Yet it suited me, in its way. To my cost, I gained sustenance from it, and grew strong again. Giving my life to the Duke’s son had left me famished and forlorn—so near collapse that my daily resolve to wait until dusk nearly drove me mad.
I had vowed that I would feed from no man or woman except those to whom God had already given death. And in daylight the battlefield was too hazardous for me. I could be hacked apart as easily as any other man, or killed by shot, or burned to death. Nothing warded me except the brief strength which I had already spent in Duke Obal’s name. Until I fed, I was as frail as I appeared—and no less contemptible. Indeed, daylight itself threatened me. It encouraged witnesses and denunciation. Therefore I awaited the sun’s decline, although my hunger and weakness were anguish.
When the sun at last dipped from the heavens, however, drawing daylight westward off the plain of battle, I presented myself to the secret portal in Mullior’s outer wall. There the guards had been commanded to let me pass—and to admit me again when I was done. This, too, was hazardous. If ever the guards had refused my reentry, I would surely have fallen prey to the High Cardinal’s retribution. But they were ignorant of what I was, and had never scrupled to fulfill their lord’s instructions. Piously they gave me Godspeed when I departed, and welcomed me when I returned. Doubtless they considered me a spy, charged with some small, regular mission for the Duke, and for that reason they wished me well. Duke Obal was well loved in Mullior, as in the Duchy at large.
My own love resembled theirs, although I did not demean the Duke by speaking of it. Even in Mullior, my esteem would have brought him execration, if I were known.
Concealed by twilight and battle fume, I emerged from the portal and followed failing light across the human wreckage of the siege. Crouching as I went, I scurried among the corpses and the dying—as timorous as the vermin which now thronged the field, and as ravenous.
It was commonly said of my kind that we drank blood. The High Cardinal himself had pronounced anathema upon me in those terms, calling me “blood-beast” and “spawn of Satan.” We were misunderstood, however. I did not drink blood. I did not consume blood at all. I drew life from blood—and I drew it by touch. The vitality in the blood of any man or woman who still lived could sustain me.
It was a fact of my nature that I absorbed nourishment and strength more quickly and easily, and with more pleasure, through the touch of my tongue than of my fingers. But at need any portion of my flesh would suffice. Life passed by blood from the one who bled to me, and I was made whole.
As for those who bled— Their lives became mine, and so they died.
For that reason, I fed only from the doomed.
Because their vitality was diminished, tainted with death and therefore noxious, they sustained me ill. I was forced to range widely to preserve myself, groaning with the nausea of my kind.
Nevertheless I was scrupulous, careful of my vow, although it was commonly believed that my kind had no souls and no conscience, and existed beyond the reach of God’s redemption. I had joined my heart to Mother Church, and to the sweet maid Irradia, for whom I still wept, and what I had sworn to do I did. I took no life which had not already been claimed by God. Any of the fallen for whom the faintest hope of rescue or healing still breathed, I passed by.
However, Mullior was at war with Mother Church, in the person of the High Cardinal, His Reverence Straylish Beatified. And each day of the contest harvested enough soldiers and commanders, camp followers and lords, to sate me several times over. I did not lack for sustenance, despite my scruples.
Yet I may indeed have lacked a soul, or the impulse for redemption. I kept my vow—and all this carnage did not content me. Touching my hand to a torn side here, my tongue to a gutted chest or a ripped throat there, I skulked among the bodies and the charnel stench, feeding abundantly—and still I desired more. Nausea hindered my satisfaction.
This night, trouble found me in spite of my caution. My foraging had drawn me nearer than I realized to one of the Cardinal’s encircling camps, and their tents and fires stood no more than an arrow’s shot distant. I heard the unsteady crunch of boots among bones and mud as a heavy tread approached me, but the warning came too late. I could not slip away among the shadows and corpses before I was observed.
The man’s presence was dangerous enough. More fatal to me, however, was the lantern in his fist. He had shielded its light so that it would not expose him to hostile eyes, but when he turned its radiance directly toward me he could not fail to see the blood upon my hands and lips—the stigmata of my unalterable damnation.
Hunching among the fallen, I stared up at him, unblinking, transfixed by the cruelty of illumination.
“Ho, carrion-crow,” he snorted as he regarded me. “Eater of the dead.” His tone held no fear. Rather it suggested the amiable malice of a soldier who took pleasure in killing and meant well by it. His grin showed teeth the color of stones. “Straylish told us Mullior’s foul Duke harbored such as you, but I doubted him. I doubted such fiends existed. Now I see the virtue of this war more clearly.”
I made to rise, so that I might better defend myself. At once, the soldier snatched at his falchion. In the light of the lantern, its notched and ragged edge leered toward me, eager for butchery.
“Stay where you are, hellspawn,” the man warned. “There will be promotion in it when I deliver you to the High Cardinal. He will be pleased if you are presented to him alive—but he will find no fault with me if you are dead.”
And Straylish the High Cardinal would certainly recognize me. This war attested daily to the enmity between us.
The soldier’s grin sharpened as I sank back. His lantern reflected sparks of greed in his gaze—for advancement, for pain. Directing his falchion at my neck, and confident of his authority, he shouted over his shoulder toward his camp, “Ho, you louts! Here! On the run!”
While his head was turned, I rose.
Here was one of the High Cardinal’s captains, brutal and righteous—and rich with life. I had fed enough, and could overmatch him, striking a blow against my accuser in the person of his servant. Within my stained robes, behind my tattered beard and shrouded eyes, I was no longer the frail figure who skulked the shadows of Mullior, or crept tottering in prostration from the Duke’s chambers. I had become strong again. This man’s blood would exalt me.
Yet I had forsworn such measures. In my heart, I had accepted the accusation.
Instead I leaped upon him, sweeping his sword aside as I sprang. My unexpected bulk staggered him, hampered his reactions. In that instant of advantage, I struck him senseless to the ground.
Shouts carried across the field, answering his call. His men had heard him, and hastened to respond. But they would not catch me now. With nourishment I had grown fleet as well as strong, and the dark was my ally in all its guises.
Before I could flee, however, I saw that the captain’s lantern had fallen with him, spilling its oil over him as it broke. Already flames licked at his side. In another instant he would begin to burn.
His men might save him. Or they might reach him too late.
And I had sworn that I would take no life not first claimed by God. Uncertain of my own soul, I had sworn it on the maid Irradia’s, in the name of Mother Church.
The soldiers of the Cardinal charged toward me, yelling. Their weapons caught the unsteady light of the campfires and shed it in slivers of ruin. Although I was frantic for my life, I spent a precious moment stamping out the flames. Then I turned and ran.
The captain had named me “carrion-crow,” and so I was. Threadbare, my robe fluttered and snapped about me like wings as I raced among the dead. I stooped and turned like a raven assailed by hawks. My only haven was Duke Obal’s secret portal, distant before me, but I did not aim for it. I feared betraying its existence to the High Cardinal’s forces. Instead I directed my flight elsewhere.
Blo
od I encountered aplenty as I ran. My senses discerned it acutely, despite my haste through the enfolding darkness. I knew it by its aroma, and its luminescence, and its aura of life. Its sweetness clad the fallen wherever they lay. Yet I did not pause to feed.
There was purpose to my path—and hope. Although the soldiers pursued me perilously, I trusted the Duke’s defenses, and bent my flight ever nearer to his walls. Like their captain, the men on my heels carried lanterns, as revealing as corpse-light, else they would have lost me at once. And those shielded flames were apparent from the walls. Soon I heard shouts from the city, a quick fusillade, cries at my back.
Several of the soldiers dropped, shot-struck. Cursing, the rest fell back and let me go.
Those who had been mortally wounded died at my hands. Cardinal Straylish was my enemy, and when my vows permitted it I did him what harm I could. By choice, I accepted the taint of Hell with each flicker of life I consumed from the dying.
Once I had fed deeply, I turned away.
Ashamed of the carelessness which had led me into difficulty, and haunted by the ceaseless fear of my kind—the alarm that I had not fed enough to sustain me until I could feed again—I returned to my portal and signaled for admittance.
Had I possessed a soul, its sickness might have driven me to madness or suicide. I had embraced the teachings of Mother Church, and knew my own evil. From Irradia’s sweet love I had learned to yearn for Heaven. With the eye of my heart, I saw clearly the baffled distress and—perhaps—revulsion she would have felt at my actions since her tormented death. Although I had not caused this war, I used it to serve me. Duke Obal and all Mullior unwittingly carried out my contest with the High Cardinal. Grieving, Irradia might have begged me to surrender, as she would have surrendered in my place.
I, too, grieved. I had no hope for the redemption which had surely enfolded her in God’s grace. But I had chosen another road, and did not turn aside from it.
Because I grieved, however, I resolved to spend this night in the hospital where the Duke’s surgeons tended those who had been injured in battle—both Mullior’s men and the soldiers of High Cardinal Straylish. There I could repay in some small measure the life I had stolen from the battlefield. I was familiar to the surgeons and nurses, although they knew nothing of my nature. I had moved among them often, when Duke Obal did not require my service. Where the portal guards considered me a minor spy, the hospital’s attendants believed me a holy man of an obscure sect, visiting the injured and dying in expiation for my sins—a man whose piety and prayers gave rest to pain, healing for fevers, and relief from infections. I was subtle and circumspect, so that no one grasped what I did. The small restorations which helped the victims of this war survive their hurts passed unremarked.
I felt the need for expiation. My carelessness had led to deaths which might not have occurred otherwise, and that burden I did not bear easily.
But at the portal a new trouble awaited me, more ominous than my encounter with the Cardinal’s captain. The guards informed me that Duke Obal required my presence. I was instructed to obey swiftly.
That he saw fit to risk my aid two nights running was highly unusual. It was also profoundly unwise. The “miracles of healing” which I performed in his service endangered us both. They attracted notice. Members of the Duke’s court, as well as of his army, could hardly fail to observe that men such as Lord Ermine—or one of the field commanders—or indeed the Duke himself—were borne, dying, from the day’s carnage, only to return entirely whole. In sooth their recovery was so remarkable that even the opposing forces noted it. No ordinary surgeon or priest could account for the new health of those men, except by miracle—or by Satanic intervention. And Straylish preached that God’s judgment would permit no miracles in the name of an excommunicate like Mullior’s Duke. Thus were spread the rumors that fiends and hellspawn served Duke Obal, empowering his resistance to the righteous authority of Mother Church in the person of the High Cardinal.
This notion was so fearsome to the devout of the Duchy that it undermined Obal’s position and strength, despite the fact that his people loved him. To all appearances, I alone bore the cost of the arduous restorations which I wrought on the Duke’s behalf. I passed stored vitality to those of his most precious adherents who had been sorely wounded—a transaction fraught with pain for me, as well as with the weakness of deep loss, all compounded by the unannealed visceral terror of giving away my own life. While it drew its recipients back from death, the infusion left me drained and frail, scarcely able to provide for my own continuance. Thus the core of the Duke’s support in Mullior was preserved. All the suffering of the stricken became mine.
Nevertheless Duke Obal also paid a price for my aid. It may have been more subtle than that which I endured, but it was no less grievous.
The High Cardinal and others of his ilk argued that I was the whole cause of the war which had set the Duke against Mullior’s more pious neighbors. Priests damned me with their prayers even when they supported Duke Obal. Religious families shuddered at the thought of Satan in their midst. And ambitious men, men who might perhaps have made their fortunes and their futures by replacing those whom the Duke trusted, advancing to positions of power from which they could conceivably have delivered Mullior and all its riches to the Cardinal—ah, such men loathed me where I stood.
It was more than unwise for Duke Obal to call upon my service too often or too frequently. It was foolish and fatal.
I considered refusal. I sensed a crisis in Mullior which might prove lethal to me. And at all times I lived in fear that the Duke might be persuaded by his advisers, or by his people’s need for peace, to turn against me—to deliver me to Cardinal Straylish so that the siege might be lifted. I had saved his life twice—that of his beloved son, thrice—his dearest and staunchest friends half a score of times. For all men, however—and even more for Dukes and Cardinals—necessity was the mother of cruelty. I could too easily imagine that the Duke might decide my life, like his own most prized convictions, was too expensive to merit so much death.
Perhaps I had expended my last hope, and only flight remained to me.
Yet I knew I could not deny Duke Obal’s summons. He had earned my unflagging service by the simple expedient of accepting it from me. I had seen the maid Irradia tortured, and heard the High Cardinal pronounce anathema upon me. How could I not love a man who opposed such evils?—a man who did not fear my nature because he trusted my honor?
Escorted as much for my own protection as to ensure my haste, I left the portal and found my way to the Duke’s low-lying palace in the heart of Mullior.
There another surprise deepened my dread. Necessarily cautious, I turned my steps toward the private gate and the unfrequented corridors through which I customarily approached my lord. But my escort redirected me. A guard at either shoulder led me to the ornate portico which gave formal entrance to the hereditary domicile and seat of Mullior’s rulers. Before I was announced to the fusiliers at the polished and engraved doors, I grasped the significance of this development.
Despite the peril to us both, Duke Obal had commanded me to a public audience.
Holding my breath to contain my fear, I listened narrowly to the terms in which my escort had been instructed to announce me. I understood that the Duke had chosen to place my damned head on the executioner’s block of his court’s opprobrium. Apart from the danger, this violated the unspoken terms of my service. Only the form of my announcement offered any hint as to whether or not I could hope to survive the night.
The leader of my escort clearly found the occasion tedious. If I was doomed, he did not know it. In a tone of bluff boredom, he stated, “Here is Duke Obal’s faithful handservant Scriven. By the Duke’s express wish, he presents himself to attend upon his lord.”
The reaction of the palace fusiliers was more ominous. As if involuntarily, they flinched and crossed themselves. One of them muttere
d, “Carrion-eater.” Others breathed fervent oaths.
This caused my escort to look at me askance. Unlike the fusiliers, however, they were familiar with me, comfortably convinced that I was a minor spy serving their lord. They were veterans of the siege, hardened to it, and reserved their fear for the enemy. Surprised at my reception, they did not step back from my shoulders.
“‘Carrion-eater’?” one of them demanded. “Where?”
The fusiliers did not reply. Their captain silenced them. Stiff with disapproval and alarm, he spoke a prepared welcome. “The lord of Mullior welcomes all who serve him faithfully.” Between his teeth, he added, “I am to say that the Duke himself awaits his handservant Scriven’s arrival.”
His obedience did not comfort me. “Scriven” was not my name. Straylish Beatified knew me otherwise. However, it was the name I had chosen for the Duke’s use. While I lived, I bore Irradia’s fate written on my soul.
Covering my unsteadiness, I required myself to draw breath. My danger was as great as I had feared. Already rumor had run ahead of the Duke’s intent, hinting at worse within.
At the captain’s word, my escort bowed themselves haphazardly away. Eager to be rid of me, the captain detached a fusilier to accompany me into the palace, presumably so that I would not wander astray. I was hastened forward. For the first time, I stood accursed and dismayed in the formal entry hall of Duke Obal’s home.
Reave the Just and Other Tales Page 19