Darksoul

‘Holy Dancer, Lady clothed in sunlight, I ask that you hear me now and bless this water with all the holiness of your sacred pools. Fox God, lord of cunning and resourcefulness, bless these our efforts to bring this man—’

‘Nils.’

‘This man Nils out of the darkness and into your sacred Light.’ Another swift glance about, and Gilda dribbled water over Nils’s face and neck, into his mouth. ‘Bathe in this water and be cleansed, from the outside in. Drink of this water and be cleansed, from the inside out. Reject the darkness, reject hate and pain and shame and fear. Embrace Light and love and comradeship. Open your heart and your soul to the Light, my friend. Let it in. Let it heal your soul and cleanse your mind, to bear you up against the waters of evil, to hold you close in love.’

Nils’s face was ecstatic as he closed his eyes and stretched his head back into his pillow. ‘I feel Her,’ he whispered. ‘I think She’s coming. The Dancer’s coming.’

‘I know.’ Gilda said, wanting to hush him, knowing she couldn’t. There was a feather-light brush across her mind, a warm breeze of laughter and overwhelming love. Peace came into Nils’s eyes even as it flooded Gilda’s heart. ‘Child of Light, let go. Of pain and fear and shame. Let it all go.’

‘Thank you, priestess,’ he murmured, breath thready, shallowing. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Thank you, Nils, for your faith and strength,’ Gilda replied. She bent down and kissed him softly on the forehead. ‘Go in grace, go in peace, and rest now in the Light,’ she added, and Nils turned his face away from her so she had the right angle to punch her slender-bladed knife through his temple into his brain. He died without a twitch and with a smile.

‘What are you doing?’

Gilda jumped and looked up into the face of Brevis, the East Rank’s chief physician. The man’s red-blotched face spoke of too much wine and too little sleep, but his hands were steady and Gilda had seen him wield the bone saw with skill.

She stood. ‘Nils was bleeding to death and in agony. There was no saving him. He begged the grace; I gave it to him.’ She sheathed the knife she’d stolen from his operating tent earlier.

Brevis scowled. ‘You have no right to make those decisions. The man might still have been of use.’

Gilda pointed to the stump, to the pool of blood still accreting beneath the cot. Scell wandered over, curiosity piqued by the raising voices and, no doubt, the sight of another new corpse. The man was a maggot, with a maggot’s lust for dead flesh.

‘Would you have me leave him alive in agony to do nothing but beg you for opium and curse you when you refused?’ Gilda asked.

Brevis looked at Scell, at the knife and sword he wore. ‘The grace is,’ he began. ‘The grace is …’ He trailed off, unable to repeat the dogma that had been forced upon him.

‘The grace is a heathen practice outlawed in the East Rank as it is among the Mireces,’ a new voice said.

Gilda looked past Brevis and bobbed a curtsey. ‘General Skerris,’ she acknowledged, ‘I find it odd you would outlaw such a thing. The grace is, after all, one of the only things your soldiers can be sure of – that if they are mortally wounded they will be ended quickly, with as little pain as possible. Surely you risk rebellion if you take it from them?’

‘They fight for a higher purpose now,’ Skerris rumbled. ‘Their pain glorifies the gods and brings Them closer, therefore we should not see it ended prematurely.’

Gilda glanced at the beds closest to her; wounded soldiers stared at them in disbelief, or hunched on their sides as far from Skerris as they could get, shoulders shaking as they wept. No swift end if infection takes them, no painless drifting away from a world filled with agony. No blink from life to death as a blade enters your brain. Instead, a protracted, lingering, pointless death that will fill them with despair and their fellows with horror.

‘Idiots,’ she snapped, careless of to whom she spoke. ‘You are making a grave mistake. These men are professional soldiers. They have pledged to fight for you, to obey your commands, and have given their souls to your filthy gods. You have already taken everything they have to give. They should at least be allowed to die in dignity, if death be their fate. You cannot take that from them. You must not.’

‘Mind your tongue,’ Scell snapped, jerking the chain as though Gilda was a snarling dog. She staggered, grunting as the collar reopened the scabs where the metal had chafed her neck raw.

‘You have no idea what the men in this hospital do and do not deserve or how they should spend their last hours,’ Skerris said calmly, as if lecturing a new recruit. ‘They are no longer mired in the delusions of your faith. They belong to Blood now, and if they must die steeped in it, they will do so to further the aims of our gods, the true gods. Treat them and do all you can to save them, but if they are dying, you will leave them to do so in their own time and not go near them again. It will purify their souls ready for the Afterworld. Do you understand?’

Gilda clicked her tongue against her teeth and scanned the closest beds; everyone was listening and she knew without doubt the news would spread to every soldier in the hospital and then to the entire Rank before dusk tinged the sky. Whether it would be enough to begin a rebellion, she’d no idea.

I hope so. Those who rise up against tyranny and the gods they’ve been forced to pledge themselves to will be welcome back in the Light when their time comes. If they’ve the strength to deny the pull of Blood with their final breaths, as Nils did.

Brevis held out his hand for the knife, and Gilda drew it and slapped it into his palm. He gasped, thinking she’d cut him, but she’d reversed the blade at the last second and his skin remained intact. His lip curled at her and she smiled back, the picture of elderly innocence. Where can I get another knife? Do I dare?

The thought was almost enough to make her laugh aloud; she dared, of course she did. Gilda had no illusions about her fate; her only plan now was to save the souls of as many of the East Rankers as she could before they killed her. Even if they were, officially, the enemy.

‘I will do as you ask,’ she said to Skerris, turning his order into a request. Skerris didn’t rise to it the way Corvus or Rivil would, or even Lanta; instead he nodded once and crooked a finger at Brevis to follow as he made his way up the aisle between the beds.

‘Don’t let her kill anyone,’ Brevis snapped at Scell as he hurried after the general.

Gilda turned a smile on Scell. ‘You heard the Rilporian, Scell. Don’t let me kill anyone, will you?’ She laughed. ‘Anyone would think I was the mass murderer, not your priestess. Come on then, let’s see who’s next. All right, mate, what’s your name? Captain, are you? Acquitted yourself well?’

She sat down on the next bed before Scell could answer and pulled the man’s blanket back, began to examine the bandages. ‘Did you hear me with Nils?’ she breathed. The man nodded, frightened. ‘You’re not dying, I can see that, but I can still pray with you if you want? If you’d like to try?’

His eyes wobbled in their sockets as he eyed the tent, Scell, Gilda herself. His mouth opened and closed like a fish a few times; then he nodded.

Gilda smiled.

DOM (#u12feb8fa-f5b7-5219-8f6f-cb6a72bd368b)

Fourth moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth

Road to Rilporin, Wheat Lands

She’d told him to cross at the West Rank’s harbour, and he had. She’d told him to walk southeast, and he had. She’d told him not to stop unless he must. He hadn’t. Now he was a week’s walk, maybe less, from Rilporin, from where he needed to be.

Dom’s feet were blistered and the muscles in his legs kept twitching even after he’d sat down, but he was close now. Close to them. Close to Her. His left hand was healing well from the knife the God of Blood had rammed through it, and although the fingers remained stiff and slow to close, it wouldn’t stop him when it came to a fight. He could always tie his hand to his sword if necessary, as long as he remembered not to scratch his arse with it afterwards. Or his throat. He snorted.

The fields were quiet, the winter wheat golden-brown and growing, but few people were working the land this close to Rilporin and the enemy. Dom wasn’t sure whether they’d fled or merely cowered in their homes, but their absence had encouraged the wildlife, and rabbits and hares hopped among the stems, nibbling the sweetest. Dom sat ten paces outside the edge of the field on a hard-packed track, waiting for something to jump into his snare. He had a few sticks ready for a fire and a ragged, soot-stinking blanket from Watchtown. A waterskin. His weapons. And the gods.

Watchtown. Home of Wolves and of Watchers. Heathens. Traitors. Murderers. Dom crammed his right wrist into his mouth and chewed, gnawing away at the itch, gnawing away the scars of his blood oath. Despite the divergence of their paths in the last months, Dom had lived with the Watchers his entire life, and so he’d done what he could to lay out the dead before She had commanded him to leave. He could still feel their skin, crispy from the fire, crumbling in his hands, sliding away in the grease to reveal pink flesh, flesh that peeled in slabs from charred bone. It was still on his hands even now, fat melted into the bandage on his left, the stink still in his hair, his clothes. There was a good chance he’d never wash it off, no matter how many baths he took.

A squeal and kick brought him back to the fields and he hurried over to his snare and killed the rabbit, ripped it from the thin cord and reset the trap. Food that wasn’t his own arm. Dom giggled. Need my strength, don’t I, my love? You said I will and look, here I am, ready for rabbit.

He unbandaged his left hand while the rabbit roasted in the top flames and poked at the sealed wound, sniffed it for signs of the rot, then splashed it with water and let the sun dry it. The smoke from his cookfire attracted attention, and he could see figures peering in his direction, armed with sticks and pitchforks, a few scythes that should be in storage until the harvest came in. So they were still there, then, watching their crop be destroyed.

Dom unbuckled his sword belt and made a show of putting it on the ground on the far side of his fire. Then he sat with his back to them. They wouldn’t hurt him; She’d said so.

He hummed as he prodded the meat with his knife, his stomach growling in counterpoint. Too long since he’d eaten enough to fill him, and too long since anything other than meat had passed his lips. What he wouldn’t give for a hearty leek and cabbage stew. His hum descended into a groan at the thought. Still, he’d be there soon, and they’d have supplies to share.

‘Travelling to Rilporin, stranger?’ The voice came from behind, gruff but with the tightness of fear beneath it.

Dom gestured, not turning. ‘You need to tend these fields; rabbits are making a right mess of your crop. Work the land so that when the war’s over you’ve got food to eat and sell. You’ll be dead otherwise.’

The man came around to face him, and Dom knew there were others at his back. The stranger was tall and broad, a lifetime in the fields honing his arms and shoulders and back. He planted his feet either side of Dom’s sword; Dom’s eyes flickered towards it and away.

‘We’re like to be dead soon anyway, those Raider scum come this way again. They’ve taken everything we’ve had put by; you’re not the only one living off rabbits.’

‘Ah. Is that the problem?’ Dom asked. ‘You want my rabbit?’

‘What? No. Man’s going to fight the Mireces, he’s welcome to a rabbit off my lands. Just wondering if you’d any news, brought any messages or anything. You’ve come from the west – is the Rank on its way? Reinforcements? They’ve been hammering at the wall for days now, sending men up there on ladders, cutting down our woods to build siege towers. I’m no soldier, but it looks pretty desperate from the glimpses we’ve had and the news we’ve heard.’

Dom licked his lips. ‘Going to fight the Mireces?’ he asked. ‘Why’d you think that?’

The farmer laughed. ‘Why else would you head towards the city? You’re a scout, a messenger or a warrior. Mind you, I’ve little idea how you expect to get past the Mireces and into the city without taking an arrow between the eyes. Still, you know best, I’m sure.’