Workshop Guild (3)

The end of the dark stairs.

Faint light leaked out of the passage that ran on from them, and the nearer I came, the clearer the voices grew. They were talking somewhere back along the corridor that met these stairs.

“…so from here on too, kindly…”

The voice broke off. They too had heard my footsteps coming down the stairs. My own footfalls stamped quietly into the silence.

There is no need to hurry. They had come within reach, and I could take them whenever I liked.

“…”

As I set foot on the last stair, the light from the passage reached eye level and blocked my view. It lasted only a moment, and when my sight adjusted I found the innkeeper standing there, and several other people.

“So it wasn’t my bean dish that kept bringing you, after all.”
“As if that needed saying.”

From the passage I had come out of, roads ran off to left and right, wide enough for two to walk abreast and with no end in sight either way. One led toward the baron’s manor, the other toward the cathedral.

Four people, three carts. One cart was loaded with armor, another with spears and swords, and not one of them stood empty. By the look of it the cathedral had sent three to haul the carts and one to oversee them. Whether they had no sense of danger or simply did not count me a threat, they stood there unruffled with me in front of them.

“Who is that?”
“A guest who has been coming to the inn every day. I did wonder why he should take a room today of all days… it seems he has smelled something out somewhere.”
“So he is not someone you know. Might he have taken a commission of some kind?”
“That may well be so.”

— SHUNK!

A searing heat spread through my abdomen. Leather soaking through with blood, a beat late. The arm of the one who had been talking with the innkeeper had, in an instant, stretched out like an awl and run my solar plexus through.

“The guard corps has been nosing around the cathedral of late. Has your side been all right?”
“As it happens, there are a few we suspect of being the guard corps’ stooges. We were intending to look into them before long.”
“Deal with it quickly. There is already one that has crawled all the way down here, is there not?”

The arm, stretched long by sculpting, slid smoothly back out of me. Before it could get clear I caught hold of it, slick with blood, and a flinch of recoil traveled up into my fingertips.

“I’ll ask you a few things.”

“…”

Lucseon’s authority, then, though not at bishop rank. Probably one of the chosen few priests.

“How long have you been handling the weapons supply?”

“…Are you speaking to me just now?”

“…”

“Hm… ten years? About that long.”

Ten years, then. That overlaps roughly with when the redevelopment began, and the odds were good that the posting had come through at the same time the baron began sending weapons to the Ecclesia church in earnest.

Which meant the old blacksmith’s son had run into none other than this one.

“Was there ever a blacksmith who came down this far?”

The priest whose arm I held gave a thoughtful tilt of the head. The faithful, in any case, are without exception a pack of lunatics.

“There were a few, yes. None since the inn went up, though.”
“What did you do with them?”
“You do ask the obvious.”

The priest pointed at the wide hole punched through my solar plexus.

“We dealt with them the way we have dealt with you. Though, well, someone like you is a first.”

The old man’s son. Finding his remains looked impossible. Not that I had held out much hope from the start.

“But how are you still—”

I took the priest’s arm in both hands, twisted at the waist and swung with everything I had, as though hurling it aside.

— KRA-BLAM!

The priest slammed into the passage wall with a roar of noise, and the dust flew up thick. As though that were the signal, the group that had been watching me from beside the carts rushed me all at once.

They are abnormally fast. Not on the level of Talios’s baptism, but the authority of sculpting alone is more than enough to outstrip ordinary physical ability.

“You son of a—”

I stepped inside the guard of the one in front, who had drawn a dagger and was charging. I set my fist against the face and drove it straight down.

— WHAM!

The one I had driven into the floor died on the spot. The right cheekbone must have been ground clean to powder; the shape of the gauntlet had been left in it exactly.

The instant the one following behind froze.

I drew my sword and ran it into the second one’s chest, pushed forward until the crossguard stopped me, and closed tight against the body.

I shoved on into the other one as well, who was hesitating because one of their own side stood too close. I thought that one was going over, but that one planted a foot back and held by main strength. At the same moment, with the second one between us, a dagger came for my neck. I let go of the sword and pulled my body back instead.

— VWOOOSH!

The one who had lost balance and pitched forward, together with the second one still skewered on my sword, looked up sharply. Too late already. I picked up the first one’s dagger and finished the last one as well.

“U— hiiieeek!”

The innkeeper met my eyes and went over backward. I drew my sword again and moved to run them down as they fled.

— CRACK!

A sharp tentacle came flying in and ran clean through my heart.

“Not an ordinary human, are you. The Talios faith?”

The priest wiped away the blood running down from the head and asked. Running my heart through and then calmly expecting an answer was not an attitude I cared for, but I gave one anyway.

“No.”

The priest does not know about me. Had the priest known, the attack would not have been a killing stroke, a thrust straight through, but something meant to bind my body as thoroughly as possible.

Just before I brought my sword down on the tentacle.

Out of it countless more tentacles grew and stabbed through my insides in every direction.

“Khuk!”
“If you are still alive in there, shall we do introductions? I am Peter Linholt, priest, attached to the supply management department of the Ecclesia church’s Norbelgard branch.”

I cut through the tentacle that connected us, then pulled the limp, slackened strands out of my body, lifted my helm and spat out the blood that had filled my mouth.

“If you show your face as carelessly as that, doesn’t the reason for wearing a helm rather disappear?”
“You’re going to die anyway, so it hardly matters. Roan Belgard.”
“I have never seen anyone like you. Not even Talios was as alien as you are — might you belong to the Selbien faith?”

There was no doubt the priest had never been anywhere near the Selbien church.

“Sounds like you’ve never met the Selbien lot.”
“I have only heard that they are unpleasant people.”
“Hardly as unpleasant as you lot, who come at a man with things like this.”

The severed tentacle lay on the floor, and I ground it underfoot. Red blood splashed.

“It is a power Lucseon granted to me directly, to me and to no one else. Is it not beautiful?”
“And you — are you allowed to be blurting out your master’s true name?”
“You are going to die anyway, so it can hardly matter. And I had grown quite sick of the absurd playacting, as it happens.”

I cracked my neck a moment and shook the blood off my sword. There was no time to dawdle.

— KA-KLANG!

A tentacle came flying in without warning, and I struck it away. This time the attack had come for my neck.

“You’ve no capacity to learn.”
“I should be grateful if you would call it a thorough experimental spirit instead. I have become curious as to where and how much of you has to be run through before you die.”

I rushed the priest. Dozens of strands of tentacle shot out of the arm all at once and punched holes through my whole body, arms and legs alike. When I paid it no mind and kept charging, the priest drew the tentacles back and bound them into one.

It took the shape of an enormous sword and came down at me on a diagonal.

— CLANG!

I raised my sword and took it. The muscles that had been run through had not fully knitted yet, and even with a sound body I could not have beaten a sculpted priest on strength. The priest bore down with a force that meant to cut me in two, sword and all.

“I think I have the measure of it now.”
“Of what?”

In the middle of the standoff I saw a single long tentacle come sliding up behind the priest’s back. All this while the priest had been drawing them deliberately from the hands alone, working a mind game so that I would be conscious of nothing but those two arms. Not yet knowing I had caught on to it, the priest rattled on and on.

“Your weak point, I mean. You let every other part of you be hit, but the neck alone you guard. Against my attacks, and against the follower’s dagger too.”
“And what of it?”
“What I mean is—”

The tentacle that had crept up behind my back ran through my neck at last. When I let my strength drop, the priest too returned the arm that had been pressing on me to its original shape.

“That your weak point is far too obvious. Look — doesn’t it look just like a skewer—”

Just before the words ended I thrust my sword out. I drove it into the priest’s neck, twisted the angle and cut sideways, then brought the blade down once more on the neck, now a rag of flesh, and severed it clean through.

I too had been working a mind game, so that the priest would come for my neck. The two mind games crossed, and only one of us had noticed it.

The corpse of the one beaten in the reading of moves crumpled without a shred of grace.

“Ah. Ah.”

I checked that my voice was coming out properly, and looked around. Sure enough, the innkeeper who had fled was nowhere to be seen.

In the end I let one get away.

Failing to allow for a priest able to use the authority had been the losing move.

I turned my head toward the baron’s manor. Already there was no sound of running, no swaying torchlight to be seen. The barkeep would reach the manor and take shelter there before I could catch up.

I could give chase and settle Baron Lestein along with the barkeep in one go. But leaving aside whether that was possible or not, it must not be done.

If the baron dies, the workshop guild collapses. The blacksmiths who leaned on the guild for their supply of iron ore would go down with it, and that meant the collapse of Norbelgard. No; before the guild even collapsed, Lucseon’s assault would begin in force. Alone it might have been another matter, but I have companions to protect, so for now a head-on clash had to be avoided.

That left one choice. To tell Kyle Rowellin, before it grew any later, about the connection between the workshop guild and the Ecclesia church.

When I came out onto the street again, the morning sun was on the point of rising. The long small hours had gone by at last. I checked that no blood was leaking from the wrapping cloth I had brought out of the inn, and quickened my pace back toward the guard corps barracks.

I had to cross Norbelgard from one end to the other, so however much I hurried, the sun was fully up by the time I reached the barracks. The guard corps’ soldiers had already finished roll call and were beginning the day’s duties. I passed the parade ground and went inside the building.

And stopped.

Lilian, who would still be asleep.

I had killed a priest of Lucseon and let slip the one who would carry word of it; war with the church had to be counted as already declared. I wanted her to be the first to know of that threat.

But there is no time.

Thought through rationally, the thing to do right now was to bring the guard corps onto our side, so that Baron Lestein could not move freely. I hesitated only a moment, then passed the lodging by, and only once I had reached the front of the clerks’ office did I catch my breath.

The clerks’ office, the one I had been marched into by soldiers on the day I arrived in Norbelgard. Kyle Rowellin would be inside working through documents, as he always was.

I hope I can talk him round before the workshop guild’s pressure begins.

It is a matter that turns on minutes.

I opened the door of the clerks’ office.