Allister insisted we move slowly and quietly, being careful not to raise the alarm too soon, in case there were a lot of people guarding the camp, but even before we reached the place I’d known what we would find. These traps were designed to take down a single Greatcoat, two at most. With four Greatcoats, there was too much chance of one or more of us escaping: so they would have sent every able-bodied man they could muster to ensure they succeeded in overpowering us. And that meant there wouldn’t be many left guarding the camp.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ethalia stumble, and I reached out an arm for her to grab onto. ‘Are you all right?’ I whispered. ‘Is it the fever?’
She shook her head. ‘No, the . . . the violence. I know you had no choice, Falcio. It’s just . . . the nature of my Sainthood makes it hard for me.’
There wasn’t much I could do about that, so I tried instead just to provide support for her as we made our way into the forest.
It took us less than an hour to find the cultists’ lair. It wasn’t much of an encampment, to be honest, and looking at the number of tents, I was convinced I was right, that almost all the men had come for us on the road.
‘Stay back!’ someone called out from behind one of the thick trees. His voice was deep, thick – so, a big man: that made sense if you had only one person to guard a captive. The slight quiver that accompanied his words served to confirm to me that he was alone.
‘We’re not here to hurt you,’ I said. ‘We want the woman you’re holding hostage.’
A tall, stocky young Knight stepped out from behind a tree, his armour mostly obscured by the woman in tattered rags he was holding against his chest. One meaty hand was clamped over her mouth, whilst the other held a knife to her throat. ‘I’ll kill her long before I let you have her, Trattari.’
‘Talia . . .’ Brasti said.
It was her all right. I would have recognised her by her hair even if I couldn’t see her face. Talia had the brownest hair you’d ever seen – not the mix of shades of auburn and mahogany and chestnut and all the shades of tree and soil that most people have. Hers was the colour an artist might use to paint a single sliver of oak.
I signalled the others to stay back and walked towards the pair, my hands outstretched, my rapiers still in their sheaths. ‘There’s been plenty of blood today, my young friend. Let’s not add to Death’s tally. He’s not a rewarding God, I promise you.’
The young Knight pressed his point to Talia’s throat. ‘The good God Purgeize will bless my blade!’
Talia was barely managing to stand on her own feet. Her gaze was confused, unfocused, but I still found a fierce anger there, and a desire to act. I caught her eyes and gave the tiniest shake of my head, hoping she would understand that I needed her to stay still. ‘War is an even greedier God than Death,’ I said.
‘I do not fear you, Trattari!’
Why does everyone always feel the need to tell us that they aren’t afraid of us? I took a final step and said sadly, ‘Of course you don’t. All that matters to you is doing this one service for your Gods and then you’ll go happily to the grave, is that right?’
‘He who dies in service of the God will be returned as a Saint,’ the man said, repeating someone else’s words in that stilted way.
So was this how the madwoman on the road had got these men to follow her commands? She must have shown them her strength and then promised them Sainthood in exchange for killing Greatcoats . . . Hells. All she’d needed were men who were strong, stupid and desperate for purpose – in other words, Knights.
Ethalia stepped forward and said gently, ‘You’ve been lied to.’
‘How would you know, woman?’
‘She’s a Saint,’ Brasti explained, ‘so, you know, she’s kind of the expert here.’
The young Knight’s jaw tightened. ‘Then when I’ve dealt with these men I’ll kill you next. The time of false Saints is past.’
‘Well, then, that’s where you have a little problem, friend,’ I said, placing my hand on the hilt of my rapier.
His eyes darted around at the others. ‘If anyone tries to draw an arrow on me I’ll slit her throat!’
I stared him in the eyes, long and hard. Anyone could make threats; not everyone would follow through with them. The problem here was that I could clearly see the mixture of fear and religious fervour shining in his eyes. I knew he’d follow through. A good part of him believed that the act of killing Talia would find him favour with the Gods.
I don’t know if that’s true, Sir Knight, but none of us are going to find out today.
‘Do you know what a vinceret is, Sir Knight?’ I didn’t bother to wait for an answer. ‘It’s a type of duellist who specialises in what we call “the quick draw”. The vinceret’s strategy is to wait until the magistrate calls for the duel to begin, and then pull his blade and strike so fast that the battle is over less than a second after it’s begun.’
‘You’re too far away, Trattari,’ the Knight said. ‘You’re at least nine feet away and that rapier at your side isn’t long enough to reach me even you could draw it fast enough.’
‘Well, I can see why you would think that. But in fact my rapier is three feet and two inches long. And my lunge when fully extended is . . . Kest, how long is my lunge again?’
‘Last time I looked, at full extension it was six feet, Falcio.’
‘Six feet,’ I said. ‘Now if you add those two numbers together you get something that’s just long enough to bury the point of my sword two full inches into your throat.’
The man holding Talia swallowed. ‘You can’t—’
‘I know, I know. Even if I had studied the ways of the vincereti – which I have, by the way – what are the odds of me being able to reach across my body, draw my rapier, bring it into line and lunge with the perfect accuracy needed to stab you in the neck when all you have to do is pull that little knife of yours across Talia’s throat?’
‘You’ll never make it in time. It’s impossible,’ he said, more as if he were trying to reassure himself than threaten me.
‘It’s not impossible,’ I said, ‘just very hard. But, you know what? I’m actually pretty damned fast when I want to be. Then there’s your other problem – your reflexes. See, it’s actually a lot harder to stand there and slit someone’s throat at the expense of your own life. Once you see me coming at you, your body’s going to try and take over. It’s going to tense up, even as it tries to get away. So Talia’s going to get a nasty cut – but probably not a fatal one – and you’re going to die for nothing.’
The Knight began mumbling words, prayers to his God, I imagined.
‘That’s right, son: the Gods guide you. Sure, you can smell your own piss right about now, and every muscle in your body is starting to freeze, slowing you down. And that taste in your mouth? Not pleasant, is it? So while you’re praying to the Gods for help, ask yourself one simple question.’
‘Wh . . . what?’
‘Do those Gods of yours really love you?’
I saw the fear in the quivering of his mouth but it wasn’t as strong as his faith. ‘Purgeize take me in your—’
His last word was cut off by two inches of steel in his neck.
I stayed exactly as I was, my rapier extended into a lunge that had been quite possibly the fastest of my entire life. Talia’s eyes were wide, and focused on the blade that rested against her right cheek.
The Knight began to gurgle and blood poured from his throat onto her hair. His left hand, the one holding the knife, twitched as he struggled to command the muscles to commit one last act of blind faith. They wouldn’t, though, and Talia reached up and pulled his hand away from her throat with a slow, careful motion that was almost gentle. She stepped out from his grasp and turned to watch him sink to the ground.
Brasti came forward and awkwardly, painfully, removed his coat and placed it over Talia’s shoulders, though she didn’t appear to notice. ‘Falcio tricked you,’ she said to the Knight, now on his k
nees. His hands were trying to stop the blood coming out of his throat. ‘He made you think about your muscles to get you to tense up, and he kept talking about the Gods so you’d start praying.’ She knelt down in front of him. ‘Both those things slowed you down. You could have gone to your Gods with a sacrifice worthy of their gift. You could have killed a Greatcoat.’
The Knight’s eyes were wide with terror as Talia’s words washed over him. But she wasn’t done. ‘Your blessed Purgeize will be very angry when you meet him,’ she continued, ‘so give him this message for me. Tell him that Talia Venire is coming for him. Make sure the God of War knows that he’s next.’
The Knight’s body slumped down to the ground. I found myself oddly uncomfortable about the way Talia had spoken, but as I had no idea what they might have done to her whilst she’d been their captive, I kept my mouth shut.
Ethalia didn’t. ‘That was unnecessarily cruel,’ she said.
Talia looked neither hurt nor offended by her words. ‘That isn’t cruelty,’ she said.
She left us and ducked into one of the tents. When she returned she was carrying a long spear with a diamond-headed blade at the end. Her name had been earned by her deadly skill with that weapon. ‘Come with me,’ she said, and motioned for us to follow her. ‘I’ll show you what cruelty looks like,’ she added as we followed her into the forest.
‘Wait,’ I called out. ‘Where are we—?’
‘I wasn’t alone when they caught me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Blood Moths
The first body was hanging naked from the tree, the flesh filthy and covered in tracks of blood that had dripped from wounds to his chest and neck. His arms had been bound to two branches that split off at odd angles from the trunk of the tree. I’ve seen plenty of dead people before, men who had met their ends in just about every way imaginable. I’d never seen one quite so white. Below his body was a pile of leaves, sopping and soaked through with blood.
‘It’s Harden,’ Kest said as soon as we were close enough to make out his features. ‘The King’s Whisper.’
‘I knew him, back in the day,’ Allister said. ‘He and I both served under Quillata.’
‘He was my brother,’ Talia said. ‘Did he ever tell you that?’
‘No,’ Allister replied, ‘he never mentioned anything about his family.’
She nodded absently. ‘There weren’t any other siblings in the Greatcoats. Harden was always worried that meant there might be some unspoken policy against it. He always was a little naïve.’ She closed Brasti’s coat around herself as if she’d only then realised she was cold. ‘I suppose that’s why he fell for the woman’s ruse and made us rush headlong into a trap.’
‘What was Harden doing?’ I asked. ‘What was his mission?’
Talia didn’t answer but instead pointed. We’d all been so focused on the first body that we hadn’t even noticed the second.
This man was bound to a post, his arms forced to full extension by ropes that were looped around the branches of nearby trees. Unlike Harden, he was clothed in some kind of heavy robe stained a dark red. Sunlight broke through the leaves of the trees above and died on the grey-black iron surface of the mask clamped to his face.
‘Harden said his name was Gan,’ Talia said. ‘I didn’t believe him at first.’
‘Why?’ Brasti asked. ‘It’s not as if Gan is an uncom—’
‘Gan-who-laughs-with-dice,’ she said.
All of us stared at the dead man. He was a little shorter than average height, and thin, but with the signs of a belly beneath the dark red rags. ‘Apparently the Saint of Gambling drew a terrible hand,’ Allister said.
I didn’t think the joke was very funny. ‘We should cut him down,’ I said, and reached into my coat for a knife.
‘Stop,’ Talia said, grabbing my arm, ‘they move quickly once awakened.’ She gestured for the rest of us to move back a few feet, then she knelt and picked up a small stick.
‘What do you mean, “they move quickly”?’ Kest asked. His eyes narrowed. ‘And what are those clothes he’s wearing? They almost look like they—’
‘He’s not wearing any clothes,’ she said, and threw the stick.
There was no sound, but the instant the stick struck the body, the dark red fabric of his robes exploded into hundreds of tiny scraps as they left behind the pale, dead flesh. Then something even stranger happened: instead of falling to the ground, the red scraps twitched and flew in the air, swirling together in a floating cloud of crimson.
‘Saint Shiulla-who-bathes-with-beasts,’ Brasti swore. ‘Are those . . . butterflies?’
‘Blood moths,’ Talia replied. ‘That’s what the woman who took my coat called them.’
The swarm slowly flittered up into the sky. I followed as Talia approached the corpse of Saint Gan. With the moths gone, I could now see the dozens of tiny shallow cuts on the flesh of his arms, his chest, his legs.
‘The moths did this?’ Kest asked.
‘No,’ Talia replied, ‘the woman . . . There was some sort of ritual to all of this. She forced liquid through the opening in the mask – I don’t know what it was – and then took a knife and made those small incisions you can see all over his body. She was methodical about it – patient, I’d say. She had this box – a plain thing, really, made of something like sandalwood, and the blood moths were inside. They start out white as snow, but after she placed them on the wounds . . . they just sort of turned red. Not just the bodies, but the wings, too.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What’s the point?’
She didn’t reply, but went back to reciting her story as though she had to get it out all at once or risk being unable to speak of it. ‘The moths just sit there, unmoving – I thought maybe they’d died from gorging themselves on the blood. But they aren’t dead. After a while, that crazy bitch would reach over and very carefully pick one off the body.’ Talia shuddered visibly. ‘Then she ate it.’
Ethalia, who had been silent for a very long time, said quietly, ‘This is what they did to Birgid.’
The way she said it transformed the words from an observation to a vow. She locked eyes with me, I think because she wanted me to see that the pale blue ocean that had once been there had hardened into its own kind of iron. Ethalia would do whatever was required to fulfil her role as the Saint of Mercy now. Everything else was in the past.
My thoughts were pulled back by the sound of Kest shattering the clasps on the mask of infamy covering Saint Gan’s face.
‘He looks . . . ordinary,’ Brasti said. ‘He could be any country drunk betting black pennies in the tavern.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said, but I was lying. I had no idea what the man tied to the tree looked like because I couldn’t see his face.
‘Falcio? What’s wrong?’ Ethalia asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘You aren’t fine. You’re shaking . . .’ She reached out a hand to touch my face and her fingertips felt like burning embers. She stumbled back, breaking contact, gasping for breath. ‘The terror . . . it’s . . .’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. It wasn’t true, of course, but that was all I could manage just then.
‘You’re white as a corpse, Falcio,’ Kest said. ‘I think you should . . .’
His words sounded further and further away, and I felt myself drifting closer to the body tied to the tree. When I stared into the man’s face I didn’t see Brasti’s country bumpkin; I saw my own face, staring in frozen agony at the cold, empty world. It was my broken body hanging from the tree.
Stop this, I told myself. That’s not you. But I could feel the ropes binding me, so tight my arms and legs were numb. There was nothing but darkness. There was no land, no roads, no people, only the tree. Only the needles and the pain and the endless torment.
They’ve come to give me the Lament again.
*
‘What the hells is wrong with him?’ Allister’s voice was calling out.
<
br /> Thin branches full of leaves were swatting at my face.
Odd. I don’t remember seeing any leaves on the tree.
The words of Heryn, the Dashini Unblooded who had overseen the Lament, repeated themselves over and over in my ears: ‘Shall we begin?’
Breathe, I told myself, willing my heart to slow. Heryn is dead. Darriana killed him. The Lament is over.
Over? What a foolish thing to say . . .
‘What’s going on?’ Talia asked.
‘It’s the Lament – the torture he experienced months ago,’ Ethalia said.
‘But he’s recovered,’ Brasti said.
‘No. He hides it, he holds it in, but the Lament is always with him.’
Distantly, I felt something inside her reach out to me, something that tried to ease the fear, and for a moment, I felt myself coming back – then Ethalia fell to her knees and again I was drawn back into it.
‘I’m not strong enough,’ she cried. ‘I can’t help him.’
It’s not the Lament, I told myself. You’re in a forest hundreds of miles from the place they held you. The Lament is over. It’s over. It’s over.
Someone slapped me hard across the face and only then did I realise it wasn’t the first time. I opened my eyes to see Kest, his face impassive, but behind his eyes I could see concern and sadness and guilt mixed together.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, pushing him away.
‘You’re anything but fine,’ Allister shouted. He turned to the others. ‘What in name of Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears is going on with him?’
‘Leave it,’ Kest said. Even I could hear the warning in his voice now.
‘Well, the First Cantor can stand here until winter comes,’ Talia said, removing Brasti’s coat and handing it back to him, ‘but I’ve got work to do and I don’t feel like waiting around for Falcio to get his courage back.’
Though she didn’t elaborate on that work, I knew exactly what she meant. And I also knew the way she was speaking to me was intentional; it was the same way Allister spoke to me, testing boundaries. I reached down to help Ethalia up, but she shook her head and I knew it was because she wasn’t strong enough at that moment to endure my touch.
Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 Page 16