“Your war won’t be within walls, Allystaire Stillbright,” Rede said, his voice a low hum that slowly rose as he went on. “It will be with the air that is full of mourning and the sea that is full of fury, with the clouds that bear the storm and the earth that drags you down to the corpses interred within it. It will go on long after you are dead.”
Allystaire felt a chill work its way down his spine as the man spoke. “What,” he said, slowly rising to his feet, his hand falling naturally to his hammer, “was that?”
Rede raised his head, looking dazed. Sudden awareness lit in his eyes, and he started. “What…what did I just say?”
“Rede,” Allystaire said, “you had best not be playing some kind of game.”
“I swear I am not.” The man extended an arm, pulling back the thin robe that covered it to expose the skin, drawn tight over sinew and bone. “Use your Gift. Ask me any question. I know I was speaking. I know not what I said.”
“You said,” Allystaire murmured, “a number of things. Things I think I want Torvul to hear. Will you walk with me to see him, Rede? He may have something that would grant you some rest.”
Rede thought a moment, a wary expression playing over his face, then he nodded shortly and stood.
His legs are shaking, Allystaire thought, and as the man rounded the table, the paladin reached out to take his arm and buoy him up. For all of his height, Rede seemed to weigh nothing, and Allystaire thought he could feel the heat of the man’s flesh through the thin and tattered robe.
The former Urdarite fared better once they were outside, a hobbling walk turning into a more comfortable stride. Allystaire was able to let go of Rede’s shoulder and let him walk under his own power. They walked in silence, and Allystaire tried to remember the cold, odd pronouncement the other man had made, slowly repeating the words in his mind while they were fresh.
They had just reached Torvul’s wagon, parked as always by the house that served as his workshop, when a figure on horseback came pounding up towards them, one long arm waving, shouting. The rider had cut straight across the village, rather than following a road. Allystaire had let his hand fall to his hammer and took a step in front of Rede, but once he picked out the details—the length of the limbs, the color of the horse, the curve of the cased bow peeking over one shoulder—he relaxed.
Norbert pulled up easily, and slid off the back of the horse effortlessly. He’s becoming quite a horseman, Allystaire thought, as he looked at the slightly lathered dun courser the youth had taken to riding. Not as huge or imposing as Ardent, closer in shape and length to Idgen Marte’s horse and as good a runner, it responded easily to the lad’s touch and stayed still when he slid from the saddle, nosing at the spring grass.
“Allystaire,” Norbert said, and the paladin envied the younger man’s easy breathing. “There are men come in the livery of Innadan, bearing messages from the Baron. They say they’ll speak only to you.”
* * *
Symod bit back his curses, swallowed the anger that rose up and threatened to explode as he looked down at the corpse. Another Islandman—or in truth, the descendant of an Islandman, since this one had lived his short and dirty life on the Barony mainland—lay messily dead before him.
“This one could have served the Sea Dragon in his own way,” he said aloud.
“He sought a quarrel with a Dragon Scale.” Jorn’s voice was unnervingly low and feral, as if it pained him to make the sounds of speech. Symod found himself, as always, straining a bit more than he liked in order to catch each word. “He reaped the ocean’s wrath.”
“And how did he seek that quarrel? Throwing loaded dice? Finishing a jar of mead?” Symod shook his head. The dead man’s innards were spattered over an area the size of a small chamber. The upper right quarter of his body was practically free of the rest, the arm and shoulder all but torn away.
“Matters not. Man was weak. Man is dead. As the Sea Dragon wills.”
“As the Sea Dragon wills,” Symod echoed. He reminded himself, again, that no man had ever brought so many of the Dragon Scales together. Nearly three hundreds of them, if the count was accurate, and more arriving, awaited his orders, his pleasure, along the upper reaches of the Valdin river valley, the thick ribbon of muddy, slow-moving water the nominal boundary between Fallen Vyndamere and the barely-struggling-on Barony Varshyne.
Three hundred barely-sane, divinely-powered berzerkers full of a blood lust that was only just contained. Meanwhile, they exercised every other kind of lust available to them in camp. The large tents where the camp followers worked were never short of business. Neither were the tents that sold food or drink.
Symod couldn’t quite figure out where the folk had come from, but borders tended to be loose places in the Baronies, especially these more lawless and less settled territories. They might be folk up from Delondeur or across from Oyrwyn, or even the remnants of Vyndamere folk, or Varshynners who felt the wind changing.
Regardless, Symod was glad they were here, for he’d given no thought to provisions or stores aside from weapons. Those he had in abundance. He smiled at the thought. Surely, he told himself, an army well armed is an army that will manage to feed itself.
Army was, he had to admit, perhaps an overstatement. While many of the settler bands he’d sent on their way had begun trickling in, they hadn’t come in the numbers he’d expected. Some carried reports of armed peasants providing stiffer resistance than expected, while others seemed simply to have lost the stomach after shedding their first blood. No matter.
Symod had lost himself in thought, and came to realize that Jorn was asking him a question. He turned his upraised brows at the berzerker, who he’d come to think was the chief of his kind.
“The body,” Jorn’s voice grated. “What to do with it?”
“Bury it by the river. He was trying to do Braech’s work, after all.”
Jorn nodded, but didn’t make any move towards picking the body up. Symod let it pass, knowing well it’d be gone by nightfall.
“Are there any new arrivals to report on?”
“Some bits of paper,” Jorn growled. “And one band. Fisherman weaklings. First village we visited.”
Symod thought back to the sea ice he’d had a job of breaking up, to all the rotten-smelling villages and worse-smelling people he’d visited with and talked to at winter’s end. The tiny villages were all the same, with their pathetic chief’s halls in the middle, in pride of place. Any such hall would fit easily in many chambers in the Sea Dragon’s Temple in Londray.
“I think I recall. Arvid’s band,” he finally said, dredging the name up from memory. “Good. I will see to them soon. And once more, Jorn, they are called letters. And they are quite important.”
“As you say.” The berzerker took a deep breath, expanding his huge, tattooed chest and arching his back slightly. “Why do we not move?”
“We haven’t the men yet,” Symod said. “And I am waiting word from certain possible allies.”
“The Sea Dragon needs no allies. What can stand against the tide?”
“Allystaire Stillbright, apparently,” Symod replied, his twisting mouth putting acid into the paladin’s new surname. “He is a dangerous man, with dangerous allies. We cannot move against him yet.”
Jorn snorted. “I fear no soft southerner. I need only meet him. Then he will die and trouble the Sea Dragon no longer.”
“I’ve little doubt of that,” Symod lied. One Dragon Scale isn’t likely to trouble the paladin overmuch, he thought, if rumors of his strength are not too greatly exaggerated. Out loud, he went on. “We must be able to crush not only the paladin himself, but the armies that will rise against us. To do that, we must raise a host.”
Jorn toed the ruined corpse they still stood over, the body just off the well-worn track between the messy camp of the warriors and the rather more orderly follower’s camp, withdrawn
a few hundred paces. “Of such men as this, you’ll raise no worthy host.” He sniffed. “Ought to seek the Gravek that would serve the Sea Dragon. They’ll make an army.”
Symod turned away from the corpse and began walking back to his tent in the center of camp. “Gravek, you say? And where am I to find them?”
“North.”
“How far?”
Jorn thought on this a while. Though heavier and shorter-limbed than Symod, he easily kept pace. The Choiron had the feeling Jorn could outdistance him without effort, and that he walked beside him as a sign of deference.
“Two day’s run for a Dragon Scale. Three, could be. Week or more for a lesser man.”
“What would we need to convince them?”
“Weapons. Plunder. Same you’ve offered the weaklings.”
“Well, Jorn, it sounds to me as though you’ve volunteered to lead a delegation to go speak with whatever Gravek you can find. Do you expect Gravekling or Gravekmir?”
Jorn shrugged. For all the bored expression on his weather-burned face changed, Symod might have been assigning him a watch. “Both.”
“Very well, then. See to it, Jorn. Bring me back giants and giantkin.”
The berzerker shot him a narrow-eyed look. “No. I will bring back giants for the Sea Dragon. Not for you.”
Symod’s face went cold, and he gathered his will. In his mind he could feel it coiling like a snake, or an arm pulled back and tensed for a blow. He let it hover over Jorn’s mind; for all the berzerker’s strength, Symod knew, Jorn hadn’t the power of the mind necessary to refuse him.
“I am a Choiron, anointed by the Sea Dragon, and I am the architect of His plan for these Baronies,” Symod said, drawing himself to his full height and rolling his shoulders back. “I will lead his army and sweep aside the heresy that nestles like poison in the heart of this country, and I will do it for Braech’s glory. I need not be reminded whom I serve by one of my servants.”
Jorn Dragon Scale didn’t pale or quiver or let fear show, but Symod felt the other man’s will quail under his. The berzerker lowered his eyes. “Apologies, Blessed Choiron. I will bring back Gravek for the Sea Dragon, or I will kill them in His name. Grant me leave to go.”
“Be gone. Never question my devotion again.”
Jorn nodded, turned, and bounded away. Symod watched him go, watched the sunlight glinting from the clawed gauntlets that swung at Jorn’s side as he ran. The Choiron let out his held breath, deflated a little. Jorn had challenged him more brazenly then, but not for the first time. If he meets his death wooing giantkin to the cause, so much the better.
He wound his way to his tent, nodding or waving absently at each bow or murmur of “Blessed Choiron” or “Honored Symod.”
Inside his tent, casually tossed on the bedding was a pair of folded, wax-sealed pieces of parchment. He picked them up and examined their seals: a report from the Temple in Londray and a letter from the Marynth Evolyn.
He sliced open the latter and quickly scanned it.
Honored Choiron,
Crossed safely to the Archipelago. Keersvasti Dragon Scales are reluctant to sail for the Baronies, as there are rumblings of war with the Concordat, but some should soon be on their way. They are likely to burn and pillage in Londray, though, I warn you.
I have made contact with the man you sent me to meet. He is difficult to read and I do not know what lever might be used to move him. He fears the boy. I have not yet showed him the book. The time has not been right.
I remain your devoted servant,
The Marynth Evolyn Lamaliere
Symod thought over the words. The boy was, indeed, a problem. He needed to give thought to how best to deal with him before moving south.
There was not a great deal in the world that Symod feared, but when he thought back to the power of the will that had destroyed the artifact in the Temple in Keersvast, he had to fight a chill.
Symod turned to the second parchment and flicked it open with a casual stroke of his thumb. The writing was slapdash, hurried, the ink smeared upon the page. There was no honorific at the beginning, no suppliant greeting.
Dragon Scales dead. Hissop hangs from a tower. Other priests taken. The Baroness has besieged the Temple. Wants all clergy complicit in attack. May sack the Temple. Fortune possibly preparing writs. No more time. Marynth Hr
The letters trailed off into a quick, flat line, as if the writer had dashed away in the midst of scrawling them.
Symod resisted the urge to crumple the paper between his hands, which suddenly surged with anger. “The cheek,” he grated through clenched teeth. “The impudence. To attack the very Temple of the Sea Dragon.”
He looked at the words again, forcing his breath to slow, his fists to uncurl. Marynth Hrigan, he presumed, of the unfinished signature. “A useless sot,” he muttered. “I hope your guts festoon the walls of the Dunes even now.” The man had left so much information unwritten. “Allystaire was a fool to let Lionel’s heir go from his clutches. Perhaps I overestimate him. What attack did Hrigan speak of?”
Once again he looked at the letter, found it maddeningly short. He tried to piece together what information he had been given to make a more complete picture. Hissop had taken the two Dragon Scales he left at the Temple—in order to guide any forces Evolyn managed to raise in Keersvast—and done, what? “Something foolish,” the Choiron muttered. He’d died for it, but two berzerkers had died as well. “Even two berzerkers could mean the difference against Stillbright. How to turn this?”
A Baroness had attacked a Temple. Symod could only assume she had looted its treasures, at least, if not razed it to the ground. The nobility did not often meddle in Temple politics, but it seemed as if the paladin and their upstart Goddess had crushed the lines between Temple and Baronial matters.
“The Baroness may have overreached,” Symod murmured. “Her seat will not be strong, nor her forces consolidated. If we move swiftly on Delondeur once our own host is forged, Braech’s faithful will see us as answering this sin.” Tossing the letter down upon his bedding and heading for the opening of his tent, Symod smiled.
* * *
Landen, wearing brilliant green enameled plate with the Delondeur Tower etched into the cuirass, helm tucked under her arm, strode the empty halls of Braech’s Temple in Londray, Chaddin, Ivar, and two knights trailing. A workman led her through the Temple corridors, the man all but constantly clutching at the cap he wasn’t wearing, or at an imaginary forelock on his bald head.
Finally, he led them to the largest chamber Landen had seen. Half of the room, like much of the Temple, was projected out over the crashing surf, sunk on heavy posts. The huge plinth and statue that stood before them—twice as tall as Landen if it was a foot—seemed to stand right at the edge of solid ground.
“Here ‘tis, m’lady,” the workman said. A few other laborers in rough clothes stood about, tools strewn about them. Hammers, heavy iron bars, chains, chisels, a block and tackle. “We can’t make a dent upon it, nor pull it down from the stone. Like it’s grown out of it.”
“Worked metal does not grow straight from stone, goodman.”
“Beggin’ your pardon m’lady, but I know. Stone is m’livin, the carvin’ and cuttin’ of it. We’ve brought in blacksmiths and fancier metalworkers, and none of ‘em know rightly what it is, nor how t’move it.”
Landen frowned, turned and handed her helm to one of the attending knights, and pointed to a rock hammer. “May I?”
A mason scrambled to put the tool in her hands. Landen stepped forward, raised it overhead, and swung hard.
The shock reverberated up her arms, stinging them to the shoulders, just this side of painfully. She looked closely; there wasn’t a dent on the metal of the statue.
“Have they tried etching liquids?” She held the hammer out towards the workman who’d led them in.
“Aye, m’lady,” the man said, taking the hammer carefully back. “We’ve tried everythin’ we can. One brave soul even climbed b’neath the floor. The stone it is built upon grows straight up under the Temple, through the floor. As if th’whole of it t’were built round this statue.”
“Well,” Landen said, “if we cannot destroy the statue, we can bring the Temple down around it. Carry on your work, goodmen. Thank you for bringing this to me.” She pulled free a purse tucked inside one bracer, carefully prised it open, and dumped its contents into the suddenly open palm of the lead laborer. “To split amongst yourselves, for your hard work and initiative.” Each man was given a long string of silver links.
There was a good deal more tugging of locks and m’ladys and bowing before Landen could shake her way gracefully free of the knot of masons and metalworkers. Once they were safely gone, Chaddin sidled up to her.
“Is this wise, m’lady? To meddle so boldly with a Temple?”
Landen turned her gazed on Chaddin, adjusting the helm she held under one arm once more. “They plundered our armory under the false seal of Lord Lamaliere. They interdicted our return to the Dunes. Good men died because of the actions of their holy men. I would say that every priest in this Temple declared himself a traitor.”
“The priests, perhaps,” Chaddin countered. “But the Temple itself? Its riches?”
“We have to rebuild the armory somehow, and we must do it fast. The ironmongers and smiths know of our shortfall, and can dictate prices. Would you rather I seized their stock, thus alienating an entire guild or two, or three, or would you rather I paid them with Braech’s money? Fewer folk are hurt this way.”
“I don’t quibble with the logic. I only wonder about the consequences. There are many adherents to Braech in the city and beyond. And then there is the—”
“Is Braech the Master of Accords, or of theft?” Landen thought on the empty armory she’d found inside the Dunes, began seething all over again.
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