The Pilgrims

47

As they headed back through the tunnels in the ghostly glow of lightstones her mood cooled, and she finally broke her silence. ‘I had hoped to win them over, when they were freed.’

‘Yet you told me that was impossible.’

‘I thought I alone could do it. I, who knew where they had been and what they’d been before. Of course I couldn’t promise you success.’

Anfen would have liked to put that memory in the place he kept all the others, where other blood had been spilled in such fashion. Yet part of him was glad for the chance to explain it this time, to reconcile his arm mechanically slaying with a mind that knew its purpose, and (this time) stood by it afterwards. ‘How well do you know history, Stranger? How well do you really know them? The ones who put those people in that cavern. And put you there.’

She didn’t answer. The caverns echoed with the phantom drip drip of unseen water, though Anfen now imagined it as blood. He spoke quietly. ‘Did my arm seem practised to you, just now? Professional? Do you know that I have had to do that sort of thing before? Only not to people little more than suffering bodies. And not to those who will soon be a powerful weapon in evil hands. I have overseen the slaughter of entire villages of people deemed trouble, or inconvenient, or simply in the way of some construction and refusing to move from their land. Sometimes it seemed they were killed for no reason at all. I executed with my own hands wise people who owned forbidden books, who practised folk magic. Some of whom did do foul things, rituals of sacrifice and perversion. But mostly others, whose crime was to cure their children of fucking colds.’

Easy. Easy. Detach. Breathe.

A swirl of dizzying thoughts spun through him and his knees felt weak. Funny — no, plain incomprehensible — that all the while Anfen and his men had done it all believing, honestly believing, that these pitiful clinging remnants of the old world did present a threat to the castle’s great strength. Small-time folk mages like Loup, farmers, refugees from Aligned cities who’d banded up for one last stand. Their tenacity, their bravery … he’d thought himself charitable, as an opposing commander, to recognise it and grant them mercy where he could, a swift kill, ordering his men against rape and plunder. Drip drip went the phantom echo between their scuffing footsteps.

‘I know the history better than you may think. Keep your voice low,’ Stranger replied.

It was indeed the last thing either of them said for a while, as muttering voices could soon be heard in passages beside theirs. In silence she led him back the way they’d come, illuminating the way with her green light when the dark grey walls were free of lightstones.

The walk it seemed would never end, but Anfen watched that too from a distance, while his tired legs propelled him along, mouth and throat dry as sand, body sick with what he’d done, his consciousness hidden in a small quiet corner of his own mind.

‘Maybe you were right, back there,’ Stranger said as they neared the surface at long last. ‘Maybe it was necessary. I know it was hard for you. I take back what I said.’

He barely heard her. He was exhausted, as though he’d just marched for days straight, not two or three hours. He found his way back through the woods, not even noticing at what point Stranger parted from him, nor caring. It was still night, well past someone else’s turn to take watch. Anfen woke Sharfy and murmured, ‘Another hour, then wake me and we leave.’

‘Where you been?’ said Sharfy, smelling the sweat of Anfen’s exertions and watching the speed with which he emptied a full skin of water. Anfen waved the question away and dropped onto the mat Sharfy had vacated.