The camp had been set up in a clearing surrounded by ancient oaks, far from the prying eyes of Viscount Lorenzo's patrols. Alistair knew the wait would be long. Hector and Orlan had an arduous journey ahead to Count Valerius' halls in Ponteverde, while also having to avoid suspicious glances, and the recruitment of mercenaries by Roderick and Marcus required time, gold, and discretion. It would be weeks – perhaps a whole month, but let us pray to Solarius it isn't so – of silence beneath the stars before the Pack gathered once more.
However, the enigmatic parchment and the piece of map that the figure in black had handed them in Fontechiara kept burning in the pocket of Alistair's doublet. Every time he pulled out the letter, the strokes of ink seemed to mock his iron and his ignorance.
– I don't intend to spend the rest of my days as an illiterate with a shiny sword – Alistair declared that very afternoon, adjusting the straps of his shield. – A knight who cannot read is merely a peasant with a more expensive carcass.
Together with Lucius, he mounted Sarcasm and rode down the dusty road to the village of Campofiorito. In its centre stood a limestone church, once white, but now stained with moss and soot. It had a picturesque yet deeply neglected look: tiles were missing from the roof, the stained-glass window that ought to display the radiant sun was shattered in one corner, and the oak gate creaked off its hinges. Alistair dismounted with the heavy clatter of his plates and approached two old men peeling turnips on a wooden bench in the sun.
– Where is the priest of this house of Solarius? – asked the mercenary, his voice sounding imperious beneath his open helm. – We have matters of faith and letters to settle with the cleric.
The two old men looked at the lunar gleam of the Ferralian steel, then at Alistair's serious face, and burst out laughing with toothless, raspy cackles.
– Matters of faith? – mocked the eldest, turnip juice dripping down his fingers. – If you're looking for Father Silas, my lord, you'd best look in the wine cellars or under the girls' skirts. At this hour, the holy man must be in deep alcoholic communion with Solarius, given that his sun rises at the bottom of a demijohn.
Guided by the amused directions of the locals, Alistair and Lucius rounded the main nave of the church until they reached a small adjoining stone cottage, its wooden windows open to let the warm afternoon air circulate. The front door was unlocked, and while holding the hilt of his sword out of habit, Alistair kicked it open with the toe of his iron boot.
The sight that greeted them inside the room involved no altars, no incense, nor any sacred books. Stretched out on a filthy sheepskin rug, right in the middle of the wooden floor, lay Father Silas. He was a fat man, bald-headed, with a voluminous belly rising and falling in heavy, noisy breathing. He was sleeping off a deep nap, completely devoid of clothes, flanked by two equally naked village women whose bodies were entwined in drunken slumber after the afternoon's excesses. A bottle of wine and another of spirits lay spilled beside the cleric's head, creating a dark stain that looked like dried blood on the timber.
Alistair froze in the doorway. He blinked once, twice, his face shifting from surprise to a near-philosophical perplexity. He glanced sideways at the lad beside him, who was watching the scene wide-eyed.
– Lucius... – Alistair murmured, adjusting his sword belt, – tell me something: has the presence of our 'morale specialists' in the region turned all the people of this land into nymphomaniacs? Or does the air of Campofiorito carry some spell that makes clothes fall off?
Lucius looked at the priest's bulging belly, then at the empty bottles scattered in the corner of the room, and let out a dry puff of laughter, shaking his head with his usual pragmatism:
– I don't think these people need outside incentives, Alistair. The altar bread and wine have always been intimate friends... and it seems the holy man decided to bless the sheep of his flock in a rather personal manner.
The fat man lying on the floor let out a deep snore that sounded like the roar of a wounded bear, shifting slightly before opening an eye clouded and yellowed by wine. It took him long moments to realise he had company, and, with a string of curses and heavy huffs, he untangled himself from the arms and legs of the two women – who merely grumbled and curled up in the sheepskins – and covered his nakedness with a frayed, grease-stained woollen tunic.
– By the grace of Solarius, welcome! I am Father Silas – he introduced himself, his voice as raspy as tumbling stones, as he poured the rest of a mug of dusty water down his throat. – If you've come for the last rites, you're late; if you've come to confess your sins, I regret to inform you that my forgiveness costs more than your soul is worth.
Alistair set out the reason for his visit with the gravity the moment demanded, placing on the worm-eaten oak table a few silver coins and his newborn desire to decipher the letters that kings and clerics used to rule over men. Silas looked at the silver, then into Alistair's stern eyes and at Lucius's youthful figure, and a cynical grin tore across his flawed face.
– Teach you to read? – asked the priest, shaking his bald head. – I will not do it for your silver, mercenary, nor for any love of your gods. I'll do it because the boredom in this peasant hole kills me faster than the drink. But mark my words: letters are not innocent. When you open books, my teachings will come accompanied by truths that the grand cathedral of the Cult of the Eternal Sun would burn at the stake before nightfall, ideas they call heretical.
The priest pulled up a creaking wooden bench and sat down, pouring himself a mug of flat ale.
– I once met a man in Aureliana – Silas began, his gaze lost in the smoke rising from the hearth, – Friar Teodoro of Valis, a man of sharp mind and iron heart, whom they called mad. Teodoro had the courage to say what all serious men whisper in the dark: that the Cult has become a den of money-changers. They sell salvation to the cruellest lords and the greediest merchants, hoarding mountains of gold in exchange for paper indulgences, while the common folk starve at the gates of their stone abbeys.
Silas fixed his sharp eyes on Alistair, his posture suddenly stripped of the drunkard's lassitude.
– To me and to Teodoro, the Eternal Sun does not dwell in chalices of gold or in bishops' palaces. The Cult lost its soul the day it decided to sit at the table of kings, meddling in the politics of men and trafficking the kingdom of heaven. If you wish to learn to read with me, warrior, you will be forced to look at the world without the blindfold of blind faith.
The tolling of the cast-iron bell tore through the silence of the adjoining house with the violence of a throwing dagger. The bronze clapper battered the stone of the tower in a hasty, discordant rhythm, making the wooden ceiling tremble and shower dust over the empty bottles. Silas shuddered as if struck by a crossbow, his air of a rebellious philosopher deflating from his chest in an instant, replaced by the paleness of a man who had just remembered the gallows awaited him.
– By Solarius' guts! – growled the priest, clutching his head and stumbling over the sheepskins as he searched for his crimson velvet stole. – Afternoon mass! The old folk and the devout women are already filling the nave, and here I am with my breath smelling of spirits and my senses in shattered pieces!
Alistair adjusted his metal bracers with a disdainful calm, ready to turn his back on that den of debauchery, but Silas, in a moment of pure improvisation born of desperation and wine intoxication, grabbed the mercenary by his shield, his eyes wide like those of a cornered dog.
– You, swordsman – hissed the priest, his voice trembling with urgency. – Say mass for me. Mount the pulpit and speak to the people. If you do, I swear by all the gods I'll teach you to decipher every line of every book and parchment you ever come across in this world. If you refuse, you can take that sword of yours and use it to wipe your arse.
– What? – Alistair froze in his tracks, his face twisting into a mixture of outrage and shock. – Have you gone completely mad, man of the altar? I'm a mercenary! I kill men for coin, I don't pray for souls! The only text I know is the sound of iron against bone!
– They don't care about the scriptures! – insisted Silas, shoving a rough white linen tunic against Alistair's chest. – Those bumpkins are blind sheep! Repeat the story I just told you about Friar Teodoro, use whatever gift of the gab you have, and speak with that arrogance of a knight bearing the gods' metal, and assure them that their gold won't buy heaven! They'll weep with emotion, and I'll be able to sleep through the rest of my nap.
Under Alistair's violent protest – and amidst the stifled laughter of Lucius, who watched it all – the mercenary found himself forced to give in. With clumsy movements, he shed his heavy armour and dirty doublet and hauled on the priestly tunic, which stretched taut and deformed over his broad shoulders.
When they crossed the oak door into the nave, the air was thick with the smell of beeswax and cheap incense. Around two dozen peasants – old folk with wrinkled hands and women with headscarves – were kneeling on the wooden pews. Silas took two steps forward, cleared his throat with a subtle hawking sound, and pointed a trembling hand at the disguised mercenary.
– Brothers of the faith, I present to you a young and devout aspirant of the Solar Order, freshly arrived from the highlands to bring us the word of truth!
Alistair mounted the steps of the pulpit. He looked down at the sun-baked, naive faces staring up at him with expectation and felt his stomach turn, but his survival instinct – the same art of fooling innkeepers and husbands that had kept him alive all these years – took hold of his tongue. He raised his hands, and the scant light filtering through the shattered stained-glass made him look like a divine apparition.
– Men and women of Solarius! – he began, his baritone voice resounding with the dramatic flair of someone who had told a thousand lies before courts and taverns. – Look at the altars and the palaces of our bishops! What do you see? Gold! Silver! Velvet! They tell you that the soul is bought with silver and gold coins, that salvation has a price printed on papers signed in Aureliana! Well, I tell you this: the blind faith sold by the money-changers is a rot that reeks worse than fish in the sun!
The silence in the church became absolute. An elderly woman brought her hands to her chest, slack-jawed.
– The Eternal Sun does not dwell in the vaults of the rich nor in the metal of the cruel! – continued Alistair, getting carried away by his own performance and landing a heavy punch on the pulpit's wooden railing that startled a few members of the congregation. – The pure soul needs no gold to shine! Those who sell the kingdom of heaven traffic in salvation itself and condemn the people to starvation! Keep your coins for your children's and grandchildren's bread, for true enlightenment is not bought... it is conquered through the courage to look truth in the eye!
Back there in the gloom of the entrance, Lucius shook his head with a sly smile, while Silas watched the scene open-mouthed, realising he had created a pulpit monster that would make the Cult's inquisitors shake with rage.
There were moments when the speech wavered dangerously at the edge of a precipice, as when Alistair tried to invoke the dogmas of the Cult and ended up confusing holy scripture with an old tavern proverb about goats and sour wine, making the silence in the stone nave feel suffocating. Yet, where theology failed him, his physical presence and the hardened gift of the gab of a survivor made up for it with interest. Whenever he stumbled over doctrine, the mercenary raised his voice, throwing out his chest and letting the afternoon light reflect off his white tunic with a glow that looked like divine justice itself. His fiery words about the soul's freedom and the weight of the chains imposed by the bishops' greed set that people's spirit ablaze.
It was a success as bizarre as it was memorable. When Alistair stepped down from the pulpit, the sound of his footsteps accompanied the emotional murmurs of the faithful, who stared at him as though they had witnessed a miracle.
– I've never heard the divine word ring with the force of an axe splitting firewood – whispered an old man with calloused hands to his wife, wiping a tear on her woollen apron. – That young aspirant understands the pain of those who tread in the mud!
– He said our copper should stay in our children's plates, not in the vaults of Aureliana! – another farmer commented enthusiastically on his way out of the nave. – May the Eternal Sun keep him! If a man with a voice like that asked me to march to war, I'd grab my hoe and go!
In the darkest corner of the church, leaning against a pillar of worm-eaten stone, Silas watched the scene with a mug of flat wine in hand. His fat face was transfigured by a devilish, deeply amused smile; the mercenary's audacity had exceeded his most cynical expectations.
Back in the small adjoining cottage, Alistair shed the linen tunic with the haste of a man freeing himself from a garrotte, letting out a heavy sigh that smelled of cheap altar incense as he buckled his armour back on. He adjusted the straps of his sword and shield, feeling at last returned to his iron shell. Lucius, tucked away in a corner of the room, was shaking his head in silent laughter.
Silas wiped the dust and grease off a corner of the table with the sleeve of his filthy tunic. With calculated slowness, he retrieved from an oak chest a parchment yellowed and crisp with age, a clay inkwell, and a worn goose quill, and then looked at the pair with a cunning glint in his yellowed eyes, cracking a cynical grin that creased his cheeks.
– Very well, Alistair... or should I say 'Father Alistair'? Are you ready to begin your first lesson?