Paladin's Strength

by T. Kingfisher

  “Is it St. Ursa then? Was this a god’s work?”

  Clara shrugged. “I don’t know. St. Ursa’s blessing is what we call it, when we’re being formal and ecclesiastical.”

  “Ah. Yes.” He understood that. “We called the battle madness the Saint of Steel’s gift. But that was courtesy, really. I think we were likely all berserkers, like the old stories, and the Saint of Steel merely gathered us up and put us to use.”

  Clara pointed a finger at him. “Exactly. Yes. If I had to guess, I would say that St. Ursa did not cause this, but was rather the patron of those who have the beast. But it’s different with a saint than a god. Gods you can actually get to, if you have a priest with a true calling. Saints, you just have to hope they know what they’re doing.”

  “Not mine,” said Istvhan. “Not anymore.”

  She met his eyes squarely, taking the blame. “You’re right. I apologize. That was ill-spoken of me.”

  Istvhan shook his head. “Don’t worry. I still forget myself sometimes. Although mine actually was a god, not a saint. A mistranslation, they think, and of course it stuck. Although I won’t swear that the Forge God did not prefer that.” He smiled. “A god of blacksmiths would never be quite easy with a battle god calling themselves the God of Steel.”

  “Mmm. Where did He come from, originally? Do you know?”

  “Up north and west somewhere. One of the little countries with a lot of coastline and too many umlauts. They grew a lot of berserkers up there, if you believe the old stories, and it makes sense that when they spread, the blood went with them. When the ice moved in and those countries became uninhabitable, they came south.” He shrugged. “It’s mostly died out over time, I suspect. The center of the Saint’s power was around Anuket City and Archenhold, and a few scattered temples up as far as the south reaches of Charlock. If someone had the battle tide come on them, they usually found their way to us.”

  Clara nodded. “St. Ursa was only ever in our valley, as far as we can tell. If there’s others like us—and I suspect there must be—they’ve made their own peace. We’d get sisters from, oh, maybe two weeks’ ride away, but not much more. Part of my job as a trader was to listen for anything that might be a sister of St. Ursa who needed our help, but it rarely happened. Once there was a daughter along the canal, but her mother had been from the valley. It’s something in the blood, I think, though it skips many generations.” Her lips twitched. “It has to, of necessity. We don’t have children.”

  “Oath?” She wasn’t sworn to celibacy, a fact that he contemplated four or five times a day.

  “Biology. The beast wakes up before puberty, and while we bleed like ordinary human women, we’re not fertile.” She scowled. “Which seems extremely unfair. All the mess when we’re never going to do anything with it.”

  He laughed. “My sisters would definitely agree with you there. Is it only women?”

  “One of us lived as a brother, but he was very old when I was a novice, and he had the same parts as the rest of us.”

  “Did you have a choice, if you didn’t want to live at the convent?”

  “Did you, if you didn’t want to go berserk?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I think…few of us wanted to. When the god took you, it was pure divinity, slammed directly into your veins.” He swallowed, wondering how to explain. “It was like nothing else on earth. You were the instrument of justice. You could fight an army by yourself. The world was outlined in golden fire. We went willingly, even knowing that afterward, our bodies would be absolutely wracked with pain.”

  “Mmm. You’d go back to that if you could, I take it?”

  Istvhan stared at nothing. “My brothers would, I think. Almost all of them.”

  “And you?”

  He was tempted to make a joke and deflect it, but this was Clara. He owed her the truth. Of all the people he had met, she was the one outside his order that came closest to understanding what it had been like. “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems obvious. Other times, I think perhaps it was like a drug. We were all addicted to righteousness and glory. Perhaps it’s best, after all, to leave it behind.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is being a bear…err…?”

  “Not like that,” said Clara. “It’s frightening if you aren’t used to it. Most of us were glad to have someone who understood what was happening. But of course, convent life isn’t for everyone. If you were not used to the discipline or the work, it would seem cruel.”

  “So what became of those who did not wish to stay?”

  Firelight left her eyes in deep shadow. “There are many bears in the woods around our valley,” she said. “They are taught how to hunt, and they know that to come too near to humans means death. But the ones who go into the beast that way do not come out again.”

  Twenty-Three

  “Time for our next performance!” said Doc Mason cheerfully. They had pulled off the main road an hour earlier and onto a smaller byway, lined with hedgerows. Farm buildings stood off in the distance, but the road itself was often in shadow. A few red and orange leaves still clung to the trees. Birds sang and scuffled through the fallen leaves.

  Clara had not seen the village until they were nearly on top of it. Tolly handled the reins, driving the mules into a large field beside the town’s largest inn, and stopped the wagon. Doc Mason went into the building to announce that he would be selling that evening, and emerged with bread stuffed with cooked peppers to share around.

  “Do we need to do anything?” asked Istvhan, as they finished the meal. It wasn’t quite noon yet, and he wasn’t sure how long it took for Doc Mason to prepare for his ‘little show.’

  “Only watch and be amazed,” said Doc Mason. He lowered his voice. “Also, once the crowd gets here, play along.”

  “What?” said Istvhan, but the peddler was already past him, undoing bolts on the sides of the wagon, flipping up levers, and then, quite astonishingly, the wagon unfolded.

  The bulk of the wagon remained in one place, a narrow stage with one back wall and stacked boxes of questionable medicines. The other wall broke in half down the middle, folded outward, and became a frame for the stage. The sheets of canvas that Clara had noted earlier were unfurled. Inside the wagon, she had only seen the backs. The front sides were painted in extraordinary colors, proclaiming the wonders of Doc Mason’s Medicines. On the left side, a deathly sick patient who appeared to have boils, buboes, and some kind of lightning attacking his head lay dying in vivid shades of bilious green. On the right, the same patient had leapt to his feet, waving a familiar bottle. Tolly unrolled one more canvas, covering the back of the stage (and, conveniently, their hammocks and small living quarters.) This canvas had enormous renderings of medicinal herbs, sparkling with colors that Clara had certainly never seen any of them show in nature.

  “Does mint even come in that shade of blue?” asked Istvhan under his breath.

  “I’m not sure anything actually comes in that shade of blue.”

  Doc Mason bustled up to them. “Domina Clara, I could not ask you to put yourself out in the service of mere commerce. Would you be willing to keep an eye on the crowd?”

  “Do you expect trouble?” asked Clara, amused. “Previous customers, perhaps?”

  “Domina!” Doc Mason looked indignant. “I have never left an unsatisfied customer behind! No, if anything the customers may be too satisfied. In areas where, perhaps, the local flow of libations has run dry, I fear that occasionally customers have been known to…ah…rush the stage in their enthusiasm to sample.”

  “Fair enough.” Clara raised an eyebrow at him, wondering if she was about to make an enemy. Still, she had to be sure. “But doctor, if your intent, as I think, is to sell this medicine to people for coin, I have to ask you what is in it. And don’t say herbs. Herbs can kill or cure, and I could not stand by and watch you hand out dangerous concoctions in the guise of a miracle cure.”

  Istvhan shifted beside her, just enough to free his sword hand, and Clara felt a rush
of comfort. He has my back. That’s good.

  She had expected Doctor Mason to become theatrical and florid in his defense, but he surprised her. Instead, he said, “I’ll drink a bottle in front of you, if you like. Though after the show, by preference, because that much alcohol’s more than I can handle right now.” He met her eyes gravely. “I don’t promise cures,” he said. “They want a show and I give them one, but if someone comes up and says their grandmother is dying, I tell them to take her to a priest or a healer. This is a fine tonic and I drink it myself—in small quantities!—but the most I’ll swear to you, Domina, is that the ginger will settle your stomach and there’s enough willow to sort out a headache. The rest are general healing herbs, no more than you’d get from an apprentice healer. No foxglove, no wormwood, nothing that’ll lay you out or cause you any real harm, unless you’re fool enough to guzzle a whole case and pass out.”

  “I can’t hold you accountable for that,” said Clara warmly. “Thank you.”

  The theatrical mask slid back down over his face as smoothly as oil. “Then we are agreed, good Mother Superior? You will watch an old mountebank go through his tricks and whistle a warning in case of nefarious doings?”

  “Never fear, Doctor. I’ll watch from the back and make sure that no one is plotting anything.”

  “Excellent, excellent. And should you see any rotten vegetables going by, please catch my eye.”

  “Is that a concern?”

  “My dear Domina, there are those in this world with absolutely no appreciation for the finer nuances of showmanship.”

  Doc Mason was as good as his word. The crowd gathered, in much greater numbers than she had expected, all of them hanging on his every word. He went from warming them up with tales of his travels to the sales pitch almost seamlessly, but Clara listened to his patter and found nothing terribly objectionable. He somehow managed to be as self-deprecating as he was grandiose, which was quite a trick.

  “And this stout fellow!” cried Doc Mason, waving Istvhan onto the stage. “My dear sister’s boy! You would never know it to look at him, my friends, but he was a sickly child, and many were the nights we thought that he would turn his face to the wall and expire. But we raised him on a spoonful of Doctor Mason’s Astonishing Herbal Medicine at every meal, and now look at him! Can you credit it? And as sound of wind as he is strong of build!”

  Istvhan, with a broad grin, spread his arms and flexed a few times for the audience. Cries of female appreciation (and a few male ones, as well) rose from the crowd.

  “You see? You would scarcely credit that he is the same fellow! And all of it, thanks to Doctor Mason’s Astonishing Herbal Medicine!” He paused dramatically, then added “Well, and fresh outdoor air and good hard labor on the farm. But I like to think that my medicine had something to do with it!”

  The crowd laughed appreciatively. Doc Mason waved Istvhan off-stage. He flexed a few times for good measure, to more laughter.

  “The truth of it is, my friends, that every man’s fate lies in the hands of the gods. It is they who determine the hour of our death, not any potion that anyone may sell you. Now, there are those, as I’m certain you know, who would claim that they could work miracles! Claim to sell you recipes from the ancients, which they simply found lying around somewhere, in the middle of a field perhaps. They would take your money and promise that their medicines could stay the hand of death itself. I don’t need to tell you fine people that this is a ploy to separate the foolish from their coin, do I? Charlatans!”

  The crowd booed appreciatively. Clara raised an eyebrow, wondering where the man was going with this.

  “So I promise you no such thing, my wise friends. We are all in the hands of the gods.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice, and the crowd leaned toward him, straining to hear his every word. “But who among us would not wish to spend those allotted hours in better health? To soothe their aches and their upsets, to put a little fire back into their bellies? Hmm? I’m an old man, my friends—no, no, I won’t deny it!—and I won’t pretend that the cold doesn’t get into my joints during winter. And that, my friends, is why I take the finest tonic known to man or beast, Doc Mason’s Herbal Medicine!”

  He swirled his cloak theatrically and drank from the bottle. The crowd cheered. Doc Mason wiped his mouth. “Made from only the finest herbs, grown under a kind sun, and rare forest plants picked in the full moon, this recipe came down through my family for generations, but it was I who put the finishing touches upon it, who decided that we could no longer keep it to ourselves, but that it was my duty—nay, my privilege!—to bring Doc Mason’s Herbal Medicine to you, my friends…”

  “Very clever,” murmured Istvhan in Clara’s ear. She jumped. She’d been just as caught up in Doc Mason’s spiel as the crowd. His breath was warm and she hadn’t expected it. Apparently, the herbal medicine wasn’t the only thing putting heat in people’s bellies tonight.

  “Hmm?” she said, trying to cover her reaction. Blessed St. Ursa, I thought I’d been getting over this.

  Apparently not. Istvhan kept his face close to hers so that the crowd couldn’t hear him. He was close enough to kiss, which seemed like quite an interesting idea. Don’t be absurd. Not in the middle of a crowd and a sales pitch.

  “Telling them they’re too smart to fall for a sales pitch. It’s a particularly elegant sales pitch, if you can hold the crowd.” He nodded. A stray lock of dark, wavy hair fell across his face. Clara wanted to reach out and push it aside. She curled her fingers into her palm.

  “He certainly seems able to.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Good for repeat business, too. He’s not promising a cure, just that they’ll feel a bit better. People remember when cures fail them. If he comes back by in a year, though, plenty of them will swear up and down that they felt better when they were downing his potions.”

  “He would have made an impressive priest,” said Clara, amused. “Can you imagine that voice, all fire and brimstone?”

  Istvhan winced. “All too easily. We cleared out a few nests of cultists run by priests who could whip up a crowd. They’re not my favorites.”

  “Ah, well. There’s that.”

  “You fought cultists?” whispered Tolly. Clara hadn’t seen the other woman slip through the crowd.

  “Long ago, in another life. It’s less interesting than it sounds. Mostly blood and mud and yelling and falling down and getting back up again. And more mud. Being the musclebound tonic-drinker is a lot more fun.” He grinned down at her. “When does he start taking money?”

  “In about ten minutes,” said Tolly, cocking her head to listen. “He’ll talk about the ingredients some more, do a brief bit on the patron gods of each herb, and then offer them the low, low price of a silver thaler a bottle. Once he gets to balm-of-ages, it’s my cue to go to the wagon and start selling.”

  They watched Doc Mason rattle through ingredients, with a brief segue into the tragic love story of the nymph who inhabited the willow tree and fell in love with the son of the moon. “And let that be a lesson, my fine young ladies, to never give your heart to a pretty lad who cannot see past his own reflection!” Women in the crowd chuckled knowingly.

  “He’s very good at this,” said Clara to Tolly. “I assume he’s been doing it a while?”

  “My whole life.” Tolly gazed at the distant figure on the stage with fondness. “I was born in that wagon. He traveled with my mum and my grandmum for years before that.”

  “What an adventurous life you must have led,” said Istvhan.

  Tolly blushed rather more than the praise warranted. “Not nearly as much as fighting cultists and protecting nuns.”

  “The nuns are occasionally an adventure,” said Istvhan, side-eyeing Clara.

  “Ahem.” She gave him an amused glare. “Are you going to take over the family business someday, then? Change it to Doc Tolly’s Herbal Tonic?”

  “Gods, no.” Tolly made a warding gesture. “I don’t even like the stuff. I thought that mayb
e when Grandda retires from the road, I’d take up being a traveling merchant. Odds and ends, from one place to another.”

  “That’s what I do,” said Clara absently, thinking of the canal. “It’s not a bad life.” Istvhan’s eyes widened and she hastily amended, “Used to do. Before I joined the, uh, Order.”

  “Of course being a Mother Superior must be much different,” said Tolly.

  “Much. Yes.” Clara prayed there would be no follow-up questions. Tolly was a sweet young woman but she was no fool.

  Fortunately, Tolly had other concerns. “You must let me pick your brain sometime, about your routes and what you sold. I’ve been keeping track of lightweight goods that would be worth transporting, but I’ve only been able to cover the towns we stop at and the travelers’ rests.” She frowned. “I’ve also thought about purchasing one of those instead, but it’s a gamble. You have to find one that’s inexpensive enough to buy, but which gets enough wagon traffic to be worthwhile. Still, it would mean I could stay with Grandda, since he’ll never admit he’s getting too old to travel.”

  “Certainly safer for a young woman than traveling alone,” said Istvhan.

  Tolly gave him a saucy look over her shoulder. “Who says I’ll be alone?”

  Clara laughed. From the stage, Doc Mason announced the powers of balm-of-ages to soothe colicky babies and toothache.

  “That’s my cue,” said Tolly. She started toward the wagon.

  She got about five steps and then her path was blocked by an enormous man with shoulders like a blacksmith. Tolly sidestepped smoothly around him and he wobbled a bit. “Eh? Hey!”

  Both Istvhan and Clara tensed up, but Tolly was clearly no stranger to this sort of thing. She was already moving into the crowd. The man swung around, saw Istvhan, and his eyes focused. “You!”

  “Who, me?” said Istvhan.

  “You were the one up on stage.” He advanced.

  “I was, yes.”

  “Think you’re strong, do you?” said the man. Clara guessed he was probably drunk. He was talking just a hair too loudly, though he hadn’t begun to slur any of his words. Drunk enough to be brave, not drunk enough to be slow. Dammit. She began to drift toward the pair. Perhaps she could invent an errand for Istvhan and get him out of the way before the drunk got belligerent.