Chapter XXIX

The fires were put out, and yet the smoke lingered in the air for days. It was a pungent stench, sour and bitter all at once. The ground was so full of ash that few places were solid ground anymore. The great horror of the ruins of Bogeid was knowing that mixed in with those ashes everyone walked on were the ashes of people. If you'd lost someone during The Night of the Violet Blaze you had to wonder, each time you went for a walk, if you were stepping on their charred remains. When the smoke was too much for you, your throat stung, and you coughed uncontrollably was it because you'd just breathed in one of the ghosts lingering in the air? Were they were forcing their way back out?

Haze hung in the air, and white ashes fell like snow. As Galia sat on the front steps of what was left of the temple, she saw a small, mostly burnt, piece of paper floating down with the ashes. Reaching up her hand she caught it and read the writing on it. She knew in an instant it was from a copy of the Sacred Scriptures, “'I will never forget my promises,' declares God, 'I will never forget my children.'”

Ardal approached Galia, slipping in the ashes as he came near, the guiltiest of expressions on his face. “It's been four days...you haven't eaten a thing or spoken a word...Have you even left these steps?” Ardal knelt down in front of her, tried to look her in the eye, but her gaze went right through him. How he wished she'd scream at him, beat him with her fists, bite him as hard as she could, express her utter rage, even hatred for what he had done. Anything but this silence.

It wasn't cold in Bogeid, but with how gray and bleak it was it should have been. In spite of the horror of their surroundings, there were those who celebrated nearly every day. They drank to their victory, and sang and danced. Galia saw two of the orphaned children who'd been living in her temple kicking around a skull, laughing as they played some childish game with it.

Even Ardal was horrified at what he saw. He told himself over and over that this was bound to have happened even without his involvement. Val had planned it for a long time, but that didn't help lift Ardal's guilt. He'd always taught that the Agalmites and the people of Arx were not necessarily evil, not to be hated and scorned, but rather misguided, and to be pitied. In spite of how hard that had become to believe with everything that had happened in his homeland, Ardal found that he did still believe those words deep down. It pained him to see so many people lost to the fires. No one deserved to die like that, and no one had the right to subject another to so horrible a fate.

Ardal held out a water-skin to Galia. “Drink!” he told her. “For the love of Prunikos, drink!”

Without any warning Galia struck Ardal across the face with her hand, hard. People walking nearby looked over and exchanged looks with one another, wondering if they should interfere somehow. Galia took the water-skin from Ardal's hands and began to gulp it down, the cool water refreshing against her dry, stinging throat.

“That's a start,” Ardal said, rubbing his cheek.

“Murderer,” Galia said. She hadn't intended for it to be a whisper, but it came out that way, given how sore her throat was. Ardal could say nothing in his defense. He could not deny it, and telling her he was sorry didn't seem like it would help any. “Sir Kedem warned me not to take you in...not to heal you. Now he's dead. He died, blown to pieces, because I didn't listen to him. Because you lied to me!” Again Ardal could say nothing. He hadn't specifically intended for Sir Kedem to be caught in the fires, but neither did he take any steps to make sure he'd survive. “I could have just as easily been caught up in that blast, had I not been at the front door.”

“Elykos protected you. He promised me that he would if I cooperated with him.”

“Right, because I'm yours,” Galia said, her nose turning up in disgust. “I'm not your property, Ardal! I don't belong to you!”

“I know!” Ardal said. “Look, I only phrased it that way in the heat of the moment, I was trying to save you!”

“You phrased it that way because it's how you feel. Well, now that you know I'm not going to submit to you what now? Do you plan to have me killed, then? Or cast out? Or, now that Sir Kedem's out of the way, did you plan on forcing me to be yours?”

“I would never!” Ardal shouted. “How dare you-”

“How dare I?” Galia stood, as far as Ardal could tell it was the first time she'd stood in days. “I thought I knew you! I thought you cared about me! I thought you were that same professor I knew when I was a girl, the one so full of kindness and compassion! God! You disgust me!”

“Professor you knew as a little girl?”

“It's not important!” Galia yelled and turned away. Tears filled her eyes. Over the course of the past few days she thought she'd cried every tear in her eyes, but it seemed there were more yet for her to shed. “You're a real bastard, you know that?”

“I know...” Ardal said, his shoulders sank.

“Hey, Ardal!” Val called out from across the soot-covered street. “I need you.” He gestured with his hand for Ardal to follow him and began to walk off.

“I got to go,” Ardal said.

“Off to plot more slaughter?”

Ardal ignored Galia's question. As far as he was concerned he did the right thing. Had he tried to stop Val and the others he probably would have failed, and, like Elykos said, Galia would have burned up in the fires too. He had no choice, and nowhere near enough power to stop what was happening. Even if he had succeeded in stopping Val and the others, then how many more would have died at Sir Gilad's hands? How much longer would his reign of terror gone on? No, he was certain he did the right thing. It pained him to know that Galia would probably never forgive him for it, but at least she was alive.

Ardal met with Val, his followers who had waited in the woods for days, and some of the other Nihilite rebels who'd helped retake Bogeid. They all huddled close together in an alley between two mostly-burned houses. “Elykos has warned me that scouts spotted the smoke rising from Bogeid, and the purple glow against the cloudy sky,” Val said. “Between that and the people who fled the town during the battle-”

“Battle?” Ardal interrupted. “Not sure I'd call that a battle.”

“Whatever you want to call it! Point is, a lot of people left Bogeid when the fires started, most of them haven't come back. In fact, I think the children are among the few who did, not knowing where else they could go. Some of them probably hoped their mommies and daddies would come back too. Between the scouts and the refugees it's not going to take long for the Arxians to discover what happened here and send an army to retake the city. We have to be ready to defend it.”

“And considering that we blew up the west wall, and Sir Gilad's keep, and the Inquisition's fortress we're at a bit of a disadvantage, aren't we?” Ardal said. “So what do we have people work on? The wall? Anti-siege weapons? Arms and armor? Even if we got all that finished in time we'd still have the problem of only having a hand-full of capable warriors to defend the city!”

“We'll have daemons helping us,” one of the rebels suggested.

“One daemon for each of us, on average,” Ardal said. “Nowhere near enough to make a difference if they attack with a sizable force. Especially if they have paladins or witch-hunters.”

“We hid out in the forest for days on end and no one found us,” one of Ardal's followers offered. “That gives us the opportunity to flank our enemies when they show up.”

“An ambush will help a little, but unless you have something serious to hit them with they'll crush you as soon as they realize what's going on,” Ardal said. “No, we need something more than that...”

“We could fill the fields surrounding Bogeid with Wet Fire,” one rebel suggested.

“Oh, sure!” Val said. “Let's set the whole damn countryside on fire while we're at it! One more rain storm and we could burn this whole region to the ground, choke ourselves out in smoke! That'll catch the enemy by surprise, they show up and everything's burned and all the people are dead!”

“They certainly wouldn't expect that,” one of the rebels joked.

Ardal ignored the joke. “That is, assuming the fire doesn't get massively out of control and burn all of Nihilus!” Ardal said. “No, we're not lacing the forest or the fields with Wet Fire!”

“Then what do we do? For Prunikos' sake, we need to do something! We can't just surrender the city back to them, not after we fought so hard to retake it ourselves!”

“For now have people rebuilding that western wall,” Val said. “We'll want it at least mostly repaired before anyone arrives, or at least we'll want it to look like it's repaired so that they'll focus on the main gate. We don't know how long we'll have...but I'll have to commune with Xaphan, see what he has for me. He told me about the Wet Fire, maybe there's some other weapon he can teach us to make that will help us win.”

“We should have some people look through the ruins of Sir Gilad's keep as well, see if there's anything NOT completely burned or melted,” Ardal said. “Unlikely...but not impossible.”

. . .

After the priest gave him the robe and the money Tassos was on a nearly non-stop trek back west. With the kingdom of Arx on the brink of a civil war he wanted to be far away from it as soon as possible, so he only stopped occasionally to buy additional food and supplies. He didn't even stop to buy new clothes, in spite of how impractical the ceremonial robes were for travel. He'd torn off the bottom of the robe, half-way up his calf. When he came across one particular town, having spent most of his money on food and all the supplies he could carry already, he found himself having to choose between buying a horse or buying a decent pair of boots. Soon he was riding barefoot on the back of a painted stallion, in a robe that, while white, was still too hot for the weather. Worst of all, he knew he was going to have to ride through Kolob again.

Kolob: the region ruled by the Inquisition. While elsewhere in Arx the Inquisition worked with the Agalmites, considering them the least of all heretics, it was widely understood that anyone not loyal to their sect caught in their lands would be either forced to convert or outright executed. More often executed if they were caught teaching their heresies. As he drew near Kolob he considered buying normal, commoner clothes, just to attract less attention to himself, but he wasn't sure exactly how much that would help. Really, if they saw him dressed in commoners' clothes they might be inclined to question him about his faith, which might lead them to discover that he was an Acolyte of the Father. If he was dressed as an Agalmite priest they would assume he worshiped the Agalmite God, and that he was one of those “least of all heretics.”

He decided to keep traveling in the priestly robes, but before he crossed into Agalmite territory he needed to do something to at least help make himself less obvious wearing a white robe in the woods. Near the path where he traveled he found a small outcropping of evergreen trees. He began snapping off the branches of the trees. The scent of the sap filled his nostrils, and he did his best to attach these branches to his robe, with the needles pierced and hooked into the linen. He then took handfuls of mud and slapped the clay on his chest and shoulders, turning the white robe brown. They'd still be able to hear the horse well enough, but now that he wasn't wearing white in the middle of the forest they'd at least have a harder time pin-pointing his exact location.

The sunlight cast streaks through the trees, reflecting off the dust in the air. Tassos knew he couldn't use the regular paths and roads, as they would be patrolled, so he rode his horse through the thick of the forest. He rode slowly because of the uneven ground and occasional low branches. Deer in the distance ran off as he approached, and a few times he could swear he heard the sound of something large, with padded paws, stalking him and his horse.

Most of a day was gone and he was over half-way through Kolob when he heard the sound of hoof-beats in the distance, riding towards him. “Damn!” he cursed, inwardly. “Father, watch over me!” The prayer was both a request and a demand, for the Father had a strange and seemingly contradictory way of dealing with mortal men. He would not reward them if they grovelled or begged, because he wanted his followers to be strong of body and will. Neither would he reward arrogance, for he wanted his followers to be prudent, and to remember not to disrespect those far stronger than they.

Tassos dismounted from his horse and led it by the reins over to one of the trees nearby. He tied the reins to the tree branches, and then searched for a place to hide. If the people approaching saw his horse they would likely deduce that he was not far away, and thus would search for him, but a horse was far harder to hide than it was for him to simply hide himself. Pine cones, dried pine needles, and thorny weeds cut and stung the soles of his feet as he walked the forest floor, and he silently cursed his rotten luck. He managed to find a thick bush and climbed into it, enduring all the cuts from its dried and jagged branches.

Through the branches and leaves Tassos could see the color the men on horseback were wearing; blood red. In Kolob this was the worst color he could have seen. Commoners wore gray or brown, dull colors meant to dissuade them from strong emotions. Inquisitors wore black, meant to inspire fear and respect in everyone around them. Only the witch-hunters, the Inquisition's trained killers, wore red uniforms.

Tassos heard dogs bark as the men on horseback approached, and he pulled further into the bush, and hoped it would deter them or hide his scent. The dogs weren't searching for him, but if he wasn't careful they'd find him, and so would the witch-hunters.

“The mountain lion went this way, I'm sure!”

“I don't see any tracks.”

“That's because the ground is too dry. The dogs know, look!”

The three bloodhounds with the witch-hunters sniffed around the forest floor. They searched for the scent of the mountain lion. For them to be hunting a mountain lion the beast must have been a man eater, and when Tassos thought back on the sound of padded paws stalking him he felt a chill wash over his skin. He didn't have long to think on that, though, as one of the three dogs headed in his direction. “Father protect me! Father, send the dog way!” he silently prayed, but the dog kept coming towards him. Apparently it found something about his scent was interesting. Perhaps the fact that he'd not bathed in days. Perhaps the stench of the catacombs was still on him.

The dog stopped just outside the bush he was hiding in and started barking loudly, its voice echoed off the mountains. The other two dogs ran over, sniffed at the bush, and then barked as well. Tassos would have killed all three dogs if he thought it would help him escape. Damned dogs!

The witch-hunters rode over to see what the dogs were barking at, and by now Tassos could see that there were five of them. He had little to no chance of defeating all of them. Surely they would kill him before he could either slaughter all of them or escape. Granted, the Father would resurrect him later, he had his fair share of deaths under his belt before he'd be leaving this world for good, but he didn't know how far back his next resurrection would set him in terms of his journey.

The witch-hunters dismounted, spears in one hand and short swords in the other, and approached the bush Tassos was in. “The mountain lion can't fit in there.”

“Something else's caught their attention.”

Tassos held his breath. He knew that if these five took him alive he'd be likely to be tortured, or burned at the stake. He wasn't sure that even his covenant with the Father could save him if they burned his body to ashes. Each violent death left scars, what would being cremated do? He had to be ready to act at just the right moment. If he hit them hard enough by surprise maybe they wouldn't have the chance to stop him from getting away.

One of the witch-hunters prodded into the bush with the end of his spear. Tassos shifted just slightly, so that the spear head moved past him, and then seized the shaft firmly in his hands and jerked it sideways. Had the witch-hunter been ready for it Tassos wouldn't have had a chance to knock him off balance. Witch-hunters were exceptionally strong, but he'd managed to hit his enemy by surprise, with no chance for him to brace for it. The witch-hunter fell into the others and they crashed into the dirt together. Tassos leaped from the bush. Branches tore at his skin and ripped his robe, and he dashed for the nearest horse. The dogs snapped at his heels, but just narrowly missed.

Tassos placed one foot in the stirrup of one of the horse's saddles and hoisted himself up in one swift motion. He grasped the reins, but just before he could kick his heels into the horse's side he felt a sharp pain in his side, between the ribs. One of the witch-hunters had pierced his side with his spear. Tassos stared down the length of the shaft for a moment and then toppled off of his horse and onto the forest floor. A loud crack shook his body when he hit to the ground. His head throbbed, strange lights danced in his vision, and there was a ringing in his ears. With his side bleeding out and all of his limbs numb from shock he knew they had him. There was no escape from this.

They spoke to one another, and their voices sounded to him like he listened to them from under water. “Hoist him up!” one of them said, he could barely make it out. The world around him was moving, and he felt his whole body jolt, and pain shoot through him, as he was brought to his feet.

“Probably missed his heart.”

“Good.”

Slowly he came to feel the sensation of two very strong pairs of hands holding his arms. Their grip was far too tight for him to shake them off, even if he hadn't been injured. Between his blood loss and the blow to his head when he hit the ground his whole world was spinning, his stomach churned.

“An Agalmite priest?”

“Probably not, look how much he's ruined those robes.”

Everything started getting dark around Tassos, and the voices of the witch-hunters dragging him off became more muffled again. “Let's take him back to-” And at that everything went black.