Working God's Mischief

12. Brothe: Brief Homecoming

Piper Hecht and his family arrived inside Principaté Muniero Delari’s Brothen townhouse. The place had been damaged badly during the fighting when the Righteous occupied the Mother City.

Hecht and his sister each began bleating about how the other should have remembered that the townhouse was not habitable.

Pella said, “Dad, I’ll check on Anna’s house. We can’t stay here.” He took off before he could be pelted with unwanted instructions.

Pella’s estimation proved to be inaccurate. Delari’s staff-Turking, Felske, and Mrs. Creedon-remained in place, in charge, and adequately housed.

Heris told Hecht, “Keep a low profile, little brother. You don’t have an army behind you now.”

He had begun to brood on that already.

Years ago, when he was another man, er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen had armed him with a wrist amulet that warned him against danger from the Night. The Ninth Unknown had replaced that with another that er-Rashal could not track.

In times of no threat he forgot the amulet. He had done so in the Realm of the Gods, though Februaren did say that it would not work there. But now Hecht was back in a world where the charm was efficacious.

He felt a continuous, low-grade, maddening itch around his left wrist.

“And where is my egg?” Heris demanded.

“Right here.” Inside his shirt. But it felt different. It was cold, and lighter. “Here.”

“What happened? It’s dead. Or something. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. You were there. You know.”

Mrs. Creedon, Principaté Delari’s cook, intruded upon their attention. “Don’t argue where the workmen can hear. Come with me. Turking will inform the master that you have returned.”

“Good point,” Hecht said. “Let’s go. And that was the easiest transition yet. I hardly felt it.”

“I’ll save your butt from the local villains by jumping it back out before word gets around.”

“It’ll take all of you.” He was not prepared to transition with Heris alone. “What about the egg?”

“I don’t know. I expected something like, it would go away if Zyr connected with his other soul. Maybe the old old man can figure it out. I’ll be damned. This part of the dump held up pretty good. Looks like hell from outside, though.”

The cook had taken them into the kitchen, pantries, and servants’ quarters. “The cellars are fine. We can put you down there.”

Anna appeared glum. She would be on her own again, soon. And the children had had a taste of adventure. The girls in particular were sure to get into mischief. And Pella wanted to get back into the field with his father. He insisted that the education Hecht wanted him to get he could pick up from Titus Consent, Drago Prosek, Kait Rhuk, and others. And that was hard to deny. They all indulged the boy.

Hecht said, “Remind me to see Noë and the kids before I go. If I can get away with it.”

Felske made them as comfortable as she could while Mrs. Creedon fed them.

Anna said, “I’m surprised looters haven’t torn this place apart.”

Mrs. Creedon said, “Some had the notion. The master anticipated them. Someone comes in that the house doesn’t know, it tears them apart.”

Osa Stile strolled in, made a startled sound, locked gazes with Hecht. The catamite did not look an hour older than when they had run into one another during the first siege of Antieux. He wanted to demand an explanation of Stile’s presence, then recalled that Osa had been rescued from the same cellar where Cloven Februaren had found Pella imprisoned. “Armand. You’re looking well.”

“As are you, Commander. I wonder, sir. Will the new Empress have the Righteous go on building a Holy Lands expedition?”

“Remains to be determined. Why?”

“Time spent in a lightless cell, without hope, has a way of turning one’s thoughts inward. I found a spiritual side I didn’t know I had. I would like to make the pilgrimage. I have a debt to repay a certain rascal.”

Hecht inclined his head just enough to let Stile know he understood.

“I can be useful, Commander. And I’ve overstayed my welcome here, playing to the Principaté’s residual affection.”

“Can you get to Alten Weinberg? And can you behave yourself?” Hecht could not state it explicitly but found Stile’s sexual proclivities repulsive.

“Yes to the first. To the second, honestly, I can say only probably. I have no desires at the moment but that could change.”

The catamite, shaped by sorcery to remain a boy indefinitely, had suffered bad times and bad people in order to spy for er-Rashal and Ferris Renfrow. He soldiered on.

Turking reappeared, having made remarkable time. He said Principaté Delari would arrive soon.

Pella turned up not long afterward. “Anna’s house is in good shape but three men are living there. They say Paludan Bruglioni sent them because the senate made Pinkus Ghort stop using constabularii to guard the place.”

Hecht said, “I should see Pinkus. It’s been a long time.”

“You’d do better to give up wishful thinking,” Heris said. “You might be friends with Ghort and Saluda and even Paludan Bruglioni but that doesn’t change the political environment. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re suddenly the hero of the Grail Empire, what’s been the Patriarchy’s dearest enemy for two hundred years.”

“This is what happens when you engage the world at more than a tactical level.”

“I won’t even pretend I understand what you just said. Turking, we aren’t ignoring you. We just have too much fun bickering. Did you have something besides the fact that Grandfather is on his way?”

“No. Nothing more than that, Lady.”

“Ha! You heard that, Piper. Everybody heard it. I’ve got one man so bamboozled he thinks I’m a lady.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Enough of that, children.”

Muniero Delari had arrived. Quietly. Evidently, little that he saw pleased him. He held his thoughts, joined the cook. “That looks delicious, Mrs. Creedon. I hadn’t yet eaten when Turking came. Can you stretch that to include me?”

Mrs. Creedon grunted. His question required no answer. Of course she could. He paid her wages.

The Principaté eyeballed his descendents again and was no more pleased. “Anna, your adventures have put some red into your cheeks.”

Flattery Hecht heard with no sense of threat. The old man preferred nubile boys-though he had shown little interest there since he parted with Osa Stile.

Heris growled, mood darkening by the moment. Hecht thought she might want to be told what a good job she had done with the Old Ones.

Whatever he said now would sound contrived.

Lila sensed it, too. And it was not too late for her. “You should have seen Heris, Opah. She was amazing. There were all these old-time gods and she wrapped them around her fingers. Except for the ones Anna blasted. You should’ve seen.”

Opah? That was a way of saying Grandpa, up north.

Delari did not object. This was not a first offense.

You missed the changes when you were away in the field. On the other hand, you did notice them.

Delari said, “Do tell. Heris, you amaze me. You’ve grown dramatically since Grade brought you here. Mrs. Creedon, are you ready? Yes? Let’s sit. The lamb pie smells wonderful. Lila, go on. Tell the whole story.” He eyed the other children suspiciously. They were unnaturally quiet. “Armand, you are not to repeat any of this.”

“You won’t believe me, but I never have.”

Stile had it right. Hecht believed little that he heard from the catamite. He scratched his wrist. He had not realized how all-pervasive the power was in this world.

Lila was full of surprises, lately. Her ability to tell a story was another. Vali acted as chorus, chiming in with interesting details at intervals separate enough that her interruptions were not obnoxious.

“Interesting,” Delari said when Lila finished, by which time everyone but she had filled up on lamb pie. “Quite an adventure. I envy you, Heris. I’ve never had an adventure.”

Hecht and the catamite both stared.

Osa, Turking, Felske, and Mrs. Creedon congratulated Lila on a tall tale convincingly told. It could not be true, of course. Those devil gods could not possibly exist. And she had best not tell her story where priests could hear her. The Church was a tad more tolerant now, thanks to the Commander, but the small minds of the Society had long memories.

Hecht’s amulet itched so badly that he said, “Principaté, you need to check this thing Februaren put on me. It’s driving me crazy. Oh. Never mind, then.”

Pillars of sparkle formed in the small bit of open space left in the crowded kitchen. They became Hourli and Hourlr.

Pella cracked, “Lila really can bring a story to life, can’t she?”

There could be no doubt that these were Instrumentalities of the Night.

The male twin faced Heris. “There you are. It has been difficult, tracing you. We’re feeling better, now, thank you. The magic is thin but it does still exist. A wallow in a well of power would be divine.”

Hourli faced Hecht. “Your world has grown strange, Godslayer. We are nearly forgotten.”

No one seized the moment to take a fundamentalist stand.

No one seemed to know what to say, either.

Mrs. Creedon asked, “Would you like some lamb pie?”

Hourlr replied, “If we take a mortal shape our bodies require mortal sustenance. So, yes, dear lady, I would love some lamb pie.”

Mrs. Creedon blushed.

Hourli nodded. She was willing, too.

Heris asked, “Where are the others?”

Hourlr replied. “Running free. Basking in what power there is. Seeing the changes in the world. Wondering what you did that has never been done before.”

Hecht studied the reactions of Muniero Delari’s staff. Delari himself was taking it all in stride, despite his place as a Prince of the Church.

Some religious insiders did admit that all things were possible within the Night-so long as someone believed. They strove to control that by managing the belief.

Principaté Delari mused, “Piper is entertaining heretical thoughts.” He chuckled. “Yes, Piper, some of us do understand that the Night is bigger than our one God. Most of us do. And most of us can square that with our faith. In Old Andoray they followed one family from the generation of deities known generically as the Old Gods. Only a few people believe in their existence anymore, but the Old Ones still believe in themselves, which is more important today. Overall, the Church, rather than deny what anyone with eyes can see, has reassigned the Old Ones to servitude in the house of the Adversary. As demons they can continue to exist without stealing glory from God in the Highest.”

“Or you can make saints out of them if they are especially beloved.” Hourli and Hourlr sneered.

They sensed the drift of his thoughts. Hourli said, “They can’t change our nature through dogma, Godslayer. Things are not what mortals think they are but only because mortals observe with mortal eyes and with mortal hearts shaped by mortal experience. But that is of no consequence. We have a contract. It will be observed on our side. By this assemblage of Old Ones. The Shining Ones. Other revenants, and the Primal Gods, won’t be bound by our agreements.”

Heris would not be distracted. “You’re running free? How can that be? Back when you were trying to murder my brother, even the All-Father could barely touch the Grimmssons here. Once they moved south of Brothe only the Exile could stick with them.”

“Arlensul was the Exile, operating independent of the Realm,” Hourlr said. “You changed everything for the rest of us. You let us out of the Realm. You opened this whole world to us, though there are still severe limits to our range. We will explore it as much as we are able.”

Hecht demanded, “What did she do for the first time?”

“She brought the Shining Ones back free from the old constraints of belief. She believes we exist. Your eyes agree. There are fewer restrictions on us today. Freedom gained at the cost of power.”

Hecht looked at Heris. She looked back. They frowned. They had enjoyed religious upbringings, each in a dramatically different belief system. Neither understood this, here, now. It could not be hammered and filed to fit what they had been taught.

Heris asked, “You can summon the others if I need them?”

Hourlr said, “Yes, but not quickly. However, if we open the way to Raneul we can then manage to do everything at the speed of lightning.”

Accepting a second portion of lamb pie, Principaté Delari mused, “No doubt also releasing a horde of supernatural miscreants not bound by oaths sworn to my grandchildren.”

Hecht mused. The twins needed mortal help reaching their native realm?

“We have sworn,” Hourli snapped, irritated, plainly irked by the continued distrust. “We will fulfill.”

“Do you have any sense of where the others are?” Heris asked.

“Not precisely,” Hourlr conceded.

“Where is Zyr?”

Hourlr’s eyes narrowed. His gaze darted. He seemed both puzzled and inclined toward evasion.

“Well?” Hecht snapped.

Hourli blurted, as though compelled, “Here. But I can’t see him.”

Heris asked, “Hourlr?”

“I feel him. He’s watching. And he’s immensely displeased with us for revealing that fact. But I can’t see him.”

Heris looked like she was about to turn nasty. “The trickery has started already, then?”

Hecht caught her arm, squeezed, shook his head. “He hasn’t broken the rules. Remember, Instrumentalities are all about sound and fury and loopholes.”

Heris produced a hand-held. “I’ve got two ounces of silver bead loophole filler right here.”

She was close to losing control. Hecht said, “Us mortals ought to get some rest. We had to deal with a lot today.”

The twins shrugged. Hourli said, “This is a city of immense wickedness. We’ll explore it.”

“Go. Have fun. We’ll see you later.”

The twins vanished almost the same as Lila, Heris, and Cloven Februaren could.

Heris was in a mood to squabble.

“Heris, you’re too anxious. Don’t get all worked up and break the contract from our end.”

Clearly, she had not considered that. “Oh! I was on my way there, wasn’t I? They were provoking me.”

“No. They weren’t. They do mean to execute their bargain, letter and spirit, for the rest of your life. They honestly see that as advantageous.”

“How can you know that?”

Hecht shrugged. “Think. It’s the rational thing to do.”

“I don’t see it.”

“You’re looking through a lens of prejudice. Look. You got them out of Asgrimmur’s trap, then you got them out of the Realm of the Gods. Now they’re seeing that the middle world is just another, bigger prison. Mortality is the rule, here.”

“Whoa, little brother. You’re going all spooky on me.”

“They’re going to need believers. Right now all they have is us. And we don’t worship.”

“I thought them believing in each other was what freed them to go where they want.”

“Sure. Sort of. They can get to places they couldn’t go before. They might even be able to visit the Wells of Ihrian. But they still have two souls to feed.”

Everyone stared at Hecht like he had sprouted green hair.

“I’ll take your word, brother. It applies, how?”

“They’re not saying so but they need more than one kind of nourishment. The magic isn’t enough. Us accepting their existence isn’t, either. We aren’t true believers. They need worshippers to hang on to their immortality.”

His audience just stared. He continued, “Real worshippers. It’s what they want to find during one ephemeral generation as our allies, as gods who actually can be seen doing something, regularly. If they fail, their own divine mortality will overtake them. They’ll fade into the Night.”

The air stirred. Cloven Februaren rotated into being. “Excellent analysis, Piper. But I do wonder how you managed it. You’re a clever lad but you only use that to find new ways to whack on people who don’t want to do what you tell them.”

“I didn’t give it any special thought. It seemed obvious. And I still think we all need rest. We have to be fresh to cope. And I need to get back to my army, which, I’m sure, Sedlakova and the rest have let go to hell.”

* * *

Hecht slept eighteen hours. He wakened twice to urinate but stumbled right back to his cot. He still felt unready to rise when Anna poked him awake.

“Piper, you have to get up. There’s going to be trouble.”

He shook the cobwebs out. “Trouble?”

“Word is out that we’re here. Delari figures the place was watched by Night thing spies. There will be trouble. Addam Hauf will take me and the kids into the Castella again. We’ll be safe while Pinkus deals with the unrest.”

Hecht shook his head again. “We should have expected this.”

“The old men did. Which is why arrangements are in place with Hauf, Pinkus, and the Patriarch. Who really should pick a reign name if he wants the mob to take him serious.”

“Gervase doesn’t take himself serious yet. What’s the plan?”

“You eat, then Heris and Lila will take you to the Righteous. The rest of us hole up till the excitement blows over.”

“There were things I wanted to do while I was here. There were people I wanted to see.”

“There are people who want to see you, too. And they’re not your friends.”

True. He would be a tempting target while he was without the Righteous behind him. “All right. I’m up.”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Creedon.”

Hecht found Heris and Lila hovering in the kitchen while Mrs. Creedon delivered a platter to her one sound table. Mostly pork, of course. “Are you all anxious to be shut of me?”

Heris confessed, “We are. There’s ugly talk out there. Ghort doesn’t have the manpower to save you. The Brotherhood can’t help you, legally. And some people who do like you won’t lift a finger if it looks like that would help a Patriarch they aren’t so sure about.”

“I see. Pella, this means I can’t take you with me. How about you go grab my stuff? We’ll fix up something later.”

Anna caught his eye. She mouthed, “Thank you,” assuming he had found an excuse to leave the boy in safety.

Surly, Pella made the same assumption.

Cloven Februaren rotated into existence an instant after Lila rotated out. She and Heris were taking turns observing events. Februaren muttered at Heris, who nodded. Lila came back. “There’s a mob gathering in the Madhur Plaza. The ringleaders sound like Society types.”

“That’s pretty far off,” Heris said. “We have a while. But let’s don’t waste time. We don’t want them finding anything but booby traps when they get here. Lila, get your father out, then shift the others to the Castella.”

“Not inside,” Lila said. “Just close by. The Brotherhood would have fits if we turned up without them having to let us in.”

“Yeah. You ready, Piper?”

“Me? No.” He nearly panicked, recalling the unpleasantness of solo transitions with Heris.

She and Lila enveloped him in a hug. Lila nodded over his shoulder.

Twist.

Darkness, haunted by terrible things, none of which thought him worthy of notice. Then morning sunshine and cool air. He was in the foothills of the Jagos, outside the mouth of the Remayne Pass.

Heris asked, “That wasn’t bad, was it?”

“No. Maybe I’m getting used to it.”

“But you sound suspicious.”

“I am suspicious. The attitude of the Night toward me can’t have improved.”

“We need to put that runt Armand in a fool suit and have him follow you around telling you that you aren’t nearly as important as you think.”

“You miss picking on me when we were little, don’t you?”

“Could be.”

“My point is, the Night doesn’t think I’m important anymore. After all that trouble trying to kill me.”

“So the Night finally understands that the genie can’t be shoved back into the bottle.”

“That would be one interpretation. Giving the Night too much credit.”

“Your theory is?”

“The Night forgot me because it found you.”

“I don’t think so. Asgrimmur would’ve warned me. Lila and I need to get back. Just sit. The Righteous will be along later.”

“You plopped me down ahead of them? How am I supposed to explain that?” He tossed a look of appeal at Lila but the girl was infatuated with the view. The air was crystalline. The Jagos were dressed in magnificent grays and purples, wearing capes of pristine white. The breeze from the high slopes was cooler than the coolest morning air in Brothe. Hecht shivered.

Heris said, “You’ll come up with something. You’re so clever. Hell. Blame it on sorcery. Or divine intervention. It’d all be true.”

“And no one would believe me.”

“So much the better, eh? Lila! Time to go.”

“You go ahead. I’ll catch up. I want to look at the mountains.”

Heris shrugged. “Don’t be too long.” She turned sideways.

Lila waited half a minute to say, “Promise you’ll be careful.” She stepped close, hugged him, squeezed his right bicep and his left wrist as though disguising a check to make sure his amulet was still there. It was. And it still itched. “You’re the closest thing to a father I ever had.” Said like it was torture to get out.

Lila turned sideways, so close he felt the breeze when she vanished.

He took a deep breath, shivered some, decided to warm up by walking. He headed downhill. The road into the pass had to be close by.

He found the road. He perched on a boulder to wait. There was no traffic, which was not a good sign. Could it be because soldiers were coming?

* * *

Lila arrived in Brothe to find Heris and Cloven Februaren already heads together scheming to move her, Vali, and Muniero Delari into the hidden Chiaro Palace basement where the Construct lay hidden. Anna and Pella had been transitioned to the vicinity of the Castella already. They could cross a bridge and approach a gate, get inside, and prepare quarters where the girls could join them.

Mrs. Creedon, with Turking and Felske, had been sent to Principaté Delari’s apartment in the Chiaro Palace. There could be no safer place for them.

As Heris explained, the Ninth Unknown, laughing, turned sideways with the Eleventh, who entered the nothing squawking.

Vali joined Lila and Heris. All three rotated into the bright lights and bustle of the secret world of the Construct-though not where their arrival would be witnessed by the career priests and nuns perfecting what looked like a vast and intimately detailed relief map of the known world. Brothe was its pivot. It revealed ever less exact detail as the eye tracked toward its edge.

The environs of Brothe and central Firaldia were defined so minutely that an observer with a sharp eye and determined focus could discern minuscule dots moving along the roads and streets. A ghost of a haze drifted toward the sea west of the Firaldian peninsula.

A Patriarch and a Collegium centuries past had ordered the Construct developed as a means of seeing and understanding the expanding Chaldarean world. It had been, from its inception, an undertaking that beggared any cathedral project. It had been secret from the start and of such little popular interest that no one had bothered spying. In time it became lost even to Church insiders. The only recent Patriarch aware of the project-a definite anomaly-had been Hugo Mongoz, sitting the Patriarchal Throne as Boniface VII.

The project would continue. Cloven Februaren and Muniero Delari, the Ninth and Eleventh Unknowns, hoped to polish Heris into the Twelfth.

They wanted to keep the magic in the family.

Heris was not yet fully aware of their ambitions.

She growled and snapped and pulled her companions into a huddle away from the project staff. “There’s something wrong with Piper.”

The others awaited specifics. Nobody asked. She could not deliver her punch line. That irked her.

The whole damned family was that way.

Cloven Februaren yielded enough to observe, “He did develop some quirks after he died and we brought him back. But I thought he’d worked through those.”

“He learned how to hide them, you mean.”

A shrug. “Could be.”

“He even hid from himself. I think his transitions were rough because they reopened him to influences from the Night.”

“The answer is in the question.”

That confused Heris. “Excuse me?”

“Make him walk if transitions cause him distress.”

“It’s not that simple. I wish he’d made transitions before he died. We’d have something to compare.”

“Did he suffer much today?”

“Not this time. He might be getting used to it. Though I don’t actually believe that. There was something weird about him.”

Februaren asked, “What do you think, Lila?”

“I think he’s worried about us. And he has a hard time because his world keeps changing. Remember where he came from.”

“Is that it, Heris? Is he turning into a lost soul because everything he ever believed has turned to smoke?”

Heris hated to admit that that might be what she sensed. But she had her own moments on slippery footing and she never had believed in anything, truly. But that was not all of it. Not even the majority of it. “So let’s just keep an eye on him, look out for him, and get in the way if he starts heading in a bad direction.”

She would figure it out. Piper was her brother. Family. That was what family did.

Heris had not had a family before. Not one to which she belonged by blood and emotion.

* * *

Hecht was sound asleep on the ground when vedettes from the Righteous discovered him. It was two hours after noon. Those advance riders were some of the more superstitious of the Righteous. One stood nervous guard while the other galloped off to report.

Two hours passed before someone senior arrived. By then fifty soldiers had surrounded the snoring Commander.

Titus Consent and Clej Sedlakova arrived together, the chief of intelligence and master of the horse of the Righteous, respectively. Consent and the Commander had a friendship that went back to when Piper Hecht had been a hired sword working for the Bruglioni, one of the Five Families of Brothe. Even now Consent was just in his middle twenties, though gray flecked his dark hair already. He slid down off his bay, waited to see if Colonel Sedlakova needed assistance dismounting.

Clej Sedlakova, onetime associate of the Brotherhood of War-and still reporting back, probably-had only one arm. But he managed, even in a fight. He had no trouble dismounting. He had become accustomed to his situation.

Consent asked, “Who found him?”

The scouts responsible raised their hands.

“You didn’t try to waken him?”

“No, sir. Sir, if he wasn’t breathing we would of thought he was dead. He ain’t moved since we found him.”

Hecht lay curled on his right side, hands bunched in front of his mouth. “Sleeping like a baby,” Sedlakova observed. Sedlakova had a thin oval face and clover honey hair thinning all over. There was no fat on his lean frame. Excepting the absent arm he looked the perfect example of what he was: a career soldier. He was one of those men who remained clean and neat even in the roughest circumstances.

Titus Consent, on the other hand, remained permanently just over the line toward rumpled. He was lean, too. The Righteous were all lean. Even in garrison they lived an active, austere life.

All the fault of that man sleeping there in the cold.

Consent considered the gathered soldiers. Hecht had to be way out not to hear all their racket. He walked round his friend, saw no hint of anything remarkable-other than the man’s inexplicable presence.

Sedlakova said, “He isn’t dressed for this weather.”

“No. You’re right.” Hecht wore what he usually did in the field, nondescript clothing you could find on any workman. There were no layers. He had come from somewhere warm. “Good eye. I didn’t notice that.” Consent knelt, shook Hecht’s left shoulder.

It took more than a minute to get a response, and that was not the expected startle reaction. It was bleary-eyed confusion, then disbelief, then a baffled, “Where am I? How did I get here?”

“I was hoping you could tell us. We’re in the approaches to the Remayne Pass, just south of where they ambushed us before. How you got here is something you’ll have to explain.”

“I don’t know, Titus. I was in Brothe, at Principaté Delari’s townhouse. I had strange dreams about old-time gods. Not nightmares. Just dreams, like memories of things that never were. Then you shook me. And here I am, freezing.” He was sitting now, but looking like he would need help getting to his feet.

Titus Consent was not as skeptical as a good Chaldarean ought to be, nor even as skeptical as the Devedian he had been before his conversion. But he had spent a year in the Connec hunting and extinguishing revenant devils from antiquity. “We put them all down. Rook was the last one. You were there when we got him.”

“Different Old Ones, Titus. The northern ones.”

“Donner? Ordnan? Due? That crew?”

“I know the middle one. Remember that big explosion outside al-Khazen? That was him getting a taste of what we gave Rook, Hilt, Kint, and that lot later.”

“They have a bunch of different names, depending on where they were worshipped. Some even overlapped the bunch we cleaned up. The ancient Endonensins liked the northern war god. Their warriors hoped to be claimed by the Choosers of the Slain.”

“All right.”

“Due was the war god. He had more different names than anybody, including just plain War. Donner was Ordnan’s son. He was big and dumb and famous for a magic hammer that was so heavy nobody else could lift it. Thunder-which is what Donner meant-happened when Donner was playing with his hammer. Or, more likely, when he dropped it.”

“Red Hammer.”

“Uhm.”

The Righteous got their Commander upright and gave him a dead man’s coat. Everyone passing got as close as possible, to see if the rumors were true. Regimental field cooks brought food. The Commander ate heartily.

He seemed bemused. Or, better said, preoccupied.

Hecht’s staff eventually gathered round. They did not say much. Though good men and old friends, they were troubled. This latest mystery left them more uncomfortable than they had been since that assassin took the Commander down and dead-just before he got up and walked again.

His very title sheltered him from darker suspicions: Commander of the Righteous. Anointed captain of God’s Own Army, destined to cleanse the Holy Lands of an infidel infestation. The Commander of the Righteous would have no congress with devils, demons, or darkness. Would he?

Still, Hecht’s staff and captains worried.

* * *

The Righteous were short on mounts and drayage. The Commander ended up riding a mule. He refused to commandeer a mount. The mule’s name was Pig Iron. Hecht had known him and his human traveling companion, Just Plain Joe, from the beginning of his career in the west. Just Plain Joe liked animals better than people. Because of Joe that side of the Righteous functioned better than it did in most armed forces. Joe had had the same impact wherever Hecht commanded, all the way back. Just Plain Joe had no ambition greater than to ease life for his four-legged friends. By doing so he improved life for the two-leggers as well.

The officer corps of the Righteous stipulated Joe’s good work but disdained their Commander’s friendship toward, indulgence of, and adamant support for a dullard peasant.

It was simple. Just Plain Joe had set a sentimental hook. Hecht could explain, “There are only four of us left from the band that went to the Connec to punish Antieux for defying the Patriarch and Joe is the only one still with me. We have a bond.”

The other survivors were Pinkus Ghort and Bo Biogna. Ghort had become Captain-General of Patriarchal forces, a post little more than that of head policeman in Brothe, now. Biogna had gone missing. When last seen he had been an undercover agent for Ghort, or Bronte Doneto, or the Church. Or maybe all three. Biogna and Just Plain Joe were close. If Biogna was alive he would contact Joe eventually.

The Righteous moved on into the chill of the high Jagos. Their Commander spent most of his time brooding. He did not notice the cautious attitudes of his companions. He did recall that there were other survivors of that first murderous campaign against Antieux, but none who had been with him doing the grunt work. Bronte Doneto had been there. The deposed Patriarch still nurtured a fierce hatred for the Connec. Osa Stile had been there, as the plaything of the Brothen Episcopal bishop of Antieux, Serifs, and as a spy for the Empire.

Did any of that mean anything anymore? Other than emotionally?

Probably not.

Once the Righteous began the descent of the north slope of the Jagos, Hecht’s brooding shifted from the past to the future. There was no evidence that the new Empress would not want him to go on preparing for a crusade. And next spring was no longer far away.

Too, he had to prepare his people for the changes that would follow once the special assistance commenced.

The Old Ones, surely, would be smart enough to take on disguises. But how could they help giving themselves away?

Humility was not in their characters.

In which case they might not have to wait long to find out what Red Hammer had discovered already.