R. Salvatore - The Ancient

“The lairds will pay well for it,” Brother Pinower admitted.

“They will pay Chapel Abelle well, then,” Dawson explained. “For I’ve no time to cart my wares southeast or southwest, and my boat’s back to Vanguard when she puts out from your dock, presently, unless I am forced to make a detour to Palmaristown.”

“We have some goods, of course,” said Brother Pinower. “And some coin.”

“Some? The whispers say that your Church grows wealthy on the tributes of warring lords.”

“Whispers,” Brother Pinower replied with an exaggerated sigh. He ended with a smile as wide as the one Dawson offered in response.

“Come,” Brother Pinower bade him, leading him off the wharf and to the gated entrance and the winding tunnels that would carry them up to the cliff top and the mother chapel of the Abellican Church.

As soon as he exited that dock tunnel into the courtyard of the abbey, McKeege understood those whispers of growing wealth to be understated. For Chapel Abelle was more than twice the size it had been on his last visit only a year before. Scores of laborers worked the grounds, extending and thickening the already impressive outer wall and constructing new stone structures-barracks and rectories and all manner of buildings. Chapel Abelle had become a town unto itself, McKeege realized, and when he thought about it, it made sense. Once Chapel Abelle had been a small church set on a hill above the medium-sized town of Weatherguard, but in this time of pressing danger, it had become a fortress, a welcomed one for the beleaguered folk of the region.

Dawson looked to the main church, which was now surrounded by scaffolding, monks swarming every region of it with tools and materials. No laymen worked this alls important building, he noted. Its construction remained for the brothers alone.

“Father Artolivan will be pleased to greet you this day,” Brother Pinower assured him, hustling him toward the church entrance. “It would help if I could introduce you with your intent.”

Dawson looked from the church to the eager brother, who was at least fifteen years his junior, with skin too soft and white and eyes tired already from endless hours spent huddled over parchments. Dawson figured that Pinower rarely ventured outside of Chapel Abelle, other than when he was stationed at the docks, or at work on the abbey, perhaps. The Vanguardsman wished that he had more time, then, so that he could sneak the young man away from his stuffy brethren and put on a good drunk and a better woman.

“Tell the good father that I come with value and leave with purpose, for Vanguard’s in need of…” He paused there and let the thought hang in the air between them. Indeed, it seemed as if poor Brother Pinower would fall right over from leaning so obviously toward McKeege.

Dawson merely grinned, intensifying the tease.

Soon after, Dawson stood before Father Artolivan, an old friend of Dame Gwydre, who had secretly offered his blessing to her union with Brother Alandrais.

“I’ve come under full sail,” the Vanguardsman said, “and will leave the same way.”

“Always in a hurry,” the old father of the Abellican Church replied, his voice a bit slurred as if he had partaken too liberally of the bottle.

It was just age, though, and indeed, Artolivan looked every day of his eighty years. Skin sagged about his face, and his eyes had sunk deeply, circled by darkness. He could still sit straight, but not without great effort, Dawson noted, and there remained little sparkle and sharpness in his gaze. The Abellicans wouldn’t easily replace him, though. Artolivan, it was whispered, had once glimpsed Blessed Abelle (though he would have been but a young boy), and had been trained by men who had learned directly from the great man. He was the last of his generation in the Church, the last man alive known to hold direct ties to Blessed Abelle and the momentous events of that magical and inspiring time.

“That is the way of the world, I fear,” the old priest went on. “None have time to give pause. Patient consideration is a thing of the lost past.”

“War breeds urgency, Father,” said Dawson.

“And what is your urgency?”

“I’ve a hold of caribou moss and no time to barter.”

“So I’ve been told-of both situations. You seek coin, then, so name your initial offer.”

“I seek coin only to use it for another good,” Dawson explained, and that piqued Artolivan’s curiosity, it seemed, as the old man cocked his head to the side. “I will use the coin-and have brought much of my own, as well-to bribe.”

“You have come for able bodies?”

Dawson nodded.

“To harvest? To log? As wives or as laborers?”

“Yes,” Dawson replied. “All of that. Vanguard is sorely pressed by the Samhaists. Dame Gwydre has victory at hand,” he quickly added and lied when he saw old Artolivan’s face crinkle with doubt.

“We are all sorely pressed, friend Dawson. War rages the breadth of Honce.”

“Yet I see Chapel Abelle swarmed by laborers, many young men who have apparently escaped the fighting.”

“Many who were captured and thus put out of the fight on honor,” Father Artolivan explained.

“From both camps, no doubt,” said Dawson, and Artolivan nodded and smiled. It made sense, of course, for neither Laird Ethelbert nor Laird Delaval had the time or resources to expend on prisoners of the conflict. Neither wanted to enrage the populace by summarily executing captives (many of whom were likely related to constituents and soldiers on both sides of the conflict). So the respective lairds would demand a vow of honorable capitulation, effectively ensuring that the captured soldiers would not return to their former ranks, and then send them here to the Abellicans, to gain the favor of the priests who held the sacred stones. Of course, both leaders, for fear of making honorable capitulation attractive, required the Abellicans to work their laborers brutally, and reward them not at all.

Perhaps there was a winner to be found in the war, after all, Dawson thought as he looked upon the grinning father.

Dawson’s own smile didn’t hold, though, as he considered the differences in the struggle that faced Dame Gwydre in the North, as he considered the scene of Tethmawle.

Ethelbert and Delaval, both posturing to rule the holdings of Honce, offered quarter to the unfortunate soldiers of the other side.

That was not the case in Vanguard’s war.

“I had not heard that the Samhaists were near defeat in Vanguard,” the wily old Abellican father remarked. “Quite the opposite.”

“They have called upon goblins and trolls to strengthen their lines,” Dawson replied. “We are sorely pressed. Yet victory is at hand.”

“That seems a rather strange interpretation. Three sentences, spoken one following the other as if the logic of them flowed as such.”

“Their line cannot hold,” Dawson explained. “If Dame Gwydre can counter their latest excursions with a forcible strike, the mishmash of warriors our enemies the Samhaists have assembled will turn upon each other. We have seen it in several regions already. Dame Gwydre is certain that a sudden and-”

Father Artolivan held up his hand to stop the man. “The details of war bore me,” he said. “From this church, you will be paid in coin alone-at fair value, given the need for caribou moss at this time.”

“Both armies will value it greatly,” said Dawson.

Artolivan didn’t even try to argue. “What you do with that coin is for you to decide,” the priest went on. “The workers here are not free men, but they are many-indeed, perhaps too many. If some choose to sail with you back to Vanguard, you and I, nay, you and Brother Pinower, will reach a proper sale price.”