by M. C. Planck
Christopher hung his head in his hands.
“I would almost suspect you of self-interest. You serve with the next draft, so it stands to reason that you want the levy to be as well-equipped as possible. You want their chances to be greater, because they are your chances.” Faren shook his head. “But I know you well enough to know this is not the reason. You don’t just want to make your three years safer or more successful: you want to change things. You want to change everything .”
The smallest muscle in Karl’s face twitched. It was enough to transform his perpetual grimace into wolfishness.
“I don’t want to upset your national politics,” Christopher protested. “I just want to give the boys a chance.”
Faren nodded approvingly. “You lie less convincingly than a two-copper whore. I like that in a man, shows he’s got a conscience. But you need to learn to not answer questions like that. The only reason you’re still alive is that nobody has guessed how much trouble you intend to cause. I suggest you keep them in the dark as long as possible.
“You do understand,” Faren said with emphasis, “what happens if this all goes wrong? You’ll be all alone on that scaffold. The only neck in the noose will be yours. Krellyan will cut you and your Church loose like an infected hangnail.”
“I understand,” Christopher said. “I can accept that.”
“You do that,” Faren said angrily. “If you shit your drawers and the King sends a squad down here to hang you, we won’t protect you. We can’t. If you piss off one of our allied lords, and he demands your head on a platter, we’ll give it to him. We have to. It is only our weakness that protects us. It is only our helplessness that convinces others to fight for us.”
“I understand. I can accept that.”
“Then what is it you cannot accept?” Faren asked with brutal insight.
Christopher looked down at the floor in shame. “We had a battle today. I killed a man. I killed him and I didn’t even think about it. I never saw his face. And while he lay there,bleeding to death, I spent my magic on a horse.
“It never occurred to me to heal the human being instead of the animal. Was it because the horse was crying and the man was silent? Or was it because I thought less of a man in a mask than I did of my pet?”
Karl sprung to his feet, his face contorted with disgust. He turned away, radiating contempt, until he gained enough control to speak. “That horse saved your life.”
“Karl has a point,” Faren said. “Those men would not have thanked you for saving them. Had you healed one, he would have stabbed you while you were still praying. And if you had not healed the horse, then you would have passed out there in the snow, and the assassins would have slain both you and Karl.”
“I know that,” Christopher said miserably, “ now. But I didn’t know it then. The point is, while it was happening, I didn’t even think of saving them.”
“No, you thought of saving your horse, and why not?” Faren asked. “He’s a good horse. Why should he be put down because some jackanapes chose to do evil? True, he’s only a horse, but he didn’t do anything wrong. They chose their actions; he didn’t.
“Look at it this way,” Faren argued. “Could you have done differently? If you had won the field, and the other assassins had surrendered, you would have healed the wounded, right? You did the most good you had the power to do at the time. You can’t be responsible for other people’s actions. The horse was an asset you simply could not afford to lose at that time. You did what you had to do.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Christopher said with contrition. “But is it enough?”
Faren snorted in disgust of his own. “You’ll get no sympathy from me, boy. If you’d brought them in alive, I would have just had to hang them. And I’m tired of harvesting your fields. I had to hang a man last week, on your account.”
“You hung him?” Christopher exclaimed, stricken. “I thought he could atone!”
“He had the chance,” Faren grumbled. “Wasted a fifth-rank spell and the Saint’s precious time, for nothing. He chose the noose despite it all.”
“I don’t understand,” Christopher said, puzzled and hurt. “Why would somebody choose to die?”
Faren looked at him piercingly. “Why does anybody choose anything? I don’t know, boy, you tell me. Why would someone choose Darkness?”
The perennial question of the heart: why would someone condemn themselves when others stood ready to forgive? This was a test Christopher could not pass, a question he was constitutionally unable to understand. Committed wholly to empiricism, to the notion that truth was something you extracted from the world, he could never really comprehend those who thought that the world derived from truth, especially from their private and personal truths.
“I don’t know, either,” he said slowly, trying to condense a lifetime of observation and confusion into a few words. “I guess sometimes people would rather cling to a pretty lie than face an ugly truth. Especially if the lie is one they’ve told themselves about themselves.”
“Indeed,” Faren snorted. “Could you be suggesting that a man might do what he absolutely had to do and yet still whine about it afterward? Still expect his friends to tell him he’s as gentle as a lamb, as innocent as a babe, as pure as the driven snow?”
Christopher blushed, stung to the core. “I don’t want to be a killer,” he blurted, trying to erase the memory of facts, to undo the bodies lying in the snow.
“And I don’t want to be old,” Faren said in a voice of sour wine. “Shit stinks. Who would have guessed? Maybe you shouldn’t have pledged to a god of War, eh?”
“But it’s so stupid. They think I have a magical sword. They’re attacking me for no reason.” He was saved by an idea. “I’ll sell it. Karl, you take it to Kingsrock and auction it to the highest bidder. We can use the money, and people will stop attacking me. Even if you can’t sell it, you’ll convince everybody that it’s not magical.”
“No,” Faren commanded, “I forbid it. In fact, I expressly forbid you to tell anyone it isn’t magical.”
“What? But then they will keep coming!”
“And what of it?” Faren snapped, raising his voice for the first time. “Did you never consider the alternatives? If the Invisible Guild is trying to kill you, then they aren’t killing other people. If the gentry are harassing you, then they aren’t harassing somebody else. You suck wickedness like a bloodworm sucks poison. Let them come. Better they should trouble you than honest, innocent, helpless folk. And what if they kill you and run off with your head? Then everybody’s problems are solved.”
The Cardinal thundered, “You were happy enough to shake the apple tree, boy. Do you expect me to listen to you whine about a few lumps? This is the price. You want rank, change, whatever the hell it is you are after—this is the price. Are you willing to pay it?”
Christopher buried his head in his arms, crushed under the weight of revelation. He had joined an army without really thinking. Not just any army, but one that fought up-close and personal with swords and spit in your face, not distant and abstract with artillery and jet-fighters. He had formed a plan to make weapons without really considering what weapons were used for. At no point had he pictured mangled bodies torn apart by cannonry, shattered limbs, and splintered houses. He had resolved to gain wealth and power without really accounting for where it came from in this world, a purple essence grown from lives and loves, histories and personalities, from sons and daughters of people he would never meet. He had thought he could take what he needed and go. He had not considered that he might have to leave some part of himself behind.
He had not acknowledged the price.
But here, with it before him in inescapable concreteness, he must also acknowledge what he was buying. It seemed that Maggie stood just outside the room, waiting, and the hollow pain stretched from his heart deep into his bowels. What was she, and the life they had shared, really worth to him?
Finally he raised his
eyes, looked across the room to the grim judge who glowered out from Faren’s age-lined face.
“I’ll need a bigger escort.”
14.
ENTER THE TROUBADOUR
With ill-concealed distaste, despite it being his own idea, Cardinal Faren handed over a dozen writs of arms. This meant Christopher could raise armed troops—at his own expense, of course. Karl only twitched at any mention of the Church police, and he wasn’t terribly sanguine about hiring mercenaries either.
“They’d just be bought out by the Invisible Guild,” he said. “We don’t need fighting skill, we need loyalty.”
Instead, they agreed to recruit the local boys. These were the ones Christopher would be serving with next year anyway. And they weren’t really boys, being seventeen, but the term “men” was reserved for those who came home from the draft. Faren said Christopher could buy the boys off from their parents for the outrageous price of a gold a week as replacement for their lost labor. Then all he had to do was feed, clothe, and arm them, and convince them to risk their lives for him. He had to offer them something besides gold, though, otherwise they’d be bought out by the Guild too. He had to offer them something the Guild couldn’t. He had just the thing: Karl.
The Church made official announcements every day at noon. Usually there was nothing to cause excitement. This morning was different. Even the acolyte proclaiming the list choked and had to cough before he could finish.
“Goodman Karl Treyeingson has announced that he will hold a special training class for a dozen last-year boys, to prepare them for the draft. Interested parties should contact Pater Christopher at Burseberry Chapel by next Tenday. Classes will last—” he choked again. “—until the draft. Apprentice buyouts will be provided for quality applicants. Room and board provided.”
Karl had insisted on sneaking out of town immediately after the announcement went public. “If they won’t walk a few miles, I don’t want them,” he explained.
Christopher found it ironic that the day he’d ridden in with a cheque for a thousand gold was the first day he’d spent in town without spending any money. He’d barely had time to deposit it with the astonished clerk and make the necessary arrangements. Next to that vast sum, Karl’s hard-won contribution from selling the armor in Kingsrock seemed a pittance.
“Go to town,” he told Fae and Tom. “Rent a place to live and work. Buy more equipment. And start looking for people you can hire.”
“Give us money,” Fae retorted, so he did, counting out stacks of fat gold coins that sparkled and reflected from their eyes.
She made the coins disappear and then resumed the conversation.
“Why do I need more equipment?”
He couldn’t tell if her defensiveness was real or an opening move in one of her secret negotiations. “There are other things I need you to make. I warned you there’d be new ideas. And you too, Tom. Now that I’ve got money, I’ve got lots of ideas.”
“People to hire?” Tom asked.
“Starting with the drayman, for you.” Christopher handed him another stack of gold coins. “I want the two of you to start collecting manure from other villages, the older the better. Just pile it up somewhere convenient in Old Bog. If anybody objects, tell them to take it up with me.”
“What new ideas?” Fae demanded.
Block-printing would count as a new idea for her, in this world of the personal and the handmade, but she could never draw enough bonds by hand.
“You’ll see.”
“That was a profitable trip you took,” Tom observed, still fingering the shiny coins.
“I suppose you could say that,” Christopher said ruefully, thinking of what it had cost him.
By midafternoon the first boy showed up from town. Christopher assembled his regular crew and told them what the deal was. He explained that Karl would be in charge of the selection, but they didn’t seem overly worried. Probably they assumed he would pick them first. Probably he would, because he could trust their loyalty.
Karl ran the five boys ragged for half a day, allegedly testing them for the positions. Christopher suspected he was just having fun. A few other boys showed up before dark, and Karl told them to come back tomorrow. One of them complained about having made the trip for nothing, so Karl told him he needn’t bother to return at all.
That night was the last night Tom and Fae would be dining with them. Christopher was going to miss Tom’s good cheer. He wouldn’t miss having Fae around that much. It wasn’t that she was unpleasant, just that she was, well, distracting.
Belatedly he realized he needed to warn Helga. “Um. We’re going to have a dozen of those louts living here soon. Can you cook for that many people?”
Helga’s eyes widened. She said yes anyway.
Over the next few days Helga got a practice run, as she fed batches of applicants at Karl’s suggestion and Christopher’s expense. Any complaints Christopher might have made were silenced by the way their eyes widened at the hams and sausages bought from the tavern.
While Karl ran them through the village like an obstacle course, Christopher struggled to master drafting with pen and ink. Frankly, he felt the boys had it easier.
On Tenday they had the largest crop, as it was the weekend and the last day for the trials. Karl was satisfied with the turnout.
“We’ve drawn most of the eligible boys in the county. I’ll make my final picks tonight. Then we can go to town tomorrow and spend some more of your money.”
He had told all the boys the announcement would be made at Knockford Church at the start of the week, and they’d better be there if they were interested. He wasn’t thoughtless about it, though. He’d told at least half the boys they didn’t need to worry about showing up.
One of those unlucky ones sought out Christopher after the regular afternoon ride. He was a short, skinny kid, missing three fingers on his right hand: Charles, the tavern-master’s son.
“Begging your pardon, Pater,” he stammered. “Karl said I could talk to you.”
“Of course you can,” Christopher replied, “but not about the class. He’s picking his own students. And aren’t you too young anyway?”
“I was born a few days before the cutoff,” Charles said. “But I’d rather go out with you, and my parents said I could go early if I did.” Understandable enough, given that Christopher had already saved the boy’s life once. “Karl didn’t pick me, on account of I can’t wield a spear with only one finger.” Krellyan’s regeneration was expensive. It wasn’t going to be used on a peasant when he didn’t need it. He could still work in his father’s tavern. “But Karl said to tell you I can read and write.”
That was interesting. Even Karl wasn’t literate. When he had signed as a witness on the mineral rights to Old Bog, Karl had laboriously printed out his name like a sacred engraving. It was the only word he knew how to write.
“How is this?” Christopher asked.
“Sister Margaret taught me,” the boy answered, “I want to be a priest after the draft.”
“You can write with only one finger?” Christopher asked, curious.
“Oh no, Pater, I write with my left hand.”
Christopher raised his eyebrows. “Then why don’t you use a spear in your left hand?”
The boy looked at him in dismay. “You can’t do that, Pater, you’ll break the shield wall.”
Christopher steered the conversation back to more familiar ground. “Can you do sums?”
“Yes, Pater, a little.”
“Let’s have a test then. Here, add up all the numbers between one and fifty.” He handed Charles a sheet of paper that he’d already ruined with bad drafting.
While the kid scratched away, Christopher discussed his trip to town with Helga. She wanted things, like pots and pans and mixing bowls.
“If you expect me to feed an army,” she sniffed, “you have to spend like a lord.”
Christopher agreed and suggested she hire a girl or two part-time to help. Much to
his relief, she accepted.
The kid was finished, so Christopher went over to check his work. “And the answer is—wait, no, don’t tell me—” He closed his eyes, worked the Fibonacci formula in his head. “Twelve hundred and seventy-five.”
Charles’s eyes grew wide for a moment, then narrowed again. “You knew the answer in advance,” he accused, before he remembered he was talking to an adult and added, “Pater.”
Christopher laughed. “Okay, pick a different number.” The kid rattled off a two-digit number, and Christopher gave him the answer. He had spirit: he came back with a three-digit number. Christopher told him the result and then asked, “Are you willing to check that one? It could take a while . . .”
“Is it magic?” the boy asked in defeat.
“No,” Christopher said, “it’s craft. And I’ll teach it to you, if you want.”
The boy’s eyes shone. “Yes, Pater, I would like that.”
“Then here’s your job. You keep track of everything we buy and use for the troop, and tell me when we need to buy more. The last thing I want to do is find out we’ve got eleven loaves of bread when we need twelve.” He didn’t actually care about bread, but managing ammunition stores for an army would be more accounting than he could bear. If he could teach this kid how to do it, he wouldn’t have to.
The boy nodded again, bubbling over with excitement.
“Go tell Karl what I said. And come with us to Knockford tomorrow.”
When he went to the tavern for his afternoon pint with Svengusta, there was a stranger in the bar. Strange, because women were so rarely allowed in the hallowed drinking hall. This exception was understandable, however—long blonde hair, a generous endowment over a thin waist, and a young heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and red, full lips.
She was singing and accompanying herself on a lute. She was very good, and very pretty, but not enough to melt the ice. The villagers had not overcome the memory of the mummers, and remained suspicious and cold. When the song was finished, to a silent crowd, she gave up and approached Svengusta and Christopher’s table.
