The Priest of Blood (19 page)

In one, his sword.

In the other, the fresh-cut head of our enemy’s chieftain.

Tossing the head onto a pile of corpses, he roared so that all might hear and speak of it. “Christendom has conquered the Legions of Hell!”

I felt a stab beneath my heart—it was not from an enemy, but from within. I fell to my knees from weakness. Dirt in my fingers felt like the blanket of my own grave. The memory of my brother’s face faded from me as if it were as insubstantial as smoke. My mother’s face, too, seemed a fiery yellow memory and did not possess any feminine feature that I could recall. The faces of my enemies were more powerful in my thoughts: from Corentin to the baron to Kenan Sensterre to the infidels. Even our commanders seemed enemies to me.

Only one memory of hope within me, but it was nearly dead: Alienora’s sweet, pure face, as I had last seen it when I had kissed her lips. Yet, she would never see me again. Those who held power and sway over others—and God and the gods—had commanded that whatever love I kept in my heart for her would wither and die as my love for all mankind must.

The sounds of the Earth died for a moment.

I hated all mankind. I hated its works. I hated that I had been born in a time and place, cursed from birth onward, which sent me and my brother and my friend to this hell for the benefit of the knights. For those like the baron, who would watch my mother burn but would train a dove for his sick wife, who would keep Alienora from me. I burned with anger over this world—the world that God had ordained and all must accept. I hated that I could expect no more from life, nor would life offer more, that even in the life to come, the kings and dukes and barons and knights would remain powerful, while such as myself would be a servant even unto the end of days.

I felt a fever overtake me in this anger. A ringing in my ears began, blocking out all other sounds. The world seemed to grow into a whiteness, as of snow. I smelled a burning of oak, as if I were in the Great Forest, around a campfire. Was I going blind? Deaf? Why could I hear only a distant ringing as of one bell tolling in a long, drawn-out tone? Why the light that ripped at my vision of the world? Then I heard a strange voice, almost as if it were within me, whispering. Then, it grew louder. It was a woman, not Alienora, but some stranger.
 

Come home
, she said, and I tried to remember where I had heard this voice before, but I could not. It was of the Old Tongue, but I could not recall it. This phantom inside me said two words, again, and again:
Come home.

The moment was broken. The smell of bloodied dead, of sweat, of human pain, all around again. The dust still rising, obliterating the gates of the great city before our throng, a city of purported riches. The men around me, cheering their heroes, raising the whoop and cry of the battle well won.

The boy, Thibaud, found me by the torn banner that our men had raised among our dead. Piles of bodies lay there, as if for a feast of some terrible demon from Hell. The boy searched among the dying, and after a time, trotted over to me, raising a skin filled with water. “Are you wounded?”

“In my shoulder,” I said.

Thibaud ran about and touched both my arms and shoulder. He tore at my coverings and tunic until I lay there, bare-chested. “There is no cut here. You have but an old scar.”

What infidel magic is this?
I thought. For I was certain I had a wound from the day’s fighting. I could not remember an old scar at all, but then, when he touched the edge of it, I remembered my beating at the hands of Corentin before my journey to this desert hell had begun.

The old wound of that beating had been opened again, and, if I lived longer, would rip apart each year of my life.

3

Later, when I had some strength, I reached out to Thibaud Dustifot for support as I stood. “Frey is dead, boy.” I had no tears left, and no feeling in my body or soul.

“No,” he said, and began weeping in a way that I had forgotten there could be tears at all. He wept with the innocence of his age and his heart, and in his eyes I saw all that I had lost on my journey through the world.

I could not comfort him, for I had begun to travel in my soul to a place of ice and fire that was beyond any human feeling.

4

When the camp had been set, for we had not yet opened the great gate of the Kur-Nu, but simply damaged the outer walls of its fortress, I sat with Ewen and Thibaud and whispered to them of what I meant to do. I tell you now that all I wanted was to be dead. I had no love for life, and had even begun to resist the idea of one more day of battle. Yes, I would desert my countrymen and the Hospitallers, and I knew the consequence of this act. I did not care. I had watched the world take my family from me, and my only love, and I had no faith left.

“Before dawn,” I told them. “I will go. I am unclean from this battle.”

“If our unholy enemy has cut down your brother, would it not be better for you to avenge his death?” Ewen asked. “At least for the sake of your country?”

“I have no country,” I said.

“What of Our Lord?” Thibaud asked.

“You remember the Old Ways,” I said, noticing the glimmer in his eye. “What of those gods and goddesses? I have no faith. I am lost.”
 

“You have the stubborn streak of your blood,” Ewen said, wise beyond his years. “As well as its doom. You must not let humours destroy you. You must not, Aleric. I beg of you.” His face had taken on a reddish hue as he spoke, and his words were more impassioned than I’d heard from him previously. Yet he meant nothing to me, nor did his words have an effect on me.

I grinned, more grimace than smile. “I will never see my homeland again, I will never see my beloved. I am a man who will bring to doom those who carry me in their hearts. It would be best if you abandoned me to this, both of you, friends.”

The boy shook his head. “I am your servant. I go where you go.”
 

“As do I,” said Ewen.

“Where I go—” I covered my face with my hands. “Where I go, friends, is to the end of my days. When the feast begins tonight, and the boasting and calling, I will be gone.”

“But the Ghul,” Thibaud said, a shadow crossing his young face. “They are out there, master. I have seen them once.”

“Have you?” I said. “Perhaps I shall meet one of these Ghul, and he shall make quick work of me.”

5

To desert the Hospitallers was to court death in many ways. First, deserters would be executed on sight, if found, as they would in any military order. Additionally, because I was part of a payment from the baron to the Hospitallers themselves, I might even be given a torturous execution to further discourage other servant-warriors from imitating my flight. Although I had never seen it, we had all heard the tales of those deserters and traitors who were roasted on spits while they begged for mercy. I did not intend to find out if those stories were true. Additionally, the enemy might take me at any moment on my journey from the Hospitaller encampment, and the foe would be happy to find a soldier wandering unguarded so as to slit his throat or perhaps take him back to their city for a slower death.

But worse than all this was the land itself. It was a land of hills and crags and desert and boulder and the intense heat of a sun that seemed to rise from Hell each day and carry with it brimstone and fire. I had nearly starved to death along our march, and the sunlight could parch even the most well drunk soul. I knew I was going to certain death, and I embraced that. If I had had an ounce of genuine bravery, I would have cut my own throat to end things there, but I felt as if I needed to find a place to die. To be away from all mankind. To find a hiding place among the endless caves and rocks of the wasteland beyond the citadels.

I could not discourage my friends from coming with me. Though I didn’t feel that Thibaud should risk his young life at my expense, he felt as if he owed me his allegiance. Ewen had become as much like a brother to me as had anyone, and as they both slipped away from camp with me, under cover of the dark, I felt as if I had burdened them with my grief and hatred and oncoming death. Hours into our journey along the vast emptiness, I turned to them, drawing my sword.

“You must return to camp,” I said. “I will kill both of you here to save you the hardships of the days to come. You are not part of my hatred. You must live and return home to those you love so that you may not fall in with the wolves of darkness, as have I.” I truly saw my world as one of wolves, not men. I meant to be done with it, and I cursed God for the life given to me.

Ewen shot me a sharp glance. “You are more than brother to me, Falconer. You have saved me more than once in the past. I cannot abandon you to this darkness you hold.”

“You must,” I said. “If you love me. If you care for my soul, you will allow me to make this journey alone.”

“I pray that you will find peace and return,” Ewen said. He approached me, and we embraced. I felt the wetness of his tears upon my neck. Though he had just reached manhood, he was still only a boy in his heart, a boy from the fields of our homeland. I could nearly smell the sweetness of spring grass in him, and as heavy as was my heart, and though rocks seemed to weigh my soul down into dark water, I could not help but hope that he would find a better world than the one I had seen. I ached for home, for love, for happiness, for some peace. But my brother, dead, my mother, burned alive—there was nothing but ashes and smoke in my world.

Ewen whispered in my ear as he held me, “Losing you, my friend, I feel as heartsick as you must have felt when your brother fell. Do not do this to me, or to the boy. I beg you.”

When he withdrew, he turned his back on me and began walking back to camp. We said nothing more.

The boy stood, watching me, as if trying to understand my resolve. Finally, he said, “With you, the wind,” which was an old saying of the Bretons on voyages outland. “And the birds, to find your way home.”

“And with you, the earth,” I gave the response. “And the forest.”

The parting of friends tore at me, but I could not then recognize the love and affection of any. I was set on my course, and had perhaps only been interrupted by the voyage to the battles. I would never see Alienora again. I carried guilt for my mother’s death, and for my brother’s, as well. I did not then understand the powerlessness of mortal life against the greater forces in the world. I blamed myself for much, and saw no good in mankind nor in myself. I pitied all, and spurned what little remained in my heart of kindness and love and hope.

I felt I had already died before I had even met Death.

6

I had heard of a place, and hoped it was not simply a falsehood, a mirage created by soldiers who dreamed of darkness and cautionary tales in this foreign land.

It would take me nine days to find the place where I would die. It was a place I had only heard of in legend from other soldiers who had been in these wars for a decade or more. They told of a Plague City—a city of the Devil Himself—called by some the Devil’s Horns.

7

Here is the legend of this place of the Devil, the great many-towered city that was also called Hedammu. It had been a great stronghold of the infidel, then had been taken by an order called the Knights of the Sword. They had begun as an order of warrior-monks, very much like the Hospitallers and the Templars.

But the Devil’s Horns had changed them. Enchantment and bewitchment were said to be afoot within its walls. Within it, it was said, was a great relic that contained healing and prophetic powers, and which had seemed to be of holiness, but had been revealed to be the head of Baphomet, the reviled and sinful.

The enemy had returned to poison its wells, and had sent in harlots full of disease, whose lips and breasts had been painted with an elixir that smelled of almond and cinnamon, but which brought a slow, burning death to the soldiers who tasted of these women. Soon, all had died within the towers, and the citadel remained uninhabitable. The infidel had razed the land with salt and spices that were poisonous in nature. It was said to be cursed and the mouth of Hell itself, thus the nickname of the Devil’s Horns. In the many years of this war against the unfaithful, more than one great city had met this fate. They became known as the Unclean Places, for disease and pestilence were their only legacy.

They became places where we, the soldiers of the Cross, were forbidden on threat of eternal damnation.

But what light of faith had I left? All my belief in eternity had diminished. All of love had been stolen from me. All of hope. I had been reminded of my lowly station, of my bastardy, of the shame of my mother’s life and execution, of the deceit and betrayal by my master Sensterre and his son, my half-brother Corentin. And just as I thought this foreign land of war and holiness had returned my sense of justice and mercy, I had watched while my beloved brother was cut down, and I had truly grown sick of all the machinations of mankind. I was not for this world, so I needed to enter the next.

And I would do so at the mouth of Hell itself.

I knew the place on sight, for its towers seemed pristine in the last light of day, and its battlements perfect yet in places crumbling. It had remained untouched by all, and was known as a symbol of the wrath of God upon all who had taken to vice and debauchery.

It would be my final home: I wanted nothing more than to drink of its poisons and taste of its damnation.

8

The first dawn, as I wandered just over the rise from the main road, so as not to be spied by either enemy or friend, I had the feeling that someone followed me. I began imagining it was an enemy, then I half hoped that Ewen dogged my steps so that I might not feel this terrible loneliness—the solitary end of my days approaching, torturing me with thoughts of the past and fear of the world to come.

All that day, I stopped, ran up to whatever rise or rock was within easy distance, and glanced back along the road, but I could not see anyone within the shadowy overhangs of rock along the ridge of the hills. As the first night approached, I became more certain that I had a tracker, and wondered who would be following me so far, for surely I had traveled too many leagues to make it worth tracking me and bringing me back in shackles to the camp.