INTERLUDE 9D: TO BE UNBROKEN
“Of all the small things that fly amidst the flowers, the bee alone was made by Lord Suffering. The bee sacrifices itself for the hive. Then, with his nephew’s blessing, the wasp was made in mockery of the bee by Lord Undeath. The wasp stings, but doesn’t die. It returns to sting again. Between the bee and the wasp lies all of good and evil. If you would use a sword, you must be prepared to fall upon it as the price of escalation. To go unprepared is to go in honour of the wrong god.”
– from the Glaivan Creed
The room was low and dark, lit only by the glowing coals on the two hearths and a smattering of cheap candles. The curtains were drawn, the shutters locked down tight in case the squall became a storm. Durgil’s nostrils told him that the near-black timbers from which this poor hall had been constructed were warping. His keen eyes, blessed with the geometric instincts of his kind, were easily able to pick out the defects in the structure despite the gloom. His hearing, no less acute than his sight, caught the dripping in the south-east corner where none had chosen to sit. By his reckoning the masters of this place had to start replacing the beams sooner rather than later, or risk the whole place collapsing – and that was probably what they’d been telling themselves for the last decade.
He smiled beneath the beard, swirling his soup, inquisitive fingertips sensitive to the slight deviations in the battered tin spoon with which he’d been provided by the tired-looking barman. The proprietors had served the food with a hunk of decent sour bread, but without cutlery, as though their guests were animals. When the stare of Durgil’s leader finally brought thirty-seven spoons out of hiding, the dwarf could tell they’d had to scour the kitchens for every last utensil. Lord Rael, one of the three chapter-masters, must’ve been wearing his cloak in such a fashion that the golden emblems of his station upon his pauldrons were hidden, because the exhausted serving-man brought him a ladle, far beneath the dignity owed one such as him. A lesser knight-initiate, still new to the order, reached out and swapped his spoon for Lord Rael’s ladle without an instant’s hesitation – an automatic act of loyalty which earned the youngster a moment of the lord’s regard, Rael’s cool elven gaze going out briefly to touch on the low-ranked knight. A glance the initiate never saw, his eyes downcast, fixed upon his grim meal – but the look was not wasted. Many of the other knights witnessed Lord Rael’s recognition of this simple deed.
When one went without words, every speechless expression was magnified, every moment a cause for renewed brotherhood. Lordship within the Church was not something one inherited – it was something earned, with blood and with devotion. None beneath Kultemeren could portend whether perhaps one day the memory of a swapped spoon might swing a vote, raise an extra hand in salutation, and make a lord of that thoughtful new knight.
The thirty-six other members of Durgil’s company, the Chapter of the Whisper’s Predicate, sat about him, draining their own wooden bowls in tranquil silence. The peace of the scene was punctuated only by the occasional inadvertent grunt, the mercifully-dull tap of spoon on dish. Even the sky’s song had dimmed, the Birdlord’s voice lost to the vast distances of the heavens. Now the only sound from outside was the transparent moaning of the long grasses that coated the slopes, a dirge given to the night.
Those here not of his company – few in number by comparison – kept to the same silence as the brethren, nothing more than slurps and the rare belch escaping their lips. Not due to oath, or duty, but fear. Few of the faithful could endure their presence without hushing. And, whatever these vagrant souls huddled in the corners thought about themselves, they remained faithful. Lies passed their lips – oh, how often the common man would sink into deception – and yet they retained the warning, burning in their minds. They knew that lying was wrong. And that was enough.
If they didn’t respect the Ultimate Judge… if they enjoyed deceit… the markers of vengeance would hang over their heads. It had been some time since he’d last seen one such marker clear-enough to his eye that his vows compelled his hand to action. But the Knights of Kultemeren were exempt from the laws of men. Just three times, in a career spanning forty years, had his broadsword drawn itself, gleaming with the white fire as it hewed into the bodies of mortals. It was so surprising, shocking, when it happened by chance on the city-streets. A cultist, a hidden heretic of one stripe or another, striding past him on his patrol about the grounds. Then there was the trinket-seller peddling cruel little traps as children’s toys. And, of course, the fourteen-year-old human girl, standing on a kerb and balefully staring out into the teeming street in South Lowtown.
That last one – that had left him shaken. He could still remember the incandescent rage filling him as he saw the incontrovertible miasma about the girl, red energies swirling atop her black, close-cropped hair like a crown of hell’s own making. He had no idea what she was entertaining in her mind, and the actions of her grief-wracked father and brother in the immediate aftermath could offer him no insight to make sense of the ordeal. There was no report from the local watch or magistry, as was commonplace. No explanation.
But as much as he could remember the rage, he could remember the lack of resistance offered by her spine as he chopped her down, taking her head without warning. The white light, clinging about the blade, an unspoken, unspeakable reassurance. That his target would be punished. That it was deserved.
There were many witnesses. Other children saw it, and he glimpsed their onlooking eyes as he cast about the crowd, even as the girl’s body toppled. A silence like his own settled over the entire road, before people started running.
Few – exceedingly few – ran towards the girl’s remains. Most fled him – a few, at first, until the panic took hold and they flooded into doorways and alleyways, anywhere to escape the vengeance of a wrathful god. And Durgil understood. So long as the warning burned in their minds, his deed was justifiable. Justified.
It was small wonder the others who’d been sitting there since the knights entered, drowning their miseries or escaping a humdrum existence at the bottom of a beer-keg, had barely stirred. Only one had dared leave. The others settled in to wait, ordering top-ups with gestures.
Did they not know that, should judgement have been their due, it would have already been enacted, the toll of retribution immediately exacted, their corpses left to cower in the corners?
No, they evidently didn’t, and it was beyond Durgil or any of his fellow knights to express it in a form that seemed courteous. It occurred to him that he could just spare them the distress, stand and face them, pointing his mail-encased arm at the door until they slid from their seats and departed in silent gratitude…
But that would’ve been too assuming. Better to let one of the lords make such a move, if the situation called for it.
He half wished one of the lords would retire politely to his room, so that Durgil could follow suit. He definitely wasn’t a big fan of the chicken broth. For all that water was tasteless, it overpowered the flavourful chunks of meat with its blandness. The carrot-slices were hard despite their thinness, the onions still crunchy and acidic. Usually half his soup ended up coating his stupendous beard as he slaked his hunger and thirst simultaneously – the chefs at the Church of Truth had access to the best produce in the world, donated to the Chapter-Houses by Agormand’s richest, those with the most to spare. Here, in this lowly tavern-hall some miles north of Hidden Hedge, there were no such luxuries to be enjoyed. The peasants didn’t even have dwarf-sized chairs! The issue was not one so much of height – most dwarves weren’t much shorter than adolescent humans – but, rather, one of stature. Durgil was forced to squeeze his wide, sturdy frame between the two arms of the chair in which he was ensconced, and he wasn’t alone. His fellow dwarf, Sir Vanfrad, remained lithe and virtually belly-less by dwarven standards despite his obvious stoutness – yet even the younger dwarf looked uncomfortable to Durgil’s eyes. Each of them surely would’ve taken a space at one of the benches instead, had the choice presented itself. But as senior knights they’d been motioned into proper chairs, placed near to the leaders.
Longevity went a long way to securing the nobility of a high office. In that regard, members of the elder races held the advantage. In battle-hardiness, too, though this inevitably meant they often found themselves at the forefront during Infernal Incursions. Demons caused the most attrition in the ranks. That aside, the town-criers said this was one of the longest periods of stability Mund had ever enjoyed, and Durgil happened to agree with them. He was ninety-four, and his memories of his twenties and thirties were no more accurate than an elderly human’s would’ve been – the impressions remained, the bite of veracity removed from them, like the taste of yesterday’s breakfast.
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A jostle with his womb-brother, Grimgil, wrestling in the mud together. A flash of copper in the sun as Bronyaka, his long-lost love, tossed her head defiantly.
Little else of note, before the Church.
Yet when he considered his long years, he couldn’t remember a peace like it. Over five months. Five months, with no masterless imps setting fire to his beard, no foot-long claws trying to tear at the rim of his shield. Weeks of stability, in which to train fresh initiates, test their readiness with combat practice.
No masterless imps – but the long-standing relationship between the Church of Truth and the sorcery-schools did permit for the use of eldritches in field exercises. No demon could be called into the earthly dimension for this purpose – no rift between Materium and the dark planes was ever excusable, and should the summoners’ misdeeds turn upon them in the end, leaving them devoured to the core by the very things they sought to usher through, Durgil would not be saddened to hear of it.
Yet, the execution of that entity which had already been brought to Mund by infernal means for another purpose now served – this, this was permissible. Such execution was an act to be revered, even.
Deep in the bowels of the Chapter-House fortifications, far below the streets of Hightown, in the heart of the sacred hills of Mund – there Durgil had presided over the destruction of hundreds of foul hellspawn, enduring their ceaseless shrieks, their stomach-churning visages. It was somehow worse, to see them chained, see them brought in one by one for the slaughter. Not that he had ever entertained any doubts as to the righteousness of his cause – oh, no. If anything it was quite the opposite. He merely felt that the demon-slaying was robbed of its potential glory. Watching an initiate dancing around his first obbolomin like it was going to explode in his face – it was demeaning.
It was all done to serve the cause. The initiates had to know in advance what they were getting themselves in for, had to see for themselves the ugliness of the underworld, so as to not give in to the fear when the moment came, hesitate at a critical moment and watch the whole company come undone. Yes, the Incursions would return. He had little doubt it would be worse than ever when they did. And, in the meantime, there were other duties given to them by their Lord God. Such as their current quest.
They’d arrived in the third hour of the night, rain streaming off their cloaks and the flanks of their steeds. Many of the hamlet’s inhabitants had come to the front porches of their ramshackle dwellings, staring in wonder at the armour-clad knights as they trotted past, the long pennants atop their spears displaying the pure-white sigils of the god against a night-blue field. According to the records, it’d been four years since an embassy from the Knights came to these parts – and that had been to aid the local constabulary in combating a cultist uprising. It was small wonder these people beheld their heraldry with awe-filled eyes. Small wonder they expressed fear, seeing so many of the paladins, the sudden presence of the holy warriors unexplained.
Durgil’s cloak bore the white dragon, the fiercest of Kultemeren’s forms. And an ironic one, given their mission.
The innkeeper had started by asking their leader, Exalted Chapter-Master Lord Ghelliot, a whole host of questions. “Your Lordship – you ride from Mund?” “You and your men – you’re wantin’ to stay?” “You’ll… be wantin’ somethin’ to eat, I suppose… and your horses…”
As the questions continued and the silence lengthened, Lord Ghelliot’s austere face not moving a muscle, the innkeep’s voice shrank away until finally he was just muttering instructions to himself, already rushing off to begin his tasks.
Where the Knights of Kultemeren went, the truth followed. The man couldn’t help but understand their need, even when faced with their silence.
When Lord Ghelliot finally stood, followed at once by Lord Rael and Lord Shebril, there was a collective sigh of relief.
The exhausted barman had been replaced with an even more exhausted-looking woman, her old eyes flashing pink as they caught the candlelight. She showed Durgil and three of his companions into a rickety room: it appeared the four of them were to share a space no larger than a penitent’s cell, replete with two narrow cots. He didn’t much care. Poor-quality food irritated his dwarven soul, and the ladle fiasco offended his sense of propriety – but the hardship offered by sleeping on the floor was something he relished. He hadn’t actually been planning on sleeping anyway.
In turn, each of the three humans insisted on gesturing him to a bed, and he was forced to look them in the eyes one by one. He was a chapter champion, and he understood their reticence to overstep their boundaries – yet he knew these lads, and they knew him. He drew his broadsword, Glaimborn, forged just for him, and went to put his sturdy back to the door. He placed Glaimborn’s tip into a groove in the warped wooden planks beneath his boots, leaned back against the barrier, and folded his hands upon the sword’s cross-piece.
Even his trio of human brothers, weaker of flesh than he, found it hard to reach sleep this night. As soon as the last candles were extinguished a spring storm arose, the blasts of Orovon’s bottomless pipes setting the whole tavern to shuddering.
Durgil was no cave-dwelling dwarf in ancestry. His folk were the hill-peoples, and the wind spoke to his soul. He didn’t shudder with the structure. His breath slowed, and he closed his eyes, rolling with the motions.
Redeem me in truth, O Hallowed Rectitude! Father of Sincerity, empty me of all inward-turning desire – empty me that I might lose my inhibition, my compulsion. There is no freedom in impulse; the unicorn is chained to its desire, and knoweth not the bliss of choosing duty. Lord of Retribution, I wield the white fire as your weapon, and persist in your name for so long as your hand would grip me!
As he formed the thoughts, the familiar warmth filled him, utterly unlike any touch of sunlight, beginning in the bone-marrow and working its way outwards.
His brethren prayed with him. He knew it.
Almighty, Eternal Onlooker, cleanse me of my impurity. Cleanse me that your light might shine the clearer through me. I will not reflect; I will not refract; I will not will. Allow my purification, and I…
I…
A bleak vista greeted his inner eye. A cavern, as broad as it was long, vast beyond the imaginations of humans – an immensity of open darkness such that even Durgil’s dwarven dreams had scarcely the scope for it. Yet it was the fodder of nightmare, not dream. At first the towers appeared to be stalagmites, but that first impression was only momentary. The hundreds of little streets resolved in mortifying detail, the inner eye swooping closer without his consent.
He knew what it was he saw. He gritted his teeth.
Undeath.
Durgil had not experienced the quest-vision. That had been the purview of the Church Prophets, and the meaning of prophets’ dreams had been conveyed to the chapter by Lord Ghelliot with a single action: the unfurling of a banner, the white dragon emblazoned there as it was upon Durgil’s own cloak. They had understood – this time, the sigil signified their foe. The mad witch who spoke a dozen lies a minute to each and every corner of the holiest city in the world –
The mad witch had been right about one thing.
Dragons. They were coming.
And the Whisper’s Predicate was going forth to do battle with one.
Foresight was the keenest edge in all their arsenal. The god’s sight outstripped that of Everseer or Timesnatcher a thousandfold. No one else would interfere in this holy work, nor know enough to propose such an endeavour. Kultemeren saw all, and that was the truth. Nothing was left for the individual paladin but the execution of his part. Through their piety, Kultemeren handled the heavy lifting himself. Their personal prowess was more to be found in wisdom than sinew, and while the two tended to go hand in hand, it was not unheard-of for a man, dwarf, or even elf in his dotage to enter the battlefield as a divine tempest, providing his vows of silence still went unbroken.
It was the purview of the Knight to place himself in the right place at the right time – that was all.
Despite not enjoying the same insights as the prophets, it was common-enough for the brethren of the knightly orders to experience their own visions. As Durgil looked with closed eyes upon this sunken metropolis of restless creeping fingers, he thought at first that he alone saw what he saw.
But the warmth never wavered. The feeling of companionship never faded.
Nigh unprecedented, for them all to simultaneously share the god’s oracular blessing like this. Still, it could not be denied. The dry tinkling of hollow bones, magnified to the crash of a wave as battlements formed about the unholy town, echoing back at him from the halls of his brothers’ minds, louder than any spring storm.
Femur-trees sprang up in courtyards, stretching their leafless frames towards the cavern’s shimmering blue ceilings and shivering in the stifled air as though touched by a wind that could not exist. A dome of skulls took shape before his eyes, as grand and lofty as any Hightown had to offer, yet with the palpable aura of a hulking monstrosity, a macabre imitation of dark elf shipbuilding, perfected to a form of unholy architecture.
Why, Kultemeren? The thought was not intended to be a prayer, yet he knew that the Lord God or his agents would hear. Why must we see this?
There was no answer; only the slowly changing landscape before them as the night wore on.
Not one Knight of the Whisper’s Predicate slept more than an hour that night.
It could only have been necessary.
It could only have been the truth.
No answer. No insight. No battle-plan. No glimpse of their foe. Nothing changed, except the ongoing construction, the bones moving into place, million by tinkling million.
What did it mean?
What does it mean?
Trapped in the question, Durgil kept his watch, waiting for sunrise.
And the only resolution came in the last moment, the last heartbeat of the vision:
An unseen woman’s Westerman voice, gentle but insistent, speaking a single word clearly to them all.
“Hurry.”
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