Heirs of Empire

prayed for strength. If only Cragsend were big enough to have its own Inquisitor! If only—

He cut the thought off, despising himself for wanting to pass his duty to another, and argued with his stubborn horror. There was no question of the woman’s guilt. The lightning and thunder from the Valley had waked the hunting party, and despite their terror, they’d gone to investigate. And when they called upon her to halt, she’d fled, proclaiming her guilt. Even if she hadn’t, her very garments would convict her. Blasphemy for a woman to wear the high vestments of the Sanctum itself, and Tibold Rarikson, the leader of the huntsmen, had described her demon light. Stomald himself had seen the other strange things on her belt and wrist, but it was Tibold’s haunted eyes which brought the horror fully home. The man was a veteran warrior, commander of Cragsend’s tiny force of the Temple Guard, yet his face had been pale as whey as he spoke of the light and her impossible speed.

Indeed, Stomald thought with a queasy shiver as he turned from the altar, perhaps she was no woman at all, for what woman would still live? Three times they’d hit her—three!—at scarcely fifty paces, and if her long black hair was a crimson-clotted mass and her right eye wept bloody tears, her other wounds didn’t even bleed. Perhaps she was in truth the demon Tibold had named her … but even as he told himself that, the under-priest knew why he wanted to believe it.

He descended the church steps into the village square, and swallowed again as he beheld the heretic in the bloody light of the flambeaux.

She looked so young—younger even than he—as she hung from the stake by her manacled wrists, wrapped in heavy iron chains and stripped of her profaned vestments, and he felt a shameful inner stir as he once more saw her flimsy undergarments. Mother Church expected her priests to wed, for how could they understand the spiritual needs of husband or wife without experience? Yet to feel such things now…

He drew a deep breath and walked forward. Her bloody head drooped, and she hung so still he thought— prayed—she had already died. But then he saw the faint movement of her thinly covered breasts, and his heart sank with the knowledge that her death would not free him from the guilt he must bear.

He stopped and turned to face his flock as Tibold approached. The Guardsman bore a torch, and its flame wavered with the shaking of his hand. He stopped two paces from the priest, and the pity in his blunt, hard features made Stomald wonder if perhaps he, too, had tried to insist this woman was a demon out of revulsion for what they now must do to her.

He met Tibold’s haunted eyes, and a flicker passed between them. One of understanding … and gratitude. Of thanks that they had no Inquisitor to break that slender body upon the wheel before her death as the letter of the Church’s Law demanded, and that, demon or no, she had never waked. That she would die unknowing, spared the agony of her horrible end … unlike the men who would always remember wreaking it upon her.

He turned away from the Guardsman who must share his duty, facing his people, and wondered how they would look upon him in days to come. He couldn’t see their faces beyond the fuming flambeaux, and he was glad.

He opened his mouth to pronounce the words of anathematization.

Harriet’s weakening implant signals left no time to return to Israel, and Sean landed the stealthed cutter within a half-klick of the village. He selected a six-millimeter grav rifle from the weapons locker to back up his side arm, and Tamman chose an energy gun, but Sandy bore only her grav gun and a satchel of grenades. Sean wished she’d taken something heavier, yet time was too short to argue, and he led them through the darkness at a run.

The torch-lit village square came in sight, and his mouth twisted into a snarl. Harriet—his Harriet!—hung by her wrists from a stake, heaped faggots piled about her chained, half-naked body, and her hair was soaked with blood. His hands tightened on his rifle’s grips, but he felt Sandy’s anxious eyes, and he’d promised her.

“Go!” he snapped, and she hurled the first plasma grenade.

* * *

Stomald cried out in horror as terrible white light exploded against Cragsend’s night. Its fiery breath touched hay ricks to flame and singed the assembled villagers’ hair, and screams of terror lashed the priest.

He staggered back, blinded by the terrible flash. There was another—and another! —and he heard Tibold’s hoarse bellow beside him and cringed, trying to understand, as three figures appeared. They seemed to step forth from within the fury consuming the smithy, the granary, and tanning sheds. Their featureless black shapes loomed before the glare, and the one in the center, a towering giant out of some tale of horror, aimed a strange musket shape at the slate roof of the church.

Sparkling flashes ripped stout stonework to shrieking splinters in an endless roll of thunder that scattered screaming villagers in panic, but Stomald’s heart spasmed with a terror even worse than theirs. It was his fault! The thought leapt into his brain. He’d hesitated. He’d rebelled in his heart, contesting God’s will, and this— this—was the result!

Tibold seized him, trying to drag him away, but he stared transfixed as the shape beside the giant aimed its own weapon at a trio of freight wagons. There was no flash this time, and that was even worse. A hurricane of chips and snapped timbers erupted, and the only sound was rending wood and the whine as fragments flew like bullets.

It was too much for Tibold. He abandoned the crazed priest to flee, and Stomald felt only a distant sympathy for him. This was more than any warrior could be asked to face. These were the demons of the Valley of the Damned, come to snatch away the demon his traitor heart had longed to spare, and terror filled him, but he stood his ground. He had no choice. His faltering faith brought them here. He’d failed his flock, and though his sin cost him his immortal soul, he was God’s priest.

He raised the sanctified oil like a shield, dry lips whispering in prayer, and a handful of villagers stared in horror from the cover of darkness as their youthful priest advanced alone against the forces of Hell.

* * *

Sean blew the village fountain apart, but the lone madman walked through the spray and kept right on coming. Sean bared his teeth as he saw the blue and gold priestly robe, and it took all he had not to turn the rifle upon him, yet he didn’t. Somehow, he didn’t. Tamman splintered a half-meter trench across the square, and the priest halted for a moment. Then he resumed his advance, stepping over the shattered cobbles like a sleepwalker, and Sean swore as Sandy went to meet him.

Stomald faltered as the smallest demon walked straight at him. The silhouetted figure entered the spill of light from the flambeaux, and, for the first time, he truly saw one of them.

His prayer rose higher at the blasphemy before him, for this demon, too, wore the semblance of a woman in the holiest of raiment. Torchlight fumed in her eyes and glittered from the gold of her profaned vestments, the fires of Hell roared behind her, and she came on as if his exorcism was but words. Terror strangled his voice, yet the holy oil he bore was more potent than any exorcism, and he sent up a silent prayer for strength, unworthy though he’d proved himself. She stopped five paces away, and there was no fear in her face—not of the frightened priest, not of the blessed weapon he bore … not even of God Himself.

* * *

Sandy swallowed rage as she looked past the priest at Harriet, chained amid her waiting pyre. But then she saw his terrified face, and she felt a grudging admiration for the courage—or the faith—that held him here.

He stared at her, eyes filled with fear, and then his hands lashed. Something leapt from the beaker he held, but reflex activated her implant force field. Thick, iridescent oil sluiced down it, caught millimeters from her skin, and the priest’s mouth moved.

“Begone!” he shouted, and she twitched, for she understood him. His voice was high and cracked with terror but determined, and he spoke the debased Universal of the Church. “Begone, Demon! Unclean and accursed, I cast you out in the Name of the Most Holy!”