The Ancient

TWENTY-FOUR

The Anvil over Their Heads

They’re wanting ye to use yer long legs and wade out for better fishing,” Mcwigik explained to Cormack.

The man sat on a large rock on the northeastern side of the powries’ nearly barren island, staring at the misty waters.

“We’re not going to kill ye,” Mcwigik assured him, handing him a weighted net. “Not unless ye do something asking us to kill ye.”

“I do appreciate the rescue, and your generosity in allowing me to live.”

Mcwigik shrugged. “I’m thinking that the bosses are wanting Prag’s son to get old enough to see if the boy can win his dead father’s cap back.”

“The bosses? Aren’t you one of the bosses?”

“Yeah, but I’m wanting to keep ye alive just because.”

“Just because.”

“Yeah.”

Despite his troubling situation Cormack managed a little grin at that cryptic admission from the rough powrie. He had grown somewhat fond of the dwarf.

“Ye don’t give us any reason to kill ye, and we won’t kill ye,” Mcwigik reiterated. “Now go get us some fish.” The dwarf hocked and spat on the rocks and turned and started away.

“And what happens when you go to battle?” Cormack asked, stopping the dwarf in his tracks. Hands on hips, Mcwigik slowly turned about. “When the powries row out to do battle with the monks or the Alpinadorans, what am I to do?”

“Ye’re a long way from getting us to let you go along,” Mcwigik replied, completely missing the point.

Cormack gave a little laugh. “I could never go to such a fight, and you know it well.”

“Yach, but ye fought them barbarians all the time.”

“Not by my choice,” said Cormack. “Never by my choice. Not against them and not against you powries.”

Mcwigik hocked another large ball of spit, this time landing it near Cormack’s feet. “I’m knowing ye better than to think ye’re afraid of a fight,” he said.

“There is no point to the fighting!”

“No? How about the trolls, then? Would ye-”

Cormack cut in. “I’ll help you kill all the trolls you can find.”

Mcwigik smiled approvingly. “Yeah, we seen what was left of yer boat. Durndest boat any of us e’er seen. Might be a big part of why th’others’re letting ye stay.”

“But I cannot stay,” said Cormack.

“Up for a long swim, are ye?”

“I cannot remain here for long, anyway,” the fallen monk went on, ignoring the sarcasm. “This is no place for me.”

“Ye wanting us to put ye back with the monks?” asked Mcwigik. “Aye, might that we can, but that ye’ll have to earn. So go get the fish, and keep getting the fish-”

“I can never go back there,” Cormack interrupted. “They would not have me, and I would not have them. They set me adrift, thinking they had left me for dead, but somehow I didn’t die.”

“Not somehow, ye dolt,” said Mcwigik. “Was the cap on yer head.” Cormack reached up to adjust his beret in acknowledgment.

“So ye’re not wanting to go back there, and ye’re saying ye can’t stay here…”

“Yossunfier,” said Cormack.

“The barbarians?”

“Yes,” the monk replied. “I would have you drop me there.”

“They’ll kill ye.”

Cormack pursed his lips. “Nevertheless, that is where I would like to go.”

“Well, ye ain’t for going there with us,” said the dwarf. “Not a place we go near. Those folk ain’t like yer monk friends. They know the water and know when anything’s near their island. They been there a hundred years, ye know. And more, lots more. They’re not using stones to throw lightning like yer own. Nah, their magic’s quieter but worse for us if we venture near.”

“Then give me a boat so I can go there alone.”

Mcwigik spat again, this time hitting Cormack in the foot. “Ye’re daft. Boats’re worth more than yerself.”

“I will return it in short order.”

“Then how’re ye getting back to their island after ye drop it back here?”

“I’m not going back to that island or any island,” Cormack said, half under his breath, and it surprised him to see Mcwigik stiffen at that remark, a look of intrigue suddenly upon his face.

“This has never been my place.”

“What’re ye saying, boy? Say it plain.”

“I have a friend-several, perhaps-on Yossunfier who wishes to be gone from this lake. Lend me a boat so I can retrieve her.”

“Her? Haha, but that’s telling me a lot.”

“We’ll come right back with the boat. Then, with your agreement, you can take us to the shore and never think of us again.”

Mcwigik started to respond in several different directions. Cormack gathered this by the way the dwarf’s mouth worked in weird circles with no real sounds coming out.

“Yach, just catch the durned fish!” he finally blurted, waving a hand at Cormack dismissively as he stormed away.

Cormack had no idea what all that might be about, so he took up the net and waded into the warm lake waters.

You keep looking out to the south,” Androosis remarked, walking up beside Milkeila. “You fear that something has happened to him.”

It was a statement, not a question, and an observation that Milkeila could not dispute.

“We took care to make it appear as if our escape had been of our doing,” Androosis tried to assure her. “I doubt that our friend’s complicity is known to the monks.”

“And yet he does not signal… in any way,” said Milkeila.

Androosis put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. Barely had his hand touched her when Toniquay yelled, “Your duties!” They broke away from each other and turned as one to regard the shaman, who was striding their way. “You spend far too much time seeking an Abellican,” Toniquay scolded.

“An Abellican who saved us,” said Androosis. He shrank back as soon as he uttered the words, surprised by his own outburst at this powerful figure.

“It is true then, what they say,” Toniquay said to Milkeila. “You have fallen for this Abellican named Cormack.” He snapped a glare at Androosis, too, daring the young man to say again that Cormack had saved their lives.

“He is a friend,” Milkeila replied coolly. “A loyal one.”

“Friend,” Toniquay spat derisively. “A mere friend does not betray his own brethren. Nay, there is more at work here than friendship. His betrayal bespeaks fires in his loins.”

Milkeila didn’t respond at all, didn’t blink or sneer or speak.

“Your duties await,” Toniquay reminded her, adding as she walked by, “You would do well to prove yourself.”

“I am shaman-”

“For now.”

The warning did indeed shake the woman, visibly so, and she turned and hurried away.

Toniquay turned his withering gaze back to Androosis. “And you,” the shaman said, “would do well to learn and accept your place. My patience nears its end for Androosis. I took you to dangerous waters. Men of honor paid with their lives!” Androosis’s stunned expression spoke volumes, clearly arguing that the disaster on the boat was hardly his fault.

But Toniquay wasn’t hearing any of it. “We went out of our way to try to save you, young and spirited one. But no more. Prove yourself or you will be banished-if you are fortunate and the elders are feeling generous.”

“Yes, Toniquay,” Androosis replied obediently, hanging his head in humility.

The shaman walked away, eyeing the young man’s every step sternly.

A somber mood accompanied Brother Giavno and the rest as they went to work collecting the larger stones from the area of the island they had come to regard as their quarry. Giavno winced and couldn’t help but recall the last time he had been down here, when powries had arrived and Cormack had battled them so magnificently, so bravely.

The loss of Cormack was no small thing to the brothers of Chapel Isle. The manner in which it had occurred had left them all, particularly Giavno, tasked with delivering the very likely fatal beating, feeling empty and desolate. No one had spoken the fallen brother’s name since he had been pushed out adrift in the small boat. No one had to.

It was written on all of their faces, Giavno clearly saw. To a one they had been shaken. To a one Cormack’s betrayal had asked primary and devastating questions about their purpose and place in this foreign land and among these foreign societies.

Why had Cormack done it? Why had the man betrayed them, betrayed the very tenets of their mission, according to Father De Guilbe’s interpretation?

Giavno thought he had the answer to that, echoed in the sounds of Cormack’s lovemaking to the barbarian woman. Love was the strongest of human emotions, Blessed Abelle had taught, and more people had been brought down by love than by hate. While there was no specific prohibition of marriage in the Order of Blessed Abelle, such relationships were scorned among the brotherhood. If you gave yourself to the Church, it was to be wholly so. Worse still, to foster a love affair with a heathen, with a barbarian shaman, was far beyond the bounds of acceptability.

Cormack had earned his beating, Giavno believed, and had told himself a million times since that awful day. He could still feel the tug of the whip as its barbed ends dug into and hooked on the flesh of Cormack’s back.

He shuddered, and only then realized that one of the brothers had been asking him a question, and probably for some time.

“Yes, Brother?” he replied.

“The stone?” the younger man inquired.

“Stone?”

The monk offered a curious stare at Giavno for just a moment, then nodded as if he completely understood (which he likely did, for the cause of distraction was quite common at that time) and motioned toward one large rock that had been set off to the side.

“Is it too large, do you think?” the monk asked.

Giavno looked at him curiously. “No, of course not.”

“I cannot carry it alone,” the monk replied.

“Then get someone to help you.”

“They are all busy, Brother Giavno. I thought that perhaps you could help, either with your arms or through use of the malachite stone in lessening the weight.”

Giavno was about to reprimand the brother for being so foolish; Giavno was overseeing the work detail and not participating. But then he caught something in the young brother’s eye, a look of both hopefulness and sympathy, and when he glanced out at the wider scene, he realized that more than one of the other workers had taken a subtle, covert interest in this distant conversation.

Brother Giavno smiled as it hit him fully: They were trying to distract him. As the work was keeping their minds off of the tragedy of Brother Cormack, so they had thought to include Brother Giavno in that blessed busyness.

“Yes, Brother,” Giavno addressed the young monk. “Come. Together we two will carry the stone to the chapel, and what a fine addition to the wall it will be.”

Together, he thought, for all that the brothers of Blessed Abelle had was each other. So far from home, so far from kin, without that mutual bond they would all surely lose their minds.

That was what had made Cormack’s betrayal so particularly difficult.

Ye might remember Bikelbrin, and these are me friends, Ruggirs and Pergwick,” Mcwigik said, splashing at the water’s edge behind Cormack.

Cormack nodded to each in turn, wondering uneasily what this unexpected meeting might be all about.

“We’ll take ye to her,” Mcwigik announced, and the fishing spear fell out of Cormack’s hand. “Not sure how we’ll do it, but we’ll find a way. But we got a price.”

Cormack held up his arms, fully displaying his now-ragged brown robe. “I have little, but what I have-”

“Ye know yer way about out there,” Mcwigik interrupted. “That’s the price.”

Cormack looked at him curiously.

“The four of us’re done with this rock, and have been for a long time,” the dwarf explained. “We’re wanting to be gone from the lake, but we’re not for knowing the land about. Been a hundred years since I walked those paths, but for yourself, it’s not so long. So we’ll help ye get yer girl, and in exchange, ye’ll take us along.”

“My road will be south, no doubt, out of Alpinador and into the Honce land of Vanguard-maybe even across the gulf and into Honce proper, itself. I’m not sure how well-received a powrie might be…”

“Ye’ll take care of it,” Mcwigik said. “So start thinking on how we might get ye to yer girl, and then we’re off this rock, all six-or five, if she’s not to come.”

“Or nine or ten, perhaps even twelve,” said Cormack, “if her friends decide that they, too, wish to see the wider world.”

“Bring a hundred,” said Mcwigik. “A thousand! Long as me and me boys get to get out o’ here and to places more interesting.”

Cormack settled back on his heels. He could hardly believe the sudden turn of events. One moment, he was floating on a raft of tied troll carcasses, about to be eaten by fish, and now he was looking at escape, at what he and Milkeila had dreamed of for a long, long time.

He nodded-stupidly, he figured.

“We can find Yossunfier at night,” Mcwigik said. “And we’re thinking to go in one of the next few.”

Cormack nodded again, no less stupidly. Mcwigik thumped his hands on his hips and walked off.

Cormack retrieved his fishing spear. Oddly, he couldn’t hit another thing the rest of the afternoon.