The Godspeaker — Episode 4
Life in the dirt
Ildus walked down the hill toward the keep. The day was ending in an orange and red sunset in front of him. A beautiful view the castle framed by that spectacle of lights behind. Beautiful until Ildus reached its bottom, and the shanty town became the focus of his sight.
“Sad as ever,” he thought.
He kept walking. It didn’t hurt his eyes to look at such a tragic state of affairs anymore. Or the contrast to the villa a few meters ahead inside the gates. None of those bothered him unless he was on a drunk with the other serfs in a tavern.
Ildus was definitely not a happy or brave drunk. When intoxicated, he got introverted. Instead of losing his coordination, he got insights about the world around him. A philosopher drunk like the men in robes down in Rome or Mediolanum. He stood hours with his drunken colleagues, but his mind was elsewhere.
Ildus walked among the people, but most of them were too absorbed in their own affairs to notice him. He passed near one of his neighbors, one of the castle’s foremen.
“Peace be with you, neighbor,” Ildus said.
“Peace be with you too,” the neighbor answered, then turned and scolded some of his workers, “turn back to work, you lazy bunch. Dux wants those crates inside his walls today. Don’t you bother telling me it’s almost night…”
The man was now responsible for a group of laborers in the shanty town. The Dux always had a service for them, and they delivered, guided by his neighbor’s shouts and curses. Everyone pitied his men because of their hard labor. Still, many of them had wooden houses built only because of this service to the keeper of the land. They traded a hard day for a comfortable night, at least comfortable for the place’s standards.
Ildus remembered how his neighbor would bring him a glass of mead while he sat alone at his usual place in the tavern.
“Where is your head wandering today, neighbor,” he’d ask.
This man was one of the few who could have a decent talk with him. They both were not scholars. The knowledge they had came from experience only. Still, they saw their home with similar eyes. Things needed to improve here. If the Dux didn’t help, they would work themselves dead to make that place their paradise on Earth. The wooden houses happened because of them. The leather shoes and gloves the laborers and other workers used were their doing also. Little by little, they improved a slight piece here and there.
Ildus approached the main gate. The large wooden drawbridge was down as it always were. Two guards decided who could cross to the other side. He passed and saluted them by their names. They returned the words with boredom. Past the bridge and the gate, a broad road made of stone lead all the way to the castle. The other structures conformed to this main trail. Sometimes the pathways were in stone, sometimes, in gravel or dirt like the shanty town. But the last case was a privilege of farther houses of lesser men. The hunter’s house was one of those. There were also a few for churchmen respected enough to live outside the temple.
He went up to the main square before the castle’s entrance, turned left, and took a smaller road. He stopped in a house with only two walls in the back. In its center, a big cauldron let some smoke out in an archaic chimney.
“This is the last chart for today,” Ildus said to a feeble man stirring the cauldron with a big stick.
“Good, good. Help me put those carcasses near big potty here,” the man’s voice was rusty and old, a perfect reflex of his body.
He always referred to the round brass cauldron as “potty”. After so many years working there, he treated the thing like family. Sometimes even talked out loud with it. Some townspeople gossiped he lost his mind after his wife and two sons died. It happened winters ago in a barbarian attack. Ildus didn’t believe this because the old man had shown a reverence for old Gods, barbarian Gods. The man hid this from the rest of the keep, but Ildus spent years working with him. It was a matter of time before the tanner put all the pieces together. He didn’t share the secret with anyone tough.
They unloaded today’s third chart with dead animals.
It was late autumn. The leafless trees helped hunting. The torpor of winter started to weight on some animals which also aided the hunt. This made the hunter’s lodge a pile of forest corpses waiting to be moved. Unfortunately, it was outside of town in a forest uphill. It took quite some time to get there and back, and only Ildus did the trip. As the local tanner, he ought to bring the animals to the cauldron where their pelt was removed. Then, he would take whatever he could work with and deliver the meat to the keep’s storage. Needless to say, the castle got the best parts and sent the leftovers to the taverns around the castle town. What left of those became sausages shared among the serfs in the shanty town.
The entire place was preparing for the closing winter. During this week it snowed a little. After this sign, all the keep would work harder to get the supplies they could to face the coming season. After the next full moon or so, winter would be upon them.
The land became even more secluded in this season. The rare merchants passing through disappeared altogether. Moving in or out became a dangerous undertake only the hunter or someone desperate would do. The roads got covered in snow, farming the land became impossible. People died on the streets. Old people died on their deathbeds. Young people died with the flu or some other winter disease. When the snow started falling, people died. No matter how much they prepared beforehand, people always died.
Ildus saw the night from his window. People still worked, and memories of winters past invaded him. The face of his beloved daughter, silent, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t last her first winter. His wife, absorbed in guilty and languishing day after day, didn’t live to see that season end.
***
Winter arrived. The streets got whiter, some roofs bent with the snow’s weight upon them. Life got slow for most of the men. Ildus was not one of them. He stocked a good amount of pelts to work on during the next days. In some hides, he maintained the furs. The others he cleaned and turned to gloves, shoes, whatever the Dux ordered. He always stocked the wastes to make things to the townspeople and to himself. These items were ugly but functional. That’s what mattered.
One day he was in the cauldron boiling the fur out of the pelts. His fellow companion was more talkative than usual that day. Ildus came there twice that day. The second time, the old man by the cauldron let slip more than he should.
“You know, Ildus, I wonder how those people of the forest build their temples. What is it like to have a different belief–” the man silenced at the fear in Ildus’s eyes. He said too much. But he was tired of it all. After the pause, he continued in a lower voice.
“Our church is corrupt to the bone. Don’t hide it with your silence. You know it too. Didn’t you see how they preach moderation to the poor–,” the man stopped with a clear image in his head, “–did you look at that priest’s belly, Ildus? He must have a whole pig inside it. I bet he is already tasting a good juicy piece of that deer we prepared last week.”
The man stopped stirring for a moment. Other people wouldn’t notice, but Ildus saw it in his eyes. A heat was growing within. When he stepped out of the chair and left the big wooden spoon behind, Ildus saw wrath. And this wrath made him silent also. And it gave him some uncanny purpose. The old man passed through Ildus.
“That way–he was going–to the church?” Ildus thought, soon following him. “This man will get in trouble. This is the worst time to be in trouble. One fault and the Dux will expel him from the city. A death sentence to the man, one less mouth for the Dux.”
They entered the church. There was no Mass that time of day. The place was calm and empty except for a woman with the hair covered in a blue cloth. She kept to her prayers despite the disrespectful noise they made when opening the door. The old man went straight to one of the doors behind the altar. They got into the inner part of the church. No laymen where allowed there. Sensing the crime they just committed, both got completely quiet. It would be a transgression only if they were caught.
Many of the doors in that aisle were dead silent. They heard a conversation coming from one of the rooms. The old man resumed walking and Ildus followed. They reached the noise. The door had a gap letting part of the interior visible. Ildus feared the man would storm in, but he halted at the gap. And listened.
“Is it ready to use, my child,” the older priest asked while his big belly pushed the vests away from him.
“No sir, but this is it,” the younger answered.
On the table, covered with a big white sheet, the two clergymen peaked into something. They had their backs to the intruders, but a piece of the object was visible. It was a long box with transparent walls. A red velvet cushion protected a rough piece of wood. It resembled a branch of a tree, but some parts were adorned by skilled hands.
“We got it with much effort. You confirm this is the artifact the scriptures refer to? What is left? How come we can’t usufruct its legendary power,” the fat priest was visibly angry now.
“I assure you, sir. This is the relic the saint mentioned in his writings. The mythic wood is within this artifact,” the young priest hesitated for a moment, “it’s as much a pagan relic as it’s touched by our Lord, Jesus Christ, himself. Still, it–looks dead. The saint wrote nothing about how it works though. Maybe we need to move its components.” He moves to change something beneath the sheet.
“Nonsense!” the elder slaps his hand, “leave it. Go back to your studies. We need to unravel this puzzle. Go, go at once.”
The young priest leaves the chamber. He looks at the door to the main navel. It was partially open as if someone just rushed past it. A chill climbs the young priest’s spine.
—
This is an on going series. Use the links below to navigate.
