Draka reached the camp at the edge of Talkro just before the sun had fully set beyond it. Torch lights were lit all throughout the camp and the ruins of the village. There were a few small campfires near the long tents with soldiers sitting around them on small logs with their pikes and spears beside them. Soldiers walked along their wall of tipped pikes with torches and tipped their helmets at him as he passed.
Vigora had slowed to a trot once they crossed through the opening in the barricade through their wall, her head lifted but her ears still laying forward with alertness. She, like him, was tense.
He slid from the saddle once he reached the only round tent of the camp, set a few paces from the administrator’s building, and rubbed her neck and cheek. Hopefully, she would calm a bit. It was bad enough that he was on the edge between rage and panic, he never likes when she feels the same. Until he got reinforcements—real reinforcements and not men susceptible to the Enemy—there was only one thing to do. Hold back the corruption and wait. And for that, he needed to speak with Gerard.
The two pikemen guarding the entrance to the round tent straightened as he approached. One nodded at him and brushed open the flap.
“If we put the fishery there, it would make that prick fur trader have control of their only trade. He’s emboldened enough, I think,” Draka entered to find Gerard and five others standing around a map spread across a wooden table with lit candles on small saucers at its corners. One of the others was moving a coin across the map from Balthazar’s house to the edge of a crudely drawn circle Draka assumed was the lake.
The chairs around the table were all in disarray, facing this way and that. Gerard’s cot and a foot chest were at the far end of the tent with his armor draped over a stand beside it. There were stacks of rolled scrolls to one side of the map. The dirt road the tent had been raised over was covered in a dozen carpets of varying sizes from one end to the other. Lamps hung from the five posts encircling them with tiny flames inside.
“You’re certainly right, but it would lessen the materials needed,” Gerard rubbed his chin. His eyes shifted to Draka as he came to the table. “Ah, Draka. Since it is your trees we are clearing, where would you want the fishery? If we put it here, at the Villiers house, we need only build half of it and can have it reinforced with the remaining brick foundations. But it is Villiers’s land, which would grant him a portion of their profits. And, he is the local fur trader.”
Draka tried not to show his disdain at the memory of Balthazar discarding his pelts as if they were dirt. He pointed to where the lake met the stream on the northern edge. It was a little closer to the stream than where the other one had put the coin.
“That’s a good spot,” the man moved his coin. “We can dam a portion for a fishpond to breed them there and still allow the stream to flow around. Good eye.”
Draka set his empty vial on the map to catch Gerard’s eye. The fishery was not the reason he came.
Gerard sighed and straightened. “We’ll begin tomorrow.”
The five filtered out, one after another. Gerard frowned with concern at the empty vial. “How bad is it?” He asked as he slid a parchment and pencil to Draka.
‘We have time. Less, if you have none to spare.’ Draka wrote.
“I don’t have much. I didn’t think this would be something I’d have to deal with when I left the Holy Lands.”
‘I need all you have left. Paper, ink, quill. Do you know where their altar is?’
“Of course, of course,” Gerard was already digging through his chest at the end of his cot. “I’ll have a table and chairs brought to you. Their altars? We’ve been trying to find them all week. Ah, here we are,” he lifted a similar vial, barely a quarter full and handed it to Draka with furrowed brows.
Draka held it up with a nod of, ‘that’ll do for now.’
“No matter how close we try to follow, they always come out from their sacrifices before we can find them. And with the flood, they’re making a lot of sacrifices. Fruits, some meats. That prick Balthazar is making more than our wages and I suspect he’s poaching over his permit limits to do so. They go somewhere along this ridge within your forest. Thankfully on this side of the stream and not yours.” As Draka tucked the vial into the pouch opposite his sword on his belt, Gerard regarded him, “Anything I should know?”
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Draka wrote, ‘Keep guards with the cutters. Evade, don’t attack or hunt. Revoke his permit. I need to find the altar.’
“There’s bound to be more than one. You’ve been dealing with Satan-worshipers for too long. Pagan’s have family gods along with the village ones. I’d imagine there’s at least seven smaller ones and one big one. Trying to figure out where, but it’s like they’re purposely hiding them from us no matter how hard we try to keep them from knowing we’re following.”
‘It’s strong, but not strong enough to venture far from the taint. Need to stop it from getting stronger. I need your three fastest horsemen tomorrow at midday to ride post.’
“Shall I ready a detachment, then. I do have twenty Monastic Knights that could at least give you some fodder to cushion the beast for you.”
Draka shook his head. ‘They’ll only fall to its corruption. Keep them guarding the people. The Talkrois are not our enemies. They do not know what their sacrificing and prayers do. Protect them.’
“Maybe they should know, then, Draka. Put a stop to it for good,” Gerard slammed a fist into his hand.
Draka narrowed his eyes at him with a shake of his head. He wrote, ‘Convert with love, not hate. When they are ready, all will be revealed. Until then, you have your Holy orders.’
“Of course,” Gerard drew in a worried breath. “So, the Abbey wasn’t abandoned.”
Draka felt a chill as he shook his head.
“Bloody hells,” Gerard let it out and stiffened his back. “I’ll come with you.”
Draka grinned warmly with another shake of his head. ‘Better I handle this on my own. Until I’m done, none approach or follow. I can’t protect them and do what must be done.’
“As you command.”
Draka walked out of the tent with quickness in his step. He went to his saddle and lifted his quiver of barbed arrows and bow, just in case the boar wasn’t the only creature that the Enemy had scouting the area. A click of his teeth told Vigora to rush back to his house. Even she can’t be with him.
She lay her chin on his shoulder and nudged him to come with her. He only rubbed her and pointed with another click. Hesitantly, she turned from him and was soon galloping down the road and across the pontoon bridge toward the house. He drew his sword as he stepped through the barricade and into the woods on the northern side of the village, where Gerard had pointed on the map.
With each sacrifice, the corruption was able to spread. Their prayers made the creature able to move freely in their world, bit by bit. Thank the Lord they didn’t have any livestock here. Their sacrifices of crops and random trappings were weak enough that it will take time for it to be strong enough to begin attacking. But Gerard was right. With the flood, they were going to make their offers more often and as large as they could muster. He had to find those altars tonight.
He called on the True Sight as he ventured between the trees. There was no corruption in the trees on this side of the stream. After riding around the entire area surrounding the Abbey, he knew that it was centered on it, pushing out far enough from its walls that he had yet to lay eyes on it. But it had not reached the stream or the Zorn River to the north, which meant they weren’t eating tainted food…yet.
Draka began looking to the ground, searching for worn paths and footprints. It didn’t take long for him to find one with collages of prints from the villagers. He followed, watching where they led with the sight the Lord gave him. The Enemy was clever in hiding their altars from the Monastics, but he could never hide them from Draka. Sure enough, he saw the dim glow of the crimson corruption ahead of him.
The altar was a thick stone slab table being held by a decoratively carved back, like a desk with a mirror, but instead of a mirror, it was carved stone a bit taller than him. Across the slab were the remnants of their offerings; bundles of leafy greens here, plates of meat brimming with blood that dripped down the edges there, flowers, and filled goblets that wafted of alcohol and blood. The stone back was etched with carvings of a crude forest and its creatures—foxes, stags, boars, and wolves—climbing decorative knotwork that arched from one end of the stone slab to the other. In the center of the knotted arch was the carved image of a near naked man wearing a crown of spiked antlers and many arms reaching outward as if to embrace whoever stood in front of it.
I hope that it doesn’t have that many arms, Draka thought as he pulled the cork from Gerard’s vial with his teeth. In his other hand, his grip on his sword tightened in preparation.
