Epilogue
The Blackchurch Guild
“Tomorrow, we’ll start the interrogation instruction, so be prepared,” Creston was saying. “In order to be prepared for any capture, a warrior must be prepared for the interrogation, and that is never pleasant, so be advised.”
It was nearing sunset on what had been a particularly strenuous day.
It had been raining, so it was quite muddy, but the sun was starting to peek out from behind the clouds.
It glistened off Lake Cocytus, giving the land a rather fresh appeal.
But Creston and his assistant, a recent Blackchurch graduate by the name of Tobin du Reims, were trying to stress the intense module that their recruits were about to face.
Since Creston’s classes were usually at the end of a recruit’s five-year cycle through Blackchurch because they could be so brutal, the men—and three women—that they faced seemed ready for what was to come.
They’d already proven themselves through the instruction of Tay, Sinclair, Fox, Kristian, Cruz, and Payne, so now they were facing the last of it. They were a tough lot.
But tougher times were to come.
“If there aren’t any questions, I suggest you eat and sleep well tonight,” Creston continued, looking over the hardened faces around him. “Tomorrow, you descend into hell.”
“My lord?” a man from the back spoke up. He was from Athens, a big recruit who had scars all over his body. “Can you tell us what sort of interrogation instruction we will be starting with?”
Creston folded his big arms across his chest. “A fair question,” he said.
“For the next week, we will be discussing the historical aspects of interrogation and give examples. The Dragon will be part of this discussion, as he has experience in things we do not normally see in the Christian world. But after that, each man and woman here will have to face the practical application of interrogation methods.”
“I’ve heard that you tear off toenails,” someone else said. “Is that true, my lord?”
Creston nodded without hesitation. “This will be explained to you tomorrow, but since you have asked, I will go ahead and tell you the truth,” he said.
“You will be tested with pain. If you break, the pain will be doubled. Meaning if I am tearing off a toenail and you confess the information you have been told not to tell me simply to make the pain stop, I will break a toe. You will be expected to function after that. I will proceed to tear off each toenail and go to work on your fingernails until you can resist the pain and not divulge the information you have been told not to divulge. This is necessary to teach you pain resistance. Your training at Blackchurch until this moment has been a simple thing. Now, the real training begins. Are there any more questions?”
After that, no one had anything more to say, but the recruits were looking at each other anxiously. Seeing that he had the group properly terrified, Creston had Tobin dismissed them. They ran away as if their arses were on fire, leaving Creston and Tobin chuckling.
“How many do you think will return tomorrow?” Tobin asked.
Creston shrugged. “I have been doing this almost twenty-five years,” he said. “It is different with every group. Sometimes they all return, sometimes only a few. We shall see tomorrow.”
Tobin was still smiling. “I do believe you gave that same speech when I was part of your class,” he said. “Fortunately, I only sustained one lost toenail. I held out.”
“You did,” Creston said. “But, as I recall, you nearly chewed a hole in your tongue.”
“True.”
“I’ve had more than one recruit bite half their tongues off.”
Tobin grimaced. “Charming,” he said with distaste. “Yet you are still here, still torturing recruits.”
Creston snorted. “Still here,” he said. “I would not miss it.”
Tobin hesitated. “My lord, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“You are the Earl of Sidbury,” he said. “Why do you not simply retreat to your properties and live as a lord of the realm? Why remain here and teach?”
Creston lifted his eyebrows, a thoughtful gesture. “I only train part time as it is,” he said. “Anteaus handles my class sometimes, so I do spend about half my time at Axen.”
“Why not all the time?”
Creston smiled faintly. “Because I believe what I do here is important,” he said.
“I’ve seen hundreds of men and women come through this guild, and I am proud to say that I had a small hand in training them to be better warriors.
It is important to me. Besides—I can bring my sons with me, and they train alongside the very best in the world. ”
He was referring to his older boys—Garston, Keaton, and Preston.
They went everywhere with him, including Blackchurch when he returned periodically to finish training a class that Anteaus had started.
His eldest, Garston—or Gar, as he was called—had seen eight summers, and a brighter, more determined boy had never been born.
Creston was wildly proud of the child, who spent most of his time at Blackchurch with St. Denis and St. Sebastian, as the two were essentially his teachers and acted as mentors to the children of their trainers.
Even when Creston returned to Axen, Gar would stay behind at Blackchurch.
Keaton and Preston, six years and five years, respectively, were still a little too young to be away from their mother, but even they spent all of their time at Blackchurch with St. Denis, the great instructor.
But that was St. Denis’ calling these days.
Once the Blackchurch instructors started having children, St. Denis had transitioned to becoming more of a tutor and less of a guild administrator.
That role fell to St. Sebastian. But two years ago, St. Denis had suffered an attack of apoplexy that left the right side of his body slightly damaged, so he was slowing a little in his old age.
He had an entire gang of boys and girls that he tutored, all of them very attached to him, and he relished his role at Blackchurch these days.
Life, for him, continued on.
And it continued on for Creston de Royans, the Earl of Sidbury.
Before Tobin could reply to Creston’s statement, Creston caught sight of an approaching soldier, heading in from the south.
Tobin saw that Creston was distracted, so he began to collect the pieces of vellum that had been passed around to the recruits, drawings that depicted some of the methods of interrogation and torture that Creston had been speaking of.
Some of the recruits couldn’t read, so diagrams were the best when explaining certain things.
As he cleaned up the area, the soldier approached Creston.
“My lord,” he said, “there is a knight at the gate who is asking to see you. His name is Theo de Betheny.”
Creston’s brow furrowed. “I do not know that name,” he said. “Who does he serve?”
“He did not say, my lord.”
“Did he say what his business is with me?”
The soldier shook his head. “Nay, my lord,” he said. “He told me to tell you ‘Mary.’ He said you would understand.”
That didn’t clear things up for Creston at all. “Mary?” he repeated. “That’s odd. As in Saint Mary?”
“I do not know, my lord,” the soldier said. “Shall I send him away?”
Creston shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “Keep him at the gatehouse. I will be there shortly. And make sure he is unarmed.”
“Aye, my lord.”
With that, the soldier headed back the way he had come and Creston moved in the direction of the village.
Ophelia was at their cottage with the younger children and he wanted to see her before heading to the gatehouse.
Even after ten years of marriage, he still missed her when he wasn’t with her.
He looked forward to the conclusion of his classes so that he could be with his wife again.
She fed his heart, his soul, and everything about him, like food to a starving man.
Therefore, he would drop in to inform her he had business at the gatehouse before returning for supper.
Thankfully, her cooking had gotten better and he actually didn’t mind returning for it.
As he entered the village, he could already hear the voice of his four-year-old daughter, Violet.
She was crying about something, which was a regular occurrence with her.
His only daughter, his sweetheart, was very sensitive.
He could also hear the voice of his two-year-old son, Shepton, and he suspected, correctly, that the two of them were fighting.
They usually were. As he entered the cottage, the pair sat on the floor of the main chamber, a toy of some kind being pulled between them.
“Vi?” Creston said as he went to the tussling duo. “Shep? What is amiss? What are you fighting over?”
“The wooden horse.” An exhausted voice came from the kitchen area. “That is Vi’s horse, but Shep wants it and they fight over it constantly. Honestly, Cres, the way that lad claims everything in this house as his. He is a tyrant.”
Creston grinned as he pulled the horse out of Shepton’s grip and picked the lad up. “He takes what he wants,” he said proudly, wiping the tears from Shepton’s face. “There is nothing wrong with that. It shows initiative.”
Ophelia stuck her head out of the kitchen. “It shows that he is spoiled,” she said, frowning. “You must not indulge him like that. It ruins all of my hard work.”
Creston laughed softly as he made his way over to his wife, kissing her sweetly. “Shepton is my conqueror,” he said. “He will go on to do great and powerful things.”
“He will go on to be a dictator.”
Creston poked the boy in his rounded belly, turning his tears to laughter. “Is that what you are going to be?” he asked, teasing him. “A dictator?”
Shepton squealed with delight as his father tickled him. But he eventually wanted to be set on his feet, so Creston put down the boy, who then promptly ran back to his sister and stole her wooden horse.
The fighting started all over again.