"Weapons drill again?" Brother Uriel seemed surprised.
Juzef shrugged. "What else can we do, Brother? Like praying, extra drills do no harm. Besides, unless I'm mistaken we're doing two things with them. The first is to frighten a bit of respect into Vortenbras's hangers on. And the other is, I suspect, to inspire several of your 'secret Christians' with a strong desire to join the order. Just making a judgment on the number of young men who have found an excuse to speak to me, the interest in being a knight in the service of Christ may be bigger than their interest in being a monk in the service of Christ. I've told them about having to eat cabbage and live in chapter houses in Prussia, and fight howling demons from outer darkness, but not even the cabbage could put them off."
"You make a jest of God's work, Ritter. You are also part of a monastic order."
Juzef Szpak was feeling in a poor mood for being lectured. "Many a good thing has been done with a light heart, Brother. And I think it's up to God to judge whether my jests serve him better than your moralities. They see that our swords and our faith are not jests, for all that they outnumber us twenty to one. They intend to murder all of us, if we do not manage to leave before Yuletide. Yet my men drill calmly. It frightens them and impresses them. And maybe I will be able to get you and the clerics away if the weather lifts. If not, we'll go down fighting. I'd hoped the secret Christians among the locals would have been prepared to help us get away. Instead they seem prepared to fight next to us, but they think that our getting away is hopeless."
"What of the prince and Hakkonsen? We know that they still live."
Juzef shrugged. "At the moment I can't get my own contingent of men out of Kingshall, let alone go looking for them. I am not looking forward to telling my superiors that we lost them, but my duty to you and the Empire is still to be done."
Francesca frowned at the letter from the Emperor. She usually avoided frowning—there was nothing worse for leaving lines on your face. But this handwriting . . . Why, oh why, did the Emperor insist on doing any correspondence he considered vital himself?
She knew why of course. She had employed enough spies herself to know the answer to that. But it would make it easier to read if he did have someone he really could trust and who could write properly! Well. The content and orders were explicit enough. She sat and penned the letters to the necessary people. It was probably going to be expensive. Looking out of her windows she was sure that it was going to be cold. But she'd better go herself. She pinched her chin thoughtfully, and sat and wrote one more letter to a Fleet Captain Lars McAllin of Vinland. He could be useful. Probably also expensive, but if the Emperor wanted his nephew in one piece . . .
She tinkled a delicate glass-and-silver bell.
Poor little Heinrich could go out in the cold and deliver the letters.