He didn't explain why he had to hobble slowly to the cart, and they didn't ask. Neither did he ask, or they volunteer, how they'd found him. He let one of the brothers drive; he wasn't very good at it, never having had much experience.
The brother found it humiliatingly simple to get out of the wood; he just followed the road, which came out on the top of a ridge. Less than half a mile away was a walled town, coiled round a spur like a length of rope. Shance, presumably.
'So,' the brother said (nobody had said anything since they left the house in the wood), 'what happens here?'
Monach, who'd been half dozing again, sat up sharply. His leg was fine now, but his neck was still painful. 'We need to find a prefect or a duty officer, someone who can tell us where Cronan's going to be coming from.'
'Coming from.' The brother thought for a moment. 'So we know where he's going, then.'
Monach nodded. 'Cric,' he replied. 'Of course, there's every chance he's there already, but it's worth a try. Certainly better than trying to get at him in the middle of a military camp.'
'Agreed,' said another brother in the back of the cart. 'So how do we go about it?'
Of course, Monach hadn't given it any thought. He wasn't inclined to try barging in and beating it out of them, whoever they were. Far better to be subtle, using some persona or other-superior officer, government courier, spy, something from his usual repertoire. He half turned.
'Scout around in the back there,' he said, 'see what you can find in the way of clothes and stuff. We've got to pretend we're staff officers or messengers or imperial agents, something like that, and right now we're unmistakably scruffy monks.'
A little later, the brother reported back. 'There's clothes in here all right,' he said, 'but I don't think they'll really be all that suitable for what you've got in mind. This stuff is weird.'
He held a sample up for Monach to see: a black velvet robe embroidered with glass thread, further decorated with paste gemstones and sequins forming mystic-looking symbols. 'Bloody hell,' Monach sighed, remembering who the cart had formerly belonged to. 'That's no use, then, unless one of you jokers feels up to impersonating a god.'
The monk frowned. 'Do gods wear this sort of thing, then?' he asked. 'I'd have credited them with better taste, personally.'
Monach laughed. 'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'Not any gods I've ever come across, anyway. Well, if we can't be gods, we'll just have to be spies. All comes down to the same thing in the long run.'
The sword-monks looked at each other but didn't say anything, and the cart rolled up to the town gate. A bored-looking halberdier waved them through-just as well, Monach realised; his imagination wasn't up to the task of concocting a plausible explanation for a cartload of illegal divine vestments.
At least finding the prefecture wasn't a problem. It was where it ought to be, in the old, thick-walled tower overlooking the road, at the weakest point in the town's natural defences. A clerk told them the prefect wasn't there; he was out with the garrison on exercises, and hadn't said when he was likely to be back. No, he couldn't see the duty officer, the duty officer was a busy man… Monach handed him the pass, signed by Father Abbot and wearing the Great Seal of the order. Suddenly, the duty officer's schedule turned out to be far less hectic than the clerk had first believed.
'I'm sorry,' the duty officer said, plainly terrified at the thought of four sword-monks in the same town as himself, let alone the same small half-circular room at the top of the tower. 'I really wish I could help, but I can't, I've got specific orders not to release the general's itinerary to anybody without-'
'You idiot,' Monach growled. 'How many times have I got to explain this before it seeps through the cracks in your brain? They're going to kill the general. They're going to ambush him somewhere on the road, cut his head off and take it to Feron Amathy in a jar of spiced honey, unless you stop fooling around and tell me which road he's going by, so we can get to him, warn him and fight off this ambush. Do you understand? If you don't give me that itinerary, the general is going to die, and it'll all be your fault.'
The duty officer looked as if the whole town had just been buried by a landslide and he was the sole survivor, the man who'd set it all off by throwing a pebble at the side of the cliff face. 'Well, I suppose it'll be all right,' he said at last, 'since you're religious, after all; I mean, if you can't trust a priest, it'd be a pretty poor show.' He pulled a brass tube out of the jumble on his desk and fished out a roll of thin, crisp paper. 'All right,' he said. 'I don't know much, no reason anybody should tell me, after all, but before he left the prefect got this.' He unrolled the paper, which proved to be a map. 'He had orders from Cronan to meet him with the garrison at this village here, Cric. The orders said that Cronan would be coming up the north-west road from Lesar's Bridge-that's down here, see, that squiggle; you can just make it out if you look closely. And here's the road-well, it isn't actually marked on this map, but it follows the line of this little river here; if you find the river, you'll find the road.' An unpleasant thought struck him, and his face changed. 'What if you're too late and they've already ambushed him? God, that'd be terrible.'
Monach requisitioned the map, together with another one that had rather more places and things marked on it, and left the tower as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. 'Right,' he said, as they clambered back into the cart, 'here's what we'll do. You four, find whatever passes for a horsefair in this town, get yourselves four horses and cut up across the top here.' He prodded the map. 'If you get a move on and don't stop to admire the scenery, you might just catch up with him. I'll head for Cric and see what's happening there. If he's already arrived, of course-well, we'll skin that goat when we get to it.'
The monks nodded agreement. 'Just one thing,' one of them asked. 'Can you give us a few more details? I mean, all we really know about what's involved is what you told the man back there; someone's going to try and kill General Cronan, we've got to stop them-'
'What?' Monach looked up. 'No, you've got that completely wrong. Didn't anybody tell you?'
The monk looked puzzled. 'We assumed-'
'Don't. Our orders are to kill General Cronan. Got that?'
There was a moment of complete silence. 'Understood,' the monk said. 'Any other considerations?'
'You aren't monks, you don't belong to the order, you've probably never even heard of the order. Try not to get captured or killed if you can avoid it. That's it.'
'Understood,' the monk repeated, and it was as if his former impression, his misunderstanding of the object of the mission, had never existed. 'We'll need some money for the horses.'
Monach searched in his sleeve and took out a small cloth bag. 'Twenty gross-quarters,' he said. 'While you're at it-this is a long shot, so don't waste too much time on it-see if you can lay your hands on at least one raider backsabre. You see them in markets sometimes. If you can get one, use it for the kill. A little confusion never hurt anybody.' He looked at each of the monks in turn. 'Does anybody have a problem with any of that?' he asked.
'Not really,' replied one of the monks, a newly ordained brother tutor. 'It's just that I can't help wondering what all this has got to do with religion.'
Of course, Monach knew the answer to that, and recited it to himself several times as he drove the cart north towards Cric. In its simplest form:
1. The order is the world's most important centre for the preservation, study, teaching and development of doctrine; therefore 2. The survival of the order is essential to religion; therefore 3. Any steps taken to preserve, protect or strengthen the order are by definition beneficial to the order and acts of grace.
Simple. Even second-year novices could grasp the logic. As for 'steps taken to preserve, protect or strengthen', the only definition of the phrase that a brother tutor needed to know was 'whatever a superior officer tells you to do', the argument being that if the superior cleric was in error and the mission turns out not to qualify as an act of grace, the brother carrying out his instructions nevertheless enjoys as much grace and absolution as if the mission had been legitimate. Without a provision like that, the work of the order simply couldn't get done; you'd have brothers and brother tutors and canons and possibly even novices questioning every instruction they were given, from kill the general down to it's your turn to bale out the latrines on the grounds of imperfect doctrine and heresy. Religion in the empire would collapse inside a year.