Blood Song

Makril raised a bushy eyebrow but didn’t comment. Instead he finished his meat and fished in his pack for a small leather flask. “Brother’s Friend,” he explained, taking a swig. “Cumbraelin brandy mixed with redflower. Keeps the fire in a man’s belly when he’s walking a wall on the northern frontier waiting for Lonak savages to cut his throat.” He offered the flask to Vaelin who shook his head. Liquor wasn’t forbidden in the Order, but it was frowned upon by the more Faithful masters. Some said anything that dulled the senses was a barrier to the Faith, the less a man remembered of his life the less he had to take with him to the Beyond. Clearly Brother Makril didn’t share this view.

“So you want to know about the witch.” He relaxed, resting his back against a rock, intermittently sipping from his flask. “Well, the story goes she was arrested on Council orders following reports of Unfaithful practises. Allegations are usually a load of nonsense; people claiming to have heard voices from the Beyond that don’t come from the Departed, healing the sick, communing with beasts and so on. Mostly it’s just frightened peasants blaming each other for their misfortunes, but every once in a while you get one like her.

“There’d been trouble in her village. She and her father were outsiders, from Renfael. Kept to themselves, he made a living as a scribe. A local landowner wanted him to forge some deeds, something to do with a dispute over the inheritance of some pasture. The scribe refused and ended up with an axe in his back a few days later. The landowner was a cousin of the local magistrate so nothing was done. Two days later he walked into the local tavern, confessed his crime and cut his own throat from ear to ear.”

“And they blamed her for that?”

“It seems they had been seen together earlier in the day, which was odd because there was said to be hatred between them even before the bastard killed her father. They said she touched him, a short pat on the arm. Didn’t help that she was mute, and an outsider. Being a little too pretty and a little too smart didn’t do her any favours either. They always said there was something about her, she wasn’t right. But they always say that.”

“So you arrested her?”

“Oh no. Tendris and me, we only hunt the ones that run. Brothers from the Second Order searched her house and found evidence of Denier activity. Forbidden books, images of gods, herbs and candles, the usual stuff. Turned out she and her father were followers of the Sun and the Moon, a minor sect. They’re pretty harmless mostly since they don’t try to convert others to their heresy, but a Denier’s a Denier. She was taken to the Blackhold. The next night she escaped.”

“She escaped the Blackhold?” Vaelin was unsure if Makril was mocking him. The Blackhold was a squat, ugly fortress in the centre of the capital, its stones stained with soot from the nearby foundries, famed as a place where people were taken and didn’t come out again unless it was to walk the path to the gallows or the gibbet. If a man went missing and his neighbours heard he was taken to the Blackhold they stopped asking when he would return, in fact they didn’t mention him at all. And no-one ever escaped.

“How is such a thing possible?” Vaelin wondered.

Makril took a long pull from his flask before continuing. “Did you ever hear of Brother Shasta?”

Vaelin recalled some of the more lurid battle stories told by the older boys. “Shasta the Axe?”

“That’s him. A legend in the Order, a great brute of a man, arms like tree trunks, fists like hams, they said he’d killed over a hundred men before they sent him to the Blackhold. Truly he was a hero… and quite the stupidest shit-head I ever met. Mean with it too, ‘specially when he’d had a drink. He was her gaoler.”

“I had heard he was a great warrior who did the Order much service,” Vaelin said.

Makril snorted. “The Keep is where the Order puts its relics, boy. The ones that survive their fifteen years who’re too stupid or too mad to be masters or commanders, they get sent to the Keep to live out their time locking up heretics, even if they’re no bloody good at it. I’ve seen plenty of Shastas, big, ugly, brutish idiots with no thought in their heads but the next battle or the next tankard of ale. Usually they don’t last long enough to be a problem but if they’re big and strong enough they linger, like a bad smell. Shasta lingered long enough to be sent to the Blackhold, Faith help us.”

“So,” Vaelin ventured carefully, “this oaf left her cell open and she walked out?”

Makril laughed, a hard unpleasant sound. “Not quite. He gave her the keys to the front gate, took his axe down from the wall of his quarters and started killing the other brothers on watch. Cut down ten men before one of the archers put enough shafts in him to slow him down. Even then he killed two more before they gutted him. Weird thing, he died with a smile on his face, and before he died he said something: ‘She touched me.’”