Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  He heaved in a breath, and when he exhaled blood ran out of his mouth and down his chin.

  “Bad enough, Sarge,” he said, and I saw that it was.

  His mail was slick with blood around his hand, where a sword-thrust had gone straight through it and deep into his guts. A man doesn’t survive a wound like that, not without a surgeon and usually not even with one. He looked up at me.

  “I wish to confess, Father,” he whispered.

  I nodded and turned to Anne.

  “I’ll stay with him,” I said. “Go and help the others.”

  She drew her daggers and followed the sounds of violence into the boardinghouse, a hard set to her scarred face. It would go badly for the first stranger Bloody Anne set her eyes on.

  I crouched down beside Nik.

  “Speak, in the name of Our Lady,” I said.

  “I’m dying, I know that,” he said. “I’m dying and I’m scared, Father. I’ve done wrong in my life, and I ain’t always confessed it. I . . . I don’t know that I’ve the time or the strength to confess it all now, and I’m scared what that means.”

  “It’s your time to cross the river, and Our Lady forgives you,” I said. “In Our Lady’s name.”

  “In Our Lady’s name,” he repeated.

  I reached out to put my hand on his head, but he had already died.

  I stood and drew Remorse and Mercy.

  I started up the stairs.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I met a man on the first landing. He was no one I knew, so I rammed Remorse into his groin even as I took the last step. He screamed and fell, clutching at himself, and I gave him Mercy through the throat.

  “Pious Men, call out!” I bellowed.

  I heard a shout from the room ahead of me, followed by a curse and the sound of a crash. I kicked the door open and found Fat Luka hard-pressed by a stranger with a mace. Luka dodged and ducked as best he could, keeping his blade up, but it’s a hard thing to fight a mace when you’ve no shield. The man swung again and Luka dodged, and the weapon smashed into the door I had just thrown open, splintering it.

  Remorse slashed out and up and took his hand off at the wrist. The mace tumbled to the floor with the severed hand still gripping it, and Luka lunged with his sword and that was done.

  “Fuck, but there’s a lot of them,” Luka panted, red-faced and sweating from the unaccustomed exercise. “This ain’t like the last bunch of cunts; these are fucking soldiers.”

  I nodded. That had been my thought too—no civilian carried a mace, or would have had much idea what to do with one if they did. This Bloodhands or whoever he was had obviously started recruiting from among the returning veterans who were beginning to trickle back into the city. That was bad, but it gave me an idea.

  “Where’s Jochan?”

  “He took the top floor, with Sir Eland,” Luka told me.

  That was as I had hoped.

  “Hold here,” I said. “You’ll know what do when the time comes.”

  I bolted back down the stairs and into the back room. I found Bloody Anne working one of her daggers out of a dead man’s eye socket. She was red to the elbows, and there were three corpses in the room with her. Anne always had preferred the close work. That was how she got her name in the first place.

  “Call the hammer,” I told her. “How we took the east cloister at Messia, remember?”

  Bloody Anne nodded and pulled her dagger free with a satisfied wrench. She marched into the main room with me beside her, and she threw her head back and took a great breath.

  “Company!” she roared, her leather-lunged sergeant’s voice filling the building with ease. “The hammer!”

  Anne was no tactician but by Our Lady she was loud, and on the battlefield a loud commander is worth two clever ones any day. What’s the point of clever orders if no one can hear them?

  Three of the lads rushed out of other downstairs rooms and joined us, red blades in their hands. From upstairs came an answering roar, Jochan’s war cry. I heard boots stamping on wooden floors, thundering down the stairs toward us.

  There were six of them left and they fled down the narrow corridors before Jochan and Sir Eland’s insane charge, and as they passed his door Fat Luka leaped out to join the pursuit. They were the hammer. The enemy had thought to make a stand in the main room where they’d have space to make their numbers count, but they found our steel waiting for them. We were the anvil that the hammer met, with those men between us.

  It was bloody slaughter.

  We had used the tactic before, in the sack of Messia, and I couldn’t take the credit for it. It was the captain’s design, but what had worked before would work again. In narrow spaces, such as corridors or cloisters or tunnels, numbers count for little. It’s ferocity that matters, and when two men decide to charge like wild beasts, they can drive a whole squad before them. That was what Jochan and Sir Eland did, and the enemy panicked and ran, looking for space enough to spread out and fight as a group. The trick was to have that space prepared for them, with armed men waiting. Drive them into the trap, and you’ll crush them between your two forces.

  The hammer and the anvil, that was how we took back the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow.

  It was a victory, but not without its cost. Nik the Knife was already dead on the floor behind me, and in the melee another of our men had joined him on his river crossing. He was one of Jochan’s, and to my shame I didn’t even know his name.

  “Ganna’s done,” Cutter said, not sounding like he cared one way or the other about it.

  Jochan looked at his fallen man, lying prone with a shortsword still lodged between his ribs and his mail drenched in blood.

  “Aye,” he said, and it seemed like that was all the opinion he had on the matter.

  Jochan’s crew had never seemed close like mine had been, but that felt cold even for his way of leadership.

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  Jochan shrugged. “A soldier, a conscript. They only sent me the shitheads, by and large. Cutter here’s a good man, and Will the Woman can handle himself, but the rest of them weren’t worth spit.”

  I thought of Mika and Hari back at the Tanner’s, both men from Jochan’s original crew, and found that I disagreed with him on that. All the same, I held my peace on it. That wasn’t the time to debate the merits of men, after all. There was one thing, though.

  “I gave Will a new name,” I said. “Now he’s running the stew, he won’t be weeping anymore. He’s Will the Wencher now.”

  Jochan laughed at that, and Cutter turned and spat on the floor to show what he thought of it, but it broke the mood as I had intended. I was pained by the death of Nik the Knife, but I hadn’t known Ganna and Jochan obviously hadn’t cared about him, so grief for him was a waste of emotion, to my mind. There was work to be done.

  There was a good deal of work, to remove the bodies and secure the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow before dawn came. Moving bodies was harsh work, but Fat Luka said he had heard where there was a plague pit not far away that hadn’t been filled in yet. A few more corpses stripped and shoveled in with the others would never be noticed.

  Harsh work, as I say, but we had done worse before.

  Every one of us had done worse.

  * * *

  • • •

  When it was done I turned the house over to Jochan to see to. It was time he had some responsibility, to my mind, and I still remembered what Luka had said to me about his views on Hari running the Tanner’s Arms. He had fought well that night too—being the hammer is hard and dangerous, and Jochan had stepped up and done it the same as Kant had back in Messia.

  There was a good deal of likeness between my brother and Kant, but he was still my brother all the same. He chose Cutter to stay with him, which didn’t surprise me, and Sir Eland as well, which did. Eland had been part of the hammer too
, I reminded myself, and I wondered if perhaps him and Jochan might be starting to find a trust between them. We could see to a more permanent arrangement in the morning, so I just nodded and let him have it his way.

  Anne and I led the rest of them the quiet way back to the Tanner’s Arms.

  Ailsa was waiting up for us with Mika and Black Billy when we came in, although she’d had the sense to close up for the night before then. That was good. We shed our cloaks to reveal clothes and hands almost black with blood, although little of it was our own.

  “You’ve had a night of it, Mr. Piety,” Ailsa said, in her barmaid’s voice.

  She went to pour brandies without being asked. There was a look of approval on her face, although I was sure she could see we were fewer than we had been. We were fewer than we should have been, even accounting for setting guards at Slaughterhouse Narrow, but she didn’t mention that. She took it in her stride like any businessman’s woman would have done, and that was good. I respected her for that.

  Anne set Simple Sam to heating water in the kitchen for washing, and we drank in the sort of shaky silence that always followed harsh work. There would be jokes and boasting in the morning, and tales grown tall in the telling of who had killed the most men and how, but that was for later. These were hard folk used to hard deeds, but shock is shock and no one is immune to it. Not even Jochan, for all that he might pretend otherwise.

  Perhaps it’s different for archers or the crews who work the great siege cannon, men who barely see the faces of the people they kill. I wouldn’t know. What I do know is how it feels to look into the eyes of a man not a foot in front of you as you pull a length of sharpened steel out of his guts and take his life away.

  You don’t feel like joking about it afterward.

  I sat at my usual table in the corner with my brandy and nodded at Mika across the room. He hadn’t been with us that night, of course. His place was in the Tanner’s with Billy now, but he had been at Messia and at Abingon. He knew what harsh work felt like, and he knew I’d want leaving alone. He nodded back and left me be.

  Bloody Anne joined me a minute later, a brandy of her own in her hand. Now we were in the light I noticed she was walking stiffly, favoring her right leg. She lowered herself into the chair across from me with a grimace that made her scar writhe.

  “It’s a sad thing to lose Nik, and Jochan’s man,” she said. “We’re spreading thinner.”

  I nodded. That was true enough. With Will and Sir Eland and now Jochan and Cutter holding the boardinghouses, Nik the Knife and Ganna both dead and Brak still guarding my aunt, Hari wounded, and Cookpot effectively retired, I was down to eleven men stationed at the Tanner’s Arms, not counting Billy the Boy or Anne herself.

  That was enough, for now, and it was still a lot to have sleeping under one roof. All the same, the more businesses I took back the thinner I would be spread, and a business once taken had to be held or I knew I wouldn’t keep it for long.

  “Those are the times we live in,” I said. “We’ll do, for now. Later, perhaps I’ll put the word about the streets that there’s work for likely lads who can follow orders and know which end of a blade to hold.”

  “How will the others take that?” Anne asked. “We have a trust, a comradeship. Losing comrades is hard, and Nik at least was well liked. Bringing new faces into that . . . I don’t know, Tomas.”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t mean as Pious Men,” I said. “Not straightaway, certainly. Perhaps in time, but that would have to be seen. Door guards and runners and watchmen, though, they can be hired lads.”

  “I suppose they can,” she said, obviously giving the matter some thought. “It’ll be like Messia. We took in new men there, to fill the holes in the line.”

  She frowned, and I knew she had remembered that we had also taken in Billy the Boy at Messia. She winced again, rubbing her leg under the table.

  “How bad are you hurt?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “I got clipped in the thigh with a mace,” she said. “It only got the meat, though. Nothing’s broken, I’ll heal.”

  “You’ll have a good black bruise to show Rosie tomorrow.” I smiled, but when Anne looked up at me I wished I had held my peace about that.

  “I don’t . . .” she started, and tailed off.

  “Our Lady forgave you your guilt,” I reminded her, keeping my voice low. This was a private matter, after all, a matter between a priest and one of his faithful, and nobody should be overhearing that. “You didn’t cross the river in Abingon, and you didn’t cross it tonight, but I can make no promises for tomorrow. Live, Bloody Anne, while you have the chance.”

  She put her head down and took a long, shuddering breath.

  “Aye,” she said after a moment, and lifted her face again. “Perhaps I will.”

  She drained her brandy in a single swallow and went through to the kitchen to wash the blood from her hands at last.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Things settled down after that, for a few days. Anne wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt at Slaughterhouse Narrow, and everyone needed time to rest and heal. There was grief for Nik the Knife, but he wasn’t the first friend these men had lost, and they knew he wouldn’t be the last. Pawl the tailor and his boy came by again, with a cart this time, and everyone collected their fine new clothes. With that and regular trips to Ernst the barber up on Trader’s Row, I had the lot of them looking like proper Pious Men now. That was good.

  We had taken back the two boardinghouses in addition to the Tanner’s Arms, and money was starting to come in. I had fresh supplies brought into the Tanner’s, food and beer and brandy, and Will the Wencher was keeping good on his promise. When Godsday came around again and he presented me with his accounts, I had to admit that he had done what he said he would do. He had taken six marks, not five, and turned a good profit on them. A quarter of that profit was his, then.

  I heard confessions in the morning, and that afternoon I made Will a partner in the Chandler’s Narrow house. Anne hadn’t come to say confession that morning, but I knew she had been up to Will’s place every day since the battle at Slaughterhouse Narrow, and she looked the better for it. I was pleased, to see her happy.

  All was well, except one thing.

  I had told Old Kurt that I would bring Billy the Boy to him, and I hadn’t done that.

  Billy seemed happy enough, and he and Hari had found a friendship somewhere. Whether it had been born that night when Billy had floated over Hari’s dying body and done whatever it was that he had done, or whether it was rooted in the extra treats that Hari produced for him in the kitchen I didn’t know, but then I daresay it didn’t matter either. It was good to see and I didn’t like to take it away from either of them, but I knew the thing had to be done.

  The day after Godsday, Anne and I took Billy the Boy through the stable yard and along the alleys to the path beside the river. Anne was still limping from the blow she had taken at Slaughterhouse Narrow and I had suggested that she didn’t need to come, but to her mind I was wrong about that.

  That made the going slow, but we walked to the Wheels anyway with Billy the Boy between us. We might have looked like a family, if Anne had been wearing a kirtle under her cloak and not the men’s britches and shirt and coat that she insisted on. I looked down at Billy and thought that perhaps it would be no bad thing, to have a family. Not with Bloody Anne, though; I knew that could never happen and truth be told, I wouldn’t have wanted it to. We were friends, and that was all. My thoughts wandered to Ailsa, and I thought perhaps that might be a different matter.

  That was a fool’s thinking and no mistake. Working for the crown sickened me enough, without starting to think about a Queen’s Man in that way. That was out of the question, I knew, yet I seemed to keep doing it. I turned my attention to the alley that led up to Old Kurt’s door. There was a fresh rat nailed to the door, I notic
ed, not more than a few hours old by the look of it.

  “He’s in, then,” I said, nodding to the rat.

  “Aye,” Anne said.

  I knocked on the door and called out the words.

  “Wisdom sought is wisdom bought, and I have coin to pay.”

  Old Kurt opened the door and grinned at us.

  “Tomas Piety and the fine lady,” he said, “and this young gentleman too!”

  Billy the Boy looked at Old Kurt, his face expressionless. After a moment he turned and looked up at me.

  “I’ll be staying here,” he announced.

  I blinked at him. That was the same way he had decided in his mind that Ailsa would be staying at the Tanner’s Arms. He had been right about that, but this might be a different matter. It wasn’t something I had intended to bring up so soon or quite so abruptly as that.

  “I said I’d have a look at him,” Old Kurt said. “No more than that, Tomas.”

  “The lad needs teaching,” I said, “and he’s keen to get started, that’s all. You know how boys are when they get an idea in their heads. Can we come inside?”

  Kurt nodded and led us through to his dusty parlor where the sword of a king hung over the fireplace. So he said, anyway. Billy sat down on a low stool in front of the cold grate and drew his knees up to his chin. He looked at home there.

  “Hmm,” Kurt said, looking down at the lad.

  “We proved he’s not a witch,” I said, although to my mind we had proved nothing of the sort, “but he’s something. Touched by the goddess, aye, but Our Lady doesn’t heal men. Apparently Billy does, and that must mean he’s got the cunning in him.”

  “Perhaps he has,” Kurt admitted. He sat down and looked at Bloody Anne. “What does the fine lady say?”

  “She says she’ll stab you if you call her that again,” Anne growled. “My name’s Bloody Anne.”

  Kurt snorted but made no more of it.

  “Well and good,” he said. “And what do you say, Bloody Anne?”