by M. C. Planck
Cannan had stopped listening after the first word, draping the tunic over a thick wooden table. With one smooth motion he drew the huge black sword he wore, cutting a terrible arc through the air and into the table.
Sparks and bits of steel flew as the chain mail squealed under his blade. Cannan brushed the tunic aside and examined the table. The wood was dented but not scored.
“It is good,” Cannan said. “Get me another one, and one for the Vicar.”
“And Gregor,” Christopher said. Hadn’t he promised the man armor ages ago? “And Karl, and . . . well, everybody, really. Get one for everybody.”
He gave Dereth a stack of drawings, some of which matched the ones he’d given Fae and some of which didn’t.
“The cannon I understand,” Dereth said, “though I hope you understand a gun of these dimensions will weigh several tons.” Christopher had sketched a rifled cannon, intended for the day when he would need to knock down stone walls. Although its muzzle was only the same five inches across as the Napoleons, the barrel was longer and much thicker to allow for a truly massive charge of powder. “But these other tubes are too thin to hold a charge, even though you’ve stacked them together like organ pipes.”
“Those are rocket tubes,” Christopher said. “They only need to guide the rocket, not propel it. Just make a single tube for now, so Fae can practice.” The one drawback of his cannons was the slow rate of fire. The rocket tubes would let him shoot three dozen missiles at once. The massed charges of the ulvenmen had been terrifying; outside of his fort they would have been terminal. He really wanted machine guns, but while his craftsmen were doing surprisingly well at making machines and guns, they were not up to combining them.
He went looking for Lalania, but only found her when she came looking for him. As usual, she wanted something.
“I need command of your chapel. It is necessary that we have the wedding there, in the god’s hall, but your soldiers will not leave off their drills.”
They used the chapel as a lecture room, having noticed that the boys paid more attention inside the stone walls. The officers claimed religion was due the credit, saying the wooden gaze of the frieze of the god Marcius staring serenely down made the boys respectful. Christopher suspected it was the history of the building. His original crop of draftees had fought a desperate battle there against walking corpses and the evil Black Bart. In a night they had gone from village boys to victorious warriors, a journey that all of these young, beardless men were desperately eager to make.
“How long do you need it for?”
Lalania calculated, looking at her lyre for some reason. “One day will suffice, I suppose. You were going to give them all that day off anyway, weren’t you?”
“Sure,” Christopher agreed. At least she wasn’t asking for money. “I’ll declare a holiday.” Maybe it would make Gregor more popular with the troops he was going to be leading.
“Also,” she said, as she was leaving, “I need money. At least a hundred gold. Even cheap weddings are expensive, and this one should not be too cheap. Remember, Christopher, this will be our last taste of civilization for a while.”
Not too many days later Disa, Karl, and two dozen horsemen rode into town. Karl had brought all of the cavalry. Protecting the Lady Disa was more important than running patrols through the quiescent swamp.
“I’ve got wedding presents for you,” Christopher told them with a grin. He, Gregor, and Cannan were already wearing the new chain mail. Even though it was lighter, it was still a shirt woven out of steel. It turned every stairstep into an exercise machine. The two knights didn’t seem to notice it, so Christopher was gratified to have mortal company for his misery.
Gregor waded into the knot of horses and lifted Disa bodily out of her saddle, carrying her like a china doll. She giggled and blushed in ways Christopher had not thought to associate with the dedicated professional healer he had known in the swamp. Gregor, too, seemed a different man today. These people were used to mixing their martial discipline with their ordinary lives, stirring moments of personal expression into campaigns of war. They had to be. In a world where horror could attack from the grave, there was never any time off from fighting. Only Christopher found solace in the unrelenting rigor of military life, using its strictures to drown out every remembrance of the past, focusing solely on the now and the future.
Not only Christopher. Cannan stood by him silently, ignoring the loving couple.
Instinctively Christopher looked to see what Karl was looking at, and found the man wearing an unusual expression, a sort of bemused and sly smile. Christopher followed his gaze, to where a blushing Helga was waddling down the chapel steps.
“Go on,” Christopher told him. “You can report later. I’m not ready to hear it, anyway.”
“Very well, Colonel.” Karl saluted and led his men and horses to the stables.
Christopher almost stopped him. He almost suggested that Karl could have someone else see to his horse. But he didn’t. Karl had rejected the life of privilege and rank.
Sighing, Christopher stopped fiddling with the ties on his chain mail, quietly surrendering the idea of ditching it for the day even before the thought had been fully formed.
The next day dawned clear and cold, and Christopher proclaimed his holiday from his chapel steps to a general cheer. Of course, it was a vacation only for the men; the women still had their daily work to do, cooking and cleaning so that life could continue, and on top of that they had a wedding to put on. Nonetheless, they cheered as loudly as the men.
After that he felt singularly useless. There was nothing he could do to prepare for the wedding because the women wouldn’t let him, and there was nothing he could do for work because his men were off drinking, gambling, and having snowball fights. It was sometimes hard to remember how young they were.
He assigned himself the job of overseeing the deliveries that Finn’s drayers were bringing for the event. Barrels of beer and sacks of flour he expected; twenty yards of white-and-gold bunting he didn’t. When he found himself frowning at the cost, he fired himself from the position. Nobody noticed his absence, which only reinforced his uselessness.
He went looking for Karl and found him in the armory, meticulously checking each suit of chain mail. Another task Christopher wasn’t qualified for. Metal he knew, but whether the links would pinch or catch on the march, or yield too easily to a thrust, were facts learned only by hard experience.
“My Lord Vicar, I would like to ask a favor,” Karl said. Words Christopher had never expected to hear from the young veteran.
“Of course, Karl. Anything.” Only after he spoke did he realize he meant it. He owed Karl everything, certainly anything that was in his power to give.
“Though I am bound to the draft, and thus not free to dispense with my future, I would like permission to marry. It may grant the child a pension, if the Saint sees fit; at the very least it will allow him to inherit my name.”
Christopher could not stop himself from meddling. He never could. “Is that all? Is that the only reason you want to marry her?”
Karl quirked an eyebrow. “Isn’t it sufficient?”
Christopher sighed. “Of course. Yes, you are free to do whatever you want. I just wanted you to . . . want more.”
“One woman is very much like another,” Karl said. Christopher thought of all the women he’d known Karl had been with, and the many more he didn’t know about. He thought about a handsome young man growing up in a world where women outnumbered men by two to one. “She is as good a woman as any, peasant though she may be,” Karl finished, and Christopher thought to detect the tiniest sliver of defensiveness.
“I didn’t mean . . .” Christopher couldn’t argue with Karl’s misunderstanding, without naming it and thus making the offense real. In that moment he realized what he was looking for was already there. Karl could have had any woman he wanted. A prettier wife, a town wife, a daughter of a wealthy craftsmen. He could even have had a no
blewoman, if he wanted. But he had chosen a girl from his own background, a poor, farm-bred orphan. He had chosen a woman he was comfortable with.
“I didn’t mean to question your judgment,” Christopher said. “I just want you to be happy.”
Karl looked up from the armor in his hands, his rifle slung over his shoulder, standing inside a building dedicated to arming and defending the common men of his county. Everything he had wanted, and more, from the day he had first turned down promotion in hatred of the hierarchy of rank. Everything he and Christopher had built.
“Happiness is not possible in this life,” Karl said. “But I am content, if that is any consolation to you.” He shrugged, in manly dismissiveness, and Christopher was too embarrassed to reply.
He went in search of Helga instead, and found her in the village. She had rented a room now that the chapel was no longer her home; Svengusta had been staying at the inn. Christopher watched the lady of the house bowing and scraping to his lordly rank, and concluded this arrangement had to change.
“I need to build a house, don’t I?” he said to Helga.
She adjusted herself on the narrow bed that served as her living quarters. She had been given a place of honor in the house, to one side of the stone fireplace. The other side comprised the kitchen. The best spot in the house, directly in front of the fireplace, had been given over to one of Christopher’s Franklin stoves, its tin chimney leaning crookedly over to the flue. The peasants had adapted to the efficiency and cleanliness of the stoves, but they still hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding their houses around them.
“A manor, my lord. This is a house.” A crude wooden ladder stood in one corner, leading to the loft where the children slept. “You need a manor like one in town, with fancy glass windows and a proper staircase.”
“And a staff of servants to run it,” he said with a grin, picturing Helga in the house of her dreams.
“You already have a staff,” she answered. “Half the women of the town work for you.”
“And a guest room, of course.” He was thinking of Svengusta. The man shouldn’t have to live in an inn just because Christopher had evicted him from his chapel.
“Tom could build you one,” she said. “He has a very nice house in town.”
Christopher had been to that house before. It wasn’t that nice.
Helga saw the doubt in his face. “Not his old one. The new one he had built when his son was born.”
“He’s building houses now?” Christopher couldn’t remember how much he was paying the man these days.
“On the cheap, he claimed, since he had so many of your workmen and not enough dirt for them to shovel.”
Apparently he was paying Tom more than just money.
“Sure,” he said. “Have Tom build us a house. But no fancier than his, Helga. I’m not a real lord. I only have a village, and the boys in it still throw snowballs at my head.”
She giggled until she had to stop, putting a hand over her belly. “He is kicking all the time,” she said. “It will be any day now.”
“I told Karl he could get married.”
Helga smiled, like a sunbeam. “I knew you would. He didn’t want to ask, but I knew you would say yes.”
That meddlesome spirit clawed its way up Christopher’s spine to seize control of his throat. “Is it what you want, Helga?”
She looked at him with more frank wisdom than he had imagined possible.
“I know I do not have his heart,” she said. “I never will. That is given only to you. But I have the rest of him, and that is enough for me.”
Christopher struggled for something to say, but Helga cried out.
“Oh!”
“What?” he exclaimed, but the lady of the house was already there.
“It is the baby, my lord.” The housewife called out commands to the household, imperious as an admiral. “Goodwoman, breathe deep. Daughter, fetch the priest. Lord Vicar, please go away.”
He had no training for this. It wasn’t part of combat healing. He caught up to the woman’s daughter outside the house. “I’ll get Svengusta,” he said. “You can, uh, boil water.” Weren’t you supposed to boil water for babies?
The little girl looked up at him as if he were insane. “I’ll check the inn. You look into Fenwick’s; sometimes Pater likes to visit there.” She ran off, leaving him no choice but to follow her instructions.
Svengusta was indeed at Fenwick’s, playing a game of stones with the youngest of the Goodman’s herd of boys. Christopher rushed out his message. The old man nodded sagely and climbed to his feet.
“Leave the board, lad, and we’ll finish it up later.”
Christopher frowned, nervous. Svengusta wasn’t washing his hands, or changing into clean scrubs, and Christopher was pretty sure he wasn’t going to.
“Is she going to be okay?” What he knew of childbirth was blood and pain and hospitals.
Svengusta stared at him in amazement. “Do you think me so ready for the pasture, then?”
“No, of course not. I just mean . . . is it safe?”
The old man harrumphed. “I haven’t lost a mother or child since . . . well, since ever. Not one in fifty years, boy, not one. The Bright Lady may not be all that on the battlefield, but in the hearth and home her power is unparalleled.”
Of course. The healing magic that made limb-severing duels nonfatal would render birth equally safe. No woman would bleed out here. Even infection would invariably yield to the power of a Curate.
Christopher was unable to reconcile this tender mercy to the innocent with the incessant bloodbath of the thresher. Until he remembered that children yielded no tael. The dying only started in earnest when the tael was ready for the harvest.
The reconciliation soured him. Seeking isolation, he went to the chapel, the only empty building in town.
Even it was occupied, though. Lalania stood alone in the middle of the room, bales of cloth and spools of bunting piled haphazardly around her.
“Christopher,” she said. “Are you ready?” His part in the wedding was to say a blessing. Purely ceremonial, Lalania assured him, as the beneficial effects would only last a few minutes until the magic evaporated, but it was traditional.
“Helga’s having a baby,” he said. “And marrying Karl.”
She nodded. “An auspicious day. The peasants like to marry on the same day as a lord. And to be blessed with a child, as well. Sweet Helga could hardly ask for more.”
She could ask for romantic love, Christopher thought. But he didn’t say anything. He knew Lalania would be even more dismissive than Karl had been.
“Who’s going to help you with all this stuff?” he asked.
“No one you know,” she said cryptically. “Though I suppose you should observe. Or rather, I cannot deny you. But please, promise me you will not speak of the magic I show you.”
Lalania gave him a look charged with warning, expectation, and excitement, and then turned to her lyre. He had heard her play it before, but this time she did something different, speaking softly in her magical language, striking a chord he had never heard before. He wasn’t even sure it was possible to hear.
White tendrils of mist floated up out of the ground at the lyre’s call. Christopher’s hand went to his sword, an automatic reaction he no longer tried to fight, but Lalania was enraptured with triumph, so he did nothing else. The mist formed itself into figures, ghostly and vaguely shaped with arms and torsos. As she played the unreal chords, sounds he heard only as a reflection from some unknown place, the figures began to move. They seized cloth and tools, hammers and scissors, and began to work. With each passing second they moved faster and faster, until the room was a blur of flying mist, flapping cloth, and buzzing scissors. In a moment their work was done, the ghosts coming apart into strands and motes and then nothing at all. The chapel was left transformed, a festive banquet hall cloaked in streamers and drapes, choked with garlands of flowers, the floor swept clean and every stone polished to
a gleam.
“Wow,” Christopher said. It seemed like a much bigger effect than the minor magic he had seen her use before.
“A shameful use of power, I know,” she admitted. “But I could not resist a trial.” She didn’t seem at all ashamed. “It would be best, though, to not mention this to anyone.”
Curious that she felt the need to warn him twice. The bards were always secretive, though, even about trivial things. Christopher shrugged, rendered useless once again, and went to find somebody he could safely annoy. Fenwick’s boy seemed like a good choice.
He didn’t know the ceremony, so his contribution was limited to the spell. Svengusta stood at the head of the chapel, leading Disa and Gregor through their vows. The girl wore a simple white dress, which Christopher belatedly realized was more a symbol of her Church than her purity—she and Gregor had never bothered to conceal their shacking up in the swamp. Gregor wore his shiny new chain mail and his glowing blue sword.
It was a war god’s chapel they were marrying in, after all.
In the first row of spectators stood a handful of commoners, Karl and Helga and her baby among them. Svengusta waited after each stanza for the noble couple in front of him to recite it, and then for the three couples behind them to follow suit. Helga’s baby cried only once, and the entire chapel wept with joy to hear the sound of new life.
At the end Christopher came forward and cast his blessing, the twinkling lights falling down on the shining couples. Never before had he spoken the words so earnestly. This was all just an adventure for him, one he hoped to go home from someday. For these people it was the rest of their lives.
The eating and drinking and dancing were easier to relate to. He’d done plenty of that since he got here. This time, at least, all of the attention was on someone else, so he could hang back and enjoy it.
His man Tom came up to pay his respects, his wife and her toddler in tow. “Congratulations,” Tom said, perhaps automatically. He’d already said it four times, to the blessed couples.
“I didn’t do anything,” Christopher answered.
