The Game Called Revolution - - (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

family or friends there. All that was left was to ask Celeste where he would be able to find her, since she was directly below him in the Ordre’s hierarchy. She told him, and he promptly headed to Grenoble. He became a monk in the Church of Saint-Laurent, and wore the black cassock appropriate for ascetics. He also had his hair cut short, as long hair was not appropriate for men of the cloth.

When he was finished wiping the floor and walls with his grey cloth, he went into the nave to make sure it was clean. As he walked down the aisle between the pews, he happened to glance up at the various images of Christ in the stained-glass windows. Not for the first time, he wondered what the Savior thought of him. Victor’s lifestyle was strictly forbidden by the Church, yet he couldn’t help the way he felt. Could the Lord truly hate him for something that was beyond his control? This question had been with him since he was a teenager, and had tormented him throughout many of his days. He chose long ago to deal with his pain with humor; he didn’t want people to know the depth of his suffering.

In the midst of his thoughts, the vestibule door opened behind him. In walked Sister Marjorie, wearing her black habit, her head covered by her wimple, the traditional apparel of a nun.

“Brother Victor, you have visitors,” the elderly nun said.

Thinking it might be Robespierre’s dogs looking for him, Victor replied lightheartedly, “Come now, Sister; you know I’m supposed to be cloistered from the outside world.”

“But they say they’re friends of yours. They even match the descriptions you gave me of them.”

Victor sighed. Sister Marjorie had better not have made a mistake. “Fine. Send them in.”

“We’re already here, actually.”

Victor stood stunned as three hooded figures entered the nave behind Sister Marjorie. The one leading the trio pulled back her hood to reveal the visage of Jeanne de Fleur, his commander. It was her voice that had just rendered him speechless.

The much larger person to Jeanne’s right removed his hood. It was Pierre. No surprise there, really; who else could it have been? “It is good to see you again, Victor.”

The person to Jeanne’s left removed her hood and jovially announced, “We’ve found another dummkopf! Wundervoll.”

Victor stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say. Finally, he said the only thing he could. “Who are you?”

The woman with the Austrian accent was shocked. “Are you kidding me? I tried to kill you!”

Sister Marjorie’s eyes widened in alarm at the confession.

“M-My friend here has an unsophisticated sense of humor,” Jeanne apologized to Sister Marjorie, who forced an uncomfortable laugh.

Pierre just shook his head. “We can’t take her anywhere.”

“I’m sorry,” Victor laughed. “I’m much better with men’s faces than women’s. Although I do like the cat ears. They’re a nice touch.”

“I do not have cat ears! My hair is simply…defiant.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “I know I say it a lot, but…he really is a dummkopf!”

This time Sister Marjorie chuckled in earnest. “That’s just the way Brother Victor is. Well, you’re his friends, right? You should know that by now.”

The Austrian woman was apparently about to reply in the negative when Jeanne none-too-gently elbowed her.

As if to change the subject, Pierre said to Victor, “I never would have thought to look for you here, what with you being a…” He caught himself before finishing that sentence and ended it with a harrumph and a coughing motion from his hand.

“That’s all right. Sister Marjorie already knows.”

Pierre was astonished. “She does? How did she find out?”

“Well…I told her,” Victor replied sheepishly.

“Why would you do that?” Jeanne asked.

In response, he suddenly became very serious. “I’ve never been what you would call comfortable in holy places. I was brought up to believe that if I even stepped foot in a church, I would burst into flames instantly. I’ve always been told the Lord hates my kind and can’t wait to smite us, and we’re abominations that defile this world. So, during my first week here, I couldn’t take it—the eyes of Christ up there staring at me, judging me. In my desperation, I went to Sister Marjorie and asked her what I should do.”

They turned to the sister to get her side of the story. “I was shocked at first, I admit. I never expected to encounter one of them in this sanctuary. I knew I should banish him from here, but as I looked upon the genuine suffering in his eyes, I just couldn’t believe that was the Lord’s will. Surely there is a place even for ones such as them on His earth. So, I have allowed him to stay.”

“I’m sorry. I never wanted any of you to find out what I’ve gone through my entire adult life,” Victor said.

Pierre walked over and patted him on the back. “A friend of mine recently said something similar. But as I told her—or him—suffering is not a sign of weakness. You’ll always be our trusted comrade, Victor. Right now, though, there’s someone who’s in more pain than any of us, and we’ve got to help her. Are you with us?”

“Who is it?”

“France, Victor. Our country needs us.”

Victor smiled at him. “Well, I’d much rather go to the aid of a handsome Frenchman, but what the hell. Let’s do it.”

They weren’t able to enjoy the moment for very long, as a throng of people suddenly burst into the nave. It was yet another mob wielding assorted crude weapons. There must have been two dozen of them, at least.

“Can’t we ever have a conversation that doesn’t get interrupted by a mob?” Victor said.

“This is the Lord’s house! What are you people doing?” Sister Marjorie demanded.

An ordinary-looking man stepped forward. “We’ve come to claim the bounties on the members of the Ordre de la Tradition. We don’t have anything against any of you personally, but things are so bad in town that we need the money to feed our families.”

“I sympathize with you, I really do,” Jeanne said. “If there were any other way—”

The man suddenly became very nervous, cutting her off. “No—no talking. We have to do this while we have the nerve. Get them!”

The crowd advanced, spreading out to surround them on all sides, and moving among the pews to do so.

“What are you orders, Commander?” Pierre asked.

“I really don’t want to fight them, but it looks like we have no choice. Spread out among the pews. At least there we have some semblance of cover.”

“Please don’t do this,” Sister Marjorie pleaded, though Jeanne wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

“Fräulein, if these French worms attack me, I will butcher them, church or not,” Farahilde declared, putting on her bladed gauntlet. She also refused to move from the spot, effectively drawing the line for the mob. Jeanne wanted to yell at her not to harm anyone, but she realized that, realistically, bloodshed may be unavoidable if they wanted to escape from the church. Also, what right did Jeanne de Fleur have to tell another human being not to defend herself if attacked? None, she decided.

Jeanne, then, did the only thing she could. She pointed at Farahilde and told the crowd, “She’s not part of the Ordre. There’s no bounty on her head.” At least, Jeanne didn’t think there was.

The nervous man, however, wasn’t about to be deterred. “She’s obviously with you. The Assembly might pay us extra for her. Everyone, attack! Try to take them alive!”

By this point Jeanne had moved in between pews to the left of the aisle, a few pews away from the mob. Pierre had taken up a position opposite her to the right of the aisle, and Victor was half a dozen rows behind Jeanne. Farahilde, on the other hand, continued to stand her ground in front of the mob and held her gauntlet menacingly, daring them to come at her. Jeanne had counted on the four of them being more coordinated, but Farahilde’s stubbornness made that practically impossible. That didn’t surprise her, though; at this point, she thought, nothing could surprise her.

She was wrong.

Just as the mob made their move, one of them (who had apparently been running late) suddenly came crashing through the door they had all entered from. He flew through the air and came to a violent stop on the ground next to Farahilde. All eyes fell upon him. “Albert! What on earth…?” the nervous leader said.

Albert, however, was in too much pain to provide much of an answer. All he was able to get out was, “H…Hubert.” The single word, though, was enough to resonate with the crowd, and they looked to have been scared to death by the mere uttering of it.

“Oh, dear,” Victor said.

“What? What’s going on?” Jeanne asked.

To answer her question, in lumbered the biggest man she had ever seen. Easily seven feet tall, with massive arms and legs like tree trunks, he had to have dwarfed even Pierre. His peasant clothing barely fit him, and was ripped in several places. Obviously, it was hard to find clothes for such a colossal figure to wear.

Everyone stood agape at the colossus, except for Victor, who laughed and said simply, “Hubert the Giant.”

Jeanne turned to Victor and asked, “You know this…err…man?”

“He is known around here as the ‘Human Alps.’”

Hubert shook his dark, unkempt hair out of his eyes and looked around the room until he spied Sister Marjorie. “I saw bad people coming in here,” he announced to her in his deep voice. “Worried they were going to do bad things.”

“It’s not bad! It’s for the good of the town!” the nervous man yelled. “Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“No one goes into church with weapons to do good,” Hubert argued.

“It’s all right, Hubert. I’m sure these men will leave peacefully,” Sister Marjorie said.

“Not without our bounties!”

Hubert looked confused. “What’s a ‘bounty’?”

It seemed Farahilde had already deduced the way the simple giant’s mind worked, and where his priorities lay, because she was quick to provide an answer. “It means these dummkopfs have come in here to tear up the place. There’s no other reason for them to bring weapons, right? You don’t want to see any harm come to Sister Marjorie, do you?”

Hubert balled up his considerable fists. “I won’t let them hurt you!”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa! We’re not after her! Just these four!”

Unfortunately for them, the giant didn’t believe it. “You’re bad men! And bad men lie! Leave here now!”

The mob advanced upon him, though they were careful to maintain a relatively safe distance. There were several tense moments where the mob and the giant stared at one another with the kind of intensity Jeanne knew all too well; it was the intensity of people trying to quickly decide which lines they were willing to cross.

The mob ultimately decided they weren’t prepared for a bloody battle with the giant, and reluctantly filed out of the church (though they fired off a few curses and threats at Hubert as they left). Jeanne breathed a considerable sigh of relief at this. They wouldn’t have to fight the mob after all—at least, not with Hubert the Giant around.

 

 

 

***

 

After they finished cleaning up the nave, they gathered in front of the pews and introduced themselves to Hubert.

“Hello, Hubert. My name is Jeanne de Fleur. I’m commander of an elite military unit that answers—or answered,” she said sadly, “to the royal family.”

“And I am Pierre Girard, her second-in-command. It’s a pleasure, after what