Would his visions become more chaotic—more distracting—the farther he got from the source? Would the wheels—the images that Percival feared were signs of impending death—become more forceful in their apparition? Was his continued presence dooming every member of the company on its quest?
Raphael’s mind fled back to Damietta, to Eptor’s anguish. The boy had suffered greatly, and to what end? Raphael had wondered, in the years since, what would have happened if Eptor had simply died during the assault on the stone tower in the Nile. Would the legate have realized sooner the futility of their crusade? Would Francis of Assisi been able to reach a better accord between Christian and Muslim? How many less would have died during the Fifth Crusade?
And Francis himself, sequestered in the ragged shack at the peak of La Verna, receiving the stigmata. It had happened soon after Raphael’s visit to the Franciscan hermitage, and the venerable priest had died a few years later. But had those marks—those symbols of being marked by God—given Francis any solace in his lifelong quest for compassion and unity?
What good had ever come from listening to visions?
The annals of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae were filled with stories of men receiving divine insight. He had, himself, told more than one fable to eager trainees about the blessings offered to the devoted and the pure-hearted by their patron goddess in whatever guise she wore. Athena. Freya. Mary. The name did not matter as long as the men believed their prayers were heard. Those who asked for guidance would be given it. Their mission—as hard and as unforgiving as it was—was not a fool’s errand. They would be rewarded for their diligence. Their lives—and their deaths, especially—would have meaning.
But what of Finn? Of Roger? Of Taran? Of Eptor, and so many others? Victories were won upon the sacrifices of these men, but was the world ever changed for the better?
Cnán quietly listened as the men told their stories. When she had first joined the company, she had sat apart from them during the evening meals and had ignored the way their conversations stuttered to a halt when she wandered into earshot. After a few months, they had grudgingly accepted her presence and no longer treated her as a complete pariah. She was no longer a stranger at their gatherings, and, more often than not, they ignored her completely. She had become invisible, and she was not bothered by their idle dismissal; in fact, such camouflage was part of her Binder training, though she had not had much opportunity to practice it over the last few years. She was, unlike many of the other kin-sisters she had met, a wanderer.
She knew enough to know that she might never fully comprehend the vastness of her sisterhood, but she also realized that knowing was not required in order to fully participate. Wherever she went, she could find signs of other sisters, and that they would welcome her and whatever news she carried. It was comforting, in her isolation, to know that she was part of an extended family. Over time, in the company of these men, she had come to realize she and they had more in common than she had thought.
The men of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae were both knights and vagabonds. Independent, fiercely loyal, and surprisingly intelligent, they were bound by a set of principles that remained unspoken and mysterious to her. Not like the tenets espoused by the zealous Christian missionaries or the mumbled riddles clung to by starved ascetics she had encountered in her travels. The Shield-Brethren, like her kin-sisters, appeared to believe in a grand design, even if each of them, singularly, did not know the full extent of its shape or plan.
They are messengers too, she realized.
Shortly after completing her first assignment as a Binder, she had given up on the idea of family, hurling herself completely into the roles offered to her as a roaming messenger. She made no attachments, avoided falling in love with any boy, and never let herself be drawn into local politics. She delivered her messages and kept moving. She had seen a great deal of the world, and every once in a while wondered if there was a Binder who had traveled farther than she. She had chosen this life, and had reveled in the freedom such a decision had granted her.
And yet, listening to the Shield-Brethren, she began to realize how lonely her life truly was. Few of these men knew each other well before they had begun this journey, but now, they were tightly bound. Even Istvan, as much as the others expressed a near constant dislike of the mad Hungarian. They were—for lack of a better word—family.