Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to bring your men and help me?’ I asked the guard standing next to me.

  ‘Our orders are to protect the martyrium,’ he replied. ‘Whatever dispute you and yours have with the pilgrims is your own problem. I’m sure with your grand Trattari ways you can negotiate for his release on your own.’

  That set his men laughing even harder. You don’t reason with mobs for the same reason you don’t reason with hordes of fire ants: they’re too stupid to understand what you’re saying and eventually they’ll just swarm over you.

  Which isn’t to say you don’t talk to them. Words are important. Words are, by and large, what got them to become a mob in the first place.

  ‘I still don’t see why you have to go,’ Brasti said. ‘If it has to be one of us, make Kest go out there.’

  ‘There’s an art to managing crowds,’ I replied, ‘and Kest is terrible at it. Thirty seconds after he gets out there he’ll be challenging them to a duel – all of them.’

  ‘Fine, then I’ll go. Just—’

  ‘Brasti, you’re even worse. You wouldn’t get ten feet without insulting the mob, their cleric and whatever God they worship. We’ll be lucky if they don’t tear down the entire martyrium just to get to you.’

  He grinned. ‘I suppose that’s fair.’ He turned and leaned against the gates, and I was modestly reassured that they were sturdy enough not to start listing with that weight against them. ‘So, what’ll it be then? Are you going with the “Memories Of Ancestors”?’

  ‘Takes too long,’ I said.

  ‘The “Child That Might Be Yours”?’ he suggested, but I was already shaking my head.

  ‘You think those people are going to look at a Greatcoat and imagine him as one of their own children all grown up?’

  Kest peered out at the crowds from inside the gates. ‘I suggest you consider a “Your Enemy Is My Enemy” and then, once you’ve got whoever it is free, make for the road and try to circle back after—’

  ‘No,’ I said, almost groaning. ‘I hate “Your Enemy Is My Enemy”. Besides, whoever they’ve got bound up out there won’t be in much shape to help me in a fight.’ Before Kest could start up again, I gestured to the guard to open the gate to let me out.

  I walked through the narrow opening he made for me, hearing the lock clink shut a moment later.

  ‘Try not to get torn to pieces.’ Brasti’s voice sounded genuinely concerned now. ‘What are you going to use on the mob?’

  I checked the rapiers in my scabbard, making sure I could draw them both at speed. ‘“Beatti feci forze Deato”,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you serious? You’re going to try a God’s Line on these people? Saints, why not just lie down on the ground and let them crush you beneath their feet?’

  ‘Because that would get my coat dirty.’ I walked away from the gates and towards the field.

  ‘This is what you do, you know,’ Brasti called out.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you’re tired. When you’re scared. You throw yourself into fights you have no real chance of winning.’

  I searched around for a clever reply but the truth was, Brasti had made a surprisingly insightful observation. ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  ‘Then why keep doing it?’

  I stepped into the crowd. ‘Because it’s the only thing I know how to do that ever works.’

  *

  It took some time to wade through the men and women, mostly farmers and labourers. They all took note of my passing, but few tried to interfere. The occasional moron with shoulders too big for his brain to manage jostled me, and a couple of children threw rotten fruit. I ignored it all, except for the one tomato I managed to catch that didn’t look too bad; I ate it on my way. I hadn’t had breakfast.

  On the far side of the field I finally saw the man held captive: Allister Ivany, a tall, rangy man we used to call the King’s Shadow, was hanging by his wrists from a tall pole that had been mounted into the ground. He looked a little beaten up, but nothing too bad. I couldn’t tell from where I stood how many of his bruises were from the people holding him and how many were simply the product of however long he’d been on the road, answering the call I’d sent out for the Greatcoats to return to Castle Aramor.

  His captors, a group of about twenty men and women, had the deeply tanned faces and sunburned arms of farm labourers. A few had real weapons, though – spears and old warswords, probably inherited from grandparents who had fought in the wars against Avares. I guessed their leader was the cleric in shabby orange robes that marked him as a disciple of Craft, or Mestiri, as they called him this far south.

  It didn’t take long for the cleric to notice me, and for the others to start to crowd around.

  ‘Well, hello there, citizens,’ I said.

  When you’re about to face off with a crowd, two things are vital: first, you must maintain absolute confidence: for some reason, the thicker people are, the better they become at smelling fear, a scent they find strangely intoxicating. The second thing is to have a plan, and to stick to it. King Paelis had trained all of his Greatcoats in the different ways of dealing with mobs. After all, most days the job meant riding alone into some dirt-poor village or backwater town, declaring ourselves the representatives of the King’s Law and thus empowered to hear all cases and render all verdicts – and then, after a few hours, telling people things they mostly didn’t want to hear. Far too often their disappointment would be communicated with pitchforks and clubs.

  The King had always been fascinated by the workings of the mind, especially the way large groups of people quickly started to share a single consciousness, to become, in effect, one person. And that person tended to be, in my experience, a complete arsehole.

  So Paelis developed a variety of strategies for dealing with mobs, and he’d test them out by ordering me to use whatever his latest stratagem was on my next mission. He had a habit of underestimating the potential consequences of his latest theory failing to work.

  ‘You know the motto of the Greatcoats, Falcio,’ he’d say to me. ‘“Judge fair, ride fast, fight hard”. If the town should turn against you, I suggest you simply amend the middle part to, “ride very fast”.’

  The King could be a bit of an arsehole himself, sometimes.

  ‘Look here,’ a particularly burly man in his early twenties with hands roughly the size of my head called out, coming towards me. He was holding Allister’s iron-shod staff. ‘Another brown bird for us to roast for supper!’

  I pretended to ignore him, but I was taking careful notice nonetheless. I’d just decided he was going to figure prominently in my plans soon – but I wanted him wound up first.

  ‘Hello there, Allister,’ I said. ‘Fancy coming inside with Kest, Brasti and me?’

  He lifted his head up to look at me, blowing to part the long black hair that had fallen into his face. ‘Falcio?’ Then he grinned through a split and bleeding lip. ‘Depends. Have they got anything decent to eat in there?’

  The big man who’d spoken earlier stuck out a thick-fingered hand to push my shoulder. I took a step left and forward to evade it while pretending I hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Brasti said to tell you that if you carried a proper sword instead of that idiot stick of yours then you wouldn’t have been captured.’

  Allister looked more pissed off by the comment than by the bruises on his face. ‘Tell Brasti-fucking-Goodbow that it’s a staff, not a stick, and I will be happy to see him in the duelling circle once this present matter is attended to.’

  The burly man came back around to stand between me and Allister, and a couple of his friends joined him. ‘You shouldn’t have left the martyrium, Trattari. Now you’re going t—’

  I raised a finger. ‘Just a moment, please.’ I looked over at the cleric in grubby orange robes. ‘Pardon me, Venerati, is this your . . . congregation?’

  The cleric said, ‘The Gods speak through me to these good people.’

  ‘Exc
ellent.’ I pointed to the horse-cart I’d seen him using as a dais on my walk down here. ‘Could you get up on there, please? I want everyone to be able to hear you.’

  He spat – I’ve noticed clerics seem to do that a lot more than regular people – and announced, ‘If you think I’m going to call off Brell and the others and stop them from giving you the righteous punishment you deserve, Trattari, then you are mistaken.’

  I sighed. I’m told most clerics are actually perfectly nice people who keep to their own broken-down little churches, confining themselves to offering the occasional words of comfort for travellers and living off whatever meagre donations people leave behind. Not that I’ve ever encountered those sort of clerics, mind.

  ‘I would never ask you to contradict the will of the Gods,’ I said. ‘Even if that will is to give me a proper thumping.’

  ‘Oh, for the sake of Saint Marta-who-shakes-the-lion,’ Allister muttered, ‘tell me you’re not going to do a “God’s Line” . . .’

  The crowd were all slowly shifting into position around me now, following that strange compulsion that turns normally sane people into a pack of wolves.

  The cleric smiled, clearly expecting me to ask him why he was here and what he was doing – to question why the Gods required him to take a Greatcoat prisoner.

  Now, here’s what you don’t do with a mob: you don’t ask questions. You don’t walk up to them with a hearty, ‘Say there, friend, why exactly have you chosen to tie that nice fellow to a post?’ Most of all, you don’t ever start by demanding that they release him.

  The mob, you see, only ever has one reason for beating up a man and tying him to a post, the same reason why they do all the things they do: it’s because they’re very angry, and they’ve found someone to take it out on. So you only ever get into a debate with them over the validity of their anger, or their choice of target if you happen to believe arguing with a bear woken too soon from sleep is a good use of your time.

  No, engaging the crowd – and most especially their leader – on questions of “why?” will only earn you a spot on the next pole.

  Brell, the big man who’d tried to push me earlier, came forward to grab my shoulder and this time I slid my hand inside my coat. By the time Brell’s right foot came back down to earth, the tip of my throwing knife was at his throat.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, and let him step back.

  I wasn’t looking to start a fight with him, nor prevent one; I just wanted everyone to know that I was probably faster than they were. Saint Forza-who-strikes-a-blow, please let me be faster than them.

  ‘You do not frighten us, Trattari,’ declared the orange-robed cleric as he stepped up onto the horse-cart. He might not have liked that it had been my suggestion, but everyone enjoys being a little taller. ‘These good people do not fear you.’

  ‘Told you,’ Brell said, sharing a look with some of the others, preparing to rush me when the moment came. ‘You should’ve stayed cowering inside the martyrium.’

  ‘It’s funny you should say that, Brell.’ I glanced back towards the gates that now looked very far away indeed. ‘You know, I’ve spent more time inside castles and palaces and, well, pretty much every type of building you can think of in the past few months than I did in all the years King Paelis was alive.’ I turned back to the crowd. ‘Greatcoats aren’t really meant for hanging about, but it’s been a life indoors for me lately. What do you suppose that means?’

  ‘That you’re a coward,’ Brell said, his mouth hanging open, eyes eager.

  ‘You’re right. I have been afraid.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not even sure of what, you know? I mean, some days I think I’m scared of everything.’

  I slid the knife back in my coat and drew the paired rapiers from my scabbard. ‘That’s why I carry these.’

  Brell and a couple of the people nearest him involuntarily took a step backwards.

  ‘You would attack an unarmed man?’ the cleric bellowed for the crowd, evidently not noticing the staff in Brell’s hand.

  ‘Me? Of course not.’ The clouds overhead shifted a little, allowing the morning sun to come out. I lifted up the rapiers by their blades, one in each hand, to catch the rays, turning them to shine the reflected light into Brell’s eyes, and he started blinking rather a lot.

  ‘Do you happen to know, good Venerati,’ I said to the cleric on his horse-cart, ‘from what principle the laws regarding trial by combat are derived?’

  Allister looked at me a little aghast . . . apparently he hadn’t really believed I was going to try the God’s Line.

  ‘All laws are derived from the Gods!’ the cleric declared, spreading his arms and clenching his fists as if daring me to contradict him.

  Nope, not even remotely correct. ‘Exactly so, good Venerati.’

  He looked surprised by my admission. So did everyone else.

  I turned a little, looking out at the faces in the crowd. ‘There are sixteen separate laws that mention trial by combat directly, each law governing different situations with different rules and sometimes even specific weapons. But did you know that every one of those laws begins with the same phrase? “Beatti feci forze Deato”.’

  ‘“The righteous are made mighty by the Gods”,’ the cleric said in a rapturous voice as I smiled approvingly.

  ‘Exactly. A lovely phrase, and one that makes perfect sense: the only way for trial by combat to be fair is if the Gods themselves are choosing the victor. They will give their righteous strength to the man or woman whose cause is just.’

  I tossed one of the rapiers to Brell who, having seen me hold it by the blade, caught it the same way. That’s a mistake, of course. If you don’t catch it just right you’ll slice your hand open.

  ‘My cause is— Ow! Hells!’ Brell swore, dropping the sword and sucking at the bleeding cut on his palm.

  ‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘People might think the Gods don’t favour your cause.’

  Brell looked around at the faces of his compatriots, all staring at him expectantly. To his credit, he knelt down and grabbed the hilt of the rapier and lifted it back up defiantly. ‘I’m not afraid of you!’

  I gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Nor should you be. The Gods will lend you their might, won’t they? Surely I will soon lie dead at your feet, my blood watering the ground and sanctifying your cause.’ I glanced up at the cleric. ‘For if our Gods do not love and support those who ambush a man like a cowardly pack of dogs, well then, who really needs that sort of God, anyway?’

  I flipped my rapier in the air and caught it neatly by the hilt. ‘Then again, Brell, if you should lose . . .’

  The cleric, like most men of his training, was adaptable in his arguments. He roared to the crowd, ‘Should a brave man fall, will his fellows flee? Or shall they, like the heroes of old, take his place? For is that not the test the Gods set to us? That we, united, shall never seek to protect our own skin, but shall trade it cheaply, every one of us, until the blasphemers have been slain!’

  Crowds always enjoy watching people shout at each other. This one waited eagerly for me to shout out some stupid counter-claim in our ecclesiastical debate. I didn’t.

  ‘Well, of course, silly man. Everyone knows that.’ With the tip of my rapier I pointed to individual figures in the crowd, one after another, until I was sure I’d got to all of them. ‘Get in line, if you please.’

  They looked at me with confused expressions.

  ‘Come on, let’s be orderly about this. In about sixty seconds Brell here is going to fall to the ground with a nasty stab-wound in his chest. I’ll need a couple of you to clear him out of the way so that the next man can take his place. And the next man after that. And so on and so forth.’ I brought my rapier into guard. ‘For if the Gods love your cause, then surely one of you will beat me. Eventually.’

  ‘You’ll tire and falter, Trattari!’ the cleric shouted enthusiastically. ‘You cannot hope to defeat us all!’

  I was absolutely going to tire and falter, and probably s
ooner rather than later. Even now it was taking most of my strength just to keep pretending to be hearty and hale. ‘No doubt you are correct, Venerati,’ I replied. ‘And besides, if by some miracle my arm stays strong long enough to get through these twenty righteous warriors, then of course it will be your turn. Surely the Gods will grant you, their chosen representative on earth, the strength to dispatch a blasphemer like me?’

  The cleric glanced about the field, possibly in search of a new argument. His followers were all staring at him now.

  Brell, who I was, I confess, really starting to admire for his raw nerve, gave a magnificent roar and ran for me, the point of his sword aiming straight for my neck.

  There were six smart ways to deflect the blow and three to get out of the way, but none of them would look all that impressive to an impressionable audience, so instead I dropped down low, throwing my left leg back and putting all the weight on my right while extending my blade all the way forward into a long and, I felt, quite elegant reverse lunge.

  It took all the strength I had not to be bowled over by the force of Brell impaling himself on my blade as his own sword passed harmlessly over my head.

  We stood there, he and I, for a long while, our eyes locked. It wasn’t anger or satisfaction that kept me there; Brell’s look of surprise and fear as he realised what had just happened made me want to offer what little comfort there was in the face of another as he saw all the things his life could have been slip away. I did my best to convey as much sympathy as I could. I had to believe that deep down, Brell was probably a decent man who’d made the mistake of allowing himself to be subsumed into the madness of crowds. It was out of this small shred of faith in his humanity that I had aimed my blow to avoid his major organs.

  He slumped to his knees and I placed my hand on his shoulder, keeping him in position so that I would do as little damage as possible as I withdrew my blade.