The Justice of Kings, page 2
I looked over to Claver. The man’s face was aghast at Vonvalt’s easy equivocation. Of course, Vonvalt was no more a believer in the Nema Creed than Sir Otmar. Like the old baron, he had had the religion forced on him. But he went to temple, and he put himself through the motions like most of the Imperial aristocracy. Claver, on the other hand, was young enough to have known no other religion. A true believer. Such men had their uses, but more often than not their inflexibility made them dangerous.
“The Empire requires that you practise the teachings of the Nema Creed. The law allows for nothing else,” Vonvalt said.
“If I refuse?”
Vonvalt drew himself up. “If you refuse you become a heretic. If you refuse to me you become an avowed heretic. But you won’t do something as silly and wasteful as that.”
“And what is the punishment for avowed heresy?” Sir Otmar asked, though he knew the answer.
“You will be burned.” It was Claver who spoke. There was savage glee in his voice.
“No one will be burned,” Vonvalt said irritably, “because no one is an avowed heretic. Yet.”
I looked back and forth between Vonvalt and Sir Otmar. I had sympathy for Sir Otmar’s position. He was right to say that Draedism was harmless, and right to disrespect the Nema Creed as worthless. Furthermore, he was an old man, being lectured and threatened with death. But the fact of the matter was, the Sovan Empire ruled the Tolsburg Marches. Their laws applied, and, actually, their laws were robust and fairly applied. Most everyone else got on with it, so why couldn’t he?
Sir Otmar seemed to sag slightly.
“There is an old watchtower on Gabler’s Mount, a few hours’ ride north-east of here. The Draedists gather there to worship. You will find your witch there.”
Vonvalt paused for a moment. He took a long draw of ale. Then he carefully set the tankard down.
“Thank you,” he said, and stood. “We’ll go there now, while there is an hour or two of daylight left.”
II
Pagan Fire
“The vainglorious and boastful initiates should be weeded out of the Order at the earliest opportunity. To be a Justice is to be a patient and rigorous administrator of the law. Tales of swordfights and horseback chases, while loosely rooted in fact, are to be discouraged and dismissed as rumour.”
MASTER KARL ROTHSINGER
Within a few minutes we were back outside in the cold and rain while a lad fetched our horses. Then we rode on into the fading light. I pulled my waxed cloak around me, trying to keep the worst of the rain off my clothes, but neither Bressinger nor Vonvalt seemed to be bothered by it. Claver, hunched in his saddle, looked bedraggled and wretched, but he was clearly savouring the prospect of frightening the local pagans.
In spite of what Sir Otmar had said, we did not make for Gabler’s Mount. Instead Vonvalt took us directly into the woods, down an old huntsman’s path half-lost under the ferns.
“Sir Konrad?” I said. My voice sounded meek and aristocratic, and I hated myself in that moment. Despite years of hard travelling, I had still grown soft. Gone was the feral refugee growing up on the streets of Muldau. I was turning into one of the nobles I had despised for so long.
He turned. The black beard which he wore in the colder months of the year glistened with rainwater.
“What is it?” he asked. His horse, a big Guelan war destrier called Vincento, plodded to a halt.
“Isn’t Gabler’s Mount to the north-east? This is north-west.”
Vonvalt nodded. “I know,” he said.
“The old man was lying,” Bressinger said. “Sending us off in the wrong direction.”
“Doubtless to be ambushed.” Claver sneered.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Vonvalt said mildly. “Misdirection, rather than murder. He hasn’t had the time – and certainly doesn’t have the gall – to organise anything like that. No.” He gestured to the ancient, mossy trees. “The Witch of Rill is in these woods.”
We moved on, into that groaning, hundred-mile forest. The last of the light had long drained from the sky. I shivered as the cold sought out my damp clothes and sapped the last of the heat from my bones. I was desperate for a fire for some warmth – or, more importantly, light – when my silent prayers were answered. Ahead, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was a flicker of orange.
Vonvalt and Bressinger were talking in low voices ahead, so I called out to Claver instead. “Did you see that light?” I asked.
“I saw it,” he said, and sneered. “Pagan fire. Draedists have always been drawn to its corrupting influence. They dance around it like lunatics. ’Tis a shabby practice.”
I could see people moving around the fire as we approached. Vonvalt made no attempt to conceal himself or otherwise approach subtly. Instead he rode on with purpose. I could see now that there were maybe fifteen or twenty peasants encircling the fire, which itself burned in the centre of a small glade. Near the fire was a stone altar which was sheltered by the overhanging branches of a nearby tree. Behind the altar was the witch, an elderly woman wearing a crude wooden mask and some dark, threadbare robes. She stood so motionless that I thought in those first few moments that she might be a statue.
“Madame witch,” Vonvalt called to the woman. “Kindly remove your mask.”
Screams penetrated the chilly night air. The pagans whirled to face us with expressions of exaggerated shock. Whatever ritualistic dancing had been going on before was brought to a sudden, dramatic stop.
I thought that the witch would defy Vonvalt, but she brought her hands up to the wooden mask and removed it, and set it carefully down on the altar. I had half been expecting the mask to conceal a monster’s face, or at the very least someone grotesquely disfigured, but I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved to see that she was simply a regular old woman. Her expression was neutral as she eyed us. It was in that delicate moment of inaction that Claver decided to assert his religious credentials.
“You desecrate the Creed of Nema!” he erupted. No one had been paying the holy man much attention, but now he had a glut of it.
Vonvalt whirled about in his saddle, his expression thunderous.
“That’s quite enough, Patria,” he snapped.
“Justice Vonvalt, these people are heretics!” Claver continued, genuinely baffled. He exercised himself into a fury. “Avowed apostates! Look at this pagan nonsense! This cultish ritual! It makes a mockery of the laws of Sova!”
“I, and I alone, will decide what makes a mockery of the laws of Sova,” Vonvalt said. His tone was as cold as the evening air. “Kindly be quiet, or I will have Bressinger take you back to Rill.” He turned back to the peasants and gestured to the fire. “You all know it is illegal to practise Draedism,” he said. “The law is clear.”
“How did you find us?” the old woman asked. Her reserve had hardened to defiance. It heartened her flock. I watched their bodies subtly recalibrate from flight to fight.
“It is the eve of the month of Goss,” Vonvalt said. He pointed to a break in the clouds, where the moon waned to a thin crescent.
“We do not recognise the Imperial calendar,” the old woman said.
“But the Book of Lorn demands this…” Vonvalt gestured to the fire “… ceremony on the eve of Goss, yes? The fire of Culvar burns and by its light and heat the Trickster is banished.”
“You use the names of the false saints. The saints of the Autun. The Book of Lorn is a simulacrum of the Book of Draeda. A poor one at that.”
“But the ritual is identical,” Vonvalt remarked, as if he might convert her on the spot. He shrugged. “In any event, it is how I found you.”
A stand-off ensued. The old woman would not – could not – fold and abandon her beliefs simply because Vonvalt had told her what she was doing was illegal. She knew it was illegal. And of course, Vonvalt was bound by his oaths and the law to prosecute her – but he, too, was unwilling to do so.
“Sir Otmar has already agreed to pay your fine,” Vonvalt said eventually. “Simply renounce Draedism and I will leave you all in peace. No one need die here tonight.”
“Otmar would never renounce his beliefs,” the old woman said harshly.
Claver exploded. “You damn him with your words! He is a Draedist!”
“Be quiet!” Vonvalt snapped.
“This whole village should be burned to the ground and its heretic peasants along with it!”
“Nema’s blood, man, will you shut up!” Vonvalt shouted. “Dubine, get him out of here.”
“With pleasure, sire,” Bressinger said, and pulled his horse – a large brown courser called Gaerwyn – around.
“I do the Goddess’s work!” Claver shouted. “Do not touch me! I will see Nema’s work done here!”
Bressinger pulled up alongside the priest and snatched the reins from his hands, leading the horse away back down the huntsman’s path. I half-expected Claver to dismount and charge back into the fray. Instead, faced with Bressinger’s unshakeable impassivity, the priest lapsed to silence.
Vonvalt turned back to the old woman. “You are Sir Otmar’s wife,” he said.
“Lady Karol Frost.”
“My lady, are you aware of the consequences – the consequences which the law forces me to put in motion – if you refuse to renounce Draedism?”
“I am aware.”
“You would consign yourself to death?”
“I would.”
“You would consign these people to death?”
“Every man and woman here can make their own decision.”
Vonvalt sighed, annoyed. He was about to speak again when something remarkable happened: the wooden mask began to rise up off the altar and levitate in the air.
I shrieked. The peasants gasped. The mask, an ugly, rough-hewn thing, rose smoothly and stopped a fathom above the altar. It hung there, the firelight dancing off its features, watching proceedings with an unmistakable hostility.
Everyone froze. For a few moments I was unable to catch my breath. The old pagan gods, furious at this Imperial interruption, were here in the glade. A horrible sense of vertigo washed through me. Murderers, thieves and rapists, Vonvalt could deal with; the wrath of the elementals, he could not.
Vonvalt pulled his short-sword from its scabbard. The blade sang in the night air. Lady Frost screamed, for despite her stern comportment and staunch belief in the old gods, even she could not help but be terrified by the cold gleam of steel.
Immediately the closest peasants surged forwards, a trio of burly men who shouted and jabbered in the ancient Draedist tongue. They reached out with frantic, grasping fingers, trying to get to Vonvalt’s leg to pull him down from his horse.
“Get back, damn you,” Vonvalt said, more irritated than angry. Vincento reared up, front legs cycling. The big black destrier planted a hoof directly into the chest of one of the Draedists with enough power to crack his breastbone and sent him flying. A second pagan lost his left arm below the elbow to Vonvalt’s sword. The idiot screamed, wide-eyed, and fell backwards, clutching the spurting stump.
The third Draedist was in the process of rethinking this ill-advised course of action entirely when Bressinger’s horse battered him to the floor from the side. The man tumbled in between the creature’s hooves, dazed and beaten, but not killed.
“Stop this at once!” Vonvalt roared. This time he used a hint of the Emperor’s Voice, and immediately the commotion died away. Lady Frost remained by the altar. The three peasants who had attacked Vonvalt lay on the floor, groaning and whimpering. Bressinger was already dismounted and was tending in his rough and unsympathetic way to the man who had lost his lower arm. The other Draedists stood in a loose, horrified gaggle. Some way off, I was aware of Patria Claver, watching these sorry proceedings from where Bressinger had left him. After a little while the priest turned away and headed back to Rill. I wish with all my heart that I could say it was the last we saw of the man.
Vonvalt’s face was a mask of displeasure as he surveyed the scene. After a few moments, he gently urged Vincento over to the altar and stopped there. Then he whipped his sword through the air in a wide arc. The mask dropped out of the air, clattered off the old stone and fell unceremoniously into the mud below.
“Thread,” Vonvalt said. “Black thread, anchored to a hidden pulley.” He sheathed his sword with callous indifference.
The spell was broken. Whatever further mischief the peasants had been about to mount in the name of religious fervour died along with the illusion.
Lady Frost looked wretched. She began to sob. I didn’t feel bad for her. It was a damnable thing to do, a spectacle which she had evidently planned for later on in the evening’s festivities.
“Go back to your homes, now,” Vonvalt said to the assembled pagans. “Every person here will come to me in the morning and renounce, or so help me it’ll be the noose for the lot of you.”
The peasants practically fell over themselves as they dispersed, scattering into the cold, dark woods.
“How is he, Dubine?” Vonvalt called down to Bressinger.
Bressinger shrugged. “With a decent surgeon he might live.”
Vonvalt looked at Lady Karol. “You will arrange for this man’s care,” he said. “If he dies, I will hold you to account.”
The woman nodded, her eyes flicking between the armless pagan and Vonvalt.
Vonvalt sighed and shook his head, then pulled Vincento around so that he was facing me. He absently patted the horse’s neck. “Helena, back to Rill,” he said quietly. “I want to prepare for court tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a busy day.”
We rose early the following morning. Again, it was cold and grey, and I wondered if the sun ever touched Rill.
We unloaded our equipment from the Duke of Brondsey’s cart: ledgers, statute books, a quill and ink, fresh rolls of parchment, a collapsible trestle table, Vonvalt’s wing-backed leather armchair, fresh wax and stamps, a shield-sized device of the Sovan Empire mounted on a five-foot pole, and various warrants of office that people were entitled to inspect. We set them up in the centre of the public square.
The village slowly rose with the sun, and the smell of cook fires filled the cold air. For most of the peasants, breakfast would be a thick porridge flavoured with whatever was to hand, and a mug of ale, though there was a distinct smell of frying bacon emanating from the Frosts’ manor. Vonvalt, Bressinger and I had eaten a few cold crusts of pie in the inn, and my stomach was already growling.
“Our friend the priest left, then?” Vonvalt asked as he settled himself into his armchair. I sat on a small stool next to him. As his clerk, my job was to take down a note of what was said during proceedings.
“Aye,” Bressinger replied from his right. “Some time in the night, though not before giving me an earful.”
“Thank you for not waking me.”
“He is not happy with the way you are dealing with the Draedists.”
“It is not his business to be happy about it.”
Bressinger gave Vonvalt a reproachful look. “His interest in it was unnaturally keen.”
“His interest in the entirety of my affairs has been unnaturally keen since he joined us. I am glad to see the back of him. The only thing that vexes me is that he did not leave us earlier. He is clearly capable of travelling alone.”
“You do not think it odd?” Bressinger said.
“Of course I thought it odd. But the man is odd.” Vonvalt shrugged. “I expect he will beat us to Seaguard, then? Off to persuade the margrave and his men to part with their lives on the Frontier.”
“I expect so.”
“He is a fool, Dubine. Put him from your mind.”
“A dangerous fool.”
“Indeed.”
“And with powerful friends, if he is to be believed.”
“If he is to be believed,” Vonvalt said. He was about to say more when the day’s first customer approached the table, a peasant of middling age, wearing rough homespun clothes and a wool cap. He shuffled over to Vonvalt, intimidated by our little temporary court, though to me it looked very shabby.
“I’d, uh,” he started, and then snatched off his cap. “By your leave, my lord, I’d, uh, like to…” He leant in close. Vonvalt, with infinite patience, for he was on official duty now, bent forwards accommodatingly. “I’d like to, uh… renounce?”
Vonvalt nodded sagely. “I accept the renunciation.” He opened one of the heavy ledgers and began writing. He took and noted the man’s details. In the margin, he wrote the fine, which was a penny and which he would collect from Sir Otmar. “Do you have any grievances for the Emperor?”
The man shook his head vigorously. “No, my lord, nothing.”
Vonvalt nodded again. “Then that is everything.”
It went much the same with the remaining villagers. One by one, those we had seen in the forest – and some others, too – approached us and quietly renounced. It was the only business of the day. Usually we dealt with all sorts, especially since it had been years since the last Imperial Justice had passed through. There were always thefts and assaults to deal with, as well as more serious crimes – murders, rapes, treason. But on that cold, wintry day in Rill, there was only the quiet rejection of pagan faith.
Vonvalt closed his ledgers for lunch and sent me off to get him and Bressinger some bread, cheese and ale from the inn. When I returned, I was stunned to see Lord and Lady Frost standing in front of the table. Sir Otmar had a bag of coins in his hand. I hurried back in time to hear the last of the charges Vonvalt had decided to indict them with: incitement to blasphemy.
“We’re not guilty of the charge,” Lady Frost said in that sneering way aristocrats – even minor ones – do. “We pay the fine only to protect our people.”
I sat back on my stool and began to furiously scribble the words down.
Vonvalt took the bag of coin from Sir Otmar and passed it to Bressinger, who began to count them.
