An Old Trick
Morning was like a blade to the eyes, a hammered fist to the mind. Allystaire woke up with a start and swung his legs out of the cot, the walls of his tent already letting in bright sunlight.
“Overslept, you old fool,” he said aloud, before forcing himself to stand. Ivar is going to want blood, he thought as he dressed and armed himself for the day. And I may damn well give it to her.
No sooner was he outside than Cerisia, maskless but in formal white-and-gold silk vestments, was sweeping upon him in a rush. Though her lips were painted, her eyes highlighted, and other cosmetics he couldn’t name were applied to her face, there were taut lines along her cheeks from the tension in her jaw.
Fear. She never showed me fear before. She addressed him with a hand laid upon his arm.
“Allystaire,” she said, her voice as tight as her skin, on the far edge of panicked. “What happened last night? I did as you asked and did not leave my tent. But I could feel the power that was unleashed. What did you do?”
He tried to force a cold distance into his face and voice. He found, to his surprise, that it wasn’t difficult.
“I did nothing, Cerisia. What you felt? That was the Will of the Mother. Surely, as observant a plotter and a watcher of men as you did not fail to notice that there were five Pillars to Her altar, and yet you met only four of Her servants? Did you not find that curious?”
That bought him a moment of her stunned silence, and he turned, pulled his arm from her grasp, and began striding away. She crossed the distance with hurried steps and grabbed for him again.
“What will happen to those men? Surely you can’t mean to kill them all.”
“You mean surely I cannot plan to do to them what they would have done to this village?” Allystaire turned on her again. The furnace of anger that had built within him the day before no longer roared as it had, but its embers stirred. “No. I will not do that. There will be no murder done. Yet they will face the Mother’s Justice.”
“You would smear your people’s hands with their blood then, and confirm all the worst fears of my temple, of Braech’s—”
“I do not give a frozen damn for your temple or Braech’s. And as for reddening their hands? No.” He shook his head, took a step closer to her. “Only my own. I will make you this promise—if I sentence any of your would-be murderers to die I will knot the rope or hold the blade. They will die quickly, as mercifully as I can manage. And believe me, Cerisia, I know that work like a smith knows his forge.”
He turned again, only to be brought up short once more as she called out.
“You cannot. I forbid it. They are Fortune’s agents, under my—”
She was brought up short as he whirled around once more, lowering his face towards hers, his cheeks livid with rage. When he spoke, however, instead of the roar she probably expected, his voice was as quiet and deadly as a sword clearing a scabbard.
“You will forbid nothing in this place,” Allystaire whispered. “You, whose word on the conduct of her people was proven dross, you have no power here, no word. I deny you and your goddess and all her servants any authority here. Speak again if you wish to chance hanging with those men.”
Cerisia was silent for a moment, but she bore up under his threat and spoke. “You will not hang me. I was as deceived as you, and came here as an honest envoy. And you, Allystaire Coldbourne, will not hang anyone who has done no violence. Especially not, I think, a woman.”
Damn her. Allystaire could make no reply, so instead he turned away, pushing his anger down and choking on it, counting on longer-legged strides to outpace the priestess till he reached the dwarf’s wagon. He pounded a fist against the side, and before he could knock a third time, Torvul stuck his head out of the door.
“Make a mark on my home and it’ll be the last thing you do, boy.” The dwarf stepped out into the morning, wearing his thick blue robe and no boots, his gnarled, wide-set feet slapping heavily against the wood of his wagon steps. He turned and saw Cerisia following hesitantly, spat into the grass, and let out a short string of Dwarfish curses. “He might not be willing to hang you, but I’m not decided yet. I’ll not trade any further words with you. Out of my sight before I get angry.”
The priestess retreated, but with a slow, deliberate pace, maintaining her regal bearing.
Once she was out of earshot, Allystaire said, “I would not let you hang her.”
Torvul shrugged. “I know that. She doesn’t. You’re the one who can’t bend the truth to suit his purposes. Now, for business. Idgen Marte and Renard simply tied the lot of ‘em together and let ‘em sit out in the night, wonderin’ what was to happen to ‘em. I’ve an idea on how to proceed. Wait here.”
The dwarf disappeared into his wagon, re-emerged shortly, and tossed Allystaire a small, hard, cloth-wrapped bundle that he neatly caught. He unwrapped it, found the hard, grainy surface familiar, and snorted.
“A whetstone? That old bit, then? Go sit there and sharpen my sword while they sweat? That lot has seen it before, Torvul. Cold, half of them have probably done it.”
The dwarf snorted. “I’m insulted, Ally, that you’d think that such a prosaic bit of theater would be the best I could do. Well, of course, you are going to go sharpen your sword. But that’s only the start of it. We’re going to be feeding them breakfast, y’see, treating them decently—”
“I will not have you poisoning prisoners.”
“I’m no common poisoner! Never touch the stuff. Professional pride as much as ethics. Just a little power of suggestion. They aren’t going to be seeing a man in musty leathers sharpening a sword, that’s all.”
“What is it they will see, then?”
Torvul smiled toothily. “The Arm of the Mother readying the judgment of their very souls.”
* * *
Growing up on the Spirit Islands well north of Keersvast instilled a healthy respect, if not precisely fear, in men like Altigern. They worshipped Braech because the Sea Dragon was Strength Against the Storm, proof that courage was always a man’s best option, a reminder that the strength of the arm was a real and a powerful thing. Yet Braech’s church and his rough, seafaring priests seemed to have no answer for the spirits of his island home, the spirits of the wind and the night.
And Braech surely had no answers for a giant of light and flame, and so Altigern spent the night of his captivity—after the dwarf had set his broken nose and given him something to take the edge off the pain of his shattered teeth—alternating between prayer to the Sea Dragon and a frantic, gnawing fear for his soul.
When he and the other men had been roused by the dwarf, he’d been too numb and too hungry to refuse the bowl of porridge offered. Besides, he’d thought the dwarf seemed kinder, perhaps, than the leader, this Allystaire they’d come to kill.
After eating, their hands were bound again. They remained guarded by men in black mail and grey cloaks, armed with spears and halberds, who aimed dark looks and muttered at the swords-at-hire and temple guardsmen who were Altigern’s companions. This tension increased as, shortly after daybreak, the body of the man he’d ordered killed had been brought back.
And just when one of those warband soldiers, with cracked teeth and an ugly, fierce countenance, spat on the ground and looked like lowering her spear and coming for his blood, Allystaire came back to the field.
Only, Altigern thought, he was changed. Taller, broader, somehow more terrifying, wearing a glimmering suit of armor that threw back the sun in brilliance and clung to his muscles like a second skin. He unlimbered an enormous sword—Altigern doubted he himself could lift it—and began sharpening it with a huge block of stone in his other hand. His face shown with a kind of radiance that was hard to look at.
Sparks fell from the blade with every stroke, in red and orange and white and green, and Altigern swore he felt the sword itself reaching for him.
He meant, Altigern was sure, to murder them all, to take their heads, and quarter their bodies and bury them out of sight or hearing of moving water.
My soul will not know the way to the sea, he thought in growing horror. I will be left locked in earth till Braech’s tide washes all before it.
Altigern summoned all his strength and looked to the uncovered face of his would-be executioner, forcing himself past the pain of it.
And instead of the grim joy he expected, he saw regret. Anger, to be sure, but an anger that he was being driven to this, a sadness, an unwillingness to do this task if there were any other way.
And then Altigern heard a voice tell him to beg for mercy, to ask this huge, gleaming figure, this angry goddess’s judge, for a clemency he hadn’t thought was possible.
It was only then that the Islandman realized the voice he heard was his own, and not the only one; all around him, his men were falling to their knees, watching in fascinated horror. Some, strong men, men he knew were hard and bloodied, wept. They wept for their souls and their lives, and some, only some, wept for the first dawn of self-knowing.
The fear Altigern felt for his soul somehow turned into revulsion. Somewhere deep down, he knew that if this shining knight before him took his head and butchered his remains, it was probably no worse than he had earned.
And then, amidst the babbling appeals for mercy, the knight, the man he had come to kill—no, to murder—sheathed his sword, stood, and raised his hands for silence.
Then he spoke a miracle of forgiveness.
* * *
Dwarf, I do not know what you did, Allystaire thought, hoping Torvul could hear him, but I hope their minds are not permanently addled.
He had done precisely as Torvul had suggested: strolled into the field as the prisoners finished their meager breakfast, unlimbered his sword, and sharpened it. Tried that once before on a captured Harlach spy, ten years ago. Maybe more. He laughed at it, Allystaire had thought, when he began.
These prisoners did not laugh. They stared, open-mouthed. Some began to weep, some cried out incoherently, while others fell to the ground. They spoke out in the quick, darting Keervasti tongue, or in the harsher and more grating dialect of the Islandmen.
They begged for mercy, for clemency, for forgiveness. When even the man he’d punched the night before, his cheek swollen and bruised black and purple, fell to the ground in supplication, Allystaire put away his sword and slipped the whetstone into his belt.
“Listen to me. I, as paladin and Arm of the Mother, protector of Her people in this village, suspend the sentence of death upon you.” A ragged cheer went up, he raised his hands again, and the men fell silent. “I said suspend, not commute. The Voice of the Mother will come to speak to you of repentance, and any who wish will have that chance. Your arms, however, are forfeit, as are half the value of all other goods you brought with you. Agree to this and you may leave this place alive, but be warned: return to it as aught but a friend, and I will see you dead.” He paused, surveyed the field, and said, “Be silent now, and think on what I have said.”
With that, he turned and strode away. The Ravens, who’d drifted a few cautious paces backwards as their prisoners began shouting and falling to the ground, once more stepped forward, adjusting their hands on their weapons and shooting sidelong glances at Allystaire.
He found Torvul waiting for him just out of sight, behind the sloping walls of Henri’s sod-roofed farmhouse. Allystaire opened his mouth, but the dwarf cut him off with a raised hand.
“I haven’t hurt them. I gave them, ah, a truth serum, for lack of a better word, which your northern tongue almost always lacks, in point of fact.” The alchemist recovered from his brief digression with a wave of his hand, went on. “It made them see you for what you are, for one. More to the point, it made them see their own deepest selves. I’m thinkin’ most didn’t like what they found, aye?”
Allystaire nodded slowly. “I suppose not. But how do I explain this mercy to Ivar and her men? Our ways are not their ways, at least not yet. Their brother of battle is dead, murdered by those men.”
“You folk and your brothers of battle,” Torvul said. “As if war and killing were the only noble thing a man can turn his hand to.”
“We owe him something,” Allystaire said. “He died at our command, defending our people. Her people. That is worth something. The Ravens will want blood.”
“I think Iolantes will oblige them.” Idgen Marte suddenly stepped around from the other side of the farmhouse. She hadn’t slept, he could tell that much by the dishevelment of her clothes and general weariness in her brown eyes, heavily bagged and lidded. Still, her shoulders were set and her walk determined. “I’ve just come from the shed where we tossed him. He’s demanding a Trial at Arms.”
Allystaire frowned and let loose a deep sigh. “Against whom?”
Idgen Marte snorted. “Who d’ya think?”
“We don’t have much t’gain by listening to him. You want him dead, string him up,” Torvul said, as the three of them drifted away from the farmhouse and back towards the village.
“Too much to lose by refusing,” Allystaire murmured.
“This is more of that brother of battle rot, hrm?” Torvul eyed Allystaire warily.
“Aye. And I would not call it rot where the men might hear you. If this Iolantes is demanding a Trial at Arms, then he must have it, for the form of the thing.”
Torvul began to speak but Idgen Marte cut him off. “If we hang him, we’re murderers. That’s the tale carried back to Londray. If he demands a Trial at Arms, is given it, and dies?”
“Then we are beyond reproach. More than fair and proven right,” Allystaire said, nodding in agreement. “He will have his chance.”