Chapter 2 #5
Amazing. Sister Svangerd isn’t afraid of anything.
But even the thought of the devil makes her whimper like a scared puppy.
It’s because she believes she’s got an immortal soul, which the Bad Guy is capable of stealing and abusing.
It’d be rather sweet if it wasn’t for the debilitating effect it has on her.
“Exactly what we’ve got planned,” I said. “Look, you know as well as I do. These people are loons. Just ignore them and everything will be fine.”
“You can’t just ignore—” She got a grip on herself.
With her it’s a physical thing. She screws her eyes shut, tightens her hands into fists, squeezes her shoulders together, bends her neck slightly.
“You amaze me, you know that? After everything we saw and went through in Choris, anybody with half a brain would have to admit it. We know. Because we’ve seen.
The enemy is real. You can’t just do an airy wave and say, Oh, that’s faith, I don’t do faith.
” She let go a long sigh, like steam escaping.
“Sorry, I forgot, you’re an idiot, you can do stuff like that. Well, I can’t.”
She was standing in the front courtyard, twenty yards from the gate we had to pass through to get out of the monastery into the World.
I recognised that particular way of standing from my childhood in the Mesoge.
The pig used to do it, when we wanted her to walk the twenty yards from her sty to the shed where we did the slaughtering.
Pigs are a lot smarter than they look, and also much stronger, and when they want to they can move faster than fish in a pond.
At which point we used to give up on force and resort to guile.
A trail of apples, from the sty to the slaughterhouse, occasionally did the trick, but not very often.
More usually, we’d throw a rope round the pig’s neck and try and drag her, which immediately made her go backwards, in a straight line, up the ramp of the cunningly placed handcart we’d wheeled in behind her.
Once she was up the ramp and in the cart she was out of options, and all her strength was no use to her, and nine times out of ten, once we’d wheeled the cart round to the slaughterhouse she’d trot meekly down the ramp and into the slaughterhouse stall, where my father was waiting with his poleaxe.
“Fine,” I said. “We won’t go.”
She looked at me. Apples, she was saying. Why is there suddenly a trail of apples right across the yard?
“We’ll go to Sister Framea and tell her,” I said.
“We’ll tell her I was talked to by a demon in the shithouse, and the demon knows exactly what we’ve got planned and where we’re going and what we’re doing, so obviously we can’t go.
She’ll understand. She’ll talk to Mother Tysapherna and they’ll send someone else. ” I waited for a count of five. “Well?”
She generally finds it useful in circumstances like that to hate me, rather than the people who are really to blame. It’s a small thing I can do for her, so I don’t mind. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“She’ll have our guts. She’ll have us thrown out of the Order.”
“Possibly,” I said. “But what choice do we have? The alternative is going on this mission with the forces of Darkness knowing precisely what we’re up to.
Of course, you sincerely believe that the Evil One knows all that stuff anyway, because he’s there all the time, crouched beside you in the shadows, watching your every move, reading your every thought.
Personally I’d have thought he’d be far too busy for that, but I lack the precious gift of Faith and have to make do with stupid old common sense, so what do I know? ”
“Piss off,” she said.
“Think about it,” I said. “You firmly believe that the Father of Lies has nothing better to do with his time than hang around you every minute of every day like a dog begging at table, and to him your mind is an open book. You may even be right, though it strikes me as a pretty odd way for him to carry on. Fine, let’s assume you’re right.
He already knows what we’re up to, and if he gives a stuff, sure, he’ll do his damnedest to give us a hard time and screw us over.
Not that it matters a toss, because we’re doing the Invincible Sun’s work and must inevitably prevail.
Which means,” I ground on, feeling stupider and stupider with each subordinate clause, “that nothing has actually changed. The bad guys have done a dumb thing, letting us know they’re onto us, but no real harm done, because we already knew that.
Or,” I added in what I hoped was my more reasonable voice, assuming I’ve got one, “they’re trying to scare us off and stop us going.
And why would they do that? Because they know that if we go, they won’t be able to stop us, and we’ll succeed.
Think about it, for crying out loud. If the Common Enemy of Man wanted to catch us and mince us up into pancake filling, would he jump out at us before we’ve even left the monastery grounds and tell us, we know what you’re doing, we’re going to get you?
That’s not how you catch a rabbit, trust me.
No, it’s what you do when you know you’re bound to lose.
And obviously it’s not going to work, but there’s bugger all else you can do, so you do it anyway.
” I did a big sigh. “It must be so depressing, being the forces of Darkness. You do your best, you really put your back into it and give it everything you’ve got, but you know that in the end, no matter how brave and clever you’ve been, at the End of Days the Redeemer is going to come and kick your sorry arse into the pit of burning sulphur and that’ll be that, game over.
And even before that happens, there’s this stupid rule that all the good guys have to do is believe, and He won’t suffer their feet to be moved.
Talk about your rotten jobs. All in all, I think I’d rather work for the Survey.
That’s another pointless, soul-destroying job, but at least your superiors are nominally on your side, not telling you from the outset that everything you do is a complete waste of time. ”
She looked at me. “Finished?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now shut your face and let me think.”
People were staring at us. I could understand why. A small rock-still nun being talked at in an agitated manner by an oversized monk. Not something you see every day in our neck of the woods. I gave it as long as I could bear to, then said, “Have you thought yet?”
“Piss off.” She sighed. “I hate this,” she said. “It’s going to be like Choris, only worse. Why does this shit only happen when you’re with me?”
“That’s like saying, why do knife fights only happen when you’ve got a knife? Count yourself lucky that every time you have to face something like this, you’ve got me there to back you up. If the bad guy’s got a knife and you haven’t, it’s not a knife fight, it’s a stabbing.”
“You clown,” she said, as an invisible tailgate slammed shut in front of her.
In front of both of us, properly speaking. That’s the thing I don’t like. Every time I talk her into doing something she quite reasonably doesn’t want to do, I talk myself into it as well. The very last thing I wanted to do was go to Angkola. But we were going anyway. Swell.
Only an idiot would walk sixty miles along inland roads in salt-caked rags, so we had our costumes carefully stashed away in knapsacks, not to be opened until we reached the seaside.
My idea was that Brother Jovian’s envoys had been shipwrecked out in the straits and washed ashore on the beach at Dipoli.
Until then, we were just a couple of contemplative pilgrims on our way to launder our souls at the Holy Child at Eichestam, with money in our pockets and no brother roundsman peering over our shoulders to see that we behaved ourselves along the way.
“The nice thing is,” I pointed out, “that we’re not really on a schedule. It’s not like we’ve got to be there by any specific date, like First of Ascension or All Hallows. We just turn up. Therefore we don’t have to scamper along like lunatics. We can take our time.”
She scowled at me. Therein lies one of the big differences between us. Svangerd likes being in the monastery. Trips out into the World are something to be got through as quickly as possible, so she can go home and get on with her praying.
“Which means,” I added quickly, “that we can take the time to visit the Holy Child. After all, that’s our cover, it’s an operational necessity.
Just think. High mass in the basilica. Am I right in thinking that you get a hundred years of Purgatory knocked off just for being within twelve feet of the Shrine? ”