by George Hatt
CHAPTER SEVEN
Barryn
In a farmer’s barn a three days’ ride from the provincial capital, Dub unfolded a wooden field desk and chair and drew up a writ of indenture committing Barryn to one year of service to the tinker. It was the only way that a “barbarian” boy could show himself in the Empire without danger of immediate arrest, and the term was the shortest that existed in Imperial law. Without evidence that somebody vouched for him, Barryn was old enough to be charged with espionage, brigandry, and any number of other crimes that surly barbarians were wont to inflict on peaceable citizens, Dub told him.
“What then?” Barryn asked.
“Then I sell your indenture to someone I know in Brynn,” Dub said. “She’s open-minded and a shrewd businesswoman. She runs one of the most renowned public houses in the province. You will never sleep on the ground while you work for her. And she owes me a favor.”
Barryn thought for a moment. “Do I get any of the money? You’re selling me like a farmer sells a cow. I should get a share.”
“Ha!” Dub laughed. Barryn did not. Dub cleared his throat. “Very well. You drive a hard bargain. I’ll give you five percent of the net sale price.”
“Ten percent,” Barryn said, knowing what neither a “percent” nor a “net sale price” were. “And write it down on that parchment.”
Dub squinted at Barryn. “I thought you heathens were illiterate. And unsophisticated negotiators.” The tinker put quill to parchment and added the provision.
“We have runes and tree glyphs, but they do far more than your letters,” Barryn said, watching Dub scribble at the lengthening document. “I can carve this same agreement into a stone with fifteen runes at most.”
“This is the easy part,” Dub said, corking the ink bottle. “We will need to find a cleric to place his seal on it for it to be legally binding. And he won’t do that until he is satisfied you have disavowed your heathen gods and now worship Mahurin as the sole God of the Heavens and Earth.”
Barryn’s heart raced in fear at the blasphemous thought. Renouncing any of the gods and exalting one over the rest! The idea flew in the face of all he had been taught. The gods, ancestors and spirits collaborate and compete, and in so doing keep the powers of destruction and creation in balance. True, he had been cast out of his clan and was presumably unclean before them. But none of that was his choice. He licked his lips.
“Can I still pray to the ancestors and the Mighty Ones? The spirits of the land? The elements?” Barryn asked.
“No, no and no. At least not openly,” Dub said. “No strange rituals, animal sacrifices, heathen offerings, or whatever it is you barbarians do.”
“Oh,” Barryn said and fell into a dejected silence.
Dub gave him a kindly look. “You are a devout one, aren’t you? Yes, you can close your eyes and commune with whatever gods or spirits you want to. Just call it ‘silent prayer to Mahurin,’ and don’t tell anyone who or what you’re meditating on.”
Barryn thought for a moment. “But won’t Mahurin be angry that I’m still praying to the rest of the gods?”
“Mahurin is like any other god—the old gods we in the Empire abandoned long ago, the beings that the monstrous people across the sea worship, your spirits in the trees. They are all the same,” Dub said. “He has as much power as his worshippers give him. But never let on that you know this simple truth. People take their religion seriously, especially the people who rule us. Just keep your heresies to yourself and you’ll be fine. And, for Mahurin’s sake, don’t ever be caught dabbling in sorcery. That will earn you a place under the headsman’s axe just as quickly as inciting rebellion.”
Barryn nodded. The Caeldrynn also had strict prohibitions against sorcery. The Sagas were rife with the horrors and cataclysms unleashed in ancient times by feuding sorcerers and rampaging demons. But what do the Castle Dwellers consider sorcery? Barryn wondered as he found a cozy place in the barn to make his pallet for the night.
The walls of Brynn stretched to the opposite edges of the world, it seemed to Barryn. He had never seen a manmade structure as large as the city’s defensive works. The wall was 30 feet tall, crenelated, with round, 50-foot towers spaced along it and even larger ones flanking the great gates into the city. Imposing fortresses built directly into the wall flanked the Mother River’s doorway as it meandered into one end of the city and out the other.
They waited in a line of carts, wagons and a long crowd of gossiping and grumbling pedestrians, all waiting to pay the gate toll and enter the provincial capital. Armored men and well-dressed ladies bypassed the line entirely and entered through a smaller gate. They were too important to wait around in line while guards and actuaries searched each wagon and assessed the entry duty, Dub explained.
When it was their turn at the gate, Barryn and Dub stopped the wagon and stepped down. The guard glanced at Barryn’s writ of indenture, freshly endorsed by a traveling friar they had met on the road, while the customs official rummaged in the back of the wagon. Barryn’s bow and arrows were stowed away and labeled for sale along with some other small merchandise. Barryn hated to part with the fine weapon, but no one save the guards on the walls were allowed to carry ranged weapons in the city.
The customs officer returned to the front of the wagon. “Guild?” he asked Dub.
“The Worshipful Company of Sutlers and Tinkers,” Dub answered.
The officer leaned in closer. “Then are you here for the faire?”
“I come as a humble traveler to sell what I may,” Dub said quietly. The guard stepped away to the other side of the wagon for a moment as if to check something one more time.
“Come as a servant of Mahurin and be welcomed,” the officer said.
“My actions bear witness to my words,” Dub answered. The tinker took a folded, sealed paper out of his satchel and handed it to the official. “This is a full accounting of my goods and a pledge for the Emperor’s taxes,” he said, handing the paper to the officer, who made it disappear into his clothes. He waved the travelers through the gate without taking or counting money.
Barryn knew better than to ask Dub what was written on the paper, but forgot the encounter completely when he and Dub rode through the city gate. The young heathen saw more people as they pressed into the heart of the city than he had previously met in his life—hawkers, criers, guards, drudges, splendid figures in exotic garb. The frantic scene engulfing Barryn fascinated him and yet filled him with anxiety. There were no trees, only buildings stacked on top of each other up to four stories high and crammed along both sides of the streets. Barryn could not imagine where he could go to be alone with his thoughts in a place like this.
Dub steered the wagon deep into the city and across an immense stone bridge with spired towers flanking each end. When they were halfway across, the tinker pointed out two great fortresses on either side of the river a quarter of a mile away. They were the Grand Temple of Mahurin and the Governor’s Palace, Dub explained.
“I see treetops over the walls!” Barryn said, pointing to the temple.
“Those are in the prayer gardens,” Dub said. “The priests of Mahurin razed the defeated gods’ temples centuries ago after Mahurin conquered the heavens, according to scripture. But the priests kept the old groves that were dedicated to the gods of the land. They were renamed prayer gardens and opened to the faithful.”
“Why did the priests of Mahurin keep the groves?” Barryn asked.
“It’s a simple business decision,” Dub said. “Some people worship inside, chanting along with the priest, smelling the incense, and all that. Others like to worship outside under the trees that Mahurin created. The old gods made you choose whom and how you worshipped, thereby cutting out half of their potential customers. It was as silly as if a merchant chose between selling eggs or only bread. The priests of Mahurin sell both, as it were. To appeal to a wider range of customers, you see.”
They rode the cart through slums, plazas and market districts
until they reached a great walled villa. A pair of guards approached the cart and asked Dub his name and business. They were armed with staffs, rather than spears or halberds like the city guards, and clubs hung from their belts instead of swords. Leather cuirasses reinforced their padded, richly trimmed gambesons. The only steel they had were open-faced helmets on their clean-shaven heads and daggers on their belts. Where the guards were lacking in arms and armor, they surpassed even some nobles with their rich dress and adornments. Even their clubs and staffs were finely carved and polished.
Barryn gasped and looked down at his feet when they passed through the gate and into the courtyard of the villa. A dozen or so casually nude women strolled or reclined or bathed among the greenery and fountains. Several more leaned on the balconies of the great house itself, chatting and brushing their hair. The guards assiduously ignored them and went about their duties.
“This, young man, will be your new home for the next year,” Dub told his charge as they dismounted the wagon and followed a pair of guards toward the great house. “You will learn, among other things, to be just as blissfully ignorant of beautiful, naked women as these guards. That indeed is a skill most of us never learn and yet desperately need.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mithrandrates
Emperor Mithrandrates absently twisted the dagger he had found under his pillow this morning in his strong, black hands. He was dark, even for a Taucethian; his shaven head and powerful forearms contrasted starkly against the white mantle that signified him emperor. His square-cut beard hung a handbreadth below the rest of his close-cropped jaw and jutted as he frowned and considered the blade. He paced the marble throne room, his lithe movements and powerful form as imposing as those of his own elite guards.
Mithrandrates, like his father Emperor Lucian, had been a soldier and general before he ascended to the imperial sovereignty. He led his father’s armies during the Crimson Rebellion fifteen years ago. Only the rebel provinces’ surrender had saved the northernmost province of Aternis from annihilation at Mithrandrates’ hands. Alas, he had followed his father’s orders to spare the provincial capital, despite having it locked in a tight siege by land and its harbor blockaded by the powerful Imperial Navy.
Those heady days of martial glory were long past. He now drilled with sword and shield before dawn to stay physically fit and mentally sharp—and to work off aggression he could not manifest while clothed in the mantle of Imperial authority. His pell had taken many a vicious blow after frustrating audiences with his governors that would have been, under past emperors, directed at the poor fools who angered him.
But Mithrandrates was more than a military emperor. As he had ascended the ranks of the bureaucracy under his father’s reign, he forged alliances and showed himself a man who dealt fairly with ally and enemy alike. Not gently toward his enemies, but fairly. His network of assassins and informants ran deeply into even the hinterlands of the Empire and was paralleled by a system of loyal merchants, guildsmen, and Imperial functionaries. And it was by these systems that Mithrandrates solidified his father’s hold of Mergova’s newly annexed holdings and kept the provinces too busy bickering amongst themselves to pose a military threat to the Imperial seat.
Thus, when Lucian died and Mithrandrates took the mantle three years ago, he inherited productive lands, a well-disciplined professional army and a formidable navy. The capital could withstand assault from any three of the six provinces he ostensibly ruled, but there was no real danger of that happening. Only acts of tyranny far beyond anything Mithrandrates would stomach could unite the provinces against him. And in that case, it would be high time for a new emperor, he reckoned.
Father truly believed he was stern but just, Mithrandrates thought. He often reminded himself never to allow his definition of “stern” approach his father’s.
The new emperor rebuilt roads throughout the provinces and had them patrolled by enough Imperial cavalry to keep them safe for travelers while posing no military threat to the skittish governors. He chartered new guilds not only for bakers, masons and wheelwrights but also assassins, courtesans and mercenaries. The guilds ensured quality control for customers and fair wages for tradespeople—and loyalty to the Empire, to which they owed their franchises.
The priesthood of Mahurin, however, had proven to be much harder to infiltrate. Primus Bergammon employed the same tactics as the emperor, rewarding loyalty where he could and crushing dissent where needed. Many of the lesser clergy could be bought and sold at will—some had even bought their way into their clerical appointments in the first place—but the upper echelons seemed to be members of an invitation-only secret society loyal only to the Primus.
The captain of the guard entered the great hall and announced the arrival of the Primus. Mithrandrates walked toward the middle of the white, gleaming chamber. “Good. See him in.”
Perhaps this audience will tip the scales in my favor, the Emperor thought.
The pontiff of Mahurin paraded into the chamber with six Templars, the exact number of guards that Mithrandrates kept with him. All were clad in plate and mail, with the golden Sun of Mahurin emblazoned on their breastplates.
The Primus had a pink, kindly face that was clean-shaven and topped by a shock of white hair. He was one of the less ostentatious pontiffs, letting the simplicity of his white robes contrast with the ornate vestments of his clerics.
When the massive doors to the chamber were closed behind him, the Primus dismissed his guards. They fanned out and placed themselves among the columns at the periphery of the great hall, setting themselves at alternating positions with Mithrandrates’ guards.
“I am honored by your presence, Primus Bergammon,” the Emperor said. “Surely your duties to the Church permit you little time to visit laypeople such as I.”
“What are the duties of the priesthood if not to minister to the laity?” the Primus asked. His eyes glimmered with kindness, distraction and cunning all in the same moment. They barely rested on the blade in the emperor’s hand before taking on a quizzical air. “And what could be more pressing than a summons from the Emperor? It is urgent, whatever it is—too urgent to waste time with niceties such as a table, chairs and refreshment I see.”
“Not urgent, but informal. You’ll note that I stand, as well. And I have a perfectly serviceable chair in this room that I could avail myself of if I wished,” Mithrandrates said, indicating the spartan white throne with a slight sideways nod.
“Ah. Informal. Then let us make small talk. I trust you slept well,” the Primus said, glancing again at the blade that Mithrandrates still fiddled with.
“I slept well, thank you. But I had no appetite to break my fast.”
“The burdens of rulership weigh heavily on your mind, no doubt.”
“Yes. The burdens of ruling such a far-flung empire,” Mithrandrates said. “The sea hems us in on all sides of our island, and vicious little nobles rule most of it, not I. You are generous to call this an empire, let alone to say I ‘rule’ it.”
“Your governors serve you loyally,” the Primus said. “Why, none have dared revolt since your father was emperor.”
“The governors should not serve me. They should, as their titles imply, govern their slices of the Empire and nothing more,” Mithrandrates said. “Otherwise, it is only a collection of petty fiefdoms ruled by little lords and ladies feigning loyalty to a tyrant more vicious and devious than they.”
“Spoken like a true emperor,” the Primus said.
Mithrandrates could not tell if there was irony in the statement, but he did not worry about it. “I have something of yours, by the way, and I wish to return it to you.”
“Oh?”
Mithrandrates walked to one of his own guards and handed him the dagger. “Take this to your master. It belongs to him.”
The guard swallowed and took the knife.
“Do not be afraid,” the Emperor said. “You served the Primus well. Go.”
He walked briskly
to the Primus, took a knee before him, and presented him the knife. The guard then took up position beside the pontiff.
“I seem to have misplaced this,” Bergammon said, handing it back to the red-cloaked guard. “This indeed has been a productive conversation, but with your leave, my Emperor, I have church duties that require my attention.”
“By all means.”
The Primus turned to leave. Only four of his Templars followed.
Mithrandrates watched the pontiff and his depleted retinue go, then climbed the low steps of the dais and sat on the throne. He may never have a firm hold of the upper clergy, the Emperor thought, but he could still gain the loyalty of just about anyone who swung a sword.
CHAPTER NINE
Alcuin
Alcuin Darkwood stood in the solar of Falgren Keep, one of his least favorite castles in Brynn, and inspected his best suit of armor one last time before his valet packed it in a series of straw-lined trunks. They were preparing for the tournament celebrating the annual Imperial Council, and Alcuin trusted no one but himself to inspect his gear. This was his tournament armor—full plate, painted a glossy black with crimson detail work. He was the most renowned mercenary commander in the Empire, and for this occasion every year he needed his armor to show it. On campaign, Alcuin wore plate and mail, unadorned and blackened like the armor his men wore. The finish on the armor prevented rust and made its wearers look like pillars of black smoke frozen into human form, identifying him and his men as the fearsome Black Swan Company.
