Dave Duncan - When the Saints

“You’ve been busy,” she said.

“Very.” Wulf wearily filled one glass and passed it to her. The evening alone was wine, compared to the weather in Ca weem"rdice, and if he drank another drop of the real stuff he would fall asleep. His eyelids were heavy as boots.

“When you went spying on the Wends, did you learn anything of value?”

“Not much.” Enough to do them a world of damage, but he was too ashamed of the carnage to brag about it. “You weren’t watching?”

“You cannot hope to keep a secret around Speakers,” Justina said impatiently, as if he were being stupid, “but sometimes secrets keep themselves. We cannot be in more than two places at once-one place in body and another in mind. You cannot watch someone every minute of every day. I know you took a stupid risk in going there, and for no real gain. Let that be a lesson to you.”

She pulled a face and drank wine as if rinsing away a bad taste. She had been upset enough by Azuolas’s death, and the Long Valley blast must have killed thousands. If she was not aware of that, why did she seem so distressed now?

Snow had stopped falling at Castle Gallant. Anton and Otto were on the roof of the north barbican, inspecting a completed trebuchet. Anton was even congratulating the workers, a courtesy that Otto undoubtedly must have suggested to him, for he would never have thought of it by himself.

Vlad was on foot -which seemed very odd and dangerous- working his way through a litter of broken pine branches that had almost buried the road. He must be in the gorge, where there was no snow falling and not very much light, either. He had a dozen or so men with him, and they were all fighting for every step. What was the big lunk up to? Where were the Wends?

“I agree. Tell me about Elysium.” He waited to see if Justina would answer.

She took a sip of wine. “It’s wherever Lady Umbral happens to be.”

“And Lady Umbral rules the Saints?”

“That brat jabbers far too much. Lady Umbral is our prelate. The pope rules the Church; the voivode rules the Agioi; and Umbral the Saints. People come and go, the names remain.”

“The Saints are a guild of free Speakers, like free masons, bound to no lord?” And the Agioi must be the Greek Orthodox equivalent.

“More or less. The Church captures most Speakers as adolescents; rulers also collect them when they can find them. We survive because we do not raid or proselytize to others. We obey the commandments, and the Church lets us be.”

“But you do favors for rulers, like helping Zdenek out with Castle Gallant.”

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

He suspected that answer fell considerably short of the truth. Helping out kings in trouble would be a highly profitable business.

“So am I to be allowed to join the Saints?”

Justina sighed and refilled her own glass. “No. Your execution of Father Vilhelmas was rank murder. The death of Father Azuolas was another. I have spoken twice with Lady Umbral, and she insists that we cannot shelter a murderer.”

“I see.” Wulf contemplated his future and saw only darkness. No life with Madlenka; no life without her either. How did a man hide from pursuers who could come to him at any time, no matter where he was?

Anton and Otto were still on the roof of the north barbican, staring up the deserted road, waiting for Vlad’s return. The entire sortie party had disappeared into the gorge.

Vlad… Vlad had stopped trying to force his way through the nightmare of deadfall, and was watching a peculiar struggle going on just ahead of him. It looked as if the sortie had finally made contact with one of the Pomeranians, who had tried to run from them. Three of the Cardicians had gone in pursuit over the obstacle course.

Justina said, “I wish I’d gotten to you before you started killing people.”

“My bite has always been faster than my bark,” Wulf said. “But I’m not making excuses. I am sprung of a warrior line. Magnuses kill men and brag about it over dinner. I saw Marek in danger, so I pulled the trigger. I would do it again. If I must pay the price, I won’t whine about it.”

Justina shook her head, staring at him, but with more pity than disapproval. “You had reasons for both killings. You did not start the aggression. A completely impartial court might levy a lesser penalty than death on you.” She was repeating arguments that Lady Umbral must have already rejected. “The Church is not impartial. You killed two priests. We cannot help you escape from that.”

“Would Zdenek get me a royal pardon, if I saved his castle?”

“He might save you from being hanged, if you’d rather be burned. Royal pardons don’t help if the Church convicts you of heresy or witchcraft. And Zdenek will certainly not admit to employing witchcraft. You’re nothing to do with him, my boy. As of today, he’d never even heard of you.”

Which was exactly what Wulf himself had told Anton.

Stars were wakening in an indigo east. Wulf rose, stretched. He was weary, aching through to the marrow. “Excuse me. I think the war’s over for today.”

She nodded. “I wish I could give you better news, squire.”

“="-"›“Not your fault, mine. Is this goodbye?”

“I’m afraid it must be.”

He walked around the table and stooped to kiss her cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s faint, but there’s still a trace of Dobkov in your voice. Thanks for doing what you did, Auntie. I know you’d have helped more if you had been allowed to.”

Wulf went back to the Blue Room. It was cold and almost dark, because it was on an outside wall lit by only a narrow, unglazed loophole. Many hours had passed since he ate Justina’s strange fish soup, but he was too weary to go in search of food.

Anton and Otto still lingered on the barbican roof. They must be really worried about Vlad’s sortie, wondering what was keeping it. Vlad himself… His men had caught their fleeing Wend and were bringing him in, not gently. There was a lot of guttural shouting in several languages.

Curiosity jabbed Wulf and told him he couldn’t possibly go to bed before he discovered what was going on up there in the gorge. Conscience retorted that to materialize in the middle of a group of workaday men-at-arms would violate the first commandment. But wait… when Wulf himself had returned from Long Valley a few hours ago, he and Copper had not emerged exactly where he had aimed, but nearby. Somehow his Voices protected him from accidentally exposing his powers.

He opened a peephole through limbo some distance away from Vlad and his men, back along the track they had cleared. They all seemed to be engrossed in the prisoner; the light was bad, and the piles of tumbled deadfall were almost head high. Confident that his arrival would be unseen, Wulf enlarged the gap, stepped through, and began picking his way between the heaps of wreckage to join the conference. Soon he was noticed, but attracted no special interest. If the count had sent his squire to check up on them, that was not their concern.

The prisoner, who was being addressed as Lech, was a grubby, heavyset bear of a man. He looked unprepossessing and none too smart. He was far from happy, but everyone else was grinning and chuckling, so the news must be good. Vlad was firing questions, one of the men-at-arms was translating them, and the prisoner’s answers were making the same laborious journey back. By the time Wulf was close enough to make out what was being said, Lech’s presence there was being explained. He was a carter, and he had been at the mouth of the gorge when “the wind came.”

“Says he was sent back to get the oxen, sir. He’s to unyoke them and try to drive them back to the bivouac.”