Talios (2)

Around the hour when the sun was just about to go down.

That time when the horizon glows at its brightest, below the fortress standing aloof at the heart of a city steeped in orange.

— KA-BLAM!

A single black dragon ran riot.

— SKRAAAAAAK!

“The outer bailey’s breached! Tell the whole Second Order to get out here!”
“What do we do about the priests in the cloister!”

Even at that distance, the voices alone told me how desperate things had gotten.

Absolute bedlam.

Strong as Pormel was, in the end it was only a beast of some four meters. The sight of two whole knight orders being thrown in to bring that one animal down was, put kindly, a thing to make you shiver; put unkindly, nothing so much as a swarm of ants.

Word would spread now that a beast had come into the city out of nowhere and run riot. It would reach Pindel’s ear as well, but a rumor that a mercenary was hunting him and a rumor that a beast had run wild traveled along entirely different tracks. There was little chance of it driving Pindel into hiding.

Pormel. Focus on smashing the buildings.

Our purpose was not battle but uproar. The more of the church’s paladins piled onto Pormel, the fewer troops would be left in the inner keep. Slip through that gap, make contact with the branch head, and once the business was settled, pull Pormel out before it was too late. That was the rough shape of the plan.

Pormel was not a beast that would go down easily, but the matchup was a bad one. With several paladins carrying Talios’s holy power rushing it at once, even Pormel would be in danger.

Before long the Third Order posted in the outer bailey, and then the Second Order behind it, had swarmed off toward Pormel to the last man. Only once I had confirmed that did I go over the outer bailey’s wall and make for the inner keep.

I passed what looked to be the soldiers’ quarters, the scouts and the supply train among them, and went on through a great cloister. At the far end lay a broad courtyard, and it stood empty. Past that, the inner keep’s wall came into sight, far higher than the outer bailey’s, and climbing it looked a hard business.

Getting through it was not especially difficult, since the guards holding the inner keep belonged to the Second Order.

Even the guards have left their posts.

The Talios church’s fixation on battle was, at times, enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck.

I walked in through the gate of the inner keep with not a soul left to hold it. My plate boots clanked against the wooden floor with every step. The inner keep, and above all the central fortress inside it, was laid out on a far more complicated plan than I had expected.

Following the cloister brought me to one large door.

A big room on the ground floor, is it.

A chapel, most likely. With no idea where the church’s branch head was, I would simply have to search the rooms one by one.

I opened the chapel door. The room must originally have served some other purpose; now the church’s emblem hung there and chairs for prayer stood in rows. At the far end of the chapel there was one person.

“Outsiders are not permitted here.”

Light clothing over chain mail, a sword at the waist.

He looked ready to fight at any moment, so I wondered whether he might be a knight in training. But the Talios church is a place where even the priests wear chain mail, and in the end his dress told me nothing about his post.

“That is a thorough sort of faith. Didn’t you hear the commotion outside?”

Above all, he was quite young. Twenty at the very most. That was the other reason I had taken him for a trainee rather than a paladin.

“My faith is nothing so grand as that.”
“How so?”

The man rose slowly. I had not noticed it while he sat, but at his full height he stood taller than I did.

“Lord Talios does not teach us to pray. To take up the sword, yes. So the ones out there fighting the beast stand higher in faith than I do, praying here.”

The man smiled. The smile was clear and unclouded, and yet something in it struck me as unnatural.

“Didn’t an order come down? To put down the beast outside.”
“Yes. It was.”
“Then why aren’t you going? That’s not a question of faith but of the chain of command, is it?”
“Because I am the one who gave that order.”

Only then did I understand why the man’s unclouded smile had struck me as unnatural.

It was the smile of a madman. Among that congregation of madmen that is the Talios church, the smile of a madman without peer.

“Commander of the Second Order, then. Quite something, at your age.”
“Young in years, thin in faith, it makes no difference; so long as a man swings a sword well, Lord Talios puts him to precious use.”

The man drew the sword at his waist.

A fine blade, keen and well kept.

“And however low my faith runs, it runs high enough to deal with an intruder.”

A small sound tapping at the floor, and the lamps on the wall swaying.

That alone was enough to tell me the man had gone from my sight.

— CLAAANG!

At the same instant his form blurred, the sword I had drawn threw sparks. His blow had closed at a speed I could not register and landed square on my blade.

“…Remarkable. This is the first time my sword has been blocked.”

“What, you think I got in this far by being good at hide-and-seek?”

I tried shoving the blade back, but the man gave no sign of budging. Physical power past the human limit was the signature trait of paladins who had taken Talios’s holy power into themselves through baptism.

At once I pulled my sword in toward my own body, and as his balance broke I brought the blade down at his neck.

The man was not there.

The moment I recovered the sword and guarded my flank, sparks flew again. Before another cut could follow it, I kicked out at the spot he would appear from. The kick landed and drove him back a good distance.

“Something is a little strange.”
“And what is that?”

The man’s face creased.

“Your body is not fast, and yet you counter as though you can see me. Do you see the future, perhaps?”

I could not help a snort of laughter. How many opponents faster and stronger than me had I dealt with by now? If centuries of piled-up experience produce an effect much like seeing the future, then in the end the man was not wrong.

“Let’s say I do.”

The man’s shape blurred once more. A heavy weight came through the hand that gripped the sword guarding my back.

His blade did not end there. Countless strokes I could not see came crowding in. A furious assault of thrusts and cuts and sweeps, all of it aimed at the vital points where taking a hit means no escaping a mortal wound.

I blocked every one. Attacks aimed so plainly at the vitals were, if anything, the easy ones to turn aside. It was the strokes that did not aim for the vitals that carved my body up.

Then came the moment the blade lodged in my shoulder twisted and tore my right arm away.

In the short instant his sword had stopped, I slammed into him. At the same time I caught the flying right arm with my left hand and swung it at the man as he went reeling back. The torn-off right hand still had a firm grip on the sword.

“Kh—!”

Even as he went down, the man’s monstrous reflexes fended off that blow and its unnatural reach.

“A pity.”

I had thought it a stroke of some inspiration, one that caught him where he was open. Watching him field it that simply left me not so much deflated as plainly dumbfounded.

“What in the world am I fighting?”
“Well, now. An intruder, wouldn’t you say?”
“The intruders I know do not swing arms that have come off.”

I brought the right arm, sword still in its grip, up against the cut at my shoulder. Shoulder and arm knitted together and the limb regenerated completely. That was the expedient I mostly used when there was no time to grow the body anew.

“Hey. All I need is to know where the branch head is. I don’t want to fight you.”
“And a man would gladly give up his superior’s whereabouts to a monster who sticks a severed arm back on in a blink, of course.”

I swung the joined arm about for a moment, then gave a shrug.

“Fair enough.”

He was not the branch head, but the man in front of me held a post high enough to give orders to the whole knight order. Second best would have to do. I drew out the apostle’s token and showed it to him.

“Do you know what this is?”
“I do not.”

Fifty years. Time enough for one generation to turn over.

However high his post, it was no wonder that a man with so few days behind him failed to recognize the token.

I let out a small sigh and beckoned lightly.

“Come on, then. I’ve no time.”

— THOOM!

A different sound from any that had come before.

Those who see my undeath generally show one of two reactions. They lose the will to fight, or they set about killing me in one stroke. The man was the latter.

Tearing the air apart in an instant, he appeared and brought his sword down. I already knew it would come for my head, so I raised my blade crosswise and caught it.

— KA-BLAM!

The roar was one you would never believe came of an edge meeting a flat, and the floorboards under my feet caved in. Ominous sounds kept coming from the joints of both arms.

“Pressing me down by main strength, is it. Crude.”
“I will take that as an insult to the Talios church.”

Pure strength, with no artifice to it at all. The classic method of the Talios church, which holds to crushing an opponent under overwhelming force.

The man’s center of gravity was shifting from high to low.

I canted the flat of my blade, and his sword rode down mine and threw sparks. In that very instant, with the man cutting on through empty air, I meant to sweep his head from his shoulders.

“What is this commotion!”

Behind me, the chapel door opened. I stopped the blade in a hurry where it had already touched the man’s neck.

“Branch Head?”

The man standing face to face with me had cried it out in a shrill voice. The moment I heard it I turned and thrust the token out.

“Hear me, branch head of the Talios church of Pirberk. I am the apostle of Talios who came to you fifty-six years ago in the domain of Branskholm, in the north of the empire. In the battle against the league of Teldrogin, Durheim, and Mordiram I stood at the very forefront of the holy war to deliver you, and now, after all this long time, the heretic who has crept into Pirberk…”

“Wait. Wait a moment.”

The newcomer had been listening blankly to the words I poured out rapid-fire. Now he came to himself with a start and studied the token in my hand closely. He ran trembling fingers over the iron, and then he sank to his knees and bowed his head low.

“I greet the Heaven-Conquering Apostle.”

As luck would have it, the branch head’s post was high enough to know the token, and he was a man well on in years. At that toe-curling apostle refrain, heard again after so long, I changed the subject at once.

“Branch head. Pull the troops back from the outer bailey.”
“Forgive the presumption, but there is a beast there, O Apostle. Where there is a beast there is holy war, and where there is holy war there is no retreat.”
“That beast is the steed I rode in on. Do you mean to kill an apostle’s steed just because it’s a beast?”

“…As you command.”

The branch head rose at once and left the chapel. Naturally enough, the man who had watched the whole of this through was left dumbstruck.

“Th-that, no, what in the…”
“What I am, you mean?”

I slid my sword into its sheath, then peeled off the severed right-arm section of my leather armor the way you would slip off a sleeve.

“As you can see. Your apostle.”

A hard wind came in at the door the branch head had left open, and the lamps swayed. But nothing just then could have been shaken as hard as the man’s heart.

“The, the Heaven-Conquering Apostle… actually exists…”
“That’s right. The apostle out of the legend.”

It did not take long for the paladin who had driven me so hard, the commander of the Second Order, to bow his head to me.