The Heavenly Host

“Bottle this!” Randolf’s mouth covered Crispin’s and their laughter was lost to their lust.

Chapter 85

^{DOF +1}

^{Late Morning 15-18-449}

Hilda stood at the edge of the still dewy clearing, gnawing on her burnt, crusty and cold breakfast cake, about four hours after dawn. Not that she needed to eat the damaged baked good; she never needed to eat, it was really more stress relief. She could not actually gain or lose weight as a saint. Saints generally looked exactly the same for all eternity, short of some strange event. In some ways this was convenient in that she had never had much luck losing weight when she was alive; she had been on what seemed like a lifelong diet. Now she could eat whatever she wanted and not gain any weight. However, that also took a lot of the pleasure out of it. No more sense of being “bad” and cheating on her diet.

Actually, it was pretty dang hard to be “bad” as a saint. It certainly put a damper on getting dates. She would be at a party or a bar, and someone would ask her what she did. “Oh, I’m a saint.” Suddenly, the other person would make pleasant excuses and move on. And that was at an avatar bar; she was sure a human party or bar would be even worse.

That was one nice thing about this undercover work; she could pretend to be someone else. She could lie and do it for the cause of Good. She shook her head and put the rest of the burnt cake into her belt pouch. The other nice thing about this whole adventure was wearing street clothes. She had been given an account at the quartermaster’s to be outfitted in Astlanian garb and tools.

Unfortunately, they had no “normal” horses to complete the masquerade, so she would have to get some from the Rod. She had also been advised to locate a follower of hers and use him or her as a guide to current customs and appropriate behavior. Further, as a lady in the city, she would need to have a man-at-arms or squire. Technically, she should also have a maid, but that would start to get really complicated. They needed to keep this quiet.

The question had been, who? She had scanned her followers in the area and finally decided on a young man named Danyel. Danyel had been born not too far from Rivenrock and was in fact a descendant of the children Hilda had died to protect. He had also been possessed by the demon, and then had the stuffing beaten out of him by other Rod members, who had to take him down to protect Talarius.

At the moment he was unconscious from his wounds. He’d been going in and out as far as she could tell, but she hadn’t been monitoring that actively. Given that he would almost certainly feel great contrition for allowing himself to be possessed and attacking Sir Talarius, she was fairly certain she could get him to agree to assist her quietly as part of his penance. Naturally, he would help her in any circumstances, but her thought was that his guilt, undeserved in her opinion, would help assuage his concerns in performing surreptitious services. Not something the Rod was famous for conducting.

Hilda was currently dressed in a modern version her old habit as a Sister of Tiernon, and had surrounded herself in her most subtle misdirection and anti-noticeability rituals. Being invisible was too risky in this camp, so simply being unnoticed would be far better.

She made her way through the camp towards the guarded area where the possessed soldiers were being kept. At least, that’s what she assumed the guards were for. She was actually just following her link to Danyel. She paused near the tent to allow some guards to look the other way before sneaking into the tent.

There were three soldiers in the tent, unconscious and heavily bandaged. They also appeared to be loosely chained to their cots. She was going to need to heal Danyel so he could help her, but she could not ignore the other two. So, first things first. She went to each cot and said a prayer of sleep over each man to keep them sleeping, and then she set about examining and healing their wounds.

It took her a few minutes per patient, as she had to make sure she had caught everything, but as she had often noted, saintly healing was a heck of a lot faster than priestly healing and definitely faster than what she’d been able to do as a Sister of Tiernon.

She healed Danyel last. When she was finished, she sat back on her stool for a moment and took a deep breath, preparing to wake him. Hilda grimaced and then put a silence spell around the tent. She did not want Danyel waking up and screaming when he saw her. With the ritual in place, they would be able to talk, but no one outside would hear them.

∼

“I have to admit, you do have a nice view,” Ramses said, looking out the French doors of Exador’s breakfast room. They were at Exador’s tower in Astlan enjoying a late breakfast, Astlanian time.