Blood Eagle - 44. Faithful

Faithful

She slept in her bed, peacefully – until a hand covered her mouth. Her eyes shot open, but the cell lay in complete darkness. She began to struggle, though her own blankets kept her trapped.

A finger was pressed against her cheek, moving in patterns. She tried to scream, but the hand on her mouth prevented this; still, the strange touch against her face continued.

Suddenly, she ceased her frantic movements. Mumbled sounds came through the fingers clasped against her face.

Hoping he had understood her correctly, that she had spoken his name, Arn removed his hand.

“Arn?” Helena repeated with a whisper. “Are you mad? What is this?”

The Tyrian began to gesture a response until the futility of his action became apparent in the darkness of the room.

“Wait,” she added, sounding aggravated. Pushing him back, she sat up in bed, grabbed the fire tool next to her, and ignited a candle.

Light spread through the cell, and she looked at her visitor. He returned the gaze, seeing her for the first time without a veil. The same brown eyes that all Aquilans had, with hair of similar hue. For some reason, he felt it like a punch in his stomach to finally see her – like the revelation of a statue shown to be flesh, not stone. The urge to reach out and touch her face came over him, and he only refrained due to weariness rather than any force of will.

“Explain,” she hissed, standing up while holding the light between them. She looked at the sword hanging by his side. “What – where have – why – oh no. You went back.”

He made no reply, too tired to know what to say.

She placed the candle back on the drawer and switched to signs. ‘Did you kill him?’

‘Yes,’ he simply replied, barely visible as the light now came from behind her.

‘And now you come here? Why?’

He stepped back and leaned against the wall before sinking down to sit on the floor. ‘They’re after me.’

Heavy knocking interrupted them. “Sister, sister! Mother calls us to gather, come quick!”

Helena looked down at him in the scarce light. ‘Don’t move.’ She extinguished the candle and quickly left her cell.

*

The convent had a single, small gate, barely large enough for a cart to pull through. A small hole at eye height opened up to allow conversation with the outside world through the smallest possible window. As Helena hastened towards the courtyard, she saw her sisters streaming in the same direction, and one of them already at the gate, having a heated conversation.

“I don’t care! You can’t enter!” she declared, standing alongside the gate rather than looking through the opening.

“Good sister, a murderer is on the loose!” came the frustrated reply from the soldier on the outside; he tried to peer through the opening.

“What is the meaning of this?” An elderly woman moved through the crowd of mumbling nuns, fixing her veil. She reached the gate, waving her younger sister away. “Who disturbs our peace?”

With someone finally looking back at him, the warrior bowed his head. He and his fellows wore household colours rather than those of the city guard. “Venerable mother, we pursue a murderer most foul! He slew our dominus, Lord Salvius!”

“Most troubling tidings,” the prioress acknowledged with a shaken voice, “but there’s no reason to seek him here.”

“On the contrary, we saw him scale the wall to your convent.”

She glanced up. “These walls? Is he a goat?”

“Please, venerable mother, he killed a mageknight. He possesses magic, undoubtedly – the same that let him scale the walls of our house.”

“Well, if so, he probably ran straight through here and out the other side,” the nun argued. “He’s long gone.”

“We set a watch on every side, thinking the same. He’s not been seen leave,” the soldier argued, clenching his jaw. “Please, for your own sake, let us search the convent!”

“My good fellow, this place is sacred to Luna, and no man is allowed within the premises!”

“That peace has already been violated, venerable mother. Let us make it right.”

“Mother, if I may suggest,” Helena interjected, and the prioress turned to her. “Let us group up three and three. We search the convent. We have our staves – we are not defenceless.”

The old nun looked at her sisters. “I suppose we have no choice,” she mumbled.

“If he’s here, he’d hide in the root cellar or storage rooms, maybe with the animals,” Helena continued. “We can forego the dormitory wing, as we all came from there. It won’t take us long to search the rest.”

The prioress took a deep breath. “Fine. Each get your staff and group up. But if you come across this intruder, stay back and call for help! We don’t know what he’s capable of. Maybe we can scare him off.”

“If you consider this wisest,” the soldier outside the gate chimed in; his tone of voice suggested his own doubts towards the scheme. “We’ll be ready to grab him if he tries to get out.”

“Very well,” the mother superior declared. “Go!” she told her sisters. “Make certain our sanctuary is safe!”

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*

Arn sat in the darkness. As instructed, he had stayed in place, remaining on the floor. He could have gotten up to take a seat on Helena’s bed, but it felt too intimate, a step too far after he had already breached the sanctum of not only her convent, but her personal chamber. Besides, he was accustomed to worse than sitting on a cold stone floor.

He touched the mark that ran across his left thigh. The rune of recovery, helping his body to heal faster, such as a sprain on his ankle, assuming it worked as it should. Arn could not be certain; the punishment for leeching the mageknight’s life along with exhausting his magical strength, both left him deeply weakened. If they came for him, he could not expect to outrun them, not until he had recovered.

Could he fight them? Perhaps, but spilling blood in this place – Arn paid no tribute to Aquilan gods, and he had already violated their sanctuary simply by coming here. But it would be a betrayal of Helena’s trust.

Of course, she might be leading the guards to him in this very moment. If so, he still would not fight. At least not while on the convent grounds.

He heard commotion, but the thick door made it hard for him to recognise the sounds. So he sat, occasionally letting his fingers run over his ankle, and he waited.

*

The door was opened, slowly creaking. Arn looked up, but as the hallway also lay in complete darkness, he could not tell who entered; he only sensed their presence. They walked over to the drawer and ignited the candle. As the light spread, the shape revealed itself to be Helena, and she turned around. ‘Where I left you.’

Arn raised his eyes from her hands to her face. ‘Yes.’

‘We searched the convent and found no intruder. The guards accept that you somehow escaped their vigilance. They’re searching the surrounding streets,’ Helena explained with rapid motions, and Arn could barely keep up. ‘Once my sisters are asleep again, you must leave.’

The skáld inclined his head in acceptance. His ankle felt better, suggesting that his rune was working; if so, he should also be able to hide in the shadows again, and scale the walls. ‘I’ll be gone shortly.’

She sat down on her bed, giving him a scrutinising look in the fragile light that struggled to dispel the darkness between them. ‘Will you tell me why? I understand that vengeance moved your hand tonight, but why did he mistreat you so in the first place?’

Arn felt no desire to recount the story, but he suspected Helena had broken one or more vows tonight for his sake. ‘At the solstice gathering, last year, the mageknight came on behalf of your emperor. They wanted to settle in the empty lands between Tyria and the Empire, and so he asked for guarantee of peace with trade to follow.’

Keeping both hands and tongue silent, Helena turned a little to face him better and awaited the continuation.

‘His fair words did not move me. I know the lore of our world, and I know empires. Their greed for land can never be sated,’ Arn gestured; if his words had been spoken, bitterness would have flowed through them. ‘Each new settlement would be closer to our borders, and legionaries would follow to keep them safe. I spoke all of this to the gathering, and the tribes heeded my words. They sent the mageknight away.’

‘So he took revenge on you?’

‘Yes. Or perhaps they simply wanted to remove an obstinate tongue, so I could not speak against them at the next gathering.’ Arn gave a sardonic smile. ‘They lured me into a trap, fell upon me from all sides, and they cut me down. Destroyed all I am and threw me to the lions.’

Her eyes flickered up from his hands to the scar that ran down his face. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

‘I have my revenge. He is slain. The Empire will think twice when next they send their emissaries north.’ Silence filled the darkness between them, interrupted only by the candle flickering. Now Arn scrutinised her, and his eagle eyes saw what few could; a bruise across her cheek, nearly healed. ‘When did that happen?’ After making the signs, he pointed at her face.

‘Yesterday. Practising with staves.’ She turned her head away.

She was healing fast, Arn considered; what should have taken a fiveday seemed nearly healed in a day. Much better than his rune of recovery. ‘You don’t seem convinced yourself.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I got nowhere to be at present.’

She sighed. ‘Fine.’ A pause followed. ‘I was born in a village far from here. My earliest memories are happy.’

Arn stretched his neck, realising she had not exaggerated when declaring this to be a lengthy tale. But he knew hardly anything about her, and he saw no reason to interrupt.

‘But one year, two evil wizards came, husband and wife. They had a son, too, without magic, but cruel enough to make up for it. They took over the village and made it their home.’

A turn that Arn had not expected. He sat up straight.

‘For years, they ruled over us with terror. Any who resisted or fled were made examples of. Everyone else bowed their heads and hoped to be spared. Every now and then, they would choose someone for their rituals. We sometimes heard their screams through the night.’

‘I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.’

She did not see his signs; she stared straight ahead, switching to speech. “One day, it was my mother. Another day, my father.”

‘That’s dreadful,’ he gestured, knowing it was in vain.

“A spellbreaker finally came. Half the village was destroyed, but he killed them.” She ran her hand across her face. “Most of the adults were dead. They sent us orphans to Aquila, to the convents. I’ve lived here since.” She finally looked at him with an expression that changed back and forth between a mournful smile and pure sorrow.

‘That’s why you hate magic.’

“Yes,” she breathed.

He thought about keeping quiet, but the last piece of the story was missing, and he felt a need to know – to understand. ‘But why do you get hurt?’ He hesitated. ‘Do you hurt yourself?’

“Perhaps I should,” she remarked with a mirthless voice. “But no.” She pointed at the wall he leaned against. “Right in there sleeps Sister Joanna. She’s from the village like me.” Helena breathed deeply. “She discovered the truth about me. She’s got more experience with magic than most. So she punishes me.”

‘Punishes you? She hurts you?’

“She – she hits me. Mostly with the staff, so it’s easy to explain away. I am marked by evil.” Helena’s voice broke. “I deserve to hurt. And I heal fast so that I can take more punishment.”

She repeated the words of another, Arn realised, but they had taken such deep root, she believed them to be her own. He moved across the space between them, crawling as much as walking, to kneel before her. ‘Evil is not what we are. Evil is what we do. And in a city of cruelty, these hands showed me kindness.’ He took hold of hers and kissed each of them in turn, knowing no other way to get his point across.

“You’re not allowed to touch,” she mumbled feebly, but she did not pull away.

Instead, he broke the connection, requiring his hands to speak further. ‘I came here with nothing but hate in my heart for Aquila and its people. You proved me wrong. And it hurts to hear you speak of yourself like this.’

For several breaths, neither spoke, but simply looked at the other person. He took in her face again, realising why she had worn a veil when they first met; the gods knew that she would have enchanted him and changed his fate. Now it was too late.

“You should go. Dawn is some hours away. You must get home before you’re discovered.”

He got on his feet; no pain from his ankle. The rune had done its work. ‘I can’t have my sword in the ludus.’

She shook her head. “You can’t leave it here. Bad enough you brought it in the first place.”

‘I understand. Thank you, Helena. Thank you.’

The sister bowed her head. “Just go.”

*

As Arn closed the door to her cell, his rune of subtlety active, he did not go far down the hallway. He stopped at the next cell and stepped inside. In the complete absence of light, he could not see anything, but he guessed that the furniture lay as in Helena’s cell. He moved towards the bed and heard the sound of snoring. He could not see the woman’s face, but it told him enough.

One hand slammed down over her mouth; the other pinched her nose together. Jostled awake, she tried to scream, and her arms came out from under the blanket to flail around. She smacked her hands against him, far too feeble to deter him. He did not even have to call upon his magical strength. He kept his grip, even after she ceased to fight back, counting his breaths. When he had reached several hundred, he finally let go.