But before Matinios could start an inquiry, the captain said, “I knew your father, you know.”
Matinios faltered, and tried to play it off as tripping on a loose stone on the path. This was not what he expected. “No, Captain, I didn’t know that.”
“Not well, I admit,” Braylar said as they descended the last stone steps and headed toward the ramshackle collection of buildings at the base of the hill. “But he was an exemplary soldier, I know that to be true. Such a challenging thing, living up to our fathers, whether we truly understand them or not, yes? We overvalue them, undervalue them, rarely know them as they truly were. And yet we spend much of our lives struggling to win their praise, or surpass them, or destroy them.”
Matinios tried to think of a good response, was mostly unsuccessful, and settled on, “I appreciate you saying so. About my father. That he was a good soldier, I mean.”
Braylar stopped and faced him. “I will tell you one other thing, Matinios. Unlike your father, you were discharged due to your inability to follow simple orders. Perhaps for a good cause, perhaps not. But fail to obey a direct order from me, or jeopardize our mission in any way, and I assure you I will not be half as forgiving as Commander Darzaak. That is understood, I hope?” His mouth twitched into the smallest of smiles.
Matinios felt his face flush and nodded. He tried to smile in return, wondering if it looked as carved and false as it felt. “Yes, Captain. Well understood.”
“Very good,” Braylar said, clapping him on the back hard enough to rattle his ribs. “Let’s try a bit of the cat piss the locals call ale, but mind, not too much. We have a busy night ahead.”
* * *
Matinios crab-walked up the hill in the dark with the small group of Jackals. The moon was curved and thin like a Grass Dog blade, but hidden behind a cloak of slow-moving clouds. Matinios grabbed scrubby grass as he leaned forward to steady himself, wondering if everyone else’s breath sounded so obscenely loud in their ears.
The Jackals wore wool tunics over their armor, and their weapons were still all sheathed so there wasn’t much metal to glint, even if it had been a bulbous full moon.
This Temple of Truth compound was a relatively small complex—they had passed some others en route as fortified as small castles—but it still had walls and guards. Plenty of ways for things to turn sour and bloody.
Matinios looked ahead and saw Lloi, the one woman in their group, who happened to be a Grass Dog. A short sword at her hip no less curved than the moon, her mutilated hand on her hip, the last digits chopped off. Matinios wondered, for about the thousandth time, what a severed savage was doing in the middle of a Jackal company. It would be one thing if they had to cross the Green Sea and needed a scout or an interpreter to the godless tribes that called the grassland home. But in the middle of a clandestine operation in Anjuria? Nothing but strange.
Matinios had seen her ministering to the captain, circling him like a nurse maid. There was a peculiar relationship there, but he hadn’t parsed out the nature of it. Yet. And when he did, it would be just the thing for his report to Cynead.
About thirty feet from the base of the wall, Braylar raised a hand. The small group crouched in a close circle as he rasped, “While the guards in this temple are no Syldoon,” he said, looking at the small group, “they still bear arms and outnumber us four to one.”
Mulldoos snorted. “Ten to one be something to start fretting over, Cap. Remind me again why we aren’t just storming the place. Be a lot simpler to just gut them all, find what we need real casual-like, and set the place blazing when we’re done. Got surprise on—”
“Because,” Braylar replied, “while Commander Darzaak did grant us some latitude in carrying out this little Anjurian operation, he insisted we not call undue attention to ourselves, and bloodletting, atrocities, and large fires are not, as a rule, overly subtle. And because, as much as I value your stalwart belief in our inherent superiority, I will not risk the lives of our men when we do not know for certain what we will find inside. And because—and this bit is really paramount, so do pay attention—because I issued an order. Not a suggestion or a solicitation. I do hope that clarifies things.”
“Ayyup,” Mulldoos said, “with clarity to spare, Cap.”
Matinios wiped some sweat off his brow and tried to sound casually curious. “Captain, you said Commander Darzaak granted latitude. But aren’t you here on the emperor’s mandate? I thought he was the one who sent Tower companies like this into Anjuria to stir up trouble?”
Lloi shook her head and gave a low whistle. “I never seen Sunwrack, never even put a toe in your empire proper, and even I know not to go asking fool questions like that.”
Hewspear looked the least comfortable crouching in the dirt, as he had the longest frame to fold up, but he still spoke in a strong voice, even whispering. “My boy, I would have thought you’d served the Tower long enough to know, but there are always things in play here...” he raised a hand above his head, “that the rank and file are not privy to and cannot possibly fathom. We answer to Captain Killcoin, and he answers to Commander Darzaak. The rest—agendas, mandates, overarching strategies—do not concern the common soldier. Or the clerk accompanying.”
Mulldoos didn’t bother with niceties. “What the nettlesome witch and the old goat here are trying to say is, shut your mouth, do your job, and don’t be a little horsecunt. Clear it up any?”
“Absolutely,” Matinios replied. “With clarity to spare.”
Vendurro and a few other soldiers chuckled but Mulldoos only nodded slowly and laid a hand on the pommel of his falchion. He wouldn’t be able to draw it in that position, but the threat was obvious enough. Matinios ignored the man and the threat.
Braylar said, “We get in, quietly, quickly. What we seek must be in the vaults underneath the temple. We find it and get out the same fashion, yes?”
“Begging your pardon, Cap,” Sergeant Glesswik said, “but wouldn’t what we’re after be likely to be in a scriptorium? You know, being written and all?”
“Oh, sure,” Mulldoos replied, “that would make a whole heaping load of plaguing sense and we’d all be slapping you on the back, congratulating you on being such an insightful bastard. If this temple had a scriptorium. And you weren’t such a dumb bastard instead.”
Matinios had no idea what use the emperor (or even the Jackal Tower) could have for Temple of Truth records or documents. But at least that confirmed the nature of their odd prize, if not the particulars.
Vendurro said, “It’s a good day for crossbows. Well, night, that is. And we ain’t shooting bolts willy nilly all over the place, you know, on account of the sly sneaking and all.”
Glesswik punched him in the arm. “You’re an ass and a half, you are.”
“Me? You’re the plaguing idiot who thought they had a scriptorium.”
Braylar rose slowly. “We proceed,” he said. “In silence, I hasten to add.”
* * *
Matinios dropped down on the opposite side of the wall, heart beating fast, sweat dripping faster, eyes scouring the shadows around the wattle and dab meditation huts and the temple beyond for any movement. He knew most of the guards would probably be in the high priest’s manor house fifty yards farther north, or the barracks alongside, but there were still patrols. He kept his hand on the handle of his axe.
If they kept to their routines the Jackals had observed the last tenday, a pair of priestguards would have completed a circuit of the complex not long before, circling around the old temple, and wouldn’t do so again for two hours at least. That was one thing the Jackals had going for them—this was a lesser temple, and its guards were surely more used to dealing with vandals and petty thieves than an assault from Syldoon troopers.
Still, plenty of ways for things to go sour.
The Jackals hunkered behind a round meditation hut and waited. Vendurro moved ahead, hugging the edge of the small ramp that led to the stone altar. When he
gave the clear signal, Braylar started for the temple with the Syldoon at his heels, everyone moving briskly across open ground, darting between huts as quietly as they could in muffled armor.
To Matinios, it sounded like they couldn’t have been noisier if they were banging pots together and singing filthy songs at the top of their lungs, but it must have just been a trick of ears and nerves, because no alarm was raised.
They collected against the temple wall, and Matinios felt the deep divots in the old stone as he tried to master his breathing again.
Waiting for a skirmish or heading into hostile territory had been easier than all this skullduggery. With a battle, you might not know precisely how it would play out, but you could be certain it would result in spilling blood, cracking shields, and hoping you didn’t step in a gopher hole or get blinded by sun glinting off a helm. Still more predictable than this.
Lloi leaned in close to him and whispered, “Got yourself an axe. Some armor under that stinky tunic too, I’m thinking. Weird equipment for a scribbler, don’t it?”
Matinios replied, “What’s weird is a Grass Dog in a Jackal company.”
She chuckled softly and ignored that. “Why is a soldier playing scribbler playing soldier?”
He gritted his teeth. “Captain asked for silence, didn’t he?”
“So he did,” she replied. “You best stop yapping then.”
Hewspear, being tallest (if oldest), braced himself against the temple wall, and Vendurro scrambled up his back, hugging the crumbling temple, stopping just under the window ledge. He listened for several long moments and then he rose up and peered over, raining dust down on the lieutenant’s head.
Vendurro whispered, “No priestguard around, no lantern anyway. Got to figure he ain’t stumbling around in the dark. Good time to go in.”
Captain Braylar replied, “Very good, Sergeant. Find him and put that light out permanently. Quietly though. So very quietly, yes?”
“Aye, Cap. Quiet-like. Got it.”
With Hewspear and Mulldoos giving him a boost, Vendurro hoisted himself up to the ledge, spun his body around, careful not to catch the crossbow hanging on his back, and lowered himself down inside the temple.
The Jackals drew their weapons, and Hewspear unwrapped the leather binding from the head of his slashing spear. Braylar guided the company along the temple wall, hugging the old building, moving so slowly it was almost painful.
They stopped beneath the porch at the front of the temple, the landing just above them, the entrance to the battered edifice a few feet away. Then Matinios heard them, priestguards, very close. It sounded like two of them. The Jackals could easily overwhelm them, but that would mean running around to the stone steps, or at least climbing up the side, and that meant plenty of time to shout out a warning, call other guards.
So they waited. And waited some more, still as gargoyles, listening for something, though Matinios wasn’t sure what.
Then, finally, the sounds of tumblers in an ancient lock, tunking and clunking loudly in the dark.
It sounded like one of the priestguards turned around. “You got to piss again, boy? Swear you got a bladder the size of a squirrel’s left—”
Mulldoos boosted Braylar up to the landing and climbed up after, the rest of the Jackals following like wraiths.
Matinios rose, about to pull himself up, and saw Braylar swing his wicked flail, the spiked Deserter heads gouging a priestguard in the side of the neck. The guard gargled and started to go down. The Deserters whipped back the other way, careening off the man’s neck on the other side for good measure. The man dropped.
The other guard spun around, pulling his sword from the scabbard, and started to yell something, but Mulldoos brought his falchion around with both hands, the blade striking the man in the midsection. Even though it didn’t sever the mail hauberk under the surcoat, the man doubled over, shout cut off, and Mulldoos chopped down on his exposed neck twice, crunching the spine in half.
A moment later the door creaked open and Vendurro stuck his head out. “You all waiting on perfumed invitations? Come on, already.”
Four Jackals dragged the two bodies inside the temple, and Vendurro pulled the door shut and locked it in place again.
Another guard lay on the floor of the narthex, a bolt sticking out of the back of his neck. Matinios couldn’t help being impressed—the Syldoon were as professional and efficient as expected.
“See?” Vendurro said, looking at Mulldoos, “Not totally undefended, is it? Maybe we got something here after all.”
The big lieutenant picked up the dead guard’s hooded lantern and looked around the temple. “You stash another ten bodies in the apse then, did you? Because if not, three guards ain’t much of a serious defense, is it?”
Braylar turned to a Jackal. “Stay in the antechamber, and more important still, stay alert. Notify me immediately if there is any unexpected company, yes?”
The Jackal nodded, mace and buckler in hand, and disappeared into the shadows of the narthex.
The group moved out into the open nave. It was difficult to make out much more than the contours and general shape of things in the gloom, even after Matinios’s eyes adjusted. A few decorative candles gave off a flaccid light. But they had all had been inside the temple recently, disguised as penitents, so they knew the general layout.
Matinios wondered what the Old Gods would have made of this usurper temple. That was, if they had stuck around instead of abandoning humanity. Probably indifferent.
Everyone waited, weapons drawn, as the captain slowly pivoted, holding his flail in front of him like a divining rod, the Deserter flail heads spinning in front of his face. None of the Syldoon seemed overly concerned by his strange behavior or hid it well if they were, which made it all stranger still, but Matinios couldn’t help wondering what in the hells the man was doing.
Braylar led them down the middle of the nave between rows of wooden benches that were facing each other. Above, the Wheel of Truth—the circular band of iron fixed with silk screens depicting the Deserters leaving the world, and the new gods slowly entering to fill the spiritual void—hung from chains from the upper reaches of the egg-shaped dome.
The Jackals crept down the aisle to the round altar at the front, and Braylar led them off to the right into the transept. The captain might have been conspiring against his emperor, but Matinios had to grudgingly respect an officer leading from the front.
Braylar was first down the spiral staircase, with Mulldoos directly behind him, falchion in one hand, the priestguard’s hooded lantern in the other, now that they didn’t fear alerting anyone.
The small company made its way round and round, deeper into the earth than Matinios expected. One or two turns should have brought them to a basement, but the stairs kept winding. The air grew colder as they spiraled, and his skin felt clammy, sweat starting to chill on his flesh.
Finally the spiraling stopped and Matinios stepped out of the stairwell onto a dirt floor, having to duck a bit. Hewspear was hunched over like a broken hermit, his slashing spear held horizontally in front of him.
The lantern lit the tight rectangular room, stone support columns that looked older than the world holding up a corbeled roof. There was a small wooden desk in one corner in front of a stool, what looked like a storage room off to the right, wooden shelves laden with weathered tapestries and vestments and some barrels and little else. Ahead, a rickety looking cabinet stood against the wall with clay jars and beaten brass bowls on the shelves.
Surely there was nothing of value here. It was barely even a passable junk room. Even the rats had abandoned it.
Vendurro scratched the tuft on his chin. “Cap, are you sure this is the right—”
“We are in the correct temple in the correct region in the correct kingdom, Sergeant. Yes, quite sure. Garton and Mosslick, check the room to the right, and be quick about it. Miss nothing. Vendurro, search the desk. Burraku, take a look at
the shelf ahead there.”
The Jackals moved off to obey, and Mulldoos stepped closer to the captain. “Could be we got lousy intel, Cap, or—”
Braylar said, “You were quite thorough in your interrogation, Lieutenant. You have singular skill in that area. That Anjurian did not lie.”
“But maybe he just repeated a bunch of superstitious horseshit he knew you were keen to hear because he was real eager to stop hurting.”
Braylar said, “It is quite possible that this is simply an abandoned undercroft. It is equally possible that what we seek was hidden here so many hundreds of years ago that it has been almost entirely forgotten. Either way, we leave only when we have exhausted every—”
“Cap!” Burraku waved them over to the shelf.
Braylar, Hewspear, and Mulldoos walked over, and Matinios followed.
The young spotty soldier pointed at the floor. “Now that’s right odd, ain’t it?”
They could make out footprints in the carpet of dust, some fresh, some ancient, but nothing else.
“Is it?” the captain asked, clearly irritated. “How so, soldier?”
Burraku pointed at the base of the cabinet. Whatever footprints might have been in the dust were smeared into obscurity when someone had pushed the cabinet against the wall.
All but one. Half of one, really, under the edge of the warped wood. Stepping away from the wall. Which should have been impossible.
Mulldoos looked at the captain, saw him smiling, and then practically yelled, “Move it aside already, you bastard!”
The Jackal put his back into it and shifted the creaking cabinet to the right. It nearly collapsed.
There was a narrow wooden door behind it, with a single rusted iron ring handle.
Braylar called out, “Jackals, to me.”
“And Grass Dogs,” Lloi said, walking toward them, a grin on her broad copper face. “Rude to exclude, ain’t it?”
Mulldoos crammed his big pale hand in the rusted loop, clearly expecting it not to budge, but the old wood cried out as he heaved, shifting an inch towards them. After several tugs, the door finally came free with an awful groan.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 16
