Abashed, the male halfling lowered his gaze. “I beg forgiveness, Holy One. Your Holiness, there is news. Terrible news!”
The Holy One sank down on the bare planks that served as his bed, a hand plucking at his monk’s habit where the hair shirt under it chafed at his brown skin.
“There can be no news more terrible than that the Dark Lord yet lives.” The elf reached across to the whip rack, selected a short thong, and began absently to scourge himself. “And that, when they ride out against Him, I cannot ride with them!”
Elvish blood spattered the masonry. The Holy One stared at the walls of the dank cell as if he could see through them to all the great kingdoms of the south.
“One tiny fort,” he whispered. “One stronghold that I could not take. And so I am disgraced.” The elf lord’s thin, ascetic features twisted, eyes squeezed shut. Sweat inched down his brown face. The whip drooped in his hand. “When I held a sword in my hand, and could not defeat mine enemies, the southern cities laughed at me. My name was made a mockery at Nin-Edin! How can I live with such disgrace? Orcs, orcs, orcs—”
“Funny you should mention them.” The deep-voiced abbess got to her hairy feet. “For those orcs are once again at the right hand of Darkness. Your Holiness, the news we have is that there is a terrible task to be done, and no one can be found who is humble enough to submit to it.”
The Holy One’s sunken golden eyes brightened. “What is that, my child? And what of the—ssss!—orcs?”
The Reverend Brandiman said smoothly, “Your Holiness has heard of the insidious evil plan of Darkness; how the Dread Lord of the East refuses to go to arms and instead challenges the free world to a contest of votes.”
“Yes, I have heard.” The elf found his slender hand moving as if it would clutch a blade. “That Great Heretic!”
“Just so,” the halfling priest continued. “Now the free world must choose its own candidate—someone who will submit to the utter humiliation of contesting with the Dark Lord on His own terms. That person, whoever they may be, must endure the shame of condoning the actions of Evil by setting themselves up as equal candidate for War Leader in the coming holocaust, and afterwards for the Throne of the World.”
The abbess added, “Holy One, where can such a person be found, who will descend into the mire, and besmirch themselves, so that the Dark Lord will not run uncontested into high office?”
“But the orcs?” the Holy One persisted.
The Reverend Brandiman smoothed his slick hair back from his brow. “Those same orcs of Nin-Edin once again serve their Dark Master, Your Holiness. They are running what they term His ‘election campaign.’”
“Now I see!”
A light burst in the Holy One’s mind. The elf sprang to his feet. He seized the shoulders of his faithful halfling priest and nun and gazed down into their trusting eyes.
“I have had a revelation!”
Laughing, easy tears ran down the elf’s high-boned cheeks.
“In my torment, the Lady speaks to me! She tells me that my disgrace and humiliation were all for her sake, and only for a short time. Nin-Edin was my dark night of the soul, but now, now I may be revenged. Orcs, orcs! Hold your lives cheap, for my time of repentance and scourging is over.”
“It is?” the abbess said.
“I shall bring no sword but the Sword of Righteousness and wear no armour but the Armour of Light!”
The Reverend Brandiman frowned. “Pardon me, Your Holiness, but I don’t quite understand.”
“Ah. You are afraid, because you sense the Lady’s power in me. Do not fear!” cried the elf. “For I, whose name was once Amarynth, called Firehand; Sir Amarynth the Paladin-Mage and Commander of the Army of Light, am myself again.”
He clasped his long fingers across the front of his ragged habit, already planning the new habits that he and his followers would wear: embroidered with a sword, and the silver crescent of the Lady, and perhaps made with integral hair shirts.
Amarynth continued, “To descend to the Dark Lord’s level must be a disgrace. But I hear the Lady of Light speaking through you, her humble mouthpieces. I clearly perceive that it is my duty to offer myself as this sacrifice, to save others from the terrible task—and to bring the sword of vengeance down upon those unclean orcs. It is my duty to stand for election. And, if elected, it is my terrible fate to serve as Ruler of the Free World.”
He threw up his hand.
“The Crusade of Light is beginning!”
The Holy One’s halfling priest and abbess looked at each other for a moment, mouths open, doubtless quite overcome with piety.
The road from Spine Gap travels south, branching once it reaches the north shores of the Inland Sea, but a part of it, at least, runs down the coast through the ochre-coloured farmlands and hunting preserves of the Southern Kingdoms until it becomes the main artery running into Graagryk.
The Duchess Magda Brandiman descended her coach’s steps, extended her parasol, and opened it. Its lace shaded her from the hammering midday sun; mage-spells woven into the fabric cooled her immediately. Two of her bodyguards checked under the coach. Two more melted into the background around the high brick factory walls.
Seeing Cornelius Scroop with the picket line, Magda signalled to him. “Chancellor!”
The mage-wards on the industrial district momentarily lifted. Magda walked forward under a lowering sky of chimneys and black smoke. A stench of oil and coal assailed her flaring nostrils. But all the normal sounds—hammering, beating, shrieking iron, saws, earsplitting whistles—were silent.
Her fat Chancellor-Mage padded forward on large hirsute feet. “Your Grace, the picket line refuses to let me through!”
His face above his wilting lace collar glowed purple. Magda waved him to silence, stepped past the halfling’s rotund bulk, and beckoned to one of the workers on the picket line.
The halfling worker took off his flat brown velvet cap and held it in both hands as he approached her. Sweat soaked the underarms of his collarless shirt, even with his sleeves rolled up, and he wore no stockings under his knee-length velveteen breeches.
“Bring me your shop steward,” Magda directed.
“Yes’m.” The halfling nervously ducked his head. “Bert! ’Ere, Bert! She wants you, Bert.”
Another halfling emerged from the fifty or so who stood clustered round the factory gates, placards drooping in the heat. The curly hair on his feet was grey, and there were lines in his round face.
“Bert van der Klump, Your Grace,” he introduced himself. “Official shop steward of the Graagryk chapel of the Associated Socialist Halfling Workers Unions. Look ’ere, Your Grace. It says ’ere in the ASHWU minutes under section forty-three, sub-section thirty-seven, paragraph twelve, items seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fifteen, and twenty, that—”
The halfling stopped, rubbing his fist across his forehead.
“What does it say?” Magda inquired interestedly.
“I forgets,” Bert van der Klump confessed. He looked from the duchess to the chancellor, back at his duchess, and responded to the crinkling laugh-lines around the female halfing’s eyes. “Honest an’ truthful, ma’am, I fink it says refer to section nine, subsection four, paragraph twelve, point fourteen, above, but I can’t remember exactly. ’Owever, ma’am, the gist of it is as follows. We ’ere—”