Fourth moon, afternoon, day twenty-five of the siege
East Rank encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands
She was under guard, of course, and had been for what felt like months. That’s because it has been months. There’s a comforting thought. But despite her gaoler Scell’s omnipresence at the other end of the chain and collar she’d worn all that time, the East Rank healers were too busy making her work to care that she was a slave.
I’m not a slave, she corrected herself. I’m a prisoner. There’s a difference.
And there was. Today was the first time they’d put her to work, whereas their slaves worked from the day they were captured until the day they died. More of a guest, really, she told herself. They like me so much they can’t bear for me to leave. She clanked the chain against her collar and snorted faint amusement.
Today though, the healers had finally admitted that the number of casualties from both armies had become too great for them to cope on their own. Decades as high priestess of the Dancer and the Fox God had given Gilda ample opportunity to hone her skills in healing, birthing, and easing men into the Light. She didn’t expect to have much cause to employ the middle skill, but healing and the grace were in high demand.
Scell’s curiosity had faded hours before and now he was the one trailing after her at the end of the chain as she strode between the rows of men lying in the hospital tents, lending what aid she could. The low roar of battle still drifted across the grass between the city and the East Rank’s precise, square, tidy encampment, so unlike the ragged, broken-down, stinking mess of a camp the Mireces inhabited. There, the latrine pits had begun to overflow, and Gilda knew disease would rip through the men like wildfire if they weren’t careful. She didn’t bother worrying she might contract something; death by fever was likely the easiest end she was going to suffer.
All her amulets had been taken from her, but as she knelt next to a man missing his left leg above the knee, she found the words coming anyway, so low Scell couldn’t hear. ‘Dancer’s grace be with you, lad, and the Fox God grant you His favour.’
The man’s eyes were wide with pain but they widened even further, so much that Gilda could see the red-starred whites all around. ‘You mustn’t,’ he breathed. ‘It’s forbidden.’ There wasn’t much fire in his voice, though. He groaned against a stab of pain, clutching at his foreshortened leg, cords standing out in his neck. ‘It hurts,’ he gasped. ‘Help me, it hurts so much.’
Both of them looked at Scell, but the Mireces was too busy poking at a fresh corpse, disgusted fascination lining his face, to pay much attention.
‘I will do what I can, soldier, however little that may be. I can pray with you and for you.’
‘It’s forbidden,’ he repeated, but there was no defiance in his tone now, just a desperate hope. The bandages around the stump were soaked and leaking blood on to the cot and through the thin straw mattress. Gilda could hear it pattering on the mud below.
You poor bastard. She tapped a fingernail against her collar and tipped him a wink. ‘Not much more they can do to me, soldier. Burnt my home to the ground and slaughtered everyone I’ve ever known and loved. Kill me too, soon enough.’ She leant very close, so the man went cross-eyed trying to focus on her. ‘Doesn’t mean I should give up my faith, does it? Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t help where I can, offer comfort. Offer … absolution.’
His mouth twisted with shame and tears spilt from the corners of his eyes. ‘I gave up my faith,’ he muttered, ‘for something as pointless as gold. Gave it up without a thought.’
‘Turning to the Red Gods and being tricked into doing so are two different things. Repent, do you?’ Gilda whispered, her hand on his chest, glancing again in Scell’s direction. ‘Embrace the Light, yes?’
‘I can’t,’ the man sobbed. ‘They said I couldn’t, said once I’d sworn that I was bound. Bound to Her, the Dark Lady.’
‘Horseshit,’ Gilda snorted, wondering if it was. ‘Your soul belongs to no one but you. If you want to give it to the Red Gods, be my guest. If you want to give it to the Dancer, then all you need to do is pray. Here, now, with me.’
Hope and shame and fear warred across his pasty features. ‘Who are you?’ he hissed.
She tucked her hair back behind one ear. ‘Gilda, high priestess of Watchtown and member of the council of priests – if such a thing still exists. Now, lad, would you pray? Would you reclaim your soul from Blood and consecrate it again in the Light?’ The soldier nodded feverishly. ‘I cannot offer you a cleansing – there’s no godpool here – so we’ll do the best we can. The Great Trickster is always pleased to see our inventiveness, is He not?’
‘Will … will the Dancer want me back?’ the man whispered, his hope breaking.
Gilda took the soldier’s waterskin and shook it, smiling at the sloshing from within. She unstoppered it and bent her head. ‘Of course. Of that I have no doubt. Now hush a moment.’ She closed her eyes and expanded her soul to encompass the man, draw him close and still within her embrace. She could feel the Dancer; despite everything, beneath the hate and fear and blood and shit, She was watching. Waiting, Her arms open.
‘Holy Dancer, Lady clothed in sunlight, I ask that you hear me now and bless this water with all the holiness of your sacred pools. Fox God, lord of cunning and resourcefulness, bless these our efforts to bring this man—’
‘Nils.’
‘This man Nils out of the darkness and into your sacred Light.’ Another swift glance about, and Gilda dribbled water over Nils’s face and neck, into his mouth. ‘Bathe in this water and be cleansed, from the outside in. Drink of this water and be cleansed, from the inside out. Reject the darkness, reject hate and pain and shame and fear. Embrace Light and love and comradeship. Open your heart and your soul to the Light, my friend. Let it in. Let it heal your soul and cleanse your mind, to bear you up against the waters of evil, to hold you close in love.’
Nils’s face was ecstatic as he closed his eyes and stretched his head back into his pillow. ‘I feel Her,’ he whispered. ‘I think She’s coming. The Dancer’s coming.’
‘I know.’ Gilda said, wanting to hush him, knowing she couldn’t. There was a feather-light brush across her mind, a warm breeze of laughter and overwhelming love. Peace came into Nils’s eyes even as it flooded Gilda’s heart. ‘Child of Light, let go. Of pain and fear and shame. Let it all go.’
‘Thank you, priestess,’ he murmured, breath thready, shallowing. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Thank you, Nils, for your faith and strength,’ Gilda replied. She bent down and kissed him softly on the forehead. ‘Go in grace, go in peace, and rest now in the Light,’ she added, and Nils turned his face away from her so she had the right angle to punch her slender-bladed knife through his temple into his brain. He died without a twitch and with a smile.
‘What are you doing?’
Gilda jumped and looked up into the face of Brevis, the East Rank’s chief physician. The man’s red-blotched face spoke of too much wine and too little sleep, but his hands were steady and Gilda had seen him wield the bone saw with skill.
She stood. ‘Nils was bleeding to death and in agony. There was no saving him. He begged the grace; I gave it to him.’ She sheathed the knife she’d stolen from his operating tent earlier.
Brevis scowled. ‘You have no right to make those decisions. The man might still have been of use.’
Gilda pointed to the stump, to the pool of blood still accreting beneath the cot. Scell wandered over, curiosity piqued by the raising voices and, no doubt, the sight of another new corpse. The man was a maggot, with a maggot’s lust for dead flesh.
‘Would you have me leave him alive in agony to do nothing but beg you for opium and curse you when you refused?’ Gilda asked.
Brevis looked at Scell, at the knife and sword he wore. ‘The grace is,’ he began. ‘The grace is …’ He trailed off, unable to repeat the dogma that had been forced upon him.
‘The grace is a heathen practice outlawed in the East Rank as it is among the Mireces,’ a new voice said.
Gilda looked past Brevis and bobbed a curtsey. ‘General Skerris,’ she acknowledged, ‘I find it odd you would outlaw such a thing. The grace is, after all, one of the only things your soldiers can be sure of – that if they are mortally wounded they will be ended quickly, with as little pain as possible. Surely you risk rebellion if you take it from them?’
‘They fight for a higher purpose now,’ Skerris rumbled. ‘Their pain glorifies the gods and brings Them closer, therefore we should not see it ended prematurely.’
Gilda glanced at the beds closest to her; wounded soldiers stared at them in disbelief, or hunched on their sides as far from Skerris as they could get, shoulders shaking as they wept. No swift end if infection takes them, no painless drifting away from a world filled with agony. No blink from life to death as a blade enters your brain. Instead, a protracted, lingering, pointless death that will fill them with despair and their fellows with horror.
‘Idiots,’ she snapped, careless of to whom she spoke. ‘You are making a grave mistake. These men are professional soldiers. They have pledged to fight for you, to obey your commands, and have given their souls to your filthy gods. You have already taken everything they have to give. They should at least be allowed to die in dignity, if death be their fate. You cannot take that from them. You must not.’
‘Mind your tongue,’ Scell snapped, jerking the chain as though Gilda was a snarling dog. She staggered, grunting as the collar reopened the scabs where the metal had chafed her neck raw.
‘You have no idea what the men in this hospital do and do not deserve or how they should spend their last hours,’ Skerris said calmly, as if lecturing a new recruit. ‘They are no longer mired in the delusions of your faith. They belong to Blood now, and if they must die steeped in it, they will do so to further the aims of our gods, the true gods. Treat them and do all you can to save them, but if they are dying, you will leave them to do so in their own time and not go near them again. It will purify their souls ready for the Afterworld. Do you understand?’
Gilda clicked her tongue against her teeth and scanned the closest beds; everyone was listening and she knew without doubt the news would spread to every soldier in the hospital and then to the entire Rank before dusk tinged the sky. Whether it would be enough to begin a rebellion, she’d no idea.
I hope so. Those who rise up against tyranny and the gods they’ve been forced to pledge themselves to will be welcome back in the Light when their time comes. If they’ve the strength to deny the pull of Blood with their final breaths, as Nils did.
Brevis held out his hand for the knife, and Gilda drew it and slapped it into his palm. He gasped, thinking she’d cut him, but she’d reversed the blade at the last second and his skin remained intact. His lip curled at her and she smiled back, the picture of elderly innocence. Where can I get another knife? Do I dare?
The thought was almost enough to make her laugh aloud; she dared, of course she did. Gilda had no illusions about her fate; her only plan now was to save the souls of as many of the East Rankers as she could before they killed her. Even if they were, officially, the enemy.
‘I will do as you ask,’ she said to Skerris, turning his order into a request. Skerris didn’t rise to it the way Corvus or Rivil would, or even Lanta; instead he nodded once and crooked a finger at Brevis to follow as he made his way up the aisle between the beds.
‘Don’t let her kill anyone,’ Brevis snapped at Scell as he hurried after the general.
Gilda turned a smile on Scell. ‘You heard the Rilporian, Scell. Don’t let me kill anyone, will you?’ She laughed. ‘Anyone would think I was the mass murderer, not your priestess. Come on then, let’s see who’s next. All right, mate, what’s your name? Captain, are you? Acquitted yourself well?’
She sat down on the next bed before Scell could answer and pulled the man’s blanket back, began to examine the bandages. ‘Did you hear me with Nils?’ she breathed. The man nodded, frightened. ‘You’re not dying, I can see that, but I can still pray with you if you want? If you’d like to try?’
His eyes wobbled in their sockets as he eyed the tent, Scell, Gilda herself. His mouth opened and closed like a fish a few times; then he nodded.
Gilda smiled.