Mercenary And Paladin (1)

When the meal ended, the branch head made for the council chamber on the ground floor of the central tower. The people who filed in after him were a mix of faces I knew and faces I didn’t. Foremost among the ones I knew, the commander of the Third Order was the first to take a seat at the central table. Walter, who had gone off with her, was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is the commander of the Second Order?”
“I judged he would not suit this war council, so I did not summon him.”

The branch head answered me, unrolling an enormous map across the table.

A little more time passed, and not an empty seat was left in the room. Drick and Kalen sat down beside me, side by side.

“Everyone who is coming appears to have come, so we shall begin the war council.”

The branch head, who had never taken a seat, stepped forward. He made no particular point of introducing me to the ones meeting me for the first time.

“The purpose of this war council is to establish the movements of the search subject, ‘Pindel Morein’, in hiding within the jurisdiction of Pirberk, and to determine the measures to be taken in response.”

The map on the table showed Pirberk exactly as it stood, and the branch head laid a hand on the marks scattered here and there across it.

“The Third Guard Corps of the commercial quarter and the Fifth Guard Corps of the farming quarter will search for the subject. The Fourth Guard Corps of the residential quarter will transfer its guard personnel temporarily into the administrative quarter and deploy them there.”

Pirberk is a radial city, drawn in circles around the central fortress. It divides broadly into five districts, and the farther a district sits from the fortress, the larger it is.

The First District: the central fortress quarter.

The Second District: the administrative quarter.

The Third District: the commercial quarter.

The Fourth District: the residential quarter.

The Fifth District: the farmland and the outer wall.

Pirberk’s five guard corps each had charge of one district, and here too, the higher the number a corps held, the more men it had.

I raised a hand as I watched the branch head give out his orders to the guard captains.

“If the guard corps set their minds to searching, won’t Pindel Morein catch the scent of it?”
“Of course he will. That is what the operation intends.”
“And why is that?”
“There are three main reasons.”

The branch head pointed at the outer wall. On the wall that wrapped the great city, a mark standing for a gate was drawn at each of the four points of the compass.

“The Fifth Guard Corps seals off entry to and exit from the city. First we strike flight from the list of choices the subject has.”
“At the same time the Third Guard Corps pushes outward from within. Cornered, the subject gives ground for as long as he is pushed, and ends up penned into the Fourth District.”
“The Fourth District is the residential quarter. The subject cannot hide himself away in a family home, so at most we turn over the alleys and we have him.”

A city’s guard corps set its mind to finding one man. That amounted to taking every district of the city under control, and nothing would change if the search subject noticed. Their method was, quite literally, to grind a man down until he died; even mercenaries, who are said to be past masters at this sort of work, could only shake their heads at it.

“…Come what may, I’ll never make an enemy of a noble as long as I live.”

To fight the ruler of a city is to fight the whole city.

Drick shook his head, having imagined himself in Pindel Morein’s place, about to face that crushing pressure from the guard corps; beside him, Kalen was twisting with the itch to talk. Watching the pair of them from where I sat, I could hardly help laughing out loud.

“Edwin Marcelo, captain of the Fourth Guard Corps. There would be more profit in joining forces with the Third Guard Corps and working the commercial quarter than in pulling the Fourth out into the administrative quarter.”
“And your reason?”
“I agree with the plan to draw the guard back and funnel the subject into the Fourth District. But we cannot dismiss the chance that the subject notices quickly and slips out before the Third Guard Corps’ cordon is complete. I therefore propose that the Fourth Guard Corps build the cordon together with the Third.”

On the whole the council ran in a lively mood. Some of that must have come from the branch head’s efforts to make it so, in means and in spirit both, but what looked decisive was that the old guard captains had been purged and their places filled with the church’s own people. If the heads of a city’s forces were paladins of the church to begin with, what reason was there for bad blood between the two?

Perhaps that was why. Strung tight as every one of the guard captains was, I could still feel their eyes stealing sideways glances at me, and one of those gazes belonged to the commander of the Third Order.

She had overall charge of the guard corps, which made her and my own party alike the worst nuisances in that room, the ones with the least actual work to do and the most power to unsettle the people running the meeting. Even so, she showed no intention of hiding the naked stare she kept fixed on me.

“Matters concerning the disposition of the search subject after his capture alive will be set down as a matter for the Apostle to decide. That concludes this war council.”

It took no time at all for every person in the council chamber to file out, the reverse of how long it had taken to fill every seat. We were rising as well when a voice called me back.

“Apostle. Might I have a moment of your time?”

The voice belonged to none other than the commander of the Third Order, Camilla Rosette. I glanced across at my companions before I answered.

“What is it?”
“It would be awkward for you to hear it here. How would it be if we walked a little?”
“Very well.”

Kalen went off to give the guard corps a description of Pindel’s face, and Drick, with nothing in particular to do, trailed along after me. Camilla did not seem to mind, so I let him.

“So, ah — I hear you had a proper go at it with Schneider.”

So that was what the two of them had been talking over so closely. Outside the central tower, heavy footsteps rang along the cloister that ran on toward the training yard.

“He was a decent warrior.”
“Ha ha. That Schneider. Outside of the Paladin, our grand commander, it’s hard to find the man a match.”

Paladin was the title conferred on the senior knight-order commander who leads a detachment.¹ Its holder had charge of the First Order, but that posting, too, lay not in Pirberk but with the main order in the north, so the rank stood close to a branch head’s.

“Now that you mention it, I have yet to see the First Order. Do you know when they come in?”
“It varies wildly. It depends on how fast their supplies run out.”

From far off came the sound of the Second Order’s soldiers throwing themselves into their training. There was no one in the cloister but Drick, Camilla and me. By the time the sunlight had crept a little further past the shadow of the roof, Camilla spoke.

“Apostle, I’ll come straight to it. I’m an ill-bred sort, you see, and I never could manage talking around a thing.”

Beside me stood the genuinely ill-bred sort, gawping vacantly at the birds. A remark like that would cut him to the quick.

In the open cloister only Camilla’s voice rang out, and quietly.

“My faith isn’t deep. But I always did like a scrap.”

Was doubting heaven a qualification for high office, then? As with Walter, this paladin confessed a shallow faith in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice.

“So I joined the church, and I’ve climbed as far as leading a knight order.”
“When I heard the apostle had come here — the top hand in a fight anywhere in the church, so they say — it struck me at once. Ah, this is the god’s own arrangement. Talios is granting me a grace.”
“Apostle, if it wouldn’t be rude, would you fight me, just the once? I’m so jealous of Schneider I can’t get to sleep, that’s the trouble of it.”

Camilla had come up out of the mercenaries, a rare thing for a woman, and she was past thirty. Too many years for a mercenary, too few for the commander of a knight order, was it not? Which meant she was seasoned enough not to die some ugly death far from home, and carried the real force and command to lead an order.

If we crossed swords.

At worst, she would be no less troublesome than Walter.

The moment I moved to answer, someone snatched the words away.

It was Drick.

“Commander of a knight order, was it? Lady knight, have a bout with me before that.”

Camilla was not the only one startled by Drick’s sudden move.

“What are you thinking?”
“Come now, brother, you fought the Second Order’s commander, didn’t you. If Schneider would go as far as… that, back at the inn, he must have been smashed to pieces something awful. I want to know what a paladin actually amounts to, that’s all.”

“…That did not come out of the fight’s outcome.”

Before I could get so much as a word of explanation out to Drick, Camilla burst out laughing.

“There are exactly two things I never turn away from. Schneider when he’s finally had a wash, and a pup who comes picking a fight. Young fellow — a mercenary, by the look of you. Traveling with the Apostle, of all things; you’ll have lived a life that’s no joke yourself.”
“It’s a bottom-of-the-barrel life, right enough, and one I’d not come off worse for anywhere. And my hand on a blade isn’t so different, I reckon.”

Between a paladin who has taken holy power into himself and an ordinary man, the very notion of crossing swords does not hold. Not unless you count being cut in half along with the sword in your hand. Camilla could hardly be ignorant of that, and yet she had met Drick’s provocation head-on.

“…Are you serious, Camilla Rosette?”

“Ah, I’d hold myself back, of course. And I hear this fellow is preparing for his baptism ceremony. Two birds at once, and I’d be his practice partner as well. Where’s the harm in it?”
“I did hear that a man has to take this baptism thing to become a paladin. How does that make you a practice partner?”

The trial a paladin in training undergoes to be reborn as a full paladin is a simple one. He fights a full paladin.

A savage way of going about it, true to the Talios church through and through, but had they not said the results were surprisingly good?

“You fight a paladin who’s taken the baptism. That’s the heart of the paladin’s trial.”

“…Isn’t that impossible, put that way? It’d mean a new paladin always has to be stronger than an old one.”

“The result doesn’t matter. Nobody’s telling you to win. It’s a trial that looks at what you’ve got in you.”

In short, the paladin standing opposite became the judge, and Drick the judged. Aptitude enough for battle to be worth the baptism and he passed; not enough and he failed. The knight in training had no need to beat the paladin judging him, and could not have managed it in any case.

“Of course, when the trial’s sat we hold down the holy power we took at the baptism. Wouldn’t do to kill you by mistake.”

Drick nodded at Camilla’s explanation. The paladin’s trial had not changed greatly from the one I remembered from fifty years ago.

“Then how’s the paladin who faces me decided?”
“That’s up to the knight in training. You can name some superior you’ve never much liked and have a round with him. You’ll only get pounded flat for it.”

The two of them looked ready to set off for the drill yard the instant I gave the word. I weighed going after Kalen and bearing the full weight of the guard captains’ stares against watching the pair of them spar, and nodded.

“Do as you like.”
“Then if you’ll excuse us.”

Drick and Camilla moved off at a quick pace toward the inner keep’s drill yard, where the voices of knights could be heard in the distance. I watched them for a while, then followed a beat late.

Late-afternoon sunlight, a few birds settled to earth, and the clank of plate boots were all that filled the cloister.