Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

The comets had been just another indication that something in Heaven’s mechanism was sprung. Several of the other brigands under Godefroy had melted away before the sickness pared them down from twenty to the four they had been when they found the girl’s donkey. Those who left had thought to save their souls by quitting the pack of thieves but had probably saved their lives. The company had gotten sick after robbing merchants with a wagonload of furs; no sooner had they abandoned one sick one to his death than another started whimpering in his sleep from a swelling in his armpit or groin.

Twelve died in two weeks.

He thought further back, to the days after his injury and betrayal, when he first came to Normandy, meaning to damn himself and grow rich. A whore had warned him not to take the road from Normanville to Évreux that particular spring night because she knew men who lay in ambush there. Thomas paid her to take him on that road, which smelled of all spring’s gaudy notes, but honeysuckle most of all, and to introduce him to those men.

To Godefroy.

The most feared brigand in Normandy, for a year or two.

The man he had just killed.

When he went back in the church, the girl was sitting up.

“We are going to Paris. And then to Avignon,” she said.

“The hell we are.”

“I have to go to Avignon. I’m not sure why. I have something I have to do. And you have to make sure I get there safely.”

“I don’t like your dreams. Someone’s going to call you a witch and turn you over to the church.”

“Do you think I’m a witch?”

“They’ll put the tongs to you. Would you like that?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know if you’re a witch.”

“What does your heart tell you?”

Thomas put his hands on his hips and walked in a slow circle, his head down.

“My heart lies,” he said.

“Something lies to you, but it’s not your heart.”

“Stop that weird shit. I don’t want to hear it.”

“We have to go to Avignon. But first we go to Paris. There’s something in Paris we need.”

“What we need is to stay in the country. Those big cities are tombs, and they’re hungry. Going to them is stupid.”

“Yet we have to go.”

“Says who?”

“Père Raoul.”

He threw up his hands.

“What, the dead one?”

“Yes, he is dead. He died in his little house with his blanket over his head. He came to tell me.”

“Horseshit.”

She knitted her brow again.

“I’m going to sleep a little more,” she said.

She lay back down on the packed earth as if it were settled.

“If you see your dead priest again, tell him he can go to Paris and Avignon alone. After he fucks himself.”

“He won’t be back.”

“Good.”

She curled her knees up kittenishly and was almost instantly asleep.

Thomas waited until he heard her soft snoring and then quietly gathered his things. The girl was a liability; he would have a better chance on his own. He could travel faster, hide more easily; if he needed to do something brutal, he wouldn’t have her knowing, flint-colored eyes on him, making him hesitate and perhaps dying because he had. This world wasn’t made for children, particularly girl children, and most particularly those without fathers. That wasn’t his fault. If God wanted her protected, He could do it Himself. He was about to leave her in the church when he saw something red by his foot. It had not been there before. When he saw what it was, he crossed himself for the first time in months and flung it outside. Then he put his gear down. His heart was pounding in his ears.

The item that had bothered him so was a crude painted mask with horns on it. The kind a country priest would wear to play the devil in a mystery play.

They marched together for two days, and on the first day they saw no people and ate only green stems, a parsnip she pulled out of the ground (using the end of her dress wrapped around her hand), a grasshopper she managed to catch, and a very little honey. They were making for Paris, though the girl couldn’t say why. Despite the devil’s horns he had seen the night before, he thought about abandoning her no less than a dozen times, and, to that end, he hardly responded to her attempts to speak to him. She had a pretty voice, and decent manners, and he would easily feel affection for her if he let himself, but he determined not to.

With limited success.

“Where were you born?” she said as they crested a hill under a pleasantly warm, blue sky.

“Picardy.”

“What town?”

“A town.”

“A big town?”

“Just a town.”

“With what name?”

“Town.”

“This town. Is it near a mountain?”

“No.”

“A hill, then?”

“No.”

“A lake?”

“No.”

“Farms?”

“No.”

“All towns are near farms.”

He scowled down at her, but she deflected this with a look of unperturbed precocity. The intelligence in her eyes goaded him, reminding him of someone else.

Someone who had hurt him.

“Then, yes,” he said.

“Near farms.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. Trees? Is the town near trees?”

“I guess.”

“I want to revisit the question of the hill. Because you didn’t seem sure.”

“Yes, it was near a hill.”

“But you seemed sure about the mountain. So no mountain.”

“No.”

“And the name?”

“Town, I said.”

“No town is named Town.”

“Mine was. Townville-sur-Cunting-Town. What did your papa do again?”

“He was a lawyer.”

“It shows. Now shut up.”

“You’ll never get a wife being so mean.”

“I already had one.”

“What happened to her?”

“I killed her for talking.”

The girl giggled at that.

“And is she buried in Townville-sur-Town?”

“Shut up.”

“I suppose you killed your children, too.”

“All of them.”

“What were their names?”

“Boy, boy, girl, and shut up.”

They saw the monastery on the second day, and only because they went into the woods to forage. They got less than a fistful of sour berries between them, but, as they were about to leave, Thomas spotted a hare and chased it down a footpath that led farther into the woods. The hare got away, of course, but the woods broke on a small hill, and from the hill he saw the low stone walls and the thatched roof, and what looked like a garden.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, let our luck be in,” he said, and the two of them went to the gate. It was a simple gate of interwoven sticks, standing open. A wooden sign over the gate read, in burned-in Latin:

THIS GATE OPENS

TO ALL WHO ENTER

IN CHRIST’S PEACE

He drew his sword and went in.

She followed behind him, with her hands clasped as if to pray, and then moved past him and headed directly for the little stone church, ignoring his “Ho! Wait!” He let her go, shaking his head at her, and then assessed the grounds.

It was a small monastery, home to no more than twenty brothers from the look of it. Only the church and the outer walls were stone; the cloisters and dormitory were wattle and daub. Another hare, or the same one, darted from the garden, but Thomas didn’t even try to lunge at it, instead making straight for the earthen cellar where he suspected the buttery would be. It had already been emptied. Considerately, respectfully, and quite thoroughly emptied.