Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)
Page 41
“That’s why she sent me. To take that responsibility from you. But you wouldn’t give it.” And I couldn’t see it.
“Taethan!” Heden called out. Was he in one of the rooms? “Taethan I’m here to forgive you. No man could shoulder that burden, do you understand me? I know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t your fault.” Even the perfect knight. “It wasn’t your fault!”
Heden stepped up onto the base of the altar. He was going to turn and look down the nave he’d just walked up and see if he could see anyone, when he saw the font, the ancient font behind the altar.
It was filled with blood, and a man’s hand was resting on it.
Heden pulled himself around the altar and saw the recumbent form of Sir Taethan behind it. His wrists were slit, two garish gashes like gasping mouths. There was tacky blood all around him sticking his armor to the floor. But his hair was still green. The Last Green Knight. Heden was not too late. He started forward but Taethan’s words froze him in place.
“It doesn’t matter,” Taethan said, reading his mind. It looked like he was fighting to stay awake. “I am a servant of Cavall like you.” Heden realized what this meant. Tragedy. One servant of Cavall could not save another who’d attempted his own life. Cavall would not permit it. That’s why the slit wrists. Taethan knew Heden was coming, and wanted to make sure the Arrogate couldn’t save him. He’d done it hours ago. He was taking a long time to die.
“You’d have made a good knight,” Taethan said, and gasped for breath. His fine-boned face and delicate features were beautiful, even in death. He slumped down further, head resting on the short pillar of the font. “Better than me…do you see why?” he asked in desperation. He needed Heden to see.
Heden found it hard to focus, his eyes filling with tears. He was rooted to the spot with impotence and rage and grief. It was like the priory itself was dying before him.
“Because,” Taethan said, his voice becoming quieter with each phrase. His face was twisted in pain, but Heden couldn’t tell if it was physical pain or something else. “Because you know the world, and can stay here in it. You’re strong enough.” The words were being pulled from him in surges. “This awful horrible world. All the pain. You hate it too,” the knight said, and Heden watched the color start draining from his hair. The green was vanishing, replaced by blonde. Beautiful blonde hair framing a dying face.
“You hate it,” Taethan said, breathing shallow, his eyes closing. “But you’re strong enough to take it. I couldn’t….” He stopped, he was weeping.
“Why?” Heden asked, and it took all he had to get the words out. “Why did Kavalen have to die? Who…who ordered it?” Heden’s rage was growing and he couldn’t stop it. “Who gave the command?”
Taethan was fading fast. It was killing Heden. Both men were dying.
“The bishop,” Taethan whispered.
Heden’s blood turned to ice in his veins.
“What?” he asked, his voice a graveyard.
The bishop gave the order. Who could have commanded the Green Order to stand down? The bishop. He lied when he told Heden he’d never heard of them. That’s why the knights all instantly hated him. He’d been sent by the same person who commanded them to let Ollghum Keep fall. And then he sent Heden to the forest to…what? Why?
Because the bishop had to send someone. Had to be seen to send someone. So send the man least likely to make a difference. The man the bishop could be sure would be completely ineffective. The most damaged man the bishop knows.
Taethan reached out with a thin arm, bright red blood painted on chalk-white skin.
Heden, bishop forgotten, surged forward, fell to the ground and wrapped his hands around the man, pulling him forward. He clasped Taethan’s body to his own, as though he could grant Taethan some of his own health and keep him alive. He pressed his ear to Taethan’s breast, listening to the heartbeat fading, struggling.
“No!” Heden cried, holding Taethan tighter. “No!” Heden couldn’t see through his tears anymore. He loved this man. As much and as strongly as he loved anyone.
“Heden,” Taethan whispered, and bent and kissed Heden’s rain-matted hair.
Heden heard Taethan’s heart beat once, twice, and then no more.
“Gods!” he cried, hugging the dead knight. “Cavall!” he cried out in unending desperation. “Please!”
He pulled himself up and held Taethan’s perfect face in his hands, his skin was already cooling, his lips blue. It was happening so fast. The knight’s eyes were still open but his jaw hung slack and his pupils were completely dilated, wide and black with no life behind them. It was the giant again, and Heden could do nothing. Again. Taethan’s dead visage was a nightmare Heden could not wake from.
All his pent up anger and frustration poured out of him and he couldn’t stop it. The desperate feeling that he could at least save one of them. That he could save someone. Anyone. A man he loved, a man he thought of as a better version of himself, his brother, everything Heden would never be. Every hope flooded out of him and he sobbed. All that work, all that pain and struggle for nothing. He couldn’t stop himself. Everything that was important to Heden had just died in his arms. His chest was being crushed by it, and he knew he was dying. Taethan’s death was his death.
He couldn’t be inside the priory. He couldn’t stand it. He lurched to his feet, unsteady, like one of the deathless, and ran outside, pushing himself into the rain. It no longer felt cold; it felt hot on his skin. His legs gave out, and the rain beat him down until he collapsed in the mud. His fists sank into it, his tears disappeared into it.
He vomited, not even realizing it. Then he choked. He was numb. There was nothing left but tears, weeping, his whole body convulsing and he couldn’t stop it.
He couldn’t save Taethan. He couldn’t save Isobel or Nudd, or Ollghum Keep, or the Giant, or the boy in the jail a year ago, or the people of Ǽndrim. And he couldn’t hold it back anymore. In killing Kavalen, the knights had killed the order, and with it, Taethan. And Taethan’s death was Heden’s death. The man he had been for three years died in the mud outside the priory.
What was left was something older, something almost unrecognizable.
A weapon, aimed at the bishop.
Epilogue
Sir Mór stood at the edge of the clearing, watching Heden. The Arrogate looked like a beaten animal, collapsed on the jousting field, half buried in mud, weeping in the rain. Mór had come to test the man again, finally. But no test was now necessary. No test was possible.
Mór, less a man and more an agent of a power, felt some impenetrable field around the priest. No god projected it. It was the man’s reality. His own sense of self pouring out so strong Mór could not approach him, could not judge him. The man was judging himself with an authority greater than any the forest could muster. Making Sir Mór irrelevant.
The man before him was now a crucible, burning away everything he had been until that moment. Mór watched with sympathy, wondering what could survive the process. Glad it was no longer his worry.
The Green Man turned, forgetting Heden, and looked with purpose north into the forest. In an instant, his horse was there. He mounted and rode off in search of what, only the forest knew.
Heden saw none of this.
Ratcatchers continues in Volume 2:
Thief
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Acknowledgments
Alpha Readers
Natalie Elspeth – “It feels like you put your whole life into these first chapters.”
Austin Baker – “Pretty cool.”
Aaron Contreras – “Polish, polish, polish!”
Beta Readers
In every instance these volunteers provided critical feedback that led to significant edits. The book within would be very different without them.
Chad Nicholas, Doug Burke, Hyrum Savage, Ian Harac, Ian Welke, Jason Bell, Jason Durall, Josh Baker, Manny Vega, Paul LaPorte, Rober
t Djordjevich
Sine Qua Non
Heden is the result of many influences, but first he came from a conversation with John Wick way back in 2003 about Sin Eaters.
The next major influence was a piece on This American Life about a veteran returning home from Iraq finding himself unable to function at home.
Most of the heavy lifting on this book was done while listening to Where You Go I Go Too, by Lindstrøm, for which I thank Brian Chan and his passion for introducing people to new music.