Verdict on Crimson Fields by M. C. Planck

Author:M. C. Planck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2019-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

20

CAVALRY TO THE RESCUE

Christopher had to struggle to enter his trance-state. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling. It was not a relief when the animated suit of armor appeared before him. He had been secretly hoping that leading a rebellion, subverting the Cardinal from his faith, and getting the Saint killed through his stupidity, had finally been enough for Marcius to renounce him.

Instead, the avatar cheerfully complied with his request to replace several of the preservation spells with sendings. Christopher had been planning to use his spells that night, and then immediately replenish them, leaving his hour of prayer to the last possible minute. The flexibility was an underappreciated boon, one of the nonobvious advantages of serving a war god. This knowledge was not comforting, either. It just meant that other priests had other advantages he didn’t know about.

He had been reviving two men every day since his last promotion, so there were only forty dead left. Faren would double that rate, not that it mattered. They didn’t have weeks left. They might not have days.

His first spell went to Vicar Rana of Knockford. Never mind his friends there. His army lived and died by its supplies, and the town was the only source of gunpowder in the world.

“The King charges me with treason. Cardinal Faren and I shall dispute the charges with force. Preserve Fae and the powder mill at all costs.”

Her reply was as flat as a grinding stone, yet no less disquieting for it. “You and your patron have much to answer for. I look forward to my death, so that I might take my complaints directly to him.”

Next was the man most in danger, the Vicar of Samerhaven, whose county lay in the south, bordered by the Gold. The man had a low opinion of Christopher, and at the moment Christopher did not feel he was prepared to argue the point. He stuck to the same text.

The response came quick and sharp. “I will do what is best for my people. If that includes pulling the lever of the trapdoor under your gallows, I will not hesitate.”

Well, at least he didn’t say anything mean.

Much to Christopher’s surprise, the ancient geezer who ran Cannenberry was still alive to take his message. The reply was far gentler, though it included a dismaying coda: “Channel all further contact through my Prelate.”

This exhausted his spells of that rank for the day. Yet the need was great; Disa had given him a scroll of sending that she had been hiding in case of emergencies, issued to her seasons ago by a forward-thinking Cardinal suspicious of Christopher’s ability to stay out of trouble and alive.

Now that they were all in the soup, all of the cards were coming out on the table. Sadly, there were no more. The Cardinal had brought nothing with him. The White Church was not wealthy that way. On the plus side, it meant that the enemy had gained hardly anything by looting the Cathedral.

Reading the scroll into burning

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