Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3

by Sebastien de Castell

  I chuckled at his comment and then stopped myself. And there it is. The answer was so simple that it could only have been the result of a thousand individual equations. So it really is a paradox of sorts. ‘I know what weakens a God,’ I announced.

  ‘What?’ Kest asked.

  ‘The Law.’

  During the long silence I looked at their faces: Kest was trying to see if I’d actually lost my mind this time. Brasti was reaching for a joke. Only Ethalia started to look as if she understood. I explained, ‘During the fight, Erastian said, “When Tristia crafted Laws to live by, the Gods became enraged.”’

  ‘So the Gods are petty,’ Brasti said. ‘That’s hardly a revelation.’

  But Ethalia was shaking her head. ‘Rage is simply a mask to hide fear and weakness. If the Gods were created by the Faith of their followers, then it stands to reason that when men and women began to live by their own Laws, the Gods were weakened. Faith is a finite force – so if the Blacksmith wants his God to be all-powerful, he needs to destroy all Faith in the Law first.’

  ‘You realise how insane this sounds?’ Brasti asked. ‘You’re talking as if the Law is some kind of living thing he’s trying to kill.’

  ‘Maybe to a God, the Law is a living thing,’ Kest suggested. ‘I can see there is a certain perverse mathematical element to it.’ His gaze became distant, the way it does when he’s calculating our odds of surviving a fight. ‘The Blacksmith begins murdering Saints and unleashes his God’s Needles to make people fear that their deities have turned against them. Then pilgrims begin threatening the palaces and the Dukes withdraw their support for the Realm’s Protector. The Churches move to take power, and suddenly the Greatcoats are replaced by the Inquisitors.’ He looked up at me suddenly. ‘You were wrong about the Blacksmith, Falcio. He isn’t an avertiere. He hasn’t been using feints and false attacks to draw us out. He’s a delusor.’

  ‘What’s a delusor?’ Ethalia asked.

  ‘Oh, God, come back and kill me now,’ Brasti moaned. ‘Another pointless term you’ve found in some old swordplay manual that no one’s used in a hundred years—’

  ‘In fact,’ Kest corrected, ‘the word “delusor” doesn’t appear in any of the old fencing texts – it’s not so much a style of fighting as a strategy – the simplest one of all, if you think about it: defeat the enemy before the fight begins.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ethalia said. ‘I thought a duel couldn’t start until both parties entered the court circle. So how can you—?’

  ‘It’s actually quite simple,’ I replied. ‘You want to beat an opponent before the fight starts? Send thugs to rough him up in a dark alleyway the night before – not too badly, mind you – just enough that in the morning he’ll be a little slow, a little too injured. Or maybe you bribe the tavern master to put a little something in his drink the night before – not to make him sick, just enough to make him a bit nauseous and blur his vision a bit the next morning.’

  ‘Fine,’ Brasti said, ‘so the Blacksmith is a delusor and this whole thing has been one long duel against the Law.’ He pointed at me. ‘You’re the First Cantor of the Greatcoats. Why not just kill you when he had the chance?’

  ‘Because the Greatcoats champion the Law,’ I said, already running to saddle Arsehole. ‘We don’t embody it, not the way the Blacksmith needs. I’m not the one he has to kill.’

  ‘The Realm’s Protector,’ Kest said as he and Ethalia brought the rest of our packs. ‘To make his God all-powerful, the Blacksmith is going to execute Valiana.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The Castle

  We rode through that night and well into the morning, stopping for just long enough to keep Arsehole and the other horses from breaking legs or expiring from exhaustion. The curses I was muttering to myself had became a rolling, endless chorus: why had I let Aline send me north? We’d found the place where Saints were being killed, only to discover it no longer mattered; the Blacksmith already had what he’d wanted from them. We’d rescued one old man, only to have him die saving us. Mind you, at least we’d been saved. Ethalia had come into the power of her Sainthood, only to find out she needed to be a warrior to wield it – so was she supposed to sacrifice herself, the very essence of what she believed, on the altar of our need? Why am I taking orders from a fourteen-year-old girl anyway? I should have stayed behind to protect them: it’s my damned job.

  ‘Stop,’ Kest called out, and I yanked hard on Arsehole’s reins, then looked back to see I’d left them all in the dust behind me.

  I was about to press on, leaving them to catch up when they could – and only then noticed the bend in the road ahead. We were much closer to the castle than I’d realised. And of course the smart thing now is to race ahead into the middle of whatever army is waiting for us.

  I forced myself to slow my breathing as I walked Arsehole back to the others. Kest had already dismounted. ‘I’ll circle around the other side and see what’s our best point of entry.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Brasti said. ‘I’m quicker, and I can fire the pistol if I run into trouble.’

  Ethalia looked out past us. ‘There’s so much dust, it’s hard to see.’

  ‘Blame him,’ Brasti said, jerking a thumb at me. ‘He’s the one who practically ran his horse—’

  ‘It’s not dust from the road,’ she said, eyes narrowed. ‘It’s grey, not brown.’

  We walked a few steps along the road, trying to make out the haze. ‘It’s not nightmist,’ I said. ‘It is definitely dust of some kind . . . what does it mean?’

  ‘It means you’re too late,’ Darriana said, emerging from the trees. She was unsteady on her feet, but I saw no wounds save for a bruise on her forehead. Her greatcoat was almost completely covered by the same greyish dust, and tiny flakes of rock. ‘It means it’s over.’

  Brasti ran to her and threw his arms around her. ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded.

  She started to push him away but he clung to her and she relented. ‘Where did this come from, Brasti Goodbow?’

  He leaned back but kept his arms around her. ‘Nothing. This is how I greet all of the Greatcoats.’

  She smiled through the dirt on her face and it would have been a nice moment, if we’d had time for such things.

  We didn’t. ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ I said.

  She pushed Brasti aside more firmly, and this time he let her. ‘It’s better I show you,’ she replied, and started walking towards that last bend before the castle.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘The pilgrims—’

  ‘Oh, there are plenty of pilgrims. Inquisitors, too,’ she said, walking away from us. ‘They won’t bother with us. No one really gives a shit about us any more.’

  Darriana’s assurances weren’t filling me with confidence. I drew my rapiers as she led us to the path up to Castle Aramor. I hadn’t had my own weapons in hand since we’d left for the cathedral in the mine; it gave me some small comfort to know that if I had to fight, at least I wouldn’t be swinging a damned mace any more.

  ‘I suppose I should tell you to prepare yourself,’ Darriana said.

  ‘For what?’ I asked, trying to wipe the blinding dust away from my eyes. It was getting thicker the closer we approached. ‘You still haven’t told us what’s waiting for us.’

  Ethalia walked next to me, watching Darri. ‘She’s in pain, but she isn’t afraid,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s sorrow . . . loss.’

  ‘Keep out of my head, whore,’ Darriana said, quickening her pace, as if to hide the tears I now glimpsed in her eyes.

  The clouds of dust kept getting thicker until it became hard to breathe and I could barely see ten feet in front of me. But once we got to the top of the road it no longer mattered: you don’t need to be able to see clearly to see what isn’t there.

  *

  Years ago, when the King was still alive and willing to pay whatever exorbitant price was asked to acquire books for the royal library, Kest and I tried to figure out exactly how ma
ny different fencing manuals existed in the world. We got to somewhere in the neighbourhood of two hundred and twenty-six: an impressive number, given that you’d be hard-pressed to find two hundred and twenty-six books on any other subject.

  The odd thing, we realised one day, was that while there were any number of texts describing how to fence, we only ever found one book on the specific subject of duelling. Oh, there were no end of treatises on trial by combat, but they all focused on the rules, the weapons, the politessi dan guerita: the ‘what to say’ and ‘how’ and ‘when’. Only one book, the somewhat depressingly titled You Are Sure to Die, by an obscure author named Sen Errera Bottio, described how to actually fight and win a duel.

  Kest’s theory was that while fencing masters wanted to show off their skills to get students, no true duellist would wish to reveal his techniques, for fear they might be used against him. As Bottio had developed a painful wasting disease, he’d apparently decided he’d now be quite happy to have someone kill him quickly, rather than slowly fade away.

  So each chapter details a different aspect of the mental and physical preparation required for the various duels one might face over the course of a (presumably short) lifetime. The first chapter, ‘On The Morning Of Your First Duel’, opens with a full description of what to expect the first time you’re forced to engage in trial by combat.

  It was Bottio who coined the term ‘delusor’, in the chapter entitled, appropriately enough, ‘On the Night Before Your Death’, in which he detailed all the different ways an opponent might weaken you in the days and hours leading up to a duel so as to ensure your failure and subsequent death. Bottio believed the most devastating attacks weren’t on the body, they were on the mind. He wrote, ‘The body can recover from many different wounds, often with surprising speed. The soul, once broken, can never be repaired, and there lies the final target where the skilled delusor will strike – and always on the very eve of the fight.’

  Bottio was right, I thought as I surveyed the scene in front of us.

  For ten years Castle Aramor had been my home. I knew every one of her nine towers, every inch of her battlements. I’d been in every room at one time or another, read most of her books and pissed in every one of her privies. Most days I can’t recognise my own face in a mirror, but I could draw Aramor’s fortifications, and more accurately than any of the craftsmen who built her.

  I loved that place. I had come there seeking to kill a King, and instead become his most devout follower. The Greatcoats had been reborn there, and it was there that I had hoped one day to see my King’s daughter take the throne: the physical manifestation of all my foolish dreams.

  Maybe that’s why I could still visualise it rising high above the endless throngs of pilgrims kneeling on the greensward, singing their hymns of joy into the thick grey clouds of its broken remains, scattered across the earth like a child’s toy shattered by a mighty hand.

  *

  We had been standing there for just a few seconds before Darriana started wading into the pilgrims. ‘Come on,’ she beckoned, ‘they won’t attack us.’

  I followed her like a sleepwalker, quite unable to convince myself that what I was seeing was real. I’d seen castles destroyed before, but none so completely. Only one tower still stood among the rubble, the shattered remains of stone and mortar.

  Darri led us through the kneeling crowds until we reached the castle’s great entrance: the very place where we had waited boldly to dictate terms to the Ducal Council. That had been just a few months before, after the battle of the Black Tabards. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  ‘How was this done?’ Kest asked, looking past the ruins and around the periphery. ‘I see no siege-engines, no armies.’

  ‘Like this,’ Darriana said. She held up a hand and snapped her fingers. ‘That’s it. Tristia’s one true God came and waved his hand and the towers began falling.’

  ‘That’s not possible. It would take—’

  ‘Oh, there was a fine speech,’ she said, her eyes on me. ‘You would have liked it, Falcio. They held a trial, if you can believe it. A fucking trial. That Prelate of theirs – Obladias? – he came out and declared that the Church had deemed the rule of King’s Laws to be corrupt and in violation of God’s will. God. Singular.’ She pointed to a small patch amongst the ruins that had somehow stayed clear. ‘He had his little deity stand right there, listening to hours of testimony – from clerics, peasants – oh, and you’ll love this: fucking Duke Hadiermo, the Iron Duke of Domaris himself, testified that the Dukes themselves were traitors to the country.’

  ‘Why go through the sham of a trial?’ Brasti asked.

  It was a fair question: why the formality? Why the performance?

  ‘Did the trial follow the Laws of Jurisprudence?’ I asked. ‘Was everything done according to the rules of evidence?’

  ‘You think anyone cares about that?’ Darriana demanded. ‘You think anyone but you—?’

  ‘Answer the question,’ I said. ‘Was this a legal trial or not.’

  ‘Yes! Everything was nice and legal – does that make you feel better?’

  I didn’t bother to answer. I understood Darri’s pain – I shared it – but I didn’t have time for it. ‘This is how you destroy the Law utterly,’ I said to Kest. ‘In a trial.’

  ‘What happened next?’ Kest asked, and she turned and pointed to the far left side of the ruins. The dust-haze was so thick that what I’d mistaken for the remains of a wooden beam standing on its end turned out to be a tall gibbet. When I squinted, I realised that wasn’t a pile of broken stone underneath, but broken bodies. ‘Then the executions started.’

  Executions— Oh, Saints, no— ‘Aline – Valiana—’ My heart was about to shatter. ‘Please, please, tell me you didn’t let them come here . . .’

  The look on her face was so full of rage I thought she might cut me down there and then. ‘Religious zealots were taking the castle – of course Valiana and Aline were here. They ordered us to escort them here so they could face the charges.’

  I moved closer to the bodies by the gibbet, trying to find them, praying to who knew whom that I wouldn’t see them.

  ‘Falcio,’ Ethalia said, a hand on my arm, ‘they aren’t there. They must have escaped.’ She turned to Darriana and ordered, ‘Stop torturing him.’

  ‘I told you, bitch! Stay out of my head—’

  Kest stepped in front of her. ‘You don’t care about this castle, so if Aline and Valiana aren’t dead, why are you so angry with us?’

  Darriana let out a breath. ‘Your little whore-Saint is right. The Prelate ordered the Inquisitors to bring them to the gibbet. Quentis Maren refused.’

  ‘Quentis Maren refused?’ Brasti asked. His voice echoed my own disbelief.

  Darriana nodded. ‘He gave his own little speech about following the Gods – the Blacksmith explained that the Gods Quentis had worshipped were all dead, of course, but the Inquisitor said, “Better to follow a dead God than an evil one.”’

  ‘So he helped them escape?’

  ‘We all did.’

  I looked at the destruction all around us. ‘How was that even possible?’

  ‘And why aren’t the pilgrims tearing us apart right now?’ Brasti asked. ‘Why aren’t there soldiers waiting to capture us?’

  Darriana gave a bitter smile, devoid of anything resembling joy or hope. ‘Because after everything went to seven hells and the first blood was shed, Aline had the bright idea of demanding trial by combat. Apparently that’s something the God gives a shit about, because he agreed. So until the duel tomorrow, no one is allowed to touch us.’

  ‘So we run,’ Brasti said, looking at me. ‘We get everyone the hells out of Tristia.’

  ‘Aline won’t run,’ Darriana said, ‘and neither will Valiana.’

  ‘Why not?’ Brasti looked astounded.

  Darriana waded out into the pilgrims, then stopped and stood there like a single living tree in the middle of a grey desert. She spread her arms w
ide and at last I saw that the men and women and children kneeling all around her and singing their hymns were also coughing and choking, and amongst them I now saw the bodies of those who had already succumbed to the clouds of dust rising from the ruins. ‘The God has commanded that they remain here and sing his praises until Aline and Valiana return to face his judgment.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The Church

  With Darriana once again in the lead, we marched through the streets of the city of Aramor, which looked impoverished without its castle looming in the background, winding our way between the two- and three-storey buildings of brick and stone, the shops and homes built one by one over hundreds of years and clinging to the hillside like barnacles to a ship.

  A ship that’s now drifting to the bottom of the ocean.

  What surprised me most was how many people were going about their daily business as if it were a normal day, mostly ignoring us, except for the occasional sneer as we passed. No doubt the Greatcoats had proved to be just what they’d always believed: a fantasy, a feeble joke played upon the people of Tristia by a King who understood nothing of their real struggles. But there were some whose heads turned as we passed, whose eyes followed us as if waiting for some sign that this must be some temporary feint on our part that was going to precede our counter-thrust against the forces arrayed against the country. I avoided their gaze the most. They were the greater fools.