Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “Do you mean to make knights of all the village folk, then?”

  “No,” Allystaire said, “but knowledge cannot be exclusive to knights.”

  “So you’ll put weapons in their hands and ideas in their heads. Do you not see how this can go wrong?”

  Allystaire let out a harsh laugh. “Of course I can. I see almost nothing but the paths that veer into chaos and failure and death. Yet if I did not try to find the one path among them all, no matter how narrow it might be, how shrouded, that leads to something better, then I would be no paladin.”

  Cerisia sighed and smoothed down the front of her dress, one hand coming to rest on her hip. “And may Fortune favor me, that’s probably why I’m letting myself be dragged into this, if I were to be honest. I do want peace, believe me,” she said, raising a hand to deflect his protest. “But I have heard other men speak of peace. Hamadrian Innadan wanted a peace congress, years ago.”

  “I know,” Allystaire said. “I was there. For a fortnight we drank his wine, rode at one another with tourney lances instead of real steel for a change, and pretended to listen to what he said.”

  “My Temple did not even send a delegation,” she said. “My predecessor felt it too unlikely to succeed, and that we should not be seen favoring it. The Temple of Braech sent a warlike Marynth and a troop of Dragon Scales simply to let everyone know how thoroughly they disapproved of the idea of peace. And this was at a meeting called by one of the most powerful Barons. Certainly the most respected.”

  “I know,” Allystaire repeated, “I was there.”

  “I am still coming to my point,” Cerisia said, a bit sternly. “Which is that the same idea was mooted not long ago by a man of vastly more wealth, influence, and standing than an exiled lord in a village so distant from the Dunes that many folk in Londray don’t know where to find it. And yet, you have one Baroness on your side already, you will find Innadan a willing second, and Telmawr will do as Innadan does. The man who is now the most powerful lord in Oyrwyn second to the Baron himself will do whatever you say out of sheer love for you, and he alone might sway Gilrayan Oyrwyn to this cause. And you have an Archioness of Fortune’s Temple carrying your messages. I’d say you’ve already done better than he did, with less.”

  “I have the Mother. I have Torvul, and Idgen Marte, Gideon, Mol.”

  “And all of that is considerable,” Cerisia agreed. “Yet I say all this to point something out, Allystaire. All your life people have wanted to do as you have asked, or ordered them, because there is something in you that they want to follow. And that is the most dangerous thing about you. You may be able to start something grand, but I do not know that even you will be able to control it. Please keep that in mind.”

  “I do not want an uprising, Cerisia. Blood will not be the answer. If I must lead a crusade I will make it a crusade for peace.”

  “And I fear,” Cerisia said, voice low, eyes sad, “that the world will not allow you that.” She sighed, gave her head a tiny shake, let her eyes linger on his a moment, and then made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go. I must finish packing. How soon can you have documents ready for me?”

  “Tomorrow,” Allystaire said.

  “That eager to be rid of me?”

  “The world has been moving on outside these walls, Cerisia. We must meet it.”

  “And what are you going to do while I go negotiate your congress into existence?”

  “Build the Order of the Arm. Keep the Mother’s folk safe. Whatever I have to.”

  Allystaire bowed to Cerisia then, a deeper and more formal gesture than he had made before. Restricted somewhat by his armor, it was as courtly a gesture as he could manage, and she smiled to see it. She watched him as he backed out the door and closed it, then returned to her careful packing.

  CHAPTER 21

  Interlude

  Symod stepped onto the crudely lashed together dock amidst the scent of rotting fish and wood smoke. The underlying smell of winter didn’t just contrast with the noisome stench hanging over the tiny settlement; it cut through it like a sharp axe through soft flesh.

  The Choiron took a deep inhalation through flared nostrils, trying to catch more of that scent, to drive the unpleasant odors away from his senses. He turned sea-green eyes critically over the hovels. Fisherman’s shacks, smoke rising from crude holes cut in the top, fires built in pits on the dirt floors inside, he was sure. Furs and hides draped over their entrances and likewise over their inhabitants. Despite the crudity of their surroundings, or perhaps because of it, the men who met his boat at the docks were imposing brutes, many of them of a height with Symod himself.

  He was accustomed to being the tallest man in a room, usually by a head or more. Nonetheless, when the Islandmen saw the deep blue robes, the rich ermine trimming, and most of all the amulet he wore—sapphire-crusted wave beneath heavy silver dragon head, hanging from a thick silver chain—they sank to a knee. That left standing only himself and the three men who’d rowed him to shore. Despite the late winter cold, all three were bare chested, cloakless, carrying a brace of throwing axes apiece in their belts. All three were tattooed, their torsos covered in images of battle, of ships, of the Sea Dragon Himself.

  “People of Braech,” he began, his voice booming through the air, thrown back in echo by the water behind him, an inlet providing an open channel straight to the sea. “Loyal children of the Sea Dragon. I am the Choiron Symod and I come to you across the sea’s ice through the miracle of Braech Himself. None but one truly blessed by the Father of Waves would dare sail to you as I have done.” With an extended hand he indicated the ship that lay moored, visible but distant. “And it is on the Sea Dragon’s behalf that I have come.”

  Symod folded his arms behind his back and swept forward off the dock, his three guardsmen swept up in his wake.

  “You are the sons of the great conquerors of Barony Vyndamere,” Symod said. “You brought down its lords in their stone halls, its knights in all their pretty steel. You drove them under your heel and took their children, their land, and their chattels. And now,” he said, disgust creeping into his voice, and his features, lips peeling back over his teeth, “now look at you. Fishermen. Farmers. Grubbing in the dirt. Toiling with nets instead of driving your ships into the other Baronies. Filling your hands with shovels instead of blades.”

  One man, older but hearty looking, pushed himself to his feet. “Honored Choiron,” he said, “you do us wrong. A man’s family can’t eat the dirt, nor the spoils of raiding. And the Baron Delondeur keeps a strong border. We’ve been beaten.”

  “And yet you live, disappointing Braech, me, your fathers, and the spirits of your home islands. For a true son of Braech is not defeated until he is dead.” Symod’s voice was utterly calm, but his eyes bulged, his cheeks quivered with a barely contained rage. Holding the older man still with his eyes, he said, “Jorn.”

  One of the tattooed men behind him whipped a throwing axe from his belt straight into the face of the protesting Islandman. The weapon was hurled with such force it split a gaping hole through his face and into his skull, sending him to the ground with a spray of blood, bone, and brain.

  The berzerker swept forward, picked his axe from the old man’s remains with a contemptuous swagger. Sweeping his eyes over the kneeling men, he lifted the long, thin blade of the axe to his face and sniffed deeply at the blood, then let out a low growl that hung in the air. The tendons in his bare arms went suddenly rigid, his chest expanding with quick, shallow breaths. He bared his teeth and swept his arm back, till Symod spoke again.

  “JORN!” The berzerker lowered the axe, growled again, a sound that seemed foreign from a human throat. “No one else here needs to die if they heed my word. No other men will be dragged inland, far from the sight or sound of the sea, from any running water, and hacked into quarters as this disappointment will be if they but listen for Braech’s call.”
>
  Symod smiled at them, waved Jorn back behind him, and said, “Who is your headman?”

  “He was.” Pointing at the corpse, a man stood. He was taller even than Symod, and as broad, with arms as well muscled as any of the Dragon Scales looming behind the Choiron. “Now I am.”

  “By what virtue?” Symod’s lips twitched in a smile. A murmur ran among the kneeling men, which caused the new headman to lift his head higher, curl his hands into fists.

  “I am the strongest among us, the best warrior.” The man’s words were cut off suddenly as blood bubbled upon his lips, then poured in a torrent from his open mouth. As he fell to the ground, another man, of similar age but less impressive size, ripped a long knife from his back, the foot-long blade covered in heart’s blood.

  “And an idiot. Can’t think with your arms, Avang,” the dagger-wielding man said, as he kicked the twitching man to the ground. He casually bent over and slid the dagger’s edge across the man’s throat, swatting away his feebly protesting arms, wiped the blade on the dead man’s furs, and considered its edge. “And I say I am the headman now.” He let his eyes sweep around the kneeling men. None moved, none spoke. He turned to Symod and bent at the waist, but did not go to a knee. “I am Arvid, honored Choiron. And we all stand ready to do as Braech bids.”

  “I am glad to hear that, Arvid.” Symod narrowed his eyes, studied the face of the man standing before him and the dead one twitching on the ground, then lifted them back up. “Kin to you?”

  “Brother,” Arvid said, with a shrug. “A fool’s a fool and I’ll not follow one.”

  “We have much to speak of, Arvid.”

  While this scene was transpiring, a knot of women and children gathered several paces back of the men who’d come to meet the boat. Arvid turned to them. “Food! Drink! NOW,” he barked, his voice suddenly impressive, if a bit forced. “The rest of you, tend the honored Choiron’s baggage.”

  “I haven’t any,” Symod said, “for I will not tarry. But I will take bread and mead with you while we discuss the purpose of my visit.” Symod turned to his berzerker guards, pointed to two of them, and then made an expansive gesture towards the corpses. “Take these as far inland as you can make in the next two turns and dispose of them accordingly.”

  “As you will, honored Choiron,” Arvid said, trying his best not to look too closely at the hulking, tattooed men who were, even now, hauling the corpses to their shoulders and setting off for the wood at a run. If he thought twice of his brother being buried beyond the reach of Braech, he said only, “My hall is this way.” Slender for an Islandman, dark haired, dark eyed, but pale-skinned, he led Symod past the damp hovels towards a building that barely qualified as a hall. It was perhaps twice as long as any other building in the village, but would’ve disappeared in the corridors of the great Temple of Braech in Londray, much less in Keersvast.

  When Arvid pushed open the ragged hall door, a woman with braided ropes of grey hair met him at the door.

  “Why do you come into Hemond’s house, Arvid Gullinburtisson?” Her voice was proud and steady, but Symod heard a quaver beneath it for a moment.

  “Hemond is dead, Lirs,” Arvid said flatly. “And I have claimed his position.”

  “Your older brother—”

  “Also dead,” Arvid interrupted her, rather more brightly.

  Lirs put her back up straight. “His body.”

  “Is being seen to.” Symod felt impatience growing in his throat, turning his words into a growl. “You need not concern yourself with it. He is being taken beyond the embrace of the Sea Dragon.”

  As if only just realizing he was there, the old woman turned old, rheumy, pale blue eyes upon the Choiron, gasped in horror. “You cannot.”

  “I can and I did,” Symod grated. “And Jorn Dragon Scale who accompanies me is eager to let his axe drink further blood. He will not be particular if it is the blood of an old woman if she persists in standing in my way, for that means standing in Braech’s way. In fact, since he ended your husband’s life, ending yours will provide a sort of symmetry. I imagine it will be lost on Jorn himself, but I will admire it.”

  Before the Choiron was even done, Lirs was sinking to a knee before him, lowering her head, fighting back tears. In a voice that seemed to retain none of its earlier pride, she said, “Of course, honored Choiron. As you will.”

  Symod swept past her into the hall. Jorn bared his teeth at her, his eyes bulging in their sockets, as he passed in the Choiron’s wake, though she hadn’t lifted her eyes. Arvid paused for just a moment to lift her back to her feet. If he wasn’t gentle, he wasn’t rough, either. “We will need bread and drink,” he murmured to her. The newly-made widow only nodded.

  The hall was made of rough timbers, full of drafts, without enough hides to keep the warmth inside it. Like the other hovels in the village, a fire pit occupied the center of the room, but this one was large enough for a dozen men or more to gather around. Stumps, stools, and one crude chair made of thin hides slung between poles were clustered around it, with the latter at the far end of the fire. Symod claimed it, and Jorn stood behind him. Arvid grabbed a stool and dragged it near Symod’s chair, waving away a curlicue of smoke from the fire that drifted towards him.

  “Why do proud Islandmen huddle miserably in a fishing village, Arvid?” Symod didn’t wait for any further formalities, or for mead to be served, to begin his questions. Even as he spoke, though, Lirs was approaching with a jug in one hand and three wooden bowls in the other. “Be mindful and humble in your answers.”

  “We rose when the alliance came sweeping down off the islands to challenge Delondeur,” Arvid answered. “That was my father’s time. He didn’t come back. Uncles neither. All told me I was too young t’take up arms so here I am.” He swallowed and gestured at Lirs to pour for the Choiron first, which she did, having set the bowls down upon a stump set near the chair. She filled one, spilling a little, and handed it to the Choiron. Symod drank a sip, observing the formalities. She then offered a bowl to Arvid, who did the same.

  As she lifted a bowl to Jorn, he snatched it from her hand, poured it down his mouth at a gulp, and then seized the jar, drinking from it noisily.

  Arvid rested his bowl carefully in his hands, laying them against his lap. “What did come back from that fight were knights in steel and soldiers in green. They took any blades we had over so long,” he said, spreading his hands a short distance apart. “Any axes they decided were not meant for cutting wood. Any armor, and most of the tools. They told us if they came north again, they’d burn our boats. Can’t raid much with wood-axes and knives, not that we didn’t try. But that Baron Delondeur was a hard man. He beat us well and truly.”

  Symod smiled slyly and adjusted himself in the rickety chair. “The Baron Delondeur, who crushed your people so thoroughly, is dead.”

  Arvid’s hands tightened on his bowl, and he sat forward, but said nothing.

  “His daughter moves to assume his seat, backed by the very man who killed her father. A man who presents a real threat not only to your folk, but to Braech himself. This, Arvid Gullinburtisson, is why we come seeking the Sea Dragon’s true sons and daughters.”

  “What must we do?”

  “You must first earn back your honor in the eyes of the Father of Waves. Go south over the Ash, or take to your boats and sail down into the bay. The men and women who come back with their broadaxes or their skinning knives blooded will be of use to the Sea Dragon.” Symod leaned forward, setting his barely-sipped bowl aside. “Do not linger. Raid and vanish. The man who stirs things, the man who killed Lionel Delondeur, is vastly more dangerous than the Baron was. Give him nothing to strike back against.”

  Arvid nodded eagerly, feeling the song of bloodlust beginning to stir in his veins. “And then what?”

  “Those of you who return will join with me on the border of Barony Varshyne,” Symod said. “Befo
re the summer is upon us.”

  “Where on the border?”

  “If you cannot find it, you won’t deserve the glory Braech will bestow. Nor the swords, the hard mail, the coats of scales, the longaxes that will be waiting. You people should long ago have overcome what remains of that Barony. I intend to begin by correcting that mistake.”

  “Begin what?”

  Symod bared his teeth in a smile that made Arvid uncomfortable, that dimmed the proud song stirring inside him.

  “A crusade.”

  When he saw the uncertainty on Arvid’s face, Symod said, “A holy war. Blasphemy stirs to your south, and I mean to make an army that will destroy the man who spreads it.”

  “What is this man’s name, the man who is so dangerous?”

  “He calls himself Allystaire Stillbright,” Symod said, practically hissing the words. “And he will die for his sins. But not until he sees the blasphemy he has wrought utterly destroyed, and all those under his sway dead before him.”

  “It will be done, honored Choiron. We will set out as soon as the ice allows us.”

  “Braech has prepared your way, Arvid. Could ice possibly be an impediment to the Father of Waves, or to those who serve him truly? I cast it aside, melted it, broke it, as I sailed here. Now go, gather your men. Form a plan for them. I do not care what it is,” he added hastily. “I want blood flowing in the south. The Sea Dragon demands it.” He waved Arvid away and stretched his legs out towards the fire, propping boots that were likely more valuable than this entire village on one of the firepit’s stones. “I expect plans to be underway before we sail.”

  Arvid quickly drank down the rest of his bowl of mead, counting on it to quiet the nerves that fluttered in him. He stood, bowed to the Choiron, then left his new hall wondering how long he might hold it.

  Longer than Avang did, anyways, he told himself. As he went to gather the men, he reached behind his back and tugged free the sheathed dagger that had taken his brother’s heartsblood, shoved it through the front of his belt. He wanted it in the open now, if only so it would remind everyone what he’d done with it that day, but he couldn’t help feeling it too small, too poor a blade to do real service for Braech. But the Choiron had promised blades, and mail, and Arvid, for one, meant to be alive to arm himself like a man should.