These two are very different from one another. One is entirely constructed of animal bones — Saints and Angels, I hope they are animal — and its joints are made of ball-and-sockets formed of metal and screwed into the bone. Someone has whimsically laced ragged strips of cloth between the bones of the rib cage to offer a bit more of a feeling of a body. I can only hope it was an Engineer who did it and not the poor creature itself.
“Wonderful construct, my Suture!” the Engineer says, gesturing at the poor devil. “So much better than a horse. No need to feed it, no end to how far he’ll go, and three times as strong as your strongest draft horse.”
It’s not shaped like a horse. It’s shaped like a man. I think that if I watch it being ridden, I might be ill.
“Cleft is twice as strong because I wasn’t the bloody daft fool who chose bone,” the other Engineer announces, striding over to us to lay a meaty palm on the haunch of the second golem.
I channel my rage into efficiently removing tack from my stallion and tethering him where the grass grows in wide tufts. The other paladins weren’t fools. They found a place where runoff is draining down in a steady, if thin, stream and they’ve tethered the horses there. If, for whatever reason, we are delayed in the ruins below, our horses will have water and food close by. I appreciate the common sense in that.
“Cleft is made of rock,” the first Engineer objects. “He’s too heavy to be efficient. You lose adaptability with that weight and it causes more wear and tear. That’s why you have to bring all those extra ball joints with you. You don’t see me hauling around spare ball joints, now do you?”
“Cleft” is indeed made of stone. Someone has carved a grim face and suspicious eyebrows around his glowing eyes. He looks an awful lot like the High Saint.
So much so that I ask, “When did you carve the face?”
The second Engineer smiles. “I put the finishing touches on it this morning.”
His gaze meets mine. He knows I know. I know he knows.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s a strong look,” I say. Not an answer. He wouldn’t like the answer I have to give.
I am still on the fence about whether such golems experience sorrow or pain. If they do, I have an obligation to relieve it. If they do not, it’s possible that a Vagabond Paladin has the obligation to end them, as they must then be demonic apparati.
“Don’t keep them next to the horses,” Hefertus orders. “They’ll spook, and then it will be up to you to round them up.”
I expect the Engineers to object. Paladins are, by nature, bull-headed. We are used to ordering ourselves, to making judgments in the field. To leading forces. We don’t take kindly to being ordered by others. But these two don’t object; they merely smile, make chirping sounds to their golems, and then amble back toward camp, their golems shambling behind them.
Hefertus leans in close. “I don’t like this place and I don’t like the company.”
I tilt my head in question. I have been acquainted with Hefertus for most of my adult life. He is not naturally a suspicious man. Rather, I’ve found him too open and affable. Seeing this dark cloud settling over him leaves me edgy.
“We can’t all look amazing in pearls,” I say, trying to turn the barb.
It doesn’t work. He grimaces and heads for camp, packs on his back, still clearly troubled, his fingers spinning down and around his double pearl string as if he is counting out rosary beads.
Perhaps he is. Perhaps this is some new, decadent Prince Paladin rosary.
“You’ll camp with me,” he says over his shoulder when we’re almost back. “Won’t hear of anything else.”
Ah. He does not fully trust me. But he trusts me not to kill him in the night. And he does not trust the rest of them even that much. How very interesting.
By the time we’ve finished setting up Hefertus’s tent, the High Saint is practically jumping from foot to foot.
“Please, we must observe Terce, brothers.”
The Engineers are making tea and refuse to be budged. They seem put out that their golems are here with them instead of with the horses.
“Just start the prayer and we’ll join in for the important bits,” Sir Sorken, the uglier Engineer, says.
We form a ragged circle and begin the prayer.
“We confess our deepest weaknesses, we bring them to your door,” the High Saint begins. “Let the Lord of Order set them right and make them be no —”
But his words are interrupted by the sound of hooves on stone and then a distinct barking sound.
Our last paladin has arrived.
