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The barrel of a gun.
Dismas’ heart stopped. There was only the plummet of dread triggered by instinctive recognition. The brigand levelled their blunderbuss at him, cradled close to their chest. At that angle and with that grip, the recoil would break their ribs. But with their dying breath, they steadied the blunderbuss at Dismas, and he knew he should have let them shoot their shot first.
Dismas froze.
He made the perfect target for a barrelling tackle, ramming into his side, crushing him against the ground. A ton of armour knocked the wind from his lungs, and he suffocated with a noiseless cry. The sight of the Old Road turned muddy, his head spinning, but the battle wasn’t over, couldn’t be over.
He sucked in a large breath, held it tightly in his chest, and hissed it out at the same time he shoved at the weight holding him down. It was the crusader, he realised. The crusader groaned and recoiled. Then Dismas remembered the blunderbuss, and their two assailants on the Old Road.
The battle wasn’t over. There had been two of them — and there were the large hands of the second, throttling the crusader’s neck as they yanked him away. Dismas’ vision expanded: himself, sprawled on the ground, the fusilier unconscious and bleeding out a foot away, and the half-naked brute with the cat o’ nine tails wrestling the crusader.
The crusader smashed his fists into the brute, but it was like hitting stone for all that it did. The brute, unseamed by the crusader’s sword across their belly and shoulders, buried their weight against the crusader’s neck. Blood welled from their wounds, splattering steel underneath. The two of them howled for breath. The crusader was flagging. He gave up trying to punch the brute and scrabbled for his sword instead, lying on the ground between him and Dismas.
Dismas gritted his teeth through the pain burning all through his side, and dived forwards, scooping up the sword with one hand and plunging down with the dagger in his other. The lopsided movement took him off his target: less of the brute’s neck, and more like their shoulder. But the dagger sunk good and deep, and it was distraction enough for the brute to rear up and knock Dismas onto his arse again.
The crusader caught the dropped sword and surged upwards, slicing across the brute’s chest. The brute spun away, pulled Dismas’ dagger from their shoulder, and then threw themselves against the crusader again. The crusader held out an arm to block their feint, but they shivved up into his armpit instead. The crusader fell away, and the distance gave him the reach to swing the full length of his sword against the brute’s throat.
Blood erupted from their neck, and still the brute staggered and swayed, slashing the air as if to catch the crusader one last time. But the crusader had fallen back. He was on his knees, clutching his armpit, head bowed. The brute finally fell and Dismas seized his dagger back. He stabbed the brute in the head just to be sure and to still their trembling.
Then he crawled away, and he heard the breathless rasp of the crusader say, “Highwayman.”
The crusader had collapsed onto his back. The steel plate armour over his body and arms had deflected most of the lead shot, but it was a woefully incomplete set, exposing his legs and feet. His blue tabard, emblazoned with a gold cross, was twisted around his belt.
Dismas saw the blood coating the hand shoved into his armpit, how the crusader’s shoulders heaved, the whimper behind the gasps, and he calculated the odds. The blood would be gushing out of the crusader’s arteries. He had minutes at best.
A pang of shame and sorrow struck him somewhere above his navel, but he throttled it down with bitterness. He could walk away.
The crusader must have seen the resolve in Dismas’ eyes, for he nodded. The close helmet he wore was expressionless, and the inside was dark.
“Last rites.”
“I canna,” said Dismas. “I don’t have the right.” Not religious, he wanted to say. Not sanctified. Not a divine servant like a cleric or crusader.
“I need—” The crusader jerked painfully. “You will. Repeat. After me.”
“Mayhaps we can make it to the Hamlet. ‘Tis only down the hill, you can see it from here!” Dismas jerked his thumb over his shoulder, to where the trees had split and shrunk away from the dead fields stretching towards the barns and houses.
The crusader was silent, and the same dread that had seized him when Dismas had looked down the blunderbuss barrel struck him again. He dropped his dagger and scrambled forwards to staunch his hands into the warm, wet pocket of the crusader’s armpit. The crusader uttered an agonised groan.
Dismas trembled. He remembered how it had felt to take a life the first time. Anger and fear for his own survival had seen him through the fight. But both were bleeding out of him now, as pity and grief wormed through the bands of his restraint and gentled his touch upon the crusader’s hand.
The crusader sighed. His whole body went slack. Still, he whispered, “Be not afraid.”
Dismas snorted despite himself, and let the crusader pray. He followed with his own voice, pretending to languish when the crusader choked or cursed with pain. But the words came to him naturally, and he could not stymie the hum that thrummed in his throat, the song that rose in him unbidden: heat beyond forbearance, a searing pain at once joyous and excruciating, filling him like hot air from a bellows. After years of its absence, it scorched him. It shone through him. He was afraid.
“Hallowed art thee, noble kindling, to return to the Holy Flame. May the Light in heaven, gracious and merciful, absolve you of your sin. Be at peace in the Holy Flame, cleansed of your mortal body. Your ashes will feed the earth. Your memory will be honoured. Your light will ever shine.”
The crusader went quiet again, so Dismas, blazing with purpose and begging for it to end but never stop, prompted, “Your name?”
“Reynauld. Of Châtillon.”
“Reynauld of Châtillon. I bless you. May you find your rest.”
The crusader twined their fingers together. Dismas thought about how close he was to the man’s heart, barely a hand’s breadth. The heat from the blood had soaked through the holes in his gloves. But it was nothing to the divinity radiant inside him, and paler still against the crusader’s gentle grasp, of the comfort of human hands embraced.
It was Reynauld’s final breath. “Amen.”
Dismas closed his eyes. “Amen.”
The fire burst from within, flaring from his back, rapture made manifest in the colourless limning of the Old Road and the death of a crusader. Dismas wept, not with misery but fury. The light pierced his closed eyes and shone red.
He held the crusader’s hand. The sizzle of burning flesh hit his nose in an acrid stench. But the crusader’s grip was strong. There was no sound but the roaring of fire. The crusader must have wept, too.
Reynauld blinked muzzily through his visor. The trees crowding the Old Road had disappeared, whitewashed by ubiquitous light. It was the same light that was boiling the tears from his eyes. The only reprieve was a shape in the darkness. It wept, too: glistening tears that shone against skin, white tracks sluicing through the dark.
Such sorrow should not abide. Reynauld swelled with anger. That someone should cry at a time like this, when there was nothing but sweet purity in the stainless light, was unthinkable.
Surely the angels, bulwarks of the Holy Flame in heaven, did not greet their entrants with such misery. No, he would not let it stand.
There was a throbbing in his armpit, drumming across his chest, as if trying to outbeat his heart. Enough, he thought, and let it burn.
A fire sparked in his fingertips. It flashed through his hand. The pain made him jerk, and for a second he saw colours, and felt them, too: red and purples striped across his neck, lead shot punched into his side and thigh. His heartbeat cantered with the shock. The embrace that had entwined his fingers vanished.
But it smothered the throbbing. Like the tide washing over sand, it smoothed the wounds and took some of the pain away. His heart beat strongly in his ribcage, proud and indomitable. Reynauld breathed out a sigh of relief.
That’s when it struck him: his mortality. His body. He felt entirely human — not transcended to divine ash. The burning in him hurt too much.
He tried to remember, and hoped the Holy Flame would forgive him the sin of reaching for his life. But the memory came easily: the contract to accompany an estate heir to her lands, the rickety carriage ride upon the Old Road, the topsy-turvy of the crash and the masked highwayman who had pulled Reynauld from it.
The eyeless light watched him with its numerous gazes. Where the dark shape was, the highwayman had knelt, repeating his last rites. It was the only thing keeping him from being blinded. It was so close he could have touched it. But he didn’t dare, not with the sins he already bore, his hands bloody and human.
If this was indeed Reynauld’s passage to heaven, then it was much too painless. That he had felt relief at all was an irrational grace. He did not deserve it — and yet, he knew with every fibre of his being that he would strive to. If this was his clemency, then he would not squander it. He would cherish it.
The light was receding, pulling away from the trees and the overturned earth. It spanned from the dark figure like wings, blazing godrays painting shadows in sharp chiaroscuro, sublime pinions fanning out in gossamer arcs. He was witnessing something glorious. And it was leaving.
He did not leave with it, though he tried, clawing the ground for purchase, and then rolling onto his right side. Each laboured breath enkindled the sharp iron taste in his mouth. His thigh twinged and tensed with the buried lead shot from the brigand’s blunderbuss. But he couldn’t roll onto his other side, not when the brute had stabbed him there.
Reynauld squinted through the last beams of light at the fallen brigands, though his eyes felt scalded and dry. Perhaps this divine visage had not been for him, but the brigands. All met the Holy Flame at the end of their lives. Perhaps he had been given another chance. There was no other way to explain his staunched wound when it had pierced so deeply into his chest.
Tenderly, he touched his left armpit. Pain throbbed anew up into his shoulder, arm, and chest. Through the frays of his gambeson, he felt scarred skin, roughly hewn on his bare fingertips.
Then he looked up, and the light was gone. The murky forest and its earthy colours framed the stunned expression of the highwayman. Everything was too dark in comparison.
Yet the bleached streaks across bark, and the yellowed grass underfoot, convinced Reynauld that it wasn’t quite the same as before. The air, too, felt dry. Still blinking spots from his eyes, he pushed himself into sitting. He wanted to lift his visor and clear the sweat from his face, but he was too afraid the metal of his helmet would burn his hand. His neck felt tender, but his breathing was clear.
The feeling of exhaustion, he knew intimately from his campaigns: the after-effect of the fight. But it was tempered by a warmth embered inside him, almost coming from his stab wound.
The highwayman laughed incredulously. “Light be damned,” he said.
Reynauld gathered his sword, though reaching for it made his vision swim, and grimaced at the stains.
“You’re alive,” continued the highwayman. His dark gaze, narrowed disbelievingly over his red scarf, strafed down from armpit to thigh. He went to run his hand through his close-cropped black hair, and then stopped. “Bloody hell. What was that? You healed y’self.”
“That,” said Reynauld, rising to his feet, “was an ambush.”
“I felt you bleeding out, mate — look at my hands!”
The highwayman stuck out his crimson gloves, but Reynauld was already limping over to the brigands’ bodies. His legs trembled and his head felt as though it was stuffed with cotton. He almost pitched with every step — but it would not do to falter now, not when he had been given a second chance.
As Reynauld examined the brigands — grubby bandits hooded in green, daggers and pouches strapped to belt and jerkin respectively — the highwayman hurried over. Reynauld slipped his hands out of the brigands’ pockets and tucked away his gains before the highwayman joined him.
They both stared down at the large brute, and Reynauld passed the highwayman his dagger. It was soaked to the hilt.
“A bloody miracle,” said the highwayman. His eyes were wide over the top of his scarf, flicking pointedly between his dagger and Reynauld.
Aside from his gloves, however, his heavy black coat and fur collar were unmarred, though both were ragged with age and use. The highwayman’s dagger fitted into a belt sheath that disappeared from view underneath the coat, hidden alongside the flash of the flintlock pistol Reynauld spied near his ribs of his leather jerkin.
The highwayman caught Reynauld’s gaze and frowned. Reynauld turned away.
“We can only hope the heir escaped on that horse.” He peered through his visor back at the Old Road whence they had come. “We should keep moving. Don’t dawdle.”
“Oh, I’m fine, Reynauld, thanks for asking.” The nameless highwayman scoffed. “Aye, look at you. Last rites, my arse.” He shook his head and finished frisking the corpses as well, having stripped one of a fur pelt. “Now. Let’s get you to the Hamlet. Other arm — that’s it, mate. Don’t want to be opening up what you just closed.”
The highwayman fussed over him and Reynauld winced as they balanced his weight between them. The side of his gambeson was slick with blood, warm and sticky against his flank. His name had rung proudly from the highwayman’s mouth, and he realised he couldn’t return the favour.
“Are you hurt, highwayman…?” said Reynauld. He pitched his voice up, and the highwayman cracked a grin in understanding.
“Dismas. And it’s nowt a drink canna fix. Here.” Dismas steadied Reynauld’s right arm over his shoulders and produced a flask at the same time.
Reynauld wrinkled his nose in answer. The taste of blood was still thick in his mouth, yet it was his keepsake of his brush with death. But Dismas didn’t move until Reynauld said, “No, thank you.”
I saw an angel, he wanted to say, and it knelt in your place. Drink would not tarnish that.
“En’t you going to ask if I planned that ambush? A cold-blooded scheme between bandits?” said Dismas dryly, sparing a finger to pull down his scarf and reveal a face of high cheekbones and tanned skin tallied with scars. The longest one stretched from cheek to chin, and Reynauld stared at it. It was a face of considerable history, all angles and lines, yet joy had left its creases, too, faint near his eyes and mouth.
“No. I know you didn’t. A guilty man would have run.”
Dismas cocked his head and gave a small, pleased smile. “A brave accusation, calling me innocent. We’re all guilty of sommat.”
“And you stayed with me all the same.”
“Since you asked so nicely.” Dismas swigged his flask, once, twice, and then offered it again to Reynauld, who declined with a head shake. He tucked it away one-handedly and then began to walk towards the Hamlet. “I’d heard of holy folks with healing hands. Saints and things, touched by the Holy Flame.”
“You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Reynauld weighed the words in his mind. They had been through enough. They had to reach the Hamlet before sundown, else they would not survive the night. Human minds could only take so much before they buckled.
But then Dismas jostled him. “Go on, don’t clam up on me now. Light above, least I can do is listen after you saved my life.”
He gestured towards Reynauld’s thigh, where the lead shot protested every step by knotting the strings of his muscles. Still, he couldn’t feel it bleeding, and — painful as it was — it was preferable to the loss he might have suffered should it have found its true target.
But he wouldn’t cheapen Dismas’ gratitude with a dismissal, or a jape. Instead, he honoured Dismas’ curiosity and said, eyes on the horizon, “I saw the Light.”
“Aye, that tracks. You were on death’s door.”
“I saw the Light. An angel of the Holy Flame. It burned away the forest in its glory. It held me. It wept for me. And then I willed for my wound to cauterise, and so it did.”
“Amen,” finished Dismas. When Reynauld glanced his way, he spotted a wry tug at his lips, a moment before it soured and Dismas pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose. “Well, let’s count it as a blessing, eh? Mayhaps it’s sommat you picked up in your crusades and you forgot about? Life flashing before your eyes and all that.”
No, it was not. Reynauld knew how to pluck words from tangled feelings and iron them into a passionate speech, rousing his comrades into a battle fury and bloodlust. He knew standard military triage. He knew how to kill. He did not know how to heal.
He considered Dismas under his arm, hobbling together with wretched haste, hurrying for the comfort of a roof over their heads but limited by their wounds. Except, upon examination, Dismas bore no open injuries. His gloves were soaked, true, but that was the only bloodstain upon him. He had been quick with that dagger and pistol, Reynauld had seen that much even when fighting the large brute.
Yet he, too, had only staunched Reynauld’s wound when Reynauld had been bleeding out. No healing in those red gloves — just a fierce grip, and a lyrical lilt to the echo of Reynauld’s prayer. If an angel could take mortal form, it would have been blasphemy to liken itself after a highwayman. There was no mistaking the cut of the man’s dark coat and his red scarf, nor the dagger and pistol that ordinary folk feared to see upon the road.
Reynauld said, quietly and warily, “Did you know those brigands?”
“Personally? Nay. But that wrap of wolf pelt around their bellies…” Dismas’ expression darkened. “That’s the token of Vvulf’s Wolves. Got one here. We’ll show it to the heir. Better she knows who accosted her carriage.”
Something had spooked the horses and caused their crash. But Reynauld had heard no gunshot or challenging cry to attribute it to the brigands they would later encounter. He could not forget the chill down his spine as he’d seen the carriage’s windows fog, seconds before it had careened from the road.
Yet the brigands had been there all the same — opportunistic vermin responding to the noise, eager to loot the wreckage. It was a shame they had left the heir’s trunks behind, though Reynauld had snuck a few knickknacks into his pouches.
Reynauld asked, “Competition?”
“Tyranny. There’s power and glory aplenty, if you measure it in pints of blood. People fear you, you take owt they have because you can, and you burn what’s left because they can’t. The real natural order, led by a man who styles himself as a wolf and smells worse than one’s backend.
“’Tisn’t a good sign that they stalk the Old Road, though I en’t surprised. There are fewer and fewer roads in the country left that they don’t prowl around.”
“What do they want?” mused Reynauld.
Dismas shot him a look. “To survive, and to feel good doing it. Theirs is a base pleasure.”
“Opposed to what you do?”
Reynauld felt Dismas tense. Yet they were still walking the same road, and had doubtlessly walked a similar one: thievery and bloodshed, a marriage unsurprising but regrettable. Reynauld waited calmly for an answer, for he held no judgement; he simply needed to know what to expect should another ambush happen on these empty fields. Woozy as he’d been, he hadn’t missed Dismas’ coup de grace on the brute’s head.
Dismas replied, an edge to his voice, “Nay. My pleasure is to wait along for knights in shining armour to come along, and hold ‘em up for their pretty shells.” Before Reynauld could respond, Dismas continued, “Speaking of: where’s the other half of it, mate? Wouldn’t have a gammy leg if it were covered like the rest of you.”
Reynauld sighed. If he’d had his chainmail, too, his armpit would have been protected. Funny that the sacrifices he’d made just to earn enough gold for the trip had spelled his doom anyway. Selling off his defences and the marks of his office — truly, a crusader of dignity, he thought bitterly.
Perhaps he did deserve his honourable discharge. Had he remained under the brotherhood and suffered the same fate, they would never have forgiven him his shame. His only saving grace was that he’d spared Alais and Henri of it.
As the trees pulled away from the Old Road and he and Dismas walked the wide, muddy path through the fields, Reynauld surveyed their surroundings and hoped they would see no further surprises. The evening dusk hung a grey pall in the sky: a portent of autumn rain. Firelight winked in the distance from the houses, and beyond the clouds and marine mist came the flash of a lighthouse.
He checked over their shoulders, hating the nervousness in his gut as he feared what he would see — or wouldn’t see. But the proof of his vision was still burned into the forest: soot and char on the ground where fire must have touched, yellow and white leaves where light must have baked.
It couldn’t have been him. He had never summoned such power before. Dismas must have lied; an angel had visited, and only the devout could have borne witness.
A human figure watched from amidst the trees. Reynauld’s heart leapt. It was too far into the forest to see properly, but the darkness was sculpted around a human shape, an innate recognition of a head and a body. Reynauld did not reach for his sword but he did slow, and shifted so that he could defend himself at a moment’s notice.
The trees swayed with the breeze, and the figure was gone.
It was likely a brigand scout. Dismas and Reynauld had left a few more brigand corpses closer to the carriage, so it was a conspicuous trail. It was not, as Reynauld’s instincts had assumed, one of the brigands revived, nor the form of an angel.
He realised Dismas had been speaking all the while, and wrenched his attention back just as Dismas said, “Am I right?”
Reynauld stayed silent, hoping it might pass as an answer, as it often did with garrulous men.
“Like I said,” said Dismas, clearly amused, “no need to be ashamed. I’m sure the heir’s gratitude will be rich — doubly, on account of that ambush.”
“We were her escorts. It was our paid duty to anticipate such things,” said Reynauld as sternly as he could muster when pain throttled his voice. He wondered what Dismas had been talking about. Of course: they had been talking about his armour. A subject better left alone.
Dismas seemed happy to change the topic, as he growled in protest, “I didn’t get paid to crash in a carriage. That’s the coachman’s fault, that is.”
“The senile caretaker?” said Reynauld with a smile. “How generous of you to believe such a man could ever drive a carriage safely. No, I doubt the heir will compensate us for his incompetence. That was a given.”
Dismas gave a one-shouldered shrug, careful not to jostle Reynauld’s arm. “’Tennyrate, we’ll have food in our bellies and a pillow for our heads tonight. Let’s look forward to that, eh?”
Having been measuring their pace to the Hamlet, Reynauld had also assessed the size and state of the buildings, and was not impressed by the broken roofs and lopsided walls he saw. “You presume much, to expect a warm welcome from that.” He nodded at the Hamlet. “The heir has inherited a substantial ditch.”
“Hey up, holy man, that’s our bed and breakfast! Don’t be putting down what you en’t seen yet!”
“Our bed will be a bale of hay, if they even have a stable, and our breakfast shall be a cold farewell. There is no fortune to be made here. Look at the manor on the hill. There are more holes and crags in it than the cliff it sits on, I’d wager.”
“A betting man, are we?” Dismas’ eyes gleamed. “Here’s one for you, then, Sir Cheery: if we canna wrangle a room tonight, proper fire and bath and pillow, then I’ll take a breakfast of prayers in the morning. How about it?”
Reynauld’s smile stretched even wider. “You, pray? First you say last rites, and next you’ll say your matins? You must be the most devout highwayman in the country.”
“Now you mention it, I’ve been called an angel before.” Dismas winked.
“I’m not a betting man. It is a sin to preordain the future, let alone stake commodities or wealth upon it.” Dismas cocked an eyebrow, and Reynauld added, “Yet company for matins would be a warm breakfast indeed, and will make up for the cold night I expect to see ahead.”
They shook hands, leather chafing against flaking blood. Dismas examined his hand afterwards thoughtfully.
“Never expected to make a deal with a crusader in good faith,” he remarked. “Always thought if I’d be making bargains, it’d be at the end of a blade, with my life up for barter.”
“Blame the blood loss,” said Reynauld dryly. “By how many eyes I’m seeing on your face, you might as well be an angel.”
Dismas huffed and looked away. “First you make a bet, and next you call a highwayman an angel? You must be the most blasphemous crusader in the country.”
The thread of amusement keeping Reynauld’s smile aloft snapped. His stomach dropped with kneejerk panic. He took a deep breath. It was not a barb. He need not retort. “Holy enough to heal,” he said simply, though it took great effort.
“Aye. But let’s get a leech on it, to be safe.”
“Now you are presuming too much — a physician, here.”
“Come off it! I ken the caretaker at least will have some knowledge of the healing arts! Else what is he good for? My flask will do the rest.”
“Your poison will not help.”
“’Twould if you’d give it a try! Light above, never met anyone so picky.”
“The pain keeps me awake, as the blood loss tempts me with sleep.”
“Then tell me about your missing armour,” said Dismas cheerfully, “and I’ll keep you awake with questions till there’s a bed to sleep on.”
Reynauld groaned inwardly. Perhaps there was no avoiding the subject after all.
“So how about it? Robbed or sold? Broken or lost? I ken you knights have shiny shoes, too. Where are those? Lucky you weren’t stabbed in the foot. Wouldn’t be walking so fast if you had. That shot is still in your leg, no? See, you’ll need a leech for that. I’ve a steady hand, if you fancy my skills to dig out the shot.”
A niggling thought bothered Reynauld: the only way to know how Reynauld had healed was to try it again. If he could remove the shot from his leg and heal it as he had his armpit, then truly he had been granted the Light’s grace. If he could not, then he did not look forward to the convalescence it would take to heal the holes in his thigh.
The fact that he faced such a choice at all was bewildering. It was a sign: to heal, than to harm, to help than to hinder. Perhaps this Old Road would help him find redemption.
“Thank you,” said Reynauld, meeting Dismas’ eyes, “for staying with me.”
“Thank you for saving my life,” said Dismas easily. He adjusted Reynauld’s right arm and launched back into asking questions.