Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  Maqsood and Ramses did not agree. Their dark eyes became the black of shade; they dropped their sacks, checked their knives, and readied their bident spears. But they were only followers, Jordan their leader in wrath and disgust. His olive skin with its glow of bronze had turned the red-brown burnish of the half-blood. His lips lay taught and twisted on his mouth. The tension in his muscles threatened to tear them out from his body; and yet, it was the Messiah himself who signed for his apostles to stand down.

  Clearing the demon toad from his throat, he spoke, “Our brother Zachariah is right. They know not what they do, blaspheming this house hallowed in the name of the Lord God Ventus. And though it is true that I have come to bring a sword to the serpents infesting our mother church, so too is it true that I have come to right the scales unbalanced by man.” He reversed his weapon so the butt-end loomed overhead. “And so I have died a lamb and returned a judge. That judgement I cast now: with mercy temper justice. Their blood shall not be spilt, yet this blasphemy cannot go on.”

  “Then what should be done?” asked the reluctant apostle-scholar.

  Jordan advanced on the defiled chapel. “I shall run them out myself!”

  “Fucking lunatics!” spat the bishop. He was already backpedaling, calling for the others to follow. Lilum and Adam joined him at once, but the half-blood stayed.

  “Go on without me,” he said. “I want to watch this.”

  “Idiot,” Ba’al grumbled, starting back for Adnihilo who stood entranced by the violence.

  Inside the open air chapel, Jordan raised a storm of thunder and lightning and hail. Voices boomed in pain and in anger, tables and coffers flew through the air as the Messiah swung the blunt end of his spear at any and every blasphemous thing: boxes smashed to bits, minted metals a mess on the floor or else pelting the heathens as they screamed, their fingers like burned sausages upon being bashed under the shaft of the Messiah’s spear. “Out! Out!” he shouted, his voice loud as the blast of a war horn—louder, even, than the calls for the guards—and those, there were plenty.

  The bishop cursed; it was worse than he feared. The commotion caught the attention of everyone within earshot, and now they were crowding around, a thousand of them—a dozen Royal Swordsmen. It would be impossible to run.

  Ba’al seized the devilish engine from his bag, filled his teeth sticks of incense, and lighting them, grunted. “Swords down! I’m going to try to talk our way out. If we’re lucky, then mayhap—”

  A Tsaazaari threat shot from the chapel side. The riverwyrm hunters. Zachariah tried but failed to pacify their native tempers, and all the while the King’s Sons surrounded. “Give up!” one of them demanded in rough Messaii. He dressed unlike his cohorts in a garnet coat and with a red tassel sprouting from the peak of his helm. His sword already drawn, the broad cleaver end rested on his shoulder. “Face justice before the court of King Solomon, or face it now before his sons.”

  A cry emanated from inside the chapel. The red Swordsman nodded, and two of his men started toward Jordan, weapons brandished. Maqsood and Ramses met them half way—a second’s standstill.

  Ba’al leveled his engine at the commander’s head. “We’re not with those religious maniacs. Just looking for a place to spend the night and a ship for the morning.”

  The Swordsman shook his head, “That is for the King to decide. Now, last chance Messah. Come with us alive, or come dead.”

  “Fine, we surrender.” the bishop said, never lowering his weapon.

  “Speak for yourself.” Adnihilo drew his sabre, and so too did Adam while Lilum positioned herself safely behind.

  Ba’al cursed at the half-blood then tried one last parley. “Vexillifer Mephist—” was all he got out before a scream drowned his words.

  Everyone turned. Jordan stood at the chapel threshold empty handed, his spear through the chest of one Swordsman held back by the Tsaazaari. “Go!” he bellowed, “with the mercy of God!”

  Fire and thunder—Ba’al ignited his shot, and the King’s Sons jumped as their commander’s head burst inside his helmet. Blood erupted from the mangled front of his aventail, dripped gently through the back, pooled upon the polished pier, bled between the floor boards slow as sand through an hourglass, so slowly the puddle looked a ruddy mirror while the smoke cleared, till a jeer sounded from the crowd. “Come on, then! Let’s see it again! Again!” did the stranger shout in Messaii. Then the crowd took up the chant in Tsaazaari—harrowing, bloodthirsty; their voices filled the seeping pool with ripples—and hearing it, fear faded fast in the Mephistine Swordsmen. Ripples became boots splashing as half the remaining Sons set upon Adam and Adnihilo, the other half for Jordan and the apostles. It was the invasion of Babylon all over again. These were trained men, organized. They positioned themselves at the sides and the flank, and cut off escape with wide cleaving arcs. That left two at the front, and like dancers they lunged and cut in perfect rhythm, each covering the other—no chance to retaliate, no place to retreat. A cautious slaughter, the only response was to block and parry till Adam’s hands were numb under the tremor of steel. The killing blow came shortly after, a cut aimed for his collar. As the pastor’s son tried to slip, he collided with Lilum and Ba’al behind him. Forced, Adam threw up a desperate guard. He squeezed tightly as he could—met the blow—was disarmed by the momentum alone. A gash opened on his shoulder. A yellow flash—Lilum stabbed behind the Swordsman’s breast plate, underneath his arm through his linen coat. She pulled her hand away clutching a bloody bone dagger. Adam staggered in shock. Reflected in the dying man’s armour, he saw the bishop rearmed, leveling his weapon.

  Another Messaii cheer burst from the crowd, “That’s it! Kill them all!”

  A clap of thunder—the roar of death. The pastor’s son had never stood so close to the discharging engine. Like sticking his head in a storm cloud, so loud his ears rang, his eyes blind from the smoke. He coughed and cried and thought he heard Adnihilo’s muffled voice calling his name—and other sounds as well, but he couldn’t tell. It was faint, distant. Pain radiated from his shoulder. His senses were returning, slowly.

  Another voice: Ba’al’s.

  Adam clutched his wound, blinked the tears from his eyes.

  The King’s Sons had been killed—all of them—stabbed in the back of the neck by Tsaazaari men dressed like Gautaman pirates, queer punch-daggers in their fists. That was, save for the richest of them who whistled and applauded, twenty golden rings clinking. “Spectacular!” he exclaimed. Adam recognized this voice. It was the one who started the chanting, who called for them to kill—though that was meant for his own men, it seemed.

  The stranger placed his slippered feet scrupulously around the bloodiest planks then granted Ba’al the slightest bow as to not lose his jeweled turban. “I’ve never seen anything so magnificent in my life. Not here in old Mephisto, not even on the eastern seas.”

  “Who in Hell are you?” the bishop asked between breaths.

  The stranger brushed off his emerald vest and pants, rearranged a few of his emerald amulets, and grinned to show them his gilded teeth. “Who am I?” he questioned, as if asking, ‘How dare you not know the answer?’ Then he asked the same to Lilum, to Adnihilo, to Adam, then to Jordan and the apostles before finally putting it to his own men. “Who am I?”

  “Shakrai!” japed one of the men, then another, “Shakurai!” “Zayyafi!” then “Mazle Dina!”

  The stranger winced. “Disrespectful louts! I am only glad you don’t understand. Now allow me to introduce myself.” He bowed again. “I am Captain Sadaf Saif Salah.”

  “So you’re pirates?” Adnihilo asked.

  The crewmen laughed. Sadaf frowned and twisted his lips so that they disappeared in his beard and mustache. “I prefer privateer. King Solomon gives lease so long as it’s slave ships we’re plundering.”

  “Does he give lease for murdering his watchmen?” asked Ba’al, fishing out of his pockets his newly purchased opium.

  Captain Sadaf dismisse
d the charge with a wave of his hand. “An accident. Everyone heard that you surrendered, no?” He waited, turned to the crowd and repeated, “No? Was there hash in your ears?” Then he asked a third time in Tsaazaari and received compliant grumbles. Turning back to the bishop, Sadaf continued, “You see? We are all in agreement. You are innocent victims in all this. It was that one who was the cause.” The crewmen glanced at Jordan, though the Messiah did not look back. He was huddled over Zachariah, muttering, Maqsood and Ramses standing a wary vigil.

  Ba’al lit his opium lamp with a smoldering incense and began warming his pipe. “So we’re off the cross, just like that? Enough horse shit. Tell me what you want?”

  “Business man? I took you for a priest. Though I hear they’re much the same in the west.”

  “Bishop, actually.” He took a long drag on his pipe and sighed. “So are you going to get to the point?”

  Sadaf cleared his throat. “I want to purchase your weapon. What do you call it?”

  “I don’t call it anything, and it’s not for sale.”

  “Where did you acquire it?”

  “It’s my design.”

  The captain’s eyes opened bright. “You invented this thing?”

  “That’s what I said,” answered the bishop, breathing smoke in Sadaf’s face.

  The pirate smiled, unfazed. “Yes. You did say this. And if I remember—and Sadaf Saif Salah does not forget—you also said you planned to board a ship on the morrow?”

  Ba’al body relaxed. “What are you getting at?”

  Sadaf spoke Tsaazaari to his men. Then, in Messaii to the bishop, “Well friend. How about a proposition? I’ll take you and these ones,” he gestured to exclude the apostles and Jordan, “in one of my very own vessels. Where ever you wish to go…if you will teach me and mine how to make our own iron arbalests.”

  “What if I refuse?”

  “Then you’ll have to risk the King’s justice, though I doubt he is as reasonable as Sadaf.”

  Ba’al took another drag of opium. “Where ever we want to go?” He looked over his shoulder at Jordan helping Zachariah to his feet. The scholar’s clothes were blood soaked down the front. It took a moment for Adam to realize what he’d seen, and by then the bishop answered. “Fine, you have a deal. Get us away from these freaks. As far west as west leads.”

  Twenty-Fourth Verse

  Clank! clunk, clunk, Clank! clunk, clunk, Clank! clunk, clunk.

  Jael’s toes rapped the coach floor to the rhythm of wheels rolling over the Valley Road. They were two days departed from the grounds of Castle Aestas, travelling south once more toward Pareo. It was slow going by carriage in the snow despite the loan of Stoltz’s personal coaches; though perhaps that was only Leonhardt’s yearning for the warmth of the capital and the company of friends if even tyres built for the Hibernis climate couldn’t carry them fast enough. We could ride off ahead, recurred the thought in the pits of her loneliness, just me and Trey out on the open road. In her mind’s eye the scene showed, two white knights on black Aestas coursers galloping red-cheeked against the crisp winter wind. In truth, it was a death sentence. Even protected from the elements inside a coach cabin lined with fur, Jael required all eighteen linen layers of her arming doublet and leather riding breaches over stockings and shift under her new plate harness and woolen surcoat. Her every breath steamed white as the lion on her breast. Watching it brought her back to the Aestas’s great hall, to the duke’s deserted tower and its enveloping darkness.

  For two days, she would have preferred that vacant, frigid place to the plush coach benches and cold inn mattresses, if only she’d be there with him again. Since that night, Trey had become her captain only, and she merely his knight. His last words before departing Castle Aestas, “I’m sorry, but I think we should keep distant for a few days, maybe till we’re back in Pareo—I know, but you’re not my squire anymore, and we were suspicious enough when you were.” After that, they roomed and travelled separately, and he all but ignored her during meals, electing instead to talk with Ogdon. And though he avoided her, Jael chose to watch him, skeptical. He’d never cared about their suspicions before.

  Imagining Trey’s face, her flight-fantasy recurred—a childish dream. If what Trey said was true, that there was risk in their closeness, then—weather be damned—what foolishness was her desire that would expose them. And if he spoke falsely, what then? She did not want to think about what that meant, yet she couldn’t help but notice the captain’s mirth every chance she saw him. He was animate, whether they were boarding for the eve or loading in the morn, his cheeks flushed pink and his lips up-curled, and his whole countenance lightened as he glance passed her for something beyond the southward road—no hint of suffering as she suffered this loneliness.

  Does that mean he doesn’t want me anymore…now that I’m soiled? The thought wrung her entrails worse than the black wood demon. She could still feel where her ribs had broken, soft lumps of scar tissue, and wondered if he’d noticed them, thought them repulsive. Or worse, perhaps he hadn’t and thought so regardless. Possessed by the question, she asked herself, is that how he saw her, a boarish whore in armour? She should have fought him more. Had she put up any resistance at all? Leonhardt remembered naught but the bitter cold and Trey’s fast embrace and how badly she’d wanted it.

  Her eyes drifted to a chest stowed below the coach bench, one of three parting gifts from the Stoltz family. This particular present was from the duke; Jael thought it appropriate. She knelt down and dragged it out. Silver inlay of flowers filled its whitewood surface while inside was silk lined and hollow save for others’ gifts. Folded, wrapped, and tied in silk rested the gown she wore the night of her ceremony, Sofia’s design, a miracle of needlework to make Leonhardt yearn to wear it once more. It lay atop her old surcoat so ragged and stained that no matter of washing could ever remove the stench of blood. Even in the cold, it rankled her nose, made her wonder if she wanted it anymore.

  The last gift was Ariel’s, a queer kind of dagger making its way from the Hibernis north. Jael drew it out now. The blade was long, nearly the length of a sword, and toothed but near the tip. She’d heard of these before. They did not cut but instead catch an opponent’s blade in the thrust—useless outside the context of the Hibernis duelists. It left Leonhardt curious as to what the duchess meant to suggest by the gift. She stared at it awhile, listening to the clatter of the wheels on the frozen road, feeling the weight of her amour grow heavy on her shoulders.

  Jael returned Ariel’s dagger to the chest then began to process of stripping of her harness. It was harder to do to oneself than to another. Once her gauntlets were off, her numb fingers fumbled with the pauldrons and the straps along the side of her cuirass. More than a few times, her skin brushed against the metal, stuck, then peeled away like a blister caused by cold. Yet steadily she worked, placing her plates, surcoat, and arming clothes with the rest of her luggage before picking a few linen outfits to layer under a drab woolen cloak. These reeked of salt from their voyage around the western coast, but that was better than scentless steel, better than the stench of blood.

  A cascade of, “Holds!” tumbled down the column from the front driver to the rear. The horses’ hooves slowed, and in turn, so did each coach rattle to a halt. Clank, clunk…clunk….Jael went still in her seat, listened. Absent the wind and carriage noises, voices broke through—excited gossip and whispers, and the sound of shuffling feet crunching the snow. Leonhardt let go her pent breath, and with it, her worry. She hadn’t expected they’d stop so early, though perhaps it was already evening. Blind inside the Hibernis coach, it proved easy to lose track of daylight.

  Jael stretched and sighed and strapped on her sword belt. She could hear the others outside, their boots alighting on the snow, as she reached for the door handle—then stopped, looked herself over as if she was forgetting something. The captain wouldn’t approve, she knew, of her leaving her surcoat. It was crucial for her to be seen as a knight of her own so t
hat the country could know and grow to accept it. But that was Trey’s plot, and why should she care for him when he discarded her as soon as he stole what he wanted—rogue and scoundrel—yet that wasn’t all she felt she’d forgotten. Her eyes fell upon the whitewood box then her hands upon the dagger inside. It fit snugly at her waist, securely between the leather and her body like it was always meant to be there. She’d have to remember to write Ariel her thanks when they arrived at Pareo.

  The coach door opened to a world of white and biting wind. Jael pulled up her hood to cover her ears, winced, and sniffled. The whisperers were nearer than she expected, more numerous, too many for a roadside inn; and amidst their chatter, Leonhardt swore she heard her name. Then the crunch of encroaching footsteps severed her attention. She squinted at Gildmane’s self-satisfied smile.

  “Welcome home, my lady.”

  Jael’s eyes adjusted her squint into a glare. “So you’re talking to me now?”

  That took the captain aback but only for a moment before he laughed and tried again. “A rough couple of days, was it? My apologies, though I do hope this will make up for it.”

  “This?” She waited for him to explain what he meant, yet he just stood there, smiling. Then she heard her name for a second time among the whispers. Trey hear it as well and glanced toward the crowd. Leonhardt looked in turn and saw half of her home village gathered about Herbstfield’s market square. They rushed out of stores and homes leaving doors hanging open, some still pulling cloaks over their shoulders, so as not to miss this unexpected event: the Saint’s Cross had come to visit them, or their chapel, or their taverns at least; and moreover, the knights brought with them one the village’s own—that strange-fated maiden, sent away with the saint half a year ago.

  Half a year and nothing’s changed, she thought. The chapel yet stood bright and tall on its plot east of the square; its graveyards seemed no fuller than she remembered. The seller’s stalls still sat at the market center, closed for the season, covered with snow. And there was the butchery and the apothecaries’ shop, the seamstress and the tailor, a small smithy next to the stables, and the dozens of little town houses filling the spaces between them. Every hide, hair, and home exactly as she’d left them. So when in a sudden gasp her heart stopped—frozen—she couldn’t say why or what the terror was, only utter the words, “Oh, God.”