Brownpony hired a local driver and proceeded toward Valana with his new servants, a regular headsman and an irregular monk.
Blacktooth had been nursing an unasked question for a long time. Guilt from his encounter with Ædrea made him hesitate, but now he asked it. “M’Lord, back at Arch Hollow, when they were about to rob us, why did you expect the girl to recognize you?”
Brownpony frowned for a moment, then answered easily: “Oh, my office has had some dealings with a group of armed gennies in that general area. I assumed they were a member of the group. Apparently, I was wrong.”
Blacktooth remained curious. Wooshin and Høngan had done quite a bit of exploring in the area, but had spoken only to the cardinal about what they found. He resolved to question Brother Axe.
By early afternoon, they were passing along muddy lanes full of dogs and children through brick and stone villages with log roofs with chimneys belching smoke. There was the sound of the smithy’s forge and women’s voices haggling with vendors over the price of potatoes and goat meat. These villages were now precincts of Valana, surrounding it, having grown up during the schism and the exile, brought by and bringing new commerce and industry to the foot of the mountains whose peaks Blacktooth had seen from the distance in his youth.
But they were too close now to see the peaks, and there was only the hulking presence of the massif to the west. It was all new and dirty, and bewildering to the monk who, although he had spent the first fifteen years of his life within a few days’ ride of this place, had never been inside a city. And the city began to loom up around them as the cardinal’s coach moved deeper into the more heavily populated area, where most of the buildings were, like the abbey, two and even three stories high. And all of it was dominated by the central fortified hill, looming ahead, the hill whose walls enclosed the Holy See, and from which rose the spires of the Cathedral of Saint John-in-Exile, where the vicar of Christ on Earth offered Mass to the Father. Blacktooth was in a daze and barely heard the cardinal, who turned to address him.
“Pardon, m’Lord?”
“Did you know that the plaza in front of Saint John’s is paved with cobblestones brought here all the way across the Plains from New Rome?”
“I had been told, m’Lord, that the area around the Cathedral is New Roman territory. But all of the stones?”
“Well, not all, but Saint John-in-Exile stands on New Roman soil. Imported. That’s why the natives here contend there is no need to go back. In fact, they remind everyone that New Rome itself was built on imported soil.”
“From across the sea?”
“So the story goes.”
“The Venerable Boedullus thought otherwise.”
“Yes, I know. The theory of a schism at the time of the catastrophe. Who knows? How did it happen that Latin came back into use after it was abandoned?”
“That, m’Lord, was during the Simplification, according to Boedullus. The book burners did not destroy religious works. One way of saving precious material from the simpletons was to translate it into Latin and decorate it like a Bible, even if it was a textbook. It was also useful as a secret language….”
“Now, that building ahead of us is the Secretariat,” the cardinal interrupted. “That is where you and perhaps Wooshin will work from time to time. But first, we must find quarters for both of you.”
He leaned forward and spoke to the driver. Moments later, they turned off the stone-paved thoroughfare and onto another muddy side street overarched by branches that were beginning to bud. It was not long until Holy Week, and time to begin choosing a pope.
CHAPTER 7
Now the sacred number of seven will be
fulfilled by us if we perform the Offices
of our service at the time of the Morning Office,
of Prime, of Terce, of Sext, of None, of Vespers
and of Compline, since it was of these day Hours
that he said, “Seven times in the day I have
rendered praise to You.” For as to the Night Office
the same Prophet says, “In the middle
of the night I arose to glorify you.” Let us
therefore bring our tribute of praise to
our Creator “for the judgments of His
justice” at these times and in the
night let us arise to glorify Him.
THE WARM CHINOOK FROM THE MOUNTAINS HAD breathed on the snow, and the snow vanished. Chür Høngan skirted the poor farming communities along the bed of the Kensau River as he rode toward the northeast. In Pobla, he had armed himself with a heavy shortbow and quiver of arrows. The cardinal had given him his double-barreled handgun and bought him an unshod stallion from a Nomad trader, but he wanted to avoid trouble with Blacktooth’s people, who in season tilled the irrigated plots of potatoes, corn, wheat, and sunflowers, and who dwelled in fortified lodges of stone and sod and worked the land for its owners, among whom was the Bishop of Denver. They might mistake him for a Nomad outlaw like the ones who had visited Arch Hollow. The soil was poor here, but careful farming had enriched it. Now it was almost planting time and there were men and mules in the fields, so he avoided the rutted roads and kept to the high ground, while leaving a trail that Father Ombroz e’Laiden and the Texark turncoat could easily follow.
There were always Texark agents traveling back and forth from the telegraph terminal southeast of Pobla, so Høngan rode alone until he was well into the short grass of Wilddog cattle country before he stopped to wait for the others. He waited in a draw, concealing his horse and himself some distance from the trail he had left until he heard them passing to the north. Still, he waited. When their voices died away, he left his horse, climbed out of the draw, and listened carefully to the wind from the southwest. He put his ear to the ground briefly, then arose and crept into the space between two boulders where he could not be seen except from the trail directly below. There were distant voices.
“Three horses have come this way, obviously.”
“But not necessarily together. Only one horse is shod.”
“That would be Captain Loyte’s.”
“Hereafter, do not call the renegade ‘Captain’! He sold his rank and honor for the cunt of a Nomad spy.”
The voices were Ol’zark. Høngan nocked an arrow and drew his bow. The first rider appeared, and fell from his horse with the arrow through his throat. Høngan leaped forth and shot the second rider while he was lifting his musket. With the second barrel, he exchanged shots with the third rider, but both men missed. The survivor turned and fled. This war between Nomad and Empire was more than seventy years old, but such battles were few and fought only when the imperial forces invaded the lands of the Mare.
Holy Madness reloaded the pistol and finished the job of killing the wounded, then went for his own mount and captured the other two horses. After searching the saddlebags and finding the proof he needed that the riders were agents, he released the animals and came back to search the bodies for more papers. He stared angrily at the tracks of the turncoat’s horse. Knowing the destination, he had previously not noticed the hoofprints because he had not been tracking.
Mounting again, he rode on with a warm wind still at his back in pursuit of the priest and his guest. His own war with Texark had begun long ago and would never end. This he had sworn in the name of hisancestor, Mad Bear, calling to witness Empty Sky and the Holy Virgin. He followed the tracks through the afternoon and afterward by twilight. There would be no moon until morning. He ate a little jerky, and without building a fire prepared to spend the night listening to the howls and barks of the wilddogs which simpletons called wolves and greatly feared. After he had staked his horse and unfurled his bedroll, Høngan slowly walked a protective circle around the area at a distance of five or six paces and marked his sleeping territory with a trickle of his own urine every few steps. With his sleeping area thus protected, the animals would not usually molest a human sleeper unless they smelled blood or sickness about him. Only once during the night did he sense prowlers. Bursting from his blankets, he leaped to his feet and let out a roar of mock rage. There was a chorus of yelps, and several dark shapes fled by starlight from the downwind border of his realm. Having bellowed the sleep out of his head, he lay with sad thoughts about the corpses he had made that day.