Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  “A moss-ridden blackguard,” he said.

  “That was it,” she nodded, not without humor.

  “Well, you’re not any kind of blackguard, moss-ridden or otherwise,” Heden said. He meant to compliment her, but he spoke so matter-of-factly she couldn’t tell. The fact that everything he said sounded so final, impartial, made her happy. Made it sound like truth.

  He looked at her and smiled a little. “I doubt you ever will be.”

  She smiled back at him. Then she stopped and cocked her head.

  “But the other knights,” she said. “You hate them somewhat.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I rarely meet one who isn’t a lout and a braggart,” he said, trying not to swear.

  She understood. She didn’t agree or disagree, but she knew what he meant. It was a point of view.

  “I think it’s the oath,” he continued. “It’s meant to be a burden but I think most of them look at it like a badge of station. An excuse to act like a horse’ ass.”

  Aderyn nodded very slightly, it was hard to tell under the bright starlight. Heden wondered at her silence. Did she agree? Was she afraid to agree?

  He turned to her, a mischievous look on his face. “Remember that,” he said. “When it comes time for you to swear your oath.”

  She pursed her lips. “I have already sworn,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was chastising him for not knowing that, or regretting something.

  “When you became a squire?”

  She nodded. “It is the first thing the squire does, for if one cannot hold the oath as a squire, how then as a knight?”

  “Good point,” Heden said. He hadn’t known that. Of course, back in the civilized world, a year was the standard term of service for a squire, before becoming a Knight-errant. Here in the forest, a lifetime as a squire, then a second lifetime as a knight.

  “Sir Nudd took the oath of silence,” Heden said.

  Even in the dark, he could tell she was anticipating his next question, and waiting ruefully.

  “What oath did you swear?” he asked.

  She deflated a little.

  “Chastity,” she said.

  Heden didn’t say anything. She seemed to think Chastity was…unfashionable? He couldn’t tell. She didn’t like admitting it, in any case.

  “The same oath Lady Isobel swore,” Heden said.

  Aderyn gaped. “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess. Guessing it’s a pretty popular oath among the womenfolk.”

  She seemed like she was going to protest.

  She looked at the ground. “Sir Taethan swore it,” she said. “The only man among them.”

  Heden looked at her. This was interesting. He was glad she recruited him for this. He was learning more here about the knights than he had at the priory. Maybe that was her goal.

  He closed his eyes and exhaustion overtook him. It was now the second night without sleep. Only last night, he’d been hunting through kethat warrens searching for a carter’s missing family.

  “All men need sleep,” she said, and it sounded like she was quoting something again.

  Heden nodded.

  “Not now, though,” he said. “I can keep going for a few hours.” His body was ready to collapse, but his mind was racing and would not let him rest.

  Aderyn, looking at Heden with wide eyes, like he was a wild animal, got up and approached him timidly, her small hand outstretched. Heden allowed it. Didn’t move. Didn’t look at her. She placed her hand on his breastplate. Her face was lit by stars.

  She spoke a prayer. Heden recognized it. The air seemed clearer, his vision sharper. Tension and exhaustion began flooding out of him. He was refreshed, no longer needing sleep.

  “You will have to sleep anon,” she said. Heden nodded his understanding.

  “Thank you,” he said, seeing her as a person and not as a puzzle to solve. She gazed at him, her hand still on his chest, her eyes wide. They stared at each other like that for a moment, then Heden looked at her hair, and she looked away.

  “You could not have done that?” Aderyn asked, and went back to sitting against the tree, finishing her rations. Her voice was rough. She cleared her throat. “Is it because you’re an Arrogate?”

  Heden shook his head and took a few deep breaths.

  “It’s because I forgot,” he said, and smiled. “I must have learned,” he took a breath, tension and exhaustion flooding out of him, “seventy prayers? A hundred?” He wondered. “Some of them twenty-five years ago. Haven’t used any in a while. You forget a lot.”

  Aderyn was impressed. “All the prayers of all the knights, even Isobel and Kavalen do not number more than a few dozen.”

  “You have other talents,” Heden said, nodding to her sword.

  Aderyn accepted this, but said “You use a sword as well,” she said.

  Heden shrugged. “Lynwen allows it,” he said. “A lot of Cavall’s saints do. But I’m not very good with it.”

  “You became a priest when you were very young,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Same age as you became a squire,” he said, trying to smile a little.

  “Is that why you are not wed?” she asked. She was looking at his neck. There was no torque around it.

  He was reminded that she’d gone her whole life with nothing approaching intimacy besides the brotherhood of the order. None of the knights had.

  “No,” he said. “Priests of Cavall and Adun can marry. So can Arrogates,” he said, preempting her next question.

  “Then why?”

  “Because the woman I love,” he said, trying to make it sound like it was easy to say, “does not love me.”

  This surprised her.

  “But there are other women,” she said.

  “Not for me,” he said, and that was it.

  Her face softened and she looked at him with a new expression he didn’t understand.

  “I knew you had not sworn an oath of chastity,” she said, smiling. He found it disconcerting.

  “It’s not the same thing for priests. We don’t swear oaths when we take the cloth. It’s more like a test. Had to take an oath to become an Arrogate, though.”

  This interested her.

  “What oath?” she asked sitting forward, wrapping her arms around her legs.

  He gave her a sideways glance. “It’s a secret,” he said.

  “This is not fair!” she declaimed.

  Heden shrugged, but did not budge. “The whole ceremony is filled with ritual and secrecy. The bishop had to go look it up. I’m the first Arrogate this Age. Probably the last.”

  This mystery seemed to gain him more respect with her.

  “Was it the bishop who asked you….”

  He cut her off. “A friend suggested it,” he said, not wanting to name Saint Lynwen for a couple of reasons. “It was the right thing to do,” he failed to add he no longer felt like he was up to it. “Part of my job as a priest of Cavall was judging people, bringing justice to people. Looking at everyone as though they’re guilty of something. I was having a hard time with that.

  “My friend saw I was having…difficulty but knew I didn’t want to just give up on Cavall. She knew about the Arrogate tradition.” Had been one, he remembered. “And suggested it. Taking people’s burdens rather than their measure.”

  “’A man is better than the worst thing he’s done?’” she quoted. Heden was impressed she made the leap.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s harder than it sounds. But once you start, once you start…seeing into people’s hearts. It’s hard to stop. Doesn’t matter what you think of someone, how much you disapprove…once you see the kind of pain they’re in,” he left it at that. He didn’t like talking about it.

  Her stare bore into him. The brilliant stars above them were not distracting enough. Heden found it impossible to ignore the strength of her attention, so he changed the subject.

  “Where is Kavalen’s body?” he asked.

  He didn’t look,
but heard her shift as she leaned back, disengaging somewhat. His question had worked.

  “You think if you saw his body, you would know what happened to him?” she wondered.

  Heden shrugged. Not easy lying on his back, but he’d had a lot of practice. “I’d know something,” he said. “If I knew any less than I do now, I’d forget my own name.”

  “There is a ceremony,” Aderyn said. “And the knight’s body is accepted back into the heart of the forest. It is not a simple burial, you could not gain his corpse even if you knew where it was.”

  Heden thought about this. She was telling the truth. He considered pressing her, but decided against it. He didn’t want her to close up on him.

  The sounds of the forest enveloped them. Heden enjoyed it. The forest could be a pleasant place. Then he remembered the urmen.

  “Why are we on foot?” Heden asked. “Why not take the horses?”

  She shook her head. “Not for this. Not for scouting. And not your horse. Mine can be quiet where yours cannot. And find its way through the wode at night with nary a misstep. But even my horse cannot mask its smell, and the urq like horseflesh.”

  Heden knew this was true.

  “Horses when we want them to know we’re here,” which he imagined was most often, “on foot when we don’t.”

  Heden nodded his understanding. Aderyn gave him a look, checking to see he was ready. She watched him a little too long, seeming to make a decision about something, then nodded and stood up, smiling. Heden got up as well. It took him a little more work to manage it.

  “We go,” she said, and turned to lope off into the forest, like a cat chasing pray.

  Heden watched her go, admiring her youth, before he started in after her.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  It was maybe an hour later and a large ravine navigated before they stopped again. They were covering miles at a time. A relentless pace. Their way lit by starlight.

  They stopped because something brought Aderyn up short. At first, Heden not seeing her clearly in the darkness, he thought they’d come upon the urq. Then he remembered they were first going to a stream. The urmen should still be hours away. And there was no stream nearby.

  He looked at her, expecting to see her sniffing the air again. He couldn’t tell what she was looking at, something on the ground.

  “The urq?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “We are in the territory of the brocc,” she said. The quasi-mythical badger-men who called the southern wode home. Where Heden grew up, far to the south, they were a story told to children at bedtime. Heden had met them though, they were anything but myths. They didn’t mind men, but only the men who lived close to the forest had any kind of relationship with them.

  “Not even an army of urq would test the mettle of the brocc,” she explained. Heden knew this to be true. Where there was one, there were thousands, and they were incredibly fierce fighters, but difficult to interest in anything except the defense of their territory.

  Heden approached slowly and looked around, not seeing what she was looking at. She appeared to be staring at the base of a tree covered in lichen and mushrooms, a large bush growing around it.

  Heden stared at it again, and like a cloud that suddenly coalesces into the shape of a bird or a horse, he saw it.

  There was a knight lying against the base of the tree, illuminated by starlight.

  “Sir Perren,” Aderyn said.

  He’d been there some time; the undergrowth had almost completely enveloped him. Heden could see his armor and his sword. A lump that was probably a shield. Heden remembered Brys explaining that the forest would grow quickly to protect the knight, but Heden had a hard time imagining that Sir Perren had been here less than a year. And Brys had known he was in this state. He’d said Sir Perren would not come to the priory.

  “Is he alive?” Heden asked.

  Aderyn nodded.

  “But all the knights are at the priory,” he said. Aderyn frowned, pained. Looked like she was struggling with a difficult decision. Or a difficult realization.

  “He attempts a casting. He casts his thoughts out, far beyond this demesne,” Aderyn explained. She was only half paying attention to Heden.

  Heden looked at the nightmare picture of a man physically and mentally merging with the wode. “Who is he trying to commune with?”

  Aderyn turned away, her mouth open, breathing heavily, looking at the stars.

  “Commander Kavalen,” she said.

  Heden was horrified.

  “Can he…is that possible?”

  “Sir Perren was closest to the wode. He would sometimes say “we” instead of “I” and flew into a rage if he found an urq or kethat harming a tree.”

  Heden stared at the lichen covered face of the knight.

  “The death of Commander Kavalen has driven him mad,” Aderyn said. Perren was trying to will the power of the forest to resurrect Commander Kavalen. It didn’t look to Heden as though the forest was trying to protect him, it looked like the forest was trying to consume him.

  “Well, we can wake him up at least,” Heden said, stepping forward.

  “No!” Aderyn hissed, grabbing him. He stopped, trusting her. He took a step back.

  She looked down at Sir Perren, thinking how to explain it, then turned back to Heden and pointed at Perren’s body.

  “It is a thing Sir Cadwyr would do,” she explained. Heden took her meaning, an oafish thing. Disrespectful.

  They both stood and looked down at the knight, his features thrown into sharp relief by the bright starlight.

  “We leave him,” she said. “He is in no danger here.”

  It looked like he was being eaten by danger.

  “What…” Heden stopped and thought, and turned to Aderyn. “Squire,” he said formally, she took notice. “You know about the sack of Ollghum Keep.”

  She nodded.

  “You know what I’m trying to do.”

  “You would save those people,” she said with maybe a touch of admiration. Heden was getting some sense of why she was here with him instead of back with the knights who refused to act.

  He pointed to Sir Perren.

  “Would Sir Perren help?”

  This was a difficult question for Aderyn. She looked at Perren, unsure how to answer. Then she took a step forward and crouched down to look into the knight’s sleeping face.

  “If you’re asking,” she whispered, looking at the gaunt knight, “whether Perren would make a difference,” she thought for a few moments more. The forest continued to make various noises, crickets and other nocturnal animals trying to find mates.

  She stood up and squared her shoulders, took a breath. Made a decision.

  “Sir Perren is lost to us,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” Heden asked.

  “He may never wake.” Her voice was hushed.

  Heden thought about this. Thought about the timeline. Kavalen had only died a few days ago. How could Aderyn know this?

  “Isobel tried to contact him,” Heden said.

  Aderyn raised her eyebrows, impressed at Heden’s insight.

  “Is this unusual for him?” he asked.

  She nodded again, her jaw set.

  “This is his reaction to Kavalen’s death,” Heden realized.

  “Lady Isobel said Sir Perren was an Oracle.” Aderyn didn’t like thinking about what this meant. “His fate was the fate of the order.”

  “That’s why no one will tell me anything,” Heden said. “They’ve already given up. On the keep, on the order. On everything.” Their behavior made more sense to him.

  Heden looked sharply at Aderyn. “How do you feel about that?’

  She shrugged.

  “I thought nothing of it. Mi’lady has been in a melancholic mood since the death of Commander Kavalen. She will regain herself.”

  “And Perren?”

  “I am not Sir Perren’s squire,” she said.

  “Okay,” Heden said, ignorin
g that since it didn’t make any sense to him. “What if I just woke him up, whether you liked it or not.”

  “It could kill him,” she said.

  “Figures,” Heden said ruefully.

  “The wode keeps him alive thus,” she explained. Heden looked at the knight against the tree, it was hard to see in the starlight. He imagined the vines that grew over him pulsed with nutrients, but it was probably just his imagination. He decided it was his imagination.

  “To wake him now would be like ripping a baby from its mother’s womb.”

  “Great,” Heden said.

  “Come,” Aderyn said. “It will be dawn in an hour, and we near the stream,” she took his hand gingerly, and he let himself be led away as they abandoned Sir Perren.

  Sir Perren made no objection.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Heden didn’t trust water and women. For reasons passing understanding, every time Heden had been near water with any woman she always took the opportunity to get naked and lure Heden into doing the same. Ostensibly for the purposes of cleanliness, but that never turned out to be the real reason. Sometimes the methods they employed to conspire to find him naked, or have him come upon them in the same state, were elaborate. They seemed to put a great deal of thought into it. Something about water, or the ritual of bathing, empowered them and made them confident.

  When Heden was younger, and very uptight about these things, it bothered him. Now he was far less uptight, but had another reason to avoid such situations. As he thought about it, it didn’t seem fair. Maybe Aderyn would be different. He looked at her in the new morning sun, watched her take out a comb missing several teeth and untangle her hair, the closest to vanity she could come to out here, and decided that in this respect, she was exactly like any other girl.

  She looked at him with a discreet smile and cocked an eyebrow, as though she knew what he was thinking. He tried to ignore her. He was not sure he could resist her, if she tried anything. And never completely sure that resisting was for the best.

  She hopped down lightly from the large rock they’d both been standing on, down the stream below. It was wide and so deep in places as to be black. It burbled past, gathering in great large pools, and the broken terrain here created small waterfalls and rivulets. It was beautiful. He understood why she wanted to stop here.