Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

  “Acknowledged, Private.” Christopher said. “Show him in.”

  The sentry opened his mouth before realizing the question he hadn’t asked had already been answered. “Yes, sir!” he finally got out, and a few seconds later he returned with the Captain in tow.

  Christopher was immediately struck by the change in the man. The Captain was clean, neat, and sober. More noticeably, he was deferential. But then, Nordland was a Duke, a terrifyingly eight ranks high.

  “On behalf of the Wizard, I would like to welcome the Lord Duke to Carrhill.” The Captain apparently had a short speech memorized, but Gregor didn’t let him finish.

  “Though I appreciate the compliment, I cannot accept it.” He stood and bowed to the Captain. “Baronet Gregor, at your service.”

  The Captain scowled.

  “I’m sorry,” Christopher said, even though it couldn’t possibly be his fault. “Just a case of mistaken identity.” They didn’t have newspapers, magazines, or televisions here. Probably no one in this county had ever seen Nordland face-to-face.

  “May we offer you some refreshment, Ser?” Torme asked.

  “No thanks,” the Captain grunted. “I prefer my own stock. Good night, Curate.” He bowed to Christopher and stiffly left the room.

  Christopher sighed. What goodwill he had built up with the man seemed to have evaporated in an instant, and he wasn’t even sure why.

  Lalania smiled, however. “That went well.”

  “How do you figure?” Christopher demanded.

  “Nobody issued a challenge to a duel. And you can relax, Christopher. The Captain won’t hate you for seeing him humbled at your table any more than he hates you for seeing him humbled at the wizard’s wall.”

  “But why was he so rude to Gregor?” The Captain hadn’t even acknowledged his existence after the first sentence.

  “As he said,” Gregor said, “he prefers his own stock. And frankly, so do I. Tell me what taverns he frequents, so that I can avoid them.”

  Instinctively these people could tell who was Bright or Dark, like Scotsmen could spot a Catholic from a Protestant at twenty yards. That must be one of Lalania’s skills: she could convincingly act like either, fitting into a person’s expectations, giving off the subtle cues they didn’t know they were searching for. Not magic, just Oscar-­caliber acting.

  “Speaking of taverns,” Karl announced, “I’ll retire now to do my own research. If we’re going to spend two years here, we must come to an agreement with the locals.”

  Christopher hadn’t thought of it in those terms. “We won’t get reassigned next year?”

  “Probably not,” Gregor said.

  “Not unless you provoke the Wizard, the King, or the Captain. Or any of the Gold Throne’s allies,” amended Lalania.

  “In that case . . . don’t get too comfortable,” Christopher sighed. Then he went to deal with the mail Karl had brought him, and spent the rest of the night engaged in merely technical difficulties.

  The next day at breakfast he was surprised to see Karl’s face black-and-blue.

  “I thought the goal was to prevent fighting?”

  “The goal was to prevent our men from being arrested and to come to an accommodation with the locals. I believe I can report success.”

  “How?” Christopher wanted to know what magic Karl had worked, for the next time Karl wasn’t around.

  “By victory,” Karl said. “Charles’s problem was that his group lost.”

  So Karl’s great plan had been to go into a tavern with a handful of picked men and beat the living daylights out of anybody who objected to their uniforms. Not a solution Christopher could ever implement. Or even Gregor. This was an issue between commoners. Rank had no place in it.

  “Shouldn’t I be healing somebody? Like, for instance, your victims?”

  Karl shook his head. “They started it. If you heal their pain now, they’ll just do it again all the sooner. Better to let them nurse their wounds until the lesson sinks in.”

  Christopher knew Karl was not irresponsible. If anyone had been severely injured, he would have mentioned it. And of course, this town already had magical healing. No one would die from Karl’s victory.

  The morning inspection counted all the men present, and as long as that was the case, Christopher really had no right to complain about Karl’s methods.

  “We’ve got to get out of the city,” Christopher said. “We’re supposed to be hunting ulvenmen.” There was also the consideration that every day outside was a day he wouldn’t bump into Joadan.

  Karl seemed to think he was concerned for the men. “Foot patrols will be safe enough, within a few miles of the city. Our cavalry is prepared to range farther afield. Although only half have carbines, their firepower and the mobility of the horses should be enough to defeat ordinary ulvenmen.”

  “And for the unordinary ones?” Whatever those were.

  Karl looked away and spat, deflecting as he always did when the topic turned to the need for rank. “Blood and flesh the men can face, but I do not know what battlefield sorceries to expect.”

  “Neither do I,” Christopher said with an unhappy shrug. His fellow clergy focused almost exclusively on healing and truth-magic, neither of which seemed likely to be employed by their long list of foes.

  “Then we should ask Gregor for advice. He has been in the councils of the ranked before.”

  “You want to ask me about magic?” Gregor was surprised. “Better you should ask Lala.”

  “Not entirely,” she disagreed from her perch on his lap. “The Church of the Aesir is a combative one. The stories you have heard from your father’s knee are perhaps as instructive of clerical warfare as anything I know.”

  “Your father is a priest?” Christopher hadn’t known that.

  “Was,” Gregor said sadly. “But not much of one. It was our tradition that a man takes four ranks of warrior, before becoming a priest of war. My father only made it to the first-rank of priesthood before old age claimed him.”

  “It’s a bad tradition,” Lalania said, frowning delicately. “It is no good use of tael to split ranks. You only wind up half-competent in two professions.”

  “Nonetheless, it has always been my desire to join the priesthood,” Gregor said with a grin. “I hate waiting on you healers to get around to me. Better if I could heal myself.”

  “The Aesir now favor making their women priests, and their men warriors.” Lalania ignored Gregor’s joke.

  “A tradition they learned from us,” Disa said. The young priestess had stayed behind to finish her education with Svengusta and had come out with the cavalry. “In another few generations, they may even see their way to becoming healers.”

  “I doubt it,” Gregor argued. “Our fiefs are on the border, and danger is constant. We cannot afford to promote people to positions of power who cannot also fight.”

  “Healers can fight,” Christopher said. The Vicar Rana had frozen Black Bart like a statue. But Gregor and Disa were having an ideological argument, so they weren’t interested in his facts.

  “Not all power comes from fighting,” Disa said. “And I am not arguing against fighting. One healer and three knights can defeat four knights, a thousand tries against one.”

  “But you confess a healer cannot beat anything his own rank, do you not?” Gregor thought he had a good point.

  “Yes, I confess it. But that only makes my case.”

  Gregor was confused.

  Lalania explained. “She means to say that healers chose service to the cause over personal power. And frankly, I am half-minded to agree. The efficiency of the healer profession is commendable.”

  Poor Gregor was beset on every side by clever women. Then Christopher realized he was in the middle, too.

  “Hey,” he protested, “I didn’t choose to not be a healer. It was Marcius’s idea.”

  “I chose it,” Torme said challengingly. “I thought it the best way to serve my cause.”

  “Enough,
” Lalania ordered. “We need no theological arguments to divide us. Leave such discord to the enemy. We serve a common cause, each as we see right. And right now our question is plain: should Christopher ride outside the walls and expose himself to the enemy?”

  “Or our erstwhile allies,” Karl pointed out. “A battle between Nordland and Christopher produces only victory for the Dark.”

  “Let us test the waters, then,” suggested Lalania. “Send the patrol out, but without Christopher. If Nordland does pounce, he will leave empty-handed. He will not murder mere servants, no matter how much he hates Christopher.”

  “And if . . . others attack?” Christopher didn’t want to see his prize cavalry obliterated by some kind of infernal magic while he wasn’t there. Well, he didn’t want to see it while he was there, either. He was assuming he would make a difference. Given how little he knew of magic, that might not be a good assumption.

  “One sleep spell and half the company is down,” Karl said.

  “Your horsemen are too spread out for that,” Lalania corrected him. “And Gregor’s rank would be a stiff defense against that spell.”

  “I don’t fancy riding into combat without healing,” Gregor said. “I will be a prime target, at least until they learn that your peacocks can spit fire.”

  “I can heal,” Torme said. “At the Curate’s command, I will put your life above the lives of our own.”

  “I will also go,” Disa volunteered. “This is why I came, after all, to serve in battle. I will not shirk my duty.” She didn’t even have a weapon.

  “I will go, too,” Lalania said with an uncharacteristically sour glance at Disa. “As eyes and ears, if nothing else.” But Christopher had seen Lalania in action. She was deadly with a crossbow. “Yet you must stay behind, Christopher. Here, in your stone barracks, surrounded by your footmen, even the Gold Apostle would hesitate to engage you.”

  “Great,” Christopher said. “The King orders me to hunt ulvenmen, and so I’m sending every person I know except myself to do it.” A supreme irony; he had locked down his men until Karl’s arrival, and now that Karl was here, he was the one confined to barracks.

  “It’s only for a little while,” Gregor grinned. “You can come out to play once we’ve made sure the sandbox is safe.”

  Late that night Christopher had an unexpected visitor. Gregor came to his quarters, a mug of ale in each hand and a troubled look on his face.

  “I thought you might like a nightcap,” he said, although clearly that was not the reason he was there.

  “Sure,” Christopher agreed, and tried to give the man time to come around to it on his own. They drank in silence for a few minutes.

  “If you can ask me about magic,” Gregor said, “then I can ask you about women.”

  “You can ask, Gregor, but . . .”

  “It’s Lala,” the blue knight said, ignoring Christopher’s disclaimer. “Whenever we are apart, she is all I can think of. I’m not a fool; I know she does not feel the same. Yet when we are reunited, she showers me with such affection that nothing else matters, and she tolerates no other woman’s glance at me. Until the days begin to drag, and then she goes away again, to leave me to stew on my own while she . . .” Christopher understood the troubadour’s comment about whoring around now. Gregor, true to his love, was faithful, even when he knew she wasn’t.

  “Yes,” Christopher agreed. That was what the woman did.

  “What do I do?” the knight moaned.

  Psychological counseling was not really part of the priestly training he’d received, mostly because he’d received virtually no training. But he had fifteen years of life experience over the knight. He thought of something he’d seen on TV once.

  “Maybe you should stop sleeping with her.”

  Gregor was extremely dubious.

  “I mean it, Gregor. See if there is anything to your relationship besides sex.”

  He could have made a joke. He could have said something like, “What makes you think I want more than that?” He could have passed it off the way any virile young man would have, without a second thought. But he didn’t.

  “Why is it the good answers are always the last ones you want to hear?” He finished his mug and took his leave.

  Only after the knight was gone did Christopher realize how impolitic his advice was. If Lalania was the chain that kept Gregor bound to him, then he had just smashed at it with a sledgehammer. The only person who could possibly profit from his advice was Gregor.

  He sighed, recognizing that even understanding that beforehand he would have said exactly the same thing. The only people he could bring himself to take advantage of were the volunteers for that duty. Like Karl, who did all the work and accepted none of the reward. Or Torme, who stood behind him with a broom to sweep up his every oversight.

  Or Disa, who would put her cute little body in the jaws of slavering monsters, for no better reason than duty.

  It was a solid week before they let Christopher out of his prison. He did kata and paperwork, alternating between sweaty sword drills and inky-fingered supply lists and mechanical drawings, but his strolls back and forth under the tall gray walls of the barracks ground were becoming longer and more frequent, to the point where the men edged out of his way when he got near, as if shying away from a tiger pacing in a too-small cage.

  Only Alstanf saved his sanity. The architect came by most nights for a chat and brought his own bottle. They talked about the limits of engineering and the hazards of imperious bosses who issued dictums and left the technical details up to their subordinates. Christopher described flying buttresses, which Alstanf found fascinating; the architect in turn taught Christopher the many, many details of magic wall-building, such as how to mix mud without injecting bubbles that would weaken the structure later. True, he mostly provided this education as a series of complaints about the day’s difficulties, but Christopher was still grateful for the conversation.

  Now Christopher was along for a ride. The days were hot, muggy, and insect-ridden; the night was spent on soggy, uncomfortable ground after eating salted meat and hard bread. Worse, he was clad in the heavy plate he’d won from Bart, his chain mail still a disassociated pile of links.

  “Brave peasants this county has,” Gregor said. They’d seen farms and villages ten miles south of the city.

  “It is good land,” explained Karl. “Ulvenmen are in their past, but a rich harvest is in front of them.”

  “They’ve spread too far from safety,” Disa said sadly. “If the ulvenmen come again, many will die.”

  “There are no ulvenmen within a hundred miles,” Gregor answered. “If there were, they would’ve already heard this cavalcade of horses and fled.”

  “You want a smaller patrol?” Christopher barely felt safe with the twenty carabineers behind them.

  “It should be just us,” Gregor explained. “You, me, and the girls. Quick and quiet, like a knife in the dark. We’d have a lot more fun that way.”

  “Men and their absurd fantasies,” Lalania grumbled. She was surlier than he had ever seen her. She shared a tent with Gregor, but Christopher suspected sleep was all she was getting.

  Disa was still bright and cheerful, if gradually becoming more disheveled with each day. Karl and Torme, of course, were in their element.

  “I fear Ser Gregor is right,” Karl said. “Our troop makes too much noise and dust to trap anything unawares.”

  “Was there anything here to trap?”

  “I have little skill at this,” Lalania said. “Lady Niona could tell you the color of their shoes by their tracks. All I can say is that Fairweather must have traveled farther south.”

  “Then so should we,” Gregor said.

  “And follow to his fate? No, that is not wisdom.” Lalania brushed a clod of dirt from her shoulder, an act she repeated throughout the day. The heavy destriers churned the ground so furiously that the boundary between earth and air became blurred by a soup of mud, gravel, and rotting vegetabl
e material. Christopher had combed half a beetle out of his hair last night.

  “It does feel like a trap,” Christopher mused. “They lure us so deep that once we do fight, we can’t fight our way out. And all they have to do to set the trap is not be here. Our own frustration and greed drags us to them.”

  “Yet drag we must. We get no profit out of sitting in that city. And some of us have bills to pay.”

  Christopher was surprised at Gregor’s mercenary finances, until he realized the man was talking about him. Christopher was the one with bills to pay; specifically, thousands of gold pieces of bonds to redeem.

  “Then let’s bring the whole regiment out here.”

  “The Captain will never let you strip his city of its defenses—which now include your men. He would probably lock you in your barracks if he thought he could get away with it. No, Christopher, if you would hunt ulvenmen, you must do it the way it has always been done. Rank by the handful and daring by the bushel.” Gregor was smiling at the prospect, which tempted Christopher to question his sanity.

  But danger marched into his barracks. Right through his soldiers, and his advisors, and the hard stone walls, and the thick bronze-braced double doors. He’d barely shaken off the dust of the road and stopped looking around warily for an ambush when the Captain, a squad of city soldiers, and Joadan stomped into the courtyard.

  “To what do we owe the honor?” Lalania asked, interposing herself between the intruders and Christopher.

  “A simple question, which the Curate can easily answer, and send us on our way.” The Captain was pretending to be friendly, which could only signify true menace.

  “I—” started Lalania, but Joadan cut her off.

  “—have no place here, troubadour. I speak rank to rank, to the Curate only.”

  Gregor folded his arms across his chest. Christopher felt things were getting out of hand, so he stepped forward.

  “Thank you for not knocking down my door. But I have to say, this feels hardly less friendly, so ask your question and go.”