The Heretic Kings

TWENTY-TWO

Albrec’s head was full of blood, swollen and throbbing like a bone-pent heart. His face was rubbing against some form of material, cloth or the like, and his hands, also, felt swollen and full.

He was upside-down, he realized, dangling with his midriff being crushed by his own weight.

“Put me down,” he gasped, feeling as though he might throw up if he did not straighten.

Avila set him down carefully. The young Inceptine had been carrying him slung over one broad shoulder. The pair of them were breathing heavily. Albrec’s world dizzied and spun for a moment as the fluids of his body righted themselves. The lamp Avila had been carrying in his free hand guttered on the floor, almost out of oil.

“What are you doing?” Albrec managed at last. “Where are we?”

“In the catacombs. I couldn’t bring you round, Albrec. You were dead to the world. So I piled up stone in front of the hole and tried to find a way out for us.”

“Commodius!”

“Dead, and may his warped spirit howl the eons away in the pits of hell.”

“His body, Avila. We can’t just leave it down here.”

“Why not? He was a creature of the lightless dark, a shape-shifter, and he tried to kill us both to protect his precious version of the truth. Let his corpse rot here unburied.”

Albrec held his aching head in his hands. “Where are we?”

“I was following the north wall-the damp one, as you said-trying to find the stairs, but I must have missed them somehow.”

“An easy thing to do. I will find them, don’t worry. How long has it been since. .?”

“Maybe half an hour, not long.”

“Great God, Avila, what are we going to do?”

“Do? I–I don’t know, Albrec. I hadn’t been thinking beyond getting out of this dungeon.”

“We’ve killed the Senior Librarian.”

“We’ve slain a werewolf.”

“But he changed back into Commodius the librarian. It’s the last thing I remember. Who will believe us? What signs are there on his body to tell anyone what he was in life?”

“What are you saying, Albrec? That we are in trouble for saving our own lives, for putting an end to that foul beast?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know what to think. How could it happen, Avila? How could a priest be a thing like that, all these years, all the years I have worked with him? It was he who haunted the library; I see that now. It was his unclean presence which gave it its atmosphere. Oh, lord God, what has been going on here?”

The pair were silent, their eyes fixed on the tiny lamp flame which did not have too many minutes of life left to it. But it did not seem important that they might soon be left here in impenetrable darkness. The place seemed different somehow. They had seen the true face of evil, and nothing else could frighten them.

“They know,” Albrec went on in a rasping whisper. “Did you hear him? They know the truth of things, the real story of the Saint and the Prophet, and they have been suppressing it. The Church has been sitting on the truth for centuries, Avila, keeping it from the world to safeguard its own authority. Where is piety, where humility? They have behaved like princes determined to hold on to their power no matter what the cost.”

Avila fingered his black Inceptine robe thoughtfully.

“You have claw marks down the sides of your face,” he told Albrec, as though he had only just seen them.

“There’s blood on yours, too.”

“We can’t hide our hurts, Albrec. Think, man! What are we to do? Columbar is dead at Commodius’ hand and Commodius is dead at ours. How will it look? We cannot tell them we were trying to discover and preserve the truth of things. They’ll put us out of the way as quickly as Commodius intended to.”

“There are good men yet in the Church-there must be.”

“But we don’t know who they are. Who will listen to us or believe us? Sweet blood of the Blessed Saint, Albrec, we are finished.”

The lamp guttered, flared, and then went out. The dark swooped in on them and they were blind.

Avila’s voice came thick with grief through the lightlessness. “We must flee Charibon.”

“No! Where would we go? How would we travel in the depth of winter, in the snows? We would not last a day.”

“We’ll not last much longer than that here once this gets out. When Commodius is missed they’ll search the library. They’ll find him in the end. And who is the only other person who has the keys to the library? You, Albrec.”

The little monk touched the torn skin of his face and neck, the lump on his forehead where the werewolf had knocked him. Avila was right. They would question him first, for he was Commodius’ closest colleague, and when they saw his wounds the inquisition would begin.

“So what are we to do, Avila?” he asked, near to tears. He knew, but he had to let someone else say it.

“We’ll have a day of grace. We’ll stay out of sight and gather together what we can to help us on our journey.”

“Journey to where? Where in the world are we to go? The Church rules Normannia, her Knights and clerics are in every city and town of the west. Where shall we run to?”

“We are heretics once this gets out,” Avila said. “They will excommunicate us when they find the body in that unholy chapel and note our disappearance. But there are other heretics in the world, Albrec, and there is a heresiarch to lead them. The man some say is Macrobius has been set up as an anti-Pontiff in Torunn. Charibon’s writ has no authority in that kingdom, and anyone hostile to the Himerian Church will be welcome there. The Macrobian kings will listen to us. We would be a powerful weapon in their armoury. And besides, Charibon seems now to me like a sink of corruption. If Commodius was a werewolf, could there not be others like him within the ranks of my order?”

“It does not bear thinking about.”

“It must be thought about, Albrec, if we are to puzzle out a way to save our lives.”

They stood awhile, not speaking, listening to the drip of water and the enfolding silence of the gutrock, the bowels of the mountains. Finally Avila moved. Albrec heard him groan from the pain of his hurts.

“My robe is ripped to threads, and I think I have some ribs broken. It is like a knife thrust into my side every time I draw breath. We must get back to our beds before Matins.”

“You sleep in a dormitory, Avila. Won’t your colleagues notice?”

“There is a bolster under my blankets doing service as a sleeping monk, and I stole out as quiet as a mouse. But I’ll not be so quiet returning. Damnation!”

“You can’t go back. You must come to my cell. We’ll get some things together and hole up somewhere tomorrow-or today, as I suppose it must be-and leave tomorrow night.”

Avila was gasping in short, agonizing pants. “I fear I will not be a swift traveller, my little Antillian comrade. Albrec, must we leave? Is there no way we can brazen it out?”

The decision had been made, but it terrified both of them. It would be so much easier to go on as if nothing had happened, to step back into the ancient routine of the monastery-city. Albrec might have done it, the inertia of fear tying him to the only life he had known. But Avila had painted things too clearly. The Antillian knew that their lives had changed without hope of recovery. They had stepped beyond the Church and were on the outside, looking in.

“Come,” Albrec said, trying not to move his neck. “We’ve a lot to do before dawn. This thing has been thrust on us as Honorius’ visions were thrust upon him, that poor, mad seeker after the truth. God has given us a burden as heavy as his to bear. We cannot shirk it.”

He took Avila’s arm and began leading him along the wall of the catacombs, touching its rough surface every now and then with his shaking palm.

“He died in the mountains, you know, died alone as a discredited hermit whom no one would listen to, a holy madman. I wonder now if it is not the Church which has been mad. Mad with pride, with the lust for power. Who is to say that it has not suppressed every holy truth-seeker who has arisen over the centuries? How many men have found out about Ramusio’s true fate, and have paid for that knowledge with their lives? That is the pity of it. Take a lie and make it into belief, and it rots the rest of the faith like a bad apple in a barrel. No one knows what to believe any more. The Church totters on its foundations, no matter how much of its structure may be sound, and those good men who are in its service are tainted with its lies.”

Avila groaned out a wrecked laugh. “You never change, Albrec. Still philosophizing, even at a time like this.”

“Our fate has become as important as the downfall of nations,” Albrec retorted humourlessly. “We carry our knowledge like a weapon of the Apocalypse, Avila. We are more potent than any army.”

“I wish I felt so,” Avila grated, “but I feel more like a wounded rat.”

They found the stairs and began to ascend them as gingerly as two old men, hissing and grimacing at every step. It seemed an age before they reached the library proper, and for the last time in his life Albrec walked among the tiers of books and scrolls and breathed in the dry parchment smell. The title page of the old document crackled in the breast of his robe like a grizzling babe.

The air of the passing night was bitterly cold as they left the library, locking it behind them, and trudged through the wind-smoked snowdrifts to the cloisters. There were a few other monks abroad, preparing for Matins. Charibon was wrapped in pre-dawn peace, dark buildings and pale drifts, the warm gleam of candlelight at a few windows. It was different now. It no longer felt like home. Albrec was weeping silently as he helped Avila to his own cell. He knew that tonight whatever peace and happiness his plain life had known had been lost. Ahead lay nothing but struggle and danger and disputation, and a death which would occur beyond the ministrations of the Church. Death on a pyre perhaps, or in the snows, or in a strange land beyond all that was familiar.

He prayed to Ramusio, to Honorius the mad saint, to God Himself, but no light appeared before him, no voice spoke in his mind. His supplications withered into empty stillness, and try as he might he could not stop his faith from following them into that pit of loss. All he was left with was his knowledge of the truth, and there grew in him a resolve to see that truth spread and grow like a painful disease. He would infect the world with it ere he was done, and if the faith tottered under that affliction, then so be it.

Charibon came to life before the sun broke the black sky into slate-grey cloud. Matins was sung, and the monks went to their breakfasts; Lauds, and then Terce followed. The accumulated snows of the night were swept away and the city stirred, as did the fisher-villages down on the frozen shore of the Sea of Tor.

After Terce a group of scholars went to one of the Justiciars and complained that the library was not yet open. The matter was investigated, and it was found that the doors were locked and there were no lights within. The Senior Librarian could not be found, nor could his assistant. The matter was pursued further, and despite the frigid air a crowd of monks gathered around the main doors of the Library of Saint Garaso when at Sext they were broken open by a deacon of the Knights Militant and his men using a wooden beam as a battering ram whilst Betanza, the Vicar-General himself, looked on. The library was searched by parties of senior monks. By that time the body of Columbar had been discovered, and despite searches of the dormitories and cloisters the two librarians were still nowhere to be found. Charibon began to buzz with speculation.

Commodius’ body was discovered just before Vespers, after the upper levels of the library had been turned upside down. Monks searching the lower levels had come upon a discarded oil lamp, and a pile of broken masonry built up against a wall of the catacombs. It fell apart as soon as they began to investigate it, and a monsignor entered the little temple along with two armed Knights to discover the corpse of the Senior Librarian stark and staring, the silver pentagram dagger buried in its spine.

The circumstances of the discovery were not bruited abroad, but the story made its way about the monastery-city that the Senior Librarian had been foully murdered in horrible surroundings somewhere deep in the foundations of his own library, and his assistant, along with a young Inceptine who was known to be his special friend, was missing.

Patrols of the Knights Militant and squads of the Almarkan garrison soldiers prowled the streets of Charibon, and the monks at Vespers whispered up and down the long pews when they were not singing to God’s glory. There was a murderer, or murderers, loose in Charibon. Heretics, perhaps, come spreading fear in the city at the behest of the heresiarch Macrobius who sat at the Devil’s right hand in Torunn. The senior Justiciars were forming an investigative body to get to the bottom of the affair, and the Pontiff himself was overseeing them.

But late that evening, in the white fury of yet another snow-storm, two events went unremarked by the patrols which were watching the perimeters of Charibon. One was the arrival of a small party of men on foot, struggling through the drifts with their black uniforms frosted white. The other was the departure of two bent and labouring monks bowed under heavy sacks, feeling their way through the blizzard with stout pilgrim’s staves and gasping in their pain and grief as they trudged along the frozen shores of the Sea of Tor, bypassing the bonfires of the sentry-posts by hiking far out on the frozen surface of the sea itself to where the pancake ice bunched and rippled under the wind like the unquiet contents of a white cauldron. Albrec and Avila struggled on with the ice gathering on their swollen faces and the blood in their hands and feet slowly solidifying in the intense depth of the raging cold. The snowstorm cloaked them entirely, so that they were not challenged once in their fumbling progress. But it also seemed to be fairly on the way to killing them before their flight had even got under way.

The party of black-clad men demanded admittance to the suites of the High Pontiff Himerius, and the startled guards and clerical attendants were spun into a frenzy by their unexpected appearance. Finally they were billeted in a warm, if austere, anteroom whilst the Pontiff was notified of their arrival. It was the first time in four centuries that Fimbrian soldiers had come to Charibon.

The Pontiff was being robed by two ageing monks in his private apartments when the Vicar-General of the Inceptine Order entered. The monks were dismissed and the two Churchmen stood looking at one another, Himerius still fastening his purple robe about his thickening middle.

“Well?” he asked.

Betanza took a seat and could not stifle a yawn: it was very late, and he had had a trying day.

“No luck. The two monks remain missing. They are either dead, if they are innocent, or fled if they are not.”

Himerius grunted, regarding his own reflection in the full-length mirror which graced the sombre opulence of his dressing chamber.

“They are guilty, Betanza: I feel it. Commodius was trying to stop them from committing heresy, and he died for it.” A spasm of indefinable emotion crossed the Pontiff’s aquiline features and then was gone. “May God have mercy on him, he was a loyal servant of the Church.”

“What makes you so sure that was the way of it, Holiness?” Betanza asked, obviously curious. His big soldier’s face was ruddy with the day he had spent, and scarlet lines intagliated the whites of his eyes.

“I know,” Himerius snapped. “You will send out search parties of the Knights to find these two runaways as soon as the weather permits. I want them brought back to Charibon to undergo inquisition.”

Betanza shrugged. “As you wish, Holiness. What of these Fimbrians closeted below? Will you see them tonight?”

“Yes. We must know if their arrival here at this time is a coincidence or part of a larger plan. I need not tell you, Betanza, that the events of today must not leave the city. No tales of murder in Charibon must trickle out to the kingdoms. This place must be unbesmirched, pure, unsullied by scandal or rumour.”

“Of course, Holiness,” Betanza said, at the same time wondering how he was supposed to muzzle a city of many thousands. Monks were worse than women for gossip. Still, the weather would help.

“A courier arrived here this afternoon, while you were occupied with other matters,” Himerius said lightly, and there was a different air about him suddenly, a glittering triumph that he could not keep out of his eyes. The Pontiff turned and faced the Vicar-General squarely, his hands clasped on his breast. It looked as though a wild grin was fighting to break out over his face. For an instant, Betanza thought, he looked slightly mad.

“Good news, my friend,” Himerius said, mastering himself. He was once more the sober cleric, weighed down with dignity and gravitas. “The courier came from Alstadt. It would seem that our devoted son of the Church, King Haukir of Almark, has died at last, may the Saints receive his flitting soul into their bosoms. This pious king, this paragon of dutiful faith, has left his kingdom to the Church.”

Betanza gaped. “You’re sure?”

“The courier carried a missive from Prelate Marat of Almark. He has been named regent of the kingdom until such time as I see fit to organize its governance. Almark is ours, Betanza.”

“What of the nobles? Have they aught to say about it?”

“They will acquiesce. They must. Almark has a strong contingent of the Knights Militant in its capital, and the Royal armies are for the most part billeted further east, along the line of the Saeroth river. Almark is ours, truly.”

“They say that events of moment are like nodes of history,” Betanza mused. “Where one occurs, others are likely to happen at the same time, sometimes in the same place. You may face these Fimbrians with new confidence, Holiness. The timing could not have been more opportune.”

“Precisely. It is why I will receive them now, though it is so late. I want the news to be a shock to them.”

“What do you think they want?”

“What does anyone these days? The Church owns Almark, it controls Hebrion. It has become an empire. Accommodation must be sought with it. I have no doubt that these Fimbrians are come to test the waters of diplomatic exchange. The old imperial power is bending in the new wind. Come: we will go down and meet them together.”

The Pontifical reception hall was full of shadows. Torches burned in cressets along the walls, and glowing braziers had been brought in to stand around the dais whereon rested the Pontiff’s throne. Knights Militant stood like graven monuments every ten paces along the walls, blinking themselves awake and stiffening the moment the Pontiff entered and sat himself down. Betanza remained standing at his right hand, and a pair of scribes huddled in their dark robes like puddles of ebony ink at the foot of the dais, quills erect. To one side Rogien, the old Inceptine who was also the manager of the Pontifical court, stood ready, his bare scalp gleaming in the torchlight.

The Fimbrians had to walk the length of the flame-and-shadowed hall, their boots clumping on the basalt floor. Four of them, all in black, except for the scarlet sash that one wore about his waist.

Hard-faced men, wind-burn rouging their cheeks and foreheads, their hair cropped as short as the mane of a hogged horse. They bore no weapons, but the Knights who lined the walls on either side of them watched them intently and warily with fists clenched on sword-hilts.

“Barbius of Neyr, marshal and commander in the Fimbrian army,” Rogien announced in a voice of brass.

Barbius inclined his head to Himerius. Fimbrians did not bend the knee to anyone save their emperor. Himerius knew this, yet the slight bow had so much of contempt in it that he shifted in his throne, his liver-spotted hands tightening on the armrests.

“Barbius of the electorate of Neyr, you are welcome in Charibon,” the Pontiff said calmly. “The urgency of your errand is written in your face and those of your companions, and so we have deigned to grant you an audience despite the lateness of the hour. Quarters appropriate for your rank have been set aside for you and your comrades, and as soon as the audience is over there will be food and drink served to help sustain the flagging spirit.”

Barbius made the slight bow again in acknowledgement of this graciousness. His voice when he spoke was the grate of sliding rock to Himerius’ deep music.

“I thank His Holiness for his hospitality, but am grieved to say that I shall not be able to take advantage of it. I and my men are in haste: the main body of our force is encamped some five leagues from here and we hope to rejoin them ere the morning.”

“Main body?” Himerius repeated.

“Yes, Holiness. I am here to reassure you that the troops under my command bear the monastery-city nothing but goodwill, and you need not fear-nor need Almark fear-any rapine on their behalf. We are merely passing through, obeying the orders of the Electors.”

“I don’t understand. Are you not an embassy come from the electorates?” Himerius asked.

“No, Holiness. I am merely the commander of an eastwardbound Fimbrian army come to pay my respects.”

The statement fell in the room like a thunderclap.

“A Fimbrian army is encamped five leagues from Charibon?” Betanza said, incredulous.

“Yes, excellency.”

“Whither are you bound?” Himerius inquired, and the music was gone from his voice. He sounded as hoarse as an old crow.

“We are bound for the relief of Ormann Dyke.”

“At whose behest?”

“I am ordered by my superiors, the Electors of Fimbria.”

“But who has asked for your help? Lofantyr the heretic? It must be.”

Barbius shrugged, his red-gold moustache concealing any expression his mouth might have conveyed. His eyes were as flat and hard as sea ice. “I am only following orders, Holiness. It is not for me to question the doings of high policy.”

“Do you realize you are imperilling your immortal soul by succouring a heretic who has repudiated the validity of the holy Church?” Himerius snapped.

“As I said, Holiness, I am merely a soldier obeying orders. If I do not obey them my life is forfeit. I called in on you here as a courtesy, to ask your blessing.”

“You march to the aid of he who shields the heresiarch of the west, and you ask my blessing?” Himerius said.

“My army marches east to stem the Merduk invasion. It is performing a service for every kingdom in the west, be they Himerian or Macrobian,” Barbius said. “I ask you, Holiness, to look on it in that light. The dyke will fall in the spring if my forces do not reinforce it, and the Merduks will be hammering at the gates of Charibon within a year. It may be that King Lofantyr is paying our wages, but the service we render is of value to every free man in Normannia.”

Himerius was silent, thinking. It was Betanza who spoke next.

“So you are mercenaries, you Fimbrians. You hire yourselves out to kings in need and fight for the gold in their coffers. What if the Merduk sultans offered you a greater wage than the western kings, Marshal? Would you then fight under the banners of the Prophet?”

For the first time, emotion crossed the face of the Fimbrian marshal. His eyes flared and he took one step forward, which made every guard in the chamber tense on the balls of his feet.

“Who built Charibon?” he asked. “Who founded Aekir and hollowed out Ormann Dyke and reared up the great moles of Abrusio Harbour? My people did. For centuries the Fimbrians were the buckler behind which the people of the west sheltered from the steppe hordes, the horse-tribes, the Merduk thousands. The Fimbrians made the western world what it is. You think we would betray the heritage of our forefathers, the legacy of our empire? Never! Once again we are in the foremost rank of those defending it. All we ask”-and here the marshal’s tone softened-“is that you do not see our reinforcing of the dyke as an assault on the Himerian Church. We intend no heresy, and would keep on good terms with Charibon if we could.”

Himerius rose and lifted his hand. The torchlight made his face into an eagle mask, eyes glittering blackly on either side of the aquiline nose.

“You have our blessing then, Marshal Barbius of Neyr. May your arms shine with glory, and may you hurl the Merduk heathen back from the gates of the west.”

“Why did you do it?” Betanza demanded. “Why did you legitimize the farming out of Fimbrian troops to heretics? It is senseless!”

He and the Pontiff were sweeping along one of Charibon’s starlit cloisters, utterly deserted at this time of night. Their hands were hidden in their sleeves and they had their hoods drawn up against the biting cold, but the blizzards had ended and the night air was as clear as the bleb of an icicle, sharp as a shard of flint. Novices had swept the cloister clear of snow before retiring to bed and the two clerics were able to stride along without interruption.

“Why should I not do it? Had I refused the blessing, alienated the man, then I would have done the Church no favours and possibly a great deal of harm. We cannot argue with an army of Fimbrians. Think of that, Betanza! Fimbrians on the march again across the continent. The imperial tercios on the move. It is enough to make a man shudder with apprehension. We knew after the Conclave of Kings that something like this was in the wind-but so soon. Lofantyr has stolen a march on us, quite literally.”

“But why bless his enterprise? It is giving tacit recognition of the Torunnan kingdom, which is no longer within the Church’s fold.”

“No. I merely blessed the Fimbrians: I did not wish Godspeed to heretics. If the old imperial power is once again stirring and taking an interest in the world, then it would be as well for us to keep it on our side. The Fimbrians are still a Himerian state, remember. They have never formally recognized the anti-Pontiff Macrobius, and therefore they are technically in our camp. Let us keep it that way. The Fimbrians themselves obviously want to keep the Church in their corner, else that brutish marshal would have marched past Charibon without a pause and we would be none the wiser of his passing. No-despite the bequest of Almark we are not strong enough to antagonize the Electors.”

Their sandals slapped on the frigid stone of the cloisters.

“I pity them, sleeping out on a night like this,” Betanza said.

Himerius snorted. “They are soldiers, little better than animals. They hardly register any feeling except the most base. Let them shiver.”

They took one more turn about the cloister, and then: “I will go to bed now, Holiness,” Betanza said, oddly subdued. “My investigations into the death of Commodius will recommence at dawn. I wish to pray awhile.”

“By all means. Good night, Betanza.”

The Pontiff stood alone in the clear night, his eyes glittering under his hood. In his mind he was marshalling armies and putting the cities of the heretics to the torch. A second empire there would be on earth, and as mad Honorius had said it would rise in an age of fire and the sword.

I am tired, Himerius thought, his savage exaltation flickering out as the freezing wind searched his frame. I am old, and weary of the struggle. But soon my task will be fulfilled, and I will be able to rest. Someone else will take my place.

He padded off to his bed as silently as a cat.

“Albrec. Wake up, Albrec!”

A blow on Albrec’s cheekbone snapped his head to one side and tore the scab of ice from around his nose. He moaned as the cold air bit into the exposed flesh and fought open his eyes as someone shook him as though he were a rat being worried by a dog.

He lay half-buried in snow and a frost-white shape was pummelling him.

“All right, all right! I’m awake.”

Avila collapsed in a heap beside him, the air sobbing in and out of his fractured chest. “It’s stopped snowing,” he wheezed. “We should try to move on.”

But they both remained prone in the drift which had come close to burying them. Their clothes had stiffened on their backs to the consistency of armour, and they no longer had any feeling left in their extremities. Worse, white patches of frostbite discoloured their faces and ears.

“We’re finished,” Albrec moaned. “God has abandoned us.”

The wind had dropped, and they lay on their backs in the snow staring up at the vast vault of the star-crowded night sky. Beautiful and pitiless, the stars were so bright that they cast faint shadows, though the moon had not yet risen.

Far off the two clerics heard the forlorn howl of a solitary wolf, come down out of the terrible winter heights of the Cimbrics seeking food.

Another answered it, and then there were more. A pack of them off in the night, calling to one another in some unfathomable fellowship.

Albrec was strangely unafraid. I am dying, he thought, and it does not matter.

“Sailors believe that in oyvips live the souls of lost mariners who drowned in a state of sin,” the little monk told Avila, remembering his childhood on the Hardic Sea.

“What’s an oyvip?” Avila asked, his voice a light feather of a thing balanced on his lips, as though his lungs were too racked with pain to give it depth.

“A great, blunt-nosed fish with a kindly eye and a habit of following ships. A happy thing, always at play.”

“Then I envy those lost souls,” Avila breathed.

“And woodsmen,” Albrec went on, his own voice becoming slurred and faint. “They believe that in wolves abide the souls of evil men, and, some think, of lost children. They think that in the heart of the wolf lies all the darkness and despair of mankind, which is why shifters usually manifest as wolves.”

“You read too much, Albrec,” Avila whispered. “Too many things. Wolves are animals, mindless and soulless. Man is the only true beast, because he has the capacity not to be.”

They lay with the cold seeping into their bones like some slow, cancerous growth, staring up at the stark beauty of the stars. There was no longer any pain for them, or any hope of flight or life, but there was peace out here in the drifts, in the wild country of the Narian Hills where the Free Tribes had once roamed and worshipped their dark gods.

“No more philosophy,” Albrec murmured. The stars were winking out one by one as his sight darkened.

“Good night, Avila.”

But from his friend there was no reply.

The Fimbrian patrol came across them an hour later, drawn by the shadowed figures of the wolves who were gathering around them. The soldiers kicked away the beasts and found two clerics of Charibon lying stiff and cold in the snow with their faces turned up to the stars and their hands clasped together like those of two lost children. The soldiers had to chip them free of the frozen drift with their swords. The pair had on their bodies the marks of violence and rough travel, but their faces were peaceful, as serene as the countenance of a sculpted saint.

The sergeant in charge of the patrol ordered them wrapped in cloaks and carried back to camp. The patrol followed his orders, picked up the bodies and started at the double back to where the campfires of the Fimbrian army glimmered red and yellow in the starlight, less than a mile away.

The wolves watched them go in silence.