All through the streets, people fought to come close to Mariead. Pressed her hands as they could, or spoke to her, or touched her shoulder. Caer Lunan was only a wee town, and it dwindled to a line of houses as we went north, breaking out of the village proper and tracing along the western […]
A massacre is hard work. Even a dirty fight gives you the rush, starts your heart, gets your palms itching for the next blow. But slaughter always outlasts the heat of battle. What follows is not cold; it’s numb. You’re no longer trying to survive; the fear fades, your nose gets used to the smell, […]
The crowd surged forward, bodies crushing in around me. The other penitent-priest, the Inquisitor’s hand-picked hunting hound, sprang onto the steps of the chapel and drew his sword in turn. “Loyal soldiers of the Church, to me!” he shouted. “Get fucking back, you pack of idiots,” Blake snarled, at the same time. “Run! Tell the […]
Wasn’t much by the way of seating. I sat with half my arse on a piece of unsplit firewood, used a larger log as a table. Sergeant Blake sat off to my left, as did all the rest of his lads, where I could keep an eye on them, and they could keep an eye […]
At the outer ring of the group of guards sat a bald man, wide and squat like a toad with stubble. He wore a Sergeant’s tunic over a shirt with no collar—but white, barbed chains were tattooed about his neck, like the chains of a seven-year Penitent. He heaved himself to his feet with a […]
Scarlet soldiers in the square behind her were moving in our direction, led by one of the Inquisitor’s white riders. I couldn’t pick out the stupid shape of Sergeant Cooper without risking a closer look, but in the corner of my eye, the Inquisitor’s white shape drifted away out of sight, taking with him that […]
Mud squished up under my feet as I stared, hands on her shoulders. Damp air was cold on my newly-bare face, and the skin felt too tight, taut, like a skull. The Inquisitor rode a white horse. Everything he and his horse wore was white, splashed with mud from the road north, tack and harness […]
The road to Caer Lunan was long and marked with wagon ruts, packed dirt torn up into muddy furrows. My legs ached, bruises from yesterday’s fight and more twinging with each step, and I kept my head down, eyes up under my hood, watching the fields to either side as we walked in. I felt […]
Caer Lunan was not a large town. It clustered up against a narrow ridge, nearly all its wee houses built with their backs to the slope. Among them, one central house stood out, and behind it, smaller but taller, a chapel with the Church’s star nailed atop its belltower. We crouched near the edge of […]
For three hundred years after the Fall, the Church had kept its foot on our neck. Hunted us. They drove us from the towns, into the wilds, and burnt our Holds wherever they found them. They taught that we were heretical to the Church of Saint Kendrick, traitors to the one right and holy way […]
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