Burchard had been run nearly in circles attempting to recover their mounts. One more black mark against a Livonian legacy that had already been hideously battered at Schaulen.
Would Volquin ever have allowed such petty affronts to their honor? Dietrich thought not. He suspected his men had made the same judgment, though they had the sense to keep it to themselves. Order required unquestioned power vested in authority, and in an ideal world, every man knew his place in that chain of command that passed from God to the Pope and down, down, down in every direction from there. And in reverse, from the lowliest cur slinking through the muck and mire to peasant to Pope—to God Himself.
In the service to the Pope, Dietrich was technically the highest Christian authority in this wasteland of decay rucked up around the bones of Legnica. Yet the Shield-Brethren had defied him once and insulted him twice. They had taken these offenses to the very border of what might be allowed to pass without calling down a distracting and violent response.
Dietrich could not himself shed the blood he felt was owed for these indignities. Had these arrogant sons of demon spew kept the horses, had they been foolish enough to kill one of his men—had they done this or done that, he might have been granted satisfaction. But now, instead of revenge, he had only the taste of ash in his mouth.
Ash not at all diluted by bad ale.
As with the aftermath of Schaulen, all Dietrich could truly call his own was this seething anger, and so he held it close to his breast like a disappointed lover clinging to a wilted flower, hoarding it to keep the flame of an all-too-often hopeless passion alive. He was God’s servant, selected by his highest-chosen emissary, and his task was holy in the eyes of the Almighty. Vengeance taken against those who defied God was justified in every sense of the word. He had merely to deduce how to accomplish it without risking his own sacred task. They’ve left me precious few options, but there is always something one may do.
He’d only finished drilling against Burchard and Sigeberht a short time ago. Training against two men at once was a habit he’d maintained from his early years in the order, and it had benefited him both in the skills it had granted him as well as the understanding of how to balance two conflicts in one field of vision. Even so, all he felt now was a weak spark of discouraged anger—not the flame he needed.
And tired. So very tired.
He took off his gambeson alone as his squire saw to the maintenance of his maille. The water he splashed on his face was as warm as the rest of this damnably hot place and brought little refreshment. Resting his hands on both sides of the raised trough that served as the basin, he breathed in and out, filling his lungs with fuel for the fires.
It was not a question of whether he would make them pay but of how and when. To that task, he turned his mind to a long-accustomed meditation of strategy, arranging his key plans in verse and ordering those verses in an elegant, memorable sequence—then analyzing and parsing both structure and logic, to find deeper meaning, alternate interpretations—treating the vengeance he and his brothers were owed as he would a piece of the Holy Scripture.
Necessity demanded subtlety, or at least something that would not provoke an obvious response from them. He could not very well raid their chapter house, and one of his men knifing one of theirs was out of the question; bodies had a way of turning up.
No, the formalities had to be observed in doing God’s work, and this was the work of the Almighty. Of that, he had reassured himself countless times.
Dietrich seated himself on a long bench against the back wall of the barn. The smell of animal feces and straw was overpoweringly pronounced, even this far back, and the crowding of his brothers around and inside the ramshackle structure had made him ever more grateful that his rank afforded him the right to demand a private space to call his own. Heaven’s hierarchies served his purposes well. He could not attack the men of Petraathen overtly, which forced him now to contemplate the options available to him. They took something of value from me—my dignity. Returning pilfered horses does not begin to wash away their crimes. Prudence dictates that I take something of greater value from them. And that would doubtless be their own self-regard—the greater, more shining, infinitely precious pride of a glorious and damnable arrogance.
His stomach twisted unhappily within. Strategizing and hating always knotted his innards. He was hoping for a silent way to release some pent-up gas when the door opened. Clenching his buttocks, Dietrich raised his eyes to see one of his knights standing in the door, an initiate named Gelther.
“I gave instructions I was to be left undisturbed,” Dietrich growled.
“Forgive me, Heermeister,” Gelther murmured, “but a runner has arrived, and I thought you should know—the arena has been reopened. The Circus has begun anew.”
*
“What about the Persian with the club?” Zug suggested. “He’s immense and dangerous, and the guards are afraid of him.”
Kim sat across from him in the tent, face set with a frown.
“He’s also been a beneficiary of the Khan’s favoritism before,” Kim said.
Zug thought the Flower Knight was far too picky, too discerning in his opinions of whom they should and should not approach in their endeavor. Zug feared that if his friend had his way, when the time came, their group would not be nearly large enough.
“As was I,” Zug said, his expression drawn into a tight grimace. “It is a cage, and a trap, and I would have been glad to be rid of it at any time.”