Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  The captain’s cabin remained much how the Messah had left it: alight with candles burned low on their sticks and with an air and odor vaguely of blossoms. The squat table and stools were still present as well, only now a flagon sat where Ba’al’s box lay before. It was empty, knocked askew next to a couple pewter goblets passed which sat the Devil himself—slumped on his cot with his boots off, his sword drawn; and drunk enough that the jaundice had gone from his ragged face. Even his ruddy nose had taken a shade of gray. And he was swaying, holding on to Magdalynn standing next to him while she filled his tankard from a bottle marked God’s Fingers Vineyard. She gasped at the brothers’ sudden entry and spilled piss-yellow wine onto the crotch of Venicci’s trousers.

  The smuggler leapt up with a start, slurring drivel , spittle dribbling into his beard, none of which concerned Adam or Adnihilo, as though they weren’t even there—as if the greatest threat within the cabin rested in a gaunt little girl rather than the desperate hands of one vengeful Messah. And so, oblivious to his assailant’s approach, Venicci lurched belligerently for Magdalynn who, throwing her hands in the air and reeling port-wise, dropped and shattered her bottle of God’s Fingers wine. The smuggler, lurching forward, stomped hard on the fragments. He screamed and lost his sword, then he stumbled heel over heel to a squat, cushioned stool where he squealed more for his bleeding foot.

  Adam stood still as stone. This was supposed to be a night of righteous justice, nothing like this carnival show. He expected resistance, confrontation, and malicious tricks, hostage-taking or lies or begging, but the pastor’s son got not of that. The hellish winds were vanished from his sails, leaving him unwilling even to advance. Adnihilo, however, seized their advantage. He vaulted the table and landed behind Venicci still wailing over the glass in his foot. He bound the smuggler with wiry arms, then the witch’s son shouted something, and Magdalynn began shouting too. Adam lifted the point of his sword. It was what he was there to do, yet no part of his being showed sign of obedience—his forearms felt flimsy as grass, his shoulders stiff as mountain ridges, his legs fixed as the roots of a tree, and his head light and lifted like a star in the distance. It was all he could do to line up his thrust and push. He didn’t look, but he could feel the steel slip in where he’d aimed at the smuggler’s heart. His stomach turned, so he swallowed hard and extracted the sword and heard the thump of the body on the floor.

  Murder.

  Adam looked to Magdalynn and saw her face was as twisted as his—to his relief—she was staring not at him but at the body, and her fear turned to tears as she turned from the corpse to cry into the folds of the pastor’s son’s shirt. Adnihilo, though, was just the opposite. His eyes held fast to the Messah; his smiling cheeks stretched wide; his chest swelled and sank with wanton excitement. Then, just as he seemed to be calming down, the half-blood’s head snapped at the sight of the smuggler’s sword on the floor. Greedily, he collected the weapon: a sabre blade, broad and short, on a pearl-pummeled hilt with bars of smoked steel that wrapped his hand like the legs of a spider. He pillaged the scabbard as well—a silver-capped sheath of matte black leather—took it belt and all without regard for the departed. He’d haven taken the smugglers vest too if it weren’t drenched in blood, Adam thought.

  The pastor’s son shivered at that and at the cold blood coursing through his veins. His body felt foreign to him now, stiff and distant as a life-sized puppet, and he felt the same about his friend. Now what? It was strange. Minutes had passed since the warning bell’s toll; the deck ought to have been crawling with seamen. Yet not a single man sought to protect the captain. Not a single one, though there should have been a dozen, and stranger still just how the carrack was silent.

  It wasn’t, in truth. The rush of fear and anger and bloodshed had dampened the Messah’s ears to the uproar on deck. Savage and metallic, the clangor of combat, grunts and curses and weird words that he could not discern. An alien tongue and one familiar.

  “Sodd’n Gaut-Dogs!” called a voice from right outside, and in the next breath a single-edged blade erupted red through the cabin door. The brothers of Babylon and the girl Magdalynn gawked in horror. Awestruck, they hardly flinched as another sword penetrated the door, nor did they recoil when the wood flew wholly off its hinges as far as the smuggler’s table while pinned with a corpse. It was Luigi, dead and broken—impaled in two places—his wounds still bleeding, still staining his shirt and his Tsaazaari silk vest.

  Then entered their uninvited guests, a man and a woman: thin eyes, sallow faces, and dead black straight manes. Both were gaily clothed, him in flowing purple pants and painted leather jack, brass bands, brazen bangles, and a fortune in gold from lands unknown riveted together in a scaly cuirass. He wore three swords as well, narrow Gautaman sabres, their jewel encrusted scabbards secured at his waist. Two were empty—and the third blade he drew while strutting the floor with his bloody boots for the first mate—or rather, for the swords stuck in Luigi’s corpse. All the while, his partner clogged about the room in absurd wooden sandals curtailing her every move so as not to trip on her robe of violet silk with its snow fox fur collar and the sword at her hip: another single-edged sabre, but longer and thin, a delicate razor when she took it in hand.

  Adam gaped in amazement.

  The raider vaulted the table, retrieving his sabres, hurling his blade as he came down on the other end. One fluid action. The sword soaring for the half-blood, he ducked but could not escape. The assailant was on him, cleaving left and right and high then low, always cutting, always lunging. The witch’s son would parry one, but the next would nick a wrist, split a shoulder, slice a forearm, bloody a thigh, slash his chest. Shallow wounds, like those from a switch.

  This was a game, Adam realized. Cat and mouse, and they were the prey. The woman pirate, his predator, pawed the floor with a wooden clog, poised to pounce, paused, then bolted forward. A wide slice for the Messah’s core that he slipped out of distance by the skin of his instincts, yet that left Magdalynn abandoned between the Gautaman and himself. The violet pirate smiled. She’d seen his mistake, and before he could raise his sword, she’d taken the girl hostage—placed a blade to her throat.

  Time froze. Sweat clung cold on the nape of Adam’s neck. His friend stood behind him, pushed back to the corner and wounded. Soon, he’d be there as well, then they’d both be dead men and Magdalynn would be taken again as a slave. The thought of it brought a burning to the side of his neck. The Crest of the King, he remembered his promise when from the heavens came a blast like thunder but louder and so close the very boat seemed to convulse. And even the raiders were shaken—the woman so taken, she released Magdalynn just long enough for Adam to charge, headlong, wrong by everything his father ever taught him. Aggressive and defenseless, his whole body behind this one mad thrust that left them both aghast as the blade sank deep into the center of her breast.

  Death took her at once, and after came the rancor, her partner’s roar in every corner of the cabin. Adam did not look back. He knew better than to expect another Godsend—whatever that blast had been—and would take his chances on the open deck. He only hoped Adnihilo would follow after him, or that the pirate might forget his friend long enough for the half-blood to run off on his own. God save him, Adam thought, and he dropped his sword stuck in the woman’s corpse as it tumbling toward him. It hurt, like losing his father all over again to desert the weapon, but he needed his hands. They snatched up Magdalynn still numb with consternation and carried her.

  Outside shone the black of night—the lumen of the ocean, the pale face of the moon—a light dew on the surface of the deck and the ropes and the rain-catchers, the sails and the masts, and the masses of dead men piled around the hatch and hanging over the balustrade. And the bishop, in his blacks and reds, a silhouette visible by the gold-thread cross on his chest, stood at the center of it. Something in his arms, large, heavy; and he was wheeling it around to aim at the aftcastle just as Adam came racing out.

  He’d
made it. Fifty paces carrying the girl, and now only a few more steps and he’d be free beneath the hatch. The prospect of safety set his heart at ease. His breathing slowed, and with it, the tempo of his feet. At that speed, the world reformed around him, revealing details unseen: He noticed the bodies were almost entirely foreigners—Gautaman by the look of them—yet there was something bloated and swollen about their faces, as if each man had been pricked beneath the chin and the wound left to fester till the skin tinged pink as rash or bruised green. Seeing them made his stomach roil, and he nearly stopped dead passing a particular corpse whose head had been blown open.

  Adam lingered on the body a moment too long. The result: a fulmination sharp as steel shot through his leg. He crashed mid-stride, turning as he fell to protect the girl and putting the source of the pain in harm’s way. It thudded as it struck the deck, the Gautaman sabre stuck in his thigh, sending secondary stabs of time-blinding agony so that it seemed less than an instant before the pirate loomed over him. He was a veritable monster, crimson flushed and gold with rage, his spare sabre raised—falling—but then the raider spun, and with the same stroke, lunged for Adnihilo who had snuck behind, tried and blundered a cut for the throat. Steel embedded into the shoulder of the pirate’s golden jack. So when the raider’s blade came, the half-blood had nothing to guard the attack that savaged his shoulder. His left arm went slack, his right clutched his left. And Adam, forgetting his leg, tried desperately to stand but could only collapse and watch the Gautaman’s sabre arc aside and up, cocked for an execution when let loose a second clap of mysterious thunder. A flash and an eruption, the man’s head exploded, where it had been now a cloud of thick ruddy mist.

  “To Hell with you,” uttered the bishop, a devilish engine in his hands, steel and smoking as he finished, “For the King.”

  Tenth Verse

  “Wake up, Leonhardt.”

  Jael’s body flung upright before she could open her eyes. Her head was pounding—loudly as horse hooves—she remembered the sword, the white knight, her whirling helmet, the ground. “The Struggle!” Her voice carried, echoing on stone walls and tall vaulted ceilings. Then there was silence, then the sounds of glass clinking and soft footfalls, a mutter in the distance. She shivered, cold, no longer in her armour—or even in the same clothes. Her eyes opened. “Where am I?”

  Sir Trey Gildmane sat across from her on an empty cot with an eased look on his face. In the candle light, his eyes sparkled like emeralds, and his blonde hair glowed like it was spun gold. “You’re in the vaults of the Temple Rock, the friars’ quarters. That was quite a blow you took. I was afraid Troy had broken your neck.”

  The friars, she thought. I’ve failed if they sent me here. Jael glanced about at the dimly lit laboratory. She was in a sickbed, tucked away in a corner and separated by screens, though she could see a few of the tables covered with mortars, alembics, and dried ingredients. So this is it, then. I’ll be making medicine for the rest of my life. It was as if she never left Herbstfield, only now Gavin, her father, and Zach were all gone.

  “I need to send a letter,” she said before the tears could come.

  That sent Gildmane to smiling. “So soon? Don’t you want to hear the results?”

  She did. After suffering through that whole ordeal, she was curious who’d managed to unseat the knight paladin. “Did anyone make it?”

  “You mean beat Troy? No, but I didn’t expect anyone to. We pick three aspirants, even if they’re all invalidated. Each judge has his choice.”

  Leonhardt turned to face the captain, her legs slipping from beneath the thin blanket to hang bare over the edge of the cot. The chill air pricked her skin with gooseflesh. Embarrassed, she pulled the thin cloth over her lap and asked, hoping he hadn’t noticed, “Who did you pick?”

  “Do you mean me personally, or all of the judges?”

  So, you’re ‘that’ kind of man who thinks sarcasm makes you witty? thought Jael, though she didn’t dare make the same mistake as with King. She settled with, “You know what I mean,” adding, “Sir,” at the end. He couldn’t say she hadn’t been respectful.

  Gildmane seemed to be enjoying himself. Smiling as he said, “All three then? I hope you’re ready. They were Sylvertre, Blackheart, and...” He pointed a finger dead-set at her heart, “you.”

  “Me? And Sylvertre and Harold, and not Harpe?” Of them all, she thought Brandon the most deserving of the honour. “How could those dullards be accepted? And me, you said? Then why am I here?” Trey smoothed the breast of his black, embroidered doublet. He was no longer in armour, Leonhardt noted. She asked, “How long have I been out?”

  “A day and a half. The other aspirants were worried you’re dead. Sylvertre has been crying since the pronouncement—God damned milksop. His lord father is the only reason we let him in. Whitehand picked Harold.” His eyes flashed about the room; his voice thinned to a whisper. “He thinks the clergy can control him. Church influence is strong in the west. They’ve still got pagans on the northern shores and along the rivers, and Duskhall sits right on the Serpent’s Head.”

  “So why me? Brandon is twice the knight that I’d ever be.”

  Trey scanned the hall and waited as a pair of men passed by the sickbeds—friars, each with a white hand sewn on the chest of his robe. They meandered close, discussing a discourse one had given that morning to the dimfolk at Vaufnar’s cathedral. At the mention of the bishop’s name, the captain’s mien darkened, and it did not restore until the strangers drifted far out of earshot. “That’s a good question, Leonhardt. I’ve been asking that since I saw your name on the list. Why is it the saint allowed you to join the Struggle?”

  “Because I asked him.”

  “You think so?” Gildmane smirked. “There is a mountain of requests awaiting the saint’s approval for heirless sons to join the Cross. You can see them for yourself, piled high on the chamberlain’s desk. Paul will never glimpse any of them. Tell me, what makes you so special?”

  Jael didn’t have answer to that one. She thought for a moment, then admitted, “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I, but I aim to find out. And besides. I want to know what a Leonhardt is made from.”

  Flesh and blood, like everyone else. She thought of Brandon, of how she stole his place because of her name. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why it was me instead of Harpe. Because I’m a ‘Leonhardt.’” She slumped back onto the cot, despondent.

  Gildmane grinned. “Get used to it, squire. There will be much worse from here on out.”

  †

  Training began early the next morning. Before dawn had broken, Jael was up fetching water for the captain’s bath. Her first lesson—true knights carry an air of nobility; the people should know a knight without need for arms nor armaments nor armour. That meant keeping groomed, but for her it meant lugging two dozen buckets of water from the duct behind the lodge to the kitchen to boil, then to the great cauldron in the basement. Trey would wait for her there each morning, send her with his soiled clothes to the Religious Sisterhood for cleaning, then to his wardrobe to retrieve fresh silks and linens, hose, stockings and shoes, and whatever else he might want. She was to wash herself once those duties were done. If she was quick, the water would still be hot, and she’d have a few moments to relax before the grueling start of the day. If she wasn’t, she’d return to him standing naked outside the iron tub, and she would have to cross the basement with her eyes to the floor to deliver his clothes. This occurred her first morning, and she spent that evening alone in the cloister of the Temple Rock, praying to forget his lean, wiry frame, his golden-blonde mane wet and glistening.

  After bathing, they broke their fast in the lodge common room to fresh bread and eggs and steaming blood sausage. The new squires were seated with the old, at the far end of the great table, separate from their presiding paladins. From them Jael learned her second lesson, the routine burdens of a squire of the Cross. There was feeding, grooming, and saddling of horses; oil
ing and sharpening of one’s presiding knight’s steel—his weapons and plate harness, or if he wore maille there’d be scouring in sacks of sand and vinegar. Then there was the training regimen. Each knight’s was different, and it was a squire’s duty to ensure the correct tools were ready when demanded. Tourney lances and swords would need to be racked, the tilts set, horses barded, and the knight himself would want help donning his harness. Then all of that would want taking down, but not before the squires themselves got in their own practice under the watchful eyes of their masters.

  By the end of her first day, Jael was overwhelmed. Some skills she’d learned working with her father out in the fields—maintenance of equipment, handling horses—but never had she been held to such a strict schedule. Never had she been brought to the edge of exhaustion and not given reprieve for even a moment. This was far and apart from a farmer’s life, she realized. They expected more from her than she thought possible, to become a noble worthy of the title. She doubted herself those initial days, as did others, though not all.

  Her third lesson: who to trust and who to serve—rank, heraldry, and church politics. She learned from her fellows that the Cross had bled thin, that aside from the seven paladins, there remained but one retaining knight and three confirmed squires. There had been a sickness the previous spring which killed off more than half of the Cross’s men, and since then, only a few aspirants endured till their Confirmation.

  Among the confirmed were those whom Jael named the Black Brothers. They were squires “Dark Finger” Willas and Normand Armstrong, and quick to join them was Harold of Duskhall. Blackheart was the one who brought them against her. Though he was new, his lynching tree sigil was already well known. Moreover, the westerner stood taller than the bald-cheeked Willas and three stone heavier than the scrawny Armstrong. With them, his words carried influence, and those words were of the fate of Brandon Harpe. He blamed Jael for the aspirant’s failure—claimed she seduced Gildmane to earn her place. His friends were fast to agree. Normand inherited the attitude of his Paladin, Oswald King of the three pointed crown, who it seemed shared the views of his brother, Captain Holland, and of Willas’s paladin, John “Dark Arm” Fischer, who mocked Leonhardt openly her first evening at supper—as did Harold and his paladin, Godfrey Westheart.