“With my what? My bathing?”
“Stick it up your ass, Gildmane. Fornicating—disgraceful! You’re supposed to be chaste knights.”
The captain sneered. “Is that how you do it in the west? Up the ass? I’m afraid that’s considered sodomy in the capital.”
“Make japes all you like,” Frampt spat, “it won’t save you if we report to the commander.”
“If,” Jael noticed the weakness of his wording—like a gap between plates. The cleric was bluffing. He wanted something from them. What, she wondered, were they after in the first place?
Trey noticed it as well, and with a smile he replied, “Report to Pyke if you want, but what are you going to tell him? That I was fucking my squire from across the water with a ten-foot cock?” He rose to his full height in the pool, the water splashing hot about his thighs as he spoke to the clerics at the elder’s back, “What do you say, lads? ”Think I could peg her from here?”
A few of the seniors laughed, and even Leonhardt chuckled, blushed as she was. Frampt, however, could not find the humor in himself. He ground his teeth and began to turn his back, then thought better of it. “If you’ve had enough games, Captain, perhaps you’d like to save some lives. There has been another attack. Freshwater Heath, a hamlet to the northwest. The survivors arrived here less than an hour ago.”
“Then they’re safe, and we’ll commence our raid on the morrow.”
“No,” the elder rasped, “we’re commencing it right now. Lloyd and his guilt be damned. I’m not sparing a single one of those butchers. Let God be their judge and us his hand of justice.”
It came together for Jael all at once. “But you’re afraid,” she started, “that’s why your here, asking us for help. You can’t do it on your own.”
“Watch your tongue, lass,” he said. “We’re going whether you come or not.” Then he asked the captain, “So are you with us? We need to be quick about this, before the commander notices we’re gone.”
Trey looked to his squire and answered, “We’re with you. We wouldn’t want to miss out on all the fun.”
Back in the barracks, arming and armouring, Leonhardt doubted any of what they were about to do would prove amusing. That was, until she and her fellow members of the Cross came out into the yard, into the black and raw with fresh horses waiting. They mounted alongside a square of forty clerics, the five seniors and Frampt included, each face a stoic mask despite the danger of their disobedience. Their frost-white breath and scarlet tunics—bright in the shadow of night—put a thrill in Jael’s heart and a chill in her spine. Together, Cross and cleric donned the iron skullcaps of the Watcher’s Eye. They brandished their arms: steel shafted mauls with heads of bronze and plush red velvet—for it was sinful in the eyes of Berthold that a man of God should draw blood—and Troy, Brandon, and Jael each had their swords—the captain with his axe. Then it occurred to Leonhardt the reason for his choice. “Three bloody thuds…I just couldn’t line my cut with the edge.”
Before the hour was done, their formation had hit the high road, galloping slowly as not to overtake their prey. They wanted them home, in their village hovels with their vigils watching eastward for the men of the Eye. If this raid was like passed attacks, and if they resisted initiating prematurely, Frampt believed they could still flank the pagans between the clerics and the Cross as was discussed in the meeting. It was sound tactics to Jael, though as they ambled on the moorland road with black woods to the south and the moon hidden in midnight clouds, she could think only of the owl’s scream and the brackdragon’s jaws and the elder’s account—fog like white smoke bringing horrors unimaginable.
As they closed on the village, she was glad for her failure to envision the demon. It was unsettling enough being harried by the gibbering of frogs, the cawing of crows, and the buzzing of mole crickets from every mire, every branch and bough, every crevasse clothed in the pall of darkness. It was the end of the road. Ahead was forest and shadow, beyond that the pagan den and—all going well—twenty-some clerics lurking in the black of doorways with hammers adorned in velvet. Then it happened. A scream from the village ushered forth Jael’s fantasy into reality. The attack had begun, and in moments a hundred desperate pagans would run howling from the tree line, shades in the umber. Yet they did not come. There was only the Cross and a dozen Watcher’s waiting, the quiet perforated by periodic shrieks too distant to be distinct over the squire’s pounding heart.
Ba-Bum! Ba-Bum! Ba-Bum! it beat like the march of a war drum. A minute passed; the horses stirred, nervous. The men began to whisper—words of worry and words of trepidation. Even the captain seemed disturbed by the unnatural stillness at the edge of the woods, the enduring silence, minutes now since the last shriek sounded.
Then the first of them emerged: wan, shirtless youths stumbling night-blind through the mud, blood stained up to their elbows and clutching crooked spears. And more were funneling onto the road as Trey summoned forth a storm of hooves. Before Leonhardt could think, the horses vaulted forward and hours of practice in the yard took over as she bore her sword point on the first body in reach—felt her hand jam against the guard, then a jerk as the steel released the tumbling corpse as she charged on to another. Her first kill, so quick, her only impression was of shock at the ease of it. He never even saw her, like she was death, and death was the wind, and she with her companions a tempest. The few pagans who stood and fought fell and died. Their crude weapons could not hope to penetrate plate nor maille, nor could their bare feet hope to escape the stampede on their heels. The Cross pursued them, through the thick of wood and out the other side, riding down the rout one by one till the last of them stood surrounded at the foot of the village. Jael was nearest then, and knew that meant that he was hers, the fourth to die by her sword that night. And thus she charged, winding high and cleaving for the neck just as her victim turned. Too late in the dim of the moon she saw the grimace of an old woman, wrinkled and terrified—permanent—the botched cut stuck inside, rattled Leonhardt’s arm and tore the sword from her grip.
She panicked, pulled too suddenly on her horse’s reins and was thrown from the saddle. The world became a whirl of black and brown. She hit the ground on her belly and gasped into the mud, half from the blow and half from what she saw. “Jael!” the captain bellowed, yet as she staggered to her feet, she stared as if unaware of the voice calling out to her. It was the horror she left behind: the old woman, the whole of what lay between her and the forest. In the rush of it, the fleeing pagans each seemed the same as that first bloodied savage with the spear in his hands. Now, however, the moon had revealed the truth of their ambush. She saw a boy lanced through heart, a headless old man, a woman prone in a mire with a bundle of swaddling buried beneath her. There was an old crone and pair of children and a dead pagan walking, half his head caved in after a cleric’s stroke. Trey finished him off as he bolted passed to where Jael staggered, dazed.
“Jael! Are you harmed anywhere? Can you hear me? Are you alright?”
“Yes. I’m fine,” Leonhardt coughed, unable to catch her breath so thick was the air with humors. It stung her eyes and sinuses and flavored her tongue with the taste of sulfur. But when she went to rub the run from her nose, a jolt sharp as a dagger erupted from wrist to elbow. Broken, she knew without looking. She could see it on her captain’s face—a grimace like that old woman’s. The throes of nausea roiled Jael’s stomach. She started to double over, but Gildmane stood her straight.
He said, “We need to get you ahorse. Now. Can you still ride with that arm?”
“Wasn’t that the last of them?” she asked, still dazed. “I need to retrieve my sword. I can’t leave it.”
“We’ll come back for it,” Trey promised, his face pale, his voice strained—his whole countenance shaking as he gazed toward the village “Take my horse and tell Troy I said to take Brandon with you. God damn it, this was a mistake.”
It was a massacre, Leonhardt witnessed for herself. Scattered throughou
t the village as far as she could see corpses steamed in the bleak, the blood still warm, still oozing to the surface of skinless bodies. Some were piled in heaps, others hung from trees, but the worst was the one slung over the back of a cleric’s horse. The beast’s eyes had been plucked out, and it ran heedlessly, braying, rounding close enough for her to see that the rider’s face was left intact. It was Elder Frampt.
It was the mist.
It rolled in from behind them, from the forest and from the village, white as snow and just as cold. It choked the hope from all of their lungs. Jael could hear her companions screaming, riding aimlessly lost and calling their names, but the captain and his squire did not respond. They would not draw anymore victims near where the demon lurked, concealed by fog, encroaching, cautiously, as if it were just as blinded as they were.
Jael glanced back where she thought her sword was still stuck in the corpse. A shriek cut through the mist. A feminine voice, stretched and sorrowful. “Run,” Trey hissed. There was a sobbing in the fog. The captain positioned himself between the weeping and Leonhardt. He told her again, “Run!” this time too loud. The sobbing became a shrill that rung the ears. A shadow appeared, huge and inhuman. “Now!” Trey commanded. “Get your sword! Run!”
Jael bolted, and the demon screamed as it rushed to meet the paladin, the sound of steel crunching, yet she did not look back for there was but one thought in her mind not consumed by fear. Against the Tides of Winter. It stood hilt-end up, the sword in the corpse, like Æturnum from the Rock, she ripped the blade free and turned in time to see the demon looming over her—the legs of an elk and arms like talons, the blonde crown of a stag, the torso of a woman slender as a knife, her womb heavy with child sliced open and sewn. “Oh, Mother Merihem,” it whispered in weeping tones, “So cold. My babe is so cold. Why isn’t she moving? Give me a coat, a skin for my babe.” The demon sunk on it haunches, “Give it to me!” it screamed, lunging faster than Leonhardt could hope to react, knocking her onto her back beside the old woman whose gashed neck had saturated the mud. The demon leaped on top of her, the concussion enough to crack her ribs, to whip Jael’s head into a pool of blood. She gagged, drowning, her limbs pinned under the demon claws—then those talons jump up to either side of her face, digging in, tearing the skin. She screamed and heard the captain scream with her, cleaving heavy with his axe into the monster’s neck. And it writhed, still living, unbleeding, turning and smashing another dent in the Gildmane’s breastplate with its elken cleft. Then it returned to Jael, lunged for her blindly, and impaled itself on the squire’s sword. The frost-white blade sank down to the hilt.
Clouded eyes crying—the demon’s dying breath, “My babe! You killed my babe!”
Nineteenth Verse
The warm waters of the Vereringeks ran like liquid gold as they flowed through Iisah’s ancient temple, rushing beneath the idol—her holy throne—where Lilum lay lush on the whispered reverence of her congregation. Or is that his voice in the river, she smiled, teasing me like a maiden bride? The thought of the Father’s godly lips brushing nothings into her ear sent the Mother of old Iisah squirming in her chair till her restless bones could bear the longing no longer. It was time that the ritual had begun. With greatest pleasure, she tore herself from the Father’s seat and descended the stairs where her congregation awaited.
Nine titan sandstone slabs separated the idol from the altar floor. They were the first portion of the temple to be raised, set where the Vereringeks necked and narrowed, splitting the river into divine halves then joining them whole again. Lilum could still recall when the first blocks of sediment were cast into the water, when the idol was forged and the channels carved banking the sacred steps so that the river washed over them, the reunion of pairs blessing her naked feet. Three hundred years and ten thousand hands perished to bring it all forth, to lay the limestone for the altar floor, to sculpt the columns, to paint the glyphs which colored the walls with five millennia of Iisah history.
Lilum was loath to linger on those early days, though such was her duty to remember the Father’s covenant. She was old then, haggard and crippled, black and sagging and Mother to nothing but a band of refugees—the only tribe to escape the Traitor’s subjugation. It was the Father who brought them high, who split the desert asunder in reward for their faith in the pact made in the depths of their diaspora. He led them safe through the Tsaazaar, gave them the Vereringeks, and blessed their Mother with wisdom and youth. To be his bride, Lilum craved the day. Please, Father, let it be soon.
She landed on the final stair to the undulating rhythm—two close beats with a long pause between, the pulsing heart of the altar. They were the percussion of drums and the clatter of sticks to which she replied with a song of her own. She sung it in the old tongue—low, mournful tones—words to evoke the souls of men, to wake them from boyhood slumber. The blooding ceremony had begun. The congregation was in place, enshrining her as she strode to the center of the altar floor and worshipped before them. She danced for their Father, alluring him with her newly given flesh: taut, honey-brown skin and a woman’s hips and chest, her face and hair like a Messah maiden’s, her eyes like black pearls in the foam of the ocean. Only her clothes were those of her former self. For the sake of her children and their blindness of soul, she retained the formless white skirt and linen shawl and a heavy rope belt of bronze medallions. Forty of them polished bright as gold, one for each night they wandered the desert.
Lilum danced and the medallions tinkled. The congregation looked on, clattering their sticks and beating their drums to the quickening rhythm. Their blood was up, their Mother could feel rushing from her own eager loins to her lips, red and swollen. Let it be soon, she pleaded, prospecting the crowd. Her dark, helpless children—fodder for the kingdom to come.
“You,” she culled a vivacious youth. He’d been watching her every moment of the ceremony, beating his drum to her every move, perfectly formed for the dying of boyhood, his body long and wiry. On thew-rippled legs, he joined Lilum in her dance, and together they worshipped as servants entered the circle bearing knives hewn from bone like yellowed fangs cradled in their fingers. Each weapon was presented, and all but one were turned away to be buried beneath the flux of the Vereringeks. Old sacrifices; the silt would be their grave, but not before the ritual was done. Until then, the forsaken blades would reside in the hands of the congregation—the chosen fang with Lilum for the hone of its hooked point and the keenness of its edge.
And now the dance was at its end. The supplicants stood together at the center, the Mother with knife in hand. She severed the youth’s loincloth, let it fall and watched him rise like the excitement inside her in anticipation of the Father’s vision. She could feel it; it would come like a dream, a reverie. Incessantly, the youth repeated the psalm of the King as Lilum sank to her knees, lips nuzzling her sacrifice’s body—the hills of his abdomen, the trunks of his thighs, then to the throbbing bough of his manhood. She enveloped him in slithering tongue and soft, warm cheek, stroking with the rhythm of the drums. She could feel the beat of the sticks at the back of her throat. The instant was at hand, root and stem severed by the chosen knife as the Mother of old Iisah swallowed. Salt and blood. The youth was raised up on the fangs of the forsaken and paraded about the congregation that in the sanguine shower they might be blessed.
His prison, Lilum witnessed in the fit of her vision the Traitor’s black walls as a serpent devouring its tail. She saw the maw of a lion clutching the neck of a lamb. A wolf in the oasis where the Father is buried. The dawn rising in the west. A dead snake in the sand, succumbed to its own venom. A hundred years of darkness, of rule by the damned. The Father, our King.
And Lilum awoke, her ears ringing, the congregation singing the psalm of the Queen—of spirit’s returning. It was her most hated thing, to be stolen from the Father’s arms, yet this day she rejoiced the herald of her regent. “Your Mother has seen it,” she hissed, and the crowd went silent. “He is coming. The Father h
as whispered the fall of the Traitor’s tyranny! And I saw it. I saw the betrayer poisoned by his own blood! His son will rise against him, and hark! Thus shall we know this progeny. He will bring slaughter to the Messah! He will slay the Black Beast! And we shall see it all within our times, for this sun is yet an early dawn, yet rising to become the harbinger, the key to the seal, the bearer of the Father’s crown. Soon, my children, the walls shall come down, and for a hundred years our King shall reign!” And I alongside him, she delighted privately while the members of her flock frothed and praised her promise of revenge.
Then their Mother turned her back, suddenly bitter toward her children’s revelry. For she loved them as man loves a hound—for its obedience and inequitable reverence—and this celebration was mockery. How could they remember, how could they hate when they had never known the home stolen from them? How can they rage without knowing the pain? The betrayal? She started for the steps, desperate for distance, to separate herself from the fools extolling their own doom—though that she kept from them, had kept it from congregations for more than a thousand years. For the pain was too great to lose children whom loved her despite the truth. This way, she could love them as hounds and puppets, though it left her tired of being the Mother of old Iisah. But soon I shall be the Queen.
“Mother! Mother!” repeated a voice from the crowd just as Lilum reached the idol throne. She was remiss to return her attention to the altar, but then the voice called louder, gasping, desperate for breath. “Mother…foreigners…transgressors…three of them profaning the river. We have them at bay, but—”
Salt, Sand, and Blood Page 29