Lord of the Silent Kingdom (61 page)

Hecht was not eager for a fight. But a fight would stir the political cauldron. And he did want that kept bubbling, whether or not his most secret self remained faithful to the mission given him by his first master, Gordimer the Lion.

The review of the departing troops done, Hecht went to see Hagan Brokke. Brokke was apologetic about his failure to handle the Navayans. He had paid the price of failure, physically. He would not have survived long had he not come into the hands of the healing brothers.

From Brokke’s bedside Hecht went to see the prisoners Brokke had brought in. He expected a handful.

There were more than forty, the majority being knights and minor nobility. Those had been given comfortable quarters in Inconje. Those of more immediate interest, though, had been driven into a stock pen.

“Bo. I haven’t seen you for an age.”

“Been too busy to socialize. Sir.” Biogna scowled at all the bodyguards. Madouc must have had a dream visit from Cloven Februaren. He had increased the protection significantly.

“Are you involved in this?”

“I was out there with Brokke. Being his Titus Consent. Keeping him convinced that we needed to take a few prisoners.”

“Why such a mob?”

“Most of them can be ransomed. The men insisted. But there are some interesting ones, too.”

“Them?” Hecht indicated the men in the pen.

“Artecipeans. Every one. Probably useless for anything but Society food.”

“Uhm?”

“They’re not just heretics, they’re Unbelievers. Trying to bring back the Old Gods. Virulently dangerous.

Unlike those ones back yonder in the other pens. That whole clutch there are Khaurenese we picked up at Mohela ande Larges. One of Immaculate’s bishops, a Praman priest of some kind, and a Deve elder.

A couple days later, we found a Perfect Master hiding in some brush. Wouldn’t have known it. He wasn’t in costume. But the ones from Khaurene knew him. One of them said something before his brain checked in.”

Hecht considered the Artecipeans. They avoided his gaze. “I’ve seen some of these men before.” One face, in fact, he recalled from the crowd of gawkers outside Anna’s house the night they moved her to Principatè Delari’s town house. “I’ll work up a list of questions. Whoever answers them honestly won’t get turned over to Archbishop Farfog. Show me what else you’ve got.”

The captured soldiers were not impressive. Prisoners of war seldom were.

Biogna said, “This might be the best catch. Bernardin Amberchelle. Count Raymone’s ugly cousin. In the top five on the Society’s wanted list. He killed a bunch of their thugs. That’s the Perfect Master over there, with the girl. He was traveling with Amberchelle. Says the girl is his daughter. He was trying to get her to safety in Khaurene. He’s lying. She has a different accent. They’re both very careful to protect her.

She’s got to be somebody important.”

“Pity Ghort’s gone. He might be able to use the cousin to get to Raymone.”

“Send a messenger. He can use the information.”

“Good work. Keep after these people. Use Farfog as leverage.” Hecht considered the old man and the girl. The girl appeared to be about twenty, possibly not unattractive under the grime. She had a ferocious look.

“The Amberchelle person. Was he wearing or carrying anything we can send to Antieux? To prove we have him?”

“I’ll find out.” Skirting the certainty that the soldiers who caught him had relieved him of everything of value.

“Do that.”

Hecht avoided Morcant Farfog for two more days. By which time he had Castreresone under control. It was not a pleasant interview. Those who had reported the Archbishop’s failings had not exaggerated.

Hecht endured what he had to endure and gave the minimum in response to demands. The Archbishop went away thinking he had won several major points. In fact, Hecht had yielded little.

He told Titus Consent, “That man must be beloved of God. He’s too stupid, venal, and opinionated to survive otherwise.”

Farfog had been vigorously obnoxious from the moment he entered the White City. Local Brothen Episcopals fed him names where they wanted plunder or vengeance.

It was one of the most interesting days Piper Hecht ever enjoyed. In the morning, while reviewing a force of two thousand moving west to add to pressure on the Khaurenesaine, he received word that his troops had engaged enemy mercenaries in a series of skirmishes and small battles and had overcome them in almost every instance. Numerous towns and fortresses had sent surrender offers as a result.

More good news arrived early in the afternoon. Count Raymone Garete seemed inclined toward reason, suddenly. Having been apprised of his cousin’s situation. He was now willing to talk, though apparently unwilling to yield.

Immediately afterward came news that Sublime V had gone to his reward. Brothe had begun the monthlong series of ceremonies and rituals that would end with a conclave to choose a successor. Hecht ordered the appropriate shows of mourning — but instructed his officers to avoid allowing their opponents any advantage from the news. “I want our men seen everywhere. In bigger groups. They’re to hit back hard at any provocation. I won’t let Castreresone fall apart now.” Yet it almost did.

Archbishop Farfog responded to the news from Brothe by surrendering to his obsessions.

First reports were confusing. No one was sure what was happening. Violence had erupted but was not directed at the soldiers. First guesses suggested factional fighting between the two strains of Chaldarean Episcopals. Hecht kept sending small bands to establish order. Each conflict extinguished seemed to spark two more somewhere else.

Consent came to report. “It’s Farfog. Out to do all the damage he can before a new Patriarch shuts him down.”

“He foresees a shift in the direction of the Church? Does he know something we don’t?”

“Inside his idiot mind, maybe. In the real world? Who knows?”

“It’ll be a month before we get a new Patriarch.”

“Then we have a month, ourselves. Not so?” Hecht grinned. Exactly! He had that long to write whatever future he might inscribe.

Madouc arrived. “Sir, you might want to go up on the wall. See if you’re inclined to intercede in what the Society is doing.”

The view from the wall was a horror show. “How many?” Hecht demanded.

A junior officer said, “Over three hundred, sir.” Hecht stared. Some wore the yellow tabards the Society forced on convicted heretics. But not many. He recognized men he had met since taking control of the city. Men who had been perfectly cooperative. Men who happened to have had money left after Castreresone paid its fines.

“Madouc. Take Starven’s company and break that up.”

“Sir? The Archbishop …”

“I’ll deal with the Archbishop. Bring him.”

Madouc did not save all the prisoners. The first score were given to the flames before the soldiers arrived. The more fanatic Society members resisted. The soldiers showed unprecedented restraint. Hecht watched Madouc and several of his lifeguards — all Brotherhood of War, the Captain-General suspected — take Archbishop Farfog into custody.

The soldiers did not release the prisoners back into the wild. Some might well deserve execution. But not by Farfog’s brigands.

Hecht returned to the keep to await his confrontation with the Church’s hellhound.

Time passed.

More time passed.

“Somebody! It’s getting late. Where the devil is that idiot Farfog? Why isn’t he in here? He’s had time to go bald. Titus! Where are you, Titus Consent?”

Consent did not materialize. Nor did Redfearn Bechter, nor Drago Prosek, nor any of the others whose presence around him could be taken for granted. Nervous, he pulled his weapons within reach.

Madouc the lifeguard did materialize. Eventually. Twenty minutes after he should have done. He was bleeding. He had suffered a dozen wounds. More than one might qualify as mortal. He was going on by willpower and the insane sense of duty of a Brotherhood warrior.

“Sir. We were ambushed. By local partisans. They killed the Society brothers. They were after the Archbishop. They cut him to pieces. They took his head with them.”

“This isn’t good, Madouc. The Society …” But the Society might not be around much longer. Nor the crusader army and its Captain-General.

The course of history hinged on the choice of Sublime V’s successor.

The uprising in Castreresone lasted one evening and night and focused entirely on the Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy.

In a whisper next morning the Captain-General confided to his spy chief, “I’m not going to miss any of those villains.”

“But Morcant Farfog’s murder …”

“Will cause a lot of trouble. How much depends on our next Patriarch.”

Hagan Brokke reclaimed his honor in a series of fierce little engagements that stripped Queen Isabeth and Duke Tormond of their mercenary strength. His light cavalry harassed Isabeth’s Direcians continuously, deliberately targeting one knight or noble at a time. Because they were who they were, each death or capture would have a significant impact in Direcia.

The Queen of Navaya withdrew to the shadow of her brother’s capital city.

From elation about events in the west Piper Hecht fell into a depression over news from the east. Count Raymone Garete had resumed his stubborn defiance, with a more punishing daily cost now that Bronte Doneto had gone. Piper Hecht reviewed the whys and wherefores. What strange, small change had reanimated the Count’s stubborn insolence?

“Those prisoners Brokke brought in,” Titus Consent said. “Some got away, probably with help, while we were running in circles because of Farfog’s murder.”

Hecht scowled. He grumbled a question about who he needed to have stoned or drowned.

“That would be a waste of time and emotion. Focus on those who didn’t get away. Bernardin Amberchelle, for example.”

“Tell me.”

“Count Raymone’s cousin. The man we thought he wanted back when he showed a willingness to talk.

But he’s gone back to being stubborn while Amberchelle is still down in the prison pens.”

“Uhm? What changed?”

‘The old man and the girl who came with Amberchelle,” Consent said. “I’d bet she’s the fiancée we’ve heard about. An upcountry girl who stole Raymone’s heart. Socia something. Who is supposedly chaperoned by the Grand Masterest of all Maysalean Perfect Masters.”

“And that would be the grayhair.” The Captain-General did not finish. “You exult over little triumphs while big defeats sneak up.”

Patriarchal crusaders now owned the eastern half of the End of Connec — excepting only Antieux. They threatened Khaurene from three directions. Lesser forces, featuring impassioned Society brethren determined to see Archbishop Farfog’s great vision fulfilled, had begun probing the Altai, discovering the incredible mountaintop fortresses of the Maysalean heretics. And snow choked much of the rural world, not only in the Connec but in Tramaine, Ormienden, Grolsach, Arnhand, and even much of Firaldia. The Grail Empire was blanketed. Artecipea saw heavy, temporarily incapacitating snows for the first time since antiquity. The war there dwindled into the doldrums of winter. As did wars all round the Mother Sea.

Wherever snow fell there arose dreadful rumors of Kharoulke the Windwalker, the god before gods from the age before antiquity. Kharoulke the Windwalker, before whom the great modern Instrumentalities must quail. But Kharoulke needed deep snow, deep ice, before he could supplant the gentler Instrumentalities of the present. Kharoulke needed millennial cold before he could rise above the vague lost deities who had supplanted his kind — before being shoved aside by the powers of today.

Those vague lost deities beloved of secret cults devoted to resurrecting the lost lord Instrumentalities of antiquity.

18. Interlude at Runjan in the Reigenwald

The Marquesa va Runjan’s sister the Empress insisted that she take up her rights in that remote town in the heart of the Empire’s wildest, most remote hill country. Helspeth could not refuse.

The fury of the Council Advisory, of the Imperial court, of the Church, and especially of Empress Katrin herself could be described only as beyond reason. Nobody told the Princess Apparent how she had rendered herself criminal by opening that sealed mountain pass.

Almost no one would speak to her, let alone explain. She was a pariah and it might be catching. She was a prisoner now, in all but name, confined to the crumbling hilltop tower overlooking Runjan. The village, in its prime, had produced barely enough turnips, cabbage, and grain to sustain itself, with a small charcoal-burning industry taking advantage of the surrounding forest. Runjan was no longer in its prime.

The iron industry had shrunk since Hansel’s death, there being less demand for weapons metal. If the smelters were closed there was little demand for charcoal.

The tower had not been occupied since the last lord of Runjan passed on, childless, leaving the fief to his beloved Hansel. Its shutters were gone or broken. The drop gate could not be closed. Someone had taken the chain. There was no resident staff.

Helspeth came with a party of eight. Two were cruel old women who hated her. They were determined to punish her. Nothing Helspeth did could ingratiate her. Not that she tried to win them over. She had to work to mask her loathing.

The rest of the party were all one family. Harmer Schmitt. His wife Greta. Their daughter Grunhilde and three sons: Hansel, Fulk, and Fritz. The boys were named for Harmer’s favorite emperors, the girl for Greta’s great-aunt. Grunhilde was sixteen. And not attractive. The boys were sixteen, fourteen, and nine.

Hansel was Grunhilde’s twin. Not identical, of course, but every bit as homely as his sister.

The Schmitts were quietly sympathetic toward the Princess Apparent but dared not show it. It was a flawed sympathy, anyway, based more in dislike of the harpies assigned to be Helspeth’s warders: the Dowager Grafina Ilse-Janna fon Wistrcz, the harridan mother of the Graf fon Wistrcz, and Dame Karelina fon Tyre, spouse of the Grand Admiral. Neither woman ever liked Helspeth. Both hated her now. It was her fault they had to chaperone her here in her rustic hell. The women hated one another as well, and had done so for fifty years. Both were petty and spiteful and had been chosen because they could be counted on to take it out on Helspeth.