Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (50 page)

The God smiled then, and spoke for the second time. ‘
You. Exist. To. Serve.
’

The sentence was a mountain falling on our shoulders and we all sank to our knees, even Erastian and Ethalia. There was no way for us to resist. Nothing I’d felt before, not even Birgid’s Awe, could compare to this. This wasn’t mere command; it was
revelation
: we were tiny, insignificant things, born to serve, fulfilled only in genuflection.

Beside me I could hear Kest, grunting like a pig struggling to escape a mudpit that was slowly sucking him inexorably into its depths. I could almost feel the vibrations in the air from his trembling body, from his desperate desire to stand. He made me so ashamed of myself, for not being able even to try, and I hated him then, for having so much more strength in whatever passes for a soul in our miserable flesh than I ever had.

Someone spoke, and it took me a moment to realise who it was until Erastian-who-plucks-the-rose, Saint of Romantic Love, said, ‘Right, well then, I guess the time for talk is over.’

With all the effort I could muster, I brought my chin up enough that I could see him as he rose to his feet, dusted himself off and extended a hand to Ethalia. ‘Remember when I told you that Mercy wasn’t the same thing as passivity? It’s time to fight now, sister. Even the Gods are bound to trial by combat.’

Ethalia looked at me, her eyes wide with pain, as she slowly pushed herself to her feet, and I tried desperately to rise, to join her, to fight by her side.

I couldn’t.

I guess we aren’t all meant to be Saints.

If you’ve never seen two Saints fighting for their lives against an incarnate God, it looks like – well, nothing, really.

‘Are they doing anything?’ Brasti asked. The three of us were still on our knees, still unable to rise. ‘Because right now it looks an awful lot like they’re all trying to stare each other to death.’

Kest’s laboured breathing told me he too was fighting against the force that held us to the ground. ‘You . . . aren’t
seeing
it,’ he tried to explain. ‘The battle’s happening beyond this place.’

I tried to see what Kest saw, to bear witness to the war between God and Saints unfolding before us, and for a long time it was just as Brasti had said: the almost comical vision of the three of them facing each other, staring intently into each other’s eyes – then my vision blurred, as if I’d stared at a flame too long, I felt a stabbing pain in my temples, forcing me to close my eyes, and at last I saw the way such duels are fought. There’s no fire, no lightning, no giant serpents swallowing their victims whole. This was something different. This was much,
much
worse.

‘You . . . see?’ Kest asked.

I see a big man with a back made strong and shoulders made broad from long days working the mill, baring his teeth as he brings his fist down upon his child’s jaw, again and again: a brutal, endless rhythm as he punishes the boy over and over . . .

Two young women hold an old mother down while a third kicks her in the stomach, the leg a swinging pendulum keeping time, once, twice, thrice . . .

A bird lands on a windowsill, drawn to a small pile of seed, but before it can eat a hand comes crashing down to grab it and squeezes until the tiny bones of its ribcage crack and give.

‘Hells,’ I whispered. I had seen all that, and a hundred hundred more such horrors; worse, I knew every one was real and happening right now somewhere in the vast distances of this country.
This is who we are as a people. This is what we do when no one is watching.

Erastian’s glib voice pulled me out of the blood-soaked visions. ‘Is that really all you’ve got, you dumb son of a bitch?’ The old man’s brow furrowed in concentration and I closed my own eyes and saw—

—
a girl, young, her cheeks alight with the first bloom of womanhood. She climbs up the mountainside, although it’s dangerous; everyone knows it, and she’s always been afraid of heights. But not today, because there’s a blue rose that grows there and she plans to pluck it. She’ll hold it between her teeth by the stem and smiling confidently, she’ll stride into town, to the young travelling musician who’d played the song for her on his violin, the song about a rose that couldn’t be found. But she knew where it was, and she would find it: a gift. A promise . . .

‘Fascinating,’ the Blacksmith said, standing apart from the conflict, apparently quite unaffected by his God’s terrible will. ‘Such remarkable intensity from a man whose Sainthood is little more than a childish fantasy.’

‘
Kneel
,’ the God said, and a rushing filled my ears —
a thousand moans escaping the lips of a hundred terrified men, hanging onto the sides of a boat even as the storm tears it apart, begging for the lightning to stop.

‘See, this is the problem with Gods,’ Erastian said, and when I turned, I saw him grinning, his jaw set tight. ‘The only thing they understand is whatever single-minded, half-witted emotion bound itself into their form.’

Suddenly, the moans disappeared, replaced by whispers—

—
two lovers, their breath warmed by the early morning sunlight. They make promises together, tell each other tales of the improbable life they will share, full of adventures and embraces . . .

‘
Stop
,’ the God said, smothering the lovers’ song.

‘You laugh at romantic love,’ Erastian said, ‘but it is the path that leads us beyond mere survival and greed. Mercy is the healer, but also the protector. She is the blessing and the sanctifier, the sword and the shield. What we bear is seven hells more powerful than your petty nightmares.’

‘What do you know of nightmares?’ the Blacksmith shouted, pacing back and forth in front of his God, then he stopped, and screamed, ‘Show them what a true nightmare looks like!’

—
a man walks through the fields on the way home from a long day at the forge. He comes upon a patch of beautiful yellow flowers growing behind the old church. He hasn’t seen their like before. He brings them home to brighten his family’s evening in these hard times . . .

‘What is this?’ Erastian asked. ‘What are you—?’

—
the man watches as his eldest boy screams, suffering such terrors, such insanity, that even after he binds him with heavy ropes, the child bites off his own tongue so he can choke on it
—

‘You . . .’ I was barely able to summon breath. ‘You were the one Obladias talked about – the man who lost Faith after his family died. The flowers you found were Adoracia. That’s what caused—’

—
the second child has it now; her suffering is even worse. She clacks her teeth together, over and over, until they shatter, and with the remaining shards she chews herself until
—

‘Give them more,’ the Blacksmith shouted.

‘No,’ Ethalia cried out, ‘don’t—’

—
the man watches his wife cradling their smallest child, not even a month old and too tiny to be able to hurt herself, but the pain never stops. The mother prays over and over to every God and every Saint ever known, and none listen
—

‘All save one,’ the Blacksmith spat, his eyes on Ethalia. ‘She came – and she did
nothing
. She gave us
nothing
. Her Mercy was as useless as a breeze against a raging fever.’

The God opened his mouth wide and let forth his next words: ‘
No Mercy.
’

—
the wife looks up at her husband, feeling the illness come upon her at last. She’s so grateful that she won’t have to watch her man suffer first
—

‘You survived,’ I said. ‘The toxin—’

‘I prayed to the Gods to grant me my own death, and even that was refused. I thought I would go mad with grief. I suppose I did.’ He looked down on me. ‘We are all mad in this fallen country, Falcio. The only question is what shape that madness will take.’

‘You became like her . . . like the Tailor.’

‘That’s what it means to be Inlaudati,’ he said. ‘When my mind shattered, I didn’t find the peace of oblivion or even the purity of endless agony . . . instead, I began to see the deep patterns of the world around me – I saw how that world might be changed. We Unrecognised, like your Tailor, like me, we do not become Kings or Queens or Saints – instead, we shape events.
We
decide who will rule and who will die.’

‘Such power,’ Ethalia said. ‘You could honour your family’s loss with this skill; you could use it to help save this country – and instead you bring us ruin!’

‘Have you not listened to a word I have said?’ the Blacksmith scolded her. He looked upon the God he had made. ‘Not ruin but
order
, not tyranny but
efficiency
. This country has been tested over and over again, and it has been found wanting. It is tired, enfeebled: a country of women in a world that demands the strength of men.’

‘He takes an unnecessarily dim view of women,’ Brasti muttered.

‘And of the country,’ Kest added.

The Blacksmith wandered beneath one of the gibbets and reached up a hand to set the corpse of the dead God of War swinging. ‘War is coming, Falcio. Your King knew this; you know it. Avares will cross those mountains one day soon, and this time they’ll destroy us. And what good will all your petty little laws do us then?’

‘
No laws save mine
,’ the God declared, his words transforming into a wild dog made rabid by pure rage, tearing at our minds piece by piece. It appeared the time for talk really was over: now the God brought forth his nightmares and set them on us one after another—

—
the boy can’t see, his eyes too swollen. He smells his own urine as it runs down his leg and pools on the floor. His hand slips in it as he tries to crawl away, sobbing, ‘Please, Father, please. I’ll do anything you want, I promise. Anything!’
—

—
the old woman coughs, and blood fills her mouth. The scent of bile fills her nostrils as the two girls holding her cheer for the third to kick harder. ‘Please,’ the old mother says, ‘please, I’ll give you anything you want. Anything’
—

—
the bird’s hollow bones crack under the crush of the mighty hand. It smells the morbid scent released into the air as its internal organs split apart under the pressure. It has no words, no song with which even to beg
—

Erastian coughed, and the thin, wrinkled skin on his face started splitting from the strain of holding back the foul images. Blood began to trickle from his nose, then his mouth, then his eyes.

The Blacksmith sounded almost disappointed. ‘Your Saint has failed his test, Falcio.’

*

‘No!’ Ethalia cried, and she took Erastian’s hand. ‘Tell me how to help.’

Despite the intense pain he must have felt, the old Saint smiled at her. He winked, and the blood clung to his eyelashes. ‘It . . . gives me strength just to be near you, my dear, but if you could summon a little love in your heart, that would be of great help.’

She turned her gaze on me, and I realised she was searching to find that brief moment we had shared, when we’d truly been in love; it was like watching someone try to break apart stone with their fingernails. I have never felt more pathetic.

‘Erastian can’t hold on much longer,’ Kest said, growling; he was still pushing against the ground, trying to rise. ‘I do not have the strength to break free,’ he added.

‘Then what
are
you doing?’ Brasti asked. His own attempts were obviously just as weak and useless as mine.

‘I am . . . searching inside myself for the strength to do so.’

‘And if you do? What good is a sword going to be against a God?’

‘The man I see wears armour.’

Brasti managed to move his head barely an inch, but it was enough. ‘So what? Trin’s wearing armour too.’

Then I realised what Kest meant: though we saw different versions of the God, there was one similarity . . .
Why would a God need armour unless he had some vulnerability to the physical world . . .

‘Kest,’ I said slowly, ‘as First Cantor of the Greatcoats, I am
ordering
you to get on your feet and kill that son of a bitch.’

The Blacksmith chuckled as if we were sharing a joke. ‘I would have expected such an experienced duellist to know the difference between strength and false hope.’

Erastian appeared to have redoubled his efforts, for the blood was now dripping constantly down his face. ‘We fight with dreams,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s a difference.’

Ethalia turned away from me, trying to fight back against the God with her own strength.

—
a mother comforts her child, ‘It will be all right, my dearest, just
—
’

The vision faltered, like a kite without enough wind to let it fly. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead.

—
a soldier saves the life of a defeated enemy. He wraps the wound
—

‘I can’t do it!’ Ethalia cried.

‘You can, and you will,’ Erastian said, gritting his teeth. ‘Don’t just make things up: find something
real
. It’s out there somewhere.’

She closed her eyes, and then . . .

—
a girl steps out from behind the table where she’s been hiding. Her father yells at her, tells her to get to her room, even as he reaches down to grab the boy by the neck. The girl starts to leave, but then stops, turns and steps in front of the father, keeping him from her brother
—

‘That’s the stuff,’ Erastian said, ‘give me more of that.’

The Blacksmith’s God countered, bringing his own foul visions down like an axe upon them, and Erastian and Ethalia leaned against each other, struggling to withstand the onslaught. The sights, sounds and smells swirled around us: a war fought on a hundred different planes against the endless power of a God, while all I could do was to kneel on the rough ground, a spectator.

Then something odd happened: the visions slowly began to turn; the sounds of gloating started fading beneath music, sweet and daring, the stench of despair began to flee in front of clean ocean air.

‘
Stop
,’ the God commanded.

‘Fight, damn you,’ the Blacksmith shouted at his deity.