webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-088.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-ietsism}{%
\section{Interlude: Ietsism}\label{interlude-ietsism}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``There is a natural order to the world and the peoples of the
world must reflect it through law. Should all serve as ordained by the
Heavens, all of Creation will be as a garden without sin.''}

-- Extract from `Ten Scales', by Madrubal the Wise
\end{quote}

They were not alone out here.

Leaning against the tall rock, the White Knight reached for the coin
that was never far from his hand and palmed it, deftly sliding it
between his thumb and forefinger. With a satisfying twang it went
spinning upwards and for a heartbeat his heart soared before he mastered
it. His fear was proved true a heartbeat later, as the coin ceased
spinning at the apex and simply hung there as if frozen in amber. After
a few heartbeats, it simply dropped down and back onto his palm. At no
point did either the laurels or the swords take primacy, as the Hierarch
of the Free Cities would brook not even the shadow of a verdict to be
passed while he watched. Flicking his wrist with a defeated sigh, Hanno
of Arwad disappeared the coin once more.

``Stern Singers again silent, huh,'' Rafaella said, peering down at him
from atop the stone.

``Anaxares the Diplomat is proving to be remarkably obstructive man,''
Hanno replied with forced calm.

And on occasion he had proved more than simply that. That over the last
three months the coin had begun to occasionally be seized instead of
simply inert had been worrying enough, for not even the Grey Pilgrim
knew whether it meant that the Hierarch was fading with a last hurrah or
\emph{gaining ground} against the Seraphim. Rather more troubling had
been the word that'd come to Hanno that for the first year after the
Peace of Salia, the heads of Bellerophans who had broken the city's laws
had taken to spontaneously exploding. Not for every infraction, but
frequently enough that rumours had spread out of even the famously
closed republic. The madman had succeeded at arrogating the powers of
the Choir of Judgement, if only for a brief time.

``Bellerophon like bag of wet cats,'' the Valiant Champion
sympathetically said. ``Never good idea to put hand in.''

``So I've been told,'' the White Knight mildly said.

Catherine had graciously refrained from reminding him that she'd attempt
to warn him off the course of action that had seen the Choir of
Judgement sealed whenever they disagreed, but Tariq had not been shy in
voicing his own opinions. \emph{Evil knows Evil in ways that we cannot,}
the Grey Pilgrim had chided him. \emph{To refuse expertise leant in good
faith is not wisdom, it is vanity.} Hanno had accepted the reproach for
it was: not the lesson of a would-be mentor, which he would have cared
little for, but the frank assessment of a peer. Few ever cared to offer
those to him, which made such talks all the more precious.

``It seems our friends are not biting today,'' Hanno added, changing the
subject. ``Any sign of the Hawk?''

``Just Wolfhound,'' Rafaella sighed. ``And he still boring loaf.''

Hanno cocked an eyebrow.

``Loafer?'' he suggested. ``Or perhaps oaf?''

``This too,'' the Valiant Champion agreed.

Rafaella turned to look downslope, among the rocky expanse leading into
the valley where central Hainaut awaited, and waved her greataxe
eye-catchingly.

``Hear this, Wolfhound?'' she yelled. ``Fight me!''

The White Knight, though mildly amused, was now forced to admit that
their little incursion looked like a wash. He'd thought it possible to
bait the trickiest of the Scourges now that the camp was about to look
vulnerable, but the Hawk had refused to bite. Even putting out the Young
Slayer as well as the Valiant Champion had not moved to Revenant to try
an attack. Hanno pressed against the stone to his side with his boot,
and with a heave have himself just enough momentum he was able to leap
out of the dip where he'd been waiting and join Rafaella atop the stone.
Further downslope, the sculpted iron helm of the Wolfhound could be
glimpsed among the rocks as the Revenant studied them unmoving.

He seemed unmoved at the notion of being alone around three Named with
significant bite to them, not that Hanno was surprised. Of all the
Scourges, that one had proved the hardest to put down save perhaps the
Prince of Bones. Not that `Scourges' were a formal band of any kind,
mind you. They were, in essence, a loose designation for the Revenants
that the heroes fighting on the lakeside fronts found to be the greatest
threats. Each among the greatest of their kinds, they were considered to
require either a full band of five or one of the greatest champions of
the Grand Alliance to handle. Who actually counted among their number
was the subject of lively campfire debate, though there were at least
ten that all agreed on.

Nine now, Hanno mentally corrected, if word about the Stitcher being
destroyed by the Firstborn was to be believed.

``Slayer,'' the White Knight called out, ``return. We're done here.''

There was no sign of movement until the young hero seemingly popped out
between stones, stalking towards the two heroes without a sound to his
steps. The Young Slayer was tall for a Levantine and unusually slender
as well, but the lithe build leant a grace to his movements that was
almost fluid. Armed with a slayer's arsenal, all hooked swords and darts
and ropes, the dark-haired youth was among the more promising of the
upcoming heroes. One of his aspects allowed him to most forms of armour
as he cut, which had proved deadly against Revenants preferring close
range. He was also something of a political headache, as it happened,
which was why he'd been assigned to Hanno's care.

The Young Slayer came from a family rival to the Osena, the descendants
in Blood of the Silent Slayer, but had come into a Name that was widely
considered to be the transitional one leading into the highly regarded
Name of Silent Slayer. For the Osena this was something of an
embarrassment, and though Lady Aquiline Osena had not proved outright
hostile to the young hero she'd also made it clear there was no place
with him in the ranks of the warriors of Tartessos. Hanno had promptly
passed him into Rafaella's care as much for the shared heritage as the
fact that the Valiant Champion had managed to remain on good terms with
Lord Yannu of the Champion's Blood without being married into the
Marave.

``Our hunt was fruitless, Lord White,'' the Young Slayer sighed as he
returned to their side. ``For all we know, the Hawk is-``

Providence nudged at Hanno's hand before his senses could, and he
followed the current without resistance. His sword left the scabbard in
a clean, crisp arc and cut through the arrow a hair's breadth beyond the
arrowhead. The Young Slayer flinched, the harmless steel arrowhead
falling against his leathers with a slap instead of piercing through the
back of his neck.

``Hawk still there,'' Rafaella cheerfully noted.

``As a rule, it is unwise to tempt irony without being prepared to meet
the consequences of it,'' Hanno calmly told the younger man. ``When you
have come into the fullness of your might perhaps you will find the
opposite tack to your liking, as it can prompt the Enemy to move at the
timing of your choice, but until then I would advise a more restrained
approach.''

The Young Slayer swallowed loudly.

``I understand, Lord White,'' he feebly said, making the Mark of Mercy
against his chest.

Promising but still so very young, Hanno thought as he sheathed his
sword. There was still no sign of the Hawk out there, and now even the
Wolfhound had disappeared into the rocks. Fighting against the Revenant
he believed had been an Archer whilst she still drew breath had made the
White Knight dimly grateful for having never fought the Woe in earnest.
For all that the powers of the Black Queen and the Hierophant drew the
eye the most, he suspected that it was Indrani the Archer that would
have been the deadliest of the lot. The Hawk -- named for the feathers
she liked to fletch her arrows with -- had certainly proved to be among
the most lethal of the Scourges.

Christophe would have died during the taking of Juvelun if the Stalwart
Apostle had not been by his side, and Prince Etienne of Brabant
\emph{had} died. The Hawk might not be as visibly destructive as the
Archmage or the Unseelie, but she'd done more damage to the army than
either so far. While Antigone fought the former and Hanno the latter,
the Hawk had set about methodically killing her way through the captains
and commanders of the Grand Alliance's army. It was the Hawk's head that
the White Knight had been hoping to take today, betting on the disorder
of the camp being enough to tempt her into an attack. Yet it seemed she
was not to be baited into exposing herself.

The deadly arrows would resume when they went on the march, then.

``Back to camp,'' the White Knight ordered. ``We've lingered out here
long enough. Best be gone before they bring in other Revenants and the
hunt turns around on us.''

It was not a long walk, but it somehow felt like it anyway.

---

While Hanno had not reddened his blade today, the same could not be said
of others. The pavilion had collapsed, its drapes drenched with blood.
Half a hundred men and women, several bruised and cut, knelt outside in
the mud surrounded by a ring of bared swords. Behind them Lycaonese
armsmen, bearing the colours of Neustria and Hannoven, set to the work
of dragging away the corpses with brisk efficiency. Few of the
northerners had died in the ambush, having gone in fully armed and ready
while most of the Alamans captains had kept swords and daggers but few
bothered with even chainmail. Not a quarter hour had passed since the
last of the steel was sheathed, but already the camp was like a kettle
about to boil over.

Rumours had flown with swift wings, for the Iron Prince's seizure and
killing of the mutinous officers had been impossible to hide. Already
two fantassin companies had holed themselves up behind their carts and
hollered loudly at treachery and breach of contract, but they would not
be the last. Lycaonese respected ruthlessness suborned to greater
purpose, and in matters of law the Prince of Hannoven had been within
his rights, but to southerners this was a grave overreach. Hanno had
already sent the Balladeer and the Harrowed Witch, two of the more
level-headed among his Named, to prevent that particular situation from
spinning out of control.

Respect for the Chosen would stay hand and the Balladeer was highly
popular besides, while the Witch had the means to quickly send word to
him if need be. In truth, though, the White Knight did not believe that
this would escalate much beyond the current trouble. The Prince of
Hannoven had been hard-handed but also clear-sighted. There was no real
support for the would-be mutineers among the broader army: the Lycaonese
remained loyal to their rulers, the Levantines seemed to approve more
than not and the Firstborn were either indifferent or amused. Hanno had
spoken with their General Rumena on several occasions over the last
month, and found the ancient drow to be contemptuously amused with what
it deemed to be `human foibles'.

Its interest in the politics of its allies began and ended at their
intersection with the interests of the Firstborn.

The Barrow Sword's footsteps were not as quiet as the man believed them
to be, but Hanno did not give it away until the bearded villain was
almost close enough to be struck. Rafaella had twice warned him of how
dangerous this one truly was, and she was not one to hand out such
praise easily. She'd also had a few unkind words about the Black Queen's
protection of him, but then Hanno figured that the Barrow Sword would
have had a few of the same to Catherine Foundling about his own
protection of the Valiant Champion. That tended to be the way, with the
Truce and Terms.

``Ishaq,'' the White Knight acknowledged without turning. ``Come to have
a look?''

``Something like that,'' the other man drawled. ``Wasn't sure the old
man had it in him, truth be told.''

\emph{More the fool you}, Hanno thought. The Lycaonese were a strange
folk at first glance, but not so difficult to understand when studied in
depth. In some ways their culture was more permissive than that of the
Alamans and the Arlesites, especially when it came to privacy -- though
with the unspoken understanding that anything done in private could not
be a danger to the community -- and mores, but their land had made them
a hard people. None of the northern soldiery had been affronted by the
Iron Prince's ambush today because, in their eyes, it was his undeniable
right to act this way. They had never taken fully to Salienta's Graces,
up north, where instead it was strong rulers and hard choices that were
trusted to get them through the dark.

The Iron Prince had never acted the tyrant before because he'd never
seen a need to. It was as simple as that. Not all ruthless men needed to
trumpet about their ruthlessness.

``It will be settled soon,'' Hanno said.

The Barrow Sword let out a noise of disbelief.

``There's four companies barricaded now,'' Ishaq said. ``And there'll be
more, mark my words. He only sent a few envoys there to inform them
their officers had been arrested for high treason and they must set down
their arms before letting them stew. He's lucky they didn't lynch any of
them. Not the wiliest of schemers, our Prince of Hannoven.''

Hanno glanced at the other man, whose neatly-trimmed beard and elegantly
subdued facepaint were both twisted by a jeer as he watched the bodies
being stripped naked and dragged to the disposal pits. The Levantine
villain did not seem to share the enmity much of his countrymen held for
Procerans, but his general callous disregard for life meant there was
little difference in practice.

``Not a schemer,'' the White Knight agreed. ``Yet not a fool. Where are
the rest of the Hannoven armsmen, Barrow Sword, if they are neither here
nor forcing the fantassins in line?''

Pale brown eyes flicked to him, narrowing in thought.

``Ah,'' the Barrow Sword exhaled. ``The conscripts. Not a fool indeed,
while I have been yapping my jaw like one instead.''

Hanno bent his head in acknowledgement. The Prince of Hannoven had,
correctly he believed, decided that the conscripts would be easier to
get in line and so focused his efforts there. It went with the way
Brabantines -- and many Alamans armies -- appointed their officers. A
prince would usually name most his relatives and closest highborn allies
to a command, but when the stock of those and trusted career soldiers
were exhausted it was tradition for levies and conscripts to elect their
officers from their own ranks. Given the high rates of attrition and the
realities of raising an army by conscription, it had in truth been
mostly lowborn captains who'd been in the tent.

And so by seizing or killing the Brabantine captains in the tent, Klaus
Papenheim had effectively removed all the men and women who would have
had the popularity and leadership to rouse the conscripts into organized
resistance against him. His actions would still breed deep resentment
and involved killing trusted officers shortly before seeking a pitched
battle, but for now though the conscripts were mutinous they were a
disorganized sort of mutinous. The kind that could be herded into
companies and forced to prepare for a march west by Lycaonese soldiers,
as was currently taking place while the fantassins failed to realize
they were being isolated.

It wasn't that the Iron Prince was unaware that a third of the camp now
despised him, Hanno mused, but that in the old prince's eyes that
mattered little if no one here was alive to hate him in a week. He was
not wrong in this.

``I take it we're not going to intervene either way?'' the Barrow Sword
asked.

Hanno almost smiled. The man's reason for seeking him out finally became
clear.

``There will not be a need,'' the White Knight said. ``I have sent
Antigone and Christophe to oversee the capitulation of the conscripts,
and anything other than our visible presence would be interference
beyond our mandate.''

The Barrow Sword turned to study him for a long moment.

``Huh,'' Ishaq idly said. ``Thought you'd be up in arms about all the
killing, White Knight. It seemed like the kind of turn you might flip a
coin over. So to speak.''

Hanno turned to level a calm stare on the villain, who met it defiantly.
He said nothing, simply waiting in silence until the other man looked
away.

``No offence meant,'' the Barrow Sword said.

``Of course,'' the White Knight mildly replied. ``A good evening to you
then, Ishaq.''

The bearded man balked at the implied dismissal but did not contest it.
It would have been easier, Hanno suspected, if they had fought. It would
have allowed the Barrow Sword to place him as the more powerful among
them, and so end the incessant challenges that uncertainty in this
matter drove him to attempt. Yet Hanno was a high officer of the Grand
Alliance, and the Barrow Sword was not one of the Named in his charge.
Duelling the villain, even if Catherine would likely end up excusing the
matter, would be an act with repercussions. Gods but there were a great
many of those, these days. His world had grown increasingly complicated
since the inception of the Truce and Terms.

Duties had grown like weeds even as old certainties now passed like sand
through his fingers. Hanno reached for the coin that was never far from
his palm, though it had never been found by another, and closed his
fingers around the silver. Laurels on one side, crossed swords on the
other. The only verdict the Seraphim ever cared to give. Watching the
corpses be dragged away in silence, the White Knight casually flipped
it. It spun, a blink of silver, and landed on his open palm without
anything beyond Creation's laws having moved it. A relief, almost. At
least it was not a spurt of the Hierarch's madness again. It still left
him feeling unpleasantly blind.

It was not that the White Knight believed himself to be unschooled in
matters of law or in matters of right and wrong. He knew better. His
interest in both matters -- sometimes aligned, sometimes opposed -- had
begun early. As a boy, Hanno had once been a court scribe for the Outer
Tribunal of Arwad. The courthouse of Halan District had been a minor one
even among the lesser of the Thalassocracy's two tribunals, but it had
often deal with foreigners and their laws, as well as possessed a
surprisingly large scrollhouse that the senior scribes and archivists
had been lenient in allowing a young Hanno to use.

These days, when looking back in search of the first steps taken in
becoming the man he was today, the White Knight had often lingered on
that alignment of coincidences as a likely source. He had learned of
many laws while quite young, not only those of his native Ashur but also
those of Free Cities -- Nicae and Delos, mostly -- as well the
southernmost of the Proceran principalities. He had also seen judgement
given day after day, the law measured and applied by the tribunes of the
courthouse for which he had kept records. It had fostered in him an
interest in justice and law long before injustice slew his father and
befell his mother in the wake of that death.

He'd read the famous treatise on Ashuran law, the \emph{Ten Scales} of
Madrubal, as much out of curiosity as because he had nursed ambitions to
one day become an archivist at the courthouse. That same abundance of
knowledge had come close to leading him astray, when he had sought the
Riddle of Fault and earned the attention of the Seraphim, so in a sense
it was not without peril. It was all too easy to become drunk your own
learning and confuse it with wisdom. Yet Hanno had continued to learn,
over the years that followed, for though it was not his place to judge
there was rarely virtue to be found in willful ignorance. And so he had
sought knowledge of the laws of Calernia, sifting through them in search
of wisdom.

He had found sense in some places, be they the graces the Principate
granted to all from princes to beggars or the shrewdly even-handed way
the Tower collected taxes, but always it had been\ldots{} situational.
Impermanent. Nothing at all like the timeless wisdom of the Choir of
Judgement. And more often Hanno had found the laws twisted and turned
into a tool of oppression by those who made them. The Magisterium of
Stygia made property of men while calling it a godgiven right, Callowan
nobles inherited the right to pass judgement along with their titles and
Ashur in the same breath condemned slavery while buying foreign
criminals whose sentences would be spent labouring in the
Thalassocracy's mines.

Watching soldiers in mail drag butchered naked corpses way, Hanno
considered justice. Law, it could not be denied, gave the right to
Prince Klaus Papenheim. Yet justice was not the same thing, and it
rarely nested on the side that dragged corpses into mass graves -- for
all that the appellation of `disposal pits' tiptoed around that words,
that was what they were in truth. No, Hanno would not put blind trust in
laws. Men were flawed and that imperfection bled into all that they made
it was the simple way of things. Even laws. \emph{Especially} laws,
perhaps. So the White Knight had observed those that he could while
pursuing what he knew to be right, and ignored those that he must while
doing the same.

It was a straightforward path, in a way. While he was as blind as anyone
else on Creation, he'd had the light of the Choir of Judgement to heed
and follow instead. That had removed uncertainty. Allowed for purity of
purpose, if not always action. Hanno had been blessed enough to benefit
from the wisdom of the Seraphim since his first breath as the White
Knight, and in a way the coin that represented it had become as much a
part of him as his hands or feet. Even when he had not called on the
judgement of the Seraphim, not tossed the coin, that he still held it at
all had been a reassurance. A sign that he had not lost his way, that as
the instrument of Judgement he still brought good into the world.

Now all that was left was a coin more silver than miracle and the
growing awareness of his own imperfections.

Hanno's hand went to trace the stumps of his missing fingers. He had not
grown to question the worth of that bargain, but there had been other
doubts that crept to his side under cover of night. The end of the
troubles at the Arsenal had been no such thing, simply a transmutation
of one form of trouble into another. And though the White Knight knew
better than to linger on the attribution of fault, he had wondered much
over the last months of how the parts of the blame there should be
assigned. Some of it was his, but how much? Hanno had refused to bend on
the principles at play because those principles simply could not be bent
if the Truce and Terms were to remain worth enforcing.

But he'd not conveyed this properly to the First Prince and the Black
Queen, and so they had joined hands to work around him.

It had stung. Not that they'd treated him as an obstacle, for he had
absolutely been one. But rather that two women he'd held in high regard
had so utterly failed to understand that the Truce and Terms were
already a compromise on principle and they'd been asking him to
compromise those \emph{even further}. Behind all the talk of necessities
and dues, what they'd wanted of him was to go back on the rights and
protections promised to someone in his charge, with little more
justification for it than `the fears of the Highest Assembly require
quelling'. Which, while likely true, was not a valid reason to break
half the oaths that made up the foundation of the Truce and Terms.

It was as if they'd believed he was being inflexible for the pleasure of
it rather than because it was the only morally potable stance to take in
that position. Even from a long-term perspective, a willingness to
discard any Named that became inconvenient at the first\ldots{} Hanno
breathed out, reached for the calm. He would not fall into the trap of
the backbiting, into the inherently losing game of beginning to think of
this in terms of victory and loss. Yet he'd allowed the eminent
reasonableness of the foremost villain of their age to lull him into a
sense of comfort, and that was an illusion that must be discarded. While
the trick with the corpse of the Red Axe had been disgraceful, it had
mostly served as a reminder of a simpler truth.

Catherine Foundling did not have lines in the sand that she would not
cross, if she thought it necessary. It did not erase her virtues, but
neither must Hanno ever allow himself to forget that all that stood
between the Black Queen and atrocities was the perception of need.

It was Cordelia Hasenbach's complicity that had most troubled him. The
White Knight was not an utter fool, he grasped that regardless of her
character her position would make demands of her. Yet Cordelia Hasenbach
had, once, been on the verge of being Named. The Heavens themselves had
measured her being and not found it wanting. He'd honestly not believed,
deep down, that she was someone who would put political needs over doing
the right thing. He'd been wrong. The grim theatre of the desecration of
young girl's corpse, a trial that was a farce going back on the
Principate's own word -- that Named alone would stand in judgement over
Named -- had proved otherwise.

Cordelia Hasenbach had and would place the preservation of the
Principate of Procer above all other callings, no matter how wicked or
virtuous they might be.

It had been a disappointment. One less person he could trust among a
number already exceedingly small. And there were even fewer he could
both trust and be challenged by. The Grey Pilgrim was one, but Tariq was
deathly afraid of stepping back into the role he had as a younger man
and that made him\ldots{} hesitant to speak up, sometimes. And so few of
the other heroes ever cared to question Hanno's actions, his reasons,
save for those that questioned them \emph{badly}. Or worse, for the
wrong reasons as Christophe de Pavanie once had. The trust that had
grown strong between the keystones of the Grand Alliance at the
beginning of the war was fraying, slowly but surely. It was, Hanno had
found, an unsettlingly lonely feeling.

And so now it was alone that Hanno of Arwad looked at the last of the
corpses being dragged away, knowing he had tactically allowed this to
happen. \emph{Veitland}, Princess Mathilda of Neustria had succinctly
asked. A cliffside village halfway through Twilight's Pass, where Iron
King Konrad had once shamed fleeing armies into turning around and
facing the enemy. \emph{Hauptberg}, Klaus Papenheim had just as
succinctly replied. A small dip into \textbf{Recall} had been enough to
confirm what he'd already suspected, that there the bloody birth of the
Iron Crown had begun in murderous treachery. Even the Barrow Sword had
sniffed out the nature of what was coming, giving a warning about
Captain Nabila being a skilled captain but green to the Dominion's
bloody politics.

``It was lawful,'' Hanno murmured, eyes lingering on the streaks of red
trailing the ground.

\emph{But was it just?} His hand itched for the coin, but the coin was
just that now. A coin. The White Knight why this had been done, and that
some restraint had been shown. He agreed with the Iron Prince that if
the army stayed here, it would most likely perish. The Dead King was too
canny an opponent to give them the kind of hopeless battle that they
would end up winning. Which meant they must win in the mundane, in the
dirt, and that meant marching west even when thousands among this army
were unwilling. Leaving the mutineers behind would not have been
possible, Hanno also knew. They would have been eaten up in a day and
risen as soldiers in the service of Keter. These, the dark-skinned man
knew, were all good reasons.

That this had been necessary was, in truth, difficult to deny. But had
it been \emph{just}?

\emph{No}, his heart whispered. \emph{It wasn't}.

There had been better ways. If he had stepped in, involved himself
regardless of authorities and restraints and how it would be seen as
overstepping, there might be fewer corpses in the pit. Or none at all.
And the heart was just as blind as the rest of him, but these days what
else did Hanno have to follow? It would have been a mistake to step in.
It had been a mistake \emph{not} to step in. If he had acted, lives
could have been saved. A simple answer. If he had acted, the potential
ramifications might have killed rather more than fifty people. A
complicated answer. Hanno knew himself to be in the right place, for he
was the White Knight and doom was creeping across the land. Between it
and Calernia was where he must stand

Sometimes, though, he wondered if he was there right man to be standing
there.

The thought came lightly, and left just as easily, but it was not far.
The White Knight eventually forced himself to look away, for soon the
fantassins would be called to heel and he intended to be there to keep
an eye on matters personally. Likely, he thought, the Prince of Hannoven
would try to begin an early march west so that the mutinous soldiers
felt like there could be no turning back. The afternoon air was chilly
and so Hanno called Light to him, letting it warm his bones as he had
learned from the life of a Paladin long dead.

It came slower than it used to.