Gold Throne in Shadow (4 page)

Christopher had been a Pater while Stephram knew him, and the title was surprisingly painful, evoking the memories they had shared as first-rank priests in an army of farm boys.

“You were only following orders,” he objected. “There was no shame.”

“It is fruitless to argue,” chided Faren.

The ghost answered anyway. “I abandoned a Brother in the field, at the behest of a mere lord. If I had stayed, I would have been a hero; instead, I was craven and disloyal, a figure of pity. I blamed Nordland, of course, yet I also blamed you, for the mere crime of surviving.”

“But how does this equate to you killing yourself?” Christopher asked. “You knew I would forgive you.”

“I did not want forgiveness, I wanted revenge. And now I have it.” The leer aimed for grisly triumph. On the face of a dead man it only achieved the pathetic.

“Revenge? How?”

The ghost laughed, cruelly similar to Stephram at the dinner table telling a joke. “My death is punishment on you both. Nordland fled a coward, though no one dares to say it to his face. But my corpse cannot be denied, and many will say that Nordland should have joined me here on the tree, purely out of shame. I had the courage to name him craven by my deed.

“And you, Brother, I have also struck from beyond the grave. Now Nordland can never forgive you. My suicide will be a lasting chain that will bind his anger and guilt. I cannot be revived, so I cannot be forced to recant or induced to forgive. I stand as a bar between you and the Duke, and he must hate you for as long as I am dead. As will I.”

The spell was done, the questions exhausted, and so was Christopher. The mist evaporated into the daylight, and the tree stood innocent and silent once again.

“Suicides are ever vainglorious,” Faren grumbled.

“Why can't he be revived?” Christopher asked, struggling against his emotional fatigue and trying to create some room for denial. “I committed suicide, and you brought me back.”

“You did not. You struck against your enemies through your act. Bringing you back let you continue your fight. Stephram can only lose his battle if he returns. And because he cannot form new desires, he cannot give up his wicked goal. Those on the other side do not change. Remember this,” Faren admonished, “before you send anyone else there.”

Christopher blushed in terrible shame. He'd shot a man, on the march home, for not walking. He had been irrational after two days of grueling travel and inadequate food and shelter. That hardly served as an excuse. He hadn't lost any more men to immobility. That didn't seem exculpatory, either.

Faren took pity on him. “The lad returned. He was in the act of returning home at the time, anyway, so the risk was low. The two you lost were no fault of yours. And yes, I know you dared not ask, but Karl lives also.” Karl the two-time veteran was the real leader of the army, a young man of such gratuitous courage that it made Christopher's stomach ache. The release of tension made him faint-headed. He could carry on without Stephram, but without Karl he would have been utterly lost.

Climbing on his magnificent warhorse, the stalwart Royal, who had carried the dead on that march instead of Christopher, he reflected that he had gone to war and lost only two young men whose names meant little to him, boys he could not even picture out of memory. The quality of his relief shamed him.

3

RETURN OF THE PRIEST

F
aren's carriage escorted him and Torme all the way to Knockford, ostensibly on its own private business, the presence of the highly ranked Cardinal guaranteeing no unpleasant surprises. They rode into town without fanfare, the guards at the gate acknowledging them with only brief formality, but inside the walls of the church Christopher was ambushed by happy faces.

“We have a lot to discuss,” he told his business managers. Tom was grinning to see him back in one piece. Jhom, more reserved, was still obviously relieved; even Fae smiled at him coolly. Karl, of course, nodded a minimal greeting, as if their recent mutual deaths were not worthy of comment, and immediately countermanded his alleged superior officer.

“Not today,” Karl said. “Your regiment requires your attention first.”

There was something wrong with the way Karl said it, the smallest hesitation that should not have been there. Christopher wasn't sure why, until Tom spoke.

“He's a Curate, now, Goodman, not a foolish young Pater anymore.” Tom made it into a joke, on both halves. In the middle the point was clear. “Mayhaps he'll not be so hurried,” he added.

Christopher was already speaking. “I'll be back tomorrow,” he told them, accepting Karl's judgment as his own. “I can tell you this much: in a few weeks, we have to start training the next year's draft. That means you all have to double your production.” Jhom finally looked almost happy; Fae pursed her lips. That was going to cost him, he knew, but he had no idea how much, or even what currency it would be in. The woman was like that.

Then he followed Karl to the stables, where his officer corps waited for him dressed in full military regalia. At least they had polished the ugly black from the armor they had taken from Bart's defeated knights, and it shone an honest and neutral gray. The rifles attached to their saddles looked out of place next to the steel plate and chain, but only for a moment.

Karl looked at Torme and waited.

“Faren felt I needed an assistant,” Christopher said.

Torme explained for him. “I am an Acolyte, Goodman, though I once served as a Knight.” In a few words, Torme told Karl the information he needed that Christopher hadn't thought to convey. Now Karl knew the man's rank and his powers, and also that Torme understood what Karl's position was.

Just to make it perfectly clear, Christopher spelled it out. “Karl's title is lieutenant; he is my second-in-command.” Assigning command or political power to a person without rank was unprecedented in this world. Torme, to his credit, didn't raise an eyebrow.

But Karl ignored the exchange with his customary dispatch, and Christopher was comforted.

As they rode out of town, they passed carpenters in the act of building a guard post for the handful of armored men who watched the traffic. Christopher shrugged his shoulders questioningly.

“The Vicar has made some adjustments to her security,” Karl answered, with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. Christopher was glad now that he'd escaped town without having to see her. She wouldn't be pleased with the adjustments, and she'd almost certainly blame him.

A few hundred yards from the village of Burseberry, an officer broke out of the cavalry column and galloped ahead to summon the regiment to inspection. Christopher was impressed at how closely they had timed it. Although the troops had only minutes to prepare, they were already in parade formation as he rode into the empty field that had become their drilling grounds. The barracks and barns of his military camp were unchanged, as was the stone chapel at the heart of the village just to the north, but he did not recognize the regiment before him, despite the familiar faces it wore.

Where had his rowdy boys gone? What mischievous sculptor had left this wall of stone, of ramrod-straight backs and squared shoulders? They stood in ranks, unmoving, the boisterous lads turned into toy soldiers, stiff and precise. On command, with flawless unison, they saluted, two hundred throats bellowing, “Sir!” in greeting and obedience. In the bright spring air they stood clean and firm, uniforms in perfect order, bayonets and helmets sparkling, boots shined without blemish.

Gazing over his army, he was consumed by a wave of pride. It radiated out from them, magnified and reflected by the watching village, and he was the focal point. He had taken them into the Wild and brought them out again. He had faced them against monsters and won. He had stood with them where heroes fled.

And now they stood for him, waiting.

Driven by a triumph steeped in bitter dungeons of cynicism and cruelty, he barked at the silent ranks. “You no longer serve Nordland,” he told them and thrust high the commission from the King. In the perfect quiet the crackle of the parchment in his fist could be heard across the field. “Now you serve
me
!” he shouted, and the wall shattered like glass, exploding into bellowing cheers, arm-waving leaps, the deafening pandemonium of victory. And this, too, was a sigil of his power over them.

He went inside, leaving the officers to deal with the disorder, struggling to contain his own emotions. The heady wine of power made him dizzy, and he could not afford to lose his step. Perhaps here, it would not matter so much, yet even that impulsive display of his absolute command had been foolish. Who knew who was watching?

Karl was, for one. “You have something I have never seen before,” he mused. “Not loyalty; a peasant's life is worth little, even to himself. To pledge it in the service of a lord is no great matter. No, you have something else.” Karl's gaze pierced distant clouds on far horizons of possibilities. “You have their
attention
.” He did not speak the rest of his thought, because he did not have to. He already knew that Christopher understood that with power comes responsibility. He already trusted Christopher with more than their lives.

And then the tension melted under the teary grasp of a young woman. Helga had become like a sister, and she hugged him like a brother returned from the dead. Both of them were orphans, her in the conventional way, and he in the loss of his own world. Only last year they had lived in the little stone chapel like simple peasants. Now he had an army under him, and she had her own battalion of cooks and servants to feed it.

With old Pater Svengusta, of course. “A Curate now, in less than a year! What a load of trouble that will cause. Every young buck will want to join the Church of Rapid Advancement. You'll be drowning in hopefuls, and how will I get any sleep then?”

Torme did not blush, although Christopher thought his bow was a little stiff. The poor fellow would just have to get used to Svengusta's joking.

“Pater, meet Acolyte Torme, newly of the Church of Marcius,” Christopher said, just to watch how the clever old man squirmed out of this one.

“Well, that's not so bad then,” Svengusta said, “at least he's quiet. If they're all like this, I suppose we can manage.” He winked at Torme, offered him a mug of ale, and their friendship was sealed. Christopher wished, not for the first time, that he could lug Svengusta around to do his politicking for him.

Then there was paperwork, despite the dearness of paper. He had to look over the supplies, to see what they had left, while Karl explained how they had got on without him. Little Charles, the young man he had recruited early because of his rare ability to read, had lists of expenses to go through and disbursements to be signed, and in the process he could not help but show off his new fingers. But he didn't look any younger from his regeneration, being only sixteen in the first place.

“That's the first time a boy has come home from war with more parts than he went to it with,” Svengusta cracked. The joke did not shake the adoration beaming from Charles's face.

“You're still quartermaster,” Christopher warned, “too valuable to waste on any further heroics, until you teach others to read and write.” And then he remembered Torme and immediately plunged the poor man into the morass.

Kennet was deeply changed by his experience, no longer a gawking teenager. In the last year he'd put on another two inches and two dozen pounds; he was now larger than Christopher, an imposing manly figure who was only barely recognizable as the village boy with the townie girlfriend that had started Christopher down the path of duels and armies. The quiet confidence in his stance uncannily resembled Karl's, but the devotion in his eyes was no less than Charles's. Even the hardened mercenaries looked on Christopher with unflinching respect. Unnerved, Christopher unconsciously sought out the one soldier who had cause to blame him, the injured man he'd shot on the march. He found him hard at work in their newest barn.

“It's good to see you walking again,” he said to the young man, the humor awkwardly buried under relief and guilt.

But the soldier barked, “Yes, sir!” while the blush crept up his neck.

Christopher could not let this go, despite Karl's subtle frown. “I'm sorry, Private, that I . . . did that. I was in the wrong.”

“No, sir, I deserved it!” reported the soldier before he realized he was arguing with his commander. Confused, he simply repeated his agreement with whatever was being said. “Sir!”

“He disobeyed a direct order,” Karl said. “You were within your rights, both by law and custom.”

“But it was an impossible order,” Christopher objected.

“Since when has that mattered?” Karl replied with honest curiosity.

“It does now,” Christopher said. But he could not reform an entire military culture standing here in a barn, so he swallowed his guilt and moved on.