Shadow

In which case, why did his mind keep returning to the question, like a child picking at a scab?

It was the fault of these confoundedly slow carthorses, giving him too much leisure to worry away at things he shouldn't even be thinking about. Religion, after all, was something quite specific and concrete as far as he was concerned. Religion was the ultimate grace expressed in the form of the perfect draw, in which there is no delay whatever between the infringement of the circle and the cut; the draw that is no draw, because it's too fast to be perceived with the senses and therefore by any reasonable criteria doesn't exist.

(So too with the gods; the gods are beings so perfect that they can't be perceived with the senses and can therefore only exist inside the grace of impossible perfection; the eye can't see everything at once, the ear can't hear every voice simultaneously, the body can't be everywhere at the same time; accordingly, the all-seeing, all-hearing, omnipresent must be divine, as invisibly real as the city just out of sight over the horizon, or land that can't be seen from the crow's nest; the faster the draw, the nearer to God, and to be impossibly close to God is to be God. Nothing could be more straightforward than that.)

Monach frowned. He'd made that speech to five years' intakes of novices, and it had made sense even to them, implying that it had to be true. Now, though, it made him think about the god in the cart, what he'd heard from Allectus, and the two dead bodies in the wood. What is perfection, he asked himself, but the elimination of everything that isn't the true essence, the fluxing off and purging away of all impurities from the meniscus of the molten metal (metal that's lost its memory in the fire; the divine Poldarn, who doesn't know he's a god)? To become perfect, to become God, you must eliminate thought, fear, memory, anything and everything that lies between the sheathed and the unsheathed sword And instead, here he was out in the world, sitting in a cart behind four of the slowest horses in the empire, on his way to murder a general. Good question: what did all this have to do with religion? Except that instinctive, unthinking obedience is grace, just as much as the instinctive, unthinking draw. The hand doesn't need to know why the enemy has violated the circle, or where the merits of the quarrel lie, and neither does the sword-monk. God draws us, and we cut.

One good thing about these speculations was that they kept his mind occupied all the way to Cric.

At first glance he didn't recognise the place. For one thing it was full of soldiers. There were tents everywhere, and spear stacks and carts and shovels and pickaxes and mattocks leaning against the sides of half-finished trenches. There were portable forges for the farriers and cutlers and armourers; a stack of cordwood taller than any of the houses; rafts of posts, piles and rails from which the carpenters were building a corral for the horses; a big round tent that didn't need a sign or board outside-the smell alone announced that it was the field kitchen. Above all there were men, each of them busy with some task or other. They made the place look like a city. A soldier came up and asked who he was and what he was doing there, but that was all right, because he'd prepared an identity. He told the soldier some name or other, ignored the rest of the question and asked if the general had arrived yet.

'Why do you want to know that?' the soldier asked. He had an accent that Monach couldn't quite place.

'None of your business,' Monach said. 'Is he here or isn't he?'

The soldier shook his head. 'He's expected,' he added. 'Any time now, in fact. What's it to you?'

Monach pulled a face. 'All right,' he said, 'which direction is he coming from? I'd better go out to meet him, this can't wait.'

'Messenger, are you?' Monach didn't answer that. All right, please yourself,' the soldier went on. 'He ought to be coming in up the east road.'

Monach knew that already, of course. Still, it did no harm to verify. 'East road,' he muttered, 'that figures. Right, thank you, I'd better get moving.'

An hour up the road, he was overtaken by a horseman riding dangerously fast on the sloppy, stony road. It turned out to be one of the sword-monks he'd sent after Cronan.

He pulled up and waited for the monk to come back and talk to him. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he asked him.

The monk was grey with exhaustion. 'Came back to find you,' he said. 'Bad information. Cronan wasn't coming this way after all. Wild-goose chase.'

Monach scowled. 'Bloody hell,' he groaned. 'Where did you get that from?'

'Courier,' the monk replied. 'Carrying a letter under Chaplain Cleapho's personal seal, telling Cronan to sit tight at the Faith and Fortitude till he's told otherwise. Here,' he added, pulling a rolled-up page from his pocket; he tried to hand it down and dropped it instead. Monach retrieved it and read it quickly.

'Buggery,' he said. 'That screws up everything. Where did you find this courier, then?'

The monk closed his eyes, struggling to find the words. 'Back along,' he said, 'maybe an hour up the road from here. Courier said he was coming down from Toizen.'

'What? Toizen's on the north coast. What in hell's name is Cleapho doing all the way up there?'

The monk had just enough strength to shrug his shoulders. Monach shook his head. 'I'm not sure about this,' he said. 'Yes, that looks like Cleapho's seal, and I've seen it once or twice before, but it could be a good fake. Then again, why would anybody want to fake a message like that? If Cronan's not at the Faith and Fortitude, he'll know that a letter telling him to stay there must be phoney. I don't get this at all.'

The monk sighed impatiently. 'Well, he's not where you said he'd be. We've been up and down this road, no sign of him. Nobody's seen anything like a troop of cavalry, either. So, that letter may or may not be bad information; what you got from the captain in Shance definitely was. Go figure.'

Monach thought for a moment. 'All right,' he said. 'Where's this courier now?'

'Ah.' The monk grinned. 'That's more a matter of theology than geography.'

'You mean you killed him?'

'Wouldn't hold still,' the monk explained. 'It was that or let him get away.'

Monach shook his head. 'Just for once,' he said, 'wouldn't it be nice if something turned out the way it's supposed to? All right, not your fault. Where are the others?'

'Heading for the Faith and Fortitude,' the monk replied, 'Wherever the hell that might be. Brother Aslem reckoned he knows where it is.'

'Halfway between Josequin and Selce,' Monach said. 'Please, tell me that's where they're headed.'

'I think so. Doesn't mean a lot to me, because I haven't a clue where Selce is, either, but I'm fairly sure that's what Aslem said.'

Monach sighed. 'That's something, I suppose,' he said. 'All right, here's what I want you to do.' He clicked his tongue. 'First,' he said, 'find a tree or a bush or something and rest; I'd say come with me back to the camp at Cric, but I don't think you'll make it that far in the state you're in. When you're feeling better, I want you to head back to Shance, find that little snot of a duty officer and put the fear of the gods into him-tell him he's a traitor, deliberately misleading us, put it on thick as you can, because I need to know where this CO got his false orders from; someone's playing games with someone else, and if we can find out who, we might stand a chance of figuring all this out. When you've done that, get back here to Cric; if I'm not there, you can bet I'll be at the Faith and Fortitude. If I'm not, get yourself back to Deymeson and tell them there's something very screwy going on, and to make ready for an attack, just in case. I don't think either Cronan or Tazencius has tumbled to what we're up to,' he added, as a look of fear crossed the monk's face. 'I certainly can't think of any way they could've found out, and we haven't actually done anything yet, so it couldn't be educated guesswork; still, better safe than sorry, and if all this is deliberately to mislead us, somebody must know what we're up to and they may just possibly consider a direct attack on the order. Not worth the risk. You got that?'