by Anthony Ryan
“Why have you come?” she asked them in a voice that had lost none of its ability to command attention. If anything, it had strengthened, reaching all ears present with no difficulty. In addition to the devoted horde clustered about the house, many townsfolk thronged the surrounding streets or hung out of windows, all unable to resist the new Martyr’s sermon. I stood with Toria at the edge of the house’s defensive ditch, arranged with the rest of the company into a cordon to guard against any agitation from the crowd. Scanning the array of rapt faces, I glimpsed a Supplicant from the shrine busily scribbling down Evadine’s words, as were several local scribes. I didn’t bother reaching for my own pen and parchment, knowing there was very little chance I would forget this speech, and so it has proven.
“Do you seek guidance?” Evadine went on. She stood on the balcony outside her bedchamber, clad in a plain white shift that seemed to shimmer in the midday sun. “Do you think I have wisdom and insight beyond your own?” She paused to voice a faint laugh, kind rather than judgemental. “Be assured, friends, I know little about the Covenant that you do not. You know what the Seraphile require of us. You know the import of the Martyrs’ example. You know that should we fail in these obligations the Divine Portals will be sealed against us and the Second Scourge will consume this world. And yet—” she raised her hands, palms open as she gestured to the assembly “—here you stand, expecting to be told what you have always known. Why should that be?”
I watched the Supplicant’s pen pause. His face was a stern, focused contrast to the wonderstruck gapers that surrounded him. When Evadine answered her own question, I was unsurprised to see the cleric’s face grow several shades darker.
“Long have I pondered this, friends.” Remarkably, Evadine’s voice managed to increase in volume, a ripple of tension thrumming through her audience as it became apparent something of considerable import was about to be said. “But, as ever, it was only with the aid of the Seraphile themselves that I discerned the answer: you have been failed. You have been betrayed. You have been denied truth and sold lies. This… uncertainty, this doubt that brings you to my door is no fault of yours. It is mine. It is theirs.” Her arm shot out, pointing straight at the spire of the Shrine to Martyr Ihlander. “It is the crime shared by all of us who joined with the Covenant, for I see now that it has been corrupted and no longer speaks for the Martyrs.”
I took amused if grim satisfaction in watching the Supplicant’s pen trail an ugly ink splotch over his parchment. He gaped along with the others now, but it was the open-mouthed stare of a shocked and fearful man. Evadine Courlain, Risen Martyr, had just spoken heresy to an audience of thousands, and she wasn’t done.
“How often have you known hunger, friends?” she asked, voice now coloured by a mounting anger. “And in your hunger, as you listened to your children cry for the emptiness of their bellies, did you look upon your Supplicant and find them hungry too? How often have you watched your young folk dragged away to wars not of their making and heard the Supplicant bless the slaughter to come? How often have you counted out coin for tithes in return for empty promises of good fortune or healing?”
She paused for a brief second, letting the stoked passions of the crowd simmer before proclaiming in a voice that I fancied carried all the way to the docks, “I TELL YOU THIS IS NOT THE WAY!”
The sound that erupted from the crowd was a mix of snarl and cheer. Fists punched the air and discordant acclamation soon coalesced into a chant. “The Martyr speaks! The Martyr speaks!”
As the tumult continued, I watched the Supplicant’s shock turn first to anger then fear as his neighbours took note of his robe. Jeers and spit quickly transformed into jostling then shoving until the unfortunate cleric found himself on his knees, his pen and parchment trampled into the mud. I knew he was in for a kicking at the least, possibly a knifing too if their anger continued to build. I’ll admit to considering making a quick foray into the crowd to rescue him, then decided placing myself in the heart of a raging mob was an unwise notion. So I stood and winced in sympathy as a burly fisherman was the first to drive a boot into the Supplicant’s side, which naturally became a signal for every other enraged loon to join in. The first public sermon of the Risen Martyr may well have been marked by the death of a Supplicant if Evadine hadn’t noticed the commotion.
“STOP THAT!”
It seemed her voice had instantly conjured an invisible wall of ice around the kneeling, bloody unfortunate, so quickly did the crowd abandon their beating.
A hush descended as the Supplicant huddled on the ground, shuddering in pain and coughing out piteous sobs. I watched Swain glance up at the captain and, receiving a nod in response, quickly organise a trio of soldiers to retrieve the fallen cleric.
“Get him to Supplicant Delric,” he snapped as they dragged him towards the house, the words swallowed as Evadine spoke again.
“I come to restore what was broken,” she told her audience which had once again shifted into a congregation rather than a mob. “Not to destroy. There has been war enough in these lands. Judge your neighbour as you judge yourself and know that we are all guilty. This sin is shared among us in equal measure, from the highest lord to the lowest churl. For we have shunned the Martyrs’ example too long. Where they laboured we have been indolent. Where they sacrificed we have been greedy. Where they spoke hard truths we have cloaked ourselves in comforting lies. No longer!”
Another ripple in the throng, this time the result of the assembly flinching from the controlled fury they heard in the voice of Martyr Evadine. When I glanced up at her once more, I saw her eyes had closed and a semblance of serenity returning to her features. Drawing a deep breath, she opened her eyes and spoke in tones of earnest entreaty.
“In a few days I will set out from this place, for it has been revealed to me that this knowledge I impart to you must be shared. In every corner of this realm and in the furthest reaches of all that lies beyond, all souls must know these truths, for, my good friends, the Second Scourge draws nearer with every passing day. As we descend further into deceit and delusion so the Malecite rise. We must prepare. We must arm ourselves with the shield of the Seraphile’s grace and the sword of the Martyrs’ example.”
She raised her arms again, head thrown back as she cast out her final question: “WILL YOU ARM? WILL YOU TAKE UP THE SHIELD AND THE SWORD!”
The collective choices of crowds are a strange thing, for they happen with remarkable speed and a complete absence of discussion. So it was after only a short interval of discordant shouting that what would soon become known as Martyr Evadine’s Cant arose from the multitude.
“SHIELD AND SWORD! SHIELD AND SWORD! SHIELD AND SWORD!”
Watching them chant, all faces red with passion as they cried it out with rhythmic precision, it occurred to me for the first time that the Crown and the Covenant had more to fear from this woman than she had to fear from them. The notion might have reawakened my scholarly instincts, but for the crowd. Inflamed by devotion and peerless oratory they were a stark contrast to the sanctuary seekers at Callintor who had sat in rapt observance of Sihlda’s wisdom. These were more like the baying mob that tormented me in the pillory: ordinary folk inflicting cruelty on a helpless youth purely because they had been given licence to do so. What licence had Evadine just given this lot? What passions would she stoke in others when she began her Martyr’s progress across this realm? A badly beaten Supplicant was only the beginning and I wanted no part of what came next.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I said my goodbyes over the course of the next two days, not that any of my soon-to-be-absent friends knew it. I drew sentry duty with Brewer the night after Evadine’s sermon and we spent a few lively hours keeping the adoring faithful at bay. They still clustered in large numbers beyond the ditch but the more ardent, and resourceful, weren’t content to remain at a remove from their beloved Martyr.
“But I have a message of great import for Martyr Evadine!” one fellow squealed in p
rotest after Brewer dragged him from a sewer grate. A man of small dimensions, he must have crawled for hours through layers of shit to attempt a personal introduction.
“She’s likely to condemn you to the Scourge for stinking the place up so,” Brewer advised, grimacing in distaste as he hauled the fellow towards the ditch.
“She would never do that!” the diminutive ardent insisted, staining Brewer’s gloves with ordure as he clutched at his wrist. “Her heart is too kind. Please, good soldier! She must hear my warning!”
Brewer raised a questioning eyebrow at me and, receiving a shrug, set the small man on his feet at the edge of the ditch. “All right,” he said. “Warning of what exactly?”
The interloper’s dung-smeared brow crinkled as he glanced around before responding in a whisper. “I must be careful, lest they overhear.”
Brewer pursed his lips and leaned closer, matching the fellow’s whisper. “And who are they?”
“The Malecite, of course.” Another cautious glace to either side, his whisper becoming a hiss. “They think I don’t see them, but I do. They infest every corner of this port and have for years. Now Martyr Evadine is here I fear what they will do.”
Brewer nodded gravely. “But only you can see them?”
“I see their true faces, the ones they keep hidden behind their stolen masks of flesh.” The man’s eyes slid to the upper windows of the house. “The lord of exchange, he is one.”
“Really?” Brewer’s brows rose in apparent shock. “Who else?”
“Master Eckuld, the baker on Crossmark Street. His wife too, and that fat little shit of a son they spawned. Also, the tallyman on the tenth wharf and that thieving scribe on Middlereach Lane—”
“Quite a list,” Brewer said, straightening and spinning the fellow around. “Best go home and write it all down.”
“I don’t know letters…”
His words trailed into a dismayed exclamation as Brewer’s boot connected with his arse, sending him into the ditch. “Then piss off and learn.”
The small man spent a time flailing about the ditch and gabbling out a stream of denunciations that seemed to include every shopkeeper or person of importance he had ever encountered. He finally fell to silence when some of the faithful beyond the ditch grew tired of his ranting and began throwing litter. Climbing clear of the ditch, he cast an aggrieved glare back at Brewer, no doubt adding him to his list of flesh-masked evildoers, then stomped off into the gloom.
“Earlier there was a woman claiming to be the Anointed Lady’s mother,” Brewer said. “When I pointed out they looked to be about the same age she said the birth had come about through union with one of the Seraphile which had kept her young ever since. For the mother of a Risen Martyr, she had a tongue foul enough to put Toria to shame.”
“Do you ever wonder what Ascendant Sihlda would have made of this?” I asked, nodding to the crowd beyond the ditch. They had thinned since the sermon, but hundreds continued to linger, grouped around their fires in communal devotion. Every now and then chants of “Shield and sword!” and “Heed the Risen Martyr!” would spring up. I found it annoying and troubling in equal measure.
“That can never be known,” Brewer replied, though the discomfort I saw in his gaze made me conclude this was a question he had pondered more than once. “You wrote her testament,” he pointed out. “Don’t you know?”
“She foresaw a good many things, but never this.” I shifted my gaze to Evadine’s window, shuttered now but a bright light burning within. “Never her.”
“And yet here she is, a true living Martyr, as real as you or me.” His broad, craggy face formed the tight but genuine smile of a man content with where life had placed him. Although I had known asking him to sail off with Toria and me would be a pointless proposition, now I understood it to be dangerous too.
“I think the Ascendant would have been… gratified to see your faith rewarded,” I told him, which brought a bemused creasing to his forehead. It was true we were friends, of a sort, but it was not a friendship that accommodated expressions of regard or kindness.
“You been at the grog?” he asked, causing me to ponder the fact that I hadn’t partaken of a drop of liquor since Olversahl, and even then it hadn’t been near enough to get me drunk.
“No,” I said. “A failing I’ll need to rectify soon.”
My last practice sessions with Wilhum took place the next morning. He was always keen to follow the routine set down by the unpleasant Master Redmaine, requiring much early rising and dunking in troughs of cold water. After this, I would attempt to follow his movements as he went through a series of sword scales. I had thought these absurdly complex when he began to teach me, but now understood those first exercises to be the equivalent of a dance taught to children. To my surprise, I found I could match his moves most of the time, not with the same fluency and speed, but neither was I the slow, clumsy oaf I had been when we’d started. However, while he appeared satisfied with my progress in the swordly arts, he was not so impressed with my motley armour.
“Worthless scrap,” he said, flicking a hand to my elbow cop, a dented and discoloured contrivance I’d got for two sheks from another soldier after the Traitors’ Field. It refused to shine regardless of how much time I spent polishing it. “I’ll ask the captain for funds to have a suit made for you,” Wilhum added. “Since she seems keen to have escorts of knightly appearance at her side when she starts her progress.”
I noted she was always “the captain” when he spoke of her now, never “Evadine”. But never “Martyr Evadine” either. Also, I had discerned a guardedness to his gaze when in her presence and he addressed her with a clipped formality in place of their prior familiarity. I knew it to be partly due to her suddenly exalted status, but ascribed this change in demeanour to guilt most of all.
“You haven’t told her, have you?” I said. “About the Sack Witch.”
He tightened the strap on my elbow cop then moved to deliver an uncomfortable heave to my breastplate. “Neither have you. Neither has Sergeant Swain nor Supplicant Delric, by mutual agreement. Best if we keep it that way, don’t you think?”
I think she believes a Seraphile descended from the Realm of Endless Grace to restore her to life. I think she’s about to set out on a journey that will transform these lands for ever, perhaps bathe them in blood from end to end, all on the basis of a lie. I said none of this, for, despite his strength, courage and skills, I knew Wilhum to be a fragile soul in many ways and had no desire to cause him pain at this, our last meeting.
“You don’t like lying to her, do you?” I asked. “This deceit weighs on you. Against the knightly code or somesuch?”
“The knightly code is a collection of meaningless doggerel cobbled together by hypocrites. Master Redmaine knew that, and tried to teach me the truth of it, though I was too young and lost in my self-regard to hear him.”
He moved to prop his longsword against one of the fence posts ringing the paddock where we practised, taking up the pair of wooden replicas. He paused for a second, eyes distant with remembrance. “They killed him, you know. Master Redmaine. Hung him for treason. He had been wounded in battle just days before, one of the later skirmishes of the Duchy Wars. As befits a man who sells his skills for money, he had pledged his sword to the duke with the fattest purse, but also the worst judgement. They dragged him from his bed, wounds still bleeding, and hung him from the scaffold alongside a dozen others. My father, a lord he had served for years, was the one to put the rope around his neck. Before he died, Redmaine begged his former lord to have a care for his wife and son, they having been beggared by the confiscation of all his chattels. Always keen to appear gracious, at least in public, my father took them in, made the wife a maid and the boy my page.” An ugly, bitter smile twisted Wilhum’s lips. “A rare act of kindness I’m sure he regrets to this day.”
The smile slipped away as he met my gaze, tossing one of the wooden swords to me. “I told you love brought me down, did I n
ot?” He raised his ash blade in the formal salute as he advanced towards me, moving with a disconcertingly purposeful stride. “It was love for a page who became a man-at-arms.”
He didn’t wait for me to return the salute before launching his attack, feinting an overhead swing then jabbing a thrust at my midriff. I managed to parry it and twist aside in time avoid the follow-up swipe at my legs.
“A man-at-arms who had learned everything his father could teach him.” Wilhum’s voice grew harsh and ragged as he launched into another assault, driving me back as he wielded the wooden sword with two hands, my feet raising dust as I scrambled back.
“A mere commoner who could best any knight, save perhaps Sir Ehlbert Bauldry and even then I fancy it would have been a close-run thing.”
I ducked a slash to the head and attempted a thrust at his belly which he turned aside with a casual flick of his wrist.
“Watching him at tourney was like watching one of the fabled heroes of old, or one of the Ascarlian warrior gods. A son of Ulthnir made flesh.” He stepped closer, too quick to dodge, trapping my sword arm with his gauntleted fist, grating his words into my face as he held me tight. “What it is to love a god, Alwyn. And what a fate to be loved in return.”
The bitter smile flickered across his lips once again before he pivoted, bending at the waist to throw me to the ground. The impact was enough to jar my wooden sword from my hand, but I knew better than to chase after it. Rising to one knee, I reached up in time to grab hold of his forearms as he brought his sword down with the kind of force that might well have cracked my skull.
“Father didn’t like it, of course.” Wilhum grunted as he swung his left leg, driving an armour-clad foot into the centre of my breastplate. The force sufficed to dislodge my grip and I was obliged to roll across the dirt to avoid his next flurry of blows. “‘Suck all the cocks you like,’ he told me. ‘But do you have to shame me with this cow-eyed devotion to a commoner?’”