The Ancient

FIFTEEN

Echoes of Cordon Roe

Concentration!” Brother Giavno warned above the tumult of the battle raging again about the chapel’s strong walls, which mostly involved crude spears (sharpened sticks) volleying against stones thrown from on high, coupled with a continual exchange of taunts and the incessant thumping of barbarians pounding on the fitted stones with heavy wooden mallets in an amazing attempt to weaken the integrity of the fortification. “It is most important, to your very survival.”

The two younger monks looked at each other with obvious concern-and why should they not? For they were about to go into the middle of the barbarian attackers!

“Brother Faldo, you must maintain the power of the serpentine,” Giavno repeated yet again. “At all costs! Accept a spear to your chest, but do not allow the magic of that gem to dissipate!”

Faldo rested the huge and surprisingly lightweight shield on one shoulder and nodded sheepishly. Behind him, the other young volunteer, Brother Moorkris, moved closer and took his companion’s hand and together they shuffled for the secret door set in the wall, just to the side of the main fighting. Moorkris held out his open palm toward Giavno, as he had been instructed, and Giavno nodded for Faldo to enact the serpentine shield.

A moment later, a blue-white glow encompassed both young monks, and Giavno gave promising Brother Moorkris a ruby, the stone of fire.

“Charge into them,” he whispered, and he nodded to the pair working the door.

It opened fast and Giavno shoved the two terrified young brothers out, then fell back through the door quickly and spun about, throwing his back against the stone. He knew they wouldn’t long hold their nerve.

And he was right, for the pair had barely moved from the outside of the door before the barbarians took note of them. Faldo did well to keep low behind his shield and to keep his thoughts on the serpentine, maintaining the magical protection. A spear hit the shield, then a second, but this was of barbarian make, woven of thin wood into layers behind a leather front, and those weapons did not get through the clever tangle.

But the Alpinadorans didn’t hesitate in the least and charged right in, and Faldo got rammed hard as a shoulder slammed against his shield, sending him lurching back and nearly upending him.

To his credit, he maintained the serpentine barrier, but the jolt broke his grip with his companion just as Moorkris sent his energy through the ruby and conjured a tremendous fireball.

With the connection to Faldo broken, Moorkris had no protection from his own blast, and like the poor barbarians caught in the area of conflagration, he was engulfed in his own flames.

It was all screaming and burning and shouting then, and Brother Faldo, confused and dazed and having no idea of where to turn next, stumbled back through the smoke toward the door. He felt someone punch him in the back, but he managed to stagger through, and Giavno and the others quickly shut and secured the portal behind him.

“I held the barrier,” the devastated young brother started to explain, blubbering through his mounting guilt as he came to understand that his failure to hold on had immolated his friend Moorkris. He couldn’t finish the thought, though, as he just fell over, for that punch in the back was not a punch at all, but a spear that had driven deep into his kidney.

“Get him to Father De Guilbe,” Giavno yelled at the other two, and he rushed for a ladder that would take him up to the parapets. When he got there, he found that his comrades were no longer raining stones on the attackers, and when he peered over the wall, he understood.

For the Alpinadorans were running off, and just below Giavno no less than seven bodies-whether men or women, he could hardly tell-either lay very still or writhed on the ground in mortal agony, their clothing melted to their blistered and bubbling skin. He recognized the monk he had sent out there by the shape of the still-burning robes, and his instinct to run out and retrieve Brother Moorkris lasted only the heartbeat it took him to realize that the young and promising young Abellican was already dead.

With a heavy heart and a heavy sigh, Brother Giavno started for Father De Guilbe’s quarters, praying that Brother Faldo, at least, would survive.

He paused at a group of several brothers, all staring hard at the gruesome scene below. “Go out through the secret door and see if any of our enemies can be saved. Be quick about it, and return at first sign that their companions are coming after you.”

He thought that an insignificant command, easily followed and without consequence-other than perhaps the notion one or two of their charred enemies might be pulled from the grip of death. But he could not have been more wrong, for as soon as the brothers moved out to the writhing wounded, the barbarian forces from across the way howled and charged with fury beyond anything Giavno could have anticipated. The monks made it safely back inside, with one grievously wounded Alpinadoran warrior in tow, but they had to secure the door fast, and calls for renewed support along the parapets rang out almost immediately thereafter.

For the Alpinadorans came on with abandon, throwing themselves against the stone, smashing at it and seeming not to care about the rain of stones that came down upon them.

“Bolster that portal!” Giavno cried, and nearly as many brothers had to work at piling stones behind the battered secret door as were up on the walls trying to repel the attackers.

Of the three fights so far, that battle was the most lopsided, with another handful of barbarians dead, and several more badly wounded, and not a monk seriously injured.

But for Giavno, that last battle was the most unnerving of all, the one that told him in his heart of hearts that these enemies who had come against Chapel Isle were willing to die to a man and woman to retrieve their brethren.

He had never seen such ferocious dedication.

Nor had Cormack, who had watched it all-the fireball, the retrieval, the second wave of wild assault-with horror. “We cannot win,” Cormack muttered many times during and after that second battle, for only then did he understand, truly understand, what “winning” might mean.

He saw Brother Giavno hustling toward De Guilbe’s door shortly thereafter, and thought to follow and plead with them to abandon this madness.

But his feet would not move to the commands of his brain. He had no heart for another round of verbal battle with those two.

The three monks stood in a line, side by side, in De Guilbe’s office, facing the father and Brother Giavno, who stood before the first, demanding his report.

“They are not eating,” the young monk sheepishly replied to Giavno’s question.

At the other end of that short line, Brother Cormack winced at every word. He knew it to be true. Androosis and the others would not eat-not a morsel. The captured shaman had decreed that they would die before acceding to the wishes of their wretched captors.

“Then make them eat,” Giavno said to the man, who retreated a step from the sheer intensity of the senior brother’s angry tone.

“We have,” he stammered in reply. “We held them and forced food and water into their mouths. Most they spit back.”

“But they got some,” Giavno reasoned. “That is good. Their bodies will likely outlast their determination.”

“Likely,” Cormack mouthed under his breath.

“When we returned to them the next day, they were covered in vomit,” the young monk explained.

Giavno glanced back at Father De Guilbe and gave a disgusted sigh. “Bind them more tightly,” he ordered as he turned back to face the young monk. “That they cannot get their fingers down their throats.”

“Yes, Brother,” the young monk answered, lowering his gaze.

“The fourth has been placed with them?” Father De Guilbe asked, referring to the barbarian who had been caught in Brother Moorkris’s fireball. The man would carry horrible scars for the rest of his life, but through the miracle of the gemstone magic, his life had been saved.

“Not yet, Father,” the monk replied. “Brother Mn’Ache fears that his wounds will fester if he is laid in the dirt.”

“Then put a blanket under him,” Giavno intervened, and from Father De Guilbe’s nod, Cormack could see that the man was of like mind.

“He recovers well, and should be ready for the dungeon in…” the young monk tried to explain, but Giavno cut him short.

“He recovers in the dungeon or he recovers not at all. I will not have a dangerous enemy in our midst when again his people attack. Would you have him climb out of his cot and murder Brother Mn’Ache while he was distracted at tending one of us?”

“He is bound.”

“Now, Brother,” Giavno ordered. “To the dungeon with him. Be gone!”

The young monk hesitated for just a moment, then whirled about and sprinted away.

“It is an unpleasant business,” Father De Guilbe admitted. “Hold faith, all of you. Keep in mind that our Brother Mn’Ache was able to save two lives during the night, that of the burned barbarian and that of Brother Faldo.”

“Brother Faldo is not yet awake,” Giavno replied. “Nor is Brother Mn’Ache certain that he will recover.”

“He will,” said De Guilbe with a confident smile, and he motioned for Giavno to move along.

The next monk in the line, the one standing right beside Cormack, offered details on the work at shoring up the walls and cutting stones and the like to hurl down at the barbarians. With confidence he assured, “They will not breach our defenses.”

The assertion was ridiculous, of course, and spoken more as a cheer than a proper evaluation, but it seemed to satisfy the inquisitor brothers, for Giavno patted the monk on the shoulder and moved to stand before Brother Cormack.

“The water supply is inexhaustible,” Cormack reported with a shrug before Gaivno could even inquire, as if to ask of Giavno why they bothered to bring him to these meetings. His only oversight was that of supplying water and fish, after all.

“And the fish?”

“The lake is full of them. They come to our hidden pond to feed, and are not so hard to catch.”

“Triple the catch,” Father De Guilbe unexpectedly interjected.

“Father?” Cormack asked.

“Triple-at least,” the man answered. “Our barbarian enemies will not relent, but they will pay too heavy a price to continue throwing themselves at our wall, I am sure. They will look for other ways to strike at us, and if they come to understand that we have this inexhaustible resource at our disposal, they might try to interrupt it. That, we cannot have.”

“Yes, Father,” Cormack said.

“On your travels to the pond, do you look in on our guests?” De Guilbe asked.

Cormack shrugged noncommittally.

“You are not prohibited from doing so,” Father De Guilbe prompted.

“Sometimes,” Cormack admitted.

“And it is as was described here?”

“They will not eat,” Cormack admitted, and the floodgates opened then. “They grow weak. There is no bend in them, Father. They will not recant their beliefs and embrace ours-not at the price of their very lives-”

“Cordon Roe,” Father De Guilbe interrupted, aiming the remark at Brother Giavno, who nodded, and Cormack grimaced at the reference.

If De Guilbe could see that apt analogy, then why would he insist on keeping the Alpinadorans as prisoners? For the end result would be their deaths or continued misery-how could it be otherwise?

Cormack wanted to shout those questions at these two monks, but the door swung open and the same monk who had just left to fetch the burned Alpinadoran and bring him to the dungeon burst in.

“A messenger!” he cried, clearly out of breath. “At the front gate. A messenger from our enemies approaches.”

“Bring him in?” Brother Giavno asked of De Guilbe, who thought about it for a few heartbeats, then shook his head.

“No, he will learn too much of our inner defenses,” the leader decided. “Let us go to him and greet him at the wall instead.”

He started out immediately, Giavno beside him, and Cormack and the others, having not been ordered to stay behind, swept into their wake.

As soon as he climbed the ladder to the parapet above the chapel’s gate, Cormack realized he was looking at one, if not the, leader of the barbarians of Yossunfier. The man was a shaman, obviously, for he wore the same ornamental necklaces as Milkeila, only grander by far, with his loose clothing decorated with shells and other trinkets, so that they rattled with his every step. He was old, well into his sixth decade of life, at least, and Milkeila had told Cormack enough about Alpinadoran society for him to understand that age was no small matter in the hierarchy of the tribes.

“I am Teydru,” he said, his voice clear and strong, and Cormack sucked in his breath, for he had indeed heard that name before, and knew then that he was standing before the absolute spiritual leader of Milkeila’s people.

“You come uninvited to this place, Teydru,” Father De Guilbe replied rather curtly. It seemed even more snappish and stilted due to the man’s lack of command of the common Alpinadoran language.

“You have three of my people,” Teydru went on, unrattled.

“Four,” De Guilbe corrected, and that seemed to shake the man just a bit. “And all of them alive only through the holy gifts of Blessed Abelle. Only through our work and healing powers.”

“Better they had died, then,” said Teydru, and out of the corner of his eye, Cormack caught De Guilbe’s silent sneer.

“Leave this island,” De Guilbe said.

“Return to us our brethren and we will be gone.”

“Your brethren are alive only through our efforts. They have felt the warmth and love of Abelle.”

“They embrace your faith?” Teydru asked, and his tone told the monks that he didn’t believe it for a moment.

“They begin to see the truth of Blessed Abelle,” De Guilbe countered cryptically.

To Cormack, there was great irony in that statement, for Father De Guilbe had proclaimed it without the slightest recognition that he, himself, would never begin to see the truth of anything other than Blessed Abelle. He was a man of complete intolerance demanding tolerance of others.

“Bring them forth to speak!” Teydru demanded, and De Guilbe crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at the man from on high.

“You are in no position to bargain,” the monk reminded the shaman. “You have attacked us three times, and three times you have been repelled. That will not change. Your people die at our walls, but we remain. You cannot win, Teydru.”

Unshaken, the shaman replied, “We will not leave. We will not stop attacking you. We will have our brethren.”

“Or what? Or you will all lie dead at the base of our walls?”

The chide didn’t have quite the effect De Guilbe was trying for, obviously, for Teydru squared his shoulders and proudly lifted his chin.

“If that is what our spirits demand,” he answered, not a quiver in his voice. “We will not leave. We will not stop attacking you. We will have our brethren.”

Cormack licked his lips and managed to pry his gaze from the imposing barbarian to glance at Father De Guilbe.

“We will kill you all,” the monk promised.

“Then we will die with joy,” said Teydru, and he turned and slowly walked away.

Father De Guilbe and Brother Giavno lingered for only a very short while before heading back to the father’s office.

“They cannot defeat us, so they try to bargain,” one young monk said hopefully to a group gathered not far from Cormack. “They will give up and leave soon enough.”

“They will not,” Cormack corrected him, and many sets of eyes turned his way. “They will fight us to the last.”

“They are not that foolish,” the man argued.

“But they are that faithful,” said Cormack, and he headed for the tunnels and the pond, and this time he paid more attention to the details of the four prisoners and the dungeon holding them as he passed.

Four tense days passed before the next attack, just when some of the brothers were beginning to whisper that the barbarians would besiege the chapel rather than assault it again.

No such luck, and the reason for the delay became apparent very quickly: that the barbarians had been training, and thinking, and better preparing. Nowhere was that more evident than when a pair of brothers went out into the throng, much as Faldo and Moorkris had done. The horde retreated from them at full speed, while others, farther away, launched a barrage of spears and rocks at the brothers that had them scrambling back toward the wall.

Pursuit came swift, and to the credit of the monks, they had maintained their concentration on the serpentine shield throughout, and so they were ready to counter with a dazzling fireball.

But those nearest Alpinadorans, obviously expecting the blast, quickly veered aside, and more impressively, they had come in wrapped in water-soaked blankets! A couple were wounded-only minimally-but suddenly the two poor brothers found themselves under brutal assault.

From the wall, Giavno, Cormack, and the others cried out for them to get back to safety, and run they did. They couldn’t outrun the spear volley, though.

Lightning bolts lashed out from the wall, along with a barrage of stones. Several barbarians fell, grievously wounded.

But so too did the brothers fall, side by side.

They would have survived their wounds, likely, had not the monks on the wall continued their barrage at the approaching horde. For the attackers wanted prisoners, that they could exact an exchange. They couldn’t get near the fallen brothers, though, in the face of that barrage, so they settled for the next best option.

The Alpinadorans rained another volley of spears at the defenseless duo.

On the far side of the chapel, the western wall, a second wave crept up and then broke into a howling charge, knowing that most of the monks were across to the other side, trying to help their fallen.

“Go! Go! Go!” Giavno yelled at Cormack and some others, and the group leaped down from the wall and rushed across, to see brothers on the opposite parapets already engaging the ferocious enemy. A series of lightning bolts shook the ground beneath their feet as they ran to bolster the defense, and Cormack understood that the immediate threat had been eradicated, though the fighting hardly quieted.

The others ran ahead of Cormack as he slowed to a stop. He glanced back at Brother Giavno and the continuing. battle at the eastern wall, wincing almost constantly from the terrible screams.

He went to the side structure of the keep, and to the bulkhead, where he picked up a torch and slipped down into the tunnels.

The sound of the fighting receded behind him, but it would take more than a closed bulkhead door to cleanse poor Cormack’s sensibilities. That reality only made him move with more purpose, however, down the side tunnel to the dungeon where the four barbarians sat miserably, side by side. Cormack considered the task ahead of them and wondered if they could possibly succeed. Beyond weary, half-starved by choice, and one still recovering from immolation, Cormack had to wonder if they would even be able to stand up once he freed them of their bonds.

“Your people come on again,” he said. “Men and women are dying up there.”

Androosis lifted his head toward the monk, and Cormack simply couldn’t read the expression on his face. Did he feel betrayed? Was he angry with Cormack? Confused?

“You would have us renounce our faith,” the shaman said in a voice parched and dry and so very weak. “We would die first.”

“I know.”

The simple answer elicited a curious look from both the shaman and Androosis, and that gave Cormack some hope. He set the torch in a sconce and moved around the wooden wall. “We will venture deeper,” he said as he loosened Androosis’s bonds.

“Because you fear my people will overrun your pathetic castle,” said Toniquay the shaman. “You move us away in desperation!”

Cormack hustled fast around the barrier to stand before the still-bound shaman. “Your people will not get through the wall. Not now and not ever. They will be killed to a man and woman at the base of the stones, unless we end this.”

“You doubt the power…”

“Shut up,” said Cormack. “More than twenty of your kin are dead already. More are dying right now. They will not relent and they cannot prevail. Their loyalty to you is commendable-and foolish.”

“What would you have us do?” Androosis interjected, and Cormack was glad of that, for Toniquay was about to issue another stubborn retort, and time was too short for such bickering. He moved around the wall again and freed all three, with Toniquay last.

As they were freeing themselves of the rope, and climbing out of the mud and the piss and the feces, Cormack went back to the sconce and retrieved the torch.

“Follow closely, and as fast as you can manage,” he instructed.

“And if we do not?”

Cormack swung about with a heavy sigh, drawing out a knife as he turned. “This ends today, now,” he said. “I will show you the way out of here, or…” He brandished the knife. “It ends today.”

“And why are we to believe you?”

“What choice have we?” Androosis asked, and motioned for Cormack to go.

To Cormack’s relief, they all followed, with Androosis helping the burned man, even lifting him in his arms and carrying him along. That gave Cormack pause-would they even be able to execute the planned escape?

They went through the door at the tunnel’s end, into the chamber where the lake comprised most of the floor.

“You are all strong swimmers, I would expect and hope,” Cormack said, placing his torch down and starting to strip off his heavy cloak. He paused, though, and considered the action. “I cannot,” he said.

Androosis shot him a concerned look. “We are not going back,” he said.

Cormack shook his head, showing the four that such was not what he was talking about at all. “I cannot go into the water and open the grate, as I had intended,” he explained. “If I return to my people with wet hair, they will know of my involvement.”

“Grate?” Androosis asked.

“A simple netting, with minor reinforcement,” Cormack explained, pointing to the northwestern corner of the underground pool. “Beyond it is a short tunnel-an easy swim to freedom.”

Androosis stared long and hard at Cormack. He placed his companion down gently and waded into the dark pool, walking in until the warm water was up to his waist before ducking under. While Canrak, the fourth of the barbarian party, lent an arm of support to the burned man, Toniquay stared unrelentingly at Cormack.

“You are so afraid of my people,” he said with a twisted grin.

Cormack brushed him off with a smirk and shake of his head, never taking his eyes off the spot where Androosis had disappeared.

“If it is not true, then why?” the shaman demanded.

“Because my God would expect no less,” said Cormack.

Androosis came up with a splash, sucking in a deep breath of air. “The way is clear,” he announced. “It is a short swim, with open water beyond.”

“What about him?” Cormack asked with sincere concern, and he indicated the barely conscious newest prisoner.

“I will get him through,” Androosis promised. He walked over to Cormack then and dropped his hands on the monk’s shoulders. “You are a good man,” he said simply, and that was all Cormack had to hear to know that he had indeed done the right thing. The cost to him might prove great, but whatever Father De Guilbe might do could not begin to approach the cost to Cormack’s sensibilities had he continued to do nothing.

Cormack came out of the side chamber a short while later, to find the battle still on in full, still loud and chaotic, still, he hoped, providing him the cover he needed.

He went to battle and prayed with all his heart that it would be the last.