by Anthony Ryan
“It’s time for me to take my leave, brother,” Tendris said. “I’m sure I’ll see you again when you’ve passed all your tests. Who knows, perhaps there’ll be a place in my company for a young brother with a brave heart and a quick eye.”
Vaelin looked at the bodies of the two dogs, streaks of blood staining the white blanket of snow. They would have killed me. That’s what they’re bred for. Not just tracking. If they’d found Sella and Erlin… “Who knows down what paths the Faith leads us, brother,” he told Tendris, not having the stomach to force more than a neutral tone into his voice.
“Indeed.” Tendris nodded, accepting the wisdom. “Well, luck go with you.”
Vaelin was so surprised that his plan had worked that he let Tendris guide his horse to the edge of the clearing before he remembered to ask a vital question.
“Brother! What do I do with this dog?”
Tendris looked over his shoulder as he rode away, spurring his mount to a canter. “Kill it if you’re smart. Keep it if you’re brave.” He laughed, raising a hand as his horse accelerated into a gallop, snow rising into a thick cloud that shimmered in the winter sun.
Vaelin looked down at the dog. It gazed up at him with adoring eyes, long pink tongue lolling from a mouth wet with drool. Again he noted the numerous scars on its snout. Although still young, this animal clearly had endured a hard life. “Scratch,” he told it. “I’ll call you Scratch.”
Dog flesh proved a tough, sinewy meat but Vaelin was long past being choosy over his food. Scratch had whined continually as Vaelin butchered one of the carcasses back at the clearing, slicing a rear haunch off the largest dog. He had kept his distance as Vaelin carried the prize back to the camp and cut strips of meat to roast over his fire. Only when the meat had been eaten and Vaelin had hidden the remainder in his tree hole did the dog venture closer, snuffling at Vaelin’s feet in search of reassurance. Whatever the savage traits of Volarian slave-hounds, it appeared cannibalism was not among them.
“Don’t know what I’m going to feed you if you won’t eat your own kind,” Vaelin mused, patting Scratch awkwardly on the head. The dog was clearly unused to being petted and shrank warily when Vaelin first tried it.
He had been back at the camp for over an hour, cooking, building the fire, clearing snow from his shelter and resisting the temptation to go and see if Erlin and Sella were still hiding in the hollow. He had felt a sense of wrongness ever since Tendris had ridden away, a suspicion that the man had accepted his word a little too easily. He could be wrong, of course. Tendris had struck him as the kind of brother whose Faith was absolute and unshakeable. If so, then the concept of a fellow brother lying, lying to protect a Denier at that, simply wouldn’t occur to him. On the other hand, could a man who spent his life hunting the Realm for heretics remain so free of cynicism?
Without answers to these questions Vaelin couldn’t risk checking on the fugitives. There was nothing on the wind to warn him otherwise, no change in the song of the wild threatening ambush but still he stayed in his camp, ate dog flesh and puzzled over what to do with his gift.
Scratch seemed an oddly cheerful animal considering he had been bred to hunt and kill people. He scampered about the camp, playing with sticks or bones he dug out of the snow, bringing them to Vaelin who quickly learned trying to wrestle them away was a pointlessly tiring task. He wasn’t remotely sure he would be allowed to keep the dog when he returned to the Order. Master Chekril, the keeper of the kennels, was unlikely to want such a beast near his beloved hounds. More likely they would pull a dagger across its throat as soon as he appeared at the gates.
They went hunting in the afternoon, Vaelin expecting another fruitless search, but it wasn’t long before Scratch picked up a trail. With a brief yelp he was off, bounding through the snow, Vaelin struggling in his wake. It wasn’t long before he found the source of the trail: the frozen carcass of a small deer no doubt caught in the storm the night before. Oddly it was untouched, Scratch sat patiently beside the corpse, eyeing Vaelin warily as he approached. Vaelin gutted the carcass, tossing the entrails to Scratch, whose ecstatic reaction took him by surprise. He yelped happily, gulping the meat down in a frenzy of teeth and snapping jaws. Vaelin dragged the deer back to camp, pondering the odd change in his circumstances. He had gone from near starvation to an abundance of food in less than a day, more food in fact than he could eat before Master Hutril returned to take him back to the Order House.
Darkness came swiftly, a cloudless, moonlit night turning the snow into folds of blue silver and laying out a vast panorama of stars above him. If Caenis had been here, he could have named all the constellations but Vaelin could pick out only a few of the more obvious ones: the Sword, the Stag, the Maiden. Caenis had told him of a legend that claimed the first souls of the Departed had cast the stars into the sky from the Beyond as a gift for the generations to come, making patterns to guide the living through the path of life. Many claimed to be able to read the message written in the sky, most of them seemed to congregate in marketplaces and fairs, offering guidance for a palmful of copper.
He was wondering at the meaning of the Sword pointing towards the south when his sense of wrongness hardened into cold certainty. Scratch tensed, lifting his head slightly. There was no scent, no sound, no warning at all, but something wasn’t right.
Vaelin turned, glancing over his shoulder at the unmoving foliage behind him. So silent, he wondered, a little awed. No assassin could be that skilful.
“If you’re hungry, brother,” he called. “I have plenty of meat to spare.” He turned back to the fire, adding some logs to keep the flames high. After a short interval there was a crunch of boots on snow as Makril stepped past him to crouch opposite, spreading his hands to the fire. He didn’t look at Vaelin but glowered at Scratch.
“Should’ve killed that bloody thing,” he grumbled.
Vaelin ducked into his shelter to fetch a portion of meat. “Deer.” He tossed it to Makril.
The stocky man speared the meat with his knife and arranged a small mound of rocks to secure it over the fire before spreading his bedroll on the ground to sit down.
“A fine night, brother,” Vaelin said.
Makril grunted, undoing his boots to massage his feet. The smell was enough to make Scratch get up and slink away.
“I am sorry Brother Tendris did not find my word trustworthy,” Vaelin continued.
“He believed you.” Makril picked something from between his toes and tossed it into the fire, where it popped and hissed. “He’s a true man of the Faith. Whereas I am a suspicious, gutter-born bastard. That’s why he keeps me with him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a man of many abilities, finest horseman I ever saw and he can extract information from a Denier quicker than you could blow your nose. But in some ways he’s an innocent. He trusts the Faithful. For him all the Faithful have the same belief, his belief.”
“But not yours?”
Makril placed his boots near the fire to dry. “I hunt. Tracks, signs, spoor, a scent on the wind, the rush of blood that comes from a kill. That’s my Faith. What’s yours, boy?”
Vaelin shrugged. He suspected a trap in Makril’s openness, luring him into an admission best kept silent. “I follow the Faith,” he replied, forcing certainty into his words. “I am a brother of the Sixth Order.”
“The Order has many brothers, all different, all finding their own path in the Faith. Don’t kid yourself that the Order is filled with virtuous men who spend every spare moment grovelling to the Departed. We’re soldiers, boy. Soldier’s life is hard, short on pleasure and long on pain.”
“The Aspect says there’s a difference between a soldier and a warrior. A soldier fights for pay or loyalty. We fight for the Faith, war is our way of honouring the Departed.”
Makril’s face took on a sombre cast, a craggy, hairy mask in the yellow firelight, his eyes distant, focused on unhappy memories. “War? War is blood and shit and men maddened with pain calling for their mothers as they bl
eed to death. There’s no honour in it, boy.” His eyes shifted, meeting Vaelin’s. “You’ll see it, you poor little bastard. You’ll see it all.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, Vaelin added another log to the fire. “Why were you hunting that girl?”
“She’s a Denier. A Denier most foul, for she has power to twist the hearts of virtuous men.” He gave a short, ironic laugh. “So I think I’d be safe if she ever met me.”
“What is it? This power?”
Makril tested the meat with his fingers and began to eat, biting off small mouthfuls, chewing thoroughly then swallowing. It was the practised, unconscious action of a man who did not savour food but merely took it into himself as fuel. “It’s a dark tale, boy,” he said, between mouthfuls. “Might give you nightmares.”
“I’ve got those already.”
Makril raised a bushy eyebrow but didn’t comment. Instead he finished his meat and fished in his pack for a small, leather flask. “Brother’s Friend,” he explained, taking a swig. “Cumbraelin brandy mixed with redflower. Keeps the fire in a man’s belly when he’s walking a wall on the northern frontier waiting for Lonak savages to cut his throat.” He offered the flask to Vaelin, who shook his head. Liquor wasn’t forbidden in the Order, but it was frowned upon by the more Faithful masters. Some said anything that dulled the senses was a barrier to the Faith, the less a man remembered of his life the less he had to take with him to the Beyond. Clearly Brother Makril didn’t share this view.
“So you want to know about the witch.” He relaxed, resting his back against a rock, intermittently sipping from his flask. “Well, the story goes she was arrested on Council orders following reports of Unfaithful practices. Allegations are usually a load of nonsense; people claiming to have heard voices from the Beyond that don’t come from the Departed, healing the sick, communing with beasts and so on. Mostly it’s just frightened peasants blaming each other for their misfortunes, but every once in a while you get one like her.
“There’d been trouble in her village. She and her father were outsiders, from Renfael. Kept to themselves, he made a living as a scribe. A local landowner wanted him to forge some deeds, something to do with a dispute over the inheritance of some pasture. The scribe refused and ended up with an axe in his back a few days later. The landowner was a cousin of the local magistrate so nothing was done. Two days later he walked into the local tavern, confessed his crime and cut his own throat from ear to ear.”
“And they blamed her for that?”
“It seems they had been seen together earlier in the day, which was odd because there was said to be hatred between them even before the bastard killed her father. They said she touched him, a short pat on the arm. Didn’t help that she was mute, and an outsider. Being a little too pretty and a little too smart didn’t do her any favours either. They always said there was something about her, she wasn’t right. But they always say that.”
“So you arrested her?”
“Oh no. Tendris and me, we only hunt the ones that run. Brothers from the Second Order searched her house and found evidence of Denier activity. Forbidden books, images of gods, herbs and candles, the usual stuff. Turned out she and her father were followers of the Sun and the Moon, a minor sect. They’re pretty harmless mostly since they don’t try to convert others to their heresy, but a Denier’s a Denier. She was taken to the Blackhold. The next night she escaped.”
“She escaped the Blackhold?” Vaelin was unsure if Makril was mocking him. The Blackhold was a squat, ugly fortress in the centre of the capital, its stones stained with soot from the nearby foundries, famed as a place where people were taken and didn’t come out again unless it was to walk the path to the gallows or the gibbet. If a man went missing and his neighbours heard he was taken to the Blackhold, they stopped asking when he would return, in fact they didn’t mention him at all. And no-one ever escaped.
“How is such a thing possible?” Vaelin wondered.
Makril took a long pull from his flask before continuing. “Did you ever hear of Brother Shasta?”
Vaelin recalled some of the more lurid battle stories told by the older boys. “Shasta the Axe?”
“That’s him. A legend in the Order, a great brute of a man, arms like tree trunks, fists like hams, they said he’d killed over a hundred men before they sent him to the Blackhold. Truly he was a hero…and quite the stupidest shithead I ever met. Mean with it too, ’specially when he’d had a drink. He was her gaoler.”
“I had heard he was a great warrior who did the Order much service,” Vaelin said.
Makril snorted. “The Blackhold is where the Order puts its relics, boy. The ones that survive their fifteen years who’re too stupid or too mad to be masters or commanders, they get sent to the Blackhold to live out their time locking up heretics, even if they’re no bloody good at it. I’ve seen plenty of Shastas, big, ugly, brutish idiots with no thought in their heads but the next battle or the next tankard of ale. Usually they don’t last long enough to be a problem but if they’re big and strong enough, they linger, like a bad smell. Shasta lingered long enough to be sent to the Blackhold, Faith help us.”
“So,” Vaelin ventured carefully, “this oaf left her cell open and she walked out?”
Makril laughed, a hard, unpleasant sound. “Not quite. He gave her the keys to the front gate, took his axe down from the wall of his quarters and started killing the other brothers on watch. Cut down ten men before one of the archers put enough shafts in him to slow him down. Even then he killed two more before they gutted him. Weird thing, he died with a smile on his face, and before he died he said something: ‘She touched me.’”
Vaelin realised his fingers were playing on the subtle weave of Sella’s scarf. “She touched him?” he asked, auburn curls and elfin features looming large in his head.
Makril took another long gulp from his flask. “So they say. Didn’t know the nature of her Dark affliction, see? If she touches you, you’re hers forever.”
Vaelin was feverishly engaged in recalling his every encounter with Sella. I pushed her into the shelter, did I touch her then? No, she was well clothed…She reached to me though…I felt her, in my head. Was that how she touched me? Is that why I helped her? He felt an urge to ask Makril for more information but knew it would be folly. The tracker was suspicious enough already. Drunk as he was it would be unwise to question him further.
“Tendris and me’ve been hunting her ever since,” Makril continued. “Four weeks now. This is the closest we’ve got. It’s that bastard she’s with, swear I’m gonna make him squeal good and long before I kill him.” He cackled and drank some more.
Vaelin found his hand inching closer to his knife. He was forming a deep dislike of Brother Makril, he reminded him too much of the assassins in the forest. And who knew what conclusions he had drawn. “He told me his name was Erlin,” he said.
“Erlin, Rellis, Hetril, he’s got a hundred names.”
“So who is he really?”
Makril gave an extravagant shrug. “Who knows? He helps Deniers. Helps them hide, helps them run. Did he tell you about his travels? From the Alpiran Empire to the Leandren Temples.”
The knife hilt was tight in Vaelin’s grasp. “He told me.”
“Impressed were you?” Makril belched, a long rumble of escaping gas. “I’ve travelled, y’know. I’ve bloody travelled. Meldenean Islands, Cumbrael, Renfael. Killed rebels, heretics and outlaws all over this great land, I have. Men, women, children…”
Vaelin’s knife was halfway out of its sheath. He’s drunk, won’t be too difficult.
“One time, me and Tendris found a whole sect, families, bowing to one of their gods in a barn in the Martishe. Tendris got angry, it’s best not to argue with him when he gets like that. He ordered us to lock the doors and douse the place in lamp oil, then he struck a flint…Wouldn’t have thought children could scream so loud.”
The knife was almost clear of its sheath when Vaelin saw something that made him stop: beads of
silver were shining in Makril’s beard. He was crying.
“They screamed for such a long time.” He lifted his flask to his mouth but found it was empty. “Shit!” Grumbling, he got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled off into the darkness, a short while later came the distinctive sound of piss hissing into snow.
Vaelin knew if he was going to do it, now was the time. Slit the bastard’s throat when he’s having a piss. A fitting end for such a vile man. How many more children will he kill if I let him live? But the tears were troubling, tears that told him Makril was a man who hated what he did. And he was a brother of the Order. It seemed wrong to kill a man whose fate he might be sharing in years to come. A sudden conviction rose in him then, fierce and implacable: I’ll fight but I won’t murder. I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents. I won’t kill children.
“Is Hutril still there?” Makril slurred, stumbling back to collapse onto his bedroll. “Still teaching you little shits how to track?”
“He’s still there. We are grateful for his wisdom.”
“Fuck his wisdom. Was supposed to be my job, y’know. Commander Lilden said I was the finest tracker in the Order. Said when he got made Aspect he’d bring me back to the House to be master of the wild. Then the silly bastard got a Meldenean sabre through his guts and Arlyn was chosen. Never liked me, the sanctimonious shit. Chose Hutril, legendary silent hunter of the Martishe forest. Sent me off to hunt heretics with Tendris.” He slumped onto his back, his eyes half-lidded, his voice softening to a whisper. “Never asked for this. I just wanted to learn how to track…Like my old man could…Just wanted to track…”
Vaelin watched him pass out and added more wood to the fire. Scratch crept back to camp and settled next to him after a few wary glances at Makril. Vaelin scratched his ears, reluctant to go to bed, knowing his dreams would be full of burning barns and screaming children. Although his urge to kill Makril had evaporated, he still didn’t feel comfortable sharing a camp with the man.