Chapter 7
I stared after Jullian as he sprinted for the abbey gates. But only for a moment. Matters were deteriorating too rapidly. The first outriders thundered across the fields toward the abbey, swords raised, cloaks and pennons flying. The little cadre of bristling lances moved slowly from the center of the field toward the gatehouse—away from the coming assault, which did naught but affirm what I suspected about the lord they protected.
“Father Prior!” Abbot Luviar himself ran out of the gatehouse tunnel as I picked my way across the uneven ground along the wall away from the gates. “In the name of the Creator, Nemesio, why are they not within?”
“Their officers refused. Their lord insists on you—”
“Run, Nemesio! Get him inside now. By my command as your superior in Iero’s service, under pain of your immortal soul, get the lord’s party through the gate. Do you understand me? Brother Broun, Fescol…ring the bells!”
The prior dashed into the murmuring crowd. As the alarm rippled in from the perimeter, Abbot Luviar strode straight out through the stirring soldiers as well. “Rise up!” he cried, moving from one to another, the golden sunburst on his breast glinting in the torchlight. “You must stand one more time. Rise up and take arms. Support your comrades to stand as well. Navronne needs your strength. Your children and your children’s children need your courage. If good is to be made of your suffering, then these riders must not find you asleep.” He tugged on weary arms and laid his hand on bent heads. “You are the men of Ardra, Eodward’s men of light! Mighty Iero will lift your arms, if you but stand. This fight is bigger than you know. The stakes grander than all of us.”
I was astonished. One by one, men who but moments before were ghosts of warriors, drained of blood and spirit, grasped pikes or spears and rose to their feet, drawing their fellows up to stand beside them and face outward. None of them seemed to notice the knights retreating toward the abbey.
I wanted to call after Luviar, “The one you protect is not worthy of more lives; he betrays his men for pride and greed!”
But the abbot was out of my reach. Like a tight eddy in the current of the shaping battle, he spun and touched and cajoled. “Rise up and the archangels will join you with their swords and shields. This cause you serve must not die this day. Show Navronne the strength of your resolve!”
Indeed, the abbot’s voice carried across the sea of bloodied faces like an archangel’s clarion, almost enough to draw me back into the conflict I had abandoned. Not for the cowardly prince I believed lay hidden behind the screen of his lancers, not for golden Ardra or industrious Morian or mysterious, mountainous Evanore. Yet, perhaps, for good King Eodward who had lived with the angels and dreamed of Navronne, the Heart of the World…
Even as I considered grabbing a weapon from one of the men too weak to use it, I shook off the fey notion. I was not ready to die for anyone or anything. To enter a fight at less than full strength was an invitation to the Ferryman.
I climbed the gentle apron slope of the wall and angled away from the gatehouse, resigned to a long and miserable journey. The abbey walls would lead me back to the river. Somewhere the monks would have built a bridge to open the cross-river pastures for grazing. The thick damp of the night resolved into cold spatters on my face. Unvowed, I had no cowl to shield me from the rain.
“Valen!” The call startled me, and I glanced over my shoulder. A pale face lined by dark brows appeared out of the night behind me. “You should get yourself inside the walls immediately, Valen.”
Iero’s bones, where had the monk come from? “Ah, Brother Gildas,” I said, “perhaps you don’t recognize the perils of this night.”
My gait was slow and clumsy on the uneven ground. Gildas quickly caught up with me, grabbed my arm, and drew me to a halt. “This world is naught but perilous. Nothing is simple. Nothing is innocent. And sometimes, those who think themselves the most worldly are the most innocent of all.”
I snorted at the concept of this monk telling me anything of the world. “Sometimes a man must look to his body’s safety as well as his soul’s. Bayard of Morian is hunting his brother, and any man who gets in his way is a fool. Soon to be a dead fool. Though Abbot Luviar seems to disagree, I doubt Iero would have us throw our lives away for nothing.”
Purposeless death was not the only risk in staying. Bayard would surely have pureblood attendants. Any interrogation of Gillarine’s inhabitants could be my downfall. Time only increased the Registry’s determination to recover a recondeur.
I limped past Brother Gildas. He darted in front of me and gently, but insistently, blocked my way. “The god has given your safety into our hands, Valen. Please believe we take that very seriously. You must not leave.”
I wanted very much to believe him. The drizzle had yielded to a downpour. My thigh ached. I was already shivering and had no provisions. All that awaited me in the dark and the wet were pestilence, Moriangi swords, and a hungry winter. “But these riders—”
“—will not find the one they seek. I swear to you they’ll have no cause to broach our walls. The dangers of this night are outside Gillarine, not in. Come. Hurry. And have faith.”
His grip was much stronger than I expected. And perhaps his faith, too. For it was more than the weather and my poor prospects that crumbled my resolve so quickly. Since I’d first taken up soldiering, I had hated the last moments before battle, when it seemed as if the boundaries between earth and body, between past, present, and future, between knowing and experiencing dissolved. But something about this place…every moment I stood on this field multiplied those sensations beyond bearing. As a wind blustering my hair and robe, I felt the sweeping onslaught of the Moriangi. As the sea crashing upon my knees, I felt the surging Ardrans step up to meet them. A horse neighed wildly in the distance and a cheer went up among the Ardrans. My soul ached, and I longed for wine…for mead…for hard spirits or poppy…for the doulon…anything so I would not feel all this.
As the cold deluge soaked my hair and funneled down my neck, I resentfully allowed Gildas to turn me around. “Answer me one thing, Brother,” I said as the monk steadied my steps. “What would it mean if I were to bid you farewell with the Aurellian word meaning we preserve?”
Though Gildas did not miss a step, his arm suddenly felt like a post. Moments passed. “Well, of course, preservation of knowledge is our charter here at Gillarine. Many here use teneamus as a challenge when our spirits flag. A reminder of duty and service to the god. You never mentioned that you understood Aurellian, Valen. Most aspirants must learn it from the beginning. What other talents are you hiding?”
My spine froze. I should have known he would turn the question on me. Stupid tongue-flapping fool. Come on. A story… “I was schooled early…a Karish charity school near Ymir…took to the language. I’ve a gift with the pronunciations, I’m told, though not the writing of it.”
Mumbling curses at my slip and thanking the gods yet again that my curling hair, light complexion, and excess height were so exceptional for pureblood stock, I hobbled back along the wall toward the gatehouse. The sloping apron gave a wide vantage. More riders broached the hardening Ardran perimeter. Arms clashed. Men and horses screamed…
“They should not shed blood upon that field,” I said, shuddering. As the last rays of sunlight pierced the cloud and sculpted the surging sea of bodies with orange and scarlet, the very thought made my veins burn and my stomach heave as they had in the cloister garth. Holy ground, Jullian had called Gillarine. Perhaps that was what I felt.
“Shedding blood is a great evil,” said Gildas. “Yet some causes demand it. Blood spilled in violence has great power for good.”
“Some causes, perhaps.” But not this one. I hobbled faster. “King Eodward could not have meant his sons to bring Navronne to ruin.”