Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  “He’s not destroyed,” Dywel said, looking to Cadwyr, who nodded approval. “Maybe he’s not an Arrogate either.”

  Lady Isobel cast a glance and Dywel and Idris hit him in the shoulder lightly with his mailed glove, then pointed at Dywel and Cadwyr, scolding them.

  “Thou knowest the truth now,” Isobel accused, turning back to Heden. “Should have known it from the start.”

  The knights accepted this. Lady Isobel had spoken and none seemed willing to gainsay her. Heden wondered at what it meant that he’d been able to deceive the knights in the first place. Isobel’s response seemed to indicate that it should not have worked. Like Heden, like most priests who served Cavall or his brother Adun, the Knights should have been able to sense truth, but could not.

  “How long hast thou been an Arrogate?” Lady Isobel asked.

  “Three years,” Heden said.

  Lady Isobel nodded, as though confirming a suspicion. “And has it aged thou?”

  Heden shrugged. “Not as much as not being an Arrogate did,” he said cryptically. Choke on that, he thought. “Ask Taethan,” my ass.

  “What would prompt one to do such a thing?” Brys asked. “Why does the church need someone like you?”

  Heden didn’t respond to either question.

  Taethan walked forward. Heden felt like a criminal with the knight standing there before him. He averted his gaze. Something he hadn’t felt the need to do with the other knights. It seemed like, until Taethan, Heden had never seen a knight.

  “They don’t understand,” Taethan said. “Tell them.”

  Heden shifted under his gaze. “It’s not just the church,” Heden said. “I…an Arrogate is sworn to find good men who’ve done or might have to do awful things, and absolve them. Take on their transgressions. Usually things Cavall forbids. Sometimes that means doing it yourself. Which means violating the speech of Cavall.”

  “Give them an example,” Taethan said, pushing him.

  Heden gave them the canonical example. “A giant is pillaging your herd,” he said. “It’s a big, stupid thing, can’t be reasoned with, but it’s not doing it out of malice, it needs the food. You need the food. So you decide to kill the giant. But that would make you a murderer,” he said, and Aderyn interrupted him.

  “Not in defense,” she objected. “Not to defend your land! The law permits!”

  Heden looked at Taethan and tried to hold his gaze. “You tell that to the farmers who’ve come back from killing the thing. Covered in blood. Can’t speak to their wives, can’t sleep with them, ignore their children. You ask them if the law matters. They’re the ones who had to go out and do it,” he bit the words off. “They still feel like murderers.”

  Taethan, some secret knowledge firing him, held Heden’s gaze. Heden found himself looking away. He looked at the floor, and then at the back of Sir Nudd.

  “They know the giant had as much right to live as anyone.”

  Sir Nudd half turned, aware the comment was directed at him.

  “So you do it for them. You murder the wretched thing, so they don’t have to. So they can go on being…normal people.”

  Brys stared at him.

  “That isn’t justice,” he said darkly.

  “No,” Heden agreed. “But it’s…human.”

  Taethan nodded approval at Heden’s explanation and turned to the other knights.

  “That is an Arrogate,” he said.

  “What an awful way to live,” Sir Idris said. Heden noted the rare moment of compassion or introspection from him.

  Heden shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

  As Taethan retreated and tucked his mail gloves into his belt, Brys walked forward and confronted Heden.

  “You lied to us,” Brys said frankly, pointing an accusing finger at Heden. “Not an auspicious way to begin.”

  “He goes,” Idris said. “He is not fit to judge the death of Kavalen, he has no authority to judge, and he has worn out whatever welcome we were foolish enough to grant.”

  “Aye,” Cadwyr said.

  “That’s what I said,” Dywel said, looking between them.

  “He must stay,” Isobel said. “For he is the only way.”

  This seemed to satisfy Aderyn.

  Brys and Nudd both looked at Taethan. Taethan turned his back on Heden.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Taethan said. “The result is the same either way.”

  Nudd held up two fingers. The second knight, Isobel. He was siding with her.

  Heden stood up and looked at each knight.

  “Someone needs to explain something to me, because I don’t get it.” They all turned away from him, could see where he was going and wanted to ignore him. This angered him more. “All I want to do is grant absolution or justice to whoever killed Kavalen. So you can go back to being Knights. So you can save the people at Ollghum Keep. Every time I bring the keep up you all look like you’re going to going to vomit. You hate that you’re all sitting here while the urmen march. I can see it. But you won’t ride out against them because of what happened to Kavalen. Okay. I don’t know why that matters, but I can see it does.”

  He looked at Brys.

  “So tell me what happened. Let me do my job, so you can do yours.”

  Brys said nothing. Heden got very angry.

  “Why are you all fighting me on this? What possible reason could you have for sitting on your asses and doing nothing while people die?” Why did Taethan matter so much?

  Brys was pained, and looked at Taethan, who seemed in some kind of meditation. Lost in thought.

  “He goes,” Brys said finally, ignoring Heden’s plea. That made it four against, two in favor, and one abstention.

  Heden stepped forward.

  “Don’t do this,” he said, his voice low.

  Brys turned and looked at the stained glass window.

  “You are an interloper here. You may return to the Hierarch and explain to him that you failed, and more that he was wrong to send you.”

  “If I leave here,” Heden said clenching his fist, “then that’s it. No one replaces Kavalen. No one else will come up here. And a thousand innocent people die.”

  Nudd turned back to them, and walked over. He was almost twice Heden’s height. He was one of the biggest men Heden had ever seen.

  Sad, in some kind of pain, Nudd pointed to the archway. Heden liked Nudd, and didn’t want to fight him. More, he didn’t want to cause him any more pain.

  Idris put his hand on his sword’s pommel. Aderyn looked confused.

  Heden grabbed his pack from the floor, turned, and walked down the nave to the archway. His boots rang out on the stone floor. No one said anything.

  He walked outside into the center of the clearing. Saw the setting sun stabbing wan fingers of light through the trees. The warm light of the priory bled out into the clearing.

  Heden dropped his pack on the ground.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty

  The sun had set; its light thin. Heden could see a few stars in the sky and the rust-colored Dusk Moon hanging over the trees. Small, turning slowly. Three times an hour, just like the Dawn Moon. No one in the city paid the two moons any attention, but they still used the word ‘turn’ to mean a third of an hour. Most didn’t think about where the word came from.

  Out of habit, he marked the facing of the moon, so he could count the turns, and know how much time had passed. Though only appearing, and at its brightest, during dusk, it would still be visible for several hours, only disappearing at midnight.

  It had not yet been a full turn since he left the priory. He hadn’t moved. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew he wasn’t going home yet. He was thinking about heading to the keep, against his own judgment, to see if he could help.

  The knights in the priory argued loudly. It meant nothing to Heden. He didn’t know what they were arguing about, and didn’t care.

  He heard the absence of sound behind him that indicated s
omeone was inexpertly trying to be quiet, and turned around.

  Aderyn was standing behind him, watching him watching the moon.

  Heden turned back to the Dusk Moon, twirling slowly in the sky.

  “You didn’t finish the pavilion,” he observed.

  She sniffed, but otherwise did not move. He could feel her eyes on him.

  “The jousting field is complete,” she said. “The melee is staked off. But the tent…Lady Isobel declared there would be no tournament.”

  Heden thought about what this meant. What it meant for Isobel to make such a decision, whether Brys objected. He heard the knights inside, arguing.

  “I guess they’ve got enough to fight over,” he said.

  Aderyn watched him. Her attention was difficult to bear, he wasn’t sure why. It was like a shaft of sunlight bearing down on only him, and he didn’t feel worthy of it. He sensed that her attitude toward him had shifted and there was something akin to sympathy and interest in her gaze. He decided to test that.

  “I asked you a question earlier,” Heden said, turning to look at her in the moonlight. “About the giant. If it bothered you that Sir Nudd took matters into his own hands.” Aderyn looked away. “You told me he wouldn’t have done that before Kavalen’s death.”

  She nodded, eyes cast down.

  “But you didn’t tell me everything. You were ashamed by Nudd’s behavior…”

  Her head whipped up and he thought she was going to chastise him again for not using the knight’s full title. But he’d underestimated her.

  “It was a cowardly attack!” she admitted, as much to herself as Heden. Her face looked possessed in the starlight.

  Heden nodded, he understood. The attack had an impact on her, because of what it meant about the order. She wasn’t just angry at Sir Nudd, wasn’t just ashamed, she was afraid.

  “Stabbed from behind,” Heden said.

  “And with no warning. No declaration, no mercy, no chance to surrender or quit the field.”

  “I’ve known a lot of knights,” Heden said, “I’m not sure any of them…”

  “We are not ‘any’ knights,” Aderyn hissed. “We are the Green Order. Not even Dywel would have done such a thing before the commander’s death.”

  Just saying that pained her. Heden wondered what kind of knights these men and women were, before Kavalen’s death, to inspire such loyalty. He had no idea. They must have been close to magnificent. Part of him would have liked to see that, see these knights who kept to the traditions for a thousand years. Part of him didn’t believe it.

  “Well,” Heden said, embarrassed somewhat by the silence and the strength of Aderyn’s reaction. “If I leave, then no one replaces Kavalen. And then no one to lead you, and the order dies.”

  He tried to say it smoothly, dramatically. Like Gwiddon would have. Aderyn didn’t respond. Heden took a breath and looked south, thinking of home.

  “Why do you not ride to the keep?” Aderyn asked, curious. “You were a Prelate. Does your service as an Arrogate forbid…”

  At the sound of his title, Heden interrupted her.

  “It’s not that easy,” he said.

  She frowned at him. He turned and saw her confusion.

  “You think I ride down there and bless their soldiers, heal the wounded. Maybe do some fighting myself.”

  She looked in the direction of the keep, and then back to him. It was obvious he thought her idea was worthless, and equally obvious she didn’t know why.

  “Right now, fear is the only hope those people have.”

  “I do not understand,” Aderyn admitted.

  “Every day more people flee the keep. Flee their neighbors, maybe even their families. They’ve been thinking about running for weeks, but they’re afraid of being called cowards. Even traitors, for abandoning their friends.

  “But those people,” Heden said nodding southwest, “the ones who shit themselves at the idea of having their heads cut off and spit upon pikes by rampaging urmen, the ones who run. They’re the ones who’ll survive. The people who stay at the keep are the ones who’ll be eviscerated.

  “And what happens if I show up?” Heden said. He turned to Aderyn to make sure she understood this was not a rhetorical question.

  “What happens if a Prelate of Cavall shows up and announces he’s going to help?”

  Aderyn ruefully held his gaze. “The people stop fleeing.”

  “And?” Heden asked.

  “More people die when the urq come.”

  “I can’t stop a whole army by myself,” Heden said. “It takes men to hold a keep, more than me, and more than they’ve got. All I’d do is give those poor bastards enough hope to convince them to stay behind. Fight and die. And for what?”

  “I had not considered that,” Aderyn admitted darkly. She found Heden’s reasoning sound, but very distasteful. “I had never considered the virtue of cowardice.”

  Heden didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if she was mocking him. He thought maybe she had a right. There was a time when he’d have gone to the keep and damn the consequences. But those principles died a long time ago.

  “Anyway,” he said, and kicked the dirt under his boot for no reason. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I am to scout the urq,” she said, drawing herself up.

  Heden glanced at her, then went back to star watching. He was counting the constellations. For some reason, he couldn’t return her gaze. He felt like he was staring at her when he did so.

  “What does that mean?” Heden asked.

  He heard her footsteps as she approached him.

  “We are a day from the keep,” she explained. “They are two days from here, but they are an army and move slowly. I can move quickly. I will find them, observe them. They will not see me. And I will report back on their position and movement.”

  Heden nodded and looked at her again. She was staring at him. He wondered if she volunteered for this because she knew he was out here.

  “Sounds like makework,” he said.

  She screwed up her face, trying to understand what he meant.

  “If you mean: something to do while the knights do nothing, you are likely correct. But it is my duty, and I will discharge it well.”

  She walked in front of him, so he couldn’t ignore her as easily.

  She set her shoulders.

  “I have decided you will accompany me,” she said.

  Heden raised his eyebrows.

  “You have?”

  “I have,” she said in plain agreement as though there was nothing strange about this.

  “What do they think about that?” Heden asked, throwing his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the knights in the priory.

  “Well, they are arguing,” she said, as though it wasn’t obvious. Heden thought he got a little sense of what she thought about her idols’ indecision.

  Heden slung his pack over one shoulder.

  “Beats heading to the keep,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “Come, Arrogate,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “And see how a squire of the Green comports herself.”

  She turned and ran off into the forest. Heden almost missed it, but she spoke a prayer under her breath, and her speed was that of a deer.

  Heden sighed and shook his head, put his other arm through the second strap on his pack, tightened the buckles, spoke his own prayer, and ran off after her.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Keeping low to the ground, her strides long, leaping up over rocks and bushes that would slow them down otherwise, Aderyn led him through the darkening wode.

  Heden marveled at her, but remembered when he and his company spent days doing this. Were they ever that young? Young, he thought. She’s already twenty-eight. Heden was already musing on age and mortality at that age.

  They made little noise and that mostly her. The soft and regular clink of her mail against hard leather armor. It was quiet enough and they moved quickly enough that should they
come upon any urq the enemy would not have enough time between hearing the sound and Aderyn and Heden being upon them.

  The first time she stopped, after about a halfturn, she turned and looked for Heden and found him standing right behind her. Both of them were breathing hard. She nodded once in approval and seemed to wait for him to catch his breath. He shook his head and waved her on, and she dashed off again.

  They would stop about every turn and Aderyn would orient herself. This was a combination of smelling the air, checking the trees, and trying to find stars through the thick canopy of leaves. When she did this, she reminded him of someone he knew long ago, someone he considered a brother, now dead.

  It was midnight before they stopped to rest. Four or five hours running. Heden watched the Dusk Moon finally wink out, only a small black circle where once had been a reddish disk. You had to know where it was to find it.

  Aderyn pulled her pack off, and plopped down on the dead leaves and moss and vines that made up the forest floor, her back against a tree. She opened her pack and took out what smelled like salted pork and dried fruit.

  Heden worked to lower himself to the ground, his joints popping. He wasn’t hungry, even after the run. There was no tree he could sit against and still see Aderyn, so he just lay down amongst the fallen leaves, putting his pack under his head.

  Aderyn ate, and Heden watched the sky through leaves now seeming black.

  “How far to the urq?” he asked.

  Aderyn bit off a bit of jerked pork. “Three hours,” she said, munching. “But it will be after dawn before we come upon them.

  Heden turned his head to look at her. She swallowed.

  “There is a stream only a few hours away,” Aderyn said. “Always take the chance to fill your waterskins and always take the chance to bathe,” she was quoting again. Then she sniffed the air pointedly. “Good advice for everyone,” she said. Heden took her meaning and sneered. At himself more than anyone.

  “And in any event,” she said, picking some of the moss off her and throwing it away. “I no longer wish to be a….” she looked at Heden quizzically.

  He didn’t realize what she meant at first, but then remembered his words in the priory.