Chosen of the Gods

apprentices soon followed, leaving the village with no one to mix balms and poultices, or bleed the dying to purify their flesh. A week later, twenty folk were dead; after another, the toll had risen to a hundred. Soon blue mourning cloths hung by the doors of nearly every house in Luciel’s valley, and more than a few stood as empty as old skulls, derelict and silent.

Before the Longosai, the MarSevrin clan had numbered five. Utham, its head, was a weaver, his wife Luska a midwife. Tancred, the eldest of their children, had been twenty-two, a quick-fingered lad set to inherit his father’s loom. Cathan, four years his junior, seemed his brother’s twin, sharing his shaggy brown hair and clever eyes. Wentha, their younger sister, was a pretty, golden-haired girl who had just begun to catch the fancies of the village’s young men. The MarSevrins had been happy, content to live in a land that, though sometimes hard, lay nonetheless beneath Paladine’s blessing.

Luska had been one of the first twenty victims. Utham had followed a few days later. Cathan himself developed the telltale rash a few days later, but he had fought it off, as some did, and it had left only a few pockmarks on his skin when it waned. Tancred hadn’t been so lucky: For the past ten days, Cathan had tended to him, bringing his brother water to drink, porridge to eat, and bowls to puke in, while his life ebbed away.

Cathan had woken at dawn that morning, curled up on the floor by the bedside, to find Tancred staring at him. He’d looked a stranger-once tall and strong, he was as thin as one of Wentha’s old twig-dolls, his face gaunt and sallow. His bloodshot eyes had gleamed unpleasantly as he raised a bony hand to beckon Cathan near.

“Brother,” he’d rasped, sounding like a whetstone on rusted iron. Cathan gave him a swallow of water, most of which dribbled down his chin. “How is Wentha?”

“She’s well,” Cathan had said, his throat thick with tears. Their sister, though devastated by the loss of their parents and Tancred’s decline, had yet to show any sign of the plague. She lived across town now, with Fendrilla, an old woman who had lost both her daughters to the Creep.

Reaching out, Tancred had taken Cathan’s hand. His once iron-firm grip had been sweaty and feeble, and his eyes shone like embers. Cathan had seen that look in his mother’s eyes and then his father’s. He’d known that, before long, Tancred would begin to rave. He’d known, too, what he had to do and had wondered if he could carry through with it.

“Promise me,” Tancred had hissed, his breath stinking. “Swear you’ll not die like this. Neither of you.”

Coldness twisting his guts, Cathan had looked away.

“Swear!”

Cathan had squeezed his eyes shut, grinding his teeth to keep the sobs at bay. Finally, he’d managed a nod, Tancred had smiled, a horrible rictus filmed with blood.

“Very well, then,” he’d said and settled back to wait.

They’d made the pact together, as they stood by the pyre where their parents had burned. They knew what the Longosai did in its last days and had sworn that neither they nor Wentha would suffer so. Cathan kept his word: as Tancred lay still before him, he had covered his brother’s face and smothered him. It was merciful, but that didn’t stop the tears from coursing down his face as he looked down on the unmoving form in the bed, so wretchedly small after the Creep’s ravages.

Later, he would find a wagon and haul Tancred to the pyres at the edge of town, as he had his mother and father. By nightfall, his brother would be ashes, gone. How much longer, he wondered, before I follow him?

He turned and looked across the room, at Paladine’s sign on the wall. He’d prayed before it every day, at the proper times-dawn, midday, sunset, even midnight-while Tancred lay wheezing behind him, his life draining away. He’d begged the god to spare his brother’s life, to drive off the disease. Now, his mouth hardening, he strode over to it, tore it down, and flung it across the chamber. It smashed against the gray stone, shards pattering down among the dirty rushes.

“Damn you, Paladine,” he spat and stormed out of the room.

A fortnight later, Cathan crouched in a gully as cold rain dripped down from the branches of pines above. Shivering, he drew his brown cloak about him, but it was already soaked through, along with the stained tunic he wore underneath. A cough tickled his throat, and he fought it back with a grimace.

Another man stirred beside him in the ditch, turning a hooded head his way. Within the cowl, a smile lit a plain face, beneath a downy blond moustache.

“You look,” Embric Sharpspurs whispered, “like you’d rather be some place else.”

Cathan coughed shaking his head ruefully. “Wouldn’t you?”

The gully was one of many that cut through the stony ground, deep amid Taol’s hills. The land around them was gray and barren, rocky crags fringed with scrub bushes and oaks not yet come into spring leaf. The clouds above were low and leaden, giving off a maddening drizzle so fine it was almost mist. Thunder muttered somewhere far away.

Embric shrugged. “Could be worse,” he said, his mouth crooking into an almost-grin. “Could be sleeting.”

Cathan shook his head and was opening his mouth to reply when a hand touched his shoulder. He twisted, reaching for the long dagger he wore on his belt. He had the knife halfway out of its sheath when he stopped, meeting the gray, flinty gaze of an older man.

“Easy, MarSevrin,” said the man. He was small and wiry, clad in hunting leathers and a mail shirt beneath his gray mantle. A few white hairs dusted his dark beard, and an angry red crease ran from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. “A boy your age should know better than to play with sharp things. Both of you, keep quiet. If you give us away, 111 hang the both of you by your balls for the others to throw rocks at.”

“Yes, Tavarre,” Embric and Cathan said together.

“Good,” the older man said. “Now sit tight, and wait for the signal.” He patted Cathan’s shoulder, then was gone, vanishing into the brush like a ghost.

Before the plague, Tavarre had been Baron Tavarre, the lord of Luciel Vale. He had seldom come down to the town in those days, keeping mainly to his keep, but Cathan’s father had named him a fair man. He was also an avid hunter, often roaming the highlands in search of game. It was said he knew every tree, every rock, for miles around. Staring at the bushes where Tavarre had disappeared, Cathan believed it.

The Longosai hadn’t left the baron’s keep untouched, so folk said, though Tavarre never spoke of what had driven him to flee its halls and take to the wilds. Others had joined him, men and women whom the sickness had spared. They were bandits now, roaming the hills in search of prey. Embric, a boy of twenty who had been a childhood friend of both Tancred and Cathan had been one of the first to join Tavarre’s band, and he’d urged them to join up too. They’d refused, however, not wanting to leave their family.

That was before.

Cathan had gone to the bandits as soon as Tancred’s body was burned, demanding to be brought to Tavarre. The baron had looked him over carefully, then nodded, agreeing to take him on. Since then, they had kept to their camp, hidden in the wilds, waiting. There was more waiting to banditry than Cathan had thought, and his restlessness grew to anxiety, even with the training at arms his fellows gave him. He needed someone to lash back at, a target for his grief.

Finally, the chance had come. The day before yesterday, Tavarre’s scouts had ridden into the camp with news. A party of Scatas, soldiers of the imperial army, were riding through the wilds nearby. There were a dozen of them, but they didn’t interest Cathan as much as the other who rode with them: a cleric of Paladine.

So they’d set out, two dozen men with Tavarre in the lead. The baron had chosen a likely spot for an ambush, along the road the Scatas traveled, and the’dy settled in and begun to wait anew. That had been last night, with four hours still lacking before dawn; it was nearly midday now, and Cathan was beginning to wonder if there really were soldiers nearby.

Just then, though, he heard the sharp, trilling song of a bluefinch. It wasn’t an unusual sound in the wilds, but Cathan’s muscles tautened anyway. Tavarre had taught his men several calls to use for signals, and the bluefinch was one of the most urgent. It trailed away, then came a second time, closer and shriller. He bit his lip as he reached beneath his cloak, feeling for the leather sling he kept looped through his belt. When he had the weapon in hand, he reached for a pouch he kept at his belt, and pulled out a jagged, white lump-not a stone, but a bit of broken ceramic. He’d taken the remnants of the holy symbol he’d smashed before his brother died. Now he rolled the shard in his hand, his mouth a hard line.