It had required many a tankard to dull the images of my own introduction to the soldiers’ mysteries. I had never subscribed to myths of noble purpose or personal glory in battle, but I had believed that shoving a spear into a twitching body busily shitting itself could make a man of me. I’d blundered through innumerable bloody days since, as much avoiding other fools’ spears and axes as wielding my own.
Brother Anselm wrapped the litter poles in their leather slings, dumped them into the boy’s outstretched arms, and threw a stack of linens atop the load. After tossing a few loose items from the shelves into a wooden chest, he slammed the lid, fastened the latch, and hefted it onto his shoulder. Before you could blink, only the chilly draft remained with me in the infirmary.
The laws of sanctuary and the sanctity of abbey walls seemed suddenly flimsy.
Two of the royal brothers, Perryn, Duc of Ardra, and Bayard, Duc of Morian, had maintained a deadly balance for three years. As no one had produced Eodward’s authentic writ stating elsewise, Bayard claimed the Navron throne by right and precedent as Eodward’s eldest son. But Eodward had granted Prince Perryn regency in Ardra—the ancient seat of Caedmon’s line—and Perryn insisted that this demonstrated Eodward’s intent to name him king over his poorly educated elder brother.
The third and youngest brother, Osriel the Bastard, regent of Evanore, had taken no active part in the three-year dispute save his grisly reaping on the battlefield. Some said Osriel cared naught for ruling on earth, but aimed to supplant the divine Magrog himself as lord of the netherworld. Others claimed he was waiting only for his brothers to weaken each other so he could sweep them both aside with an army of gatzi.
Only in the winter just past had stories of a fourth brother—this child Pretender—risen, and as sure as dead men stink, before the rumor could gather strength enough to create him a rival, Bayard had made a devil’s bargain that looked to win him the day. He had allied with the Harrowers.
The Harrowers denied both the elder gods and the Karish upstart Iero, claiming that Navrons had lost their proper fear of the true Powers who ruled the universe. Their priestess, Sila Diaglou, said that our cities and our plowing had defiled the land and that our false religions had caused us to forget these Powers that she called Gehoum, and that was why the weather had gone sour and the plagues and wars had risen.
For years people had laughed at a woman speaking out as if she were the divine prophet Karus come back again, set on changing the ways of the world. Yet, in the last years of Eodward’s reign, when pestilence and storms grew worse and the king could pay no mind to aught but Hansker raiders—Sila Diaglou’s direst predictions come true—folk began to listen and nod their heads. More and more wild-eyed rabble, dressed in rags and orange head scarves, heeded her call for burning and destruction to “harrow” the land and appease the Gehoum’s wrath. Scorned by priests and nobles, she had grown her ragtag band of lunatics into an army to rival those of Navronne’s princes.
Throughout the summer campaign, while Prince Perryn dithered and regrouped farther and farther south, claiming that no rabble could stand against his knights and legions, the Harrowers burnt villages and fields and left us nothing to eat and nothing to defend. And then Prince Bayard and Sila Diaglou had joined forces and swept us up like chaff from a threshing floor.
The abbey bells clanged in an urgent rhythm. Distant shouts, mysterious door bangings, and running footsteps from the infirmary courtyard accompanied the summons. The evening reeked of danger. Unable to lie still, I threw off my blankets and pulled on my wool shirt, trews, and hose.
A brown-clad body burst through the door and pelted down the long room to Brother Robierre’s shelves—the other young aspirant, Gerard, a soft, stammering boy of fourteen. He shoved bowls and basins aside, knocking half of them clattering to the floor. Then he whirled about, dark stains on his arms and in his eyes. “B-b-bonesaws. Where does he k-keep them? He said the far end…”
I was already on my feet, alder stick in hand. “In that great iron chest down below.”
By the time I joined him, the boy’s trembling fingers had scarcely got the lid open. Together we lifted out two trays of small, fine instruments—pincers, scalpels, probing tools of thin wire, and the like—laid out between sheets of leather. In the bottom of the chest lay a number of larger, linen-wrapped bundles. The boy dragged out cautery irons, mallets, and strangely shaped implements of unknown purpose. I’d seen enough use of such tools to recognize the wide blade and thin, squared handle of the bonesaw.
“There. That one. That’s likely what he wants. And you’d best take the larger iron as well.”
The boy looked up at me like a begging pup, raising a small key in his hand. “And p-p-poppy extract. He said you’d know where to find it.”
“I’d guess that every wounded man who comes here learns where the good infirmarian keeps Iero’s salvation…” I limped to the corner of the room where the roof truss lapped over the wall, forming a high shelf, and lifted down the heavy iron casket that likely only Brother Badger and I could reach. “…but he chooses not to leave it loose about to tempt boys or weak-minded malingerers like me. It will be a boon to those you’ve seen, as will the care the brothers give them.” Saints and angels, I didn’t want the boy to start weeping.
I wheedled the recalcitrant lock open and handed over the precious brown flask. “Anything else?”
The boy shook his head, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and trotted out the door.
I stowed the nicked herb knife and the pilfered herbs and medicines in my rucksack and tied the bag around my waist with a length of linen bandage. Then I pulled my jaque over my woolen shirt, wrestled my boots onto my feet and my damp monk’s gown over all.
Caution demanded I bolt. To strike out directly across the River Kay behind the infirmary would get me away from the abbey quickest. But the church would hold valuables—calyxes of gold or silver used for noblemen’s offerings, or the offerings themselves—rare oils, coins, gems perhaps, or other gifts from wealthy benefactors and pilgrims. I made Iero’s sign on breast and forehead, vowing to take only enough to pay for my book. Stealing from a god’s house was a risky practice.
Though twilight lingered in the outer airs, night had already settled in the confines of the inner courts. The wood-splitters’ yard was deserted, the wood stacked in the voluminous undercroft, splinters and flakes neatly raked and dropped in weatherworn tinder baskets. The ripe stench of a latrine overlaid the scents of brewhouse and granary. All very natural. Yet I peered over my shoulder fifty times in that short journey, and gripped my alder stick so fiercely I likely put dents in the smooth wood. The guesthouse sat dark. I breathed freely only after I hobbled into the maze of gardens and hedges before the church.
I paused amid the overgrown yews, wondering at the quiet. Perhaps circumstances were not so dire as the fears of naive boys implied. Only a fool would pillage a church and abandon such a comfortable sanctuary without ripe cause. So instead of bearing right into the church, I headed left toward the abbey gates.
Just inside the massive outer wall of the abbey and its twin-towered gatehouse lay the walled enclosure the brothers called the Alms Court. In this pleasant space of fountains and mosaics, where, on ordinary days, Brother Porter dealt with visitors, five dead bodies lay wrapped neatly in linen. A lay brother sponged blood and dirt from a sixth corpse, while a white-haired monk droned prayers over the dead man’s battered head. The mournful Porter, Brother Cadeus, filled a pail at a splashing fountain and dashed it over the paving stones as if to expunge the horror.