Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  Fine then. Let’s see if we can’t pass the time playing with our new friends. He started with Adam. “You there. You’re David’s son, aren’t you? What in God’s name are you doing locked up with the pagans?” No response, he just laid with his back to the bishop, curled up like a babe, so Ba’al played the part of the priest harder. He begged, “Please, my son. It breaks my heart to see you like this. Tell me a mistake has been made. You can’t possibly be…” he smiled wide despite himself, “…an apostate?”

  A clinking rang from the half-blood’s chains.

  The bishop turned his attention. “Ah, I remember you. You must be one of David’s converts, only, I don’t see that brand anywhere.” Ba’al rubbed his chest and winced. “I have to say, you Imps were truly committed. David did good work in Babylon.”

  “Then why?” Adam whispered. He had turned over so the bishop could see his face. His cheeks were hollow, his body caved, his voice broken.

  A searing flashed in the rear of Ba’al’s nostrils—his heart jumped and sweat dripped from the pits beneath his arms. “’Why?’ My son, I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘why?’” The Messah dared not answer, just stared through the mat of hair hanging in front of his forehead. So the bishop asked him again, “My son, I—”

  “Why did you kill them?” It was the half-blood, bitter as he was indignant.

  Ba’al paused for a moment, pondering what sort of answer would hurt the worst. The pastor’s son was easy—gouge the open wound—but he knew next to nothing about this one. He asked him, “What’s your name, Imp? What were you doing at the parish?” but the half-blood kept his mouth shut and eyes to the floor. Occasionally, he’d glance toward the woman. Ba’al started again, then changed his mind. He could feel the itch, the agitation, the sickness. “Have it your way.” He stepped out of the Imp’s reach and jerked the woman by her chains and manacles. “How about you? What’s your name, witch?”

  “Jezebel,” she answered, flatly, revealing nothing.

  “Well, Jezebel, are you the kind of witch who likes to sing?”

  Her deep, brown eyes peeled wide, and a curious smirk slipped from her lips.

  “You do, then! Good, good. This won’t take long—”

  He smashed the lantern against her manacles, gripping her chains to keep her from flinching while the others pleaded, feeding his glee as he pressed the jagged glass against her arm. She winced as the flame licked her skin—the stench of melting flesh.

  “So, Imp, let’s try again. What is your God-forsaken pagan name?”

  “Adnihilo!” he blurted.

  Ba’al forced the glass deeper. “What were you doing in the parish?”

  “We were there for the feast! Please, stop!”

  “Are you pagans? Converts? Why did David turn against the church?”

  The half-blood and the pastor’s son sputtered as fast as they could, yet it was not enough for the bishop. He wanted more—for the whore to howl, to beg him herself. She was already grimacing, her skin blistering, welting as she struggled in vain. Just a bit more. He twisted the glass—then strangely she stopped, and he turned to face her—felt the fingernails dig across his cheek, down his jaw, into his neck. He jerked back and dropped the lantern, watched it bounce from the scaffold and smother on the floor.

  “Impii bitch!”

  He dabbed at the blood. It was only enough to slick his fingertips but felt worse in the dark. Ignorant savages! I swear, if there are scars I’ll give them all to the Gauts! What good are they anyhow? The Walls will come down just the same without them. A buzzing answered from inside his ears, like a storm of hornets. Agitation. Sickness. He took the thought back and stepped down from the scaffold, smashed fish underfoot as he found the ladder. The sound died.

  Ba’al conceded, “Fine, but she’s going to pay for what she did.”

  †

  Trey and Venicci were engrossed in their game when Ba’al slipped inside the cabin unnoticed. He crept behind the knight and spied the board. Gildmane had disgraced himself—was down to a few pieces scattered about. He overextended, waged the bishop. The knight had that habit, and it seemed no number of lessons could rid him of it. Venicci was loving every second. Unlike Gildmane’s mistakes, however, razing the smuggler’s grin was simple as the bishop clearing his throat. At once, Trey jumped. The tops of his thighs struck the bottom of the table, and the game board and all its ivory figures flew to every corner of the room.

  Then came the inevitable lampooning, the profuse apologies, the comments about Ba’al’s fresh wounds to which he lied and evaded till finally the knight took his leave. Only after he and Venicci were alone did the bishop relax into his seat and call the privateer from the floor.

  “Stand up; you can find them later. There’s been a change of plans.”

  “There you go again, talking to me like it wasn’t your man who knocked them over.”

  The bishop dropped onto his cushioned stool. “I might be willing to share some of my cargo.”

  Venicci stood and sat across from him, his yellow eyes squinted, suspicious. So when Ba’al said he would sell one of his captives, at least for the rest the journey home, the smuggler was not prepared to curtail the perverse curl of his lips.

  “Which one?”

  The question took the bishop by surprise. “Which one do you want?”

  “I’ve never had one from the Summerlands.”

  “The Messah, then? Done, but it will be payment for our passage east. And I have one more stipulation.”

  “What?” he asked, anxious.

  “The bitch has to watch.”

  Sixth Verse

  It was warm in her dream and getting warmer as Jael padded the length of the sea-stranded cog: a hot deck slick with salt water and not a sliver of shade, nor a wheel, nor sail. Her soles were blistered, her shoulders bare and peeling under the yellow glare of an angry sun. Viciously, he watched her, stripping layers of her skin like a moulting snake—fresh, pink, and vulnerable. Then a wave struck the ship, and the spray rained like fire, and Leonhardt cried until her eyes were empty. When she opened them again, she found the deck flooded; and in the water were reflections. She saw the face of the torrid sun and her own exposed flesh. It was then that Jael realized she was naked. Out of instinct, she hugged her knees to hide her indecency—then felt herself a fool. From whom would she hide, alone on the open sea? She glanced again at her reflection, at her body, her nakedness. Why did God make me like this? She thought. Why didn’t he just make me a man?

  Suddenly, the sky grew dark as the depths of the ocean, and all warmth fled like the breath from a corpse. Even the sun had hidden his face, eclipsed by a new moon whose corona shone silver-white like twilight in winter. Jael shivered. Beyond the cog was nothing but shadow of a thousand shades, shifting, morphing, the largest and darkest of serpentine shape. It saw her, she was somehow certain. That’s why it circled around and over the ship, brushing the sides, catching the cog in a contrived maelstrom.

  Leonhardt pulled her legs in closer. There was nowhere for her to run, nothing to hold on to save for her faith. She remembered Gavin’s last homily and the monster Camilla so boldly faced. These are just shadows, she told herself. Be brave. Keep faith. In those words, Jael found the courage to stand against whatever demon lurked on the edges of darkness. When she stood, however, a different beast was there to greet her, and not in the ocean but there with her on deck. It was a wolf, warm as summer in a blonde coat, panting and craving, slaver dripping from jaws the size of a horse’s. Be brave, she commanded, afraid, yet finding her courage pressed in the palm of her left hand. Her father’s sword—hers.

  Jael leveled the tapered point of the frost-white steel with the eyes of the beast now snarling before her. She was ready. The wolf crouched low and bolted over the flooded deck, its paws splashing fast as a storm, and before she could blink, it was on her, lunging for her throat, and without knowing what to do or when to move, Jael plunged the sword into the heart of the wolf and
was spattered by its simmering blood. It stung in her eyes and filled her tongue with the taste of iron. She spat out what she could and cleared her face with a clean forearm till she could see again. What she saw was that the wolf was gone, replaced by another.

  “Mother,” she whispered, agape at the body impaled on her sword. But it wasn’t her sword. The hilt and blade were those of a great knife,—heavy—the weight of the corpse bending the weapon, nearly wrenching it from her grip. She tried to pull it out, but when she did, she felt a stabbing tear through her abdomen. She looked again. Now it was her who was pierced, not Dahilla, and Zach’s hand had wielded the blade.

  Jael gasped, embarrassed by her nakedness in front of Zach who was staring with laughter in his squinty eyes. “Don’t look!” she cried, both hands flying to cover herself, finding strange clothes where prior was flesh and blood. Boots, she saw examining her body, hard brown leather, thick, and laced just below her knee; hose underneath as high as her waist; and above that a gambeson of dark brown linen.

  “Come back to me, Jael,” Zach called from afar, from a raft drifting toward the black horizon. Leonhardt could hardly hear him over the sound of wind whipping his canvas sail. She ran. As fast as her feet could slosh through the flood, she ran for the end of the cog where her promise was shrinking in the distance. But with every step, her pace became slower. Her body became laden, weighted down with maille and sword and surcoat and gauntlets. Last was the helm, a great helm with the embossed face of a lion at its crown. She heard Zach shout but couldn’t make out the sound. He was too far now, and she could go no further—the edge of the cog and an expanse of ocean between them. Then on the raft she saw with Zach the wolf, bloody and hungry, and for a moment she forgot where and who and what she’d become. She stepped off the boat and into the water.

  †

  The world was a haze as Jael awoke to the patter of rain like hooves on mud. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Dawn had yet to break over the Valley Road, and not a soul was stirring in the novitiates’ carriage. None save Leonhardt. The wagon was packed with women on their way to become Religious Sisters, and there was little enough room for them all during travel, let alone to sleep. Jael had volunteered to take the rear, where cold air snuck inside between the door flap and carriage cover. Soaked and shivering, she regretted it now. The knot tying the door flap had come undone and let in the rain overnight.

  Everything was wet: her riding boots, her linen trousers, her shift and her woolen shirt, and even her surcoat with her sword wrapped within—though the latter stayed safe under an oily rag. It was the first thing she checked after stripping off her borrowed quilt, that the steel of the guard and pommel were dry and oiled, that no moisture had stolen into the scabbard and onto the blade. She drew it out and read the inscriptions, said a short prayer for her father, and sheathed it again.

  Cold and soaked, there was no going back to sleep. Her damp clothes looked less than inviting, but it was them or sit nude with a dozen snoring maidens. Grimacing, she dressed and fastened her sword belt and surcoat, then stole outside with a sodden thump.

  The rain fell lighter than Jael expected while she walked the caravan from end to end. By the time her first round was done, there was only mist and morning fog, and she had forgotten her shivers and chaffing clothes. Her mind was taken with what life would be like in the holy capital. She’d be a knight of Pareo serving in the saint’s personal cavalry, the Saint’s Cross, second in honour only to the Temple Guard. “If it is His will,” echoed Paul’s words, “perhaps you may be permitted to swear the knight’s holy oaths.” That perhaps stuck her like a thorn in a rosebush. The Struggle was coming. She’d need every hour of practice that she could get.

  During her second lap around the caravan, Jael strayed from the camp and took refuge on a grassy knoll alongside the road. Here, her footing was firm, and she could practice unseen the techniques her father had taught those last few years. God Save me, she prayed, drawing the sword into her left hand and wrapping a finger atop the guard. The point leaned forward.

  “The lion’s fang,” Ricard’s lessons echoed, “because you must be a beast to kill a man. Any fool can cut down a peasant or naked pagan. But to slay a man in maille or gambeson or plate, you must pierce him.”

  “Under the arm and to the heart, along the thigh, the throat, behind the knees, the elbows.” Jael thrust for each imagined part as she called them out, one by one, batting and slashing away phantom blades and fingers between each of her called strokes.

  “Arms back and fangs to bare. Lead with your weapon. Your feet follow.”

  “Feint from afar. Strike true up close,” she said, finishing her set. Then she began another: advancing, retreating, winding with both hands on her blade. Silent on the slick grass. Graceful. Dangerous.

  “So it’s true,” boomed a western drawl. Applause followed, then a cough as the stranger clear his throat. “You truly are Leonhardt’s get!”

  Jael froze mid-stroke, too embarrassed to look who had discovered her.

  The stranger continued, “Ah, you’ll have to excuse an old knight his habits, lassie. Seeing such an impressive display made me forget my manners. Happens often if you grew up in the bog. But look at me, talking crude as swamp gas. I’m Rillion Pyke of the Temple Guard.”

  Indeed, he wore the Guard’s crimson surcoat and white coat of arms, though Leonhardt thought he looked more like a bear dressed in maille. He stood huge and hairy, with a gut to match his height, and equally round jowls peppered with gray whiskers thicker than the tufts crowning his head.

  Jael felt at once like she was staring at a long lost uncle. She sheathed her sword and descended the hill. “How long were you watching?”

  “An hour before first light. I walk the perimeter each morning to make sure you ladies are safe. Saw your footprints in the mud and thought a thief or raper was about.”

  First light? Leonhardt had not noticed dawn break over the eastern mounds.

  “So the whole time, then?”

  “Aye, lassie,” answered Rillion Pyke, “And I say, you remind me much of your old man. He was about your age when we picked him up at the Duke’s Tourney.”

  “The Summer Tourney?” Jael asked.

  “Aye, that’s what their calling it now. God, what times those were. What I won’t give to see Leonhardt fight Himmelriser again.”

  The knight spoke on, but Leonhardt got caught on that last remark. She had known that her parents met at the tourney, but never did her father mention having fought in it. She told as much to Pyke, though he could hardly believe her.

  “Never told you?” he started. “You’re telling me Ricard never told you about Himmelriser? What about our campaign in Babylon? The mad charge of Salt Spear and the Twin Fangs?” Jael shook her head while Rillion gaped, incredulous. “Then,” the old knight swallowed hard, “then surely he’s at least mentioned me?”

  No, thought Leonhardt, but she felt suddenly sorry for her father’s old friend and his frowning jowls heavy with disappointment. She studied his sigil in hopes that she might remember him. It was an odd image, a queerly formed spear piercing the back of a brackdragon, yet despite its peculiarity, his coat of arms brought naught to mind.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Jael said. She could think of nothing kinder.

  “That’s alright, lassie, but a God damned shame. You ought to know about your own sire’s exploits.” Rillion glanced toward the north-east where Herbstfield lay beyond the rolling horizon, wincing as the rising sun shone bright in his dark eyes. “I’d tell you some myself, but I best be getting back before Saint Paul has risen.”

  Maybe he was too ashamed, thought Leonhardt, but instead she blurted out, “Wait, let me go with you. I’m sure you’ve got some shorter stories to tell.”

  At that, the old knight smiled.

  Together, they made a round of the caravan, starting afar from the saint’s gargantuan wheelhouse as to poach more time for Sir Rillion Pyke’s story telling. He told her the leg
end of his lineage, of Usurper Wulfheart who ruled during the age of kings, of and his family patriarch, Luen Pyke. Luen had been Wulfheart’s champion—there were no knights then—and famed for the slaying of brackdragon Gronue. He did battle with the demon, so the story went, at White Tower stronghold, but found that its hide turned aside arrow and sword and even the legendary Saltspear. It was not long into the fight when he found his back pressed against White Tower’s salt-stone walls. Desperate, Luen pierced a block from the stronghold’s foundation and brought the weight down onto the monster’s head. At least, that was how Rillion told it as they walked a snail’s pace around the southern end of the caravan. Jael thought the tale sounded severely embellished, yet the old knight insisted.

  “It’s all recorded in the annals, lassie. You’ll see for yourself when we get to Pareo. Just ask the scribes about Saint Maxim and the Watcher’s Eye.”

  Pyke’s comment left a foul taste in Jael’s mouth. At once, she crumpled her face and spat, “The scribes? What, you don’t think I’ll make it in the Cross?”

  “I didn’t say that, lassie,” Rillion replied, “but you should know that even if I and all the knights of Nuw Gard thought you were Camilla come again, it’s still the gentry and clergy you’ll need to convince.”

  His words burned like ice-dagger winds. He was doubting her, Leonhardt felt sure of it. And why wouldn’t he? She doubted herself as it was, as Gavin had once, as had the members of Herbstfield’s assembly. She was about to question Rillion again, to be certain of her suspicions, when they came upon the saint’s carriage and the half-dozen men working to free it from the mud.

  “There you are!” barked one of the men dressed in the coat and armour of the Temple Guard. A three-pointed crown showed proudly on his breast, and he possessed a haughty mien to match. Sir Holland King, captain of the Guard. Jael had heard more than she wanted about him during her stay in the maidens’ carriage. He was the young, rugged knight of the girls’ fancies: tall, brooding, muscled, and slender, with a long, wavy mane and a jaw like a hammer—at least, Jael thought he spoke bluntly as one as he snorted and said, “I was wondering when you’d show your face. You’ve got some nerve, Pyke, pissing on your charge. If it were up to me, you’d be dishonoured like the up-jumped sellsword.”