stink that had been sickening Ivanr now rose to a choking reek of rotting flesh that made him gag. He covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his forearm. The priest nodded his understanding.
‘Offensive, yes, but you get used to it. I know it now as the sweet scent of cleansing.’ He gestured for Ivanr to peer into the well. ‘Come. Do not be afraid. Welcome deliverance unto Our Lady.’
Though he knew exactly what he would see, Ivanr could not help but look down the stone-lined pit. A strange fascination demanded that he bear full witness to what had occurred. Flies in a churning dark mass choked the opening. He waved them aside one-handed and edged forward. At first he saw nothing. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that the well was not nearly so deep as he’d assumed. Something filled it. The dark mass of protruding limbs, heads, and bent torsos of a mass of human bodies stuffed the well to just below its lip. Ivanr flinched away, fighting down the bile clawing at his throat.
‘This is monstrous!’
‘We are doing the Lady’s work.’ The priest raised his voice, shouting to everyone, ‘The faith must be protected! Heretical doctrine must be cleansed!’
‘Heresy? Who says only one god must be worshipped?’
The priest now directed his response to the crowd: ‘And where were these so-called gods when our ancestors were being wiped from the land by the predations of the demon Riders? Where was this ancient sea god some go on about now? This god of healing? Or this earth goddess? All the multitude of others? Where were they then?’
Yet the crowd remained silent, more cowed than enthusiastic. It seemed the priest’s fanatical zealotry did not extend to them. Their faces did not shine with the conviction of true believers. Hunger, exhaustion, and days of constant fear had clawed them into a grey pallor. It seemed to Ivanr that they possessed a sullen suspicion directed more at each other than at him. They are terrified of this man, and their own neighbours. They have woven a bitter existence of constant mutual dread spiked by explosions of bloodletting. He eyed their drawn faces, sweaty grips on makeshift spears, and fevered gazes. Could they have been browbeaten and dominated into believing anything? Following anyone?
‘What is this?’ Ivanr demanded and snapped out a hand to grasp the priest’s robes at his neck. The man squawked and batted at the grip. Ivanr yanked as if tearing something then raised his hand high, a small object dangling there. ‘Look!’ he bellowed. ‘Look what this man wears secretly beneath his robes!’
The object swung on a leather thong. The token given him from the hand of the Priestess herself: the sword symbol of the cult of Dessembrae.
Ivanr felt all eyes shift to the priest. The young man glared back, scornful. ‘Fools! How stupid can you be?’
Wrong tack, my friend.
Faces twisted into masks of rage as long-suppressed anger and resentment found a path to release. Too late the priest realized his position and raised a hand for pause. It was as if that hand had motioned Begin as countless spears and sharpened hafts of broken tools punched into him. Ivanr was shouldered aside, so eager was everyone for a share in the man’s death. With the shafts of their weapons they levered up the still-twitching figure and thrust him over and into the well. Standing back, they raised those wet gleaming tools and looked at one another, amazed by what they had accomplished.
Then all those eyes shifted to him.
Ah… the flaw in the plan.
Squeaking of wood on wood announced the return of the old man into the square. He was pushing a wheelbarrow, a shovel resting in it. He set down the barrow to gape at everyone.
‘And there’s his lackey!’ Ivanr shouted.
With a beast-like throaty snarl the crowd went for the man. He ran, showing a good set of heels for a skinny old fellow. Ivanr found himself all alone in the square.
Now where are my blasted horses…
He tracked them down easily enough; fed and watered in a corral. As he led them through the hamlet complete murderous chaos raged. Neighbour slew neighbour as all past feuds, grudges, and outright hatreds erupted in an orgy of stalking and stabbing. Soothing his mounts, he passed bloodied corpses splayed across thresholds, trampled on the narrow cobbled ways, and slumped against walls. Men, women, even children.
He reflected that there seemed no stopping once all restraint was gone. And that chute was slicked by blood.
As a stranger, and no part of their feuds, Ivanr was ignored. Only once did he stop, and that was before a child, a young boy, standing in a doorway, blood from a gash in his head wet down his shoulder and shirt-front. The solemn regard of the youth’s deep brown eyes shook Ivanr more than all he’d seen. Stooping, he picked up the lad and set him on his spare mount. The boy did not complain; said nothing, in fact. Ivanr’s relief was palpable when they reached the cool breeze of the open pastures above the hamlet. Looking back, he saw black smoke pluming from here and there about the town.
Complete and utter collapse. The natural consequences of religious war? Or something more? Who was to say? It was all new to these lands where the Lady had ruled unquestioned for so many generations. Perhaps the eruption was natural, given how hard the Lady and her priests had clamped down, and how long.
He regarded the youth, who sat awkwardly, his thin legs wide, feet bare and dirty. Probably his first time on a horse. ‘What’s your name?’ But the boy just stared — not sullen, flat rather — emotionless. Am I to have no answers from you either? So be it. Spurn me as Thel half-breed, would they? Then to the Abyss with these Jourilan peoples and lands, and all their gods, new and old, with them. I am done with them.
Ivanr turned his back. The higher slopes of the foothills beckoned, and the snow-sheathed heights of the Iceback range beyond glittered in the slanting amber light of the passing day.
‘It was quick — if that’s any consolation.’
Hiam looked to his Wall Marshal, Quint. The man was staring down at the broken equipment and bodies smashed on the rocks below. The indifference on his scared face troubled Lord Protector Hiam. His callousness again. Was that why the man was passed over for command when the old Lord Protector chose? Turning away, Hiam waved to the Section Marshal, Felis, the only woman he knew of to have risen so high in the order. ‘What happened?’
Felis saluted and drew off her helm, revealing short brown hair that grew low on her forehead, almost to her brows. ‘Witnesses say equipment failure. Old rope. I take full responsibility, of course.’
Shameful. What would his predecessors say to see the order so reduced? ‘The builders?’
‘Theftian labourers. Part of their imbursement.’
Hiam once more peered down the dizzying slope of the curtain wall. A cold wind buffeted him. He examined where the boards and ropes hung tangled, swinging before a long dark rent, a fissure in the face of the set cyclopean blocks of the wall. ‘And that break?’
‘Largest in these three west sections,’ Quint answered.
He saw it in his mind’s eye: the specially sized block being lowered to the workers suspended below on their planks, where they would fit and set it. But something went wrong — the block fell, smashed through the workers to crash to the breakwater. And now there was no time to cut a new one. The frost was already upon them.
The fiends could dig their claws into this gap to pull the wall apart.
The answer came reflexively, as it should. He trusted his instincts. ‘We’ll set the Champion in this section.’
Quint did not disappoint. ‘Hiam! That is, Lord Protector! The centre bears the brunt. It’s always been the champion’s post.’
Hiam offered his deputy, the Wall Marshal, an amused smile. ‘You’re telling me things I don’t know?’
Quint’s bright gaze shifted to the Chosen nearby. His look told Hiam: If we were alone right now… ‘They’ll read something into the change. You mustn’t underestimate them.’
The Lord Protector’s smile broadened: that had always been his message. The Wall Marshal was obviously not above appropriating arguments. Anything to win the skirmish. ‘They might. We’ll watch their patterns, just as usual.’ The Wall Marshal was not appeased, but he did clamp his lips shut — a temporary withdrawal perhaps. The rain that had been long promised by the day’s low-hanging clouds scudding in from the north came spattering down. Hiam pulled his thick cloak higher and tighter. ‘Section Marshal Felis…’ The woman saluted. ‘My apologies that we
