Chapel of Chains Part 5
The Putrid Abbot, the Bandit Prince, the Virtuous Saboteur
In the last part, Tiber finally makes it back to the safe zone—and Rattles the undead is taken into custody by a powerful grizzled mage. Runt learned her mercenary company was bound for an unknown prize deep under the city—and would sneak through the defending army’s cordon to get there. The hobgoblins demolished the massive keep looking over the whole city and began a mass-evacuation to the surface. Over all this, the unknowable towers raining death and hell on everything wailed a lament only the logophagic undead could understand.
A resigned sniff. "Fuck a duck." Staff Sergeant Tiber Klepacki spat out a sachet and lit the fifth cigarette of the day. The wheel of mages, their chain spokes, and the undead hub looked like an omen passing out of his influence before he could learn the significance--he the poorer for it. The Cordon held the focused bustle of people working with extreme diligence not to be annihilated.
Ahead, two mercenaries in black wools, mail, and plates shook hands as if mortal danger separated them for several hours. One was fair-featured and bearded Stanis, of Tiber's rear-guard who also saw what the undead was capable of. The other, and larger, was dark-haired and shaven Petr, sent ahead hours ago to keep the rest of the group in line when they rescued the hobgoblin woman Lau and the Old Bird. And when Runta Sarlatova escaped Tiber’s capture.
Like him, they were ethnic Niyarodans, from the Golden Empire of Lidovica, foreigners among ethnic Arcadians and the kingdom of Arc Royal; of the several mercenary companies in Thunder's Vale when the invasion kicked off. They stood among the ersatz party of the past three days--the hobgoblins greeting one another, likewise the cleric giving her deacon-lieutenant protegee a noogie and an attaboy, and a few regulars with bittersweet regards that their fellows save one were alive.
“Tell everyone. Even the ones who weren't out with us last. I'm proud to fight with them, and honored if they stick around," he said after breathing out a plume. Everyone but the mercenaries saluted with raised hands and departed for their makeshift quarters. "Thanks for going along with my orders when you didn't have to follow them," he said, dragging and passing the roll to Petr. "And, sorry you had to be away from the rest of the company on my account."
"Tosh, kid, it was our pleasure," replied Stanis, holding his hand out for the roll. "You beat ass out there. We'll follow Klasky and Csupo to Hell, but they can pound sand on this one point; as far as we're concerned, you're a Coal Hound." Tiber, his joviality coaxed, pantomimed consideration and gestured to the city.
"Sure, but it looks like you might following them to the Abyss…" he ventured with a smile. Both mercenaries returned it, the big one choking back a laugh as he exhaled smoke and passed to Stanis.
"Eh. The she-demons in Pandemonium are probably more fun than in the she-devils in the Hells," he deadpanned. Somewhere nearby a woman sneezed.
16:30 Palicas, 15 Moiraios, 14389
SISTER-MISTRESS ABIGAIL BOCHRA had two habits. One she wore on her head. With the other she exhaled a diaphanous awning over the balcony. She moved with the efficiency of an angel at war, since a leopard, a terrestrial animal, seemed too… material for the warrior-nun. And too small. Once a simple nun with a complex pituitary gland, she accepted an invitation years ago to join the church-militant of Saint Irinia (for Whom it was all militant) after decapitating a Tijak with a mace. On the balcony she wore what passed for the garrison attire of Irinia's warrior-clergy (for Whom they were all warriors). Linen garments with just the plates of the upper limbs. Adjacent a personal shrine in her office Tiber saw the rest of the steel on a rack, and he could tell she could get the armor on in moments. Presently it bore much wear and tear.
By now, the skysle—the flying island—known as Point Radovic could just fit behind an outstretched palm. Mountain crags on top and city-sized stalactites on the bottom distinguishable from one another. Separate from the central mountain was the colossal cronegate: an assumed-natural stone formation not unlike a hagstone one finds on a beach. He could see right through it, see the discoloration of the sky as the Point approached a cross-dimensional leyline or something that would connect it to its stationary twin in Krespask, Lidovica.
It was easy for him to imagine still more demons crawling over it, waiting for some interruption in the Spires’ vigil to take flight. "How long have you gone?" he asked, forcing his mind away from the matter.
"Five days," she replied, putting the stub of leaf in a small offering-censor. The ritual fasting of Irinia's followers in theater so they could ignore profane bodily functions--a stretch that daunted him, slightly. "You ever fast? Voluntarily, that is?"
"I have; for special rituals and in the course of learning some spells." The paladin-commandant nodded her head, and he realized she also spent time in a magic arts association.
"Common in the Cermak Association. Who was your instructor?"
"Gregor Hlavacek, ma'am, he taught under Cermak's brother Zepry." She paused a beat, as if collating information.
"Heh! Fuckin’ Zep. I learned how to disassociate my tactile senses from his cousin, Okatrin Hlavacekova." The sergeant raised his eyebrows at the casual mention of a wizardess who could cast in the middle of a gale. "Hlavacek was, and I pray still is, also frequently commissioned by the Lidovican royal constabulary." Tiber's heart skipped a beat and abseiled his throat. "Such as the son and grandson of the Prinz-Vyzo's Royal Marshals, Karl and Oskar 'Ironsides' Klepacki."
He stammered, she charged through it. "Who is here, enlisted, and somehow hounded by the mercenary company founded by his grandfather and led by his cousins." Bochra nodded to the square below. "I saw you fraternizing with two Coal Hounds. Watch dogs, I assume." Tiber nodded. "Things must be bad in the Golden Empire. Well, Staff Sergeant, it just means we have talent in our ranks." She handed him a new beret--a blue one, with a larger flash.
"It's Lieutenant Tiber Klepacki now, and we're lacking overall unit leadership so it's also acting Captain for you." As he changed covers, she added "you're probably not the first foreigner commissioned right now, so don't get a fat head." They sealed the commission with a salute. "I'm personally putting you in charge of a mission. I've authorized your ersatz company for the last of the rejuvinating elixirs we've accounted for. In six hours, you're to rendezvous with the last century of hobgoblins evacuating the Morningstar. You'll enter the undercity from the Cordon, and demolish the tunnels as you all and the Tetsubos withdraw." Tiber affirmed the order. "Now tell me about the thing you brought with you."
"I think it's related to cacti, the flower looks a little bit like a beret." In a pot in his hands was what could only be described as a child's idea of an anthropomorphic spineless cactus. True enough, the flower atop it resembled a carmine beret, and it looked up with black beads for eyes.
"I meant the undead. Before we purge it. But that's a charming cactus."
"Why purge this little cactus?" which looked between them in apprehension.
"Well, it's probably invasive, but I mean purge the undead.” at this point the succulent would have chewed its spines in fright like fingernails if it had any.
"I think we should keep it around."
“Are we talking about the undead, or the cactus?”
“Well, both, but the subject of my assertion is the undead.” Her ahem would have begged seriousness were she the type to beg. Tiber rolled with it. "I'm dead certain it has information about what lurks beneath Thunder's Vale, why the Spires wailed, and… honestly, what we don't know about the Tijakim and Dead Sidonis. It may have knowledge they don't know of."
"…The undead, not the cactus." she gestured to the cactus, not the undead, which by the way was not there.
Tiber didn't miss a beat. "I'm not ruling anything out after this week, but no, I don't mean the cactus." Which was there. In his hands.
"An undead of virtually unknown variety appeared during the first major invasion from Dead Sidonis in centuries speaking the same Abyssal language as the invaders. Several of my inquisitors know Abyssal, they will interrogate it before incineration."
"I think that's overwhelmingly premature, Ma’am. The paladins in my party can attest to the creature's vigor-mortis in killing Tijakim and demons alike."
"Yes, I debriefed Deacon-Lieutenant MacCormagt's novices and himself before you. The Undead seems to have a bone to pick with the invaders--that changes nothing. It's the way of things for evil to infight. Under the gaze of Saint Irinia, being our enemies' enemy does not make that monster an ally, and doctrine is unambiguous on undeath. My inquisitors will uncoil its intellect for anything actionable before purging. Otherwise, ancient history isn’t germane to staving off annihilation. Dismissed."
After he left with palpable frustration, the plant turned in its pot to look at her. She shrugged. "What?"
18:00, Palicas, 15 Moiraios, 14389
PICKING OVER RUBBLE without making a noise took time. So too crawling up a pile of stone and a fallen tree to put her near a second-story window. Looking into an amphitheater of broken stone and wealthy furniture and fixtures, there stood Enochab.
Who he spoke with made Runt's peripheral vision slide like a detached cornea. At first it looked like one from the stooped degenerate mobs, but this individual was not dressed like the massed gibberers in makeshift armor and weapons. Long robes belted around the waist and a hooded sleeveless jacket over a lean frame. He faced away from her boss, crouched, turning over in his hands a ceramic figurine. She regretted her beastly senses picking up the smell of oily, rancid pus.
Enochab was in fact speaking the same language spat by the stooped degenerate mobs, but in this case conversationally--intelligently (of course).
Yet when the putrid interlocutor spoke back, Runt's talons dug into her handholds and she even sat one of her horns in the crook of a branch to steady herself from the vertigo caused by hearing that speech with that voice from that vessel. She shifted focus from the sudden taste of coins to their actual words--as the morning earlier, she understood none, recognized a few, and memorized the bulk.
Yet the words from hours ago did not work this unsettling nausea on her. She mouthed them as they spoke them, practically turning them into a chaplet. Honing her mind around the words, she grew ill, as if the repetition and memorization of the raw data itself tasted of rotten milk even not knowing the meaning. Her vision swam, she caught herself from falling and giving herself away. Curiously, she felt none of that when Enochab spoke in the same oily language.
His restrained tone carried none of the ease he used with his posse; something shook him, alarmed him, and Runt guessed it had to do with the towers' wailings since he used similar words as the towers uttered. Until then the putrid interlocutor affected blasé indifference to her boss' alarm, but upon hearing Enochab repeat them, the interlocutor stopped his musing and stood upright. The Tijakim must speak the same language as the towers, but far removed from the ancient edifices, and corrupted…
That corruption was physically manifested on the small part of the interlocutor's face she glimpsed: excellent features, better-formed and bred than even the pioneers she and the grey foreign girl saw underground--but marred by swollen sores and pox. Her eyes caught small tubes and ducts embedded in those wounds, and they looked… cultivated.
A presence behind her, and she raised a hand while unseating her horn to roll off her perch and counter--but the hand which grabbed her sparking paw was Alyosha's, drawing back to put a finger over his mouth (and blow out the small flame that puffed to life on hers) and nodded at the conversation. Not needing to look--Runt not wanting to look--they heard Enochab speak at length in the alien tongue; when they finally stole another look, they saw he was alone--the putrid interlocutor absconded.
ALYOSHA SAT CURLED over on a bench nearby; breathing through his body's nauseous reaction to the interlocutor. For her part, Runt was practically back to normal once she knew the stranger was gone. She minded the whole ordeal not at all and felt, for the first in a long time, enthusiastic at the thought of squaring off with someone. She guessed at her infernal heritage eager to impose itself on a priest of the Abyss.
"What the Hell was that…"
"Our boss is apparently working with the attacking army in some capacity."
"No, not Hell… the Abyss, bidniya. I'm no scholar, and not a cleric, but I know a priest of the sunken powers when I see one." He looked through her eyes and she felt her friend looking at her soul. "We… I… fought them in the past."
"The posse has?" His meaningful look intensified as he formed his words.
"No. Before I joined them." He bowed and shook his head again, trying to shake his stomach back in place.
"Will you ever tell me about your time before joining the Kites?" He chuffed.
"Someday, you have to grow up a little."
Runt crossed her arms. "I'm an adult, Aly."
"I mean you have to grow old a little bit. See some things. Know some things." She looked him in the eye and saw how much older, wearier, he was. "Anyway." The scout stood up uneasily--at first. "Nobody can know we saw Enochab. Not him, not anyone else in the band."
"What do we do?"
"We keep quiet, keep our heads down. Keep our eyes open for a way to get out."
22:00, Palicas, 15 Moiraios, 14389
LIEUTENANT, ACTING CAPTAIN Klepacki took a drag as he catalogued his thoughts and impressions for his first big-boy mission, audibly telling himself--or perhaps the ideas themselves--bullshit and fuck off to any that did not reinforce measured aggression. Plus the trigger every soldier in command must intimately know when to let everything fly out the ruts and go berserk.
Word went around that a Lidovican received field commission, and among the leaders of the various cliques--blue-clad Arcadians, red-clad foreigners, warrior-clergy, hobgoblins, mercenaries--of the sixty-odd people he took on sorties, it was circulated that Tiber wore blue and everyone had to muster for reinforcing the escaping hobgoblins.
As he waited for those same informal subordinates, among the crates and ignored building supplies near a stone awning along a wall, his eyes followed a hollow clay ball used for lightening domes that rolled from its basket under the awning on past the gap in his legs.
While it was in his own shadow, it was perfectly silent. Military magic from one of Golden Lidovica's southern vassals, Nagorynaya.
"I respect the art, stranger. Near-silence for everything within nearby shadow." He cast his gaze to the roof of the awning, where a rangy, lean man on the cusp of middle-age in earthen armor and attire peered down with an eraly-greying jaw and a slanted smile. "Keeps the whole team safe and undetected, not something you typically see among bandits with the acumen to use magic at all." His dominant eye closed, he made an L with his thumb and fingers vicing the roll, putting the interloper between them. "Or with Nagoriyi."
"I could comment on the gassy egos of Lidovicans, but I'm past such pettiness. Read me--I am not aligned with the attackers." The figure shifted to rest a forearm on a knee. "It's you I wanted to speak with."
Satisfied his divination showed no cosmically anarchic leanings or influence, Tiber draw from his roll and let his arm rest. "That’s something we share, I'm burnt-out of it also. Otherwise we wouldn't be so far from home. I guess asking the Russet Kites' business here would be too much?" The Nagoriyi spy (or scout, or bandit, or…) shrugged.
"Right now, our band is making their way underground for a prize only our leader knows the details of. But I learned he is working with the attackers--not casually, no; I espied him meeting with a putrid emissary who looked important, and I know how to spot people running things." A putrid emissary? Oh.
"The Putrid Abbot as he styles himself. Ran into him a few days ago. Almost died. So why approach me?" he asked, taking another drag. "And not Abigail Bochra?"
"Because I can see in your face your father and grandfather--men every Nagoriyi know of," he uttered with a bitterness he visibly pushed aside. "I have someone you want." At this comment, Tiber's eyes widened and his teeth crimped the roll in his fingers. A stump of ash fell, and an eyebrow propped the rim of his blue beret. "I find… this," the man gestured at the skyline that looked like rows of broken teeth and headstones, "as foul as I expect you would. The prize our band is goaded to achieve is the center of all this, that much I know, perhaps you know more. I can do what I can to stop it, but what I can do more is suss out who hired us; because they're back west and they're part of the attack. And I can give you Runta Sarlatova."
Tiber's eyes narrowed as he took the phattest of rips. Twenty seconds, easily. The rogue actually got a little uncomfortable and was about to spea-"What do you want in trade?"
"You must keep her safe." Tiber voiced confused protest. "Arc Royal make liberal use of… penal units." (Both snorted.) "…to reinforce their ranks and are certainly going to need every body they can get. And let's be honest, Ironsides’ son of all people would know how capable Scarlet is."
"She's a traitor to her own nation and by proxy to Lidovica." He sniffed and dragged on the rolled leaf again. "But you're right, we need some manpower. And we're a long way from the heartland, facing whatever the demons and their Tijakim created after centuries of isolation." He sniffed. "Crimes and grudges are as distant as where they were committed, multiplied by present urgencies." The interloper mulled this over.
"Very true, very astute." He drew something from a pocket and threw it. Tiber snatched it from the air and beheld a vial of blood. "Give that to Lady Bochra, you can use that to contact or divine me. Keep Runt safe and I'll feed you information."
"You yourself?" as Tiber drew his last cigarette and flicked it to the man’s hand.
"I still have some contacts from the bad old days, men who were able to do to Lidovica's best what Lidovica's best wanted to do to them--and keep doing it" he verbally thrusted as he lit the offered roll with a very not-mundane, mundane lighter.
"Well I hope we were practice enough for your friends, because it's a mixture of abyssal cults and high nobility that you seem to be chasing. What do I call you?"
The Nagoriyi breathed smoke. "Alyosha."
"And between the two of us, what's your relationship with Sarlatova?"
Alyosha smirked. "Which one?"
"That answers my question. You knew her father?"
"I was not in the Bloody Baron Sarlatov's company, but worked with him quite often. It's possible I ran into your father and his father at least once." He shrugged. "Maybe you and I ran into another before," which provoked a slight bow from Tiber. "To old adversaries," he said, rising.
"And new allies." Tiber watched Alyosha the Nagoriyi depart, then ran for the suppliers. Suddenly he needed blackjacks--lots of blackjacks.