At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  And she never said his name.

  With an offering of what passed vaguely for a nod, Rurik slipped away. For a time, he wandered the streets, wondering without care how long it would take for an escort to catch him up. This was, after all, nothing like a victory camp. Where one might have expected to lose themselves in noise and lechery, there was only silence. A few haunted ghosts of soldiers ghosted the lanes and peripheries, but most retreated to their ramshackle quarters, in vain attempts to blot out what they had done.

  It was one thing, he knew, to kill in war. To burn and to pillage from faces they had never known and would never need to see again. Different for a neighbor. Family, perhaps, for some. He thought again of the face he had searched the field and its infirmaries for, and gave a silent, thankful prayer that his fears had not been borne out.

  A shadow crossed his path not far from Tessel’s own tent. He looked up to meet it and found Berric staring back at him. Time had rendered the man gaunt and waxen-faced—in the lightless mourning night, he looked almost skeletal. They shared no words. Rurik turned from him, and his shadow fell in against his heel. They kept a distance between them, and in that uncomfortable air Rurik knew that he was not the only one haunted.

  Would that he could have confided in the man. But he could never know if Berric was his own man, or Tessel’s. He knew only that Tessel had been the one to offer him up, and at the moment that mattered most, it had been Tessel to receive Berric’s voice, not him.

  In times past, Rurik had kept close to his commander, by order and by choice, that he might be indispensible to his effort, day or night. Now they wandered to the furthest reaches of the army, and to the tents pitched as far as possible from the burnt husks of Oberroth. He could not stand to look at Tessel. Not since his dismissal earlier in the day. Not since the cracks of the whip. Each one had rattled him to the very bones.

  He glanced back to be sure that Berric still followed. The faithful shadow stopped where he did, and cast a wary look about them. He, too, had stood by while the guiltless had been delivered into the others’ guilt.

  There was nothing for Rurik in this camp now. He began to fidget. A dream was dead. If ever they returned to Verdan, he knew, it would not be as liberators. It would be as murderers.

  “Is there something you need?” he asked belatedly of his shadow.

  The man tightened up, but did not shy from confrontation. “The general gives message.”

  All one need do to see Tessel’s message was to look at the bodies scattered about the boughs. Even so, he inclined his head. “As you wish.”

  “He would speak with you on the morrow. With marching orders. And to extend his…apologies, for the day’s blackness.”

  He felt the twitch in his eye, but did nothing to hide it. “Which part?”

  “That business with Essa. It was poorly done. But you understand confronting him there, like that—he could not back down then, not in front of the men.”

  That was enough. In disgust, Rurik spun from him and made for his place at a fevered march. No footsteps stalked him this time, but at his back, Berric called: “On the morrow, than?” But he did not answer. He drew up beside an empty fire-pit and cast himself against the dirt. His cloak he took for a blanket, and earth his bed. He did not bother to pitch a tent. The air was cool but not unpleasant, and he was too restless for the excess. At his back, he felt Berric shuffle a while in indecision. Then he, too, slunk into the night.

  So I am to be an exile again, he thought with bitterness. Perhaps it shall actually teach this time.

  Two years he had been on the road. He would not have wished them on anyone at the time, young and foolish as he was, but he had not realized their kindness—warm friends and warm beds, if not an excess of coin. He had seen places he might have otherwise never seen, and he had never had to dread the coming of a night truly and utterly alone.

  Yet he had taken in none of it for what it was. The youth of him was concerned only with the word: exile. It burned with indignation, like a brand on his heart. Drove him round and back again, and into blood. Everything that had come to pass was his fault. All of it. Eighteen winters now, and this was all he had. And the thought of bearing it alone—it was enough to break the gentler soul. As it was, he felt himself exhausted, without any hope of sleep.

  What is sleep with nothing to wake to?

  But there was something. Someone, still—distant yes, and broken as he, but there all the same. He tried to frame her in mind, the wisp of a girl and the bright, thundering eyes that had always shone for him. The listener. The wanderer. The fellow wronged.

  Something struck him at the whisper of her being. A cascade of force nigh drowned him. He could feel his thoughts turn and quake and the semblance of himself begin to fall, all becoming hopelessly adrift and death’s dark maw looming through it all, cackling mad as a burning village, and he cried out as the coin toppled from his hands.

  It took him a moment to muster the courage for another try. Tentatively, he touched the rusted bit, daring not to place it in his palm again. He had the feeling of being watched, and he squirmed against his blanket, feeling his throat go dry. It had been like a raging storm, that moment, but he steeled himself and called out to her again. This time, he could feel her spread around him, and the tingle of the connection, and then it was as if she had made a cloak of herself to spread about him.

  “It cries,” came the whisper.

  What was that? The storm. The madness.

  “Murder by the child’s own eyes. It makes no sense.” He had a semblance of her somewhere in a dark place, groping about for something in the dust. “But it strikes up lines she sought forget. Ah, she—I—we cry for the world, dear Rurik. Do you also, and for her? She would set you right, that there might be one pillar still…”

  It was a long conversation. One-sided, but long. He told her all of it. Told her all the things he had held back so long. Of Essa and Voren and all the rest. His loneliness and his mournfulness, his hatred of Tessel and the regret of son for father wronged. His incapability. A rant, by its end, nigh raving, and when her voice trickled back from wherever it rang, he barreled over it, letting the pictures form in his mind until he himself felt nothing but the hard-hearted desire for the drink, to carry him away and never let this feeling return.

  Love. That was all he wanted. Essa’s love. Friends’ love. A family to have and to hold and to take the pain away. I am a child. A needy child. He was such the child, ever and always, and he despised how he sounded, yet he could not help but offer his true heart, to for once honestly unveil the whole of its sundering.

  What was bundled was loosed, and by the end, he felt all but empty in its wake.

  After a long while, he realized she had not spoken. He called to her, somewhat unhappily—had she goaded him to speak, only to offer nothing in reply? Had he not listened in days past, and done the duty of friendship? He called again, louder this time—or so he thought, for it rose with his anger—and felt, for the trouble, the weight of the cloak about him grow thicker, pressing him down. As though Usuri clambered upon his back, and knelt. He rasped, groping for a mug near at hand, but feeling her presence grow with a thunderous tremor.

  Could she come to him? Had she not done it before? No—or so he thought—that had been a trick, for she had followed them, and even magic had its limits. Or so he hoped.

  “Oh, how it cries.” The voice drew bitter and tremulous, storming through his bones as surely as his head. “How it cries—for itself. Lament! It seeks to use, does it not? She should have known the voice was just a ruse. A child lost to shadow—oh it bleats! Does it not hear? Does it only speak?”

  Usuri, he choked, feeling the weight of her surpass him, bearing him down to the earth by the throat and all but tearing the world from his knowing. It was unnatural. He tried to rise, but he was caught as if in a vice. Usuri, it wasn’t about you, please, I know you hurt, and I just— The words ran ahead of him, but he despised the known truth: just tra
ding an eye for an eye.

  “Well she knows!” And this—the thunder—it nailed him quivering to the earth, a drunk fool laid low by a wild man’s cudgel. “Name me, father, for a fool, and leave me dead. They all burn and burn, and never one to know the thoughts that fuel. Oh Rurik, the things you see and do, oh child, can you not hear greatness’ call? Can you not see what looks you in the eye? No. Perhaps not, and nevermore. It fuels, but does it do?

  “Leave me. Leave me to the memory. Leave me to the murder. Leave me to Usuri, and the names that should name her. Loneliness—do you know what it truly is? Name it Usuri, name for the stars—it knows not you, nor shall again. Die, Rurik. Die—for all you do not see. Simply fade, and greet me another shadow in another time.”

  And it was gone. The drunk man surged to the fore, rasping wild and weary for the drink so long denied him, and he thrashed in his sheet with the coin naught but a weight against his hand. It was cold, as he was cold, and the night was long—he shuddered against it and lay still. She was gone. Another voice to silence, another memory buried, and not for the first time, he wondered at his own seeming predilection toward self-destruction.

  Greater still, the question: what murder had named Usuri? It seemed likely it would be his own.

  Morning was groggily rendered, and the night’s events left his mind detached and wandering far. He could not say whether he truly woke, or merely breathed.

  For their hard-fought victory, and a far-deadlier march, the Bastard rewarded his army with a day of rest and relaxation before the order to move would be issued. It had been Rurik’s intention to slip away with the Company while the rest of the army dozed, yet even as he wandered to his erstwhile companions, the mailed figures of Tessel’s personal staff made themselves plainly known, and intercepted him. Berric was among them. So too was Orif of Kellsley, and his orjuk dog.

  For a fleeting instant, Rurik let his hand fall to his sword. He thought them assassins, come brazen by the daylight. Yet it was Berric who did the talking, and reminded him of Tessel’s command the night before. After that, he acquiesced quietly enough, letting them surround him like an honor guard as they marched for the heart of the camp. Back to the place where innocence had gone to die. Few onlookers would take him for the prisoner he truly felt.

  “You mean to leave, I hear?”

  Bundled in the stifling warmth of his tent, Tessel did not even wait for the honor guard to dismiss itself before he addressed his once-lieutenant. As it was, he sat hindering, rather than aiding his page in the removal of his muddied boots. He had been out riding. Either that meant him set for good spirits or in dire need of distraction. Given the sidelong snarl he leveled on Rurik, the former seemed doubtful.

  It would not do to bandy words with the man, he knew. If there was one thing to be said for Tessel, it was the bluntness of his approach. That, at least, had not changed with ambition. So for once, he made his feelings clearly known.

  “After what I witnessed yesterday, ser, I realize I do not have the stomach for this. Not this bloody thing. I know not if you ordered it, or simply let it come to pass, but the sort of madness as seen these days is not justice, nor even revenge; it is plain and simple murder that need never have been. You might have taken their food. You might even have pillaged the homes. But this? Such wholesale rape and ravishment—I tell you there is not one soul that shall not have this massacre on their lips by month’s end, and you shall find yourself very much alone.

  “You can tell me that soldiers will be soldiers. It’s true, ser, I’ve seen it. And I know the sort of insanity that starving drive can bring. But Assal help you, I know your place with the men. Know that if ever a soul could have stopped such mindless bloodshed it was you. You let Scheyer get away, and Pordill, and instead, you took it out on their people.

  “I have heard you call yourself Farren. A new man—well, that may be so, but what is to be said of new men that act the same as the old? And how many fellow new men do you think lie ashes in those streets now, when they might have opened their arms to you as brother and friend?”

  Though Tessel’s eyes flared and twinkled in their courses through Rurik’s speech, it was to Rurik’s own credit that he never once tried to interject himself. If the Bastard had, he knew, he would have faltered, and the whole thing would never have emerged. The Bastard’s page ceased his struggles with the wayward boot and stood gaping at Rurik, the fear stark in his young eyes. The boot slid off of its own accord.

  Tessel waved the boy off and shifted up straight to an arrow’s point. Neither smile nor frown creased that point, but still the eyes burned. “So. You are certain this has nothing to do with the girl?”

  “My lord, I—” The nervous page edged back as he spoke, but Tessel rounded on him sharply.

  “No. Remain. There is nothing we would share here now I think the rest should not shortly know as well. Please, Rurik.”

  The boy huddled back from them both, and Rurik pitied him for having to witness such as this—and resented Tessel, too, for keeping others to bear it witness. Still, he did not let it deter him. Resolutely, he said: “Did I say this? Decisions, as you told me once, should never be singly delivered. Factors are innumerable, and all point from here. And I resent you think me so short-sighted.”

  The last earned a teasing smile from the general. “Of course. As you say. I merely thought to dwell a moment on history. Yours.” A dismissive wave of the hand made a mockery of the thing’s removal from his mind.

  “With your leave,” Rurik replied, turning to go. He hadn’t crossed a foot before Tessel beckoned him back with a cry of “wait,” and the pikes beyond the door crossed to enforce it. Sighing, he turned back to face the hollow glint of a man denied.

  “Excuse me, lad. This whole business has left me bitter—I see it well as you. But you hear me out, for what you once bore me. Please.” He gestured to the chair before him, and Rurik reluctantly slid into it, to meet his general eye to eye. After a moment, Tessel continued in softer tones: “Haste is a virtue we both share, I think. A blessing and a curse. It can make a man short-sighted; apply that to those with grand visions atop it and it is a recipe for disaster.

  “I am for war. That is not about to change, and I’ll not apologize to you or any man for it. I neither brought it, nor desired it, but I’ll surely see it done. But what happened today, this whole mess—you have the right of it. It is not war, and while no man can be everywhere, every general knows that it will be his fault, down to the smallest man that sins within his charge. It is not a sin I intend to allow again. It will earn us no friends. And I shall need many where I walk.”

  “No doubt.” Skepticism colored Rurik’s words and left them grim. “But how can you possibly expect to move forward? There is no sanctuary for you. Here, or anywhere in Idasia.”

  The general’s eyes rekindled at that, and the smile widened. “Oh ye of little faith! Have you fallen so far, Rurik? By Assal, we need no safe harbor. The Maker Himself set us here within His divine will, but then he stepped away, and left us to it. There’s no man has a safe harbor in this world; merely illusions. These northern ‘scapes are Farren. They need but hope to rise. So I march south, to give it to them.”

  And so he saw the madness of man come full into its bloom.

  “Do not make this a holy war, Tessel. I beg you. It cannot end well.”

  Not least of all for Verdan. He did not say it, but in that boast of southern march, it was the only word that rang through Rurik’s head. And it made the most sense. The forests would cover Tessel’s march and offer game. The river would provide water, and mountains terrain to manipulate against any hunters.

  But Rurik would not see it bleed. Too much blood had colored that land’s history. Let it end. Let the shadows of Ulneberg grow no deeper.

  “It is a war already drawn!” Wielded like a cannon, the anger snapped plain and fierce through Tessel’s voice. Even the page flinched from it. Though Tessel shook, he made a gradual withdrawal from this lack of c
ontrol, settling into a morose sort of whisper. “Drawn when some foreign priest tried to have me butchered. A man that never even knew our father would dare to guess his will. No, Rurik. This I cannot promise you. But I say you this, now—it is you who should be asked: where can you hope to go?”

  “Home,” he answered swiftly.

  “Home,” Tessel repeated, seeming to weigh it before dismissing it outright. He shook his head sorrowfully. “I worry for you, Rurik. Often. Many are those who wonder, how does a boy survive his family? But I see it in you, true enough, that a boy who survives his whole family has not survived—merely dies a slower death.”

  Rurik felt the shiver up his spine. His voice spilled out near breathless: “Meaning?”

  “You think Cullick lets them breathe? That Ivon would look at you after all this?” A dry, bitter laugh caught in his throat. “Come now. Do not be naïve—that is not why I took to you. Use your head. By all rights, you are lord of Verdan. And of the Ulneberg, if I should have a say in it. You are the only noble blood I need, Rurik. Do you not remember that? But I do need someone with a name to support me. You may not think yourself loved, but your name is known, and it gives me cause against greater bloods than ours. The Emperor. Cullick. I have asked you before—would you not see yourself revenged? I am the only path to that. You must know this. On your own, you cannot hope such things. They will be snuffed between your hands like the flicker of a candle’s flame. And you will die penniless and alone, knowing that everything you could have done, all the wrongs you could have righted, were left to rot at road’s edge.

  “Go, if you wish, but know that, and know that if you leave so too leaves any hope of protection this place has brought you. Think you that the assassins and their ilk have left you be simply because of war? Simple child, nothing is so simple. I tell you this: take up sword with me, or strike it up against me. There is no middle ground. No neutral party standing silent as a reed whoso lives within our lands. When it is a matter of empires, it can be no other way.”