The priest’s tent had a layered bottom, thick cloth packed with wax and raised at the edges to keep insects from crawling inside. It was a luxury no one else in the convoy could boast. Similarly, he had a platter of goat cooked for himself, something Lucius hadn’t even realized was available in the desert. The whole animal had been boiled and stewed, melted down with desert vegetables and melted with its own fat. Luigi Sacerdote picked at the heaping of food with his clean hand, tugging bright red shreds of meat from the bones as he stared at Lucius.

“What do you think of my army?” he asked.

Lucius crossed his legs and kept his hands in his lap. Try as he might however, he struggled to keep his gaze on the priest and not the succulent feast. Weeks of soldiering rations left a yearning in him, and an irritation. “It’s not an army, it’s a rabble.”

“Pray tell, what’s the difference?”

“Discipline.”

“Impossible to achieve with these soul-less wretches. Even the gods cannot whip them into shape.”

Lucius shrugged. “That simply means they can’t be made into an army. They’re still a rabble. They don’t march in line. They barely take orders.”

Luigi nodded. “And what orders do you wish they would take? If you were in my shoes. Indulge me, northman. Such conversation is rare in these lands.”

Lucius crossed his arms to keep himself from reaching forward, and part of him wondered if he should take his chances killing the priest. “Shields, for starters. I know wood is scarce out here, but that makes it all the more important. You can twist some of those branches, string leather across it, and have a decent bit of protection. Of course, nothing compared to a proper tower shield, but it’s better than nothing. With the shield to start, you can then make a shield wall, and from there all other formations come. I noticed you didn’t plunder the men you killed.”

“No, they ate their fill and left the waste, as they saw it,” the priest said, rolling a soft tuber between his fingers before eating it.

“So, after a standard formation of any shape, you then need to manage food.”

“But, they are each other’s food, more often than not.”

Lucius shrugged. “I suppose that’s one way of having them eat their own stomachs. Water though, you treat them like camels, shoving them into whatever oasis you find and drinking it dry. With proper barrels, or pots at least, you could take more direct routes.”

“Oases cannot be relied upon to appear. We must navigate day by day, even if it takes us off course.”

“But with proper storage, you can endure foul luck.”

“Until disease festers in the stagnant water.”

“Better to fall ill than to go thirsty, if you ask me. If I were in need, I would be prepared to drink an animal’s piss if I had to.”

The priest waved his hand and shook his head. “I think expecting inspiration from you was an error. You are a northman. I think very highly of your… creativity when it comes to weapons, but you don’t understand our peculiarities.”

Lucius nodded. “I suppose there’s fair reason no army has ever made it this far south. Just getting to the ley quarries was an ordeal. We were entirely reliant on Giordanan guides. But honestly, the land could be conquered, with the right stigmata. Take Golden’s ability. In normal circumstances for us, that’s not an ability even worth remarking on. But, with the right application… I imagine with a proper census of abilities, many hundreds of specialists could be hired and all of these issues resolved. In fact, there is one stigmata, colloquially called [Cement] that would conquer this desert easily.”

“Oh? And what does that one do?”

Lucius grinned. “It compacts sand to sediment. We could make roads across the dunes.”

“But they would be buried soon.”

“Not if they were used well, and even then; so what? We could make more. This desert is nearly the ideal material to work from. The stigmata is most foiled by moisture. Pure earth like this would barely make them break a sweat. Then, we could march at double the pace. The basins beneath these skyfall oases could be turned into proper reservoirs. You’d capture ten times more water.”

Luigi closed his eyes and nodded. “That I can see the merit in. We shall se what our god has to say about it. But first, fill your stomach northman. Let it get on your hands and into your blood. You will be viewed with nothing but suspicion if you do not smell like one of us.”

“Who’s going to be smelling me?”

Luigi grinned and picked up the cracked skull of the goat. He swirled it like a wine goblet and said, “My patron of course. If you wait much longer, the fat will begin to congeal like butter. I know that may sound good to a famished man, but trust me: it’s much better liquified.”

His rational mind told him to hesitate, to be cautious. But experience told him that he would need all the energy he could muster if he was to face off against a so-called god. Clearly not one of the true gods, but something powerful enough to flatter itself as one. Something like Umbra, or the Giordanan coast godling, or my little pet from Jarnmark. To face it unprepared would likely be suicide, but without information all he could do was trust in his strength and his wits and the steel in his grasp.

For those who have never had the pleasure of a full animal roast, the idea might seem queasy. Some people can be so squeamish about organ meat, about sucking marrow from cracked ribs and scraping out the innards of leg bones. To them I counter that fish head soup is perfectly common. Many people have even eaten cooked frog. I believe it is far more disgusting what sea creatures, shellfish notably, people eat as delicacies. Compared to that, what harm is there in seeing an eyeball float across a ladle of marrow gravy?

Now, I must say that there was a certain and obvious flaw with the meal. It lacked any wine, beer, or spirits to speak of. That did not stop it from loosening Lucius’ tongue however. The more full he became, the more bold, and the more frustrated he became by the desert-dweller’s hospitality, until he asked, “Aren’t I supposed to be your prisoner?”

The priest laughed. “Is it not your custom to treat enemy commanders well?”

“Only among civilized nations. Rebels, criminals, and pirates are given no such treatment.”

The priest had to pause as he cleaned his lips. “Well, you certainly are none of those, so are you implying that I am one? There is no kingdom here to rebel against, no laws to make me a criminal, and I believe a pirate must be at sea. I know some poets have described the dunes as waves of sand, but I think you see the difference?”

“The key difference is I have not given you my word of honor to be your prisoner. There is no basis of agreement. I have no reason to respect my imprisonment and yet you seem hardly perturbed that I have my apparent freedom of your camp.”

Luigi swept his hand around the tent. “You are a prisoner as sure as if you were clad in steel. You would die if you left, or if we retracted our support of you. I suppose that’s a form of freedom, but I doubt you would risk your soul falling into a grasp other than your dear Shepherd’s.”

“You don’t restrain Golden either.”

Luigi laughed and used a leg bone to point at him. “Why would I have fear of that? Your friend is a turncoat. Did you console yourself that you could escape and drag him around to find the oases? Why do you think he came on your ill-fated expedition? I met with him long before I treated with you, northlander. He has come to visit old friends.”

I’m sure any reader at this point can imagine the shock and rage that appeared within Lucius at this time. His appetite ended, giving the priest more good humor than a troupe of minstrels could have afforded. Lucius flew out of the tent, not even pretending to maintain the etiquette that rival commanders should have. As he already said, Luigi had no bond of honor on him. The entire premise of their polite words was because Lucius still had on his person the relic, and because he was one of the only people in the hundreds of wastelanders that could hold a conversation. Even the priest of a dark god could be tempted by mere conversation.

The thralls certainly provided none.

Even a divine beast could not see them as more than objects, not even animals. Their minds were like dolls. If rewriting and sealing memories had been difficult for him, controlling these husks of human flesh was trivial.

Lucius found him using a trio of them as a chair as a dozen more dove into one of the fetid ponds, grappling with the blind fish. “What haven’t you told me?” Lucius demanded.

“Lucius, Lucius, Lucius, the volume of things I haven’t told you would last longer than your life!”

Lucius grabbed the bird by the throat and pulled him to his feet. “What are you doing for the wizard?”

Golden coughed and wheezed, making a show of his struggle to breathe. As soon as the grip about his throat loosened, he cracked a grin and said, “Why, I’m only here to do what was always the plan. I’m helping you get an army. In this case, a very… very loyal one.”

“You’ve been eating their brains as they fall dead.”

“A side benefit, nothing more. You’ll understand as soon as you meet their god. You’ll find him very familiar I think.”