crowded Devedian quarter.
Damp weather had proved a blessing.
“I didn’t plan this but I’m not unhappy that it happened. Though I do wish I had that firepowder back.”
Departure for the connec had to be delayed. Hecht and a band of lifeguards took the damp road to Fea, the village where the creature from the Jagos was being kept. Hecht enlightened no one about the reason for the trip. Madouc was in a sour mood. No tempers were improved by the ongoing drizzle.
Feeble rains had fallen irregularly since the explosion at the Krulik and Sneigon works. Old people complained about their joints and proposed unlikely theories to explain the weather. Those in the midst of life were amused because their elders usually claimed everything was bigger, brighter, prettier, deadlier, and just generally more so in every way in decades gone by. Not so, the rain.
Hecht’s destination proved to be at the heart of Fea, a tower seventy feet tall. It was a primitive example of architecture beginning to appear in various republics and even a few Patriarchal cities where local politics could overheat. Entry was accomplished through a doorway sixteen feet above ground level, after climbing a ladder. Its few windows were archer’s embrasures well above that. Food and water, sufficient to endure a brief siege, were stored inside.
The towers were not fortifications in a traditional sense. City politics being volatile, they needed to protect their owners for hours only. Days at the most. Rioters seldom came equipped with siege trains. Or martial determination.
Hecht thought these family fortresses might be worth consideration in the Collegium. They could make difficulties for Patriarchal troops trying to control local disorders.
This tower was different from similar towers in that the ladder was stored outside. The Captain-General swung that into place. “Wait here, Madouc. I won’t be long.”
Madouc did not want to risk his principal to a thing that had harvested lives by the score. He argued. But Piper Hecht had no fear. Asgrimmur Grimmsson had reclaimed himself from the Night.
“Madouc, I do most everything you ask. Even when I don’t see the point. But not this time. I need to talk to this man alone.”
Madouc reddened. Would this be the one time too much?
But Madouc controlled himself. He had his men hold the ladder.
“Thank you, Madouc.” Hecht climbed. He felt it in his thighs. Too much comfort lately. And too many years.
The tower door swung inward at a touch. Hecht swung off the ladder, stepped inside. He saw no immediate evidence that the place was occupied. He moved through the gloom to a narrow stairs that had no rail. Stepping carefully, one hand against the wall, he climbed a riser at a time, testing each before he put his weight on it.
His eyes adjusted. And the light did grow stronger as he climbed, sneaking in through the unglazed embrasures above.
How had Cloven Februaren gotten hold of this place? He supposed the villagers would have reports, thirty percent fiction and sixty-five percent speculation.
“Godslayer. Welcome to my mansion in Firaldia.”
“Soultaken. I’m glad you’re enjoying the Patriarch’s hospitality.”
“I don’t think your old man has much to do with it. Except insofar as he executes the will of the All- Father.”
Hecht found himself in a round, featureless room boasting few comforts. Archer’s embrasures marked the points of the compass, designed to accommodate crossbowmen. Hecht tried to hide the fact that he was winded.
“The will of the All-Father?”
“Unless my brother Shagot lied, one of our rewards for destroying the Godslayer would be a stone-built mansion in warm Firaldia. Warmth being a huge luxury and giant temptation for wild young Andorayans. Who believed everything could be theirs if they had the will to take it.”
“I must confess, you’re entirely unlike my preconceptions of an Andorayan pirate.”
“I’m not that Svavar anymore. He was ignorant and shallow and an embarrassment to his people. And wasn’t bright enough to see it.”
“So how…?”
“When you’re trapped inside the monster of the Jagos you can’t do much but think. And taste the Night. And sample the unfortunate minds and souls that get in your way. You become as aware of the beast you were as you’re aware of the horror you’ve become. All that time thinking could drive you mad. Unless you re-create yourself in a shape more acceptable to yourself. I think most ascendants must go mad. I’m probably barking mad myself- though I keep trying to convince me that I was doing my stint in Purgatory and I’m just fine now. A diet of iron and silver does wonders for clearing the mind.”
Hecht moved to an embrasure, looked out on countryside that had changed little in two thousand years. In all likelihood those vineyards and olive groves and wheat fields had been where they were before the rise of the Old Brothen Empire. There were ruins down there the Feaens claimed antedated the Old Empire. Ruins no one disturbed. They were part of a pagan graveyard protected by the insane fury of cairnmaidens, children buried alive so their angry ghosts would guard the burying ground.
Even devout Chaldareans would not test those beliefs.
“Nor should they dare,” the soultaken said, as though reading Hecht’s thoughts writ upon his face. “Those murdered children are ascendants themselves, of the most terrible sort. Though very small. The world is fortunate they can’t grow and can’t sever their connection to the ground they guard. I’ve tried to talk with them. I can’t. Their rage is impenetrable.”
“Once upon a time, when the Faith was young, the saints set out to free the cairnmaidens and lay them to rest.”
“So they did. Once upon a time. But it was cruel and painful work. And thankless. Changing the official religion didn’t change the superstitions of the country people. When those early saints passed over they left no apprentices to carry on. Idealism flees all faiths early.”
Hecht moved to another embrasure. From this he could observe Fea itself, and Madouc nervously pacing. He stuck an arm out and waved to demonstrate that he remained among the living. “You wanted to see me.”
“In a sense. The old man who comes has a very one-sided mind. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to ask questions that produce definitive answers. But he doesn’t know how to ask the right questions.”
“You’re hoping I’ll sit around chatting, wrestling the world’s travails? I’m not the right man. I’m a soldier. I solve problems by killing people and burning things till the problems go away. I seem to be good at that.”
“Better than most of your contemporaries. Your weakness is your inability to be ruthless.”
Recalling the Connecten Crusade, Hecht considered a protest. He forbore. The soultaken was right. He had made examples in an effort to chivvy potential enemies away from the battlefield. But his thinking had been local and limited, concerned only with the immediate future. Ten years from now, if the Patriarch sent him against Arnhand, no one would be intimidated by what he had done then.
The Old Brothens said war was neither a game nor a pastime. If a man was not willing to pursue it with all his strength, with utter ruthlessness, he should not go to war in the first place. In the long term, ruthlessness saved lives.
An enemy had to be stripped of all hope. Before the killing started, if possible. He had to know that if war came it would not end till someone had suffered absolute destruction. The Old Brothens always had the numbers. Not to mention superior discipline and skills. And utter ruthlessness.
“I see what you mean.”
“Good, then. In time to come you’ll need to be less gentle.”
“What?”
“I am become a child of the Night. Though I’ve resumed my original shape part of me is still entangled in the Night’s boundless sea. I know what the Night knows. Like most Instrumentalities, I have trouble organizing that so it makes sense inside this world’s limitations. The toughest chore is to anchor information at the appropriate place on the tree of time.”
“The same problem your Old Ones had when they conscripted you to murder me.”
