The large wet snowflakes fell on the path leading through the smaller hills that stand between the Austrian towns of Hainfeld and Grill. The path was quite plain as the frequent use had churned it into a muddy rut in the midst of the pure white snow that had fallen all around it. Despite it’s well traveled look, only a solitary figure could be found on that path just now.
He was a tall man, just over six feet, with a dynamic muscular build that was well hidden in the folds of his winter coat. His face was cold and hard where it was visible between the top of the black coat, and the grey brim of his fedora. Small curls of jet black hair poked from under the hat contrasting with the dead grey of his eyes that marked him as one who had undergone the surgical augmentations to become an agent for the Office of Government and Religion.
He was out on official business and as he drudged through the snow he mused on the scenery around him. These hills in the midst of the mighty Alps were not very different in look to the Carpathian Mountains he had left to come here. He had spent his last five years in those mountains suppressing a blood religion that claimed it be started by Vlad the impaler. Vlad was and old Hungarian count who they claimed had sold his soul to the devil to gain immortatillity on the battlefield. They claimed that his life was replenished by drinking the blood of his Turkish enemies, and then later on any man who dared cross him.
These religions of the blood sickened and outraged him. His parents had held to some ancient brutish god as well, Crom, the god of war. They had named him after that god. Crom though was no blood God, but a god of honour and strength, he was a god to inspire the man on the battlefield was he faced down his enemies and sent them to Sheol. The religion of Crom was a religion without rites, at least none that his parents had ever shared with him. When Crom had first discovered the black rites of the great black gods he had blanched at their brutality. It was that very thing that lead him to join the Office and undergo the process for becoming an agent.
He had been called from his hunting in the state of Hungary to help a fellow agent here in Austria who had tracked down several different Christian communities and wanted to hit them all at once. Crom had never hunted Christians before nor had he seen their rites. His only knowledge of Christians was limited to his training where they were spoken of it as a once dominate religion of blood. Apparently these Christians got together to eat the flesh and drink the blood of their God. Just how they got that flesh and blood was unclear, but Crom was fairly certain that they like the other black religions used a human, probably in some sort of religious trance of mania, to represent the flesh of the God.
These thoughts brought him quickly over the hill to the bottom of a shear rock face. He followed the grey stone for nearly one hundred yards before he found the place were some of the footprints left off from the path and disappeared into the stoney cliff.
Crom had been informed about this secret door After a few moments of feeling the stone he had found the locking mechinism and released it, allowing the small boulder to swivel silently at his touch. The movement of the the rock recealed a small hole for him to enter. Once inside he allowed the boulder to resume it’s original position.
The passage was dimly lit and let downward for thirty of forty feet be fore it came to a simple wooden door in a simple wooden wall. The hallway itself was hewn from the stone and unadorned except for the various electric lamps hanging on the stonewall.
Crom approached the door and knocked once. There was an echoing knock and he responded with an another single knock. A small window opened through which all he could see was lips. The lips spoke, “Jesu mortes est.”
The rehearsed response sprang at once to Crom’s lips, “Sed resurrectio fuit iterum.” The knock and password worked just as he had been briefed. The door swung open to admit him into a large, well lit chamber.
The room was nearly full of people probably almost two hundred in all. It only took a glance to kow that he was in the ritual chamber. There in the front was the altar raised up above the floor and near it was surely priest dressed in an off white dress embroidered with images. There were also a number of other attendants up near the alter, presumably assisting the priest.
Above the altar was the statue of a dead man nailed to a cross. Around the room their were other stautes and paintings of different men and women. Some of those images held a child, a flower a tool or a weapon. Some of those images were wounded, indeed one was full of arrows, but others were entirely whole and without any visible imperfection.
Crom had a growing uneasiness. He could not understand it at first, but as he continued to observe the ritual and the room he started to understand his feelings. His first realization was of the white cloth on the altar and the white garment of the priest. In all his previous experience the altars where kept bare and the priest was either naked or almost naked eliminating the need to clean the clothing after it was drenched with the blood of the victim. The ritual too made him uncomfortable as they sang in what must be latin to rather pleasant tunes and responded evenly to the priest. Crom was used to the frenzied worshipers who sang and cried brutish hellish chants while screaming their responses to their priest in long hidden black and evil languages.
Despite of his uneasiness Crom stayed himself with iron nerve. He followed the simple gestures of those around him, standing and then kneeling. This continued for nearly forty minutes with a constant dialogue between the priest and the people. At one point the priest gave a long instruction in the Germanic Austrian dialect, but Crom knew only a smattering of that language and only caught the occasional word, baby, god, born, star, died.
Then Crom watched as the priest mounted the altar steps. It was difficult to see all that was happening as the priest stood mostly with his back to the people, but from was as an attendant brought him a golden cup and bowl adorned with jewels. Then the attendant brought two vials of liquid one red and one clear. Crom strained his eyes, was that blood. It might be but it seemed too translucent and pink. The priest poured them both into the chalice before handing the vials back to the attendant who then washed the priest’s hands.
Crom waited, he still saw no victim. He saw incense and gestures and heard bells and the priest lift above his head a small white circle and then the golden chalice. He saw the priest spread his arms and close them and turn to face the people and then turn back to the altar but still Crom saw no blood. The priest never let blood, either from a victim or from himself.
All at once Crom was aware that the people were going up to the priest who was giving them something from the golden plate while another attendant gave the people the chalice to drink from. Crom followed the example given, moved to the front knelt down and received the object from the priest onto his tongue. It was only Crom’s mastery of his will that kept him from laughing aloud when he recognized it to be cracker of some sort. Then receiving and drinking from the chalice he was amazed to discover only wine.
Crom returned to his place. He knew and understood his orders, it was to confirm and neutrilize the Christian presence in this small region. What he did not understand was this. All these Christians did was eat bread and drink wine. For the first time in his life Crom saw that the religion of the god Crom was also a religion of the blood, for it demanded the blood of his enemies spilled upon the ground. So to was the Office of Government and Relision a religion of blood for all it’s enemies must be bleed for the sake of the government, but here was a rite that had no ritual of blood despite all it’s statues and history. Did the Christ of the Christians not demand the blood of children and virgins. Did that Christ not even demand the blood of his enemies. What sort of God was this that the Christians worshipped?
Crom smoked a cigerette that had been offered him by an old man as the left the cave. It was not treason that caused Crom to descend out of those hills without having shed the blood of a single Christian. He had been trained to destroy those religions who were the enemy the humankind and in that cave the only enemy to humankind he had found was the one he found in himself.
