Draka didn’t stay for long at the Clevlan’s. They were…odd now. How they kept their smiles for so long baffled him. He definitely couldn’t smile for that long, nor form the words of their language so easily while doing it, if he could talk. He had always noted how exhausting their language had been when he first learned it because of how he felt they used their entire face. And, most often than not, they said much more, with tipping inflections and twists of their tongue, that could be said much quicker in his own language.

  It was understandable for them to have assumed he wouldn’t return when he spurred Vigora to Strasbourg so hastily. If he had been any other man, he imagined that he would have kept going straight across the long bridge over the Rhine River and into the kingdom of Neuse-Baden. But he had never been that sort of man. If he had intended to leave for good—not that it had ever been an option for him—he would have taken the family with him. Vigora was strong enough to carry Balor and Aurie and the other two would have walked with him. That had never been his intent. That wasn’t what God wanted of him. If only God would tell him a bit more than just, ‘This is your land by My Will.’ Not that God had to explain anything to him. He commands and Draka obeys.

  Perhaps it wasn’t that they were smiling the entire time. It was the way they smiled, each different and equally vexing. Aurie had the smile of one who was glad for forgiveness. As if she did anything but protect her family. Balor’s was a sheepish, brimming version of the same. The jackass still has no idea what he’s doing, but at least he stood by his wife this time. Alden was the easiest of the two young ones to understand. He always kept by Draka’s side and mimicked the way he stood, every shift of his feet, every crossing and uncrossing of his arms, even the way he tilted his head while listening to them for those few minutes he could spare. Once Draka realized the boy was doing this, he naturally began doing each of those things as often and randomly as he could to the point that Alden nearly fell over from trying to keep up with any semblance of nonchalance. The others might have noticed, but they gave no sign of it. If they had, he didn’t know if they would feel insulted by him toying with their son’s admiration or laugh at the ridiculousness. Draka saw the value in both.

  Maud’s smile was the one that confused him the most. It wasn’t a smile of gladness, really, nor a smile of admiration. It was the smile that Isa had given him often when he was too young and distracted to recognize it until far later than he would have allowed it otherwise. It was a smile of bulging emerald eyes fixed on him, when she wasn’t admiring and spoiling Vigora, of course. Her teeth were hidden but her lips were thickened, her cheeks tight and brightened red with each passing moment. A few times, he caught her lips parting ever so slightly while her head tipped to one side and her eyes were glazed over beneath creasing brows, as if deep in thought. A look that Isa never gave him. A look that made his breath shallow. A look he didn’t want from her. Or anyone.

  That was the main reason he excused himself before they invited him to dinner with them again. The last thing he wanted was to cause another fight between Balor and Aurie, nor make Maud uncomfortable, though the way she was looking at him told him she would probably force him to let her wash his feet. The women in this region were like those of his homeland in many ways. Their domineering natures was one he missed most and the culture of this place stifled that more than he liked in its women. But not these two. He’d get a good ‘thumping’ from them if he refused them too often, proof that their strength wasn’t completely smothered, and perhaps one day he would purposely find out what that would look like. If they actually began beating him, he would feel far more at home than he had expected. The women of his tribe could beat their children and husbands to death if they felt the offense worthy and none would care.

  He doubted Aurie or Maud would do that. Well, not Maud. Aurie…maybe. He’d have to keep careful with that one. Balor is afraid of her enough to where that might be something which has happened before. Of course, that wasn’t God’s way, making that dynamic between men and women something that he forced himself to adjust to. By God’s Will, they are meant to be equal in all but granted responsibility to the tending of the Earth, partners in all ways. The man is no servant to his wife as he would be in Draka’s tribe, and a woman is no servant to her husband as it is in Talkro.

  Balor was the exception of the village with the fact that Aurie had no innate fear of him bred by beatings even at the start. The other women of the village, however, had all the signs of being under their husband’s fists at one point or another. A few in particular, he had noticed before they fled the rising stream, had clouds of black around their eyes and their cheekbones. Something which, when the time was right, he would address in kind to their afflicters.

  Draka laid the driest of his pelts in place of the sopping wet hay of his bed he tossed beside the house in a pile that Vigora gleefully began prancing and jumping through. He stretched the others across the beams to keep at least some of the next rainfall off him if it started again. If it didn’t rain then they would dry out faster. With any luck, the engineers he brought will be able to spare some twine for him to make a drying line between the closest tree and his house on the eastern side.

  It was just as he was dumping the overflowing pot of stew over the broken pipe of his outhouse that Gerard came riding up with two others with him. They dismounted from their horses and wrapped the reins on the pillars at the end of his porch, watching Vigora closely as they did so.

  “You should tie that beast up,” Gerard stepped up onto the porch to him. The other two, carrying their spears and tall shields, followed behind him.

  Draka looked around him to say, ‘Where?’

  Gerard did the same and shook his head, “Quite the horseman, I see. I’ll have a proper stable built for you tomorrow. Along with a door. And an extension on your house. And, for Judas’ sakes, a roof. Have you done anything, you heathen?”

  Draka raised a brow at him. There was no way he could think of without writing it that he was too injured to do it until the Almighty graced him with the Holy Spirit that night. He knew there was a reason the Captain of two hundred men was at his house and it wasn’t for small talk. He waved him to follow inside.

  “You two, guard the door.” And Gerard followed, stepping through the door with a brush of the cloth to the side and stopping after taking a step. “Bed, table, chairs. Should have known.”

  Draka turned to him with a narrow-eyed frown. Then he snapped his fingers for the board and charcoal pencil. Gerard handed it to him.

  ‘Was injured. Unable to do much of anything until healed.’ He held it up to show him.

  Gerard nodded. “I understand. Well, they’ll make quick work of it. How have you been, brother? Been what, six, seven years?”

  Draka held up six fingers. Then wrote, ‘I miss the Kingdom. The men. You?’

  Gerard lifted his sword from his belt and set it beside Draka’s next to the the door and sat himself on the pelt where Balor had laid with a loud breath. He leaned against the wall, “I miss it, too. But life is simpler here. No demons popping out of the walls. No devils. You’re lucky, I had just gotten the battalion of Monastics only less than a year ago. Not going to say that I was surprised the Baron was glad to see them do something other than pine after his ‘Baronnie’ women and wreak havoc in his inns. And that platinum I gave him will ease his anxiety about Mueller. Utrecht masons are guilders and you paid more than their share of wages, so that will make his walls at the bridge much stronger than we could manage.”

  ‘Why are so many Monastic Knights here? Doesn’t Taggerty need them to retake Heblem?’

  Gerard let out a longer breath, looking to his lap. “Taggerty had to make a deal with the Muslims for steel and it nearly bankrupted him. Brokered an alliance with them, but they’re not keen on crossing into the West Bank without promises. You know how they are about Heblem. Long history there even before the Great Fires. That’s why we took the mines in Tauber and Mount Isgrinde. Mueller tried to retake them, but I’m better and so were my men. Humiliated him after a few skirmishes.” A prideful smiled formed.

  Draka sat on his own pelt and crossed his legs. He wrote, ‘You and Taggerty both knew better than to steal another’s land. That is not the Paladinate’s way.’

  Gerard laughed even with the guilt written on his face at that, “The Paladinate is keeping quiet. Mueller protested, Taggerty had me take it anyway. The matters of the world are inferior to those of God’s.”

  Draka shook his head. ‘How did you end up here and not Aviv? Or Damascus? Or Al’Constantine?’

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  “Taggerty relocated us as soon as he returned from Sodiulakum with that finger. We’re the Sepulcher Monastic Knights. There’s no Church of the Holy Sepulcher left after the Fallen tore it down. And after the Unsainted rose from Golgotha…well, you were there, so.”

  Draka’s shoulders sank. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “Look, that’s no longer our concern. At least, not mine. Who knows what the Lord has in store for you, but I doubt He granted you these lands with the intent of drawing you back into another twenty-year campaign in the Holy Lands. You’d be fighting demons with a walking stick and arthritis before long. You’re what, nearing forty now?”

  Draka nodded with an eye roll.

  “We have a village to rebuild and rein in. This area is wrought with pagans and God knows who or what they’re praying to, but I imagine that’s why you’ve been called here.”

  Gerard pulled a leather wrap from his coat and untied the ribbon. He scooted closer to Draka and spread the wrap open to reveal a map of the village and the surrounding area with fresh lines drawn on it. Draka leaned to look at it.

  “From what I was told, you have two types of land, if you didn’t know. All of this…” Gerard slid his finger along the northern side of the village and around when it crossed the stream. The forest and the Kelger Farm, which included half of the tilled filled between him and the Clevlans. “…is your personal domain. The Abbey lands stretch all the way North to the Zorn River and follows it around east and west until it meets the Deux-Zorn Riverway across your south.”

  Draka frowned at that. He had been told it was a kilometer or so, not two east to west. At least north to south it was only one. If it wasn’t so oddly shaped, it would be nearly a perfect square kilometer.

  “Now, your De Jure goes all the way south to the Alps and west to Nancy and, of course, east to the Rhine, to what the locals call ‘Berone.’ Strasbourg is what they’re talking about. Metz and Luxembourg are your northern neighbors. Which means…”

  Draka bit his lip. That son of a bitch! When he gets his hands on Phillip, he’s going to show him what a northern ‘thumping’ looks like. That’s nearly…a kingdom.

  “Yeah,” Gerard flicked his eyebrows. “It isn’t official yet, but I was informed that I’m to treat you as such. Which is why I’m here.” He put a finger to the stream, “The stream itself is going down fast and will be back to what it was before noon tomorrow, likely before sunrise. But the standing water, well, it isn’t going down at all.”

  ‘Standing water?’

  “The men are calling it Lake Talkro, since it covers all the way to the door of the pub. The fur shop is half in it, as well. We can repair both and build levees to keep them fairly secured unless another flood raises it a meter or more. With what we have and your land’s resources, we can’t do much more and build them new houses. It’s wide, too. Goes nearly to the hills. And the whirlpool that current caused has given it a pretty good-sized bank along the edges.”

  Draka shook his head with a frown. Gerard nodded in agreement with his concern.

  “Which gives me the idea that needs your approval. There’s arable land for farms to the south, but not much and they’re owned by the Greshons and Vorners. So, redistribution would likely cause bloodshed and raise some heads from their families in Alcer. The forest engulfs the rest.”

  ‘That’s most of the homesteaders’ lands.’

  “Exactly. But there’s an interesting development as well.”

  Draka blinked at him. ‘What else could it be?’

  “The lake is full of fish. They keep leaping into our ferries and pontoons at the lamplight. And, the Zorn has connections to the lake here,” he pointed, “And here. So, the fish will be replenishing themselves according to one of my men who was a fisherman before he went on pilgrimage.”

  Draka let out a laugh. Then he wrote, ‘The Lord provides.’

  Gerard shrugged with a grin. “We can build them piers and, if we clear this part of your domain forest, we’ll have all the wood we need to build them stilted houses, two-man to four-man boats—one per family—and a fishery. There is a tactical advantage to this lake as well. There are mounds of ruins we can build on, make a bridge that the masons, once done with Strasbourg, can spend the winter laying foundations for linking to a small keep in the center for the garrison. I figure there’d be no argument about garrisoning some men at arms down here for you. I figure twenty or so family men, with the fishermen included. Plenty of sons and daughters nearing marriageable age.”

  ‘Family men only. We all know what the unmarried do with their time between watches.’

  “Yes, I know, I know. I’ll keep the others with me when I return to Strasbourg, which will be a bit longer than we originally thought, so will be constantly swapping the companies out. Now, I know that you can’t parcel the land, which begs another question.”

  Draka raised a brow at him.

  Gerard thinned his lips, “Given the present climate and the fact you want no one to know what you are, the rents are going to cause an uproar. Which makes me think you should reconsider keeping your secret. You need to tell them, Draka. You have authority, even without the lands. They might resist, but keeping up this ruse will embolden them once I leave and you know it.”

  Draka nodded. Then, with a line under it, he wrote, ‘No. And no rents.’

  “No rents?” Gerard stiffened. “What do you mean ‘no rents’? They tried to kill your neighbors, planned to kill you. And you want to let them live without paying for it? I understand forgiveness and all, but it requires repentance and compensation as well!”

  Draka wagged a finger of warning at him, his expression projecting that Gerard was teetering in the direction of sin. He wrote, ‘They lost everything. God judged them. Now they must learn to be fishermen after lifetimes of farming. Is that not enough punishment?’

  “Punishment? Certainly. But there’s no repentance in them. You understand that they are still planning to burn you out. And it will be more so once I inform them that they’re being relocated onto land they don’t own. And, that, I cannot keep secret or you’ll find yet another bit of discourse. They must atone and they’re not going to submit to Diocese marks of atonement, but they will submit to the law’s.”

  Draka drew more lines under, ‘No.’

  Gerard threw his hands to his lap. “This, this right here is why I could never be above a Monastic. The insanity is unmatched.” He jabbed a finger on the map with eyes fixed on Draka’s cold stare. “They’ll see it as enablement. I promise you, Draka, it will only embolden them.”

  ‘Let them know that the land cleared directly behind and around their new homes is theirs to do as they wish, but not into the forest. Mention their lack of ownership and nothing more on the subject.’ Draka wrote while Gerard waited and watched. ‘Enforce that. When the time is right, they will know that God is ensuring their futures through my hand and the wealth He granted me, including their lost dowries.’

  “I beg you to reconsider. One of them must be made accountable. The redhead twin to your neighbor is the one I’d recommend. He’s got an air about him.”

  ‘That will pass. As will their suffering. We will speak of this no more.’

  To that, Gerard stood and slid his sword through his belt. “I think you’re a na?ve fool for this, but I will do it. But I will enforce the law while I’m here and, if we’re to keep your authority secret, I ask that you do not interfere. Unless you want your authority known sooner.”

  ‘Consult me before judgment. The matters of the world are inferior to God’s.’

  “They’re bloody pagans, Draka. They don’t follow biblical law. But they do follow King’s and Lord’s law. That’s what will be enforced without interference.”

  Draka drew a line under his last statement with a glare.

  “One or the other, Draka. Which is it? Secret or no secret.”

  Draka stood to meet him, nose to nose, unmoving. He felt the Spirit fill him. And Gerard’s widened eyes told him that he saw it. Gerard took a step back and bowed his head.

  “I will consult you before judgment.”

  Draka accepted.