Draka knew what he looked like to anyone who laid eyes on him. He knew what they felt in their hearts at the sight of him when Vigora carried him into the square. Fear. Hesitation. Caution.

  In his armor, he was a fortress against men. Layers of steel thick enough to break the strongest sword, blunt the sharpest spear, shatter the thickest axe. It was made to withstand the onslaught of a thousand demons to one. Made to fight beasts who would tear through the people crowded together in the square nearly shoulder to shoulder as if they were only the liquid pumping through their frail bodies.

  Beneath those plates were layers of chainmail and padding, with plates of iron woven into the quilting. His head was a solid helmet of steel with only a thin cross to look through, topped with sharply pointed spikes instead of some feathery plume that made him look like some rooster. His boots were covered, his legs were covered, his body was covered, there wasn’t a single sliver of his armor that even the finest point could pierce except the holes at the ends of claw marks that had dug into his back and chest plates. Remnants of the last time he had worn this very armor; the last time he felt the battle’s call. And Vigora, beneath him, was just as armored, just as protected as a veritable fortress as he was with her own coat of plates and horned chanfron. Few warhorses could bear the weight of her armor and walk let alone carry him with his, carry him with his legs hanging between her armored ribs and his zweihander with a blade wider than his hand and longer than she was on one side, and the hooks to hold his spear the same way on the other.

  His long steel spear was in his hand, locked into the kite shield bearing his sigil so that he was protected while holding it upright and could use it as a lance. Its point was sharp, but the end was weighted with a holed cylinder. He had decided to twist the handle so that the spikes jutted out through those holes like he would for the demons it was designed for. A man caught by the spear wouldn’t survive regardless of how good his physician was. His two swords were on either side, in their sheaths.

  A squeeze of his knees and Vigora stepped slowly forward, her head down so that her long horn was aimed at the crowd before them. And they parted, some in a panic. He didn’t need to hold her reins. He never used them in battle, never in his armor. With his right hand, he held the spear upright, pointing to the Heavens that granted him his authority. His left rested on the hilt of his sword. They couldn’t see, but he was watching every single face, every movement, every shift in the crowd.

  They parted all the way to the Cathedral across the square. Draka raised his heels and squeezed his knees. Vigora shot forward in a sprint that sent a flutter of puddle water and bits of the stones beneath her hooves flying.

  The crowd became a blur. To the crowd, they became a blur. He raised his spear, let his fingers gripping it from behind his shield loosen just enough for the red silk to fly. Crimson flooded around him, gripping his Seven-Pointed Star and tall white Cross in its waves. It was to full flight as Vigora neared her hardest, charging sprint that would trample any in their wake.

  Vigora turned with a sideways leap to the stone steps of the cathedral with a huff of butterflies. She faced them to the tall double doors. Draka leaned his head forward as the silky flag swayed back to his side, nearly lifeless. Now, he used the reins.

  Vigora raised herself on her hind legs and planted her hooves on the doors, one and the other. The doors flew open as Draka ducked the spear down enough that the flag nearly touched the ground. Vigora went in with her head lifted proudly. If not for Draka’s jerk of her reins, she would have been prancing her way to the altar. He raised the spear upright so that it played the part of a flagstaff again.

  If you relieve yourself in here, I swear to the Lord Almighty, I will give your pelt to Balian, Draka thought as he kept his own back straight and his chin lifted to the gawks and gasps echoing through her clopping hoofs.

  Commoners were awestruck, monks were gasping, nuns were crossing themselves, and priests were gritting their teeth in rage as he rode past them down the center of the nave.

  He stopped her just before the crossing and stepped off the saddle. The cleric standing at the Chapel of St-André was wearing the chain shirt and tabard of his Order, signifying that he was on guard. Draka saw that he had his mace. He nodded once at the cleric. The cleric nodded back.

  “What is this? You desecrate a House of God!” One of the priests started for the steps onto the crossing.

  Draka ignored him.

  The cleric didn’t.

  The cleric drew his riveted mace and drew the dagger from his belt with a hop to block the priest. “Don’t.” It might have been said quietly, but the nave echoed with that single word.

  “This is against the Sacra Carta!” the priest shouted from where he was.

  “You mean that really big bunch of words about how you get to run your churches while we stop all the monsters and ghouls from ripping you apart?” The cleric said with sharpness and ease. “Never read it. But if you take another step, I’ll make sure it gets read to you when you wake up.”

  Draka turned his helm as if he were glancing at the man, then continued climbing the steps to the altar, toward the apse, toward the stained glass window of the Holy Mother and the painted saints seated on either side of her. And he went around the altar, a symphony of gasps filling the air as he came to the tall golden cross between him and Holy Mary. He looked up to Her, then at the cross of crosses. The Cross of the First Paladin.

  With a one-handed tug to loosen the strap, he pulled his spiked helmet off and set it on the altar behind him. He let the spear’s handle rest on the ground, the point still upright to keep the flag from brushing the stones, the kite shield still locked to it at midway up the haft, and knelt before the cross. The gasps quieted.

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  “This,” the priest growled, “Is blasphemy.”

  Draka drew his sword from its sheath and held the blade below the cross guard. He kissed the ruby adorning his pommel, a ruby given to him by the former King of the Holy Lands and Protector of the Holy Sepulcher until the exact moment of his death, and bowed his head in prayer.

  Silently, he prayed, ‘Lord God Almighty, Alpha and Omega, Creator of All. I, Deitrich of the Sczecin-polczi Tribe, Commander of the Cohorts of the Holy Sepulcher, Paladin of Thy Holy Spirit, Ask for Thine Holy Grace on this consecrated ground with which I stand. In Thy name I was chosen to bear your Holy Spirit in battle. In Thy name, O Lord, I carry Thy Will as best I can into the throes of my battles.’

  “He can’t do this,” the priest shoved at the cleric. “That is for the Cardinal and the Cardinal alone to have communion. Not some soldier with a fancy banner. Paladin or no, there are rules.”

  Draka was unperturbed. He continued praying. ‘I have never asked for more than mercy and forgiveness. I follow Your Will beyond all else.’

  “You want to stop him, stop him,” the cleric stated flatly, softly, but with a conviction that was unwavering. “Go on. Trust me, you’ll prefer what I will do to you over him. Paladins aren’t known for playing nice with little hotheaded lobsters. Back. Away.”

  ‘Now, I come before Thee, to honor Thy Will as I understand it. I raise Thy banner in defense of those who have been deceived in Your name, I raise my sigil as the Lamb of their sins and so that they may know Thy Will as I do. Thy Will and Thy Will alone, I act. I plead the blood of the Lamb for Thee. Amen.’

  Draka opened his eyes and lifted his gaze from the cross to the stained-glass visage of the Holy Mother.

  Please, he begged.

  He waited.

  All he needed was a single answer.

  No voice thundering in his bones. No command from the Holy Spirit. Only silence, apart from the priest’s haughty growls and snarky remarks at the cleric who was, as far as he could tell, trying to get the man to hit him. If the priest was foolish enough to do so, it allowed the cleric to strike back. Hard.

  “What is that horse doing in here? What is he doing?” Cardinal Olivier had arrived, much to Draka’s chagrin. He had emerged from the chapel doorway, he imagined. He didn’t look, but listened to the Cardinal’s rushing steps up to the apse where the cleric stood. “Let. Me. By. Theodore, do not let the temptations of the devil deceive you. This. Is a. Blasphemy that must be stopped.”

  Draka waited, watching. Listening.

  “Paladin Grande Prince, this is your only warning. If you do not come down from there now, I will have to rally the Monastic Order to seize you. Now, I know that you are a good man at heart. A simple exorcism can fix this, but otherwise I will have to act. Don’t make me…”

  The cleric was laughing. Over his shoulder to Draka, “Can you believe this guy?” Back to Cardinal Olivier, as if he had to shift to block him. “Stand down, Cardinal.”

  Something. Anything. All he needed was a whisper. Even if it was to stop. A command. Something.

  Please, Lord, Draka bowed his head again. What is Thy command?

  The Holy Mother brightened as the sun passed over her stained-glass features. A wave of colorful light beamed over Draka, filling the ruby with its glow. Draka raised his head and closed his eyes to bathe in its warmth.

  “Welp,” The cleric took up a defensive stance, pressing on the haft of the mace. With a loud click, the head of the mace extended and the rivets sprung out. He lifted it, ready to bat his way through the Cardinal and his priests if they took a single sliding step forward.

  “What?” Cardinal Olivier gaped as Draka stood to look back at him.

  With a toss, the flag of the Diocese, with the red cross in the corner of a field of white, that had been beside the golden cross, landed with a drift toward the doors of the nave. Draka loudly tapped his spear. Vigora jumped over the steps of the apse and landed behind the cleric with her head down and her hooves scraping.

  Draka left them as they were. Gaping faces over robes of either red or brown wool, nuns kneeling in prayer, and a single cleric beside his horse ready to defend him. He carried the spear and shield, the flag Maud had embroidered draping over his shoulders, down the steps from the apse, past the gawking Cardinal and Priest, and into the nave.

  Vigora paced at his side as he approached the doors. He clicked his teeth. He couldn’t see her ears, but he knew she was surprised that he wasn’t leaving. He was going through the door on the left, the door up to the tower. She turned herself around and faced her horned chanfron toward the frozen onlookers.

  Draka climbed the stairs two at a time. Up and up, into the tower. Past tall windows, round and round. Finally, he reached the top with a heartfelt deep breath. He opened the wooden door and stepped out onto the windy balcony. Ducking around the bell, he found a ladder and climbed up onto the roof.

  The wind whipped against him, grabbing at him, tugging him toward the ground so far below that the city looked little more than a footprint beneath him. He had never been so high. He clawed and pressed his body to the ancient shingles to reach the point and cross.

  Fighting the wind with all his might, he pressed his spear flushed against the iron rod of the cross and slid the ropes he tethered his flag to so that they slid over it.

  A tug of the spear—after retracting the spikes, of course—and a quick jerk of the ropes and the flag was fixed. Red silk fluttered around his shoulders and head, then plumed outward, straight and rippling to the strong wind of the height. The Cross and Seven-Pointed Star shone with the brightness of the sun shining through it.

  Draka gripped the rod with one hand to keep from falling the entirety of one hundred and forty seven meters to the square below. Adjusting himself to lay on his side across the roof, he held his spear loosely in the fingers of his other hand as he reached for the horn on his belt. Spear still in hand, he lifted the horn to his lips and blew with all his might.