At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  Don’t look weak. He drew up straight, like the soldiers did, but instantly knew it was a poor decision. He innately spoiled for a fight that would not help him. He looked aside. Remember: think of him as another noble. Hands folded and head bowed, but the words, the pathetic words, spilled out of him regardless.

  “They took her.” He hated his voice. Eyes lifted. The boy came into focus. “You have to stop them. They took her and they’ll beat her, and if that happens—”

  “Woah, woah,” Rurik hesitated, leaning forward on the palms of his hands. “What is it? What are you on about? Who—“ He licked his lips. Blinked. “Essa?” There came a hint of feeling—a flash of raw, mortal fear.

  So we are both of us human, after all.

  The explanation was rushed, but he left nothing aside. As he went on, Rurik’s face blanched. Before he had even finished, the young lord had snatched up his pistol and was outside. “Berric? Berric?” he shouted, but no one answered. Voren followed, but the inflamed lord easily outpaced him—as well as his own guards, who shouted after their dust.

  It was funny, in its way, what fear could do to a person. As Voren looked around them, he began to recognize signs. Signs that might have turned his legs to so much paste had not the fear for Essa pulled him. The camp always built itself up along certain lines, and even the drunken wake of victory had not changed that. So Voren knew they headed for its heart.

  Voren had made it a point never to visit the place the men called “the pit.” A barbaric notion, long past its prime but all too prevalent in their oh-so modern army. Everywhere they camped, a new pit—nothing but a bare patch of starched grass, really, where the most people could gather for a show.

  It was the punishing grounds. At the center, five poles were daily raised, not so unlike the Springtide Poles, but to these were hung ropes threaded with the barbaric hunger of men taught to wear emotion far too close to the surface.

  At its edge, Rowan sat glowering up at the gathering crowd, hands bound and lip bloodied. With no sign of Essa, Voren watched as Rurik shoved his way through several hapless soldiers, pivoted frantically in place, and at last settled on the cousin as well. Knuckles white as snow clutched the boy’s pistol, earning more than one hesitant whisper. He looked back to Voren, as if for some reprise, but Voren only shook his head and nodded to their bound friend.

  “What is this?” Rurik cried, voice breaking at the strain.

  A cluster of men stood guard over the fencer, at least one of them a Gorjes man. They exchanged knowing looks before one among them shrugged. Rurik stepped toward them, but if he meant to cow them, it was an empty gesture. They stared, blank as posts. Probably twice as dumb. At least one snickered.

  “I demand to know why you hold this man.”

  The Gorjes snorted as he stepped towards the boy. “Not your call, I’m afraid.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bastard’s call,” the Gorjes sighed, losing interest in the debate already. “This one’s to be held till the beatin’s done. ‘Is own safety.”

  “We’ll see about that. And just who are you supposedly punishing?”

  A toothless smile. “Y’know damn well, lordling.”

  For the fleeting breadth of a moment, Voren thought there would be blood. Though the armored hulk towered over Rurik, the boy’s hand quivered to the tune of his taunt. A flick of a trigger, and another day of chaos might have reared its ugly head. Despite himself, Voren found it stirred a chord within his own head: Kill, kill, kill. All he had was a kitchen knife, but he was sure if push came to shove, he could bury it in one of the sellswords’ throats.

  Red-faced, Rurik shoved at the man, though it hardly moved him. The smile remained and laughter echoed behind it, and Rurik—Rurik let out one incontinent scream and swung back towards the baker. “Come on,” he snapped, though he did not wait to see if Voren followed.

  They made it as far as the edge of the gathering crowd. It was splitting down the middle, making room for a fool’s procession. Armored men led three figures bound to a line by ropes, while two bare-chested Gorjes took up the flanks. None held weapons drawn, but their hands did not linger far from hilts. At the center of this procession was a disheveled Essa, eyes wild and alert, but otherwise as yet unharmed. Neither of the others were in such fine condition. She was a star swimming through darkest night—and he wondered how much longer she could shine.

  He side-stepped the lord, darted through a few lingering bodies toward the line. He emerged to the left of the lead man. Essa seemed to catch the motion, for she locked on him instantly, gaze widening, eyes pleading. “I don’t—” But that was as far as she got, for the Gorjes man at her side swatted her as though she were no more than a fly. Voren cried out with her pain, though she did not, and flung himself forward, overcome with the sight. He bundled his fist, even as he railed against his own idiocy in mind. The Gorjes turned, grinning and then…

  Another hand caught his, and he was all but wrenched off his feet. He struggled, helpless as the Gorjes took Essa by the arm and hauled her back on her feet. Someone hallooed a cat call, and a dozen other voices answered. Voren raged against the grip, twisted on it—and found Rurik, stalwart, staring back at him.

  “This does not help.”

  Voren pulled one final time, the fight if not the rage going out of him. Rurik let it go, but his stare—sympathetic, almost—did not waver. “Then do something,” Voren cried bitterly. The boy nodded and his twisted eyes scanned the crowd. If the Bastard had ordered this, would the villain dare to survey his own handiwork? He rarely did.

  “Back, all a ya’s,” one of the Gorjes said, with a shove to a soldier not quick enough on his feet. Voren tittered at the poles, wringing his hands. He knew what happened here. So much blood.

  It reminded him of another day. Never before had Voren spared a wayward thought for the father. For Pescha. But he saw the drunkard then, bound up at the stake, on parade for them all. He looked to Essa and felt the sweat roll down. Could she really take such a thing?

  When he turned back, Rurik was gone. It took him a moment to find him again, and then it was only his back, shoving forcefully through the crowd. Shapes broke at the passing, and he trailed the figure up to what he assumed was the destination—gryphon-headed flags, at least half a dozen flapping to the breeze of one. Though he dreaded the thought of leaving Essa alone, he dreaded more the thought of leaving Rurik alone.

  He glanced back at Rowan, still as a blade of grass upon the earth. “I’ll be back,” he spoke softly, but the fencer did not hear him. He turned, regardless, and stalked after the boy. Their hope.

  It was not nearly so easy for him to navigate the crowd, for though he did not lack the will, he lacked the body and the name to make the people move. He brushed alongside them, rather than they along him, like water crashing on the rocks, until he burst out the other end, stumbling into the clearing Rurik had marked as his own.

  A dozen men stood in a throng about the boy. He looked outmatched, naught but his pistol within a mass of steel. These were men that were never off-duty. Not since the assassination attempt, at any rate, and they were all of them built like bearded statues. Career soldiers, he had no doubt. And at their center, the Bastard, with that fool-man Berric, listening to the boy he called a friend.

  “…nothing wrong. In point of fact, the moral man would say she did all that was right.”

  The Bastard’s expression betrayed no toil, nor mirth. It stood as stone itself. “After she attacked her own men? On this, law as well as commonsense are clear.”

  “Commonsense? She is not a soldier!”

  The Bastard’s lips curled into the thinnest of lines, giving him a dreadfully wearied look. “She bears arms. And she walks beneath these banners. We sent the camp followers home months ago. If not a soldier, my friend, than what is she?” Someone whistled, but the Bastard did not smile. At least, not with his lips. He flicked Rurik’s disjointed stare aside and took a step forward. “Must we continue to make
this such a show? This is best discussed in private, Rurik.”

  A shudder went through the boy, but even then, Voren could see some of the fire had gone out of him. Don’t you…

  “You have already made it a show. This is—”

  “None of your concern. Your dedication to your friends is commendable. But this is beyond you. Punishment comes.” The Bastard’s voice seemed to falter on that last, and his hand absent-mindedly brushed against the scar at his hip. Then, sharply, his voice rang with a marshall’s clarity, drowning out the crowd. “To one and all. Now take your stand. I would not drag this out any longer than need be.”

  And that was it. Coward, the voice in Voren screamed. He stood, fists clenched, like a child confronting a bully. The Bastard brushed by them both, and when Rurik turned, the fire had been replaced with naught but ashes. Chill and damp with the spring rain. You coward. This is your fault. Do something! Berric drew close to the boy, and said something in his ear. Rurik looked down. Neither bedeviled eye would meet his own, yet he lingered under Voren’s scowl a moment longer, as if his own personal penance.

  Then he too walked away. Following his bastard. His master. Like a faithful hound. Voren spat on him as he passed. “She trusted you,” he snapped, but the boy only sank a little lower, and continued on. The fool-guard shouldered Voren as he passed. Rowan called out Rurik’s name. It, too, fell on deaf ears.

  No, this one is no Matair. He had to remind himself of that. Something lower, yes, something darker than even that foul name. This was what we depended on?

  He twisted back on the processional, honing in on Essa. The wild eyes, in turn, had focused on the boy. Searching. Yearning. It broke Voren’s heart. She still hoped, some small part of her, that there was some good in that creature. Rurik slid in behind the other soldiers like a snake, and stood shuffling his feet in the dust. A sergeant put out the call, and the prisoners were bound to their posts.

  “Rurik?” The weak voice broke. Like a whisper in the surge of cheers. Both youths winced.

  Blood was the only recourse. His eyes followed the boy, downcast, as he let the soldiers unravel their whips. Coward. Traitor. She looked to him, and back—trying to maintain the stoic disposition. Failing. A child’s whisper in the haze of unknowing. The boy would not look at her. Not as the soldiers stepped forward and the charges were read. Not as some other man’s dirty hands tore her tunic and bared her breasts. Not as the whip yanked back and the leather sang its airborne snap. He winced, as Voren did, with the crack. And the whimper.

  She did not cry out. Not for them, or for any other.

  The leather drew back and he looked away, unable to meet her gaze. It snapped, and the sound—it was terrible for its intensity. Wet and slick and echoing with the fleshy slap. It came again and again.

  Hands swam before him. How many others wondered? He paused, breathed—had to remind himself to breathe. They will weep. They will hate. Hell, they all hate. That is the nature of war. They pour that hate out onto others lest it turn unto themselves. One could not bottle it. Only destruction lay within that path.

  When Voren’s eyes opened, there was but one body they honed on. Rurik looked away, watching the trees, or the smoke of the town. Nothing. In that moment, watching the hands revolve around themselves, and the purpose lost, he knew—Rurik Matair, the lieutenant, the lord, for all that he was and all that might lay yet within his stars—the lieutenant had to die. And in the night, the rest, they had to slip away.

  When they were finished with Essa, her should-be savior did just that. As if sniffing at the vapors of Voren’s thoughts, he slithered away into the mass of others and left her lying there in a puddle of tears and blood. The crowd gave way more gradually, loitering like vultures to the leavings. They inhaled the scent of pain, as if Oberroth had not been enough. In disgust, Voren pushed beyond them and into the ring where her blood still settled.

  With a cry, Rowan sprang past him. He fell to the earth and clasped at her arms, trying to draw her in, but she shook him off, the gesture leaving little tremors as echoes down her frail frame. Pale. She looked so pale. Voren twisted to scowl at the loitering guards, but those that had bound her cousin had receded with the rest, content that their doings were only duty.

  Bastards, he spat, and might have shouted, but sense still appealed somewhere inside. He went to her in turn, and Rowan’s eyes turned to him, wild and wet with a boyish sort of uncertainty. It unsteadied him, nearly drew him back. But the eyes—they pleaded. He sank, shivering, beside them, and drew the modest cloak from his own shoulders. What more will they do to you, oh star?

  “Take the cloak,” he said. He was shocked by the hoarseness of his own voice. When did it grow so dry? His hands shook and the cape trembled over the scarlet mud. Or so unsteady?

  “So much blood. Essa, you need to, if only…” Rowan looked to him, and to the retreating crowd, then back to his cousin. He blinked, licked his lips, and seemed to try to pause for time. But none of it could be blinked away. “Swine!” He bellowed sharply over their heads. A few turned back at the cry but, losing interest, turned quickly away again. Even though he hallooed it again, none turned at the second. Cracked hands swam through reddened hair, and reached to rub at his cousin’s own. “Essa. Can you move?”

  She shook her head. The lips opened, but fell back, as if the words were too much strain.

  “The cloak,” Voren repeated. “It will sop the blood.”

  “The blood?” Rowan blinked again. He looked up sharply, as though the shaken mantle had resettled, eyes honing to a darkened purpose. “Yes, yes the blood. Give it here. Essa, you should take it.” Voren did not fight his hand as it ventured for the offering, but Essa’s own snapped to take it. All three winced with the gesture.

  “Foolish child! Do not open the wounds any more. You are—are bloodied enough,” her cousin said.

  She shook her head. Soft tresses tumbled with the motion, hiding her face. She could not look at them. Voren wished nothing more than to wrap her in his arms and bear her away, but she was insistent. Her hand would not loose the cloak until they loosed it to her, and then, with all the poise of a child tying her laces, drew it about her bared, stained back and tightened it across her shoulders. The fingers, rough-hewn though they were, moved like needlepoint, and settled as feathers when the deed was done. Thus covered, the head finally twisted up to them and bared its pain through every ashen patch of skin on that bark-like flesh. It had been harder to break this one’s flesh than most, but they had done it all the same.

  “Oh my coz,” Rowan whispered.

  She caught his touch on her hand and rubbed it gently at the palm. Then she turned to Voren, perched still as a statue beside. An observer and nothing more, he thought. When that gaze touched him, however, he felt the blood stir anew. He faltered. She did not. Her face, tightening, implored of him behind its mask. No gesture was required.

  When it came, her voice was mouse-like in its utterance. “Bring me home.” That was it, but it was enough. They did not question; they obeyed.

  It was no easy feat to move one so scourged. They set her to her feet, only to become her shadows. Despite her words, Essa still tried to take the steps on her own, and though they lingered close at hand, neither man dared to take her in hand until the pain seemed prized to pluck that last shred of dignity, and the ground loomed. Every inch she took was every inch hers, and though it was not far they moved, they moved all the same, until a stray footstep threatened to buckle her. Under a dozen itinerant eyes, Voren surged beneath her as she lurched, and steadied her by the waist. She said nothing as they took that first step together, nor at the second, when Rowan stretched a hand to join them.

  They moved slowly to ease the burden on the wounds themselves, but this only dragged the pain out longer, and by the ending paces, Essa begged them to haste. Though her eyes were wet by the time the familiar tents crowded into sight, they heeded her.

  Alviss and Chigenda stood sharply at their approach, forsaking
the bowls of dinner left to gather chill on the sodden earth. From Alviss: “What has happened?” But he already moved to meet them at their utterance, closing the gap in a few long strides. The normally cool face, nigh featureless beneath the coarseness of beard, grew hotly animated, twitching through the range of pity and disgust and agony the likes of which one might expect to see in a parent’s eye. A storm stirred there. Of this he was certain. It reminded Voren of home, and it made him shudder to think how serious all this blood could truly be.

  Between them, they set her to the earth. All the while, it fell to Voren to explain. He spoke of the soldiers and the beating and all of it—save Rurik’s part in it. Much as the thought of him stirred blood to the fore, he knew that too much pain on so old a heart might only serve to break it. For whatever else lay between Alviss and he, it did not mean him cruel. The old Kuric, for his part, took it all in with sagely nods, and when he was finished, brushed the baker away again as easily as dust.

  He sank beside Essa as she bundled against the damp. Her eyes had drawn shut, clenched and flinching every so often. Rowan whispered soft words in her ear as he petted her hair and held her hand, but it was Alviss that demanded: “Show me.” Uncertainty blinked the emeralds back to life, but she need only look once into her guardian’s eyes, and Essa left all play at pretense from her reply. A shift of the shoulder dropped Voren’s cloak just enough to bare the scars to light.

  A dozen lines crisscrossed her back, set almost so rigid as lines of wheat at harvest. Dry crusting had begun to take the edge away, but the wounds themselves still blared bright and red, and the edges quivered with the remnants of her flesh. Alviss took her cover and drew it tenderly back over her shoulders, settling his hands about them as he finished.