Talios (3)

Pormel gave a low cry and came over to rub itself against me. I scratched underneath the spines that ran along its neck.

“You’ve done well.”

— Grrrrrk.

The beast had kept clear of the swarming soldiers and wrecked the buildings of the outer bailey just as I had instructed. By the end the paladins of the Third and Second Orders had cut off the road and all but closed the circle around it, and the branch head must have broken in on them at exactly the right moment.

“That such a savage beast should lie flat on its belly…”
“I’m not called an apostle for nothing.”
“Ah. Truly, the Heaven-Conquering Apostle.”

When the branch head broke in on them, the paladins had doubted his faith. Then I appeared behind him with Pormel fawning on me, and the doubt turned to astonishment. He explained what I was, and that left them kneeling in front of me.

My leather armor had gone to rags again, so I had stripped it off and stood in a set of the church’s armor someone had hurriedly fetched.

“Robert Gunter.”
“Robert Gunter, branch head of Pirberk, attends the apostle’s word.”

The church’s strength left in the city amounted to just the Second Order and the Third, and nothing besides. I meant to put them to use for a while yet, so I had an obligation to know exactly what they amounted to.

“Report the Pirberk branch’s forces to me in detail.”
“One detachment seconded to us by the main church in the north, comprising the First, Second and Third Orders, is at present incorporated into the Pirberk branch. The First Order is charged with putting down the disorder outside the city, the Second with guarding the church’s interior, the Third with keeping the peace in the city.”

The First Knight Order, the branch head said, was made up solely of baptized paladins, and it was out beyond the walls cutting down every beast it laid eyes on. Running a flying column like that to exterminate beasts was standard practice for any Talios branch of a certain size. So the very size of this branch had drawn its core strength out of the city.

Exactly as I had expected.

By simple head count the Second Order was the smallest of the three, while the Third, having absorbed the city’s own troops, was the largest. He gave me all the rest of the odds and ends besides.

“I’ll come again as soon as the sun is up tomorrow. Let no one know I exist.”
“Yes. Understood. Yet not a few will have seen the apostle’s steed. Stopping every mouth is impossible.”
“Make it out to be the rampage of a beast that had crept into the city. And announce that the beast has been dealt with.”
“As you command.”

I could hardly take Pormel back to the inn, so I left it in the church’s keeping. I considered calling Kalen and Drick up to the castle and lodging us all there, but the night was far along, and I settled on sleeping at the inn where they were.

Over the rubble of the ruined outer bailey, and on to the inn.

Kalen must already have been asleep, turned over on the bed, and Drick was keeping watch at his side.

“You’re late, brother.”
“I’d have said I made rather good time.”

Drick laughed under his breath. In the dark I could make out Kalen’s body rising and falling.

“And you didn’t bring the branch head along either. I was looking forward to seeing him flat on his belly like a frog.”
“Impatient, aren’t you. Morning hasn’t even come yet.”

The room was cramped and held only the one bed, so I dropped down beside it, where Kalen lay. I unbuckled the sword at my waist as well and stood it against the wall.

When was it that I had come by this sword? Some decades back I had got hold of a good blade, gone on using it, and never changed it since. However fine a thing is, it can’t stand against the years. Rust had come up here and there, and the edge was notched. I ran a gauntleted hand along the deep scar the commander of the Second Order had raked across the flat of the blade.

“An old sword.”
“It’s about time I changed this, too.”

What is worn and old ought to be replaced with something new. Can I not follow even so natural a principle as that? Am I dragging back out a story that has already closed?

Whenever a bond out of the past reached into the present, it left me with a strange feeling. All the more so when the bond was old enough that a whole generation had gone by.

“Now that you’re back, brother, I’ll get off to my own room.”
“Do that.”

Countless lives are crushed, and countless lives bloom again. Can the Talios church I knew and the Talios church of today be called the same thing?

Hundreds of soldiers and dozens of knights.

And one young commander.

Am I truly fit to receive their obeisance?

I could not know.

No one was there to answer, and the sound of Drick pulling the door shut filled the room all on its own.

It felt as though hours had passed, and as though only minutes had. The moonlight reached into the room through the window for only a little while, then everything around me went dark, and before long it grew light again. Dawn had broken.

I hung the sword back at my waist and was about to wake Kalen when a knock came at the door.

Drick, is it?

But the one standing on the other side was someone even I had not expected.

“Did you sleep well?”

“…I don’t recall telling you to send anyone.”

The commander of the Second Order, a sturdily built young man with black hair, smiled and bent at the waist.

“We could hardly have the apostle come to us alone. Allow me to greet you again properly. I am Walter Schneider, commander in charge of the Second Knight Order of the Talios church’s Pirberk branch.”
“I’m quite sure I told you not to make me known. A commander of a knight order calling to wish me good morning. Do you mean to advertise what I am?”
“There’s no cause for concern. I have never once gone about with my face uncovered.”

He was dressed in ordinary everyday clothes. Seen like that, nobody would take the young man for a commander of the church’s knight orders.

Walter’s gaze went past me to Kalen.

“You have company. We will escort them as well. A meal is prepared at the branch.”

Just then Drick, drawn out by the unfamiliar voice, opened his own door and met Walter’s eyes.

“…Brother?”

He was bristling with wariness, and I moved to stop him. Then I thought about it a moment and gave Walter an order instead.

“Down on your belly.”

The order had gone to Walter, but the one who froze on the instant was Drick.

“Will this do for lying flat?”
“A little more like a frog. There.”

I corrected Walter’s posture and looked over at Drick. He met my eyes and let out a helpless laugh.

“…Hah. Are you telling me to believe this fledgling is the church’s branch head?”

“Of course not. This one isn’t the branch head.”
“Then what in the world is—”
“The commander of the Second Knight Order, apparently.”

Still flat on the floor, Walter lifted his head.

“A pleasure, companion of the apostle. I am Walter Schneider, commander of the Second Knight Order of the Pirberk branch.”

Watching him lie there and make his greeting perfectly at ease, without so much as a murmur of complaint, left even me uncomfortable. It had always been the same with the Talios church lot. You could never throw a careless word their way.

Introduction or no, Drick did not lay his suspicion aside for some time. In the end it took Walter drawing out the commander’s seal for the business to settle.

Drick woke Kalen, muttering ‘The end of days… the end of days…’ at intervals as he went. Kalen went through the same sequence Drick had (fainting dead away at the sight of the seal held out to him by a Walter still flat on the floor like a frog). By now, though, all of them had, just barely, come round to accepting it.

So, after that small commotion, all four of us set out for the church’s stronghold.

“How did you find out where I was?”
“There is nothing in this city the Talios church does not know.”

For a start, the soldiers who kept the record of who came and went were the church’s own. I turned his answer over and nodded.

“That would follow. Do you collect the trade tax as well?”
“Not only that. We take the market tax, the labor tax and the river-freight tax besides.”

Which was to say they bled everyone within reach: wandering merchants first, then market traders, farmers, hauliers, the lot. Pirberk stood on a level with the cities of the empire’s heartland, and I could not easily reckon what the whole of it must yield in tax.

“You must be rotten with money.”
“Not so, in fact. There has never once been a time our war chest was full.”

To the war-mad Talios church the war chest was a gauge of faith. The more of it you spent, the higher your faith stood.

“We are doing our best not to leave any of it lying spare.”
“A while ago you said your faith was thin. Now you talk like a fanatic.”
“However much a son doubts his father, a father is still a father, is he not?”

Talking of this and that with Walter, I drew steadily nearer the castle that served as the branch’s stronghold. Pormel had brought part of it down, but the outer bailey still made a show of its grandeur.

Kalen looked up at the thick wall.

“…This is the church’s branch?”

“It is.”
“What about the people who used to live here, sir? The lord, all right, this was Slonhar land to begin with, so say they drove him out to Brus.”
“The lord of Darbar did have his eye on the place. Even so, we drove him out to another city of Darbar. The servants and the soldiers the church absorbed as they stood.”

Just as Walter said, the outer bailey was busier than it had ever been. Yesterday there had not seemed to be many people about, whether because of the dark or because they had gone indoors to hide from Pormel. Now the crowd moving about outside the buildings alone looked to run well past several hundred.

“The outer bailey holds the Third Order’s quarters, the training yard, the storehouses and the like. Formally the whole detachment uses them, but in practice the space belongs to the Third.”
“The First would have little business here, and the Second takes its board and lodging in the inner keep, is that it? Doesn’t that set the Third talking?”
“The Third is mostly Pirberk’s own soldiers. The paladins who lead them come to about ten, and even their commander came up out of the mercenaries. We could hardly have outsiders sleeping in the same quarters as the Second, who hold the church up.”

Walter was answering Drick’s question. The Third’s commander, as it happened, had worked as a mercenary, had been won over by the church, and had become a paladin. Walter can hardly have said it knowing what it meant, but there was no helping the odd look that came over Drick’s face.

“They don’t look unhappy.”

The soldiers in the training yard looked worn out, but no shadow lay over them either. In the Middle Ages it was no rare thing for the lord you served to die overnight and your allegiance to change hands. This was an age of upheaval where killing and being killed were taken for granted.

“They’re all used to it. Though it’s true enough our church treats them uncommonly well.”

For a soldier of the Talios church, not dying in a fight was the stranger outcome. The welfare and the benefits were good in proportion.

Better to die short and thick than to live long and thin.¹

The thought seemed to have risen to the surface of every face in the yard.

“Well, if it isn’t young Schneider.”

A voice came out of nowhere and I turned my head. The commander of the Third Order stood there, one of the faces I had seen the night before.

“Oh my. I greet the apostle.”

Rather than dropping straight into a prostration, she bowed from the waist. That was on account of the first order I had given as apostle: ‘There is to be no prostrating before the apostle.’

“The Third Order’s commander?”
“Yes. Camilla Rosette.”

The commander of the Third Order.

She was a model of the seasoned warrior. The scars all over her face seemed to speak for the sort of life she had lived.

“Ah, I have something I need to discuss with Schneider…”
“Do you.”
“Yes, that’s so.”

I gave Walter a look. He inclined his head to me and pointed toward the inner keep.

“Then I’ll excuse myself here. The branch head is waiting in the inner keep.”
“Yes. We’ll head in.”

Walter went off after Camilla. Kalen, Drick and I made for the inner keep as he had said.

“The inner keep’s not so different either.”

Leaving the central tower aside, you could fairly call it nothing but a narrower outer bailey. Here too there were quarters, and men at their training; in the end it was a place where people lived.

Drick met my eyes for a moment, then went striding off deeper inside. Kalen and I followed after him.