Chapter 7 #2
“I think this is the only fresh water source,” I tell her as we reach the pickets, grasping desperately for a safe source of conversation. “If you’ve a flask or skin to fill, now is the time.”
She pauses, staring at me as if she wants to say something. I wait patiently for her words, but my eyes are busy. She looks very vulnerable under that thick clay. I can feel it almost as easily as I can feel the heat of the infection beginning in her wounds.
“Clay is not a good choice for infected wounds.”
I shouldn’t have spoken first, but the words rip out of me unbidden. Something inside me wants to protect her — and kill her dog — in equal measure. I shudder at that random thought.
Kill her dog? What a terrible impulse. What could have made me think that?
I force myself to look away and to turn to an old pillar, where the other paladins affixed the picket line. I run my hands over the worn carvings to where it is abruptly broken off. The head of the pillar lies a few feet away, coated in thick orange lichen.
She’s replying to me. “I had little choice. My superiors bid me ride without pause or succor.”
That brings my eyes up. She arrived here last. And has ridden without pause. I suppose I should not be surprised that an order known as “Beggar Knights” is stretched so thin, but still, I am.
“You’re pausing now. Let me look at those wounds.”
I shouldn’t press her, but it’s a matter of professional integrity. How can I let another human walk around ailing when I have the ability to heal them?
Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. In truth, I am as drawn to this woman as I am drawn to these ruins — illogically, instinctually, in a way I cannot properly describe.
Perhaps I should beg the Seer to pray for me that the God will tell her what my future holds. Stirring up such deep waters in me can only lead to tumult — as it did once before.
“No,” she says, meeting my eyes defiantly. “I will bathe them here. I do not require the riches of your gift.”
“Are you forsworn to healing then, too?” I press.
I don’t know why I’m pushing her like this. Were she Sir Sorken or the High Saint, I’d gladly let the matter drop.
Annoyed, I fiddle with the pillar. Whatever was carved so thickly into the rock before is now worn down to only faint relief. The top portion narrows to a point and lichen grows in the grooves between the letters.
I frown. It looks very much like Ancient Indul, but that makes no sense. This monastery must be far more ancient than the Indul language.
“I’m not forsworn to healing. I just don’t want it from you.”
There’s probably some deeper meaning to how she has emphasized “you” but I’m not paying attention anymore. I am tracing the lettering with my finger.
What’s this one? The “au” sound? I think so.
But it’s been a very long time since I read Ancient Indul.
I could use a priest right now. A scribing priest by preference.
While we paladins are well educated in the holy scrolls, we also have to reach physical attainments for battle and war, and that prevents scholarly specialization.
A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking there is no war when the church rules all the world and installs and pulls down her kings. They’d be wrong. Wars abound as priest fights priest and paladin fights paladin. It’s enough to make the heart weep.
I trace the letters and try to make the sounds in my mind. Pinnacle. Or mountain. Or rock? That’s this first one. I think I was right guessing pinnacle.
“Are you listening to me, Poisoned Saint?” Her voice is faint in the background, but I’m trying to concentrate and she doesn’t need me.
I hear her huff something and it almost sounds like a curse.
I turn back to the script. Pinnacle of something. Pain, perhaps?
“Look, you were warned. I’m not going to wait out whatever this is.”
Yes, pain. Or aching? Pinnacle of Aching … I know this one. Souls. Pinnacle of Aching Souls.
I think this next part is a date. And now, in smaller lettering, a note of some kind.
Woe to you, supplicant. Five woes. For the attainment of … something. I can’t decipher it. With a curse, I turn away and my eyes fall on her.
Blood rushes to my cheeks so that they sting.
Oh. That’s what she was trying to tell me. That she was going to bathe here. I feel my cheeks go hot. She isn’t indecent, but still, I am seeing feminine skin, a thing I’ve been avoiding since I joined the Poisoned Saints fifteen years ago and gave my squire vows.
Her skin is ripped and rent with slices, as if she recently fought a sword battle.
They are inexpertly stitched. She prods at one with a finger while standing in the creek in just a pair of leather trousers and a corset-type garment that keeps her decent while letting her inspect her wounds.
Already, she has washed off enough clay that I see the woman that was hidden beneath the grime.
She is young. Twenty, perhaps? Twenty-one?
And her small mouth frowns over her wounds as her long hair hangs in a sheet down her back, ready to be re-braided.
She is both severe and terribly vulnerable.
My face is instantly hot. I go to great lengths to avoid situations such as this.
Two weeks ago I waited a full six hours to refill my flasks because it was washing day for the nearby village and all the maidens would be …
well, just like this, I suppose. I’d spent the time healing an elderly man and then in prayer.
All of that effort, only to find myself here.
When she looks up and catches my gaze, I steel my jaw and gaze steadily back. I am annoyed that she’s caught me failing, but I won’t make it worse by pretending it’s not happening.
“I tried to warn you,” she says. “Celibate order, yes?”
“Yes,” I grit out. “How long have you been a paladin?”
It’s the first question that comes to mind.
I ask because I don’t want to talk about celibacy — or my very non-celibate thoughts — with a dripping woman standing in front of me.
She is not a great beauty, but she is well-looking enough, and she radiates health and cleverness.
Her sharp eyes seem to catch all the things I’m trying to keep wrapped inside.
“Ten days.”
Her answer is like a wave crashing over me from a sudden swell of the sea. I am instantly sober again.
“Ten days? You must have been halfway here before you even said vows!”
I’m understandably shocked. This is not my aspect, but it offends the orderly paladin in me to see such haphazard planning.
“We were serving a remote village.”
She prods again at an angry wound. Her stitches have popped along one side of it.
“Really, you should let me heal you.” I feel physical discomfort watching her.
Her eyes shoot up and meet mine. “No.”
I swallow down the annoyance I want to let loose. “Tell me, then, who is ‘we’? I don’t think you mean the dog.”
She smirks as if I’ve told a joke. “Oh, he was there.”
“And?”
“And what?” She says it so casually that I know she is dancing around something.
“And who else.” I put steel in my words as I lean against the pillar I can’t read.
Her dog trots out of the woods, turns its head to one side, and then barrels forward, stopping only when it is between her and me. The beginnings of a growl rumble deep within his throat.
“And a demon. He was troubling the village.”
“Did he have someone in thrall who fought against you?” I ask, nodding at her wounds.
I don’t expect an answer. I probably wouldn’t give one, but she’s young enough that she still thinks she has to answer when someone questions her.
“He did,” she says gravely. There is a challenge in her eyes. “My paladin superior, Sir Branson.”
“Blessed Saints.” The curse tears from my throat like a growl.
I don’t know what comes over me but I’ve left the pillar and I’m by her side in an instant, gripping her arm even as the dog snaps at my legs.
She orders it to stop. It’s not listening to her, which makes sense, since it’s not really her dog, right? It’s her paladin superior’s dog.
But I’m not looking at the dog, I’m looking all around us at the trees. God forfend she wasn’t heard. We can only hope that Terce prayers have dragged on.
I saw a squire burned at the stake once for less than this. His screams were like tearing fabric. I thought my lungs would tear with him.
In a low voice, I tell her, “Whatever you do, do not confess this to the others.”
“Confess what?” She lifts a brow in a challenge.
“That you have killed your paladin superior, taken up his mantle, his quest, and even his dog.” My voice is growing rougher. I force out the words before it breaks. “That you’re barely even out of squirehood and possibly not even called by the God.”
She pales at my words. And then pain blossoms in my leg as her dog gives up on her and sinks his teeth into my thigh.