Heretic

Chapter 7

Kierna reigned in her horse and wiped gods-blood off the blade of her sword. The substance seemed to sizzle, radiating power as hot coals give off heat. It burned with a light of a color she could not define, bright as a freshly forged sword taken from the fire. Her godseye was open only a slit; she’d learned long ago that opening it wide was a recipe for nausea and over-stimulation.

Ordinary red blood came off as well. Kierna remembered hewing through short spears, chopping across shields, and stabbing and slashing through arms and faces and guts. The faces of the men she’d killed swam in her mind, expressions of fury or pain or terror contorting them. They joined the many others she’d killed over the years, the ones she saw whenever she tried to sleep.

Sheathing her cleaned sword, Kierna took stock of those around her. Hamaara and Kenth were ahorse atop the nearest rise, bows ready with arrows nocked, ready to fire at the first sign of pursuers. Vahn’s riderless horse stood nearby, cropping at the grass. She could see Garreth a quarter-mile behind them, riding with his lance at the ready, watching their backs. Farrus was over the hill, screening their advance and scouting the best path.

A dozen tired villagers stood or sat in a huddle nearby, many of them injured and bleeding, all of them dejected and wide-eyed with grief. Half of them were children. One gray-haired woman carried an infant on her hip, and a small boy held the hand of an even smaller girl who looked to be his sister, but most of them seemed unrelated. Some had a few belongings slung up in a roll, and two men carried spears and long knives. A teenaged girl was driving a goat beside her. But most of them had nothing but the clothes on their backs.

“Rest while you can,” Kierna told them, her practiced captain’s voice cutting through the chatter like a boom of thunder. “We move on in five minutes. Stay together, keep between us, and be ready to run when we tell you. If any of us ride off, continue on the path and we will rejoin you shortly.” Weary, she climbed off her horse and unstopped her canteen. Her throat ached as the cool water softened it. After, she overturned it and let a trickle of it pour down her head. The water seeped down her neck and into the cloth padding beneath her armor, which felt like it had doubled in weight since before the battle.

“That blood isn’t yours, I hope?” Kierna turned to see Hamaara approaching, off her horse. The older woman’s leathery skin was dirty with dried blood and sweat, and a bandage wrapped around her upper arm was red. She was breathing hard, her proud stature betrayed by the way she hunched forward and took small, careful steps, avoiding pushing herself too hard. Kierna felt a pang of guilt. The woman had been riding with her since long before Kierna had become a paladin. She’d shown her how to shoot from horseback, how best to move in the weight of full armor, how to take one glance at a battlefield and notice all the little details that meant life and death, and how to seize the opportunities that would let her survive them. But she was old now, past fifty, and had no place in a pitched battle.

“No… I…” Kierna looked at herself, noticing for the first time the way her beautiful silver armor was covered in gore, its shining embellishments turned dirty and brown in the cloudy light. “I took no wounds. This is from Amauro’s soldiers. The fools.” She’d not wanted to kill them, but she could not stand by and watch as they slaughtered an entire tribe.

“And from Hauthern,” Hamaara said sadly. Hauthern had been one of her lancers, a good, solid man, veteran of a hundred missions. He’d taught her how to set a lance, and staved off boredom on long rides through the country singing the joyous basso songs of his homeland, and cooked her hearty stews that tasted of home. He’d come between her and the great wolf of the grass, after Kierna had charged her. Her glaive had torn the goddess’ side open in a great gash as long as a carriage, but Amauro had bowled her over, throwing her from her horse, and she’d lost her glaive in the fall and been forced to draw her sword. She’d looked up in time to see the wolf’s burning orange eyes before her, and then Hauthern had been there, and Amauro had lunged, and blood had gushed down like a waterfall. But somehow she’d gotten out from under him, and lived.

“Preserve his soul,” Kierna prayed, as Hamaara echoed. Willing to speak no more, she turned away and began to inspect her horse, checking for any injuries. The creature was a magnificent specimen, his coat a glossy chocolate brown, twenty-two hands tall, with intelligent eyes that watched her as she rubbed him down. Beneath her gloves, she could feel the crackling energy of the temple’s miracle, granting the steed strength and vigor. He would be good to keep riding for hours more, and seemed unhurt.

Jurran hadn’t been so lucky. She’d called the young lancer away just as he’d been about to attack the heretic, and his eyes had flashed with an angry reproach. All the way across the Warana grass he’d glowered and stewed, still angry about his demotion back in the city. She’d taken to sparring with him every few nights during camp, and he’d swung his sword with brutal force, as though he could smash all his problems away if he just hit hard enough. She’d been talking with him, slowly and cautiously, as one might a spooked horse. His responses had been dark and sardonic, but she had thought she was on the verge of getting through to him. The last few nights he had seemed more relaxed, almost at ease. He’d died in the village, thrown from his horse by a swipe of Amauro’s great paw. She’d seen him lying in a muddy puddle, struggling to get to his feet, and she’d rode hard for him, desperate to make it in time, but the warriors had gathered around him and stabbed down with spear after spear, impaling him a dozen times. The face of one of his killers flashed in her mind, a scared-looking boy barely old enough to fight, and the way her sword had sheared through his ear and eye as she’d rode by.

Vahn had died as well, though she’d never seen it. She’d called her men together, once it was clear the battle was lost and they must retreat. They’d herded the few survivors they could gather out of the village, and she’d looked back one more time to see his body lying in a pool of blood, surrounded by the four men he’d killed. His face had been smashed in by a sling-stone, his beautiful smile cracked and ruined. The man had been a hopeless flirt, never ceasing in his joking self-deprecation and his dramatic compliments towards her. There were times when she’d looked at him across the fire, lying splayed out with his long limbs and tousled curls, and contemplated what it would be like to break her vows with him, some night beyond the sight of the camp. Well, he wouldn’t be around to tempt her anymore. That realization felt like a stone lodged in her chest.

The thunder of hooves shook her out of her thoughts, and she turned to see Farrus riding back over the hill. He made straight for her, taking the time to put his fist to his chest in salute, his long blonde braid sticky with sweat.

“Path ahead is clear, Blessed, just more hills and grass. But it’s a long way to the border, five or six miles, I’d guess. We’ll need to push them hard if we want to stay ahead of the wolf,” he said.

Kierna did not know if Amauro would follow. She’d hurt her, wielding her blessed blade and the miracles of Jehx to cut deep into the body of the wolf she’d chosen as her avatar, and the goddess had backed off rather than commit to battle. But it would not take them long to finish their destruction of the village, and Amauro had nearly a hundred warriors left by her reckoning, and might send them to hound them even if she chose not to come herself. She hoped Tzamet would slow her down, if for no other reason than spite. The god’s influence here was ended; he would soon be reduced to a mere spirit of the land, a vassal or parasite living in another god’s fiefdom.

“We shall. Jehx will grant us strength,” Kierna said. “Ride back to Garreth, tell him to wait here for an hour to watch for any signs of pursuit. If they come, he is to harry them with bow and arrow, but to avoid battle, and to retreat if they get close. If he sees Amauro, he is to flee at once.

You will continue to scout ahead until we reach the border. When we get within a mile of it, leave off and cross on your own, seek out the nearest village and find out what sort of reception we are likely to get. These grass tribes are many, and often they hate each other, embroiled in some old grudge or another. It wouldn’t do to deliver these folk to safety only to have them murdered.”

“Yes, Blessed. What if I should spot the heretic? He was running this way, last I saw him.”

“Avoid him. He’s a Lector, and you’re one man. Who knows what sort of powers the Unbound have given him? We take him together, or not at all.” Kierna could not abide the thought of losing more of them. When next they found the heretic, she would deal with him herself, safe in the knowledge that Jehx guarded her.

“And after we reach this village? Try to pick up the heretic’s trail once more?” Hamaara asked. Her gaze was questioning. She had always been able to read Kierna well.

“No. We’ll let them rest a bit, then escort these villagers to Aathdel. We can pick up fresh levies there and task a company to send them on to the Stairs. Like it or not, they’re apostates now. They’ll need somewhere to go. We’ll send Garreth with them. If he’s lucky, he’ll make it home in time to see his son born.” She envied him that miracle, but pitied him the task of speaking with Jurrun and Vahn and Hauthern’s families. “Mount up. It’s time we moved.”

They rode for hours across the flowing grass, the summer’s heat cooled by Tzamet’s rains. The apostates marched sullenly, eyes downcast, speaking no words. Most never bothered to look ahead of them. What did they have to look for? Their god was lost to them, and their homes, and there was nowhere in the world that would call them kin. Kierna remembered another train of refugees, marching along stony foothills, decades ago. She’d been barefoot, her shift torn and muddy, only able to walk on her own for an hour or so until her little legs had given out and her father had had to carry her on his shoulders. She could barely remember the name of the goddess and town they’d left behind.

They’d made it to Ethka in the company of one of her brothers, an aunt, and three cousins, but a year in the city had scattered them across its streets. The brother had died in a drunken brawl, a cousin executed for theft from a goddess’ temple. The others had become strangers. Her father worked, but Kierna had come down with a cough that he feared would kill her, and so he’d borrowed money for a doctor. He’d died in a debtor’s prison, months and months before she could save enough to see him free.

Kierna had wound up in the very same prison, shortly after her fourteenth birthday. She’d stolen a sack of grain, nothing she hadn’t done a hundred times before, only she’d been caught, and the cost of the theft had been quadrupled and placed on her as debt. She had no money, and no one to pay for her, nor could she work from her windowless cell, and so she had thought her life over. She would sit there and rot for years until she wasted away, with only the vain hope that her cousin or aunt would remember her and care enough to pay.

On the third day, she’d been released. Shocked and not understanding, she’d been too afraid to ask questions, scared that there had been some mistake and that she would be jailed again if she did not leave at once. But on her way out of the prison she passed ten men outside in monk’s black robes, submitting themselves to arrest. She’d stared, wondering at how serenely they accepted their chains.

“They’re here to replace you,” a voice had said, soft and certain. She’d jumped, and turned to see an ordinary looking man with his white hair bound in a long tail, and green eyes that watched her like a merchant taking stock of new merchandise. He was dressed in soldier’s clothes, all dyed white and black, with a long straight sword tied at his waist.

“Replace me?” she’d asked, then nervously glanced around, but the guardsmen were paying her no heed.

“Your debt has been paid, by the Lector of the Sword Temple. Charity balances the scales when justice is weighted too harshly, yet crime must still be punished. The city has settled your punishment at thirty days internment. Each of these men will be jailed three days, to settle the matter.”

“And you’re here for me,” she said, catching on. She balanced on the balls of her feet, checking the nearest alley out of the corner of her eye. If she ran, she thought she could escape. The swordsman was older and likely slower, the sword would make him awkward. Yet she was in poor health after her stay in prison, and she did not know this part of the city well enough to lose him in its alleys and backstreets. If he caught her in some dead-end, she did not like the thought of facing him with that sword in hand. He leaned against the stone wall, as relaxed as a cat, but he seemed graceful, perhaps one of the swordmaster-monks she’d heard about at the temple of Jehx.

“The girl understands,” the swordsman said, smiling at some secret joke. “Your payment has been settled, your debt passed to me. You will work at the Sword Temple, perhaps for a year, longer if need be, and then you will be free.”

“What sort of work?”

“The ordinary kind. Cleaning and tending the gardens and minding the animals, that sort of thing. You’re a skinny thing, but tall, and those arms look to have some muscle on them. I should think we can find a place for you. Our temple does not practice prostitution, if that concerns you.”

“And if I say no?” Kierna asked, ready to run.

“You may go… and next time you find yourself rotting in a cell, no one will extend the hand of friendship. There is place in Justice for mercy, I think, but no tolerance for stubbornness. Do you love your crimes so well, that you bristle at the thought of a proper living?”

“No. I’ll come,” Kierna said. She could always run away if they made her do something she didn’t want, and no doubt the temple would have plenty of riches. She might be able to escape with a fortune, and finally leave this city behind her.

“How gracious. Let’s be off then.” The swordsman started away, moving with long smooth strides, and she trotted along to follow.

At the gates to the prison, a small gathering of men and women waited. They were resplendent in finery, soft silks and furs and bedecked in jewels and gold. She froze, recognizing several glyphs embroidered along their clothes, the names of gods and goddesses in the language of the First World. She dropped to her knees at once. These were the clerics, the men and women who spoke with the voices of their gods, rulers of the city of a thousand faiths. Each one of them could have her killed with a word.

At the swordsman’s approach, each one of them kneeled and bowed their heads. Her mouth hung open.

“Holiness,” one of the clerics muttered. “We were told you were visiting the city today, and hoped for a meeting-”

“I’m afraid I’ve no time,” the swordsman said, blowing off the ruler with not so much as an apology. “I have a new acolyte I need to introduce to the temple.”

The clerics studied her, and she felt herself quake under their gazes. “This… child? Is she someone of importance?”

“All our children are important to us, Keitha. You fellows ought to try to remember that. Come, Kierna.” The swordsman clapped the cleric on the shoulder, as though they were equals, and continued on down the street without a backwards glance. The clerics glared at Kierna as she ran to follow him.

“Who are you?” she asked, after working up the courage for several blocks.

“My name would take one of your lifetimes to speak, child, but those who serve me call me by the old word for the fairness and reward which I aspire them to follow,” he said casually.

“Jehx,” Kierna said, breathless.

“The man who’s body I am borrowing today is Mareth Kenly, the Lector and Third Sword of Tyre Ettha. After today, he will be your master. I expect you to show him respect, and I know he will do the same of you. Serve ably, keep your eyes open and your mind thoughtful, and perhaps you will learn enough to make a proper living, hm? There are paths to faithfulness open even to apostates, much as our children loath to admit it.”

“I will. Serve, I mean.” All thoughts of stealing from the temple fell from Kierna’s mind. This was a god before her, and he knew her name. She had no choice but to serve.

And serve she had, first in fear, then in habit, then in peace. Her debt had been paid in less than a year, and she had left, tentatively regaining her freedom, but three years later she had returned, seeking the sense of belonging she had left behind. That had been long ago, but still she served.

Escorting the refugees through the grass, Kierna reflected on the task of Justice her god had given her. Her mission had shown her all the ugly evils of the world, had forced her to maim and kill and see her friends slaughtered before her. Yet she had also raised up helpless and battered children, helped men reclaim their stolen lives, avenged the murdered fallen, saved those condemned to die for no good reason. These villagers here were only a dozen backwoods nobodies, uncared for by any but their own tyrant god who treated them as tools. But she could change that, give them a new home, a choice, like the one she had been given so long ago. The stone in her heart started to grow lighter, and fade away, as her faith replaced it. The clouds dispersed, and warm sunlight shone down on her once more.

She wondered if the heretic Isaand Laeson felt that same sun, and whether his god was watching over him as well.

End of Part One