DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (275 page)

Abbot Olin gave a dismissive snort.

“Your warriors and ships dominate the coastal region, Abbot,” Yatol Wadon reasoned. “In wars past with Honce-the-Bear, this has always been the case.”

“We are not at war.”

“And that is why your hopes of reaching farther, of encompassing the entire kingdom, have a possibility of fruition,” Yatol Wadon explained.

Pechter Dan Turk’s eyes widened and he had to fight hard not to gasp and reveal his interest.

“How will your armored warriors fare away from the cool coastal breezes, when the hot sun heats their armor so greatly that they can no longer even stand to wear it?” Yatol Wadon went on, and Pechter Dan Turk understood that the man was almost pleading here, as if he was trying to make Abbot Olin understand that the Behrenese were still needed to control Behren!

“The coast controls the commerce,” Abbot Olin countered. “Commerce determines the health of the theocracy. If you have no trade with Honce-the-Bear, and indeed, no routes for merchant ships to connect your own greatest cities, and no roads from Jacintha outward upon which caravans might travel, then what have you left?”

“Yatol De Hamman understands how to wage war, and he alone might raise the forces necessary to strike westward to Avrou Eesa,” said Yatol Wadon.

“Bardoh’s city is virtually undefended,” agreed the abbot. “It is ours for the taking.”

“With Behrenese soldiers,” insisted the old Yatol, and he did indeed appear very old and weary to Pechter Dan Turk at that moment. It was obvious that Abbot Olin was the one with the final say, and that observation sent a chill coursing along Pechter Dan Turk’s spine. He had not missed the reference Olin had made. Abbot Olin had not said that Avrou Eesa was Yatol Wadon’s for the taking, but had included himself in that victory!

The two leaders continued their private discussions for some time, turning the subject across many borders, from trade to the potential loyalty or lack thereof of
Maisha Darou the pirate, to future trade policies between Entel and Jacintha and the proper assignment of soldiers, Behrenese or Bearmen, within Chom Deiru and the city as a whole.

In all of it, Pechter Dan Turk recognized clearly that Abbot Olin and not Yatol Wadon was in charge. On every issue, Olin made the statements and Wadon then countered with questions and concerns, some of which were answered by the Abellican abbot and others of which were summarily dismissed with a wave and a derisive snort. And how it hurt Pechter Dan Turk to see his beloved master so belittled by an Abellican heretic!

For the first time, Pechter Dan Turk wondered if he had done right in enlisting the aid of Brynn Dharielle to defeat Yatol Bardoh. For the first time, he wondered if the wrong side had perhaps prevailed. He had never been a supporter of Yatol Bardoh—though he had often considered Yatol Peridan a superior Chezru to the perpetually whining Yatol De Hamman—but Bardoh was Chezru, at least!

Only then did Pechter Dan Turk come out of his contemplations to realize that Abbot Olin and Yatol Wadon were both staring at him. For a moment, panic hit him, as he wondered if the two had somehow read his traitorous thoughts.

“Do we know how many of Yatol De Hamman’s warriors survived the battle in the southern district of the city?” Yatol Wadon said, his tone making it clear that he was reiterating his unanswered question.

Pechter Dan Turk gave a sigh of relief, then stiffened and shook his head. “But I can quickly find the numbers.”

“Do so,” Abbot Olin ordered him. “At once!” He waved Pechter Dan Turk away and turned back to Yatol Wadon, and Pechter Dan Turk heard him remark, “We must set De Hamman on the road west immediately and force every province under our control.”

The man’s last words as Pechter Dan Turk moved out of hearing range struck the advisor particularly hard: “Perhaps we can entice the Dragon of To-gai to do war with any foolish enough to resist the changes that we know must befall Behren.”

T
he guest quarter of Chom Deiru was quiet this night, in sharp contrast to the revelry of a gathering of the victorious Yatols and Chezhou-Lei warlords that was going on in the lower feasting halls. Pechter Dan Turk was supposed to be there among the revelers, and surely not here!

The man pressed on. He held his sandals in his hand, having taken them off so that he could more completely mask the sounds of his movements. Fortunately there were few guards about, and even more fortunately, Yatol Wadon kept a spare of all of the room keys hanging in an office—an office to which Pechter Dan Turk had full access.

The nervous man stopped before Abbot Olin’s guest room and looked both ways along the quiet and dark corridor. He took a deep breath, praying that the Abellican wizard hadn’t placed some gemstone-riddled wards about the portal,
then he slowly turned the key and moved into the dark room. He fiddled in his pocket to produce a candle and flint and steel, then moved, shading the light with his free hand, toward the large desk opposite the door.

In but a few moments, he found an unsealed letter addressed to King Aydrian. Hands trembling, Pechter Dan Turk slowly flattened the parchment on the desk. He was versed in all the known languages, nevertheless Olin’s scrawl was at first hard to decipher.

As the pieces and intent of the letter became apparent, Pechter Dan Turk began to tremble even more, his worst fears realized. Abbot Olin was not writing of aiding Yatol Wadon and Chezru, but was hinting that the Chezru were ready to receive the truth of the Abellican Order!

He was hinting that they were ready to be subverted to the precepts of that order!

Pechter Dan Turk brought his hand to his cheek, but he was shaking so badly that he wound up slapping himself repeatedly in the face. He read through the letter again, as well as he could decipher it, but found no comfort in any misunderstanding of his first passage through the foreign words.

Abbot Olin was here as an opportunist, not as a friend.

The trembling man considered his next move. He could bring this to Yatol Wadon and reveal the treachery …

That thought died before it ever gained any momentum.

Because in his heart, Pechter Dan Turk knew the truth.

Yatol Wadon would not be surprised. Yatol Wadon was a part of this conspiracy.

The man left the room in such a fit that he forgot his candle on the desk and even forgot to relock the door. He didn’t go back to the feasting room, where he was expected, but rather, left Chom Deiru altogether, moving out along the streets of the city, where the revelry had become a general thing ever since the victory over Yatol Bardoh.

Victory?
Pechter Dan Turk had to wonder. Could the intrusion of the Abellicans at the head of a Honce-the-Bear army rightly be called so?

The man left Jacintha altogether soon after, having procured a cart, horse, and supplies for his journey. He moved westward along the northern road, bound for Dahdah Oasis and beyond, to the city of Dharyan-Dharielle. What he might accomplish there, he did not know.

He only knew that he had to get away from the place that was no more his home.

Chapter 23
 

B
ROTHER
S
TIMSON OF
C
HAPEL
A
UBEARD HAD BEEN HANDPICKED BY
M
ARCALO
De’Unnero to lead the contingent of monks accompanying the Ursal fleet because of his absolute loyalty to De’Unnero’s cause and his strong proficiency with the gemstones. The young brother, barely into his forties, was one of the few of his generation who rejected the teachings of Brother Avelyn outright. Stimson’s peers, after all, had come to their full power as Abellicans during the time of the rosy plague and the Miracle of Avelyn at Mount Aida. Brother Stimson, too, had partaken of that miracle, and he could not deny that God had touched the world through Avelyn to defeat the rosy plague. Still, to Stimson, the magical gemstones were the gift of God reserved for the chosen of God—the Abellican brothers. The notion of using these stones among the populace so readily, as was espoused by the followers of Avelyn, seemed absolutely abhorrent to the man.

And thus, Stimson was all in favor of the current revolt within the Abellican Church, where Brother De’Unnero and Abbot Olin were reshaping the chapels and abbeys in the image of the Order before the days of Avelyn. By extension, Stimson had become a loyal supporter of Aydrian Wyndon, as well. Without Aydrian, there could be no revolution within the Church, so went the thinking, and thus, though he had always been loyal to King Danube and though he had always understood the successor to Danube’s throne to be Prince Midalis, Stimson would forgo the desire for that logical ascension.

The Abellican Church, after all, was paramount.

To Marcalo De’Unnero, brothers like Stimson were the most valuable of resources as he moved along with Aydrian to bring the kingdom into the proper fold. Thus, he had rewarded Stimson with this most important of missions. Seven brothers had sailed with the fifteen ships of Earl DePaunch out of the Masur Delaval and into the Gulf of Corona. They had shadowed the land for many days before turning straight north, taking a direct line to the target: the island fortress of Pireth Dancard. The weather had cooperated, with no early-winter storms blowing across the waters, but with a cold westerly wind that the great ships had tacked into a fine, water-raising speed. Right on schedule that cold sunny morning, the dark tower of Pireth Dancard came into view.

Brother Stimson was among the first on the deck to spot it after the lookout’s call came down. Standing at the front rail of
Assant Tigre
—the Behrenese words for
Attacking Tiger
, DePaunch’s flagship named by Aydrian in honor of Marcalo De’Unnero—Stimson gripped the rail tightly at the sight. He heard the commotion behind him, many footsteps shuffling forward.

“We have the gemstones held ready,” an excited Brother Meepause said to
Stimson, and he held forth his hand with the graphite and hematite De’Unnero had given him. A couple of other brothers behind Meepause did likewise, though Stimson hardly seemed interested at that moment. It would be hours before any battle was joined, after all.

And Stimson secretly hoped that the gemstones, and all other firepower, would be unnecessary. Pireth Dancard and the Coastpoint Guards who manned it had not formally declared themselves for either Aydrian or Prince Midalis, after all. It was quite likely that Earl DePaunch and the Allheart escorts would be welcomed by the soldiers. That would be for the best, Stimson knew. The less battling that Aydrian had to do to stabilize the kingdom would allow for more concentration in securing the contentious Abellican Church.

“The bear rampant!” came the cry from the crow’s nest, and Stimson gritted his teeth as the man finished, “No tiger!”

Pireth Dancard was flying the pennant of the Ursals, not the new flag of Honce-the-Bear, the bear and tiger rampant, facing off above the evergreen of the Abellican Church. The island fortress should have known about the change in flags by this time, though Stimson recognized that the Coastpoint Guards stationed out here would have no appropriate pennant for King Aydrian available to them.

“There will be a fight!” one of the younger brothers behind Stimson remarked eagerly. “They ally with Prince Midalis!”

That seemed to be the feeling all about the ship and those ships nearby, Stimson could tell in glancing around at the sudden commotion, at the eager faces and sparkling eyes. He held quiet his argument that perhaps the soldiers out here were flying the only flag they possessed.

Signalmen flagged each other across the waters and the ships moved from their fairly straight triple-line formation, with the vessels port and starboard of
Assant Tigre
bowing out wide and tacking to slow, and those behind sliding up into the vacated areas. In mere minutes, with the black speck of Dancard on the horizon barely larger than it had been at first sighting, the ships had moved into an approach formation that created two rows, seven up front and eight off center spaced right behind, instead of in three columns of five in a front-to-back line.
Assant Tigre
centered that front line. These were the “kill” ships, heavily armored and manned with regiments of archers and the seven gemstone-wielding brothers. The eight smaller craft behind, swifter and more maneuverable, each housed a pair of long-range catapults and soldiers trained in ship-to-ship combat.

“Each of you knows your duty,” Brother Stimson said to his six fellow Abellican monks. “Since Earl DePaunch has chosen to concentrate us all on one vessel, we must be even more efficient and coordinated in our attacks. If resistance is discovered onshore, a catapult or a contingent of archers, then we must destroy that resistance quickly, before any real damage can be offered to this ship. Do you understand?”

Enthusiastic cries came back at him. Too eager, thought the older brother, who had seen a great riot in the days of the plague, a wild battle in the square of his
small town northeast of Ursal. Stimson had heard men dying by the score, and despite his belief in De’Unnero and Olin and his acceptance that the Church and kingdom would not be secured without a fight, the man had little desire to hear those echoing screams ever again.