For Thine Is The Kingdom 1300

"Forgive me, father, for I have sinned." An altar with a man lain like a sacrifice dominated the room, a younger and healthier man bowed before it.

"From whence have you come, my Son?" The voice creaked with the miasma of plague. His skin, yellowed and blotted against marble-white silks, showed the progression of his curse.

"I have come from the court of our enemy, Father. From parlee with the False Christ." The young man's handsome face cringed in expectation.

The sacrifice of a man pulled his flesh-overladen body up with much effort and turned a balding head to the younger man. "This is not a sin in itself, Callisto. I stood before him for many years, as Patriarch. What in his presence has been wrought?" The altar spoke with suspicion.

"I... I... have renounced the King's Opposition...." Callisto shifted back from the altar, raising one knee to stand. "With my hand upon the True Cross."

Blood-shot eyes gave a look that spoke of fiend's fire. "And what did he give you, Caudillo?" The insult of vulgarity was not lost on Callisto. "Wine? Land? Or was it women?! That was always your weakness, Caudillo."

"He gave me nothing, Holy Father. It was what he took...."

"I do not care about your price, you cur's son! A handful of silver or the whole of Gascon.... a hanging for you nonetheless!" Blood rushed to the sacrifice's face, his pallid features going scarlet and veins went purple.

"He took my daughter, Horatius..." The voice was soft and moved away from the altar with its master.

"I do not care for that whore's afterbirth!" The sacrifice flung itself from the altar, landing on a lame, gout-ridden leg and a long burnt-away stump. "I gave my all for the Old Way of Christ! I gave my wealth, my name, my damnable leg! I have this... ague because of his stunted Jew! Do you care nothing for the Old Believers, for the King's Opposition, for ME?!"

"Not above my own flesh, Horatius." Callisto spoke barely above a whisper.

"There are many more gutter-rats just like this girl, born of that same overused piece of flesh. Why do you care?!"

"She is born of Melinda, Father. She was..."

"She was nothing to you. And don't you dare take that tongue into mischief!" Callisto pursed his lips. "I gave you a virgin as great as Maria and you squandered her."

"I was a fool. Had the Lord not taken her...." Horatius stumbled and held himself up with one arm upon the altar. "....the Scarlet Pox you gave her would have. Leave, Callisto. I would kill you here, if not for my curse and if not for the frocios following your podex."

Callisto turned away and Horatius tried to pull himself back onto the altar. "My apologies, Father."

"There is no forgiveness in revolution." Horatius fell from the side of the altar, and Callisto walked on.


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"Eduardo is as useless to me as a eunuch is to a woman."

"Rey, he is your son, and he needs more men..." The adviser was whining, nasal and ugly- inbred and oh so Orimmo.

"Pah! He is a fool. Let him take his herd of thugs out into the countryside. No more levies, no more gold, no more Wehrwulfen. Tell him he is on his own. Keep my men at the mines, and on the road to Lugdim, and let him figure out the rest of that wilderness."

"And what if he can't, milord?" The man was obviously wed to this effort. Eduardo could at least bribe people, not that it took much skill.

"Someone will kill him, and I'll be able to make someone competent or at the least, controllable, ruler of that Northern shithole. How is that old Queen, Matilda?"

"She would never bow to you, Rey. No one good in Lugdim would. She lives out in a hut by Oldhedge and Eduardo wants to break up the secret masses there. But he can't if you don't give him men...."

"I will give him nothing. I already gave him life and a Kingdom of his own. What more can he really ask of me? If he is so strained, maybe he can arm women? I remember horrible things about Lugdimer women, and have the scars to prove it." Alphonse grinned, and the adviser squirmed. He had tried Lugdimer women, and probably had his own regrets. Not the most fair of folk, and certainly not the most clean or attractive or gentle. "Or maybe he can act like an old Nilotic, and build an army of Jews? I know Jews wander unveiled near the Thymenes. Ha!"

"It is not funny, Rey. All of Lugdim will fall if he can not own the countryside."

"Then send him my suggestions and the best of my regards. I really don't care for the north anymore."

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The Darkest of the Darkest.... Lmumba had brought her tribe far, digesting many tribes to flee from the pale-faces. And they were still digesting tribes.

But to stand before the place where trees bled and the soil screamed and griots larger than tusk-beasts ate a warrior daily and more feet marched than she could count..... that was true terror.

Lmumba fasted for days, hoping some vision would give her some sign of where to go, where to find the seed of the One Who Should Not Have. And she saw nothing. Nothing but horrible visions of the land where trees bled and gold split the ground with stomach curdling screams.

The pale-faces were not so frightening, and their bitter flesh did hold some knowledge, if stale and unfilling. She would taste their flesh, where the Darkest of the Darkest would drown her in there flesh.

Her tribe would march back to meet the Pale Tribes from the Sea. She already knew, from the leathery flesh of a hunter who had graciously eaten an elder who had sampled a pale-face as a gift from his son, that there were more than before.