Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Vagabond Paladin
They found me while I was filling in the grave. Which was lucky for them because time had not improved Sir Branson’s corpse.
I’m endlessly embarrassed about that.
Their silence was the loudest thing along the river.
Louder than the murky trickling water or the fierce blast of the growing storm peppered with ice pellets.
Louder, even, than the harsh scrape of Sir Branson’s shield across the half-frozen lumps of clay and hardpan I was dragging into the hole to fill it.
I heard them in that silence, and when I stood they flinched as one man, though there were three. Their eyes were wide. Their shared gasp clouded the air around them like triplet hearths in the late-spring air.
No wonder they fear you, you terrifying thing, the demon paladin dog reminded me.
You stand as a warning to anyone fool enough to tangle with the power of the demonic.
It’s a wonder they don’t run screaming from you to their wives and sweethearts.
I set a woman on fire once and made her dance and she looked better than you do before the end.
I set my hand in its wet, tattered glove upon Brindle’s head in warning, and he whined loudly, sitting back on his haunches.
The lead man watched this, swathed in a deep grey cloak, his beard torn by the edges of the wind, and his eyes trailing up my arm from the dog’s head to my unbound hair, likely thick now with clay, or blood, or snow, or the God Himself knew what.
A ripple of terror ran over his lined face, but he clenched his jaw hard and it subsided enough for him to snap sharply.
“Revenant. We seek the Vagabond Paladin, Sir Branson the Rejected.”
“Good for you,” I said between huffing breaths. I was winded. I’d lost feeling in my hands and feet sometime during my vigil in the night. I had not slept and my belly ached with hunger.
As the newly minted Lady Victoriana the Rejected, can you not show more dignity? You look like you crawled out of the river and forgot that algae hasn’t been in fashion for a few thousand years.
I pushed aside the voice.
I believed in the God, that he revealed to us his Rejected Aspect, and that he called paladins to his service.
Even so, from the outside, I couldn’t imagine a formula better designed to induce hallucinations and the belief that one had “heard” a call than to make one kneel in metal armor on hard ground with a storm whirling around them, blood still leaking out to mix hot with the cold, indifferent clay.
Adding to that the horror that I had “stood” vigil beside the cold body of my only friend in the world only made my recollections more suspect.
And yet, I’d seen no hallucinations during my vigil. Or at least, I didn’t think I had.
It’s fine that you haven’t had a blessing. You’re with me. And I am blessed. Always have been, really. Did you notice I didn’t lose my hair? Old as pond scum but I kept it all.
“Have you seen the good paladin, Ghost of Our Fathers?” the man behind the first asked me with a quaver in his voice.
He was, perhaps, ten years my senior and thick across the shoulders.
Stout, and while not exactly beautiful, the strength of youth made him seem so.
How delightful that he thought me a dead woman walking.
“I’m no ghost,” I said shortly, jamming the shield in the ground.
It would suffice as marker for Sir Branson.
Bent and sullied as it was from serving as shovel, it was still the only piece of his armor above ground.
I’d buried the rest with him — including his sword — and I was already sorry I’d done that.
I could use a second sword, and his had been a good one, but it was disrespectful to bury a knight without his weapon. The dog had views on the matter.
Might as well bury him without his feet. Or his hands, it had said when I hesitated over the matter. Or his hair.
Or at least I thought it had. I was not at full mental capacity at the moment. To say that the night had been long was a wicked understatement. It had been nigh on a decade.
“But you know where Sir Branson might be?” the second man pressed.
“I do,” I agreed, pointing to the shield. “And now you do, too. And may this marker remain in his memory for many years to come.”
It’s a terribly sweet gesture. Honestly, I really can’t thank you more. It’s rare for one of us to get any kind of a marker when we die.
The looks exchanged between the three men showed a marked concern.
Perhaps they knew, as I did, that the shield would last about as long as a marker as the road remained empty.
Sir Branson was no decadent, but he hadn’t skimped on steel when the shield was made and it would fetch a price for whichever thief found it first. The God forfend.
I certainly hope he does forfend!
I ought to say a prayer by rote, but after an entire night of them, my mind came up empty of suggestions.
When, sometime in the middle of the night, the snow started to swirl around me, I had redoubled my prayers, certain that they were my only hope of remaining still as the cold leached into every bone of my body.
“Cast upon the lake of sorrows all your hopes and gathered dreams, Let the ancient waters cover ‘til hope is not as it seems,” my thick lips had chanted in the darkness.
An owl had hooted in response and the small things that fled from it in terror made the grasses rustle.
My horse huffed an annoyed breath from where he slept standing.
Perhaps, as the horse of a soon-to-be-paladin he was doing vigil, too, but on his hooves rather than on his knees. They were likely better suited to it.
The wind had picked up, making the trees creak and groan their annoyance and whispering so intently that I heard a thousand possible voices with a thousand possible messages, but since all were echoes of my internal monologue, I didn’t credit them.
If the God called to me, I doubted he’d use my own voice.
“This is madness,” they had whispered through the trees.
Perhaps you are not called at all. Your prayers are feeble, the demon in Brindle had suggested. If I were a god, I’d reject you, too.
Not everyone is called, dear girl, the paladin in the dog had said later. And when they are, sometimes it’s hard to hear. Or it’s not in the way they might think.
Which was a solid point, because how was I supposed to hear anything at all when I would not stop speaking? In conversation, one didn’t natter on and on and expect that the other would speak over them. If the God had remained silent, mayhap he was merely tired of waiting for his opportunity.
“Lady? Lady?” The third man’s voice burst into my memories. I was swaying on my feet, my mind wandering sinfully.
“I am no lady,” I told him. I wasn’t nobility, that was certain. And I may not be a paladin either.
“Would you grant us your name, then?” he asked. He was the youngest of the three. He looked almost like a royal messenger. Or a church messenger. But they didn’t come so far into the wilds.
“I am Victoriana Greenmantle, Squire Supplicant —”
Cough, Brindle said.
I cleared my own throat. “Paladin of the Aspect of the Rejected God.”
It was my first time saying it aloud. It felt like a lie, and that twisted something deep in my gut like a festering wound.
We demons know more about religion than you’ll learn in your short mortal lifetime, delicious morsel, the demon had told me last night, when it seemed I could no more hear the God than I could ignore the terrible pain in my knees.
And I can tell you with certainty that you are not called to anything other than a swift death and perhaps my amusement.
Demons knew nothing about faith. Which meant this one knew nothing about the God’s call.
Perhaps the calling was within, a firm certainty of spirit that this was the right course.
Perhaps the light from heaven and the voice were just …
symbols … of what was occurring, like how a lover might offer his beloved his heart.
He did not mean to cut it beating from his breast. It was merely a metaphor.
That’s an adorable loophole you’ve found. Now, find one for me. Excuse the God’s silence to me the same way, the demon had snickered. Tell me all is forgiven and I am free to follow my heart.
I had hoped it was the demon snickering and not Sir Branson. If my mentor was so bereft of belief, it would throw an uncomfortable light upon our shared history.
My prayers stuttered again and went out like a guttering candle.
“I offer up this well body and this quick mind, honed by faith and service, and presented for your use,” I had said aloud.
And is this a bargain, then? You give the God something and he gives you something? You’re closer to demon than Saint. We’re the ones who do everything by transaction.
“It’s not a transaction,” I’d said aloud, considering. “Perhaps I must open myself up to receive the blessing.”
Just listen. It will come if it will come. You can’t make demands of the God like you’re negotiating with a stingy fishwife.
And what if he didn’t call me?
I explained that part, didn’t I? I’m pretty sure that I did. Do you remember Sir Lysander? We stayed in his father’s loft once just outside Saint Hermake’s Rim?
I did remember him. A rough man, hard and cold, but he softened when Sir Branson started talking horses and breeding lines, and the pair of them had been up all night debating which sire had got a foal who had grown up to win a race in some city I’d never heard of.
Yes, that’s the one. He didn’t hear the call. Pity, really, he was such a nice fellow. But I suppose it makes sense that the God didn’t require him. He didn’t have much compassion, and it’s hard to be a good Beggar Paladin without compassion.
I wished he wouldn’t call us that. It was a slur.