They followed them back to the Great Hall. On the way, they passed the king's personal doctor, who took care of the knight's pulse. It could have been much worse, the doctor observed as he applied an ointment to the wound and protected it with a bandage; there was a man who had lost his hand to that beast in the same way and another who did not even return from the visit. Dungeon trips were strictly controlled, and none were made without the king's permission.
When they reached the Great Hall, John had heard the whole story. How Dexter will discover the arcane scrolls and planned to use them as a way to strengthen Auriana against future Danish threats without risking English lives. How promising the plan sounded at the time. How Dexter was allowed to conduct the experiments in hopes of perfecting a way to control the transformations and the abominable creatures that resulted from them. How Joshua will perceive Dexter's sick obsession and finally end the whole enterprise. And how Dexter, using the obscure skills he mastered, transformed the detached guards to imprison him into monsters who aided his escape from the tower.
John's head hovered away after Joshua finished telling the story. He sat in silence, sitting at the heavy oak table in the center of the room, and looked into the distance, his mind trying to reconcile all that. He had been created to believe in the existence of things that went beyond understanding, invisible forces and much greater than he. But seeing these things with your own eyes was quite different. No known scientific or natural phenomenon could explain what he had witnessed in that dungeon or the story that the king told him afterwards. And he agreed with Joshua - no God he was faithful to would create something so devilish, so disturbing, so tremendously distorted. Something so ... hellish
"This is Chisaki," announced Joshua, pulling John out of his thoughts. John got up to greet the man as usual, he didn't know where to look when the king's advisor bowed to him. Chisaki was a thick-necked, bald, stocky man, of ordinary appearance, except for the scar that ran diagonally across his face just below his left eye, passing through the top of his nose and on both sides, ending just below the right side of his chin. , John had seen a lot of war wounds to recognize one, probably done with a long Danes sword years ago. Although the scar was disturbing to many, John was reassured by it. He gave more importance to the words of men who learned the price of war in the first place. They tended to speak the truth more directly.
"It is a great honor, Sir John," said Chisaki when he bowed. "The king has delighted me with stories of his heroism many times."
"There is a fine line between heroism and obligation," said John. "I prefer to think of my actions as the latter."
"Chisaki is my oldest military advisor and chief spy," said Joshua. "Few things happen in the kingdom without his knowledge. He has been struggling to find Dexter's whereabouts since his escape. Chisaki?"
Chisaki unrolled a map of downtown Auriana on the table, placing chalices and candlesticks in the corners to keep it in place.
The map was all adorned with Chisaki's handwritten notes
While studying it, John was immediately taken back to the Danish war. He always stayed in Joshua's tent with the king and his war council, studying campaign maps and discussing strategies. The oldest of Joshua's advisers was furious that an ordinary soldier had been invited to a high-level meeting, but the king, having met John after Ethandun. He insisted on that. 'All these nobles and knights tell me only and that they think I want to hear,' he had confided to young John. 'Your desire to win my acceptance for agreeing with me all the time will still kill us all. I need men with the courage to disagree with me when I'm wrong. '
And so John did as he was asked and spoke the truth when he saw her. Joshua's noble advisers had no choice but to tolerate his presence, restricting their objections to stealthy glances between them, especially when the king preferred to accept John's advice.
"Dexter left here with six of our men that he perverted his will," said Chisaki, pointing to Wythchester on the map. "Twenty days ago. Since then, we have received several reports of disturbances across northeastern Theliwyth. Ordinary people fleeing their homes, claiming that they were attacked by angry beasts like no one has seen before. With each new report, the number of beasts increases. I believe Dexter is making his way to the Danelaw border, increasing his army with each new city and village he enslaves on his route. "
To John, everything still seemed unbelievable. He had faced dozens of military instructions, and yet nothing like that. It was more like something out of a nightmare, or a ghost story told around the campfire by travelers to scare each other.
It couldn't be real, and yet he couldn't deny what will come with his eyes. It took a while for his mind, still spinning at full speed, to concentrate and find his first question.
"How big is that army according to the most recent report"
"The villagers we spoke to are not very reliable, replied Chisaki. Many are in shock, babbling. But the most coherent among them said he counted close to a hundred."
John stopped for a moment to think, 'A hundred of those things ... that thing he had seen in Joshua's dungeon? The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
"Where is him now?"
The last known whereabouts occurred here, "replied Chisaki, pointing to a small town almost a hundred kilometers from the border where Theliwyth ended and Danelaw began." At this rate, you may reach the Danes' border at the end of the month. "
"And what is his intention when he gets there?" Asked John.
"First he presented this bestial force as a way to deter another harmful invasion," said Chisaki. "But now ... I hesitate to try to predict the actions of such a clearly insane man, but I believe he intends to launch some kind of early attack on their territory."
"If you really want to attack the Danes on your own soil with such little force, I suspect the problem will be resolved soon," suggested John.
"They may not look like many," said Joshua, "but, considering our experience, only one of these beasts is capable of taking down a dozen armed men. Who knows how many more Dexter will have acquired by the time he reaches Danelaw? With the power he employs, your enemies will not fall on the battlefield ... but they will become your allies. Soon the Danes could turn against themselves. "
There was silence for a moment in the Great Hall. Joshua waited while the full implication of the situation entered his mind. John had become a war expert, in theory and in practice, but this was no longer a war as he understood it. The rules had changed. The old way, the way it had been for thousands of years, both sides lost men in battle. However, under Dexter's new rules, the victor brought the loser into his ranks and grew more powerful with each achievement. It was a terrifying idea, strategically and in other ways that disturbed John even more deeply.
It was Chisaki who broke the silence.
"Our concern is not with a war between the Danes and Dexter's army, if we can call it that. And that any kind of attack from within Theliwyth is seen as carried out in the name of the king. If Dexter breaks the agreement and attacks Danelaw, it will set fire to an already precarious situation and perhaps lead to a counter-invasion. "
"And another total war," noted John.
It was a strange thing, he thought, to be considering ways to prevent an attack against the Norse, after all the times he had helped to plot offensives. He had no love for the Danes, after all they had done with him and those he loved, but feimo simply couldn't afford to go into another war.
"My advice is simple," he said. "Dispatch the full strength of our armies to intercept Dexter before he reaches Danelaw, Smash him quickly, with devastating force, and end the matter for good."
"If it were that easy," replied Joshua with a deep sigh, looking at Chisaki.
"Our forces are spread across the kingdom," said Chisaki. pointing to various annotations on your map, indicating the layout of infantry camps and other military groups. "Even at our best speed, they have little chance of gathering enough strength to destroy Dexter before he reached Danelaw. And even if it were possible, compromising such a force would leave the rest of Theliwyth with weakened defenses, should the Norse. take the opportunity to attack from anywhere along the border. No, our best chance, we believe, would be to take him by surprise, using a small, fast and mobile force, one specially formed for this mission. "
John scratched his head, confused. "If Dexter's strength is equal to more than a thousand men, what chance would a small contingent have against him? It is more likely that we are sending only more men to enslave him."
For the first time, Joshua allowed himself a smile. John knew it well, the mischievous look the king used when he had a brilliant scheme.
"Dexter is not the only one with magic tricks up his sleeve," he said. "Come with me to the chapel. Thank you, Chisaki."
The priest walked back and forth in front of the stone altar in the Wythchester chapel. He had been warned to await the presence of the king, and by then he had been waiting for over an hour. Still, it was not the wait that bothered him, but the concern about what would be asked of him when the king finally arrived. He had been practicing all hours of the day and night and was sure that he had mastered what was asked of him. But he also knew, more than most, what was at stake - and the price of failure, both for him and for the men who would leave life in their hands.
A small mistake, a badly pronounced syllable or a moment of hesitation would trigger disaster.
Irony did not escape him. By nature, it was not cut out for martial professions; they entered the priesthood largely because it was a path of peace. But that peace had twisted in an unforeseen way and will take you exactly to what you hoped to avoid - a war, not any war, but one fought with weapons more horrendous than anything ever conceived by man. A shiver ran through his body only partly because it was cold in the small stone chamber.
He heard the chapel door open behind him and turned to see King Joshua entering with a person he did not recognize. In the young priest's eyes he looked like a commoner, but the man's sharp gaze suggested that he was some kind of soldier of great importance. The priest swallowed and corrected his posture when they approached.
"Your Majesty," he said, making a great bow to the king.
"Harley, this is Sir John," said Joshua. The priest's eyes widened a little; he might not have recognized the grimy-looking man beside the king, but he certainly knew the name. It wasn't just one living legend, but two. He looked at John and tried to conjecture something to say, but he couldn't think of anything that wouldn't make him look like a complete idiot.
Joshua felt the priest's embarrassment; he had gotten used to it and knew it was more pious to get right to the point.
"Harley was one of Dexter's assistant clerics in Greenland," he explained to John. "He has a keen aptitude for languages, so the archbishop appointed him to work on interpreting the scrolls. He was the first to successfully decipher what confused many more experienced scholars."
"If I had known what was in them, I would never have consented." Harley was quick to clarify. He had seen what the archbishop had forged in the courtyard at Wythchester from the words he will help to decode, and the guilt weighed like a burden. He felt responsible for all the deformed monstrosities that the archbishop had created and he just wanted an opportunity to fix things.
"I didn't say that to blame you," said Joshua, placing a reassuring hand on the cleric's shoulder. "That should be attributed only to Dexter. I meant that you are among the brightest in Greenland. And perhaps you are our brightest hope."
Harley felt for a moment elated by the praise, only to become even more nervous when the king's words had reminded him of the responsibility that now also weighed on him. He put his hand on the back of his neck and rubbed it nervously.
John did not know what to make of the impoverished and restless little man who stood before him. Little more than a boy, actually. He saw many like him during the war, pressured to enlist, despite protests and tears. Most of them did not survive long. But behind all the shyness and instability, John recognized a spark in the boy's eyes - a keen intellectual curiosity he remembered burning inside himself as a young man, before the war made him a luxury to be had. left out.
In a way, he envied Harley. Before the Nordics arrived, he himself dreamed of entering the priesthood and devoting himself to a life of silent study. 'In the next life,' he said to himself.
"Did you come with Dexter to Wythchester?" He asked Harley.
Harley acquiesced. "I was one of many that he brought from Greenland to help him with his…" He hesitated, looking for the right word. "Your ... experiments. I didn't dare to refuse, but to pretend an illness contracted on the journey so that I could be as little available as I could. Many of us were not comfortable with what the archbishop was doing. Few of us had the courage to refute it. or question him. "
"What happened to the other clergy when he escaped?"
"One tried to stop him. It was transmuted, God help him. The others fled shortly afterwards for fear of being punished for complicity in the archbishop's crimes."
"But you do not."
"I have no family, no resources, nowhere to go. I cannot return to Greenland. And even if I could, I would not return. I vowed to help in some way to undo what I helped to create, and I have already told His Majesty this."
John smiled; I was starting to like that man. Nervous conduct like Harley's can almost always be mistaken for lack of marrow, but the more John examined him, the more convinced he was that Harley was not a coward. From his own experience, acquired with difficulty, he knew that true courage was not the absence of fear, but doing what needed to be done in his often paralyzing presence.
"In studying the scrolls, Harley discovered that there was more than just words of transformation," explained Joshua. He looked at Harley. Still hampered by nervousness, it took a moment for the cleric to realize that the king expected him to continue the story.
"Ah! Yes. The scrolls also contained detailed descriptions of several other very interesting invocations, some of which I believe were created to contain the transforming effect, simplifying, I think it may be possible to bless an object, such as a set of armor, with a sign of protection that would dispel any magic directed at him. "
John looked at Joshua in bewilderment. "I thought I had ordered the destruction of these scrolls."
"I've been working on a lot of memory," explained Harley. "Mine is quite good."
"Does Dexter know about this?" Asked John.
"No. By the time I deciphered these counter-spells, I had already realized what the archbishop was doing, and I decided it was best not to pass on more knowledge to him. When he asked me, I replied that the rest of the scrolls were beyond my ability. to translate. "
John was impressed. That young priest could be anxious and clumsy, with a survival probably measured in seconds as soon as he entered the battlefield, but John's father will teach him to value the intelligence and insight of the mind more than any other quality, and he was almost getting Of course, Harley owed nothing on any of the questions. Still, it was hard not to experience extreme unease when considering the strategy that Joshua had so confidently proposed. Reis, John considered, were always more bloody with their war strategies than the men in charge of leading them on the battlefield. He gave Joshua a skeptical look, as few at court would dare to try.
"Is that your plan? Magic armor"
"At this point, I'm sure you agree that Dexter's magic is not fantasy," said Joshua. "If the arcane arts with which he conjured these monsters cannot be doubted, why shouldn't we have the same confidence in other spells collected from the same scrolls?"
"I look at it as if I look at any other weapon of war." said John. "I will believe in its usefulness once it has been proven in the field. How exactly do you propose to test it?"
"I thought we could put the armor on you and send you over to Dexter," said Joshua with a sly smile.
John turned to the cleric again. "Does your knowledge extend to anything that we could use offensively against Dexter and his horde?"
Harley looked taken aback.
"Sorry, my lord ... like what?"
John looked at him angrily. "I don't know! A rain of fire? Enchanted arrows? Tell me, you are the expert!"
Harley looked down, ashamed. "No, my lord. None of that, I fear."
"So you can protect me against these spellcaster spells, but not against the beasts he creates."
"For that, my friend, you will have to rely on your sword and your reflexes, as always," said Joshua, with a smile that he hoped could instill some encouragement. What did not happen.
John sighed heavily. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that there was no escape from this risky mission - not just because of the debt he felt he owed to Joshua, but why, against what else should I see about Dexter's witchcraft, but genuinely feared the chaos and destruction that it would cause. You could refuse and go home, but then when would it be long before the war or something even more terrible arrived in your village, threatening your wife and child?
No, that crazy priest needed to be stopped. And if he didn't, who else would?
"I want to choose the men myself that I will take with me," he said to Joshua in the bored tone of reluctant acceptance.
"Sure," said the king, trying not to show his relief. Harley was still there, rubbing his hands in silence.
John looked at him, now with a shake of his head.
"Starting with him."
Harley's eyes widened in alarm.
"Sorry ... how?"
"If this campaign is to be successful, my men and I will depend a lot on your knowledge. Your unique knowledge."
"Yes, yes, of course," stammered Harley, with the start of what looked like a very panic. "But I can carry out my activities here, enchant any armor you require before leaving with your men. Anything ..."
"It won't be enough," interrupted John with a wave. "This magic of yours is not proven. We may need your expertise to maintain or adapt it. And I am almost certain that we will find situations that will require some improvisation. You will be better served by us on the field."
Harley could hear his own heart pounding in his ears like a drum, and darkness seemed to creep in from his peripheral vision. The knees felt soft. The stomach, contracted. His mouth was suddenly so dry that he could barely speak, but his keen sense of self-preservation somehow pushed the words out.
"My lord," he said sweetly, his voice trembling. "With all due respect, I am a scholar, not a soldier."