“After the sacrilegious swine had done their worst to his poor flesh and bones to force from out his lips the hiding places of the holy treasures, they decided that he must not know that secret after all. That was when they fashioned a cross and bound his shattered, broken body upon it and rode off and left him to die among the other corpses of the murdered brethren. He might well have so died, there upon that cross, save that two shepherd brothers who had been absent in search of some sheep of the monastery herd and had wisely lain low until the raiders were beyond the horizon came back in time to cut him down and nurse him back to as close to health as the poor, mutilated old man ever again will know. Following a few more close calls while they still were nursing him, the two brothers sagaciously quitted the wrecked monastery as soon as he could walk for any distance, for here they were become only sitting, helpless victims.
“In my boyhood, this monastery was noted for the fine vintages its vineyards produced. My late father was a taciturn man, yet he rejoiced openly whenever one of his agents was able to buy a pipe of the wine produced here, completely disregarding the literal pounds of silver that that pipe had cost. But that famous vineyard is now no more, my lord, and it will be many a year before the new-planted ones can produce even a small keg of wine.
“The monks of earlier years also were widely known for their brewing of herbal- and fruit-flavored cordials, but that too is now a thing of the past, even had we the wherewithal. Some nameless idiot of a bandit tried his clumsy hand at it and managed to blow up the distillery, the building that had housed it and himself, as well. The copper-scrap, of course, was looted and borne away, and it will be years yet to come before we can afford to replace it, poor as we are here.
“You recall, my lord, that Father Mithos mentioned that someday again he would like to see a few pigs feeding on the oak mast?”
Milo nodded. “Yes, my lord monk.”
“The monastery once ran herds of fat swine and their specially cured and smoked pork-products were known far and wide. So, you see, it was not just the bridge or the bequests that made this place a famous and a very rich one. Lay brothers included, there were at times as many as seventy souls laboring at one thing and another hereabouts. Yes, they lived well, but it was all from the fruits of their own hard work, and they also shared unstintingly with those in need.
“Father Mithos is a good and a saintly man. He does not really, as I said, know it all. What he does know, I believe he unconsciously sees through a rosy mist, as it were, imagining the best where objects are unclear to him. He is aged, most infirm at his healthiest and … and I fear that the terrible, horrible torments he endured and, with God’s help and infinite mercy, survived may have beclouded his mind.”
“Quite likely true and fully understandable, if so,” said Milo, adding, “To my sorrow, I’ve learned more over the years about torture than I ever had any desire to know, and, yes, protracted torment does quite often affect the minds of its victims … and sometimes of its perpetrators, as well.
“But that aside, I take it you want me to, are imploring me to speak of the straits of you and your brothers, here, to the Council of Thoheeksee, in Mehseepolis. That is it, isn’t it, my lord monk? All right then, I will do so, you have my word on it, one gentleman to another.”
The man with the black, square-cut beard shook his head slowly. “No, my lord, I am no longer a gentleman or anyone’s lord, only a simple, humble servant of God. But … and it please my lord … there is one other thing that I would ask of you.” At Milo’s nod, he went on, “The stallion that Father Mithos found and took in and healed, he is a fine, beautifully trained destrier, obviously foaled of the very best bloodlines and sound as a suit of proof, now. However, he eats more than any other beast we own and, as he was never broken to aught save being ridden into a fight, is useless to us; I am the only one that he will abide astride him, and that must be bareback as we have no gear for him. Yet Father Mithos will not put him out. Would … does my lord think that perhaps he would be willing to trade a draught mule for the horse? He would make for my lord a splendid charger.”
The morning mist still lay in a thick, fleecy blanket over the rack-studded river when Milo, riding a gelding palfrey and leading a loaded pack-mule, rejoined Brother Kahnstantinos. The High Lord wore knee-high boots, leather-lined canvas trousers, an arming-doublet and a half-sleeved shirt of light mail. There was a quilted-suede cap on his head, and a wide, cursive saber hung from his baldric.
When he had dismounted and hitched the horse and mule to a brace of saplings, he followed the monk through the second-growth woods to halt before a split-rail fence enclosing a grassy expanse of pasture.
“I fed him and groomed him and turned him out about a quarter hour since,” said the tall monk. “He’s likeliest beyond that fold of ground out there drinking from the pond.”
A shrill whistle from the monk brought a tall, dark-mahogany stallion, with four white stockings and a long, thin blaze of white, up over the fold of ground. At a slow but distance-eating amble, the horse approached them and came to a snorting, stamping halt just the other side of the fence from the monk, who took the fine head into his arms and petted the beast with a gruff tenderness.
Silently, Milo sought the mind of the stallion. “How does my horse-brother call himself, think of himself?” he beamed.
The stallion started so abruptly that his jerking head flung the monk backward onto his rump, that man’s own surprise and pain being expressed in terms more heard in cavalry lines than in monasteries.
Moving slowly, warily, the big equine drew back just beyond the reach of either man. “How can you speak to me, two-legs? Your kind cannot really speak to my kind, every horse and mare knows that.”
“But I can bespeak you, horse-brother,” beamed Milo. “So, too, can most of the two-legs of my herd. For this reason, we need not place cruel, pain-making metal bits into the mouths of our horse-brothers, for they are truly our brothers, our partners, not our mere slaves.
“Now, what do you call yourself, horse-brother?”
Helping the tall monk back onto his feet, even while he silently conversed with the bemused but still-wary stallion, Milo signaled the man to fetch and lead back with him the palfrey and mule. The monk came back just in time to see Milo step from the topmost rail of the fence over and astride the bare back of the stallion. With his thighs tightly gripping the dark-red barrel and his sinewy hand grasping the full mane, the man kneed the warhorse first to his slow amble, next to a faster amble, then a canter, then a full gallop.
Lifetime horseman and veteran cavalryman that he was, Brother Kahnstantinos still was startled when, after galloping the full circuit of the pasture twice, Milo sent him sailing over the four-foot rail fence, out into the woods, then back over it again for yet a third circuit of the pasture at a hard gallop, maintaining his seat effortlessly and doing it all, incredibly, without a bridle and reins.
When he had brought the big horse over the fence a third time, Milo slid from off him and said, “He’s all you attested and more, my lord monk. I’ll take him into my service. This mule is now yours; he’s five years old and healthy and he’s as docile as any good mule ever was or will be. He’s double-broke—can be used for either draught or for riding or, as you can see here, for packing loads—he now bears two fifty-keeloh bags of grain, one twenty-keeloh bag of dried beans, one of shelled maize and a small cask of brandy for Father Mithos. I realize that in total this still is a dirt-cheap price for so fine a horse as this one, but there will be more yet to come to you, believe me, my friend.”