Dave Duncan - When the Saints

“It’s a reward for courage. Hang it on your belt or stick it in my chest. That’s the only way I’ll take it back.”

“I agree,” Anton said thinly.

In disbelief, Wulf hung the heirloom at his right thigh. Today, what was left of it, he would wear the Magnus Dagger. Tomorrow he would give it back to Otto to keep safe for him. Otherwise the Inquisition would steal it.

“Come, Count,” Otto said. “Vlad is right. We must strike while we can. Let’s go throw the fiendish bombard into the river.” He strode out the door.

Wulf shivered. “I need dry clothes first.”

“Wait!” Anton shut the door and blocked it, arms defiantly folded. “Wulf, you have done everything we could have hoped for. You have defeated the Wends and saved Castle Gallant and we are all very grateful, but the Inquisition will soon come looking for you. You said so yourself. I realize that you got into the trouble you are in now by helping me, and I promised you any reward I could give you. Name it, take it, and then go. You must flee.”

Wulf looked up at his brother and saw a lot more jealousy than gratitude. He felt his temper twitch again. He shivered again as the cold bit deeper. “Pretty speech! The trouble is, the only reward I want, you cannot give me. And fleeing is no answer. Let’s see how things are back in Dobkov… Branka is currently reading a bedtime story to our nephews. Old Father Czcibor is teaching a confirmation class. Understand? I can see them and I could go to them. The same applies to the Inquisition’s Speakers. I can’t hide from them, no matter where I go.”

“But you don’t need to draw their attention to the rest of us!”

Fury! “Oh, listen, you long streak of stupidity. The Scarlet Spider fooled you, haven’t you seen that yet? When Zdenek offered to exalt you from a nothing to a lord of the northern marches, he knew that you couldn’t claim the reward without using Satanism. He knew the Magnuses produced both swordsmen and sorcerers. You knew that too, and knew you could twist my arm until I agreed to help, so you accepted. When you twisted, I yielded. I was just as guilty and just as deceived.”

Anton unfolded his arms, but one hand sought out his sword hilt and the other went to steady his scabbard. He was probably too mad to listen to reason. “Deceived how?”

“Because if we’ve won the war, we’ve won it for that old sinner, not for us. Maybe I’ ve destroyed Wartislaw’s powder and Vlad and Otto can do the rest. But the way the Church sees it, I begged help from Satan and you accepted it, too. We are up to our necks in Satanism, all of us. The cardinal won’t lift a finger to save inglp us, not a pinkie! Once he’s sure that Castle Gallant is safe, he’ll throw the Magnuses to the dogs and put some dandy courtier in your place. We’re all doomed. Understand? Now get out of my way.”

Anton’s face was fiery, and for a moment Wulf thought he was actually going to draw. Glaring, he stepped aside, and Wulf left.

Wartislaw of Griffin had not won his duchy by being nice to anyone, even his nominal overlord, the Holy Roman Emperor. His entire court was terrified of him. So were his generals, because he liked to boast that none of them ever lost more than one battle. But he had rarely been in such a rage as he was now.

Even his falcons feared him, because they were prevented by their jessing oaths from defending themselves from his rages. He had been known to withhold their powers for weeks on end, and even have them beaten when they especially displeased him. He flew three falcons, who had speeded his climb to power up a ladder of mysterious deaths.

At present, two of them were escorting the Dragon as it was laboriously hauled through this hellhole of a gorge in this hell-sent blizzard. One was riding on the wagon, supposedly keeping watch for enemy Speakers, although at the moment nobody could see anything in this Satanic blizzard. A second was busily blessing the gravel of the road, the fords and bridges, and even strengthening the team of sixteen oxen that hauled the monster.

The third Speaker was supposedly supervising and enabling the digging of the emplacement at the point where the road emerged from the gorge and turned the corner. There the gun would have a clear shot at the gates of Castle Gallant, which would begin a historic first storming of that castle. What not one of the damned-for-eternity military idiots had thought to tell His Grace was that the road there was carved out of living rock. Worse, they had not considered the narrowness of the ledge between cliff-up and cliff-down. Now the sappers had hacked out a trench about three feet wide and two feet deep-not yet deep enough for the bombard, but wide enough to block passage of any vehicle larger than a cart. How did they think the gunners were going to get the Dragon into that hole? The dray was too wide to pull up alongside it. Did they imagine a team of sixteen oxen could back up? And if it could, that would leave the bombard pointing the wrong way!

Even in the blinding snow, Wartislaw himself saw the problem at a glance. His roar of fury caused the Speaker to vanish, and half his escort moved off, into the fog. The duke wheeled his horse, drew his sword, and prepared to behead the captain in charge. The man screamed in terror, backed away too far, and vanished over the edge of the cliff. Good riddance. Wartislaw ordered one of his mounted escort to remain and take charge-and finish the excavation by morning, or else. Then he bellowed for the rest to follow him, and spurred his horse back into the gorge.

By the time he reached Thunder Falls, he had still not solved the emplacement puzzle. The answer would probably involve ropes, which he had, and dozens of pulleys, which he did not. His falcons could fetch them from Pomerania, but it might take weeks to find enough.

Perdition!

He had to slow his horse to a walk as the escort attempted to clear a way for him along the mass confusion of the trail, carts bringing forward tools, weapons, and ammunition, and men-at-arms standing by to repel any sortie from Gallant. There just was not enough room here to fight a war! Even the rumble of the falls could not drown out the cursing and bellowing of orders, clumping hooves, squealing axles, lowing oxen, clattering shingles. The sides of the gorge varied from sheer rock to almost-sheer moss and scrub. Even above the falls, where the canyon became slightly wider, the extra space was taken up by rocks and tree stumps.

And out of the gloom and the swirling snow emerged an incompetence worse than any yet. He had left strict orders that his pavilion was to be situated as close to the gun battery as possible, so that he could watch the bombardment when it began. But the fools were assembling it on a shingle bank only a third of the size it needed, so half of it would be in the river, and the rest strung through the boulders like a ribbon of colored silk.

“Idiots!” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing?”

An elderly servant-Wartislaw never bothered to remember menials’ names-looked up at him in terror. “Erecting your tent, Your Grace. You told-”

Wartislaw slashed him across the face with his quirt. “Pig-brained nincompoop! I’ll have you all flogged. Where is-”

Huh? Horses staggered, then reared in terror, even his own courser, until he hauled on the reins and beat it into submission. Several men had fallen over, and were scrambling to their feet again. Rocks clattered down the hillside.

“What was that?” he muttered, but nobody answered.

Thunder rolled and echoed. All heads had turned to stare back along the trail, the way they had come. Not thunder; a mine! He had never heard one that big, but the delay between shock and sound meant that it had been at least a mile away. So it must have originated within his baggage train. The train had still been working its way forward while the men were setting up camp. Had one of those cretinous wagoners driven too close to a campfire? Or was this more Jorgarian Satanism like that suspiciously defective ladder this morning? If a powder wagon had exploded in the middle of the column, Wartislaw might have to add two or three hundred casualties to the toll from thi s morning’s fiasco.