horses and wagons, and go around righting wrongs?”
“No sign of movement in the woods,” came a voice from the back corner of the hut. Another bowstring eased.
Who would do such a thing? Luccia wondered to herself. Her mind raced back over the two years she had spent arming and training the villagers to oppose Scipio’s extortioners. She couldn’t conceive of any soldier who would have the courage or the heart to oppose the black-market colonel.
“Alansis and Borsh, bring your bows to the front. I’m going out to check that wagon.” Without pause, she placed the arrow back in her quiver, slung the bow over her shoulder, and pushed open the door. There was a shuffle of young men in the darkness behind her, then the door was shut, and she was out in the bitter, blowing dawn.
She gazed after the soldiers, only small gray specks floating in the distant white wind. Whoever they are, they’ll be dead when they step within a bow’s shot of Solanthus, Luccia thought to herself as she reached the wagon. Unless Scipio himself is dead.
*
One Day Hence, 16 Rannmont, 1186 Age of Light
“Scipio is dead,” came the guardsman’s shout from the dusk-cloaked wall of Solanthus. “A horse fell upon him. You and your men will be charged, therefore, with the murder of a colonel, as well as with treason, horse thievery, aiding the enemy, bribing the soldiery, and a host of other offenses.”
Vinas glanced sidelong at his men, who trembled with exhaustion, hunger, and cold. It was as though they had taken the afflictions of the peasants on their own shoulders.
“I, Captain Hellas, have assumed command of both companies in this garrison. Your men, Colonel Solamnus, seemed all too eager for a real commander. Now, will you surrender without a fight and spare yourself further charges, or must we ride out into the dark to slay you like wild dogs?”
“Let them go to hell,” said Gaias. “They’
ll pay dearly in blood if they try to bring us in.”
For a moment, Vinas thought the old soldier delirious. The men wouldn’t last another half hour in this cold, nor would they last five minutes against a fresh band from the garrison. Staring into Gaias’s eyes, though, Vinas realized it was not delirium he saw, but resolve. A light had awakened in the veteran’s eyes at the first village, and it had grown only the brighter through that long, miserable day.
“Everybody dies eventually,” Gaias said to his commander. He drew his sword. “It’s a lucky few that get to die for a reason.”
Blinking, Vinas studied the old man. He drew a long breath. Then, turning back toward the wall of the fortress, Vinas called out, “There will be much of your blood spilled if you try to take us. In the end, perhaps we will all slip away into Paladine’s palace, denying you a single body for your tribunals and tortures. The senate and the emperor would be very unimpressed with the result of your first true task as colonel, Captain Hellas.
“On the other hand, we will come without a fight if you promise to charge only me with the crimes. These are my men. They followed my orders. Only I am in the wrong, not they. One treasonous colonel is a better gift for the emperor than six dead soldiers.”
Gaias began to whisper a protest, but Vinas cut him off. “There will be better fights for us, friend.”
The voice from the wall urged them forward. “Come. I, Captain Hellas, swear your men will be spared, and only you charged, Colonel Solamnus.”
Meus Pater
“I will not always be here to save you, Son,” Adrenas Solamnus warned coldly. The statesman’s booted toe nudged a red-hot coal back from the edge of the hearth. “And you are quickly exhausting the family fortune I’ve built up for your inheritance.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me,” Vinas replied heatedly. He began again to pace the mosaic floor of his father’s villa. “And I don’t want a fortune stolen from the poor, or clout gained and maintained through black-market dealings in influences and indulgences. That’s the very thing I was fighting in Solanthus.”
Adrenas shrugged. “That is the way of the empire.” He shifted, fighting to control his anger. “What exactly do you think would have happened if I had not gotten the tribunal dismissed and the charges dropped?”
“I would have gone to trial, where my witnesses and I could have exposed the corruption of Scipio’s rule, and demanded an investigation into the current practices of Colonel Hellas.”
His father rose. The man was getting old enough that, these days, precious little could make him stand. This time, sudden fury forced him to his feet. The action was ominous.
Adrenas’s voice was no louder than it had been before – perhaps even diminished – but the choked intensity of it made Vinas stop his pacing. “You would be dead. You would be executed. Son, who do you think sits on such tribunals? Soldiers such as yourself? No. Soldiers such as Scipio and Hellas – only older, more inured to evil. Corruption and violence and perverse cruelty have become second nature to such men. Even they do not recognize their own depravity. They would condemn you to the scaffold, and sit and drink a good bottle of wine while you hanged. A good man in an evil society will seem the greatest villain of all. We can’t change that.”
Vinas looked down. Shame colored his face. His father was right. Corruption was the way of the empire. No one man – certainly not a young colonel painted to look like a plainsman – could change that.
Vinas sighed, then offered weakly, “You’re right. I can’t change it – but at least those villagers didn’t starve.”
“Not this year, but what about next?” shouted Adrenas. “Besides, Scipio wouldn’t have let them starve. He kept them hungry and weak, yes, but if they starved, they couldn’t buy back the tribute he took from them.”
Vinas looked miserable.
Adrenas turned away and stalked toward the window. Outside, spring was making a sluggish attempt to drive off winter. “You’ve always been a dreamer, Son. So was I when I was young. But I learned to be hard. You have to learn that as well. You’ve always just plunged in and, when things fell apart, waited for Father to pick up the pieces. I won’t always be here to do that.”
“You already said so,” Vinas groused softly.
Adrenas went on as if he hadn’t heard. “You’re lucky I have been a close friend of the emperor since before he came to power. That was not an easy friendship to forge, nor to keep. You have nearly destroyed all that. I could barely convince the emperor you aren’t a traitor. I used your own dreams against you, Son – yes, I did. I told Emperor Emann you were only a starry-eyed kid out of your depth, impressionable, immature —”
“I knew what I was doing —”
“Kiri-Jolith slay me if you did!” cried Adrenas. “Unless you’re hiding a death wish, you had no idea. Luckily you’ve only been banned from military duty.”
“But that’s the only thing I ever wanted to do —”
Adrenas dropped his head forward and leaned heavily against the stone sill. “You destroyed that future, not me.” His fury was ebbing away. His face was placid again. “Emann Quisling is as corrupt as all the others. It was no small task to get him to concede.”
“What is it, Father? What did you agree to?”
Adrenas stood and turned toward his son. The old man blinked slowly as he explained. “Emperor Quisling fixed upon the idea that you were a moralist, a dreamer.
He dropped the tribunal on the condition that you enter the priesthood of Paladine.”
It was Vinas’s turn to be enraged. “The priesthood?”
Adrenas looked apologetic. “It was that or death.”
Vinas flinched as though he’d been struck. “So you said I would?”
In response, his father strode across the sitting room and threw back the door of an ornate mahogany cabinet. On the inside of the door hung a shapeless sackcloth. “These are your initiate robes.”
III
Two Years Hence, 2 Chislmont, 1188 Age of Light
“I can’t believe it,” rumbled Titus. His gigantic, muscular hands fiddled with the stole he wore around his neck. “The emperor’s own wedding, and we’ll be officiating!”
The young priest to which Titus was speaking struggled to find the collar of his robe. His voice was muffled beneath the labyrinthine garment. “Yes, Titus, we, and half the other priests of Paladine in Daltigoth.”
Beadle Titus considered his friend’s words and rubbed his jawline. “Still, we’ll be there when history is made.”
“Ah, made it,” sighed Underchancellor Vinas Solamnus as his head emerged from the robe. He looked up at the half-ogre priest, who was a year younger and three feet taller than him, and said, “You’re really looking forward to this, aren’t you?”
Titus lifted his arms. “Of course. Aren’t you?”
Vinas snorted, thrusting one arm out a hole. “Emperor Quisling is the reason I’m in this ridiculous costume.”
“You aren’t in that ridiculous costume,” Titus noted. He pointed toward the sleeve dragging on the ground.
Vinas looked down with a grimace. “How did that get down there?”
“Your head is in the other sleeve, and your arm is sticking out of the collar,” Titus explained.
Vinas groaned in frustration, ducked back into the robe, and hunted for the collar. “This is what I mean. I can’t even find my way out of my vestments. Last week, my candlesnuffer set the chancellor’s hair on fire.”
“I wondered why he’d gotten tonsured...”
“I’m always left standing when everyone else has been seated; I’ve fallen asleep twice during vespers.”
“I heard the snoring. I thought it was Jonas singing bass.”
“My heart’s just not in this, Titus,” Vinas confessed, not for the first time. At last, his head emerged in the right place, and he turned his attention to the sleeves.
The colossal man quietly let his ornate stole fall against his knees, folded a piece of parchment into
a miniature hat, and balanced it upon his shock of black hair. He was mulling something over, and at last came out with it. “Do you believe in Paladine, Vinas?”
Vinas slipped a stole around his neck and fastened it to the back of his collar. “If you mean, can I heal small wounds or lay blessings on crowds or get pigeons to land on my fingers, as any good magician can —”
“You aren’t listening,” Titus said. He cradled his head in his hands. “I mean, do you believe?”
The underchancellor’s stare was thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose I do. But for me, believing in Paladine is like believing in trees. Paladine is good, and trees are good, and I’d not like to live in a world without either. But both get along quite well without me. Do you see what I mean? My belief doesn’t matter either way.”
“Mine does,” said the hulking priest. “I don’t know what you mean by a world without Paladine. To me, Paladine and the world and life and everything – it’s all one. Paladine isn’t like the trees, but like Krynn itself. You’ve got to believe in Krynn before you can exist on Krynn, right?”
“I don’t know,” Vinas replied, straightening the folds in his rumpled robe. “Does an ant believe in the world, or just live in it?” He stopped, chagrined. “You’ve led me into one of your damned theological debates again!”
Titus grinned apologetically. “I can’t help it. I eat and drink and breathe it.”
Vinas tugged his friend’s sleeve. “Come on – the other priests are already rehearsing the ceremony. If we don’t hurry, we’ll be sent to the catacombs.”
“Maybe I will,” said Titus, tramping after the underchancellor, “but not you. You’re the emperor’s favorite – the son of his best man.”
*
“The emperor will enter here, at the prior’s door,” said the white-haired chancellor to the crowd of priests waiting in the bright, dewy morning.
They all dutifully looked at the ancient and ornately carved frieze above the small, wooden door. At that moment, the door banged open and a hulking priest and a frazzled-looking underchancellor barged out, yammering, into the crowd. The two clerics took one more step, and then halted.
