The Guard and the Godsman

In the land of Traffing, in the dead of winter, a figure in a white robe walked like a ghost upon the snow. The guard at the fortress of the Count trembled in fear until he saw it was a man, with his face reddened by the cold, and his hands thrust deep into a bedroll for warmth. Ghosts have nothing to fear from the cold, the guard knew, and so he hailed the man—hailed rudely, because the guard had been afraid.

"What do you want! It's near dark, and we do no work on the Feast of Hinds."

"I come from God," said the man. "I have a message for the Count."

The guard grew angry. He had heard all about God, whose priests were so arrogant they denied even the Sweet Sisters, even the Hart, though the people had known their power far longer than this newfashioned deity. "Would you have him blaspheme against the Hart's own lady?"

"Old things are done away," said the Godsman.

"You're done away if you don't go away!" cried the guard.

The Godsman only smiled. "Of course you do not know me," he said. And then, suddenly, before the guard's very eyes, the Godsman reached out his hands beseechingly and the bar of the gate broke in two and the gate fell open before him.

"You won't hurt him?" asked the guard.

"Don't cower so," said the Godsman. "I come for the good of all Burland."

From the King, then? The guard hated the King enough to spit in the snow, despite his fear of this man who broke gates without touching them. "The good of Burland is never the good of Traffing."

"Tonight it is," said the Godsman.

Suddenly the sunset erupted, hot streams down the slope of the sky, and the guard became a Godsman himself from that moment.