17. COXTON PRAET

Elyse woke the next morning to light streaming in through the window and Flit’s song worming its way into her foggy dreams. It was as beautiful a day as Silverfish had seen since they had been there. For once, the mist was not coming in off the lake, and the sun was not hidden behind a cloudy sky. Though, she thought to herself as she stretched and pulled on her dress, she could appreciate that mist and fog a bit more now. It might make this village into a dreary, shadowy maze, at times, but the way it had caught the light of the sunset last night had truly been gorgeous, and she did not think it would have been half so impressive had the mist not been there.

She stepped out into the hallway, and saw Martim’s door closed; when she listened, she thought she could hear the wizard snoring behind it. She was glad that she might be awake before the wizard was. When she thought about last night she could not help but feel a twinge of embarrassment, and she thought that it might be worse if she saw his face.

It was not that she had undressed in front of him. Her mother truly had not cared, living in their swamp, how little she wore, and her blood ran so hot that she had preferred going without much of the time. She had picked up on the concept of modesty from the books she read - the Aurelics had placed much stock in it, and it was always treated as a very solemn or shocking event when Véreline Valoir disrobed and was seen by someone in her stories; when it was not a lover seeing her, she reacted with wrath and cursed the one who had spied on her. But this had always seemed very silly to Elyse, and while she knew that people put stock in such things, she could not feel why they should, and so undressing in front of him had not bothered her. She had wanted a bath, and she had also wanted to see the wizard blush, and that was all.

No, that was not what embarrassed her. It was how bad she felt about keeping the working of water a secret from the wizard. But more than that, it was how damned sad the wizard had looked when he learned about that, and how much that had rankled her heart. It was true, Martim had a handsome face, and it looked much better with a smile or a blush upon it. And he had looked particularly striking last night, with the sunset aglow on his wild hair. But it had saddened her to see him sad, and that felt strange to her, and it had gladdened her to see him glad when later they had worked the Art together, and she did not know what to make of this other than to feel a thread of embarrassment when she thought of it.

Down the stairs, in the common room, it was strangely quiet. Well, for an inn of this size, she supposed that the usually-empty common room was always strangely quiet. But in the mornings, Ritter could usually be heard puttering around in the kitchen, making a meal for the meager few guests he had. But there was no meal laid out today, and the innkeep nowhere to be seen.

She frowned, puzzled, at the lack of food, and spent some time peering around the tables and counters wondering if she had missed it. She did not have much idea of coin, but she had the vague sense that the meals were something that were paid for, and felt a slight irritation that they were apparently not receiving any breakfast today.

After a few moments of frustration, she stepped outside, into the inn’s courtyard, greeted by the thorn-festooned tree that stood in its center. The mist was not entirely absent this morning, but it pooled low, not coming up much further than her ankles. She peered into the shadows of the colonnades that surrounded the plaza, looking to see if she might spot the innkeep, but all she could see was Cecil, who strolled up to greet her and curled around her legs, purring.

Her familiar was large, almost too large to carry comfortably, much larger than most cats would be; but she picked him up anyway, appreciating the feel of his rumbling in her arms. “Perhaps you may catch us something today, to cook,” she whispered in his ear, scratching his mane. The Night Fisher Inn had not let them go hungry; there had been plenty of bread and cheese, but as far as meat went, it was mostly fish from the lake. It was very good - much better than the fish she had been raised on, the mudwallows and whiskerfish of the swamp - but one tired of fish, eventually, and there was little of red meat on offer here other than that which was oversalted and dried.

Cecil blinked at her, slowly, with mysterious yellow eyes, his pupils thin slits. Then he leapt down from her arms, tail twitching in the air, slowly strolling off, as if to let her know that he was in no hurry to obey her, but he just might find the time to set about the task she had asked of him. She had no worries, though. There might be some things that her cat would refuse to do, but she had not found them yet, and she knew he took the matter of being well-fed very seriously, and he liked hunting besides.

As he walked off, though, she thought she caught movement from the corner of her eye, and just the faintest sound of footsteps from the edge of the plaza. Looking, though, there was no one there, and when she walked to the arched entrance to peer cautiously where she thought the sound had gone, she was greeted only with an empty street.

It was, perhaps, just another curious villager. When she had gone off chasing after Martimeos last night (and hadn’t you told him that you would not chase after him again) there had been a couple of those still lingering about, watching the inn, watching the inn. Wondering, no doubt, about the strangers who had brought back their apothecary, not that she had had the time to put the question to them. Perhaps one decided still to come ogle at the curiosities the next morning as well, but had gotten scared when they actually saw her. It was nothing worth worrying about, except that she still could not shake the feeling of being watched.

Moving her way back to the inn door, she strained her ears to listen, to see if there was any sign of someone, but there was nothing but the sound of her own footsteps. She was about to simply go back inside, but instead she paused and regarded the door, for a moment. She had been quite impressed with the carving in it at first. The horseman, carrying away what looked to be some form of noblewoman or other highborn lady, whilst strange men in plumed hats and carrying polearms struggled to stop him. But the more that she saw it, the more she disliked it; it was not a very welcoming scene for an inn, she thought.

“Do you know what it is?”

Her heart leapt into her throat, and she spun around so quickly that she nearly tripped over her dress.

Standing behind her was a little man, not all that much taller than she was, which for a man made him very short indeed. He had a long, bushy beard which may have once been black, but was now more peppered with silver. He wore what looked to be deerskin, stitched together with rawhide lace, and a fur cap made of something she could not name, perhaps a fisher or marten. Despite his short height, he was broad-shouldered, and from what she could see of his arms, they looked thickly muscled for someone of his age. His eyes reminded her of Finnel’s, though. That glassy stare that was not all there, as if he was always looking inward, or at something that could not be seen. Whoever he was, in the few short moments she had spent in idle thought, looking at the door, he had managed to come within an arm length’s of her without her hearing a sound. “Who are you?” she demanded.

He looked at her again, doffed his fur cap - he was completely bald beneath - then gave her a nervous bow. But he did not say anything, after. He merely wiped his long and crooked nose on his cap, and then looked at her, mouth opening and closing as if not sure what he ought to say. “Do you know what it is?” he asked again, nervously, his eyes shifting from her space, to some place behind her.

“What? The door?” Elyse glanced quickly back over her shoulder, then back to the curious stranger. She did not want to take her eyes off him. “Are you deaf, man? I asked who you were-”

But he ignored her. He was looking at the door, with a sad, dreamy smile. “Long time ago,” he said, interrupting her, “back before the Aurelics conquered this land, they were naught but a collection of small farming villages in the heartlands of Mannus Aurum, well before it was tamed, before any of the grand spires rose, before any of the founding stones for their cities had been laid. And in those days, long before their glory to come, they were subject to the cruel whims of the Horde of Nud, the Horde of Black Banners, savage folk who knew nothing of building, who knew nothing but plunder and terror.”

She had been about to interrupt him right back, but there was something about the way he talked that enraptured her. His nervousness and strangeness had melted away and disappeared, and he seemed to swell, become larger than he was. He had the manner of a raconteur, and it reminded her for a moment of Ritter. Only, the innkeep could spin a good yarn, while this man’s voice, while it did not boom, it was rich and deep, and it held her, in a way, at bay. She closed her mouth and listened.

He had not paused for her to make this decision; he continued on, his eyes affixed to the door. “The Nudmen were cowards, and always came on horseback, to strike swiftly and then flee, but they were endless and ranged far, and none were safe from them. Among the Aurelics, there was not yet much in the way of royal blood, but there was noble and beautiful Serafina, daughter of the Duchess of Namiere, and lover and betrothed of Alain the Dweomer. She was brave as well, but it was that bravery that doomed her. For when the Nudmen raided her lands, her bravery drove her to be amongst the men who fought and died for her; to be by the side of Alain, who was then but a soldier, to let them take heart in her presence, and inspire them to deeds of valor. And in doing so, she caught the eye of one of the chieftains of the Horde of Black Banners, a vile brute known as Churr the Weeper.

“Entranced by her beauty, Churr vowed that he should have her; and, cleverly, he lured her and her men out with small skirmishes, spreading her armies thin, and then came at her encampment in force. That is what the door shows; Churr capturing Serafina, her men trying in vain to defend her. Alain was not at her encampment that day, having been drawn out into the field by the warlord’s cleverness. It is said that when Alain heard of her capture, in his wrath he set his own tent ablaze, and against the orders of his commanders he set out with his men to save her.

“But it was too late, for the Nudmen knew of nothing but cruelty. Churr had earned the name of the Weeper because, in all the wicked ruin he wrought, he wept, seeing the beauty in what he burned but not knowing how to make it. He forced Serafina into marriage and tempted her, said he would make her the Queen of all the people of Mannus Aurum, if only she would order her craftsmen to teach the people of Nud how to make the artwork, the goldwork, the stonework that he so envied but which he only knew to undo or steal. But of course, Serafina refused him, and in her shame at having the brute force himself upon her, she killed herself.

“Churr wept when he discovered her, another beautiful thing that he had only been able to destroy. But he was not so saddened that he had been moved to do her proper honor in death, for it was the custom of his people to leave the dead tied to a pole to be picked apart by buzzards, and so it was that Alain found his love. It is said that he went half-mad with grief in finding her, and killed two of his own men before he calmed, and he swore on the spot that the Nudmen had forged their doom that day. If there is any happy ending to the tale, it is that the Dweomer had spoken truth like a Telling. Years later, Churr would become the last Great Chief of the Horde of Nud, and Alain himself would unite the folk of Mannus Aurum against their black banners.

“It would be the first of the Aurelic conquests, and their bloodiest. Alain would order the Nudmen killed to the last wherever they were found; he would burn their great tent-cities to the ground, and it is said the very earth itself groaned beneath his workings of the Art and swallowed countless number of the Horde whole, alive and screaming, to be buried in forever darkness. It is said before the end that Churr the Weeper himself knew the doom of his people had come, and tried in vain to ride out to western lands with the last of them, but Alain worked a plague upon them that killed horse and man alike, and Churr himself died coughing and weeping, without even the honor of combat to send his soul to the Hells. And what was left of the Nudmen were cursed forever to wander the lands.

“Alain had his revenge, and in gaining it, became the first High King. It was only the start of his glory, but even then the seed of his fate had been planted. For he never forgot Serafina; he never loved again, and though many would have borne his child regardless, he would not have it. He could not stand the sight of a woman, only seeing in them what he had lost. He became the Mad Mage-King, his mind lost in the Art and his grief, and though he ruled and conquered for many years in this manner, his blood is forever lost to us. And it is said that a curse of madness followed the Aurelic Crown forevermore, and would surface itself from time to time. But those are other tales.” The spark in the man’s eyes dimmed, though he lingered on, looking at the door with the story locked inside.

Elyse had been listening in wonder, and then in awe. They had been simple words, and the telling had not been too long, but the way in which the story had been told was entrancing. This man had spoken with such flourishes and with such a rich tone that she felt she had known the folk in the tale. She thought she could picture brave, foolhardy Serafina, the dread she must have felt as her encampment was overrun; smell the blood and sweat of the men who had died to save her. She could know, in the depths of her soul, the despicable Churr, impotent to do anything but destroy and knowing it, perhaps knowing that it would eventually spell the death of his people, but powerless to do anything other than weep. And the rage and grief of Alain, driven to madness for the rest of his life by the loss of his one true love.

The man before her, as he told the tale, had become grand himself, in the telling. Despite being short, and old, and clearly not all there, despite his bare garb of skins and furs, he seemed almost of noble stature. Except now, that he was done, it seemed to be pouring out of him. He shrank in on himself, and his eyes, so sure, so bright when they had been in the midst of his telling, were dimming, becoming glassy and unfocused once more. “Are you a bard?” Elyse cried out, almost wondering if it would all pour right out of him and he’d be no more, feeling that she must get the answer from him urgently before that happened. She could think of nothing else the man could be. She had heard of them in stories; bards whose works were half-Art themselves, who could in the tellings of tales bring entire courts to tears or move the heart of a King. Some said that there was no half about it, bards were wizards, and it was some working of the Art that gave them their power. She had felt no Art at work here, but if she was not a witch herself, she could believe that there had been.

At her words, the man had seemed to stop wilting, just a bit, some spark remaining in him. “A bard,” he laughed softly. “A bard. I suppose there were some who called me that, but I always thought the title far too grand for me.” He blinked at himself, then at her, and all at once the nervousness came back into him. “It’s just a silly story, anyway. Who knows if it even happened. There are other tellings of it you can find, and with just as much proof that they are true. Some say Serafina ran off with Churr of her own accord. Some say that Churr killed her, rather than that she killed herself. Some say Alain killed her. It’s all silly stories.”

Elyse did not know what to think of this; she had heard stories before that had multiple tellings, but had never heard them told so. She knew, of course, that it was all just words, but such a hold had the man’s speech had on her, so clearly could she have pictured it all, that she had to bite back on the urge to insist that no, the way he told it must be the way it happened, it must have been true. “Well, I do not think stories are silly at all, even if they are not true,” she said instead. She eyed the man and wondered if he were mad. Some said the mad were seized by spirits, or touched by the gods, and that the madness could occasionally come with great gifts. Perhaps that was why he told so well and strong. And he did seem to have the manner about him. “I love stories myself, even if they are not truth.”

The man’s eyes turned to her, and all the anxiousness seemed to sweep out of him in an instant, to be replaced by a cold fury, his lips drawing back in a half-snarl. It was an expression that seemed well at-home on him.“You think so, do you? I used to think as you did, child. And then…and then…” Just as suddenly as it had come, the fury was gone, and he was blinking owlishly at her once more, until he looked away from her, as if he could no longer bear to look. “Just a child. Just a child. You…are not what I expected,” he muttered.

“I am certainly not a child,” she snapped at him. “Now I ask you again who you are, and do not go trying to distract me with a pretty story this time.”

“Me? Myself?” It seemed for a moment as if the man might not remember, but then his eyes lit up. “I am called Coxton.”

“Coxton Praet?” Elyse asked, and the man nodded. The huntsman, or so it had been told, that Martimeos had first wanted to meet in the One-Road Wood, only to find his home overrun by demons. She was somewhat surprised to see him in the midst of the village. From all they had been told, he was a recluse and a loner; since his home in the wood had been attacked he had taken up residence in one of the houses on the edge of town. But they had never come across him in their searches or their talkings with the folk of the village because, as Ritter told it, Coxton could not stand to be around people. He would leave his home well before the first light of day, and not come back until black midnight, spending all his time in the woods just to avoid being near the village. Though part of her wondered now, speaking with the man, how much of the truth was that people simply could not stand to be around Coxton, as well. “Well met, then. My name is Elyse.”

The man looked happy to have heard his name, and happy to have heard hers. He leaned in so close that Elyse almost felt the urge to back away from him. His breath had an oddly sweet scent to it that put her on edge, though she could not name why. “And you are a witch,” he said, in a confidential whisper, giving her a knowing wink. “Isn’t that right?”

For a moment, she felt a panic, wondering how he might have known this. But she remembered then that Coxton had been one of the mercenaries of Farson’s Pass, and that Ritter, too, had been able to know them as what they were. If one could tell by sight, then perhaps the other could as well, though she could not think what it was about her that gave her away. “How are you able to tell that?” she muttered.

He did not respond, simply laying a finger alongside his nose in an odd gesture that she was unfamiliar with. “And you are here with…him. The wizard. Yes?” Again, he did not wait for her answer; he read something in her expression that gave it away. “Yes. You’ve been here this whole time, haven’t you? Right here this whole time.”

“He’s wanted to speak to you, in fact. Well, as much as he wanted to speak to anyone, I suppose.” If the man knew she was a witch, it stood to reason he’d know Martimeos was a wizard.

Coxton froze at that, then grew very, very pale. “Speak to me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The wizard wants to…speak to me?”

“As much as anyone,” she repeated, but this didn’t seem to register with him. He stared at her as if she had just told him that the Dark Stranger himself had come to claim his soul. She considered for a moment. Talking to the man was like trying to seize on a butterfly, fluttering here and there in a chaotic wind; if she did not take the chance now, it seemed likely that they might never get the chance to talk to this man, not unless they tried getting up when the moon still shone to catch him before he left for the forest. And he seemed odd, but harmless enough. “He is inside. Might you come and speak to him? He is likely awake by now, and you would gain a wizard’s favor by doing so.” She tried to put on her best charming smile, though she hadn’t had much opportunity in her life to practice that yet, and most who saw it would have snorted at the obvious baseness of it. “And you might earn a witch’s favor if you told some more stories. I should dearly like to hear them.”

Coxton did not snort at her. He merely stared, pale, clutching his hides, and then, slowly, a calm, beatific smile crossed his face. “I am glad I got to tell one more story,” he murmured. “Yes. Bring me to him.”

===***===

Restless winds blew over the shattered ruins of Coxton’s mind, his heart beat like a war-drum, his eyes seemed to rattle in their sockets as he followed the witch, fool girl, innocent child. He had meant to kill her, had thought he had needed to kill her, had wanted to kill her, for she had come with him, the wizard, and there could be nothing but the working of death with her, with him. But some part of him had seized his tongue to speak to her, and when she had spun to face him, that same part of him forbade him, that same part of him could not do it, some part of him had stayed his knife-hand, and instead had spoken aloud the story, the foolish story, the bloody story, and she had watched with such open-eyed wonder, listened with such raptness, that he knew he couldn’t, he couldn’t kill her. He did not know what he had expected, but not this, not this smiling, happy creature with strange blue eyes who loved the story, the first story he had told in years, waiting to burst out of him it seemed, his tongue ready to take up the habits he had long ago.

It had felt good, far too good, far too calming to speak the words, to tell the tale, for a moment, for a blessed moment it had seemed as if the broken shards of his thoughts had knitted themselves together. There had been a time when he had wanted this so desperately, so frightened that he could not do it, he could not think clearly, so frustrated that his thoughts so often flew away from him and down dark paths that left him morose or weeping, that he would have done anything, pursued any path to undo it. But the years of loneliness, of living out in the One-Road Wood, of going weeks and months without seeing another human soul, they had done their work, and Coxton was quite convinced now that he was hopeless, it was over for him, he would never again be sane, never again be whole, his time in the wood had knotted dark roots into his mind and pried apart the pieces and they’d never be put together again now. He had been surprised that there was enough left in him, enough left of who he had been to even know the story. He had spent years damning the stories, setting torch to them in his mind, because he knew the truth now, he knew the bloody damning truth of the stories, and it sickened him that they had ever fallen from his tongue. He was a storyteller once, but now he was nothing but a huntsman. It was all there was for him to be. His two great talents had been storytelling and killing, and really one led right to the other. But if he must kill, no longer let it be his fellow man, let it be a useful killing, done for furs or food.

Except that he was planning on another killing now, wasn’t he, he had come to wreak bloody death again, hadn’t he? He was, and it tore at his soul to know it, tore at his soul that he should break his promise to himself to never again raise blade or bow against his fellow man. He had even knocked out Ritter, tied the man up and left him trussed inside his stables, and Ritter was a friend, no not a friend, had been a friend, but he saw it in Ritter, he saw it in him yes, Ritter still dreamt of glory, still dreamt of blood, he did not know, he could not see that the stories which had been told to them had all been lies, lies, lies, damned lies. He had not fought when the fighting had gotten its worst, he had not fought when true war and death stalked the earth, he had fought in his pissant little skirmishes and thought he knew war was gold and glory, but it wasn’t, war was a breathing, red, bleeding thing, a thing that screamed and howled and burrowed itself into you and caught you up in hooks and never let you go.

He felt himself teetering over the edge of a red abyss, one that had swallowed him so many times before, and his well-practiced numbness that he had gained in his isolation let him step back from the edge. The pretty girl was smiling at him, pointing to the bookshelf Ritter kept in his inn, telling him how much she loved the stories there, and did he know any of them? She had read many in word, but she would love to hear some spoken by him. She led him to a table, and fussed and pouted and said she dearly wished for some breakfast that they might share but that Ritter was not here, not around (tied up trussed up with a damp red spot on his head that oh gods please let it not have killed him why had he done that). He had almost killed the pretty girl too, had come within moments of it, and why, and why, and for what? Because of the wizard, the wizard, some part of him still cried out for justice and vengeance against the wizard, the one death that would be justified, and would it still be justified if it took innocent blood to purchase?

But it was too late now. Far too late to reconsider, too late, always too late for him. He was here now, in the lion’s den, in the dragon’s teeth, he was here in the face of death and his only hope was surprise. He told the pretty girl that he was not much hungry anyway, and she nodded, and told him that she would go and fetch the wizard, and he nodded, and as she walked away he felt his own death inside him, death like a great black shadow that seeped into his blood and was more than fear that coursed through him, it was the certainty of his doom. He would die here, he knew, he would die either way, but the one thing he might do before he died, the only thing he might do is put paid to the stories, and put an end to the wizard, the monster no stories had warned him about, just as no stories had ever told him what war really was, they had dressed it up pretty in makeup and prostituted it to him, they put cheekshade and powder on war and called it GLORY and HONOR and hoped you did not notice until it was sucking your blood dry, and he with his damned stories had helped, he had been one of those selling war as a beautiful woman to young men who were dead, all dead, all dead now.

Even before the witch began her way up the stairs, his hand snaked beneath his hides to grip the hilt of the long knife there (the long knife that he had nearly dragged across the neck of the pretty girl, pretty Elyse, the pretty witch who smiled at his stories, who said he wasn’t a monster as well). He felt death in his blood, felt death in his hand, and the certainty of death in his thoughts bestowed upon him that strange calm that befalls the doomed, the clarity that comes to those who know they will die, who see their death coming. All seemed to move slow, in a soup, in a fog, and his thoughts turned back to what had brought him here, to this ending moment.

===***===

Coxton had been born in the city of Farson’s pass, where the red cliffs raised high above crowded streets and the dawning sun made them so bright that they appeared splashed with fresh blood, fitting, he thought, fitting for a town ruled by mercenary houses with so much blood on their hands. But while so many there were born into it, born into knowing they would be made for war, one way or another they would be made for war, that had not been Coxton’s fate. No, he had been born to the poor and the desperate, his mother a prostitute and his father a nobody, a shadow he had never met. Where the mercenary lords dwelt in Farson’s pass, there the streets were wide and plazas beautiful and tiled with artwork and all was perfume and brightly colored flags of the dozens, hundreds of bands who made up the soldiers of fortune, but where Coxton was born the streets were narrow, not really streets at all, and always flooded with filthy water and stinking and rotten and eventually that rotting stink had crept into his mother’s lungs and she had coughed herself to death.

Foolish, idiot boy that he was, he had thought it good fortune at the time, for his mother, like many who grew up in those dark and dirty places, had forbidden him to take work as a mercenary. He had thought the mercenary lords great men, then. They had grand houses with grand histories fitting of the grand legacy of Farson’s Pass. The city’s story was that the dread necromancer Hooloon, in the depths of time, had come out of the west with an army of slaves and summoned demons and dark undead creatures, and the hero Jak Farson and his company of mercenaries had turned them back here, where the Bloodcliffs narrowed to a singular pass, they had held it there against tides of wickedness and later built a fortress there against any who would try again, and centuries later it would serve them well as the Aurelic Crown came against them, and it was a point of pride that Farson’s pass had been where the conquests of the Aurelics had been stopped; they never took the city, and they would never go further west, the mercenaries of Farson’s Pass had told the mighty Crown who all swore allegiance to where their sovereignty came to an end.

The mercenary lords and their great Houses each had stories grand to match, Houses founded by the companions of Jak Farson, and they claimed that all could win GLORY, all could win HONOR, if they had the skill. There was no real nobility, Jak Farson himself had been born a simple carpenter, and his companions had been thieves and prostitutes themselves before they forged their name in history forever. And they kept their books, they kept their stories, they did; the mercenary lords had a grand tradition of storytelling, they kept great archives, and every man or woman who served as a mercenary had their names written down in them, and during festivals the greatest stories would be told, and Coxton, foolish boy that he was, he loved and listened to the stories, he wanted his own stories, and he would memorize them and tell them to his friends in the secret dark places when the adults were not listening, and he could never understand why so many in those low places hated the mercenaries, except that now he could, now he could, his poor whore of a mother had only been trying to warn him but he was too stubborn young stupid to listen.

So when his mother had died he had gone to join the mercenaries, joined for GLORY, for HONOR, but most of all for MONEY, and the happiest years of his life had been there, proving himself, as gold flowed into his pockets and he made new friends, away from the low places, the mercenaries and the Soldiers of Fortune and the Knights of The Balanced Coin were his friends now, and he learned to wield sword and bow and spear, and they were hired on as guards for merchant caravans, to uproot bandits, he had even been to the edges of the long and dark wastelands of the west to put a tribe of the madmen who dwelt there to the sword all for the coin of the strange and secretive rulers of the City of Bells, and they had all told themselves that their days were full of death and their nights were full of dancing and singing and stories, and Coxton himself had poured his soul into their telling, sweating and prancing before campfires, in taverns, in their encampments, just to make them see what he had thought was good and true and right.

But it hadn’t been, it was all lies, they thought they knew death but they didn’t know the slightest damn thing, did they, they had not known death and war at all, they had known its whisper and its echo and its slightest shadow before the White Queen came to them, borne in a silver carriage and with an accompaniment of long lines of knights in gleaming armor, snow-white cloaks and banners streaming behind them so she had come, and the Queen herself was pale and deadly grace, (beautiful but a sorceress a witch who could freeze your heart in your chest if she so wished it) in white dress all done up in silver thread that gleamed as brightly as her crown, and the only spot of color about her was her lips, painted red and smiling, always smiling, that blood-red smile, as she came before the mercenary lords to tell them that she was waging a war of conquest (true war this time, she would show them what true war was) and that she would always have coin for them, always have need of them, if only they would swear never to fight for her enemies (victims).

And perhaps it was because Coxton had come from the low places, had come from those narrow and dark streets where the wicked dwelt, but he was wary of her from the start (WHY HAD HE NOT SCREAMED HIS CAUTION AT THEM WHY), for he had seen her red and bloody smile before, had seen it in the face of every thief who thought it sport to threaten a child for what meager coin he had, seen it in the face of the man who owned the home they lived in, who charged them rent and when they could not pay would come to his mother and say what shame it would be for the boy to be set on the street, children do not do well without a home in this city, no they don’t, hadn’t she better come up with twice the coin in two weeks or it would be a real shame what happened, and always with that smile, that smile in the face of a dozen demons-in-human-flesh. But the mercenary lords had only ever lived in the high places and they did not know that smile, they had never had that smile aimed at them before, that smile that promised I am going to hurt you badly and there is nothing you can do to stop me, and so they had agreed to the White Queen’s terms in a night of fires and festivities and the Witch, the Queen, the Sorceress, she had presided over all of them as they sang and danced and belted out their stories and in all the shadows that jumped and flickered over all, never had she stopped smiling.

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And then her tasks, her bloody tasks had come, and at first the mercenaries, his new friends, his comrades, at first they had thought and at first it had seemed that it all would be worthy of stories, worthy of GLORY, that it would all just be as their grand adventures of routing bandits and skirmishes with talking lions had been, full of laughter and HONOR and death but oh they were so brave weren’t they, they would face death when it came! They sallied forth to the Freetowns of Dorn and sometimes even their reputation alone could force a surrender, and that was when Coxton had first seen that the stories he told, the stories they spread, they were not merely a lark, a laugh, they were not stories for the sake of stories, but they were weapons as well. There had been battle and blood in the service of the White Queen, and love and laughter and even grudging respect between the mercenaries and the Freemen of Dorn, and this was all as the stories said it should be, all as the stories had said it would be, except that Coxton even in those days could see what the others did not. He could see the fear in folk’s eyes as the mercenary lords would give over a captured village or town to the care of the White Queen’s men, he could see the gibbets that her bondsmen would begin to build even as they marched out successfully, off to another grand and glorious battle, and he could hear the whispers that nobody else seemed to (except of course they could hear them, couldn’t they, his beautiful friends could hear them they just pretended not to), whispers of hangings, of beheadings, whispers of massacres, whispers of an entire village put to the sword to make an example so that others may not resist their oaths to the Queen, he heard these things and he had done nothing except laugh along with his friends and he was damned, damned, damned.

It was in those years that Ritter and Ezekiel had left, before the worst had come, and perhaps that was why Ritter (pray that he lived, pray that his brains were not addled) still held fond memories of that time. Coxton had known the two men; he had made a name for himself but not as much as Ritter and Zeke, their story, two boon companions from their youth, ever by each other’s side, with Ritter the practical, hardheaded one and Zeke his dreamy, absent-minded friend with a romantic nature, he had known them as characters from their stories but not really as men (but not many in Farson’s Pass seemed to appreciate the difference did they). Ritter had passed the command of his band to his son, and the younger Ritter Coxton had known quite well, and how could the father not have seen the doom he was sending the son into? Had he not worried, had he not cared, had he not seen the signs, had he not heard the whispers, did he not know the damnation marching towards them inexorably through time? Except Coxton knew exactly, he had seen the signs himself and not known them, he had seen the signs the first moment the White Queen stepped out of her carriage and why had he not cared, why had he not screamed for it all to stop?

For slowly, surely, like the beat of a war-drum the darkness marched toward them. What were once whispers ceased to be, what was once hidden in secret was now done in the open; they saw the trees with their fruit of corpses, they saw the gibbets hanging full, they saw the headsman’s block bloodied and the men (not even men barely men barely old enough to call themselves men) pushed down in front of it screaming for refusing to serve the Queen, they saw the crosses that lined the roads with dying men nailed to them, they saw the famine-withered corpses where the White Queen had brought blizzards and freezing dark winter to ruin people’s crops. The Freemen of Dorn no longer greeted them with respect, the Freemen would no longer surrender to them; the Freemen hated them now, as much as they hated any Queensman, and they hated Queensmen such that they would die to see one in the grave. And the worst of it all was how the Queensmen smiled at them now, the knowing grin on the faces of their commanders as they passed by on horseback amongst all the death and ruin, as if to say, Yes, this is what we’ve done. What will you ever do about it? With that same damned smile their Queen herself had, all those years ago when she brought their damnation to them on ink and paper.

Something might have been done. Something could have been done. But nothing was done. For where Hooloon the Necromancer had failed, where the Aurelics had failed, the White Queen had succeeded, she had conquered them, she had made them hers, not by any force of arms but by binding them in guilt. And through the wickedness that had always lived in the hearts of the mercenary lords, the wickedness his mother had seen, that she had tried to warn him about, for no longer were they the grand storytellers welcoming all that he could remember from his youth, but they were the White Queen’s enforcers, she had paid good coin and all those who broke their contract were guilty of treason, as far as the mercenary lords were concerned, and oh, some left, some fled, the noble ones, but Coxton was not a noble one, was he. He could have gone over with the men who quit their positions, the ones who had gone over to the Freemen, but he had not, he had stayed, slowly hating himself, slowly hating the others, his once-friends but now mute witnesses to this horror, and he had thought it could never get any worse and Durnholde had been his punishment.

Durnholde. A city of the Freemen, a city of high walls and an ancient fortress built back when the Aurelic empire was young which still stood, buttressed by the Art and grander than anything any could build today, a city of stone when he had first seen it and a city of ruin when he had left it. It was that ruin that loomed large in his mind, those were the ruins his thoughts swept over constantly, tracing along every toppled stone, unable to stop, unable to turn away from the thought of it until finally at long last his mind had taken on the shape of them and he was ruin, too.

The White Queen, frustrated by the long resistance of the Freemen, had gathered her armies to capture Durnholde, the greatest of their cities and the center of the concorde between the otherwise independent Freetowns that stood now together against her. So the wise said, so the stories would say, but Coxton thought he knew the truth, he had seen her when she visited the field, he had seen her cry Art to the skies, seen them obey her command, seen them grow black and heavy and as the cold descended, never to lift, as the wind howled and the snow began to fall he had seen the mad lights in her eyes and that blood-red smile and he had known then that all she wanted now was sacrifice, was blood splashed on the stone, was death. And death had been there in Durnholde, waiting there for him.

Durnholde was a pit born of two people’s madness. The madness of the Queensmen and their Queen, and the madness of the Freemen themselves. For the Freemen had decided that this was the place, this was where the Witch in the West would be turned back. It was a foolish obsession of the White Queen to capture the well-fortified city, and the canny captains and commanders of the Freemen had realized her mistake and their opportunity; though it would be a slaughter, they could make her pay for every inch with barrels of blood and so it was a clever decision to hold onto the city as much as they could and make her pay dearly for it. So the wise said, so the stories would say, but again Coxton thought he knew the truth: What the White Queen had done to them was so offensive to the spirit, to the very souls of the Freemen that they were prepared to pay any price to spit defiance in her eye, they would have fought like animals even if had meant they would all die to the very last, and in their desperation and hatred of her they called upon all the dark powers and they had answered their call, the wizard had answered their call.

The siege of Durnholde had not ended when the walls of the city were breached, through trebuchet and mining and the great roaring flashes of heat and light that the Queensmen said were not the Art but could be nothing else, great booming roars that tore stone bricks into splinters that could easily kill a man. No, the Freemen fought them even in the streets, every building, every house a small fortress now, and over all of them the grand fortress of Durnholde loomed, and every foot purchased was done under hail of fire from the windows of homes, under hail of fire from ballistae shot from the crenellations of the fortress, until the blizzard and storms had grown so thick that it blinded them, and for months it had raged, and it was here in the dark streets, choked with snow and blood, that the wizard had stalked.

Coxton had only ever seen him from afar, but that was enough. To see the wizard was death, had been death for so many, and he did not know how he himself had survived. A tall man in a dark coat with long, wild hair, the wizard had smiled too, smiled like the White Queen had, and where the White Queen had brought down the clawing death of freezing winter, the wizard worked with shadow and flame and Coxton could not think of it, would not think of it, even now he could not bear to make himself remember the sights and the sounds, the howls of his friends burning alive, the desperate animal screams that did not even sound human anymore (Lasset had still been alive even with all her flesh, every inch of her blackened and the only way he had recognized her was her eyes and the dagger she held, he could not even know if the sound she had made had been thanks as he had put a sword through her, so died the witch they had tried to get to stand up to the wizard), and even worse were the ones who were eaten by the shadows, they stepped into the dark and they were simply not there anymore, without a sound, and you never knew which shadow might simply unmake you, and even worse, even worse, were the dead who moved-

He had died, he thought, he had died and he was in the Hells, because otherwise the gods and the very world itself should put an end what was happening all around him, every day. Men went mad, and there was no depth of depravity that went unplumbed there. Coxton could remember only in shattered, broken images. A street full of staked heads. Some had turned to cannibalism when the supplies ran out (you did too, didn’t you Coxton, it was not some it was all and you did too, but you weren’t like the others, you would not eat it unless you could pretend it was something else) and he could remember them ghoulishly leaping upon a corpse preserved in a snowbank, hunger and constant fear driven all dignity and shame out of them. Talking to a man throughout a long, dark night, only to awake and find that the man was now one of the moving dead and wondering, forever after, when he had died, or had he been talking to the dead the entire time?

And always, always, always the threat of being found by the wizard, and always the death that would follow. It was not a war, any longer, in Coxton’s mind, in the minds of many, it was torment, Durnholde became a world unto itself, a warren of stone, an impossible labyrinth of ruin, and the wizard was the mad king of this place, he must be Hell made flesh, impossible to be real, and wherever he went there were screams, and this would never end, he was in the Hells, he was in the Hells and all he could do was suffer until the wizard found him and obliterated his very soul, annihilated him from existence-

And then it was over.

It seemed impossible that it might have ended. But there it was. One day he awoke to find a Queensman prodding at him, wondering if he was a corpse, and he was told that the Freemen had withdrawn from the city, and the White Queen had claimed victory. Coxton was astounded to find that merely six months of his life had passed by in that Hell of his. It had felt like an eternity of madness, of darkness, of cold and fear, and in a way for him it would be, because all of that was pressed into his soul and would be a part of him for as long as he lived. But even as shattered as he was, he could see the writing on the wall. He thought that maybe everyone could, after Durnholde. It was a victory that had defeated them. He did not need to see a disposition of forces to know that simple too many had died, to see men whose spirits and souls were broken, blank eyes staring at a world that they would never be able to see the same again, eyes knowing too much, seeing too much, men which had known nothing but horror for too long. And so then, finally, long after should have, far too late to save his own soul, far too late, he had fled. He had fled with all the romantic stories burnt to ashes in his mind, he fled now knowing war, true war, knowing now what those stories had been meant to conceal, and the taste of them would be bitter on his tongue, his tongue that should be cut out for the lies it had told to the young to seduce them into this madness.

He could not remember the time after he had fled very well. His thoughts seemed so blackened and poisoned that he barely seemed the world around him. He thought he had been robbed, at some point, and beaten at another; he could remember the brief moments of kindness, remember a woman dabbing his forehead with a bloody cloth, remember an innkeeper letting him sleep by the fire in the common room, he could remember drink, wine and wine and more and more wine, wine so dark it seemed nearly black. He could remember a sweet voice that whispered into his ear, whispered when no one was there, whispered even when he was alone on the road, and the whispers became stronger with wine, and the voice told him that it was too late now, he was broken forever, the burning in his head would last forever, the guilt that seized him so that it seemed he could not breathe, it would all last forever and the only real respite, the only mercy, would be the gentle kiss of death, to open his veins and let his life’s blood spill, and one night alone in the midst of a field, beneath a wide expanse of endless stars, in trepidation and terror he had asked the whispering voice who it was and it had answered I am Ysonne, and I am the goddess and lover of broken souls.

But he had not listened (though he should have, he should have, but if anything a gentle and quiet death was more than he deserved). And eventually he had come to Silverfish, following the tales he had heard of the Night Fisher inn, hearing it run by Ritter and knowing that if he could do anything, anything at all with his miserable waste of a life, with his wicked lie-dripping tongue, if he could do anything he could finally use it to tell the truth and to tell others, warn others away from the madness, to tell them there was only death in the service of the White Queen, that the war was lost and she was mad enough that she didn’t care, she’d soak the land in blood for nothing, to flee, to quit, that even if they had not cared for the lives that the Queen had trampled they should care for their own. Ritter could send out birds, he could send out warnings to old friends, such that still lived, far away from the reach of the mercenary lords he could tell people to burn their contracts, he could use his inn to shelter the mercenaries who quit the Queen’s service, he could do, should do so much.

Ritter had listened to his warnings, in arms crossed and face stern, alone in the common room of the Night Fisher inn, and even before Coxton was done giving them he knew they had been for naught. He had cursed his tongue and so now, it seemed, its power was taken from it; he could not use it to persuade the man of the awful, gut-sick cold folly and horror of it all. No, he could see, he knew that Ritter’s mind was still bound up in the stories, he still thought fondly of the war, he still thought of it as the laughing glory and graceful dance with death that the mercenary lords had taught him it was, the stories Coxton’s tongue was made for, he could not make the man breathe in the corpse-stink, make the man feel the cold grip of shadows, make the man see the blood in the snow, he could not make him feel the horror in his bones of seeing comrades burnt alive. He could believe the war was lost, though, but that only made Ritter want to foolishly sally forth, to rejoin the fight, to make sure that the men of Farson’s Pass might be protected as well as they could be while keeping the honor of the contracts intact. And Coxton could only stare in wonder at the man who remembered a Farson’s Pass as it used to be, who did not understand that the only sane thing was to damn the contracts, damn the HONOR, damn the GLORY, there was none here, the mercenary lords of Farson’s Pass would rather see their young dead, the stories were all in flames, all filthy ashes and Ritter simply could not see and Coxton wept at his impotence to change his mind.

Ezekiel had seen, though. When Coxton had talked to the mage, the man had simply nodded silently along to his words, and that one sweet moment of triumph had been worth resisting the whispers of Ysonne. In the stories that he had heard of the two of them, Ritter had been known as the clear-eyed strategist while Ezekiel was called the starry dreamer, who ignored the world and only saw the Art, and who always needed his boon companion Ritter by his side to keep him grounded in reality. But Coxton thought that Ezekiel must have been clearer-eyed than the stories told of him, Ezekiel must have seen the darkness encroaching before he left, must have seen what Ritter could not or would not see (and wasn’t that always the way, the stories were lies, lies, even when it was not for any purpose they were lies).

The stories did not lie about the great love that Ritter and Ezekiel had for each other, though, and so Coxton had thought that the mage might have been able to bring his friend around. But Ritter would not see. He would not see the truth, he damned the truth and damned himself, he refused to hear of what was being done in her name, refused to see that the only thing to do now was to abandon the vows made to her, to abandon the contracts that the mercenary lords of Farson’s Pass thought were worth more than the blood of their men. He shouted at them, then screamed at them that they were both cowards. And while this meant nothing to Coxton (for he knew, he was a coward and worse if not for the reasons Ritter thought, he was dung), Ezekiel had been gravely wounded by this and Coxton could not help but feel the deepest knife of sorrow twist in his heart for the man. For that fateful night in the inn, where they held council alone in the common room, in the shadows where candlelight had shown only their faces and where disagreement had spilled over into shouts and ire, Coxton had seen one thing quite clearly. Ritter loved the stories more than he loved Ezekiel. He thought more of GLORY and HONOR than he did of his boon companion. Ezekiel had seen it as well, and he thought the man’s heart had been broken by it.

He could do nothing but watch as the two were driven apart, and all for Ritter’s foolish pride, and for what? Ezekiel holed himself up in the manor that he had taken as a home, so near across the waters of Nust Drim that it could be seen, but impossibly far, as certainly none could approach it without his knowledge and consent. And Ritter, what did Ritter do, anyway, when he had realized that neither Coxton nor Zeke would be going with him on his fool romantic quest, what did he do? Did he sally forth alone? No, he remained in Silverfish, and he would walk down to the shore of the great lake and stare out at the manor, stare at it for hours, and he would come back bitter and sharpen his sword and mutter to himself about going but he would not go, he would never go without Zeke and he would never apologize, either. And Coxton would stay with him, stay with him in one of the rooms of his inn which was empty even in those days, until the day when Hell visited Silverfish, too.

For the wizard came.

Coxton had been sure he was in the midst of a nightmare, the day he had spotted, from a distance, the butcher of Durnholde walking down through the road that stretched out from the One-Road Wood, through Cross-on-Green and into Silverfish, and then certain that he must be mistaken. Part of him had thought, had hoped, that the wizard had died in Durnholde; they had victory there, as bitter and untrue a victory that had been, and in the end the city had been fully encircled. But he had dared, he had dared (even now he could not believe his mad daring) to get closer, and he knew what he had known for the truth even from a distance, it was the wizard, a long leather coat flapping dustily behind his long strides, wild dark hair, and that cunning smile, that bloody smile, the smile of the Queen, the smile he had seen in Durnholde, he had that smile for everyone he had met, and the wizard had come to bring them to the Hells.

He knew it, and he should have said something. He knew it and he should have screamed, screamed warning, but he was a coward, he was dung, he was worthless, a worm, the gods ought to have thrown his soul into darkness rather than let him walk this earth, he should have listened to Ysonne so he would never have known this final shame. For he had followed, staggering along the street, struck dumb and silent, his mind refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him, watched as the man paid for a boat to bring him and his companions out to Ezekiel’s manor, clutching at his clothes and trying to work a throat that seemed to have seized on him.

And then the wizard, as he stepped onto the boat, had turned and seen him, that smile was for him, and Coxton had broke, had turned and ran, ran with nothing but the clothes on his back, his mind full of nothing but a frantic white fear that muted all thought, for the wizard had not merely seen him but knew him, the wizard knew him, he knew, and it was like having a needle driven through the deepest part of him, he should never want to be seen by a man such as that, never want to be known, to simply be known by him was to invite the Dark Stranger into his home.

He had gone to Cross-on-Green at first, but he could not bear to see the faces of other people any more. Everyone must know, he thought; everyone must see his naked wretchedness, must see all that he had done and did not do, and in every face he saw an accusation, in every face he saw the hatred and disgust that he knew he deserved, he was befouled in the deepest way possible and all could tell. And so he had fled there, as well, and went to live in the One-Road Wood, among the ruins that the Hallics had left behind, their waystations and inns that they had once kept for weary travelers, now all fallen to rot. He had not wanted to hear, oh but he had heard, he had heard, for as much as he tried to avoid people he had heard, travelers brought news of what had happened in Silverfish. This was the Hell his cowardice had purchased them, this was the damnation the wizard had brought to them, that he had brought them. He heard later of what happened to Cross-on-Green and he knew, too, that the wizard had done this, he had done it all and just like he had with the Queen, Coxton had let it happen, saying nothing. It was small consolation that the news came too with a herald of the White Queen’s death.

Ysonne whispered to him again, in those days, and not merely whispered; while he was alone in those woods, she spoke to him, as clear as day, she visited him, if he was not merely going mad; she would come into his home, nude and pale and beautiful with long raven hair, twin black snakes painted into her skin, except that they moved, curling around her legs and arms, and she would speak of such things that would make his soul ache with longing. She said that she loved him as she did all wounded and broken souls, and he had been so long without knowing love, so long knowing only guilt, that the mere thought of that made his knees buckle. She would love him forever, she promised, if only he could summon the courage for suicide; by hanging, or opening his veins, or however it happened, for she was the goddess of merciful death. It was not the Hells that would await him, Old Scratch the Chainmaker would not take his soul, but she. An eternity of unthinking, unfeeling darkness, comfortable unbeing, with her, if only he could prove his dedication and his love to her, and it was such a small thing, wasn’t it, such a small thing she was asking for her love in return and the eternal rest of his soul. And he saw Old Scratch as well, the jailer of the damned, never in his waking hours but in his dreams, his dreams where he was weighed down with searing, burning-hot chains of black iron.

How he had resisted the call of Ysonne then, even Coxton himself did not know. He harbored no illusions anymore that he might be of some use to someone, to anyone. Perhaps part of him simply wanted to live, and to live his mind must be occupied very much with surviving, here. The world was quiet, now, and travelers few, and to live alone here meant that much of his mind must be occupied much of the time with the simple act of making do for himself. Wells to be cleared, that he might drink; traps to be made, traps to set, catches to skin and cook, skins to stitch into clothes and clothes to be mended, wood to cut for fires that he might not freeze, all the acts of living, and the years of being alone, going months without seeing another human being - he was less now, he knew, than he once was; his mind did not think of many things, but these simpler thoughts were less fertile ground for guilt and pain and darkness. Ysonne’s whispers grew quieter, she visited him less frequently, and eventually she stopped, and his dreams were quiet too; he did not dream at all, he dreamt of nothing.

And so he had lived until the woods became strange, and he had been driven out of his home by the vulture-men demons, who came to him in the night with their strange screams, tearing open his door; but by then Coxton had honed himself into a fine hunter and had heard them coming, and had slain two of their number, one by bow and one with a knife to the throat before he had fled. He would have gone north, to Congar, where Mother Pris knew him at least; she was one of the few who still traveled the One-Road Wood on occasion, and had made a habit of stopping by to see him when she did (Inhuman she might have been, but Coxton did not care. He barely saw himself as worth of being called human anymore). But he had been harried southwards, south where the fae haunted the woods, he knew, so he had followed the road instead, and eventually came upon Cross-on-Green and, finally, back to Silverfish.

He had been surprised to find folk still living there. He had been back once or twice, in the years since the green shadows and the long silence of the forest had numbed his thoughts, trading furs for fish, and he thought that certainly they must abandon the place soon. No one could live there, no one could raise a family there, it was doomed. But now all overgrown with black bramble, many of the houses that were left beginning to fall into disrepair, it was barely recognizable. He was likely barely recognizable himself, for that matter. He was not the man he had once been. He gave his warning of demons in the wood to Ritter, and then he had taken up home in one of the houses on the outer edge of the village, cutting away black thorns that had crawled up the door, and disliking that he must take up residence here; already he could feel dark thoughts from long ago worming their way into his head once more.

He did not want to see or speak to people; he howled, growled and cursed at those who knocked at his door, and he would leave to go into the forest while the moon was still bright in the sky and not return until it had risen again, longing only for the quiet of the woods that he had lost, wondering how he might go back, when he might dare to scout out whether the demons were gone.

He might have never known that the wizard had come back if he had not returned early, the night before, when his bowstring had snapped (his replacements had all been in his home out in One-Road Wood). He had gone to the Night Fisher Inn to ask Ritter if he might have some, or the materials for the making of one, when the wizard had come storming out of it, cloak fluttering behind him as he went stalking down the streets. Coxton had been struck dumb once more, his mouth going dry. The wizard, his hair was shorter, and the wicked, knowing smile was missing, but there was no mistaking that the face was the same. He had remained there, frozen, until the witch, the pretty girl, had come out of the inn as well and gone chasing after the wizard.

Coxton had gone back to the house he had claimed, and he had not slept a single moment last night. He had sat in the one creaking old chair that whoever had abandoned this place had left behind, and he sat, staring, at the floorboards.

Why was this happening? Why had the wizard come back? Had he come to work another dark magic on the village? What more could he possibly do here that he had not already done? But Coxton would not believe in coincidences now, no, no. If Ysonne had spoken to him, perhaps another god had seen fit to grant him mercy. He would have never known about this at all if his bowstring had not snapped, and his bowstring ought not to have snapped - it had been new, and he knew the maintaining of it, and yet it had snapped anyway, drawing him back here just in time to see the wizard. Perhaps Fortune was giving him a chance at redemption. Perhaps the god which governed the toss of the coin had smiled upon him in its silent, serendipitous way. He had failed to stop one smiling butcher, the White Queen, and later had failed again to stop another mad killer, the wizard, when he came to Silverfish. He was being given a third chance to do something now. All the other times when he had failed to do anything, when he had stood by as the blood had spilled, when he had been silent when he ought to have spoken, his great sin knowing the right thing and yet never doing it - he had not escaped his responsibility for these things in the forest, and here it was again.

If he might do anything, anything worthwhile with his life, it might be to see the wizard dead.

===***===

He had thought so, at least, it had seemed so perfectly clear last night, so right. Fortune must be showing mercy to his damned soul and giving him an opportunity for redemption. It must be so.

But then came the reality of what it would take, this morning. He had met Ritter out by the stables, tried to explain what must be done, tried to explain his reasoning. But his words had come out all wrong, and the innkeeper had first frowned and then stared at him with wide-eyed alarm, and then told him to stay away from his guests, and would not list, kept backing away as Coxton plead with him to see reason and why would his damned tongue not work right, why could it only speak well when it spoke of the lying stories, and then when Ritter had turned away from him (he was fleeing, he was fleeing) Coxton had grabbed a shovel and cracked the handle of it over the man’s skull (there was blood, was it too much blood?) and tied him and gagged him and left him unconscious in one of the stalls (or perhaps dying perhaps he had killed him oh please please please no).

And then he had spotted the witch in the inn’s courtyard and he thought he must kill her, she must be either the wizard’s lover, or apprentice, or perhaps merely a fellow traveler in his dark Art, and if the wizard must die then certainly she must as well. He could not imagine, could not think that the wizard would have a companion who was not as bloodstained as he was. But even as he snuck up behind her, some part of him had struggled, had cried out No! And took hold of his tongue, and before he knew it he was not slitting her throat but rather telling her a story, and in her innocence he had begun to doubt. She was young, young like the men who had died in Durnholde well before their time. What was he doing that he had nearly killed her? How could he have lived with himself if he had let her throat bleed out into the cobblestones? Is this what Fortune had in mind for him?

These doubts gnawed at him now, even as he crouched in the shadows by the staircase in the common room of the inn, his hand wrapped in a knuckle-white grip around the bone handle of his knife. He could hear, on the floor above him, the sounds of two pairs of footsteps, now - the lighter, gentler ones of the witch, and the heavy dull thud of someone much larger. The footsteps of his doom. He wondered if all those who saw their death coming felt such doubts. It seemed such a cruel thing, to die questioning, to die unknowing. And yet he had seen the long sweep of his life, and it seemed even more cruel that he might die without even the chance to redeem himself. If not for that, why else had he resisted the sweet whispers of Ysonne? Her promised kiss, her promised love, if only he would do what he so desperately wanted to do anyway? Why else had he remained, in this life of woe?

The footsteps grew louder. They were at the top of the stairs. Coxton coiled himself, every muscle in his body tensed like taut rope. The wizard had wanted to speak to him, so that meant that the grinning bastard knew already that he was there. Why the wizard might want to speak to him, Coxton could not imagine, but he could believe that the wizard might know him personally, though he had only seen the man from a distance. Of course the wizard knew him, because he was a demon in the flesh, he was the arbiter of Coxton’s Hell, he was the shadow that haunted Durnholde and Durnholde haunted him. A voice inside of him wailed that he needed to stop.

Footsteps descending the stairs. The moment of his death had arrived. He held his breath and remained as still as he possibly could. The world narrowed to a point. All he saw was the foot of the stairs before him. All he saw was the back of the wizard, dark tangled hair, cloak of black glossy fur, as he stepped into view. Just a moment until he cleared the banister. Just a moment until he could strike.

“Coxton?” the witch’s voice called out from somewhere above him, and then he moved.

He stepped forth as silently as quickly as a snake, with his knife held ready in one hand and the other one outstretched to seize the wizard’s hair. He meant to grip it and pull the man’s head back and cut through his throat in one swift movement. He had tested the floorboards around the bottom of the stairs while the witch had fetched the wizard, knowing which ones creaked and which ones did not. He knew exactly where to step to make no noise. Which was why he thought it was so sickly funny, when it all came to naught because of an absurdity.

Just at the moment when he reached forward to seize the wizard’s hair down to the scalp, the man’s head pitched forward in a sneeze, and his fingers instead seized only enough to give a painful tug. And then he knew immediately, and for the first time, what age had done to him.

For though he stepped forward immediately with the knife to plunge it instead into the wizard’s back, between his ribs, to reach his wicked heart, the younger man reacted with a speed that Coxton simply could not have matched. The wizard whirled, and a pair of dark green eyes, questioning eyes, shocked eyes were suddenly staring at him, and Coxton’s knife-hand was tangled in the folds of his flapping cloak, straining vainly to pierce flesh, and a voice inside him screamed for him to look, to look, to look-

But he could not look, he could not think, his one moment, his one chance for redemption, and why would Fortune have taken it away from him on a whim? Why? So he launched himself forward, tackling the wizard, sending him sprawling across floor, and the witch was screaming behind him now but he didn’t listen because he was so close, he was so close, this had to be done. He was on top of the wizard now, and a wild fist that seemed to come out of nowhere hit him hard, and he tasty salty blood, and he could feel the strength of the man and knew it was only half a moment before he was thrown off and then it would be all over, all done, he would die and he would die for nothing, his redemption come down to such a thin scrap of time (the voice inside him was screaming in panic for him to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop), and so in the flurry of the man’s limbs around him, flapping cloak and swinging arms, he sought out the throat, the throat, and he pressed his bright blade there and -

In a single, clear instant, he saw it. He saw the face staring up at him in terror. Saw the blood welling up already around his blade, and knew that it would only be the matter of the slightest push to kill. But he couldn’t. The voice inside him screamed that for the love of his own soul, he could not, and the voice inside was right.

And that moment’s hesitation was all it took. The wizard threw him off bodily, and the knife went flying from Coxton’s hand as he crashed into a table, the breath driven out of him, and then the wizard - so quick, young men were so quick, so strong, he had once been that quick and strong and true, back before the world had ruined him - the wizard was up with a sword in one hand, and holding the other to his bleeding neck, and the witch was there too, with a dagger, and she did not smile at him any more, no, she looked at him with confusion and terror and it was only right. It didn’t matter anymore, let them both kill him right now, right here, let their cold steel slide into his fevered flesh, he deserved it, he was done. He was a fool, he was a fool, he was a fool.

He slumped down on the floor, laughing hoarsely, as the wizard and the witch looked on in confused shock. He could not help but laugh. Fortune had led him astray. Perhaps the only merciful god was Ysonne. Was there ever a soul more wretched than he? “You’re not him,” he croaked, laughing, hot tears carving a path down his cheeks. “You’re not him, you’re not him, you’re not him.” And then he put his face into his hands, and shoulders hitched as his laughter became weeping, and he wept, and wept, and wept.