Antioch

  “Ugh! I hate cellists. They step all over everybody else, like they’re the only one on stage.”

  Ditch couldn’t help but agree. “I know! I just wanted to grab that thing and break it over his dumb head, like SHUT UUUP!”

  The roommate laughed eagerly. Then he said, “Why don’t you sing with your accent?”

  “Nobody sings with a accent, man.”

  “Oh... So, were you a singer, before? Were you in a band?”

  “Nah, just a fan.”

  “You’ve got a nice voice.”

  Ditch lost his rhythm again. “Uh… yeah, thanks.”

  ***

  Biggs woke up with the sun on his face. The other bed in his room was straight and empty. Worried, he dressed and went down the hall to knock on Ditch’s door.

  Ditch opened it wide and stood half-naked in the way. Tattoos snaked and dotted the length of his chiseled little body, weaving under his shorts. He had a straight razor in one hand and a puffy, white horseshoe of shaving foam on top of his head. “Hey, Biggs, what’s up, man?”

  The roommate poked his head into view from farther back, red haired, freckled and smiling. “Hey, Biggs, we were just jamming!” He waved his fist and sang, “Hold you dooown! Hold you dooown!” Ditch turned to chuckle at him and rocked out with his own fist.

  Biggs said, “Seen Drake? Kid didn’t come back to the room.”

  Ditch said, “Nah, man. Hope he fell in a hole.”

  Biggs gave a half-hearted wave and walked away. Ditch paused, struck then by the feeling that Drake might really be in trouble. He shut the door and started dressing.

  Betheford’s common room was much larger than the Cauldron’s, with a high, white ceiling and pillars. Large, frequent windows filled it with daylight. Decorative red and white checkered cloth covered four long banquet tables and matched the curtains. People were gathering near the double doors at the entrance, Welles among them. He saw Biggs on the stairs and ran up to him.

  “Biggs, bauran hit that little restaurant Andalynn’s at! Let’s go!” The two sailors pushed outside and ran down the street.

  Hundreds crowded the courtyard across from the Cauldron. Biggs found Andalynn’s blonde among the black. He pushed toward her. She had her back to him with her arms folded, watching the closed door along with everyone else. Strangely, she wore some kind of scarf on her head and her gun belts circled a baggy set of the church’s longhandles.

  Biggs shouted, “Lynn!” working his way through. “Lynn!”

  When she turned he stopped. The makeshift headscarf slanted to cover much of the left side of her face. Jagged scars tore out from under it, outlining the strips Michael had replaced. She stood straight with her chin up, ready to tell Biggs about the evening’s events and that she was fine.

  Biggs’ mouth fell open. “Oh, Lynn...” He went straight to her and embraced her. “What happened?” She stood rigid in his arms, eye darting.

  She thought about pushing him away. She was trying to accept what had happened to her, feeling it was an appropriate punishment, some kind of cosmic justice for what she’d done on the boat. She did not want to be comforted or to pretend there would be anything between them now that she was so disfigured. But, she did not want to hurt him either, so she rested her forehead on his shoulder and let him hold her.

  Biggs said, “It’s alright, ever’thin’ll be alright.”

  “Drake is dead.”

  “Aw no… What happened?” He held her like he’d held his loved ones in another life.

  Andalynn described the flight from the Cauldron as a list of her faults: she was too slow, she was inaccurate, she made poor decisions. By the end of her story she had even apologized for her clothes, explaining that her nightgown had been ruined in the struggle and the long underwear was all the church had to cover her up.

  Biggs offered his own point of view. “Took out two on your own. Them folks’re lucky you was there.”

  She started to tear up and thought about how strange it was to cry out of only one eye. Ditch called their names across the crowd.

  ***

  The Cauldron was dark inside except for the sunlight from the second floor. Fergus would’ve had it lit from the hearth by then. Puffs of the bauran’s disease rose from Michael and Abraham’s steps as they thumped up the stairs. At the top, Drake’s body sat in a pool of ink, slumped against the wall with its chin on its chest. Smoke bled out of the bullet holes.

  Abraham lifted Drake’s head by the hair. It pulled like a bag. “She squashed him.”

  Michael was in full habit again, his sleeve repaired. He looked around and sniffed the air. “It’s settled, somewhat...” He stroked his finger across the banister and tasted the leather. The smoke fizzled in his mouth against the riin. “But it’s still deadly. A good place to try the milk.”

  Abraham harrumphed. “That sounds like a clan remedy to me. Still, these sailors have experience. You can’t argue with experience. Advise Fergus and his family to stay out of here until you know it’s safe. Also, keep in mind that you need to stay at the church, where you can be found easily. I don’t know when you’ll find time to clean a house.”

  Michael nodded. “Absinth and a cow are ready for you. That boy, Lot, is minding them until you’re finished here.”

  “I’m taking him with me.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll need the help. I’d just get lost, my eyes the way they are. And he’s got nowhere to go. I can’t send him home now, can I? It’s convenient for both of us.”

  “Do you think he can be trusted?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll give him a chance to keep his mouth shut. He’s earned that.”

  Michael paused and then spoke against his better judgment. “Sir, should anything happen to you, all of Salem will die. They won’t stand a chance without someone who knows the way.”

  Abraham’s manner went cold. “Yes, they certainly are in peril.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but, considering your age, perhaps you should… forgo the crucibles, only for Lot. Then he could…”

  Abraham turned on him. “Salem will rot before I break my vows!” The templar wore his sword behind his back, at the waist, and had his hands linked above the hilt. His head seemed to float above his armor in the shadowy hall, like the skull of an ancient knight returned from death. A thundercloud of riin billowed out of him. “You’ve broken trust, haven’t you, consecrate? Confess!”

  Michael took a step back. “No...” He’d never felt such a wash of power. Then, he imagined all of Antioch lost to the plague because he’d spoken carelessly at the top of the stairs. Michael shouted, “No!” and opened the way.

  He was a bonfire on the shore before Abraham’s blazing Vesper. Michael’s hand shot to his sword. There wasn’t enough room in the hallway for a full swing, he’d have to stab for the head, knowing that thrust would not only doom the town of Salem but would thereby open a path for the bauran into all of the towns and cities of the north. John warned me to be careful with him. I should have listened.

  However, before Michael’s blade bared more than inches from the scabbard, Abraham’s aura dispelled. He was a skinny old man in a loose suit of armor again. Abraham showed his palms and said contemptuously, “My hands are sheathed.”

  My hands are sheathed was an expression from the Reformation that meant loosely, “I’m not up to mischief,” or literally, “I don’t put people to sleep without their permission.” It was a reference to why they kept their hands in their gauntlets and their gauntlets buckled to the sleeve. Most of them couldn’t open the way in someone else without the touch of skin. In light of Abraham’s ability, the expression was as meaningless as a quarter inch of leather, but Michael’s sword clicked back into its housing.

  Abraham glared at him. “Why don’t you go find something to cover the boy? Let’s get this over with.”

  Heart pounding, Michael slowly backed away from him and into Sarah’s room. In all of his life, so much of it
spent with Abraham and practicing the way, Michael had never felt riin come out of the air like that. It filled him with dread curiosity. What technique had that been? What is he capable of?

  Abraham was still glaring when Michael returned. They wrapped Drake’s corpse in Sarah’s sheets. Michael lifted it, an end in each hand, like a grisly hammock. Then he carried it down through the restaurant, dripping ink on the floor and leaving strands of patient smoke in the air behind him.

  He stopped in the kitchen. The door was open. Muddy footprints tracked the floor like a man had walked through on the balls of his bare feet. Michael turned to Abraham and said, “Marabbas has been in here...”

  “Mmrnmhrn… stupid gunder. Come on. If he isn’t dead already, he’ll be out by the shed.”

  Abraham was right. Marabbas lurked near the smokehouse, beard and furs clumped with blood, crouched over an eviscerated deer. When Michael came out of the kitchen with Drake’s body, Marabbas stood up and waved.

  Away from the dinner table, the difference between Marabbas and a man was obvious. Standing on the fores of his very long feet, with stocky thighs and calves bent, his legs resembled a dog’s. Leather braces on his arches left his thick toes and bony heels bare at either end.

  Relieved, Michael tried to wave back, but it looked more like he was raising a toast with one end of the corpse.

  Marabbas sniffed the air. “That’s Drake. He’s dead.” He stalked closer, continuing to sniff.

  Abraham strode forward.

  Marabbas stopped, head cocked to one side, watching him. At five feet tall, average for a gunder, he was shorter than Abraham’s shoulder. As Abraham approached, Marabbas felt threatened. His amber eyes flared and he tensed, ready to flee.

  Abraham came to a halt ten feet away. Marabbas collapsed. Michael took note of Abraham’s range, about twice that of a caligan. Abraham stood there, examining the unconscious gunder’s reflection. Then he said, “Hmm, the smoke doesn’t hurt him.”

  Michael set Drake’s body down. “It didn’t harm Ares either...”

  ***

  Marabbas stirred. Then he stretched and yawned, emitting a faint, high-pitched whine. His mouth opened wide, twice as wide as a man’s, and his long tongue curled between vicious rows of teeth. When his jaws closed his face seemed human again under all of that wild and bloody hair. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around, doggish legs out in front of him. Michael and Abraham were discussing the smoke.

  Marabbas listened for a while and then said, “That’s the sailor smoke?”

  Abraham turned, stroking his beard. “Yes…”

  Marabbas stretched again, splaying his toes, and then got up. “A lot of that’s inside. Is Fergus dead too? I have this deer.” He pointed at the deer.

  Abraham harrumphed and suggested to Michael, “You could use him.”

  Michael’s expression lifted at the idea. “Marabbas, do you want to help Fergus?”

  “Ok.”

  Michael spoke slowly and with his hands. “The smoke is in the house,” he pointed at the house, “but Fergus can’t clean it up,” he mimed pushing a broom, “he’d get sick,” he brought his hands up to his throat and stuck out his tongue. “Will you do it?”

  “Ok.”

  “Good! I’ll have a bucket of milk and a brush inside tonight. You go in and scrub the milk everywhere you smell the smoke, alright?”

  Marabbas paused. “Scrub the milk.” The idea tied his mind in a knot. How do you scrub milk? Michael gave him a long moment while Abraham’s eyes rolled. The gunder scratched and said, “I have this deer.” He pointed at the deer again. “Is Fergus inside?”

  Michael slowed down even more and made even wider gestures. “No. He can’t go - inside - until the - whole - house is - clean. He’d get - sick.” Marabbas’ face followed Michael’s arcing hands like they were birds flying around in a room. Michael’s expression went flat. “Come back tonight.”

  “Ok.” Marabbas grabbed one of the deer’s legs and bounded toward the forest. The two hundred pound carcass plowed through the fallen leaves and apples. Considering the unholy strength of the bauran, Michael was thankful he wouldn’t be seeing any undead gunders.

  Abraham said, “If you leave him alone with milk and a brush, he’ll drink and scratch himself. Take that body out to the other one. I’ll gather some wood.”

  In a private little clearing, they built a pyre out of apple twigs, branches and a large amount of the Cauldron’s woodpile. On top they placed two bodies, both wrapped up to contain the smoke. Drake was bigger and heavier than the other, the monster that had killed him, the same one that had almost killed Andalynn. Michael stepped away from the intense heat as the fire started to roar.

  Abraham had his own copy of the bauran book, his handwriting blocky and precise. He’d just turned from a page that gave basic instructions on how to properly burn a body with readily available materials and was on the passage that defined the incinerator. He’d copied detailed, technical drawings of the machine from the originals Captain made in Michael’s book. He said, “Whatever is pyrolysis?”

  Michael said, “This has taken too long. They’re defenseless in my absence.”

  Abraham closed the book and tucked it flat against his lower back, under his sword. It was pleasantly supportive and tightened his belt. He motioned at the burning corpses. “You’ll have your hands full once this gets out.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “They’re having service today. I’m going there to explain it to them.”

  “They won’t hear it. They’ll shun you again, this time for saving their miserable lives.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Honor your vows. Even good intentions can tempt you away from them.”

  “How will that keep me from getting shunned?”

  Abraham grimaced. “No, no, Michael! I don’t care if you’re shunned! I’m worried about what you’ll do once these intolerable idiots are shunning you! You’ve no one left to advise you. You’ve no equal in this place. Our vows temper us and give us integrity. They make us fit to judge.” Abraham pointed at him. “Honor your vows. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”

  “You don’t. I’m not some kind of devil.”

  “Without strict, inhibiting law, that’s exactly what you’ll be! A devil. You almost pulled your sword on me today! Me! What foolishness are you going to justify tomorrow?”

  Michael spoke freely, confident that Abraham no longer suspected him of heresy, in the strictest sense at least. “Perhaps you’re right. But, perhaps men weren’t meant to be so helpless. Please, be reasonable. With Lot you can...”

  Abraham threw his hands up in frustration. “Fwah! Keep your advice!” He shook his finger at Michael. “You’re a sorry successor!”

  “I’m not. You’re short-sighted. If you don’t care about whether men live or die outside of the law, consider this, if everyone dies, there will be no one left to replace us. Who will protect the way then?”

  Abraham put his fists on his hips. “If everyone is dead, it won’t need protecting!” Michael dropped his hands to his sides and gave up. Abraham was just getting started. “This plague, these bauran, they’re a crucible. I’ve never understood how someone like you could have come from this place, from these people. But now I see... Now I see you crumble and lose your resolve. You hide behind the letter of the law and mock its spirit. A true paladin takes the hard road. You’re a disgrace!”

  “Ah, I see, well, you could have consecrated your own acolyte, hmm?” He said it to be irritating.

  It worked. Abraham had been at odds with Gabriel for a long time. “You know damn well why I didn’t! Do you know what he said to me when he got back from Tabor, after having done nothing? I’ll tell you what he said! He said thou shalt not kill. He actually said that to me! That’s some of your father’s gibberish, isn’t it? What are you supposed to do with devils then? What good is a paladin that doesn’t kill devils
?”

  “Quite a bit of good still, I’d think.”

  “Oh please. Thou shalt not kill… fwah.”

  Michael agreed but argued with him anyway. “I believe that only applies to men.” He felt foolish right after having said it. Regardless of beliefs or having an accurate understanding of the fellowship’s moral imperatives, it simply wasn’t a good argument to have with Abraham.

  “Only applies to… these people can only afford that sort of brainless morality because they built their houses on our doorstep! Do you think Breahg war parties stay away from here because they’re afraid of being shunned? Do you think Tabor would be a better place if they had God? A devil’s a devil, it doesn’t matter what skin it’s in! And I’ve never met - anything - so evil as a man!” He indicated Michael’s scar. “Your devil’s marked you, hasn’t he?”

  Again Michael agreed, but had by then developed a general disputatiousness that would not allow him to be silent. “The devil’s mark is a silly superstition. This was an accident.”

  Abraham recoiled. “No, no, Michael! I know that! Don’t be an idiot! I was making a point!”

  A chorus of singing rose away south as Michael and Abraham argued. It was one of the fellowship’s hymns. Service had begun. Abraham stopped and scowled when he heard it. “I can’t stand these people. They’ve God instead of honor.”

  Michael wanted to be rid of him. “Before you go, may I have your key, sir? I’d rather not break the library door.”

  “So, that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” Abraham snapped the chain from his neck and dropped the key on the ground. “I’m not a saint yet. Honor your vows.”

  Michael linked his hands behind his back and waited - in the apple trees, the crackling heat of the pyre and the distant singing of the fellowship - for Abraham to leave.

  15 Faith

  That week’s service filled Betheford’s inn to the walls and almost three thousand more people stood outside, waiting for word of what would be discussed within. Seats had been saved for the sailors and Fergus’ family. Betheford stood on the staircase, smiling and waiting for the whispers, chairs and shoes to silence.

  Service started with a hymn. Betheford led their worship with a clear, powerful voice. The songs rose and fell in practiced harmony. An ocean of sound flowed from the fine, double doors and carried through the city on the voices in the streets.