The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen:
The Adherents

Out with the gnome! Out with his unclean ways! Gnomes lie. They steal. Their smiles are evil, and their hands are dirty from counting their hoard of filthy coins. This one is the worst. He’s clever. He’s dangerous.

He’s my friend.

He must go! Go, go, go! The gnome must go!

The constant chatter was what got to him. The voices. The repetition of the same idea using slightly different words. Yes, that was it. The never-ever-ending stream of words, words, words.

He had once loved words. That was what had set him apart.

That was what he and Albrec Tolas shared, and what had made them good friends over the years.

He’s the enemy. He wants to kill us. He wants to kill you.

No.

Gnomes drip with hate. He hates you!

But even the cluster of voices in his head couldn’t convince Master Docent Lars Bauch that Albrec Tolas hated
him
in particular. He and Albrec had shared too many beers for him to think such a thing. They had shared too many late evening conversations, gentle jokes about students and their jobs at the university—not to mention many, many pipes of good tobacco.

The chatter shouldn’t bother him. He was part of the Adherents now. He should welcome the voices. He’d chosen freely to join. Nobody had forced him. He was part of them, and they were part of him.

So why did his head feel like it was about to split open from all the jabbering?

He admitted the failure was his own. But couldn’t they, just once in a while,
shut up
?

Your doubts are the problem, not us. Trust us! Trust us! We know. We know all about filthy gnomes!

Bauch missed being alone. He hadn’t been truly alone for the past year and a half. He had loved his visits to the university library before he’d joined the Adherents. His gold and gray robe, showing that he was a full university scholar, allowed him to wander to his heart’s content in the restricted section in the library where the scrolls and codexes were shelved. Sometimes he would just stand in the library and take in the smell of ink and sheepskin. As a boy growing up the second son of a country squire, and a very sickly boy, he’d spent many days in his father’s small library while everyone else played outside. He felt safe there. He’d dreamed of living in a roomful of books once he was grown.

That was another thing he shared with Albrec. They both were, at heart, librarians first and foremost. They would talk about new scrolls added to the university collection, wonderful scraps of poetry scratched down hundreds of years ago by some mostly illiterate, genius skald, or codexes filled with ancient scholarship—things they’d come across all the time in the library’s vast collection. They could even spend a whole evening discussing simple things like the storage and care of manuscripts.

He was going to miss Albrec.

Sentimentality! You have your position to think of.

Yes, he had his position to think of. He’d done it, what he set out to do as a boy. He didn’t literally
live
in a library, but he had a two-room apartment attached to Klugheit College, one of the nine colleges and three women’s halls that made up Raukenrose University.

Putting up with the chatter of the Adherents was worth it. He was a soldier—well, a mental soldier—in the cause of reason. His task was to bring rational philosophy to the superstitious, heathenish mark. He had always hated the divine beings. What had they ever done for him? Had they cured him of his constant cough and weak, spindly legs? No. Because they couldn’t. Regen, Sturmer, the Allfather. What nonsense!

He wished he could make Albrec see the beautiful simplicity at the heart of the Roman belief system called Talaia. It was a philosophy that had built an empire and created a high culture that put the ugly and simplistic ways of the northern heathens to shame. When he had gained his first position as docent of Klugheit, he had taken it as his greatest responsibility to break his students of the misguided ideas they’d gotten from their parents and families. He would expand their minds. And he had. For the past twenty-three years Bauch had risen through the ranks of the university system to become master docent of history and lore. His introductory class was part of the required curriculum, and he didn’t have to drum up students anymore like most of the other docents.

His teaching fees had gone up as well. He liked to tell students that he
chose
to live at Klugheit Chambers near them when he could really afford a much grander place—which was very true.

But there was always failure lurking in the back of Bauch’s mind. Every term he chiseled away trying to break his students of their heathen delusions, and every term he succeeded with a few. But then those would move on to other classes or graduate, and he was once again faced with a bunch of students made ignorant by their upbringing and their parents.

Maybe that was the real reason he had started taking the red-cake. It was the sheer boredom and grind of teaching the same material over and over again. All of the students had started to look alike and sound alike. It felt as if he was getting nowhere against the heathenism and ignorance that surrounded him.

He knew that the Adherents were taking over Klugheit College, and he’d resisted it at first. Secret societies seemed so silly. But one day he had tried the celestis, and after that everything changed. Then the new celestis, the blackened ater-cake, came along, and everything changed again.

The Adherents. It was really only a community of like-minded scholars. Yes, they did occasionally exchange wafers dipped in one another’s blood. But the blood was collected in tiny glasses. It was Roman and civilized.

Each docent of the Adherents had one thing in common. He or she thought it was only a matter of time until Talaia philosophy swept the north.

No more divine beings. No more teaching the laws of revenge killing and lore of animal sacrifice. No more heathen ugliness. No more silly superstition.

Some called this treason. Some might agree that it was treason and welcome it. For Bauch, there was nothing treasonous in freeing people from illusions that chained their minds. And for those who clung to the old ways—

There are casualties. Regrettable causalities. There have to be. All revolutions have them.

Like today.

Albrec Tolas was Bauch’s friend. They had both come in at the same time and, although he was not fond of gnomes, they had hit it off. They both had an interest in Harrald Harraldsson the Younger and his sagas first written down seven hundred years ago. Bauch believed “Harraldsson” was secretly a nobleman, probably Sir Gustav von Kinder, and Harrald Harraldsson was a name he used to hide his identity. Albrec insisted that Harraldsson was a commoner, just like Harraldsson claimed to be, and that he had performed his tales for money in the taverns. Though they never could agree on Harraldsson, they’d become friends.

Now every Regensday evening after classes they had a standing appointment to drink a mug of beer at the Wiesel and Frosh Pub near Ironkloppel College, where Albrec was a master docent. They’d come to know each other pretty well. Bauch had told Albrec about his dictator of a father. Albrec had confided that he felt very alone here in the north. Ironkloppel was a college that welcomed gnomes both as students and as docents, but outside of the halls of the college there weren’t a lot of gnomes in Raukenrose.

Yule had come and gone. Now in the coldest month, Wintervoll, he was going to destroy his friend’s life.

They found their usual table. After taking off their winter cloaks and draping them over the stools for padding, they called for fresh pipestems and firebrands. When the pipestems arrived, they’d broken off the used ends, packed their pipes with tobacco taken from the leather pouches produced from their university robes, and now both lit up the first smoke of the evening. Albrec smoked the strong perique that gnomes liked so much. Bauch stuck with the more common orinoco.

Tell him. Get it over with. Do it!

All right.

“Albrec, there’s no easy way to say this.”

The gnome had been contentedly watching the smoke rising from his pipe. Now he turned and faced Bauch.

Beady eyes. Gnomes had such devious, beady eyes.

“What is it, Lars?” Albrec said, gently but firmly.

“I . . .” Bauch faltered and put his pipestem in his mouth and pulled a cloud of smoke into his mouth.

“Come, out with it.”

Bauch blew the smoke from his mouth and lowered his pipe.

“Very well. The faculty guild has voted, and they’ve decided to…I hate to even say this…take back your scholarship privileges at the university library. And you know that without scholarship privileges—”

“I’m not a university scholar anymore. I can’t wear the gold and gray,” Albrec said with a sigh.

“You act as if you expected this.”

“I suspected something. Not exactly this. And I never thought
you
would be its messenger, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I’m sorry, Albrec.”

“To be sure,” the gnome said. He puffed a moment on his pipe, considering. “I can’t go back to being just a master docent at Ironkloppel, of course. The guild knows that I gave up being master when I became a university scholar, and now Raffen Mohaut has that spot. They are throwing me out of the university.”

The life seemed to go out of the gnome’s muscles temporarily, and he lost his balance on the stool on which he sat. He tottered for a moment before he caught himself. Then he straightened himself again. Albrec
never
lost his balance. He never even slumped as far as Bauch could recollect.

“He carried through with it,” the gnome muttered to himself. “He doesn’t make idle threats. I’ll give him that.”

“He? Who are you talking about?”

“Gunnar von Krehennest of Sandhaven.”

“The prince that’s marrying the duke’s daughter?”

“He vowed vengeance on me two months ago. It looks like he has kept his vow. Or someone close to him has.”

“I can’t say one way or the other. You know I am sworn to secrecy when it comes to guild business.”

“That has never stopped you from blabbing before, Lars,” the gnome said. There was a sad smile on his face that let Bauch know he wasn’t angry. “But I understand.”

Make him think it was only that! He must not find out what is really happening. He must never suspect about the soldiers.

“All right, yes. The Krehennests are huge benefactors to the school. They practically paid for Brent College. The Sandhaven scandal you involved yourself in was the final straw, Albrec,” Bauch said. “You know your opposition to new methods has caused a lot of grumbling among—”

“My
what
?” the gnome broke in with laughter. “Opposition to new methods? That’s got to be a joke! I helped Ute Geldennov establish the investigative magic department at Herbstern Hall. I proved the Doren werewolf manuscript was authentic lore.”

“No one denies your credentials, Albrec. They are impressive.”

“Not as impressive as having the correct political opinion. And the fact that I am against the insanity of this…dunces’ society of traitors you call the Adherents that seems to have taken over half the colleges pretty much sealed my doom, didn’t it?”

“Now, Albrec, don’t get upset. Traitors? Not at all! It’s the rational method the Adherents want to adopt, not the Romanish religion with its dragon slaying and blood-dipping. If you strip their idea of its religious frills, it is a powerful tool for mental development and rational thinking.”

“The composition of the Talaia cake substance is not understood. But we do know that it has to be dipped in blood for it to work. Human blood.”

“But the blood is nothing, just for show and to impress the ignorant,” said Bauch. “We could reduce it to parts, discover where its true power lies.”

“It is very irresponsible to encourage students to experiment with it—and to take it yourself…you are playing with fire, Lars.”

“But the advantages, Albrec! To be able to push knowledge directly into a student’s mind. Imagine how it might be used in society as well. The projects for the betterment of humankind!”

“I am not humankind.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. That second town aqueduct, for instance, the one that the castle engineers have been trying to construct for the last three years and never get anywhere on. With collective action it might be done in a month. In a week, even!”

“The Tiberians use the celestis to keep millions in slavery down south. There is plenty of collective thought and collective action there,” Tolas said quietly. “This doesn’t bother you?”

“
We
are different.”

We are better! Better! Don’t listen to him! Stay the course!

“The Adherents won’t use it that way. Albrec, we are at the dawn of a new age. The old ways no longer apply.”

Albrec took another long draw on his pipe. He shook his head sadly. “You were a good friend, Lars. Knowing I had our Regensday mug to look forward to really helped make up for my isolation here.”

“I still am a friend to you, Albrec. If you would change your old-fashioned ways, all could yet be well. I can get…I have some of the new celestis. We call it ater-cake. Try it. You’ll see things differently.”