Cardinal Adansoni had frequented some inauspicious places in his time; brothels, bars, places of ill virtue. But the tavern in which he found himself was by far the worst establishment he had ever known. There was a man laid across the main path through the inn, face down in the thick dirt of the tavern floor, unmoving. For all Adansoni knew, he was dead.
Vomit, excrement and blood seemed everywhere within the place, the landlord too traumatised, lazy or drunk himself to attempt to clean up. The smell was obscene, rank and fetid, like a seeping cloud of rancid flesh.
Adansoni put his handkerchief to his nose and shuffled gingerly forward.
He stepped over the prostrate body and continued to work his way through the place, ducking under oddments, heavy with dust and grime hanging from the beams above, peering around corners in the hope of finding him. How he prayed he wouldn’t find him. Not here, not in this place.
And then he saw him, and it broke his heart, as it had twenty one years ago when he laid his eyes on him for the very first time.
Alone and weeping, drunk out of his mind in the darkest, most remote corner of the tavern, the man Adansoni used to call ‘gallant’ sat broken and ruined.
“It’s me, old friend,” he called, stepping closer. Tacit barely acknowledged him, fumbling blindly for his glass. “May I sit with you?” Adansoni asked. He waited for an answer which never came.
Tacit stared unseeingly towards the figure and guzzled the drink in his glass clumsily. Finally, Adansoni gave up waiting for his request to be answered and sat down opposite him. The stench off his old acolyte, despite the smell of the tavern, was atrocious.
“It’s me, Poldek,” the Cardinal said, leaning forward and touching his arm. The touch on his arm seemed to spark activity within Tacit and, at once, he sat up and tried to focus on his visitor.
“It’s me, Poldek,” he continued. “I am so sorry, Poldek.” Adansoni removed his hat and placed it on the table next to him, ignoring the vomit and other detritus into which it was set.
Tacit peered at him inanely, but slowly a semblance of recognition seemed to register with him. His eyes narrowed and then widened in his head, as if trying to comprehend, to remember.
“Ad …,” he muttered quietly. “Ada … Adan …,” he persisted, trying to form the words on his tongue. “Adansoni?”
“Yes,” replied the Cardinal, tears in his eyes. Tacit shuddered and a bubbling of air escaped from his lungs. “It is me, Poldek. I have come for you.”
Adansoni was aware of crying but he refused to look, turning his eyes firmly to the table. Only when Tacit spoke did he raise them and put them on the pathetic figure.
“They … they killed her,” he wept. “They killed my love,” he roared. “They killed my love and my child!”
“It was the Orthodox,” replied the Cardinal, his eyes firm, making sure Tacit heard and understood. “They’d been moving north, burning farms, looting wherever they went. Taking everything they could find.”
Tacit leaned his head back and wept, strains of spittle lining his lips like a mask.
“We caught them, Poldek. We caught them. They’ve admitted to everything and have been charged. The punishment was carried out over the last few weeks. They’ve all been hung.” Adansoni noticed how dry his throat had become, how his mouth trembled. He swallowed painfully. “They suffered,” he said quietly, bowing his head.
Tacit sobbed, closing his eyes, his head still turned to the ceiling. “She was everything to me,” he said, his sobs becoming howls of pain. “Now I am nothing!” he roared, so loud that all heads turned in his direction. “Nothing without her!”
“The war goes on, Poldek,” replied Adansoni, his cold words charged with passion and belief. “The war goes on. People come. Lovers go. But nothing really changes. Our loved ones? Our friends? They touch our lives briefly, like stones skimming across a pond. We will see them in the next life, of that there is no doubt. All that really matters is the war, the war against our enemies, those who wish to wrong us. Those who have wronged us, like those who have wronged you.”
Tacit had stopped howling now. His head had sunk onto his chest, his body shaking, his dark eyes locked on the Cardinal.
“Take up the banner again, Poldek. Make your war on those who have dared to take away everything that you thought you held safe. Make them suffer. Make them suffer double what you have suffered, every single one of them. It is your fate, Inquisitor. It is your fate.”
And slowly, like a gathering storm, the figure seemed to grow large in the chair in which he sat. “You want a war on our enemies?” Tacit growled, suddenly fierce, his eyes wild. “I’ll give them a war.”