Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  Burran obviously expected another leaping attack and crouched down, bracing himself, a gap-toothed smile on his face. But Aderyn, commanding the horse with her knees, spun her mount around halfway across the clearing and hurled the javelin.

  Heden watched as the thin piece of wood with a sharp metal tip sunk into the giant’s right shin, burying itself in the bone, causing Burran to cry out and grab his leg. Before the javelin had found its mark, the horse had spun around and Aderyn had readied another.

  Seeing the result of her first throw, she hurled another. Putting her whole body into it, bracing against the horse. She grunted with effort and this time the javelin pierced the giant’s hand and stuck in his thigh. The horse never stopped moving, always ready to leap away should the thyrs lunge forward.

  “NO FAIR!” Burran keened, and fell to one knee. Aderyn stopped the attack and, eyes wide, breast heaving with effort, she readied another javelin and watched to see what the giant would do.

  What it did next, was die.

  Without warning, Burran arched his chest up as though struck from behind. The tip of a lance jutted out from his chest, pushing his hide armor out and poking through it a few inches. He howled and fell forward, bracing himself on the floor of the clearing.

  “OOOAAA, NOOOOO,” he cried piteously. “NOOO,” he said, “NOT DIE.”

  As he slowly lost the strength to hold himself up, Heden saw the butt of the lance poking out from its back. The entire lance had buried itself in the giant’s chest. As Burran fell, he revealed the creature that killed him.

  At first, Heden was certain he was seeing an elgenwight in plate armor. One of the elk-men of the wode. They were huge, the bucks as tall as fifteen feet. They had the head, arms and torso of a man, and the body of a horse, with huge antlers sprouting from their foreheads. Like most of the wise creatures of the wode, they were created by the Celestials, and they were among the deadliest foes in the wood. Morso than the brocc, the urq, most of the thyrs.

  Heden blinked and looked again. It was a man. A man on a horse, both in heavy armor. But the man’s helmet had two massive antlers sprouting from it, projecting forward like a dozen spears. They were deadly, and half covered in what Heden assumed was dried blood. The warhorse was one of the biggest Heden had ever seen. The man had to be eight feet tall. He had several weapons on his person and strapped to the horse, one a massive two-handed sword. With his eyes shrouded in his helm, the huge blood-covered antlers projecting forward, and his heavy plate covered in moss and vines, he looked like a demon of the wode. Menace boiled off him like steam.

  The horse bore a white caparison over its armor with a green circle in the center of it.

  “People react badly to seeing them,” Gwiddon had said.

  The Green Knight had killed the giant.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The giant was taking a long time to die. Heden stood and watched, a look of horror on his face as the massive creature made terrible noises and wept to itself. Even with its breast pierced, its inhuman health kept it alive.

  Aderyn on her horse, the vanquishing knight on his, took no notice of the huge hulk dying before them. They rode up to each other. Aderyn looked like a child compared to the huge knight.

  The knight removed his ornate helm. Heden got a closer look. There was no doubt as to the blood on them, no question about their function. They were not ceremonial.

  The knight had long dark green hair, at first Heden thought it was black. The top of his head was bald, the bald spot forming a perfect circle, his straight hair falling down to his shoulders. He had a boyish face, but was obviously older than Aderyn.

  He nodded at her once.

  “Sir Nudd,” she said, bowing in her saddle. “Your aid was not required. It was only a hills wight.”

  Sir Nudd got off his horse and walked around the dying giant. Anywhere south of the duchy of Gaeden, this man would be called a giant. He said nothing to Aderyn, who quickly dismounted and stood by her horse with Heden behind her. Once the knight had completed his circle, noting the two javelins sticking out of the giant’s right leg, he stood before Aderyn and nodded to Heden.

  “This is brother Heden,” Aderyn said, her voice unsteady. She was still recovering from the fight, her body coursing with unspent energy. “The Bishop of Cavall sent him.”

  Sir Nudd glanced at Heden and frowned, then looked back at Aderyn.

  “About Commander Kavalen,” she said, and looked down.

  Heden was only half paying attention. He was seriously considering healing the giant’s wounds, and also hating himself for not acting, and hating more than he knew he would not act. Black Gods, he thought. What’s wrong with me?

  Sir Nudd looked at Heden and appeared to sense his thoughts. He went back to his horse, removed the two-hander, and walked up to the weeping giant lying face down in the dirt. The ground was soft with its blood and drool and tears.

  Nudd brought his sword down onto the Giant’s head. The blow was not enough to kill the giant, though it cracked his skull. The creature made one last desperate effort to pick itself up and get away, but all it managed to do was turn its head and look at its assailant with huge dark eyes, red with tears. It moaned briefly, no words just pleading.

  Sir Nudd continued. It took several blows, but in the end the thing was dead. Heden watched its eyes dilate becoming huge black pools. It made the dead giant look like it had died in terror. Which it had.

  Heden found it took deliberate effort to draw air into his lungs. He was on the verge of tears himself. He looked at Sir Nudd as though for the first time, and saw the huge knight looking back at him, puzzled.

  What’s wrong with me, Heden wondered, trying to pull himself together.

  Sir Nudd approached with heavy footsteps and looked down at him with some sympathy, maybe some pity. His armor was old and been repaired several times. Heden guessed it weight as much as a man. He smelled of moss and brackish water. Of earth and mold. In places, Heden couldn’t see the armor, and he wondered whether the knight wore armor covered in vegetation, or vegetation covered in armor.

  His shield was polished, but the polish couldn’t cover the many dents and damage done to it. The device engraved on his shield was seven small birds. They looked to Heden like stylized hummingbirds. Sir Nudd turned to Aderyn and held up three fingers.

  Aderyn nodded. “I told him to speak with Sir Taethan,” she said.

  The knight nodded. He turned and snapped his fingers, and his horse walked up to the trough next to Heden’s and Aderyn’s horse and began drinking. The knight walked in long slow strides to the priory, entering without having said a word to Heden or Aderyn.

  The clearing was quiet. Aderyn and Heden both stood still and looked at the priory. At some point, the birds started chirping again.

  Aderyn broke the spell, looking around the clearing, at the scene of the battle with a combination of confusion and loss. Eventually she climbed atop the giant’s back and began the laborious process of pulling Sir Nudd’s lance out of the dead giant’s back.

  “Sir Nudd,” Heden said.

  Aderyn yanked the lance out of the corpse and, exhausted, threw it onto the ground in front of Heden.

  “He is the strongest of us,” Aderyn said from atop the dead giant, wiping sweat from her brow.

  Heden nodded, recovering himself. “I bet.”

  Aderyn hopped down to the ground in front of Heden like a bird and stared at him. He avoided her gaze.

  “Thou hast never seen a giant felled before?”

  He ignored her. He was getting sick of the knight’s cant.

  “What happens to it now?” he asked, looking at the blood pooling around his feet. He didn’t bother moving out of the way.

  Aderyn looked at the massive corpse and shrugged. “It is not seemly for the Green to have the corpse of a hills wight here at the priory,” she said. “Some might consider it boasting. Imagine perhaps that we are issuing a challenge. And the thyrs are, if not our allies, at leas
t not our enemies.”

  “This wasn’t an enemy?” Heden said.

  “This was an exceptionally stupid giant, rejected by his mate,” Aderyn wiped some of the sweat from her forehead and tried to manage her hair. Her bruises were yellowing, healing quickly, and she was no longer bleeding. “Seeking to blame his failings on the Green. His people will understand,” she said turning to look at the corpse. “Though not if we leave it here without ceremony.”

  “There’s a ceremony?” Heden asked. He couldn’t look at the giant’s face anymore, its wide staring black eyes and gaping mouth were too much for him. He turned and looked at the forest.

  Aderyn nodded and began pulling the pavilion materials away from the blood.

  “Soon Sir Brys will arrive and see the corpse and order the three dastards,” her hand flew to her mouth and she turned, hoping Heden hadn’t heard her. She tried again. “Sir Idris and his two…” she stopped and Heden was reminded that she’s spent almost her entire life among the knights and the forest. Talking to anyone who was not a knight was very unusual for her. She wasn’t used to people listening to her.

  “Three other knights will clear the body away, take it into the forest. They will perform the ceremony and the body will be accepted by the wode.”

  Heden kept quiet, let her talk. Then changed the subject.

  “You going to finish that,” he said, referring to her continued preparations with the pavilion, “with this thing sitting here?”

  Aderyn didn’t look at him, she just went back to work. “My duties remain,” she said. “I shall erect the main tent over the body of Burran and keep the sun off him until Sirs Brys and Idris arrive.”

  Heden watched her go through the motions. Fighting the hills wight, she seemed more alive than anyone Heden had met in years. Now she looked like a walking corpse.

  “Would you have killed the giant,” Heden asked, “if Sir Nudd had not arrived?”

  She stopped working and just stood there, her back to him. She didn’t speak for a moment.

  “But Sir Nudd did arrive,” she said, not turning to face him. “So ‘if’ is no matter at all.”

  “It bothered you, that he took matters into his own hands.”

  Heden expected Aderyn to rebuff him, but through blind fumbling he’d hit upon the right question.

  “He would not have done so, ere Kavalen’s death,” she said, her voice hollow.

  Heden knew he’d gotten lucky, and let it drop for now.

  “Nudd doesn’t talk,” Heden said.

  Aderyn, hefting the maul to return to work, stopped and shot a violent look at him. “Sir Nudd,” she said.

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Heden asked.

  Aderyn shook her head. “The proper form of address is Sir Nudd. I am Squire Aderyn. His father could call him…by his given name alone. You,” she said, turning back to the stake and hefting her maul, “may not.”

  “Sir Nudd,” he said. “Sir Nudd, I apologize. He doesn’t talk a lot.”

  She started hammering another stake into the ground. “He swore an oath of silence upon taking the Green. Few are strong enough for that oath. We are lucky to be among him.”

  “The hummingbirds,” Heden said, nodding. He knew it would be something like this.

  “What?” Aderyn said, not taking her eyes off her task.

  “His device is seven hummingbirds.”

  “He is the seventh,” Aderyn said.

  “Yeah,” Heden said, “but hummingbirds are…in folklore they’re noted for their silence.” Aderyn stopped hammering and turned her brilliant, blue-eyed gaze to Heden.

  “They were the messengers of the ancient Gol gods,” he said, staring at the dead giant’s horror rictus. “Because they hover and fly silently. One of them brought a message to Áengus when he went into the World Below to rescue Eithne. It was the only creature that could get past the guardians, because it flew so quietly.”

  Aderyn stared, amazed by Heden’s knowledge. He glanced at her and shrugged.

  “I always thought it should have been an owl,” he said. “Hummingbirds make a terrible buzzing sound. Can’t count the number of times I had the piss scared out of me by an owl flying past me like a ghost.”

  Aderyn went back to hammering stakes. The sun was no longer overhead. It was mid-afternoon.

  “Sir Nudd seems sad,” Heden said. Back to work.

  “He was always of a melancholic disposition,” Aderyn replied. Heden wondered if she was trying to ignore the dead giant as much as he was. He turned his back on her and looked at the sun dipping below the level of the trees. He guessed it was three o’ clock.

  “Not helped much by Kavalen dying,” he said.

  Aderyn grabbed the maul just beneath its head, and strode over to Heden.

  “You!” She said, spinning him around to face her. “You will not speak to Sir Nudd of Commander Kavalen.” She punctuated her words by tapping the hammer against his breastplate. Heden saw the tendons on her forearms straining, the muscles in her arms rippling. She seemed impossibly strong.

  She stared into his eyes. He was listening, trying to understand, and obviously concerned. He wondered if she was angry at him for being here, or at Nudd for killing the giant. Her eyes softened, she looked down and let the head of the maul fall to the ground, the shaft loose in her hand.

  “It would destroy him” she said, looking at nothing.

  Neither of them said anything. Heden wanted to reach out to help her, but she seemed as distant now as she was strong a moment ago.

  Heden gently reached down and took the maul from her loose grip. When she didn’t resist, he walked away with it.

  After a moment, she turned and saw he was hammering a stake into the ground.

  “You were right about not taking your armor off,” Heden admitted. “That’s good advice.”

  She watched him work, not knowing what to make of this man.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The main tent of the pavilion was just begun, the sun almost at six of the clock, when the knights Aderyn called ‘the three dastards’ arrived. Heden heard them laughing to each other in the woods before they emerged into the clearing. Aderyn stiffened when she heard them. Neither she nor Heden had spoken since he began helping her. The thyrwight’s corpse lay where it fell. Heden had prayed over it so that its flesh would not decay, nor collect flies. He’d also closed the giant’s eyes. It didn’t help. The memory was enough.

  Aderyn kept her back to the knights. Heden took a step backwards, so he could look her in the eye. She gave him a sheepish look, as though apologizing in advance for them. He tossed the maul to her. She snatched it out of the air as though it didn’t weigh thirty pounds.

  Heden walked forward and leaned on one of the pavilion stakes. He crossed his arms, waiting for the knights to notice him.

  They walked into the clearing like three men carousing through the streets of Celkirk. They were laughing and talking about something Heden couldn’t make out. Their horses followed behind.

  They all wore plate armor. Like Nudd and Aderyn, they each sprouted moss and lichen, vines wrapped around them. Their plate was green-tinged, as though made from an emerald metal.

  Like Nudd, and unlike Aderyn, they all had green hair. Heden saw their helmets packed away on their horses. Each helm sported a full set of deadly antlers.

  The largest of the three was the best outfitted. Obviously got the best choice of armor. The other two were missing pieces, the gorget for the neck. The elbow coverings. The well-outfitted knight walked in the center and the other two looked to him for approval as they laughed and japed.

  The lead knight locked eyes with Heden right off, but otherwise did not change his attitude, laughing with the others. When he stopped in front of Heden, the other two turned with surprise. They hadn’t noticed him.

  The leader, still smiling, slapped the flank of his horse, and soon there were six horses at the water troughs.

  The two sycophants were different i
n appearance but similar in bearing. The one on Heden’s left was a little taller than Heden, but fit like all the other knights. No fat on any of them. He looked like a brawler. Like a thug in armor. His face was red and pockmarked with scars giving him a look of permanent anger. The other one was a little weasel of a man, Heden’s size. He looked from the lead knight to Heden and sneered.

  Heden said nothing. He watched the knights and relaxed on the stake. The lead knight looked him up and down, while his flunkies walked around Heden, pointing to his outfit and laughing. Looking to their master for approval.

  After the once over, the lead dastard saw Aderyn and walked over to her, ignoring Heden. The other two seemed disappointed. No words had passed between them.

  Heden turned to watch them. Unusually, he felt the urge to go to Aderyn. Protect her. Something he knew she would resent. He shrugged and followed his instincts.

  The knights and the squire were already talking.

  “I required no aid,” he heard Aderyn say as he approached. She seemed much diminished since the fight against the giant. This did not seem like the same girl who hurled two javelins from horseback, unerringly striking the hills wight. Hitting his leg in a manner that would have let him escape without a fatal wound. “Sir Nudd need not have acted.”

  “It is not yours to decide,” the tall one said. “Burran’s quarrel was with Sir Nudd in any case, it was his right to end it as he saw fit.”

  “Would that I had put Burran down myself,” the weasel one said, with a sniff.

  “But did not and so have no reason to speak,” the big one said. The thug looked at his counterpart and sneered.

  There was something about the way Aderyn was talking to the knights. Apart from the way she deferred to them and seemed a little afraid of them. Then Heden saw it.

  She would not look at the thug, the meaty one to the left of the big knight.

  “Who told you to erect the pavilion?” the big knight asked.

  Aderyn looked for a moment at Heden and then met the lead knight’s gaze. “No one,” she said. “I need no instruction on the tradition.”