CHAPTER 8
Allystaire saw Mol approaching the Temple as soon as he stepped outside, so he paused to wait for her and watch her approach. Her feet were still bare beneath her sky-blue robe, a fact he had learned not to question. Her face did not carry its usual unruffled calm; instead a frown, bordering on a grimace, creased her small features.
“What troubles you, Mol?” Allystaire asked.
She wasn’t startled by his question, though she’d made no sign that she’d seen him, but she answered his question without even averting her gaze. “It is a problem for the Shadow,” she said, and made to continue past him into the Temple.
Startled by her response, Allystaire moved into her view. “Mol! What is the matter?”
She lifted her eyes to him. The inquisitive brown eyes he remembered, bright and quick, had long since been mingled with something vastly old and knowing. Now, it was almost as if the girl he had known had been entirely erased by the presence of the Goddess. Mol’s gaze carried nothing like the impact of speaking to the Goddess directly. Less a hammer blow and more of a slap, but still a shock.
“Do not impede me, Arm. If I say it is a task for the Shadow, then it is,” Mol said, with a note in her voice that demanded obedience. Allystaire suddenly dropped to a knee on the steps of the temple, balancing himself awkwardly, cold seeping from the stone into his bad knee.
“I am sorry, Voice,” he found himself saying, before he knew it. “I did not mean—” He found his words being cut off as Mol stepped close to him and hung an arm around his shoulder, leaning against him for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Allystaire,” she said, more of Mol’s country accent in the words. “I…it’s not you I’m angry at. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’ve not always got m’gifts as well in hand as I should,” she muttered, then shuffled away from him. “Stand. Ya look right foolish. Ya’ve no need t’kneel t’me.”
Drawing a sharp, lung-stinging breath, Allystaire stood up. “Think nothing of it, Mol,” he muttered, patting her on the shoulder before moving off.
Have to ask Idgen Marte what that was about, he thought. Not that she’ll tell me.
The searing cold air began to drive into his lungs, and Allystaire became suddenly and intensely aware that he’d not eaten for turns. “There will be food later,” he muttered. “Torvul will see to it.”
Assuring himself did nothing to calm the rumblings of his stomach as he made his way out to the Oyrwyn camp once more.
The sentries and men moving about the camp still stared, but perhaps a little less intently than before. Allystaire ignored the occasional click of a heel or clatter of armor as a man he passed snapped halfway to attention, then relaxed.
Inside the tent, conditions, and morale, had improved. It was warmer, the men were all better dressed, and the aromas of better food still lingered.
“Gentlemen,” Allystaire said, and all the heads turned in his direction. “If any of you crave exercise, a walk, a change of scenery, I could use volunteers.”
“Volunteers for what?” The man asking the question was the old veteran Harrys.
Allystaire swallowed. “There are bodies, from the battle. I mean to lay them to rest tomorrow. I cannot dig a large enough grave myself. I will put beer in the hand of any who come to help, when the job is done. Full flagons,” he added.
“Gotta be better than sittin’ in here,” Harrys said. “I’m your man.”
“We could all use the air,” Landen said then, suddenly. “Every man will come if you have the tools.”
“Tools we can find,” Allystaire said, and the Delondeur men began to shuffle out around him, herded by Landen.
“Most o’ this lot gonna be as much use as tits on a fish,” Harrys muttered, just barely loud enough for Allystaire to hear, as he passed out of the tent.
“Why do you say that?” Allystaire asked.
“Bunch of thieves, layabouts, and merchant’s sons,” Harrys said. “As used to workin’ a shovel as they were a spear.”
The two men fell in step together after Allystaire called out directions towards the Temple, and its adjacent graveyard; one mass grave holding the victims of the slaver raid, and one single, freshly dug for Renard. Landen had them moving in something resembling a solid line.
“You say that with implications of regret about the outcome of the battle,” Allystaire offered.
The other man shrugged and grunted noncommittally. “Professional soldier in me talkin’. Don’t like bein’ on the losin’ side.”
“None of us do,” Allystaire replied. “If I may ask, though, if the men Lionel brought here were mostly untrained, how did a veteran of the Baron’s Own wind up with them?”
“A dozen of us on winter garrison,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a shit duty, but makes extra weight in your pay. And it’s mostly for show, anyway. Assembly and drill once or twice a week, keep your horse in trim, wall duty every other week. Plenty o’time to drink, and, ah…carouse,” he finished uncertainly.
“You need not curb your language around me, man,” Allystaire said. “Whatever the differences between us, I am as much a soldier as you are.”
“There, you’re wrong,” Harrys said. “You were a knight and a lord and now you’re a knight and a lord whose fists shatter things made o’steel and bone and dark magics.”
“Spent a score of years on campaign, Harrys. Ate the same food, slept in the same camps, fought in the same battles,” Allystaire said. “And I am no lord now.”
“Slept on a cot and not on the ground, I’d wager,” Harrys said. “Had all that cunning foldin’ furniture, and squires and servants around t’pack it for ya. Better women, better wine.”
Allystaire sighed. “Some of what you say is true. The servants, the wine, the furniture. Not the cot, though. I never lost the knack of sleeping in preparation for a stand-to.”
Harrys turned his flat brown eyes to Allystaire. “I’ve heard you Oyrwyn lot are hard. Old mountain ice, they say. Seems mad t’me for a man not to stretch out when he can.”
They walked in silence for a while longer, till Allystaire filled the air with a cloud of breath in a sigh, and asked, “What were your thoughts on the Baron, Harrys?”
“A showman. Wanted us all t’love him, like in stories and songs.”
“And did you?”
“Once, maybe,” the soldier snorted. “Ordering a village full o’yer own folk put t’the torch will put paid to love.”
“And what of slaving? What of hiring sorcerers? Of giving his own people to them for their divinations, of giving his own wounded men to be made into monstrosities.”
Harrys shifted uncomfortably, rubbing at his left shoulder. “That all true? That upstart’s lot were puttin’ those things about.”
“It is true,” Allystaire said. “Every word of it. You saw the Battle-Wights, Harrys. Those were the Baron’s men. Your Brothers of Battle.”
Harrys frowned, biting at the inside of his lower lip. “That weren’t right. A badly wounded man, a man ya know is bound for the Cold and has only shriekin’ agony between here and there, maybe you ease that man along. Can’t be soldierin’ long as I have without doin’ it or seein’ it done, and prayin’ that the men you’re with’d do it for you.” He shook his mostly bald head. “But sendin’ a man who’s a few days away from walkin’ home to sorcerers to be butchered. That’s…” The old soldier sputtered, looking for a word.
“It is evil, Harrys. That is the word you are looking for,” Allystaire said. “I know it is a word that soldiers do not consider much. Any man who survives a few years campaigning knows the men on the other side are probably good and evil in equal measure to himself and his comrades. But Lionel Delondeur can be rendered that simply. He was evil, and he needed to be stopped, and that is why the Goddess gave me the strength you saw in the battle. It is why She gave me the power that healed your frostbite.”
“Because you’re a good man, is that it?”
“Because I had come to understand that I was not,” Allystaire said. “And because someone needs to stand against the Lionel Delondeurs of this world.”
“Kill ‘em, you mean.”
Allystaire nodded. “I suppose I do.”
By now the small column of men had reached the field Allystaire had directed them to, and they stood about, stamping their feet against the frozen ground, rubbing hands over their arms. He gave Harrys a nod and walked towards Landen, feeling the old soldier’s eyes on his back as he went.
* * *
Once tools were fetched and the space marked off, the work went quickly, with many of the Delondeur men putting their backs into it eagerly, if for no other reason than working made them warm. Many of them lacked experience with mattock and shovel, but when long deprived of the chance at exertion, a man comes to crave it, or so Allystaire reasoned, given how quickly they dug.
“Remarkable loose earth in this village,” he’d overheard one man say, as he’d hacked up the ground with a mattock.
Allystaire had to admit, it had seemed unusual how easily the earth gave way to the mattocks, how light the piles of frozen earth were in the shovels. Finally, after clearing more ground than should’ve been feasible with men who’d had one good meal in a week, he turned towards the nearby Temple.
Gideon stood on its steps, casually gesturing with a hand held low at his side. Allystaire smiled and lifted his shovel in a brief salute.
When the work was done, the men leaned on their tools and then looked to him expectantly.
“Give me a moment,” he said. “Beer will be forthcoming. I promise.” He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and concentrated a moment. He could, if he focused hard enough, determine where, relative to him, Gideon, Torvul, Mol, and Idgen Marte were.
Gideon was within the Temple, as was Mol. Idgen Marte proved a bit harder to locate.
In…the middle of the Oyrwyn camp, he thought, curiously. What is she about?
That left the dwarf, who was closest, by the smithy, likely still hard at work.
Torvul, Allystaire thought, pushing the words in his mind towards the dwarf.
A sour answer came back almost immediately. Ya can’t rush craftsmanship. What is it now?
The Delondeur men helped me dig the graves for the promise of beer and hot food. I cannot take them to the Inn and let them mingle with the villagers.
Allystaire’s mind was filled, briefly, with the stone-on-stone grinding sound of Dwarfish cursing, only to have it quickly shoved aside by Mol’s voice.
They may have to mingle with the folk this night. Snow is coming. Badly enough that even in an evenly heated tent, some men will freeze.
Allystaire was briefly taken aback by Mol’s intrusion. Could we not have Gideon heat their tent?
There are some men among them who need to spend a night in the Mother’s Temple, and our people need to see them do it. We cannot be enemies any longer, Allystaire. Time to start proving that. Take them to the Inn.
As you say, he thought, but not without a ball of doubt building in his gut.
He turned to the men, most of whom stared at him, their expectation turned to curiosity, even fear.
“Beer is that way,” he said, pointing to the road that led back down into the village and the “And food.”
Landen’s eyes were narrowed. “What did you just do?”
Dammit, Allystaire thought. Should not have done that in front of them. He shrugged. “One of the gifts of the Goddess. I was speaking with Her other servants,” he admitted.
“You were standin’ there with your eyes closed like a man about to have a fit,” one man observed.
Murmurs ran through the crowd, with Landen eyeing him carefully and Harrys edging up behind her to watch Allystaire with the same intensity.
“Believe me or do not,” Allystaire said. “Talking does not get you any closer to your reward for the work.” And with that, he set off.
Harrys was the first of the crowd to follow after him, then Landen. The rest followed their Baroness.