Free The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner Page A

through a village with a single streetlight, the mercury glow revealed that his bandages were red with fresh blood. I cursed my stupidity; before leaving the clinic, I should have asked Dr. Jacek for appropriate medical supplies. Krzysztof had left a filthy old blanket in the back of the car, so I ripped off a strip and tied it around Reuben’s torso in the hope it would press his dressings tighter against the bullet wounds. Reuben whimpered in his sleep but didn’t wake.
    I checked a road map. The nearest hospital was hours away. I decided to press on to St. Bernward’s Monastery; the monks would surely have a first-aid kit and maybe a full-scale infirmary. Rural monasteries were usually self-sufficient in such matters.
    Back on the highway, farmland gave way to snow-packed forests and lakes. In wealthier countries, an area like this would be full of hunting lodges and summer cottages . . . but few in Poland could afford such indulgences. Besides, the Soviet Union had operated military camps here until the Iron Curtain fell. The Red Army had strongly discouraged Polish families from holidays in the region. With the Soviets gone, vacationers might now begin to filter in; but it would take years for a full-fledged tourist industry to develop.
    So nobody lived here but lumberjacks and the occasional recluse. Only a few snowy dirt tracks led into the woods—mostly logging roads not shown on the map. Some had signs telling which timber company owned the land, but the majority just said PRIVATE, KEEP OUT in Polish.
    “Reuben,” I called. “Reuben. Reuben!”
    He woke only when I shook him hard. “Wha . . . what?”
    “We’re getting close,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me which road to take.”
    “Oh. Right.” He rubbed his eyes as if they wouldn’t focus. His head slipped back against the seat again.
    “Reuben. Reuben!”
    “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah . . .”
    “Talk to me,” I said, just to keep him awake. “Tell me about where we’re going.”
    “I told you—St. Bernward’s Monastery.”
    “What kind of monastery is it?”
    He forced himself to concentrate. “It’s old. There’s been a monastery on the site for more than a thousand years. Parts of the original are still standing. It hasn’t always been called St. Bernward’s, but—”
    “What type of monastery is it?”
    “Roman Catholic.”
    “I guessed that,” I said dryly. “But what order of monks? Franciscan? Dominican? Benedictine?”
    “Uhh . . . Dominican.”
    “Reuben, here’s a tip: don’t lie unless you know what you’re doing. The Dominican order was founded by St. Dominic in 1215—eight hundred years ago, not a thousand. But then, you’ve always been the type of archaeologist who concentrates on true antiquities. I could never trip you up on prehistoric Mesopotamia, but anything after the fall of Rome is beyond your expertise.”
    He said nothing. He should have known I was only teasing, but he was too weak to make a retort. “Who
really
lives in the monastery?” I asked.
    Reuben sighed. If he’d been stronger he might have told me it was none of my business, but he seemed too tired to fight. “They
are
monks, Lara. And a few really are Dominicans. Also some Jesuits, some Trappists, some Hospitallers . . . some Buddhists, some Sikhs, some Sufis . . .” He sighed. “Nuns, too. Taoists, Jains, Essenes . . . a lot of different types.”
    I raised my eyebrows. Hospitallers? They were a tiny order whose members hardly ever left Rome. And the Essenes were a Jewish sect who disappeared from history around the year 200. “An eclectic group to find anywhere, much less the backwoods of Poland. Care to tell me what they’re up to?”
    “They call themselves the Order of Bronze,” Reuben said. “The Order is, uhh, quite old.”
    I groaned. “An ancient society of religious dropouts hiding in the back of beyond? Reuben, how could you get involved with such people? They could be trying to summon some evil elder god . . . open the