John was still pondering when Andrew looked at him, one eyebrow raised, waiting for the answer to his question.
"That's why we're here, isn't it? To attack?"
John looked across the plain to the pinnacles of Greenland, covered by the morning mist.
"We will attack when I have a better idea of what awaits us inside, not before that," replied John.
"We know what awaits us inside. Dexter and at most a dozen of those hells dogs ... much less than we already got rid of. Why wait?"
They were continually watching the route that Dexter had taken to return to Greenland as they went on, writing down any settlements or towns where he might have collected reinforcements. As far as they could discern, he had not passed through any village, opting for the most direct route - that is, he could only have recruited individuals or small groups he encountered along the way. Perhaps he had already transformed Greenland's servants and other employees, but even so the numbers could not grow more than Andrew's estimate. The sorcerer was trapped and under siege, his forces drained, his magic useless. It was ready to be exterminated. Unless ... The word eroded John like the burning "bracelet" around his wrist.
"He's been there for three days," he observed, nodding at the mist-covered cathedral in the distance. "Doing what, only God knows. Perhaps refining the magic to attack the protections in our armor. Perhaps training the remaining forces to better endure the battle, fight more fervently. Perhaps something we don't even consider. I don't like that."
"What evidence suggests any of these situations?" Asked Andrew.
"None," admitted John. "Just a bad feeling. Like the one I had before Chippenham. Remember?"
"Humpf," growled Andrew, looking at the horizon. The two men had many differences in warlike matters, from infantry strategies to the best way to silence a man's throat, and they almost always debated until late at night, but Andrew had to admit that when it came to bad omens before a battle, John's instinct was almost never wrong. He sighed. "John, the only way to find out what's waiting for us inside is to go ahead and find out."
John let the disturbing flower fall from his fingers and stood up, turning to look at his men, gathered just behind him.
"Maybe not," he said. "Bring me Harley."
Andrew passed the order on to a messenger, and a few minutes later they saw the little cleric running across the field where his commander was, huffing as he ran, smoking his mouth in the morning mist.
"It is really surprising that the boy is still alive," said Andrew, amused, as he watched Harley's clumsy walk, his scruffy tunic hanging from his thin body as if hanging from a sloppy chair.
"This boy is the reason we are still alive," said the knight.
Harley earned his respect during the campaign. As tense and fragile as he might have seemed at first, he proved that he was not a coward. In Aylesbury, Harley insisted on staying with the men until the last minute to ensure that each of them had a recent blessing on their armor, as well as on their mounts, before they entered the skirmish, should the spell's protective power - at that moment, still without known quantity - decrease over time. In doing so, he ventured closer to Dexter's horde than he ever imagined himself capable of. Only later, after the battle was over, did he realize that he had forgotten to make a protective blessing on his own robes and became vulnerable to one of Dexter's curses. It was only by chance that he would not become a target and had become some hideous beast that his comrades would be forced to overthrow.
Harley spent most of the night throwing up, but so far his actions on the field had earned John's esteem and, by extension, everyone else's admiration. Harley also proved to be valuable as a curator and archivist of the various forms of deformation that Dexter will learn to conjure. Many of the beasts had dispersed in all directions after the battle at Aylesbury, and were now scattered across the kingdom, living and lurking in the shadows, without a master, savages.
They had become the basis for a new folklore that quickly spread throughout the southern Auriana: terrifying stories told around campfires and to uneasy children about dark, malevolent and misshapen horrors pursued their prey - animals and humans - at night, taking anything or anyone they could find, dragging their prey, screaming, to feed on it in the darkness.
John's men encountered several of these fierce types during the pursuit of Dexter after Aylesbury, and after each death Harley strove to catalog them in his bestiary, kept carefully in a leather-bound volume. He made detailed drawings of each species they encountered, noting their behavioral characteristics, speed, strength, intelligence and preferred method of attack, making the next encounter with a beast of the same type much faster and less likely to result in fatalities.
Harley's work was as exhausting and scholarly as its practical application was useful, and even John admitted to being darkly fascinated. It took him back to childhood, when his father taught him to study and identify the various forms of insects. There, the insects were twice the size of a man and could kill him from twenty meters away, but the principle was the same.
Harley arrived red-faced and breathless. He tried to speak, but he was too breathless for the words to come out.
"Breathe, boy!" Shouted Andrew. "On your knees, if you need to."
Harley waited a bit to regain his composure and take a breath. "Sorry. Sir John, do you need me?"
"A few nights ago you told me about another enchantment in Dexter's scrolls that you started translating before he escaped," said John.
It took Harley a moment to remember the conversation. "Ah! Do you say the projection?"
"This can be done?"
Harley hesitated. "I'm not sure. My translation was incomplete, and…"
"But from what it was translated, you remember precisely." By this point, John knew that Harley's claim of perfect memory was not unfounded.
Harley nodded.
"Excuse me," interrupted Andrew, "but what are we talking about here?"
"By my understanding of the scrolls, projection allows a person to see what is anywhere," said Harley. "The spell describes the use of a reflecting medium, such as polished metal or a lake of calm water, to project the image of a place, exactly as it is at that moment, like a window into a distant place. I did my studies on the issue, and I believe it is possible to go further, to actually launch an immaterial projection of someone in that place and to explore it remotely, as if the person were there. "
"And can you do that?" Asked John, puzzled.
"In theory, yes," said Harley. "But in matters of magic there is always an abyss between theory and practice."
"I need you to try," said John. "I need to know what's lurking inside the cathedral before I commit my men. That knowledge could be the difference between victory and defeat, or at the very least determine how many of us will see the end of the day. Do you understand?"
Harley was silent, as if the weight of what John was asking for started to make sense. He began to imagine what could have convinced him to get into this situation. He felt his stomach begin to turn until it formed a knot.
"Got it," he said at last, as calmly as he could muster. "I will… I will try."
"Great," said John, keeping a hopeful look on Harley.
It took a while for the young cleric to understand. "Ah! Do you say… now?"
"Preferably," said John, with a slight smile. Harley went a little paler.
"I ... I'm going to need a reflective surface," said the young man. "Something with glass or ..."
Harley flinched when John drew his broadsword, the flat part of the blade gleaming in the sunlight that was beginning to pass over the gray, overcast sky.
Is it enough?
Harley looked at the sword and saw his own reflected face. John was proud of the meticulous maintenance of his weapons and armor; the blade, so exquisitely polished, was almost a mirror.
"I think so," said Harley. "I can...?"
John offered him the sword. Harley almost fell forward when he wielded it - it was much heavier than he imagined. 'How does he carry that damn thing around,' he thought to himself as he struggled to hold it, 'and still strikes with it in fury?'
John and Andrew took a step back and watched Harley with great curiosity as he left the sword on the floor and sat cross-legged in front of her. He touched his fingertips to the blade, careful not to touch the edge - John knew it was as sharp as it was brilliant - then closed his eyes and began to mumble the spell. To John and Andrew, it did not seem different from the words they heard him use many times before blessing the armor protections; it was the same arcane language, unintelligible.
For several minutes, they watched him recite the same phrases over and over, seeming to have no effect, until Andrew became impatient. He leaned over to John and whispered, "How long will it take us to know if this is going to ..."
Then he stopped. He saw an incredible thing, even after everything that will come in the last few months. Harley somehow seemed to shine, to remain for a moment translucent, like a muslin, as if it were no longer complete, before returning to a full bodily state. The two horsemen stared at him with wide eyes.
"You ..." began Andrew.
"Yes I see..."
"What was that?"
"I'm afraid I can't answer it"
Harley had stopped reciting the words; he seemed to be in some sort of trance. Without moving, like a statue. John found it disconcerting. The only time he had seen such immobility was in dead men. He watched Harley closely, looking for any sign that he was actually still alive. At first, he couldn't detect any sign, then he saw that the young priest was breathing, but slowly and so superficially that he hardly seemed to be. Still, the knight did not like that situation.
Since I didn't know how it was supposed to work, I had no way of knowing if something was wrong.
"Harley?" No reaction.
"Harley!" Louder this time. Still, no reaction. John leaned over to Harley to shake him up with a shake when the boy's eyes suddenly opened. But Harley was not looking at John, Andrew or anything in the field of vision that they could identify. The body was still there, but he seemed to be seeing something completely different, something beyond perception. And finally, he spoke, his voice low and measured.
"I'm there." For an hour, they watched Harley sitting motionless, except for occasional cringes or tremors, like someone in the middle of a powerful, lived dream ... Or a nightmare, John thought to himself. And yet, Harley's eyes remained open all the time, not blinking, staring into that distant place. Sometimes it flickered, as before, and was transparent for a few moments, as if it were more in the other place than there, in front of them.
"Something's wrong," said Andrew with growing concern. "We need to wake him up now."
"Not yet," said John. He still didn't understand how this magic worked, but he knew enough to suspect that disturbing Harley in his state could either get him stuck in that other place or bring him back.
Everything changed when Harley's buildings and turns suddenly increased - strange spasms at first; then violent convulsions. John's eyes widened in fright when Harley threw his head from side to side, as if walking away with sudden terror. He screamed, kicked, as if trying to get away, but his feet were not supported, the grass beneath them still damp with morning dew. And yet, while the lower part of the body resisted, the fingertips remained firmly on the mirrored blade of John's sword, immobile, as if that half of the body was paralyzed by its connection with it.
"Okay, that's enough," said John when Harley continued to squirm and kick. Andrew grabbed the boy while John went to separate him from the sword. It took all of Andrew's strength to hold Harley just long enough for John to drop his sword, but when John touched it, the world around him darkened. He was no longer in a sunny pasture, but surrounded by damp walls illuminated by flickering torchlight, a narrow corridor that stretched in shadow and gloom. It was difficult to see; his vision was somewhat distorted in that place, its surroundings indistinct and disorienting, as if looking through thick glass. He was able to see clearly only what lay ahead, while everything on the periphery of the vision was falling apart in a blur.
He heard a low growl behind him and turned around - slowly, because moving in that place was difficult, like moving into a dream. It took a while for his vision to orient itself and focus on what it was seeing: one of Dexter's horrors, unlike any he had seen in those days. Most of those that John's army had fought at Aylesbury had at least some characteristics of human beings that they had been before - most of them were standing on their hind legs. The thing in front of him was more like the plump monstrosity he had first encountered in Joshua's dungeon. It almost crawled on the ground, the four limbs with claws extended on either side of a bulbous torso, and resembled a giant lizard. As much as John tried, he couldn't make out any more through the distorted lenses of his vision, except for the armored, spiky tail that wobbled back and forth. There didn't seem to be a head, at least none that John could make out, just an open mouth where his head should have been, with straight, blade-like teeth.
The beast ran towards him aggressively. John's retreat was like trying to walk with sand up to his knees. He looked down and saw the sword in his hand, and thought of hitting the animal with it, but it looked so heavy that he could barely lift it. Then he heard a voice, low at first, so low that he thought it was his own mind playing tricks. But it got louder, unmistakably real, and recognizable: it was young Harley's voice.
"Sir John! Come on! You must drop the sword!" He tried to do what the voice asked, but the hand did not respond to his command. When the hideous beast moved back toward him, at a stroke's distance, John concentrated all the mental capacity he could muster in the sword's hand and felt the hilt begin to weaken slightly.
And then the beast jumped, and the rider fell on his back, the horrible stench of the monster's breath on him ... John screamed when he felt the body hit the ground and looked up to see the gray clouds hovering in the sky.
Andrew and Harley were on him, looking down with expressions of great concern.
"What happened?" He asked, realizing he was panting, his heart pounding. Andrew and Harley looked relieved when they saw John's eyes focus and then on each other.
"You shouldn't have touched the sword," said Harley. John saw that she lay on the lawn, far out of reach. Harley had removed one of his robes and dropped it on the blade. "I think it will have to be destroyed. The ability to disenchant you is beyond my reach. A thousand apologies."
John sat up, dizzy. "I was ... I was there," he said. The mind spun, remembering everything they experienced in those last moments.
"Notable, isn't it?" Replied Harley with learned enthusiasm.
"The sharpness of the vision is almost .."
"What did you see?" Asked Andrew, and Harley was serious in an instant.
"I saw what I had seen before in Greenland," he said, and looked at John. "When the archbishop started his experiments." John nodded. Now he understood why the estates and pastures around Greenland were mysteriously empty of animals that would normally be grazing around. He believed that they had been removed or fled in fear from the demons created inside that cathedral. But he knew now what had been done to them.
John mounted Carpeado, covered in his cavalry armor with Andrew at his side, in front of the assembled ranks of men on the hill from which they saw Greenland in the distance. The time they spent idling while John pondered only heightened his anxiety for that final battle; he could see in those faces. And now that John knew what lay ahead in Dexter's lair, they would have their will done.
"In his desperation, Dexter returned to the most primitive form of his cursed witchcraft," announced John. "He went back to acting as he did at the beginning, turning ordinary animals into abominations that he hopes to use as his last line of defense. If the measure of control he had over the men he enslaved was little, it is even less over these beasts. They can fight with savagery, but without discipline, courage or loyalty. This is what separates us, as virtuous soldiers of God, protected by his divine blessings, from the renegade misfortunes within. " He pointed with the sword at the cathedral. "Greenland is home to our most sacred beliefs, though tainted by a filthy and corrupted, blasphemous presence. No more. Today, we will clean that cathedral and we will return it to the grace of God. Today we will send the evil that infests it, together with the heretic who summoned him, back to where he came from ... to the depths of hell! "
The men howled in unison, swords raised. When John turned his horse toward the cathedral, he and Andrew exchanged the last look, the type well known to soldiers who have seen many battles.
"Good speech," said Andrew with a smile as he looked at the assembled men. "Their blood boiled."
"I just hope that no more than necessary is spilled today," replied John. "Let's get this over with. I want to go home as soon as possible." And with that, he raised his sword, let out a battle cry, and spurred his horse toward Greenland, with the screeching of dozens of hooves behind him.