“They’ve been up all night,” said Aberlott. “After you went to bed there was another conference. But this was among the sharfs. The Pope was sent away.”
“Sent away?”
“Wooshin was allowed to listen, but he was thrown out when he disagreed.”
Blacktooth was amazed. No one threw Axe out of anything. “Thrown out?” Blacktooth was still woozy, half in and half out of his cougar dream. As he sat up, he realized with asudden and unusual moment of clarity that his entire life since leaving the abbey, since he had met Brownpony in fact, had had the quality of a dream. So why was it that Specklebird, instead of Brownpony, came to him in his dreams? Brownpony was in the real dream.
Aberlott grinned and shrugged. “Not exactly thrown out, then, but asked to leave.”
Blacktooth got out of the wagon. The rain clouds that had rode across the sky for days had disappeared, and the camp was almost as bright as day even though the sun hadn’t yet risen.
“They are leaving only a few men from each horde, about three hundred in all,” Aberlott said, too loudly. “The rest are heading south with the Qæsach dri Vørdar to take Hannegan City. I’m going with them!”
“But you are in the Papal Guard!”
“The Pope’s Guard is going, all except Wooshin. Besides—the Pope didn’t give me these!” Aberlott opened his hand. In his palm, where three empty shell casings had nested the night before, now there were six, and each was filled; each had a dark bullet peeping out of one end as though eager to be on its way.
“Goodbye then!” Blacktooth said angrily. Wrapping his robe around him against the morning chill, he half walked, half ran toward the latrine trench. As he squatted, through the bushes he could see hundreds of men stirring, grumbling, dressing, farting, laughing. Pop pop pop! Some were pulling at dogs, some at horses. The pall that had fallen over the camp in the last few days, the pall of rain and forest, was lifting even as the skies brightened toward the east. Almost a thousand warriors were crossing the creek, many of them slapping the sides of the metal wagons to hear them ring.
“He’s taking all the healthy men,” Blacktooth muttered to himself.
“There aren’t that many healthy men,” said the man at the trench beside him, who sounded and smelled very unhealthy. “And I’m not that healthy and I’m going.”
He spoke in Wilddog. Before Blacktooth could answer, he was off and running, barely wiping.
Through the shrubs that cloaked the latrine, Blacktooth watched the horses cross the creek, and then crawled back into his bed. It would be an hour or so before breakfast and he wanted to get some rest. He searched for Ædrea and Amen through his dream, but it was like prowling through an abandoned house, empty even of furniture. When he woke again his fever was back. He sat up, dazed. He could see by the sun on the wagon’s hood that it was almost noon.
“Your Eminence,” said Bitten Dog. “His Holiness and whatever, His Eminence the Pope wants to see you.”
“Brownpony?”
“He wants your butt in his Pope wagon right away.”
Brownpony had stopped shaving but it had hardly changed his appearance. There wasn’t much left of his beard, just a few wisps of hair on his chin. Some were dark and some were light, giving him the look of a sketch that had been abandoned. He was finishing his breakfast of horsemeat jerky and plums when Blacktooth found him, at a small table that had been set in the shade of the papal wagon. “Nimmy,” he said, “where is your zucchetto? I have a commission for you.”
“As a soldier?” Blacktooth answered. He was ready to refuse.
“As an ambassador,” Brownpony said, ignoring the novice cardinal’s sarcasm. “As the papal legate to the farmers. They are all that is left in the city. Hannegan’s troops have abandoned the place and left them there to fight. We could have avoided the fight altogether by peacefully slipping a thousand men into New Rome.”
“A thousand Nomads are not peaceful, Your Holiness,” replied Blacktooth. “And besides, the farmers have shown an inclination to fight.”
“True. Perhaps you’re right,” Brownpony said. “Perhaps this is all for the best. We have only three hundred men anyway, mostly the Grasshopper.” The Pope waved an astonishingly skinny arm around at the camp, which looked deserted in the harsh daylight, like a dream only half-remembered. Brownpony looked weaker than Blacktooth had ever seen him. Surely, he thought, it was the Meldown. Nunshån the Night Hag was claiming her husband, calling him to her cold bed.
“The War Sharf of the Three Hordes, the Qæsach dri Vørdar, our old friend and companion Chür Ösle Høngan, has taken almost a thousand of my crusaders south, to Hannegan City. Even Magister Dion and the New Jerusalemites have gone with him. They intend to join the Jackrabbit warriors and the gleps that are preparing to besiege the city, and instead of a siege we will have a battle.” Brownpony sat down wearily. “Perhaps it is all for the best.”
“Not so,” said Wooshin.
“My sergeant general disapproves,” said Brownpony. “But what does it matter? It is done.” The Pope’s hands fluttered in the air, like two birds. Blacktooth watched, intrigued; with that motion, this most worldly of men suddenly reminded him of Amen I.
“I’m sick anyway,” Blacktooth said.
“We’re all sick,” said Brownpony. “Except for Wooshin, of course. Where is your hat, Nimmy?”
“Here.” Blacktooth pulled his red cardinal’s zucchetto from his robe. “I don’t wear it around the camp. It might blow off my head and fall into the dogshit.”
“No wind here,” said Wooshin, who disapproved of Blacktooth’s attitude toward his master.
“Oh yes, the dogs,” said the Pope distractedly. “We get to keep the dogs. The Qæsach didn’t want to take them on the campaign south. We have been left with three hundred men and almost as many dogs. And the Grasshopper sharf, of course. The farmers don’t know this, not yet. What I want you to do is go into the city, Nimmy, and make them an offer of peace. Extend to them my offer of peace. The Pope’s hand in peace.”
“Before they discover your numbers have been reduced,” Blacktooth said, scornfully.
“Why, yes. Wear your hat and your robes. I will give you a papal seal to carry.”
“They will shoot me before they see it.”
“Put it on a stick,” said Wooshin. Blacktooth could see from the yellow warrior’s eyes that he wasn’t going to be allowed to refuse the mission. He resigned himself to it. He was curious to see the city anyway, and sick to death of pots and pans. So what if he got killed? Wasn’t that bound to happen sooner or later anyway?
“You look very sick, Cardinal Nimmy,” said Wooshin, his voice almost gentle. “Tell the farmers that we wish them no harm. We want to settle things peacefully. The Empire has deserted them but not the Vicar of Christ.”
“And don’t mention that the Vicar of Christ is down to three hundred men and as many dogs,” Blacktooth said.
“I will overlook your insolence since it has never been an impediment to your vocation. Indeed, Nimmy, sometimes I think it is your staff. I hope for your sake it is not your crutch. Better get going, though. This has to be done today, or at least attempted.”
“I have to walk?”
“Eltür Bråm has a white mule you can use,” said Brownpony. “And God go with you, Nimmy.”
He made the sign of the cross and allowed Blacktooth to kiss his ring.
The grassy swale had been a highway a thousand years before, and now it was a highway again. The muddy tracks of wagons crisscrossed in the grass. Who knew how many years this “door prairie” had pointed like an arrow from the plains into the forest and then to the city—or, Blacktooth thought, the other way? Though the monk had never thought much of the Pope’s plans to return the papacy to New Rome, lately the Holy City had been appearing to him in his dreams. It had arrived with the fever. In the dreams it beckoned on the distant horizon, like small, steep mountains. How different was the reality! There was no horizon at all. The road ran straight between trees and low ruins that were just mounds of earth, some with openings where they were mined, others barricaded where some pitiful creature had chosen an intact basement or a mined-out room as a cave. The farmsteads were smaller here, close to the city, usually just a weedy vegetable patch and a ruined building or two; perhaps a shed emptied of pigs and chickens.