...

“Fiona!” Her father tried to stop her, but she went on regardless.

“It means you should respect the beliefs people already have!”

“You see, Corps Commander?” Arlen did not respond directly, but spoke to the older man, apparently a leader in the Expedition. “The very picture of an ignorant barbarian. She was ever thus, even at the academy.”

“Barbarian?!”

“Listen to me, Fiona Schillings,” Arlen said, a haughty smile forming on his face as he looked at her once more. “First and foremost, your understanding is mistaken—impotent and feeble! Just the sort of boorish navel-gazing I would expect from you. You presume to accuse us with your platitudes, as though you knew anything of the truth of the world, as though your views were anything but narrow. You do us, and yourself, a great evil. But we are here to put right where you are wrong. Show proper gratitude.”

“Just who do you—”

“I understand that in this town you continue even now the inhuman practice of living sacrifice.”

Fiona could say nothing to this. Arlen saw his chance, pushing ahead:

“Pitiful! To think such a pathetic tragedy should continue in this day and age! It is time such things were done away with!”

“It is true,” Fiona said, narrowing her eyes, “that I don’t think much of the sacrificial system, either. But I detect the threat of violence in your words. Why is that?”

“Why? The fool asks why!” Arlen looked at the ceiling and gave a theatrical sigh. “Surely you know! We are weapons being wielded on your behalf, to cleave through the ‘demons’ that infest this land and bring you salvation! We are righteousness—yes, we could be called righteousness itself! And it is the power of righteousness that you sense—please, do not be so crass as to call it ‘violence’!”

“Demons... You mean the erdgods?”

The older man broke in sharply: “The God we worship is the only god!” Apparently, the use of the word “god” had struck a nerve. He went on: “Other beings may have powers that imitate God’s. But they are evil spirits, or even demons. We shall cast them out. And not only for a time, but forever.”

“Forever...?”

What could he mean? True, the Missionary Order was reputed to have great strength. They might even be capable of killing an erdgod or a demigod. But nothing ever ended with the felling of a single god. Just as she had told Yukinari, demigods and xenobeasts would come to try to take the newly vacant territory for themselves.

“You, all of you, shall never again be without our protection.” Arlen spoke in an exaggeratedly grandiose tone, unmistakably mocking them. “It has already begun. Look at your town square.”

“What...?” Fiona, her father, and the butler looked at one another, wondering what he meant.

The Missionary Order did its work quickly—and altogether unilaterally. The missionary knights rode through the village on their horses, exhorting the people to come to the square in the center of town. Those who had gone out to the farms were called back, until nearly every resident of Friedland was gathered before the Order.

“Good! The next person shall now be granted the Holy Mark! Come forward!”

The knights had lined the people up in front of three stations granting the Holy Mark, and they were now giving the people this sign of faith in the True Church of Harris.

The people, for their part, had scant understanding of what was happening to them. The True Church of Harris was known by name even in these far reaches, but like capital or king, it was a term with little relevance to the life of the average Friedlander. In fact, the people understood barely half of what the men of the Missionary Order were saying to them, so many were the words that bore no influence on country life. But since the knights proclaimed that they were acting with the full approval of Mayor Hans Schillings, the villagers decided they might as well go along with it.

What was more, for the Friedlandian people, “religion” was not something about which one made a deliberate choice. They followed the local cult from the moment they were capable of following anything—indeed, it was so ingrained that it did not even have a name—and they would do so until they died. It was intimately connected to their daily lives, something deeper even than “common sense”—not a “faith” in which they purposefully believed.

Neither was the native cult of Friedland about having respect or even love for its deity. It was motivated by simple awe of creatures whose powers vastly exceeded those of humans; it was a way of avoiding unhappiness and misfortune in this life. Fear of the gods was instinctive, but this did not necessarily beget veneration or affection—if anything, it might be said that simple fear, in every sense, was what had given rise to the native cult in the first place.

So “religion” was among the words the people did not understand. They did not even grasp that they were being converted. Rather, most of them were simply in line because they had been told they were going to be given something—the “Holy Mark,” the knights had called it—and they regarded anyone who would give them a gift as praiseworthy.

“We shall bestow the Mark. Give us your neck.” One of the missionaries held up a metal ring. A small cross shape extended from the bottom. This was the true “Holy Mark,” but the villagers seemed to take the entire device as the Mark in question. One of the townspeople, completely unknowing, bowed his head, whereupon the missionary put the ring around the man’s neck, then struck it with a little metal instrument with a split tip.

Riiiiiing. The sound hung in the air for a long moment before fading.

“Hrrk...?!” The villager made a strangled sound as he experienced something he had never felt before. The metal ring began to shrink. It shrank until it fit perfectly around his neck like a necklace, stopping before it got so small as to constrict breath or blood flow. The metal band had thickened slightly as it shrank, but the villager certainly didn’t notice such a fine detail. Instead he, like most of the others, wandered away touching the “Holy Mark” in puzzlement, as behind him a voice sounded, Next!

Suddenly, there was a pained shout: “Just what is this?!”

The villagers looked up to see acting mayor Fiona, standing there with what appeared to be two of the knights of the Missionary Order. She had probably come running from the mansion and was breathing hard. One of the knights spoke:

“A gift, from us. The Holy Mark. All the faithful wear it.”

“I’m familiar with the Holy Mark! But you’re collaring them like animals!” Fiona pointed to the metal bands.

This set a murmur running through the crowd. Hadn’t the Order said they had the cooperation of the mayor? Then why did Fiona now seem aghast? Why did she seem to be arguing with them? And those metal bands. Now that Fiona said it, they really did seem like a collar such as one might put on livestock...

“How dare you! You are beyond impudent. The band ensures that the Holy Mark shall never be far from the faithful. If anything, it’s a blessing. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

“But—”

“What in the blazes?!” one of the villagers exclaimed. “It don’t come off!”

He must have tried to remove the band when he saw Fiona criticizing the actions of the Missionary Order. But the Mark held fast; though they scrabbled at it, the villagers could not even loosen the bands, let alone remove them.

That first cry sparked a chain reaction. Having discovered that the metal bands would not come off, the people began to close in on the knights, their faces dark with fury.

“How d’you expect me to work with this thing around my neck?”

“Yeah! Take this off, now!”

“I ain’t gonna wear this!”

The crowd of disgruntled villagers seemed to grow with every blink of the eye. There were, obviously, more Friedlanders than missionaries. They surrounded the knights and began to chant, Take these off! Take these off!

One of the knights spoke. “You preposterous asses! You are beyond foolish.”

And then, in the next instant, a tortured scream went up. Then another, and another—all the townspeople at once.

“It burrrrns!”

“Yaaaarrrgh!”

Every one of the villagers of Friedland was screaming: men and women alike, from grandmothers too old to walk without a cane to children who could not yet speak whole sentences. Some had fallen to the ground, thrashing.

“What is this?! What’s going on?!” Fiona demanded in horror.

“Those bands are wonderful things,” laughed a young knight standing beside her. “They’re a little contrivance of ours that allows us to know the general location of each believer, and promptly bestows punishment from God on any who might think to turn their back on the faith.”

“Punishment from God? You mean punishment from you!” She pointed to a box next to one of the stations where people had been receiving the Holy Mark. She had seen one of the knights do something with it immediately before the townspeople began screaming.

“It is from God,” the young knight repeated. “Inestimably so. The arrogance of sin becomes a fire redounding upon the sinner, scorching his profane flesh.”

The fingers of those who had attempted to remove the rings were red and swollen, suggesting that the devices had indeed become hot enough to burn. The villagers had no idea how this was possible, but it was torture; that much, they understood.

“How can you do this?!” Fiona said. “When I was in the capital, I never knew the True Church of Harris to do such awful—”

“This is not the capital,” the young knight said evenly. “On the frontier, we treat you people like the barbarians you are.”

“And you think you can just march in here and—”

“What’s more,” the knight went on, speaking over Fiona, “there has been a change in leadership. Our new acting Dominus Doctrinae is a hard man. Especially toward heretics.”

●

Yukinari looked at the map and grunted, folding his arms. It was complete for the moment.

“Now, as to the question of what we do from here...”

He had based the map entirely on what Berta had told him, not on anything resembling the results of a proper survey. Frankly, much of the diagram was no more than guesswork. It looked a bit like a child’s “Map of My Neighborhood.” Chances were that it was wrong in more than a few places, but it was enough to allow them to start thinking about how to improve Friedland’s farming situation.

“For starters, I think we do this here...”

“Lord Yukinari...?” From beside him, Berta was giving the map a mystified look. The various letters and symbols he had scribbled all over it didn’t seem to mean anything to her—but then, since she appeared to be illiterate, that wasn’t surprising. Dasa sat on Yukinari’s other side, clutching his arm for no reason in particular.

Berta ran her finger along a particular line on the map. “What’s this?”

“An irrigation canal. And this is a reservoir. I’m trying to decide where the floodgate would work best. Although we can’t really be sure until we see the place for ourselves.”

“An irrigation... canal...?”

“Well, in extremely broad terms,” Yukinari said, as if partly to remind himself. “Most crops—plants and such—will grow even without soil. Maybe not legumes, but leafy vegetables will, for the most part.”

Berta made a sound of confusion.

“Plants grow by putting down roots in the soil, fixing themselves in place so they can get bigger. They get water and nutrients from the ground, too. That’s why you need a certain amount of land area for any given plant to mature.”

As he spoke, Yukinari tried to think back to his “previous world,” where his sister had done aquaculture as a hobby. Ever devoted to her interests, she had grown everything from cherry tomatoes to spinach and basil on their porch. Aquaculture, which didn’t use soil, minimized the number of harmful bugs and yielded a relatively large harvest per unit of surface area. Or anyway, that was how she had explained it to him.

“Basically, if you can keep the plants in one place and make sure they get plenty of water and fertilizer, you don’t even need soil. You can grow twice as many crops in the same space.”

Berta was silent.

“I mean, I know jumping right to aquaculture probably isn’t feasible. But even so. All I’m really saying is, as long as we have a steady source of water and nutrients, even the fields you have now should yield richer harvests.”

“I... I see...” Berta said, appearing overwhelmed. Yukinari reflected that all of this probably made little sense to her, even as he kept talking.

“Let’s worry about fertilizer later. We have rivers, which means we can get water. We just need to find a nice, easy place to dig an irrigation channel.”

Berta was quiet for another moment; she stared at the map and blinked several times. Then she said, “And then Friedland will have plenty of crops?”

“No promises. But given I’m no deity, I thought I’d start with what I can do.” He shrugged, offering a pained smile.

“How did you come up with this idea, my lord?”

“How? I mean...” Irrigation was practically inseparable from farmland in Yukinari’s mind. It was the obvious thing to do. But maybe it would be a leap of the imagination for the Friedlanders, who thought the obvious thing was to rely on the erdgod’s ability to influence the environment.

“It’s not my idea,” he said finally.

“It’s a rare person... who would think of it,” Dasa said.

“Dasa’s right. Don’t worry about it,” Yukinari said, plopping a hand down on Berta’s head.

“...Yuki.”

“Oh, sure, sorry.” At a miffed look from Dasa, he put his other hand on her head and mussed both girls’ hair. Dasa seemed to feel that if Berta was going to get her head rubbed, she deserved just as many rubs herself. Yukinari didn’t exactly follow her logic, but if it kept her happy, he had no problem giving her all the pats on the head she wanted.

But even as he ran his hand through her hair—

“Yuki...” Dasa furrowed her brow. “Someone... is coming.” Her senses were sharp; she had probably heard footsteps coming toward the sanctuary. A second later, Yukinari heard them, too, and then there was a pounding on the door.

“Yukinari! Open the door! Please, let me in!”

Yukinari knew that voice. “Fiona...?” He went to the door and pulled up the bar that they used in place of a lock. Fiona all but fell through the doorway into their hut. “Why are you so—whoa, what?!”

She immediately wrapped her arms around Yukinari’s torso, clinging to him.

“Yukinari! Yukinari, help us!” she choked out. He had gotten the distinct impression that the deputy mayor was a strong woman, so to see Fiona reduced to this blubbering, terrified state understandably startled him.

“What is it? What’s happened?” He took her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. As he had suspected from the moment she grabbed onto him, Fiona looked like a mess. Her skin showed through tears in her clothing—and not the kind of tears one would get from running through the woods on the way to the sanctuary and catching one’s clothing on branches. These were clearly the result of an act of violence.

Dasa and Berta jumped to bring a blanket, which they set around Fiona’s shoulders. It seemed to have a calming effect—she sat down where she was and said shakily: “The True Church of Harris—the Missionary Order—they’re here...!”

Yukinari and Dasa looked at her with eyes wide. Berta, however, cocked her head as though she hadn’t understood any of this.

“The Church is here?”

“Yes. And they’re ‘civilizing’ the villagers right now! When I lived in the capital, I heard that the Church sent out missionaries, but I never dreamed they’d—that they’d come all the way out here...!”

“—Yuki,” Dasa said, an edge to her voice. “Is this... because of us?”

“I don’t know,” Yukinari said, frowning. “I didn’t think we had any pursuers, but...”

Fiona, whether or not she had any idea what the two were talking about, grabbed on to Yukinari afresh.

“The Missionary Order—they go around killing erdgods and demigods! If they find out about you, I’m sure they’ll kill you, too!”