Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (15 page)

Heden held the shield with one hand and used the other to block the sun streaming in from outside. The shadowed form in the archway resolved, and he saw a woman pointing a long spear at him. It wasn’t a lance, as Heden understood it. It showed a tell-tale dullness and weather-beaten quality that Heden had learned to associate with constant use and a sharpness that didn’t need enchantment to kill.

The woman was slim and lithe, but clad in chainmail with hard leather underneath. She had a shield strapped across her back, a dagger on her belt, and a sword in a scabbard. She seemed in her late twenties. She wasn’t crouching, but was coiled and ready to strike. She had long red hair streaked with blonde. Bleached from hours and days in the sun.

In addition to her arms and armor, which gave every impression of being well-used and expertly repaired, she was covered in what looked like moss and vines. The moss grew from every crevice and the vines twined around her arms and legs, some sprouted small leaves. All in all, she looked like part of the forest had come alive. She was a strange clash of civilization and feral wildness. Heden remembered Gwiddon saying most people didn’t react well to the Green Order.

“I, ah…,” Heden began. “I’m not here to, ah,” he bumbled.

The girl frowned at him and cat-footed forward into striking range. Heden didn’t move.

“Replace that shield ‘ere another word passes thy lips, or by the wode I shall strike thee down,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

He noticed she swore an oath on the forest itself. Not, for instance, Halcyon, the patron saint of the order. He took a deep breath, aware that this woman could make a bad decision forcing Heden to hurt her even in her own defense, and carefully turned and replaced the shield on its hook.

When he turned back to face her, he found her spear tip at his throat. He stood rigidly still, remembering the knight in the wode who found him on his ass.

“What is it with you people?” he managed, looking down at the shaft of the spear. He wondered if he was fast enough to grab it and kick her away, but the length of the spear made this unlikely. And he wasn’t a young man anymore.

“Eh?” the woman asked, peering at him. He looked away from the spear, and noticed she had blue eyes, her skin golden from the sun. She was peering at his neck.

“This is the, ah,” Heden said, pausing as her spear tip pressed lightly into his neck, “second time one of you acted like I’m a threat.”

She ran the spear tip down his neck toward his collar. He instinctively twisted his head up and away, but didn’t otherwise move.

“Why is everyone around here afraid of me?” he asked, his voice low.

“Silence, lout,” she said, and used the spear tip to push down on the collar of his breastplate. “Or you will bleed your life out here on the priory floor.”

Delicately, she used the tip of the spear to fish a metal necklace out from under his collar. How had she seen it there?

She slid the spear point under the necklace and pulled, and the whole necklace came out from under his breastplate and leather. There was a talisman hanging from it.

She stepped forward, grabbed the spear under her right arm, halfway up its shaft, and leaned in to get a closer look.

“You bear a saint’s talisman,” she said. The spear was no longer at his throat, but uncomfortably close nonetheless.

He didn’t say anything. She threw him a dark look and pressed the spear hard into his neck.

“I said…,” she began.

“Alright, alright,” Heden said, raising his hands and backing away a little. “Yes, that’s my talisman. You’re right.”

She pulled the spear away and let the talisman fall to his chest.

“A priest then?” she asked, straightening up. He was glad she didn’t ask him which saint. “A priest sent hither from Ollghum Keep?”

“Sort of,” Heden said, frowning. He rubbed his neck. “My name’s Heden,” he said. He’d hoped a little to shame her into being polite and introducing herself. He was disappointed.

They now stood at a respectful distance and though she was still tense, it no longer seemed as though she was going to attack him.

“You’re a knight,” Heden guessed.

“That I am
not
,” the woman said angrily.

Heden’s eyes darted around.

“You’re not?” he asked as though perhaps he’d somehow come to the wrong place.

“Is it not
obvious?
” she asked, and shook her head, letting her hair fall behind her face in a manner she seemed to think was meaningful.

Heden chose to shut up. He could not remember ever regretting silence.

“My mistress shall be here anon,” she said, uncoiling. “We shall wait for her, and she shall find me guarding thee.”

“You’re a squire,” Heden realized.

“I am that,” she said. “Why how now, do you look so amazed?”

“How old are you?” Heden asked.

She leaned on her spear and cocked her head at him. There was a naked element of challenge about her.

“Eight and twenty years, I have.”

Heden blinked.

“You’re twenty-eight? You’re a squire and you’re twenty-eight? Isn’t that a little late to get started?”

“My mistress accepted me when I was thirteen,” she said proudly.

Heden was silent for a moment.

“You’ve been…hang on, you’ve been a squire for fifteen years?”

“Upon this solstice I wouldst have been a knight,” she said, relaxing a little. Her face betrayed melancholia. “Earning my spurs, I would have been the youngest to take the Green since the Lady Isobel.”

“Why are you talking like that?” Heden asked, frowning.

“What sayest thou?”

“Yeah, like that.”

She grimaced at him and relaxed a little.

“The Green is an ancient order,” she said carefully. “The knight’s cant is traditional.”

Having decided Heden was no threat, she walked around him to one of the long walls of the nave. He noticed she was wearing high, hard boots. Expensive leather.
Good boots
, he thought.

“Furthermore,” she said walking up to one of the crests, “it is historical.” She placed her spear on a small wooden stand. There was one before each crest. Each knight was permitted one squire, and this is where the squires put their spears while at the priory. She placed hers under the crest of the second knight.

“Why are you covered in moss and vines?” Heden asked. She ignored him.

“Thou art no man from Ollghum Keep, though ye may have come by there. I can tell from your speech and manner. Hast thou come from the southern plains?” She looked up at the crest above her spear.

It seemed as though she had not completely mastered the knight’s cant. Her words sounded forced, not elegant. It was the speech of someone from five hundred years ago and Heden wondered how she could have learned it. Probably from the other knights.

“Do you have to talk like that? I mean, is it required?”

She turned from admiring the knight’s crest and gave him a very cynical appraisal.

“Did you come from the southern plains?” she spoke deliberately.

Heden tried to smile winsomely in gratitude. He hoped it didn’t look like a grimace.

“I’m not…ah,” he shook his head. Trying to dislodge a thought.

“Vasloria, man. Did you come here from the southern nations?” She was impatient. “What is the matter with you? It is clear the answer is yes, why can you not speak the truth?”

“I’m sorry,” Heden tried smiling again. “We’re only about ten miles into the forest,” she obviously didn’t take his meaning. He shrugged. “It just seems strange to refer to Corwell as ‘the southern plains.’”

“Corwell?” she asked.

Heden stared at her.

“Yes,” he said slowly, peering at her. “The country directly to the south.” She obviously didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Where were you born?” Heden asked.

She laughed derisively. “This is of no matter to you.”

“Well, that’s probably true,” Heden admitted. “But I’d still like to know.”

She seemed a little disarmed by his honesty, and there was something else. Something he didn’t quite understand. He took advantage of this.

“You haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.

“I am named Squire Aderyn,” she said, a little shyly. “’Twas born in the hamlet of Brode some thirty leagues hence.”

“There,” Heden said, smiling genuinely. “That wasn’t so bad.”

He knew Brode. It was a little larger than Ollghum Keep. Heden threw out his suspicion that time was playing tricks on him here in the wode, that this squire might be from before the Age of Nations, before Corwell was a country. Far simpler was the explanation that she was thirteen when she joined the order and few peasants ever had an interest in or a real knowledge of the wider world beyond their town and barony. Corwell was less than three hundred years old and some places still resented the system of kings and counts that supplanted the dukes and barons of the Gol.

Heden remembered his assignment. Kavalen, the dead knight. But this woman was a more immediate puzzle and Heden instinctively believed solving her now would be fruitful later. He decided not to mention the knight he met earlier. Explaining to someone else how he chopped someone’s head off and they put it back on didn’t seem like the best way to make a first impression.

“What are you doing here alone?” Heden asked.

“I have come to prepare the…,” she began without thinking. Then she spun around and became defiant. “I need not answer you!” she said. “I am a squire of the Green, this is our priory,
you
are the interloper!” She put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Who art thou and why cometh thou here?” The cant was back.

“I’m here because something’s happened,” he said lamely. Not sure how to phrase it. She reacted by looking at the floor.

“The baron sent you here?” she asked, lowering her voice. “To ask for our aid?”

“No. No, not exactly. I mean, yes in one sense, sure. She knows I’m here. She wants me to succeed. But the Hierarch of the Church of Cavall the Righteous sent me.” He used the formal term for the bishop out of instinct.

“We have had no messenger from Ollghum Keep,” she observed, and leaned against one of the prayer benches. “”Tis passing strange.”

Heden was careful not to respond right away. His instincts told him that just coming out and telling her the forest wouldn’t allow anyone up here would be a mistake.

“Do you know anything,” he said slowly, not sure if this was a good question to ask, “about an army of urmen marshalling to the north?”

Her face lost its expression. She became still and didn’t answer. Heden took that as a ‘yes.’

“The Hierarch sent me,” he said walking forward slowly like a man approaching a wild animal. “because a knight has died.”

She looked down and said “Thou must speak to Sir Taethan, he will be here anon.”

“Taethan,” he said. “Is he the commander of the order now?”

She shook her head in disbelief at the foolishness of his question, more to herself than anything else, and did not answer.

Instead, still leaning against the end of one of the prayer benches, she gave him a very knowing look. “You are a handsome man, though passing old.” Heden raised his eyebrows. “Have you been with many women?” Her eyes flitted to the archway, the entrance to the priory.

“What?” he asked flatly.

“Women,” she reiterated. She pulled her chain shirt down over her leather armor, and inflated herself slightly. She then indicated with a flourish of her hands the inward and outward curves relevant to her point. “You are familiar with the phenomenon? Spear and distaff? Jousting on the fields of love?”

“I’m sorry?” Heden asked, and found himself absurdly blushing and speechless. It suddenly felt warm in the priory.

She laughed. It sounded like birdsong. Her eyes danced. She walked up to him and stood too close, looking up at him with blue eyes and sculpted red lips.

“You are, I can tell. You have won many a tournament, I judge. And though aged, you are still young enough to know to be flattered and flustered when the time comes for it, well played.” She flounced away.

She had caught Heden off guard and now he knew what was strange about her. She was proud, strong, and confident but that wasn’t it. She behaved like someone who’d spent very little time among people. She said whatever came to mind. Fifteen years as a squire in the wode, and she had almost no experience with anyone who was not a knight.

“When was the last time you went home to Brode? Or saw Ollghum Keep?”

She ignored him again. He thought he knew the answer. Part of him was annoyed by the fact that she ignored so much of what he asked, but he respected it. She didn’t answer when she thought the question wasn’t important. And she was avoiding telling Heden a lot.

She went into one of the small rooms to the left and right of the altar, and came out a few moment later with a huge chest on her right shoulder, and a huge wooden maul in her left hand. The chest was so big, it looked like it would crush her. She didn’t even seem to notice the weight.