Someone Old, Something New, Something Stolen, Deadly Too

“Seven gods made a world in seven days. One made itself at home. Six went off to roam.

            Six gods made a planet in eight days. One looked on until five were gone.

            Five gods created a world in ten days. One would do no more. It said goodbye to four.

            Those four gods crafted a planet in twelve days. One was done. Three were having fun.

            Three gods built a world in sixteen days. One looked on until two were gone.

            Two gods made a world in twenty-five days. One was satisfied. The other felt there were things it had not tried.

            The last world would never be done. The last god was the tireless one.” Lupita Smith had the attention of her girlfriend Danielle Longbow and Carl Nothman as she recited the tale unprompted.

            “I’ve never been sure if I believe it.” Miss Smith said, pulling on the uniform of the Royal Coven.

            “Gods on your mind?” Carl asked, his blue eyes twinkling. “Does my divine beauty put you in mind of higher things?”

            “Your divine beauty tells me that I prefer women, but I’m sure you’re going to make some girl very happy someday.”

            “Who wants a girl? I want a woman.”

            “Good news, as soon as you’re a man you’ll have your pick.”

            “I am a man!” Carl pouted, hands on his hips.

            “Of course, you are,” Danielle ruffled his hair and pinched his cheeks.

            “Get off. Patronising me.” He straightened his tabard.

            “What gods do you worship in the empire?”

            “I don’t worship any gods but the two who gave me a bed in their temple.” He was back to flirting. He mostly spoke with two settings, flirting and provocation. “In the empire there is only one God. It is on his behalf that imperials slaughter the unworthy, which is everyone else.”

            “Which one of the seven do they think is the only one?” Danielle asked. She could hardly imagine the idea that there was only one God, as if the pantheon was a menu. The imperials had chosen a god from the menu and burnt it, denying the other six.

            “That’s not how it works in the empire. There’s one God. One world. One race worthy of controlling it all.” Carl’s face sank. His eyes darkened, thinking of the grim society he had left behind in his homeland.

            “Hurry up and get dressed,” Lupita scolded them both. “We need to go.”

            “You started the conversation.” Danielle threw a woollen sock at her girlfriend.

            “Never mind.” The sock hit the smith’s daughter in the cheek and then flew right back to Miss Longbow.

Danielle Longbow’s life was an endless list of surreal events. Carl, dressed in a Crann tabard as he shot the traitorous Lady Guinevere in the chest was only the most recent.

            The dead traitor hung limp on the stake. Northman had killed her a day before as she leapt at the queen with a knife in hand. The dead king’s dead sister twitched as a curaduile tree began to grow out of her mouth. It was hideous but no one looked away. It was an important moment. The traitor would become a fully grown curaduile tree. The deadly tree would defend the city of Leonor from future attack. Danielle saw the last of Lady Guinevere disappear. The tree which had been the dead king’s sister began to obscure the granite walls of Leonor city.

            Danielle remembered the feel of tight chords around her own wrists as she was whipped at the post for saving Carl. Gods had an odd sense of humour.

            It was her turn.

            She placed a red arrow in her bow and pulled it back.

            Sir Douglas Armstrong looked at her with a resigned expression. He seemed not to dare make eye contact with the queen, whose gaze in that moment might have cursed him to a fate worse than death.

            She shot the red arrow.

            The disgraced knight gasped, tied to a stake next to a tree which had once been Lady Guinevere. A curaduile tree burst forth from the traitor’s chest.

            Sir Fabian Castel shot the corpse of Sir Calum Noble. Badru Quacey shot the body of Sir Brodie Gordon.

            Half an hour later four trees stood where the traitors had been.

            “Let them be a reminder to any who would threaten Crann, or my family.” Queen Malin’s wrinkled face burned with hatred as she watched the four trees, still growing.

The next duty for Danielle was to return the bodies of two assassins to their homeland. Queen Malin wanted to make a gesture of good will to the Church of Red Knives.

            Miss Longbow removed her pine green tabard and folded it respectfully. She could not wear it across the eastern border to Sliabh where she would take the bodies to the city of Carraig. Wearing a kingdom’s crest across any border in the lands around Crann was considered a declaration of war. The gold embroidered oak on green would stay in her room as she headed out across the snowy winter land.

            “You’ll need to leave yours as well,” she told Carl.

            “Nah. I’ve got watch duty tonight.” His smile was ear to ear. “Looks good on me, right? I suit green more than red.”

            “Definitely.”

            “Shame you can’t say goodbye to Lupita.”

            “I said it before. I know she’s busy working on something with what’s left of the Royal Coven. With Queen Malin’s magic spent and Lady Guinevere dead, they’re down two of their most powerful witches.”

            “Lupita is powerful, isn’t she?” Carl asked. His inquisitive blue eyes locked onto Danielle’s brown ones as she put on a fur cloak.

            “No idea really, all I know is that she has magic and I have less than most stones.”

            “There’s a test?”

            “Yes. Ask her to do the glowing stone thing. If it glows you have magic.”

            “Why?”

            “Because power glows, apparently.” She hugged him. “I’ll see you in a few days. Stay safe.”

            “The same to you.” He shivered.

Helping her shift two bodies tied side by side on a sledge were Badru the loup garou and Sir Fabian. They marched through the snow, taking turns to pull the sledge. Danielle felt that she was taking far longer turns and whinging about it far less than the men.

            They camped for the night in a tent by the border river which they had abandoned during a blizzard two weeks before.

            They crossed using a rope they had left during the last journey to Sliabh.

            Badru transformed into his wolf form to drag the sledge up the mountains on the far side of the river as the sun rose over an endless blanket of snow.

            They were in Sliabh by midday.

            Milder weather on the far side of the mountains made them press on at a quick pace. Only the freezing cold had kept the bodies of the two assassins from decomposing.

            Farmland stretched in every direction before them until Carraig City loomed up over the fields. The familiar stink fell upon them as they drew closer. Danielle wondered if anyone would notice the stench of a body over the city’s natural perfume.

            The Church of Red Knives was easy to find the second time around. It sat at the heart of the poorest neighbourhood in the city. Grand dilapidation was the paradoxical description that would have come to mind if Danielle had the vocabulary for it.

            Brown acolytes handled the needy masses on the church steps. A sledge bearing bodies wrapped in cloth parted the crowd better than a hot knife through butter.

Patrick Murphy met them in the entrance hall of the Church of Red Knives. The familiar tapestry of the brown, grey and red acolytes covered the wall. One a preacher, the second a soldier, the third an assassin.

            “Thank you. I have to say I’m as surprised as I am heartened to have them back.”

            “A gesture of goodwill from Queen Malin.” Sir Fabian bowed his head to the archbishop.

            Patrick turned slowly to his brown robed brothers, bones cracking as he did. “Begin the preparations for their funerals. I will be there shortly to say the rites myself.”

            “Rites?” Danielle asked.

            “Yes. It’s not often enough I get to say them for red acolytes. They go to the God of Dire Necessity nonetheless, but it soothes me to say my goodbyes, heart-breaking as that is in its own way. They are like my children you know.”

            “I have one like that back home archbishop, I believe I understand.”

            “Then perhaps you can appreciate how grateful I am that your queen saw fit to spare three soldiers to send dead enemies back while you are under constant threat from the empire.”

            “For now, the winter snows and our forces on the borders keep them at bay.” Sir Fabian Castel was tense. He looked around at the grey acolytes that flanked the archbishop, swords in scabbards showing on their belts.

            “Forgive me Sir Castel. I meant no offense. If I may, I have some information that your queen should know. Now she’s returned my children to me I feel indebted, and uneasily so. Follow me to my office. I want to show you what my informants have learned about the empire in the north.

            “There are other empires?” Danielle asked. She looked at the redheaded Badru, who shrugged.

            “Several.” The archbishop began walking away. “The more they expand, the more we are crushed between them. That will not be your problem first.” They followed the old man with his dusty brown, grey and red robe trailing on the floor.

            Books covered three walls of his office; a giant map covered the fourth wall.

            “Behold the world as the Church of Red Knives knows it.” Patrick raised a liver spotted hand to the yellowed drawing which was taller than any of them and wider still. “The Empire of the Holy Proclamation controls most of the north. That was made easier by the fact most people don’t want frozen wasteland.

            Below that empire, our kingdoms with the sea to the east over the mountains.

            Across the ocean we call the Eastern Sea, lies another continent far larger than our own. In the southeast an empire as expansive as that of the Holy Proclamation has built a wall that is said to circle their entire empire. Most know it as the Empire of the Endless Wall. The locals call it Coowin She.

            Coowin She invented a device that will render every weapon we have redundant.” The archbishop unlocked the drawer of his desk and retrieved a small metal tube the length of Danielle’s forearm. She smirked. “I know it looks like nothing on its own but when you have the black powder, it is an ungodly weapon.”

            “How does covering a metal tube with powder make it dangerous?” Sir Fabian’s tone was scathing.

            “I can demonstrate. My grey acolytes are learning to use them currently.”

The Archbishop of Assassins lead them to horses at the rear of the church. For a stiff looking man, he rode as well as any knight. Danielle was glad for the training she’d been getting for her own bid to be knighted. Badru looked uneasy on his steed. Fabian held the reigns of the ginger man’s horse as they left Sliabh City.

            On the outskirts they heard a noise like a god’s own cracking whip. The horses stirred and tried to turn back but were spurred on.

            With the mountains in the background, grey robed men in armour were looking at their leader reverently, kneeling as Patrick rode closer.

            “Arise. Arise. I am here to see what you have learned with the new weapons.” Suspicious faces turned to the three from Crann. Archbishop Murphy assured them. “They are not targets, today. Do as you are told and show me what you have learned.”

            Danielle dismounted and tied her horse up with the four others.

Three warriors from Crann who had only ever known the power of might and magic, of bow and sword, witnessed the dawn of the age of guns. They winced as the explosions in the barrels of the tubes split the air. They were near blinded by the flash of the explosion.

            Danielle held armour in her hands that should have stopped any arrow, any sword. It was pocked with holes made by the tiny balls of led from the fire lances.

            A heavy weight sank in her stomach. Fabian’s pale face and sparkling eyes said it all. Badru scratched a patch of dry skin on his other hand.

            Chainmail beneath the plate had torn into the padding of the surcoat beneath, through that. Some pellets went through the armour at the front and out at the back. No warrior would survive that.

            “The Empire of the Holy Proclamation bought a thousand of these weapons from Coowin She. With them they will come for Crann. Then they will annihilate Sliabh. There will be nothing left of us unless we can master these weapons.” Patrick Murphy’s wrinkles were deeper, his skin greyer than tanned. His voice trembled. “If it comes to it, if I’m still alive to see the day when the northern empire invades Sliabh, we will leave our homeland.”

            “You would abandon your home?” Fabian asked.

            “Our faith will be with us wherever we go. The God of Dire Necessity granted us many gifts, invincibility was not among them. Imagine a thousand imperial warriors with fire lances leading an army of millions. They have conquered lands from coast to coast without these. The only way for them now is south.”

            The archbishop looked at the man leading the grey acolytes. “We stole ten of these?”

            “Yes Brother Murphy,” said a stone-faced man as tall as Danielle with eyes the colour of his robes.

            “Give them two,” Patrick gave Fabian the metal tube from his pocket.

            “Are you sure? Archbishop?”

            “Certain. Don’t question me. If they cannot save their kingdom, we will be forced to flee our own.”

As Badru, Danielle and Fabian walked home, Danielle wondered if the gods were watching kingdoms of the world shift like pieces on a board. Would they intervene? She doubted it. If Crann was going to survive, it would be up to the people.