III. Aediobri

The autumn air was clear and crisp as they rounded the bend to see Aediobri. It had been two weeks of riding since their encounter with the demon to reach the small town and their relief at a sign of civilization beyond the occasional traveling merchant extinguished abruptly at the sight of the ruins. There was nothing left of Aediobri. Not a stick of lumber rose from the ground. White ashes were scattered and heaped everywhere around the burned crops. "This is not the work of some impassioned horde," Seva said, quietly horrified as they rode slowly into the town, passing through what had once been buildings. The basements had all been filled in and the main road turned into an open grave where all the bodies of the villagers, young and old, were laid out in neat rows. "This...this..."

The nauseating smell of death was everywhere and the bodies themselves were bloated from their decay beneath the sun and rain. Bodies were discolored and distended as they rotted. Carrion birds cawed as they guarded their grisly meals from the approaching riders.

"They salted the fields," Holland observed distantly, noting the churned soil. Her stomach had turned into a twisting knot. She recognized this destruction, though she had no way of explaining what the modus operandi was doing here. It set her mind racing. It wasn't possible, not so far east. Seva was right, this wasn't a raging barbarian horde's work. This was something altogether more cold, methodical, and rational. This was planned. "I imagine they were offered terms and refused, thinking their lord and his armies would save them. Whose land is this?"

"The Count of Navia," Seva said, her eyes wide as she looked around at the deserted place. She couldn't even hear insects. "He would never allow—"

Holland pointed as they crested the next rise. There, in the center of the town, was a crucified figure. "Is that the Count?"

Seva stifled a sob with her hands and nodded, blue eyes tearing up. Even from a distance, she recognized him. "I played with his daughter when I was a girl," she whispered. "And now he's dead."

The penitent couldn't think of a sufficient word of comfort. She swung down from her saddle and helped Seva down from hers. The poor baroness was shaking like a reed, so Holland wrapped her arms around the young woman. What could she say? The only words she had ever been told on the eve of loss were: Death comes to us all. It was not really a reassurance. Seva didn't seem to mind the armor, curling her arms around the armored warrior and pressing her face to one cold, unfeeling shoulder. Holland knew her companion was overwhelmed. She would have been herself, were it not for the lifetime spent in battle. It was never easy to see a whole town destroyed, but she could stand it stone-faced. At a loss for anything else to do, she held Seva and let her cry.

Eventually, the tears dried up and gave way to anger. "Who? Who would do such a thing?" the baroness demanded, wiping her eyes and sniffling to stop her nose from running.

"I've seen it before," Holland said. She took a deep breath. "The only thing I know of that so carefully calculates its cruel reprisals is the Imperium."

"Thou speakest of it as if I should know it," Seva said, detaching from the penitent.

Holland took a deep breath. "I did not expect you to know them," she said. "I am grateful that you do not. This is not the time or place to speak of it, however. I will bury the Count, if you can keep watch on horseback."

They both heard a soft sound, a whimper, and froze. Seva's head whipped around. She saw a little boy limping along the road towards them, one arm cut open in a long laceration that had clotted before he bled to death. He was a skinny little thing, like a doll made of brown twigs with dark, bird-like eyes. "Holland!" she shouted as she pulled away and raced towards the boy. He looked about six or seven and positively terrified.

The warrior jogged after her, murmuring a prayer that they would be able to help. Had someone actually managed to escape? Or...did they let him live? That was an unsettling thought. Never, never, did the powers that she thought of do something without a reason. They were not prone to the mistakes of mortal men, not swayed by sudden surges of passion.

Seva swept the little boy up off his feet and into her arms, holding him tightly as he latched his arms around her neck and held on tightly. There were no tears from the little boy. He was so covered in filth and smell that Holland suspected he had been hiding among the dead. "Th' art well," Seva murmured, stroking his greasy hair. It didn't matter that he was dirty or someone else's. At the moment her maternal instincts were fully awake.

Holland changed her mind immediately about the Count. They needed to leave. If there was a survivor, this place might still be under their baleful eyes. "We need to leave. Swiftly," Holland said quietly to Seva. "He needs to be away from here."

The baroness nodded. "Maebh made a salve for thee in case thou came to open wound again. We can use it on his arm," she said, carrying the boy back to where their horses waited. The boy was clinging to her like a limpet, so she motioned for Holland to fish out the medicine.

The warrior did it without hesitation and applied the pale green salve to the wound across his arm. She recognized it by its smell. A powerful healing agent, to be certain. Rejen was well known in her homeland. This was a different recipe, but the base and the effects were the same. The wound began to close and heal at an incredibly accelerated pace. "He'll need food," she said, gently prying the boy away from Seva so that the baroness could jump back up into the saddle. The moment the woman was situated, Holland returned the child to her.

Holland swung up into her own saddle and urged her horse forward. They needed to leave this accursed place. Seva followed quickly behind, her mount leading their pack horse. Holland needed to be able to maneuver and fight freely without minding another horse, though Seva and their new ward were never far from her thoughts as she rode.

The answer to the question that was nagging at Holland was soon apparent as they crested the next hill. Where was the Count's army in answer to the summons of the village? Here, every one of them dead. Banners hung at fallen angles, surrounded by the bodies of men and horses alike. Shattered lances and broken shields decorated the battlefield in painted colors and pennants all stained by mud. Holland prayed softly for them.

At her insistence, they rode for hours before stopping. Every step of the way, Holland's eyes were searching the world around them for danger. She saw hints of things moving in the shadows of the undergrowth, but no monster materialized. By the time they came to what she deemed to be a safe resting place, the boy's wound was little more than a pale white scar. Their ride ended beneath a yawning oak beside a coursing stream and within sight of the roaring sea.

Holland sighed. "This is safe enough," she said quietly, swinging down out of the saddle. "What's his name?" The baroness had spent the ride murmuring soft reassurance to the boy. Perhaps she had learned something from him.

"Ciar," Seva said. "Or so I am inclined to think. No other words have come from him. The things that he has seen..."

The penitent nodded her understanding. She had seen others rendered mute by war. She unrolled her bedroll and took the blanket off. "He can clean up a little in the stream, at least until we hit the next town. Tamaris is far enough north that it should be safe for the moment. If this is the Imperium, they will wait a time to see how Yssa reacts to attack by an unknown force. They probe defenses with precision and keen inquiry before committing their full force."

"Who are these people?" Seva asked, walking with Ciar and Holland to the stream. The penitent got to work cleaning the boy up, wiping blood and the traces of death that covered him away.

"The Imperium is a power like nothing in the east that I have ever seen. Its Emperor lies shattered, His pieces scattered across the world—your people's myths know Him by many names, as He lived in the days the ancients called the Revealing. The magnitude of His evil is beyond what you can imagine. Nothing short of the end of life that breathes and multiplies will satisfy Him. He was destroyed, but much of the world burned in the process."

"Thou canst only mean the Deciever," Seva said. She took a deep breath. "That...thing...rules the Imperium? How? He is dead!"

"He is in pieces. That does not mean He is dead and gone. It is said that wherever His name is spoken, He hears. He whispers in the hearts of men and tempts them to His service. One day, He plans for His pieces to be reunited in full glory. However, as you say, He is indisposed at the moment," Holland said with a frown. Ciar was fairly quick to clean up. She had some soap that Maebh had packed for them. The boy looked at her with grateful eyes, but said nothing. "The Princes of Iron rule in His absence. There are seven: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Raguel, Remiel, and Saraqael. Each one believes that his place is to rule in the Emperor's stead, and so they plot against each other and often make war. Never will you see another creature...if they can be called that...so inclined towards cold and calculating cruelty."

"And thou thinkest they responsible?" Seva said quietly as they headed back to their little camp. She watched with wide eyes as Holland started the fire with spark-twigs. They were another gift from Maebh to the young baroness and a very useful one at that. Even in the rain, they could coax a flame to life.

"No one else I know of is so thorough and measured in their destruction," Holland said by way of explanation. "But for them to be this far east...there are nations between us. They must have finally found a way to cross the Eye of the World." It was an almost impossible task. That circle sea had a hunger for the souls of any who dared try and cross it. Few ships ventured out into its open waters and those who did never returned. Safer just to sail along the coast and hope a storm didn't sweep you out into oblivion. "That, or they are shipwrecked and the survivors are doing what they know."

Seva set about getting food, even though she barely had an appetite after seeing so much death. Even though they were only heated trail rations, Ciar ate as fast as he possibly could. Holland stopped him several times to slow him down so he wouldn't give himself a stomach ache. She felt for the boy, though. If they had been besieged, he had likely been hungry for a very long time.

"Thou knowest them well?" Seva said uneasily, looking at Holland.

"Too well," the penitent said grimly. "The Oameni were incorporated into the Imperium a generation before my birth." What she didn't say was how long ago that was. The truth was yet another thing that set her apart, and she found she didn't want to be so separated from Seva.

The baroness looked at her friend with worried eyes. "Thou canst not have been a knight for any who would do such a thing. Thy nature is too honorable," Seva said.

Holland looked up into blue eyes that genuinely seemed to believe the best of her. That trust made an unfamiliar warmth touch her cheeks. "The Imperium has no knights in the eastern sense," she said. "Only soldiers and servants. I was the second."

They fell into a silence as both of them processed the day's events. Seva was still struggling to find an explanation while Holland was questioning why this didn't bother her as much as it should have. Ciar was quickly tucked into the penitent's bedroll and sleeping soundly by the time either of them were ready to talk. It was Seva who spoke first.

"Thou knowest war too well to have simply been a servant," she said, looking at Holland as the penitent smoothed Ciar's hair back out of his sleeping face. "What purpose didst thou serve?"

"I was what they made me to be," Holland said quietly. "In the Imperium, there is no choice. You do not say you want to be a baker. You are not even born to be a baker. You are designed from conception to be a baker. The Princes of Iron are not mages. They do not need to be. At their fingertips are the powers of the First World. They made me a warrior born, but more than that. I was an Immortal, not a soldier. I did not walk the battlefield nor ride with the army."

Seva frowned deeply. "Thou hast never done such a thing as Aediobri, then," she said.

"I carry past enough," Holland said. It wasn't really an answer and she knew it. She'd stood idly by while such things happened more than once, along with her own sins. What bothered her most was that at the time it hadn't even troubled her. It was the will of Saraqael. That had been enough for her. She had known nothing else.

The baroness studied Holland as she came over and sat beside the warrior. All she could see was remorse there. Whatever had been done, the penitent punished herself for it and wished it undone. She was not a woman who took pleasure in the suffering of others. "What was it like as an Immortal?" she asked quietly. "What didst thou do?"

Holland felt her mouth go dry. "You must understand that this was a lifetime ago. I am not the woman I once was," she said, hoping Seva would see the truth of that. Alan had done much to gentle her down and imbue her with conscience she had been lacking in her youth. "But...it was an honor to my family, to pass the grueling tests demanded of those who would birth an Immortal. They had to be strong and cunning. The Prince of Iron my family served, Saraqael, he worked the artifices of the First World in my body before I was even born. Cold and dark things they are, things I would not wish on anyone. He shaped me as an empty vessel, devoid of soul, that would perfectly suit his purposes. He made me stronger, faster, harder to slay. His gifts were many, but his price far outweighed the benefits. I became one of his favored servants, his right hand. I avenged insults to him and waged his shadow-war with the other princes. Willingly for much of my life, but towards the end I was becoming...dissatisfied with my life as a tool."

Seva reached out, brushing her fingertips across the scar around Holland's throat. "This brand is his?" she said.

The penitent felt a little shock of warmth flood through her when Seva touched her. "It is," Holland confirmed. "Obedientia est vitae. Obedience is life."

"A grim epitaph," Seva said, letting her hand fall. "Wherefore art thou not still in bondage?"

"A story for another day," Holland said with a wan smile. "You should sleep, my lady."

"As thou shouldst," the baroness pointed out. "Share mine space. 'Twould be unkind to stir Ciar from thy bed."

Some part of Holland was screaming that it was not a good idea, but she was struggling to come up with a reason for why she should say no. "I don't think it would be appropriate. You are still a baroness, my lady."

"And where will my faithful hound sleep? The grass?" Seva said, raising an eyebrow. "Or on a blanket rich with the smell of horse? I would not gladly ride downwind of thee should that be the case. Indulge me on this, for sake of my own satisfaction."

"Someone should take watch," Holland said, well aware her argument was not winning her points with Seva. "We are less than a day from Moloch."

"If I am truly thy lady, as thou dost oft proclaim, thou wouldst bend to mine will in such a matter as this," the baroness said, playing her trump card. It was a statement that Holland was hard pressed to argue with.

The warrior sighed and laid out her armor before slipping into the bedroll beside the baroness. Holland gazed up at the stars until she realized that she was being watched by soft blue eyes. "Hmm?" she murmured.

"Thou hast my thanks," Seva said softly. Now Holland could hear the faint tremor of fear. "I wished my protector near after seeing Aediobri."

Holland found the baroness's soft hand with her own and gave it a gentle squeeze, ignoring the warmth it prompted in her own chest. This was for Seva's benefit and not her own, she told herself. A penitent was supposed to serve others and avoid the vice of selfishness. "You're safe with me, my lady."

"And I will guard thee with every spell I ken," Seva said. "When we meet Moloch, as certes we will, let me stand as aid. Thou hast need of all advantages that thou canst find."

"Only if you promise to stand well behind me," Holland said softly. "Someone has to take care of Ciar if something happens. I wouldn't like to see him alone again. What are you going to do if the Prince is there?"

"If he still draws breath?" Seva said grimly. "I will make my plea and hope that we need not go to the capital. I have heard of Fionn, prince of Yssa. He is a goodly young man of excellent courage, though of a hot temper."

"Oh good, we'll have something in common," Holland muttered. She hadn't realized how much she wasn't looking forward to dealing with royalty of any kind. Seva was easy to get along with because she was respectful, for a noble. That was not true of many who dwelt in Tamaris. Being a penitent was somewhere between a landless knight and a criminal. It was not a flattering position to be relegated to, in her experience. She had gone only once, when Alan was still alive. She remembered it as two cities melded together. The center was a beautiful citadel and palatial estates, ringed by thick walls and then surrounded by squalor. It was very different than the seven arcem of her homeland. She gave Seva's hand a second squeeze before letting go. "He'll be alive."

"I hope," Seva said before drifting off into fitful slumber, haunted by what she had seen at Aediobri.

Holland, for her part, could barely convince her eyes to close. They were too close to where Seva had told her Moloch made his home and she still worried about demons or the Imperium's legions on their tail. She watched Ciar through the fire, hoping that the boy would recover from the shock. He still had his tongue, which meant other things were at play. She could barely remember having been his age.

How long ago was that now? A century? Two? The tinkering of Saraqael had granted her an unnatural lifespan. Every time she was maimed horribly in battle, he had pieced her back together—always with a little improvement or experiment. She was a valuable investment and difficult to replace. A pity Laenus had not seen it the same way. She still remembered how he had helped break her body on the saltire with a rod of steel, knowing he enjoyed every moment of it. It was a proper punishment for a traitor, he'd said as they dumped her body into the Sundered Sea. She had the good graces of a fisherman to thank for not drowning and the gifts of a healer to thank for keeping her from life as a cripple. She had left Arcem Tenebris as soon as she was well enough to move all the same, hoping to gain as much distance as possible as quickly as possible. She always wondered on nights like these if her master knew she had survived. She doubted he would care—even a faithful servant was little more than an insect for a being of his power. Holland just hoped Laenus had received an equally unjust punishment from some other Immortal clawing for favor.

It was bitter, but she had not yet learned to release all of her old ways of thinking. Being a penitent was more difficult than she had realized at the beginning of her journey. At least for now she had Seva.

Holland turned her head, looking over at the sleeping baroness. Under the moonlight, she looked perfectly serene and lovely. She was just as beautiful during the day. Seva was something worth protecting and Holland found herself dreading a meeting with the prince and the capital itself. She might find herself leaving Seva's company and that wasn't at all what she wanted to do.