‘I reached the road, staggering in the mud as thunder rolled above. I was almost done by then. The wretched close to my heels. Drawing my sword in desperation.
‘If thou art b-brutally murdered here, she whispered, and I end my days hanging on the hip of a m-mindless shamble-bag of m-maggots, I shall be terribly upset with ye.
‘“The hell do you want from me?” I hissed.
‘Run, Little Lion, she replied. RUN.
‘I did as the blade told me. One last burst of speed. And as lightning arced across the skies, I squinted through the drizzle and saw it before me. A miracle. A carriage, drawn by a miserable grey draught horse, sitting in the middle of the road.’
‘Divine intervention?’ Jean-Fran?ois murmured.
‘Or the devil loves his own. The carriage was surrounded by a dozen soldiers. Feed was scarce those nights, and keeping a horse had never been a poor man’s game. But each of these men also had a mount – good stout sosyas, standing downcast in the rain while their riders argued, shin-deep in the muck. I saw their problem in a heartbeat – the weather had turned the road into a quagmire, and their carriage was sunk to its axles.
‘The soldiers were well geared and well fed. Clad in crimson tabards and iron plate caked with filth, they tried to drag the carriage free. And standing at their head, whipping that poor dray as if the mud were the horse’s fault, were two tall, pale women. They were near-identical – twins maybe. Their hair was long, black, cut in pointed fringes, and they wore tricorns with short, triangular veils over their eyes. They were clad in leather, and their tabards were also blood-red, marked with the flower and flail of Naél, the Angel of Bliss. I realized these were no ordinary soldiers, then.
‘This was an inquisitor cohort.
‘The men heard me coming, but didn’t seem too ruffled. And then they spied the pack of corpses on my tail, and all of them looked fit to shit. “Martyrs save us,” breathed one, and “Fuck me,” gasped another, and the inquisitors’ jaws near dropped off their heads.
‘Gabriel, ’ware!
‘The whisper rang in my mind, silver behind my eyes. I turned with a cry as the first wretched caught me. It was close enough that I could smell its carrion breath, see the shape of the little boy it’d been. Rot had set in hard before it turned, but it moved quick as flies, dead doll’s eyes glinting like broken glass.
‘My sword cut the air, an offhand swing that was far from poetic. The blade met the monster’s thigh and just kept going, sending the thing’s leg sailing free in a gout of rotten blood. It fell without a sound, but the others came on, too swift to fight and far too many to best. The sosyas screamed in terror at the sight of the Dead, bolting in all directions, hooves thundering. The soldiers shouted after them in rage, in fear.’
Gabriel steepled his fingers at his chin. Pausing for thought.
‘Now, there’s three ways a person can react when they look their death in the eye, coldblood. Folk talk about fight or flight, but in truth, it’s fight, flight, or freeze. Those soldiers saw the two dozen corpses charging them down, and each chose a different path. Some raised their blades. Some messed their britches. And those inquisitor twins glanced to each other, drew long, wicked knives from their belts, and sliced through the harnesses binding the horse to their carriage.
‘“Run!” one cried, scrambling onto the terrified beast’s back.
‘The other leapt up behind her, gave the dray a savage kick. “Fly, you whore!”
‘Gabriel, ye mu—
‘I sheathed my sword, silencing her voice in my head. And I reached to my belt, left hand shaking as I drew my wheellock. The pistol was silvered, a sevenstar embossed in the mahogany grip. The shot I could’ve given Justice was still loaded in the barrel. And glad I’d saved it, I gave it to the inquisitors instead.
‘The shot rang out, the silver slug ripped through one woman’s back in a spray of blood. She toppled from the dray with a cry, the horse rearing up and throwing her sister into the muck. Breathless, I bolted past the baffled soldiers and leapt onto the dray’s back.
‘“Wait!” the first woman cried.
‘“B-bastard!” the other coughed, bloodied in the mud.
‘But I’d no time for any of them. Clutching the dray’s mane with my one good hand, I raised my heels for a kick. But she needed no encouragement, screaming in terror as the wretched came on. The horse dug her hooves into the mire and bolted, and in a spray of black mud, we rode away towards the river without a backwards glance.’
Gabriel fell silent.
A quiet rang in that cold cell, long as years.
‘You left them all there,’ Jean-Fran?ois finally said.
‘Oui.’
‘You left them all to die.’
‘Oui.’
Jean-Fran?ois raised an eyebrow. ‘The legends never called you coward, de León.’
Gabriel leaned into the light. ‘Look into my eyes, coldblood. Do I strike you as the kind of man who’s afraid to die?’
‘You strike me as the kind who would welcome it,’ the vampire admitted. ‘But the silversaints were meant to be exemplars of the One Faith. Slayers of monsters most foul and warriors of God most high. And you were the best of them. You weep like a child over a dead horse, but shoot an innocent woman in the back and leave God-fearing men to be slaughtered by foulbloods.’ The historian frowned. ‘What kind of hero are you?’
Gabriel laughed, shaking his head.
‘Who the fuck told you I was a hero?’
III
SMALL BLESSINGS
‘WE FORDED THE Keff a while later. The river rose up to my horse’s shoulders, but she was a strong one, and I suspect, glad to be rid of the inquisitors and their whips. I didn’t know her name, and I supposed I’d not be keeping her long. So I just called her “Jez” as we rode on through the dark.’
Jean-Fran?ois blinked. ‘Jez?’
‘Short for “Jezebel”。 Since I’d only know her for a night and all.’
‘Ah. Prostitute humour.’
‘Don’t fall down laughing, coldblood.’
‘I shall do my very best, Silversaint.’
‘My arm was slowly healing,’ Gabriel continued. ‘But I knew I’d need a dose of sanctus to really see it right. And without my flintbox, I’d no sensible way to light a pipe, let alone a lantern, so we ran blind to Dhahaeth, hoping against hope that the town was still standing. Whatever light the sun gave was long gone by the time I saw them in the distance, but my heart still surged at the sight: fires, burning like beacons in a black sea.
‘Jez was just as uneasy as I in the dark, and she rode harder towards the light. From what little I’d heard of Dhahaeth, it was a one-chapel milltown on the banks of the Keff. But the place I drew up outside was like to a small fortress.
‘They couldn’t afford much stonework, but a heavy wooden palisade had been erected on the outskirts, twelve feet high, running all the way down to the riverbank. A deep trench skirted the palisade, filled with wooden spikes, and bonfires blazed atop it despite the rain. I could see corpses blackened by fire in the ditch as we halted outside the gate, and figures on a highwalk behind the palisade’s spikes.