Chapter 126: Den of Hypocrisy

Reynald de Chatillon stood at the prow of the small boat the Fallen Paladins were using to ferry themselves from the dock to Anarg's ship, his back to the rowers and their passengers, eyes scanning the horizon. The Athkatlan guard did keep a few ships out around the shoreline to keep an eye on goings-on, but the ship was anchored legally. They had no problems with the laws – their reason for hiding was keeping out of sight of the Shadow Thieves. The Bridge District was one of the freer areas of Athkatla, hence their encounter with some of the other gangs in the area.

We should not be doing this… not huddling under the feet of the Guildmasters like dogs, hounded by the Order. We may not meet their standards, may not share their doe-eyed views of life, but we are still men of honour. Reynald's gauntleted hand clenched into a fist as his gaze dropped to watch the murky waters below them. "Torm, we are, I swear it," he whispered inaudibly, his heart stretching out, seeking, searching for the fire of divine protection that had warmed his soul before… and found nothing but an aching, empty coldness. Again.

To the Hells with you! his mind cursed, lashing out suddenly and against his will, the emptiness filled with anger for a moment. It was always like that when he searched for his God again and found nothing. Resentment at Torm turning his back on him, anger at the Order for rejecting him, and disappointment with himself for failing them both.

Torm… what I did was wrong, so very wrong, but I know that I could not, would not have taken another course. Is that what makes you keep your back turned? Again, silence. It was what he had come to expect. It was what he was used to.

"That's quite a boat," a quiet voice cut into his reverie, and he was aware of one of Delryn's companions stepping up beside him – the small girl, with the disconcertingly bright pink hair, chirpy smile and extreme competence at killing.

"A ship," Reynald replied tersely, but there was a slight, sad smirk on his face. "I would not call it a boat in front of Anarg. He gets irritated by such things." He sighed deeply, morosely. "He should have been a sailor instead of a paladin."

"What happened to him?" Imoen asked. "What happened to you all?"

He looked over at her. She was frowning slightly, glancing back at her companions and the rest of the knights who were coming back to the ship. "We don't…" Reynald stopped, shaking his head. "I can't speak for everyone. Not everyone likes to talk about it. Myself… it is a long story. One best left to history."

"Many of us have such tales," Anomen interjected from where he was seated further back in the boat. He gave Imoen a glance, and the mage withdrew to also sit down. "We do not always see eye to eye with our patrons. They can ask us to go against our hearts." He fixed Reynald with a look.

The former paladin's throat tightened. Torm, he knows! It was not inconceivable, though, he supposed. Anomen may have left the Order before Anarg had split them, but the Helmite had done so on distinctly better terms than the Fallen Paladins. Indeed, he had not been a paladin in the first place, only a knight; and even then he had not been dishonoured or forced to leave. He had departed voluntarily, keeping Helm's favour.

"Anarg will be happy to see you," Reynald replied simply. "More numbers are always welcome, even if some of you are not…" He paused, searching for the correct word as he uncomfortably eyed Anomen's companions. "Like us," he finished haplessly, shrugging.

The large bald man who had been tending to his hamster looked up a little indignantly. "Like you? Boo thinks that we are like you. We fight, we kick the buttocks of evil, and we do not care who judges us for how we do it! You do not need to pray each night for your powers or follow the advice of someone who has not been butt-kicking for many years to be a force of righteousness!" he declared brightly.

Reynald looked at the man – Minsc, his name was? – for a moment, a slow smile creeping over his face… then it trailed off with confusion. "Who's Boo?"

"Boo! Boo is the miniature giant space hamster, and my very wise companion for many years now. Say hello to the nice knight, Boo," Minsc exclaimed, standing up and extending a massive hand towards Reynald. In the middle of it, nibbling on a biscuit, was a golden-and-white hamster, who fixed him with dark beady eyes and squeaked quietly.

"Minsc?"

The tall and broad-shouldered man in crimson-tinted armour who kept his face hidden and his helmet on – Anomen had stumbled over his name; Rondlek, it was – spoke for the first time, gesturing to the large Rashemani to be quiet and sit down again.

Anomen glanced up at the ship as their smaller boat drew up alongside it; his eye scanned the hull evaluatingly, settling on the name painted on the prow – two simple words, one of them worn and beaten, the other one shiny and new, on wood which had evidently had been scraped away at lately. "The Divine Thunder…" he read quietly.

"It used to be called Tyr's Thunder," Reynald replied, his voice just as low. "Anarg renamed it."

"Her!" a voice exclaimed from above them, on board the ship, and as the boat came to a stop and a rope ladder was thrown down to them, they looked up to see an armoured figure leaning over the side of the deck. "You don't call a ship 'it', you call a ship 'her'. And she's a beauty."

Reynald sighed deeply. "Yes, Anarg," he declared in the voice of one who has suffered much, then turned and did his best to climb the rope ladder – not an easy feat when one is wearing full plate.

Anarg, former paladin of Tyr and former knight of the Order of the Radiant Heart did not seem to be what the party had expected, judging from their expressions. Reynald shrugged as he began to take off his armour, placing it easily on the deck – he was sore and weary from the fight, and the heat of Athkatla was getting annoying. People listened too much to stories; they expected Fallen Paladins to be ugly brutes, forsaken by their gods and turned twisted outside as well as inside.

Anarg wasn't quite like that. He wore his dark hair longer than it had been when he was in the Order, and although his eyes were dark and sunken, they were set in a finely-chiselled face with delicate features that denoted his noble upbringing.

"What do we have here, Reynald?" the leader of the Fallen Paladins asked imperiously, raising an eyebrow as the four adventurers clambered up – again, a difficult task with three of them in plate mail. There was a pause as his eyes settled on Anomen. "Lord Delryn. I'm most pleased to see you here; I'd rather hoped you might show yourself."

"I have had other matters to attend to first, Anarg," Anomen replied easily, evaluating the ship with the cool look of someone who wants to appear knowledgeable but clearly has no sea-legs. "But when I heard of your forming yourselves away from those meddlesome paladins… well, I had no choice but to seek you out, did I?"

Anarg smiled a bright and sparkling smile. "Well, you had a choice. You don't have the Order hating you; you were smart enough to walk away, whereas we…" His voice trailed off, and he gestured to the Fallen Paladins in the vicinity. "…were ejected. Their hypocrisy, their self-righteousness blinded them. They cannot see beyond their own noses."

Anomen snorted and nodded. "What they cannot understand, they fear. Believe me, I know all of this. I was condemned for being in the company of a man who had done nothing wrong, purely because of who he was. It does not sound like righteous behaviour to me."

"You understand." Anarg nodded slowly. "And even now, even when we are out of their reach, they do their best to temper us, to keep us in line and stop us from living our lives as if we were still of their number! It is unacceptable. Either we are their comrades, their brothers, are held in the same esteem as they are, or we are out of their control fully. They cannot have it halfway."

Imoen shrugged. "Well, with rumours going around that you're running slaves and other sorts of crime rackets, I'm not too surprised." There was a pause as the eyes of the Fallen Paladins settled upon her, and she gave an impish smile. "They're the persistent do-gooders."

Anarg snorted. "Aye, and that's the truth of the matter. What they do no understand…" His voice trailed off, and he glanced at the four adventurers evaluatingly, his gaze settling for a moment on the fully armoured 'Rondlek'. "No matter. We are free of them now; free to do our own things. Anomen, you have been free for a while. Now it seems that you are done with whatever gallivanting around to took part in with the Bhaalspawn, are you here to join us in our efforts?"

Anomen paused for a moment, folding his arms across his chest and looking a little hesitant. "What efforts?"

"We are forging our own path in the world, going a new way. We are still men of honour, even if we do not meet the Order's unrealistic and hypocritical standards now. As brothers, we can find our place in the world."

There was another second's hesitation from the Helmite. "I have found my new place in the world," he said at length, then paused once more. Eventually, his face lit up, and he smiled brightly. "But there is always time to help others find their place out of that den of hypocrisy."