[Angelika Fleischer 02] - Sacred Flesh Read online

  “You’re the one who took charge, who slew those orcs. You’re the one they want to trust.”

  “I’d sooner have their fates on your conscience than mine.”

  “You keep professing not to have one.”

  “You keep reminding me how burdensome they can be.” She beckoned Franziskus to follow her as she strode over to the flat rock where Thomas, the former officer, was laid out. He opened his eyes as they approached. Angelika looked for Rausch, the physic; he was clambering around inside the cart, struggling with a large, unruly roll of Araby carpet. What on earth could have possessed anyone to take such a thing on a trip into the Blackfire?

  “Did he bandage you up properly?” asked Angelika, lifting up Thomas’ tunic. The blood flow seemed to have slowed.

  “I’ve had worse medics,” Thomas coughed. “I might be better off if he’d hastened my end. I’ve a couple of painful days of dying ahead of me.”

  “We’ll have to get a stretcher together,” Angelika thought, aloud.

  “No, don’t do that either,” said Thomas. “Leave me.”

  “I won’t leave a man to die. And you’re in no position to argue.”

  Angelika marched over to the cart and grabbed the physic’s rug from him. Franziskus pulled the axle from beneath the cart and began to smack at it with his sabre, to break it into lengths suitable for a stretcher.

  It dawned on the physic that Angelika meant to commandeer his carpet. “You can’t just take that!” he said. “It’s worth twenty crowns!”

  “We’re making a stretcher for Krieger,” she said. “You, of all people should be willing to donate to the cause. What use did you plan for it, anyway?”

  Rausch shifted on slippered feet. “A number of us brought goods, to sell along the way. To defray the expense of the pilgrimage.”

  Angelika looked into the cart. She saw silver plate, candles, incense, prayer blankets, glass jars for holy water and a pile of spare robes. She shook her head in disbelief.

  The widow woman, whose name was Kinge Kloster, bustled up to Angelika’s side. Thick curls of rust-coloured hair covered her head and a pair of spectacles sat in the middle of her round, well-fed face. Her face was powdered, then rouged and a paste of particularly artificial crimson covered her lips. Her eyebrows had been plucked to nonexistence and then recreated in grease pencil as thin, semi-circular arches. The effect would have been whorish, were it not for the widow’s air of merry self-satisfaction, which made her exaggerated appearance seem perfectly ordinary.

  “I organised this,” she proudly declared. “It is well known that many pilgrims come ill-equipped for their journeys, and others are robbed of their things or see them meet with mishaps along the way. I, and some of the others, thought we would assist those unfortunate souls, and virtuously enrich ourselves as an incidental part of the bargain.”

  “Carpeting? Silver plate?”

  “Wealthy pilgrims often undertake extended stays at their holy destinations. I would assume that Heiligerberg has many such guests; they might welcome the chance to purchase a few bargain luxuries, from their fellow believers.”

  “I’m sure the orcs and goblins will enjoy lining their lairs with them.”

  The widow’s jaw fell. “What?”

  “We can’t certainly can’t haul this with us, can we?”

  “But the expense! No, no, no! You must allow us—”

  “Take heart. Anyone following your trail will stop to root through the cart, and that’ll buy us time.” She raised her voice. “Now listen here everyone! Take only what you can carry—I want the lot of you ready to move by the time this stretcher’s ready!”

  Angelika and Franziskus got to work fashioning a stretcher. She took a length of heavy leather cord I mm her kit and quartered it with her dagger. Franziskus cut strips from the carpet and wrapped them around the axles of the cart. With a thick iron needle, also from her pack, Angelika threaded the cord through the rug, sewing loops of cut fabric onto it. Franziskus stuck the poles through the loops.

  “We have to test this,” Angelika said. She ordered Ivo to approach. He pretended not to hear. Angelika picked up a fist-sized rock and strode toward him. He goggled his eyes at her.

  “You weren’t calling for me, were you?” he asked, feigning innocence.

  “Get on,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We need to test the stretcher, to see if it holds, before we attempt to put Thomas on it. Get on the stretcher.”

  He waggled his head like a beagle trying to get honey off his muzzle. “Why me? Why not the miller, or the shipman? Surely you can find someone better suited to this indignity!”

  “I can think of no such person. Get on the stretcher.”

  Not without inarticulate sounds of protest, Ivo laid down on the rug. Angelika and Franziskus bent to heft the poles. The left front loop gave way, as the leather cord freed itself. The aft loop on the same side followed suit. Ivo rolled out onto the ground, yowling. He leapt up quickly, brushing bits of grass from his robe.

  “I hope you’re happy,” he said.

  “Not as much as you’d think,” replied Angelika, looking into a wooded patch about a hundred yards away, where a low, red-leafed bush rustled. She knew the difference between a bush that rustled in the wind and one whose rustling was caused by something creeping behind it. This was not the wind. She snicked her dagger from its scabbard and ran toward the bush. She heard a hissing sound; a crouching figure retreated as she came at it. She caught only a flash of its fur-clad back and warty green skin, but that was enough. A sniff of the air confirmed it—the acrid tang of vinegar, wolf urine and sour ordure was unmistakable.

  “A goblin,” she announced, returning to the others. “A scout, most likely. We have to assume it’ll be back, soon, with an entire horde, maybe on the backs of war-wolves. This place is crawling with greenskins, big and small. It must be all you pilgrims—they’re flocking to take advantage of easy prey, like frogs in mayfly season. We’ve got to get moving.”

  “Then leave me behind,” called Krieger, attempting to sit up.

  “I’m fixing this stretcher,” Angelika told him, “and then we’re moving.” She re-sewed the stitching on the left side. Devorah, the pretty sister, hovered nearby and when Angelika had finished, she volunteered to test the stretcher. She was not heavy enough for an ideal test, but Angelika let her do it anyway. She lay down demurely on the rug, azure ryes fixed on Franziskus. He and Angelika hefted it, and this time it held. Franziskus stuck out his hand for Devorah; she let him clasp her delicate wrist and pull her chivalrously to her feet. Then he broke the gaze, picked up the stretcher, and carried it to Krieger’s side.

  “This’ll hurt like hellfire,” Angelika warned Krieger, as she and Franziskus stooped to heft him onto the stretcher.

  Krieger barely grunted as they laid him down. “If there are goblins coming, you’ll have to leave me,” he said, perspiration beading on his face and neck.

  Angelika assured him, “At the next sign of greenskins, we’ll do just that.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Angelika had first thought that they would start out with herself and Franziskus ferrying Krieger through the woods. She would lead by example, showing up any potential complainers unhappy with the pace she expected them to keep. Then she counted the number of pilgrims who seemed capable of contributing to the group’s defence, and saw that there were only four: Altman the bailiff, Ludwig the sailor, Waldemar the summoner and the landowner, Richart. The monk, Brother Lemoine, seemed robust enough, but he refused to bear arms, claiming to have taken a vow of pacifism. The physic, Victor Rausch, was also a healthy man, but Angelika did not want to risk his hide so early in the journey, as he’d be needed as the others began to sustain injuries.

  She and Franziskus would be put to better use on point, Angelika concluded. The two of them knew the wilderness and its danger signs. She assigned the pacifist, Lemoine, and the miller, Muller, to haul the stretcher for the fir
st leg of the hike. They’d make a slow tramp of it, but Angelika doubted that many of her charges could travel much faster anyway. She assigned Richart and Ludwig to bring up the rear, sternly warning them to whistle out at the slightest indication that they were being watched or followed. It was better to seem foolish and give a false alarm, she lectured, than to dismiss a strange noise or movement and get caught out by a squad of bandits or onrushing greenskins. She bunched the other pilgrims behind the stretcher, with Waldemar on the left flank and Recht, the lawyer, on the right. Recht did not seem the warrior type but at least he had a rapier on his belt.

  Angelika gave the signal to move out, and immediately their marching fell into disarray: the pilgrims scattered like quacking ducklings. She moved them back into place, seizing some of them, such as Ivo, by the back of the neck. She threatened vivid bodily harm to the next person to break formation.

  The pilgrims stayed in place for ten minutes, until they reached the first bit of sloping ground on their way into the hills. Then the formation once more dismantled itself, as some forged ahead, others slowed, still others stopped dead, as if they thought the slope would flatten out if they waited for a little while.

  Angelika sighed deeply and bitterly. “I can’t keep this pack of fools alive,” she muttered.

  “Have hope,” Franziskus told her.

  “False hope’s gotten many a throat slit,” Angelika replied.

  They found a narrow trail, half overgrown, and Angelika wondered whether to take it or not. Greenskins could follow trails, too. On the other hand, her hapless pilgrims would find it difficult to navigate rockier ground, or through uncut underbrush. They might fall, or twist their ankles, or step on vipers, whose fangs might drip with poison. Angelika hated situations like this, where there was no right answer. She chose the trail. She’d stay roughly parallel to the pass, to keep herself oriented. Much of this land she knew well; it wouldn’t he long before she found some landmarks she recognised.

  The trail meandered up a hillside, wandering from one stand of leafy bushes to another. It had been made, Angelika realised, by deer and elk, as they moved from one good grazing spot to another. Though she might have liked a straighter route up into the mountains, a deer path was better than one favoured by goblins or other marauders.

  The stretcher-bearers lasted for less than half an hour before they cried out, begging for rest. By harking out some choice threats, Angelika got another quarter of an hour out of them. Then they laid Krieger down and plopped their backsides in the underbrush, gasping for breath and mercy. Angelika stomped back to make new arrangements, but the prioress had taken charge, and had given the job to the physic and the merchant. Angelika returned to point position, gratified that at least one of the pilgrims had the wherewithal to shoulder on some of the burden.

  The pilgrims puffed up a rocky incline. Brother Lemoine cried out when his sandaled foot was stabbed by a sharp stick protruding from the ground. The physic moved to check his wound, but Lemoine waved him off. Minor wounds, he explained, were to be borne with courage. They were a gift from Shallya; they taught you to inure yourself to pain, so that you could better withstand truly serious injuries, should you be unlucky enough to suffer them. Or so Lemoine had been taught, in his monastery in far-off Bretonnia.

  “I said, no god talk!” Angelika yelled, from the front. The doctrine seemed convoluted, at any rate.

  Next the entourage threaded up through a thick stand of straight young pines. The summoner, Waldemar, exclaimed in outrage and his deep-set eyes flashed when a scaly branch whip-lashed his dashing face. He accused Muller of holding the pine branch so it would do just that.

  “Pish!” said Jurg. “The summoner imagines things!” His eyes twinkled with a delight that seemed to contradict his denial.

  “I imagine nothing! It was plainly intentional!”

  Muller kept walking, moving closer to Angelika and Franziskus, and their point position. Rather than respond directly to his accuser, he addressed the group at large. “As a great and lofty summoner, festooned in silk and jewelled rings, Waldemar here’s learned to think of himself as the centre of the world, with all others merely in orbit about him. So it’s little wonder he’d think the accident of a misplaced branch could be none other than a calculated assault upon his person!”

  Waldemar stood still and fumed. “Listen to him! Listen! He clearly pursues some motiveless grudge against me. Even as he denies it, he confirms it!”

  “Pish,” Muller clucked.

  “Shut up, the both of you,” suggested Angelika.

  “I’ll not be silenced,” declared the summoner. “Not with such an obvious affront thrown in my face!” He spun on his heels, fixing young Devorah in his beady gaze. “You saw it, did you not? You were right behind me. You saw him flick that branch at me!”

  Devorah flushed. She fluttered her eyelids and bowed her head. “I am not certain what I saw, father.”

  Waldemar adopted a velvety tone and placed a paternal hand on each of the girl’s shoulders. “Now, young sister,” he said. “You know as well as I do that the miller flicked that branch.”

  Muller spun and headed back in the summoner’s direction. “She knows no such thing, because no such thing happened. If she says she didn’t see it, you shouldn’t be bullying her.”

  The prioress stepped in Muller’s path, before he could reach Devorah and forcibly remove Waldemar’s hands from her shoulders, which seemed to be his intent. Waldemar still stepped back from her.

  “Disgraceful!” Prioress Heilwig exclaimed, puffing herself up with a huge breath of air. She treated the miller to her most withering look then turned to give the same to the summoner. “Are you not pious men? On a holy pilgrimage, no less? What example do you mean to set?”

  Kinge, the widow, slapped her right haunch, thundering out a mighty guffaw. “Pious they may be, but they’re still men! That means they have the temper of mules—and the sense, to boot!”

  Others—the friar, the shipman and the pardoner—joined in her mocking laughter. The procession had now halted completely. The merchant took the opportunity to let down the aft end of Krieger’s stretcher, and Rausch the physic, on its other end, did the same. Angelika slapped a disgusted hand to her forehead, but hung back, waiting for the right moment to step in.

  “My grievance is legitimate!” the summoner lamented.

  The pardoner’s fluting voice joined the fray. Ivo gesticulated into the air with his left hand as he clapped his right on Waldemar’s back. “Indeed and yes,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t see him lash you with the branch, but I’ve no doubt he did, because that miller is nothing but a slandering varlet!”

  Muller guffawed. “Varlet?”

  Waldemar whirled on his defender. “Your help is no help at all—pardoner!” He spat the word as if it was the vilest of insults. “The day I need defence from a—from a—” The summoner stammered, at a loss for the right words of condemnation.

  “From an unworthy peddler of sacrilege?” the friar volunteered.

  Waldemar vigorously nodded. “Yes—that’s it! The only one here who’s not fit to criticise this flour-handed scoundrel is you, Ivo Kirchgeld, you cut-worm, you—you—heretic!”

  Angelika rocked forward on her heels, ready to spring down and visit her unholy wrath upon them. Friar Gerhold spared her the trouble. He was a squat, doughy man, worn and rounded down by age. Wild, snowy hair cascaded down from his ball-shaped head, spilling all the way to his wrinkly, bouncing jowls. Sharp, black eyebrows accented his impish, clever eyes. The friar’s brown robe was the colour and texture of a turnip sack, and was thread-bare at the hems. Even the rope he used as a belt was grey with soot and soil. He stepped in, his voice quiet, his palms held out in a gesture of conciliation. “Come, fellow pilgrims,” he said. “Is there really any need to abuse one another so?”

  Both Waldemar and Jurg eyed him ungratefully. Gerhold waited for an answer, but got none, and so continued, “Do you not think the goddess watches us, eve
n as we approach her holy shrine? Shallya is the very personification of mercy. How can we expect her blessing, if we do not show mercy to one another?”

  Ivo drew in a great sniffing breath of vindication, his chest swelling out. “Touchingly put, my brother,” he said to Gerhold.

  Gerhold put his arm around Ivo. “I am no theologian,” he said, still flashing his charming smile at the summoner and the pardoner. “A mere country friar am I. Yet one of my duties is to settle disputes between the farmers of my humble parish. And I have learned that hardly any argument is ever truly about the matter supposedly at hand. Often it is a long forgotten slight, as the complainant is remembering a grievous harm done to him by some entirely different person. This Ivo Kirchgeld has done nothing to you. You scarcely know him. So on what honest grounds do you despise the fellow?”

  Waldemar clucked his tongue as if carefully weighing the friar’s various points. He pinched his thumb and forefinger reflectively through his silvery beard. He nodded, having reached a conclusion. “Because he is a pustule on the forehead of true faith. He is a bowl full of urine, dashed in the faces of the gods.”

  The pardoner lunged at him.

  Angelika got in the way. She grabbed both the summoner and the pardoner by the collars of their robes and pulled them close to her face. Muller crossed his arms in profound satisfaction.

  “What do you god-addled nitwits think you’re doing?” Angelika demanded.

  “Well I—”

  stuttered Waldemar.

  “Did you see how—”

  stammered Ivo.

  “Listen to me and listen well.” Angelika released her hold on the squabbling churchmen. “I know that there’s nothing you pious types love more than to call down anathemas on each other. It’s the whole point of being a churchman, from what I can see. But to point out the obvious: your survival depends on your ability to get along when trouble finds us—and to stay quiet, so it won’t! We will move in silence till we find a camp for the night. And that might be hours. The next person who talks gets a smack in the mouth. Understand?”