They would not. Of course.
“Go, Asgrimmur. And, please, when you come round again, try to be clean and neat. I demand that from everyone.”
“As you will.”
Hecht went back to his maps. He had wasted the interview. It was true, though, that what he wanted to know was not material to the success of the Enterprise.
He still wanted to know. He wanted control. He wanted no loose ends. No unpredictable variables. No surprises.
He rubbed his left wrist. That was so much better now.
* * *
The Empress and Lord Arnmigal were reviewing the van of the Enterprise: favored champions the Commander of the Righteous considered least likely to generate enmity toward the crusaders coming along behind.
The spring melt had begun early, as Hourli had predicated. The van would move out in four more days.
Meantime, captains studied maps and the intricate supply system the quartermaster staff had developed. And they paraded.
Lord Arnmigal wished he could ride with the van. His place would be with the main host, wrangling the willful, the selfish, the stubborn, and the stupid.
The Empress, as titular monarch of the western world, had taken an oath from each member of the host. It required obedience to the precepts of a charter from the current Patriarch, and to Lord Arnmigal as Commander of the Righteous. With Church and Grail Throne behind him Hecht had the legal power he needed.
Those who would not take oaths had been sent home under obligation to make fiscal contributions. Nothing was required of anyone who did not ask to participate.
Many wished for a different order but few challenged it. Lord Arnmigal and the daughter of Johannes Blackboots recognized challenges before they developed. Their intelligence was golden. Further, they controlled the artisans of Krulik and Sneigon, who provided tools that made argument a very bad idea.
Since the Shades only blind tortoises refused to admit the power of the new weapons. The Righteous had the best of those and the most talented and innovative falconeers.
Some tried to resist, even so. They came up wriggling in Hourli’s nets. But the gods themselves fail to notice what makes no noise.
Neither the gods nor the most skilled spy can thwart an assassin who shares his thinking with no one, makes no threat, never complains, never seeks allies, and cares nothing about his own continued existence once the needful is done.
Franz-Benneroust Plaza was a sea of glamorous champions honoring a woman whose decisions would shape the next thousand years. Batteries of falcons passed in review. The bird and the weapon had become tutelary emblems of the Enterprise. The crusaders would carry more firepowder than flour to the Holy Lands.
An ammunition wagon drawn by a four-mule team rumbled along near the end of the column. It exploded as it neared the reviewing stand.
It carried a half ton of firepowder made at home by a madman who was not entirely sure of his formula. Most did not explode at all but just flung out in gouts of smoke and gobbets of burning sulfur.
The villain was one Rolf fon Utmeg, bachelor baronet. He had avoided detection by the Shining Ones by relying entirely on himself. He got what he paid for.
He got dead. His mules got dead. Scores of onlookers got burned. Hundreds suffered lung damage. Among the burned was the Empress Helspeth. Likewise, Lord Arnmigal and others on the reviewing stand. But the disaster touched them only for an instant, though shock, shrapnel, and poisonous air should have claimed them all. But a dark curtain fell an instant after the first gust of fire rolled out of the wagon.
Hecht had a fraction of a second to register the appearance of something all fang, claw, and stench of corruption, interposing itself between the explosion and the reviewing stand.
A second horror materialized between the wagon and the parade.
Long screams ripped through Hecht’s mind. Bits of iron from the wagon tormented Fastthal and Sprenghul. Then they vanished.
Poorly made firepowder, burning and bubbling still, fell.
Few in the square failed to see the Choosers. Few failed to understand that they had saved the Empress, Lord Arnmigal, and senior leaders of the Enterprise, as well as the men on parade.
Hacking sulfur smoke, Hecht ordered, “Wrap this up. Captain Drear, get the Empress to her physician.”
Helspeth wept with pain. She had suffered several burns, small but fierce. A blob of sulfur had landed in her hair. Drear had gotten it out before it reached her scalp, getting burnt himself in the process. “Will do, my lord.”
Hecht mentioned guardian angels repeatedly. Unfortunately, those inclined to believe in angels wanted them to be beautiful creatures of light.
Hecht overheard veterans of the Hovacol incursion claim to have seen these same dread angels before.
* * *
Hecht and Helspeth, Ferris Renfrow, Archbishop Brion, Ormo va Still-Patter, the Lord Admiral fon Tyre, and others the Empress had drawn into her circle shared a table in the palace’s biggest quiet room. Hourli and Hourlr accompanied the Grand Duke of Arnmigal. Others could see that those two were siblings but not that they were Instrumentalities.
Renfrow said, “I fail to see any excuse for further excitement. A lone madman tried to … All right. We don’t know what he wanted. To kill the Empress? The Commander of the Righteous? Or did he just think a nasty big bang would scuttle the Enterprise? It doesn’t matter. We survived. He did not. Let’s get on with our work.”
Hecht sipped coffee, flirted with Lady Hilda, and stayed small while Renfrow took the heat-though there was little enough of that. That was all out in the city, where rumors had grown so crazy that only crazy people listened. But Hecht worried that superstitious soldiers would abandon the Enterprise if they decided it was connected with evil Night.
Helspeth said, “There will be no change in plans. The vanguard marches on time. Rolf fon Utmeg was a fever dream. Forget him. Don’t mention him again. We do not have to apologize for surviving. Disdain the distractions. Let the Enterprise unfold. You in particular, Archbishop. The Holy Lands await.”
Archbishop Brion had learned some sharp lessons lately. Foremost was that he could serve his Church best by not irritating his Empress. And he did want to experience the Holy Lands for himself.
Lord Arnmigal smiled across the table, rested a finger familiarly on the back of Daedel’s hand as she poured him an extra coffee.
Most attendees left the meeting puzzled. What had been discussed? What had been decided? Nobody could say for sure.
Again, the Enterprise went forward as the Commander of the Righteous desired.
Or such was the rumor spread by someone who wanted to undermine the baseborn foreign upstart with unholy control over the Empress.
During a hectic four days scribes and secretaries transcribed hundreds of letters. The Empress signed them all. Each was tailored to its addressee. Each listed sins and suggested that Helspeth would not be in a forgiving mind should such behavior persist.
Battle group after battle group headed down the roads and rivers toward the Holy Lands. The Enterprise could no longer be stopped. It was like nothing gone before, in weaponry, planning, or organization. The Righteous staff had determined the optimum means of accomplishing the mission, then had mapped out how best to make it happen.
Lord Arnmigal believed that the worst peril the Enterprise faced was the potential bad behavior of its members. The last crusade, grand as its successes had been, had done more damage to fellow Chaldareans than to Unbelievers. That Enterprise had wasted strength, power, and moral credibility by oppressing those who had cheered its coming.
Hecht was determined that there be no repetition. Unambiguous articles of behavior had been read out to each contingent, in its own language. Hecht knew some would have listened with their fingers crossed. Lords who came with black reputations would have a Righteous liaison close by. The Commander reiterated his attitude daily.