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The mumbles grew louder with each descending step. Once downstairs, we faced a room where at least twenty people gathered. They stared at us from unwashed faces, but the scrutiny in their eyes landed heaviest on me.
“Your Grace,” the keeper said, hands nervously pinning graying hair back underneath her wimple. “They came unbidden, no matter how I told them to stay away.”
Pulling me tighter against him, Enosh stepped through the parting crowd. Whispers, pleas, wails, and promises—he ignored them all and walked outside.
Wax from the candlemaker scented the air, the sky above us still gray. A small group of men stood gathered beside our horse, all armed with daggers and the occasional sword. Except for the priest, who clutched the Tome of Helfa to his robed chest as though it would help him.
He made the sign of Helfa—two fingers tapping his forehead before he lifted them heavenward. “In the name of Helfa the Allfather, I hereby demand you surrender yourself to His holy judgment. High Priest Dekalon has long ordered your arrest, so you may stand trial for your crimes committed against this realm.”
Unimpressed, Enosh only lifted me onto the horse’s back. “Leave, and you shall escape with your life.”
Metal hissed when a man unsheathed his sword, giving pause to my next inhale. Clueless idiots, all of them, though I could hardly blame them for their ignorance.
My eyes flicked nervously to those few villagers hiding between merchant stands and hides stretched on frames. Being among this many people with the god was uncharted territory for me—there was just no telling if he would spare them… or kill them all.
Fearing the latter, I addressed the townsfolk, “Listen to his warning, or he’ll—”
“Capture him!” the priest shouted. “And take the woman.”
Fool!
While most men scattered to surround Enosh, one made the mistake of setting his eyes on me. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, wretch?”
With one quick leap, Enosh dug his fingers into the man’s greasy brown hair and yanked him before the gasping crowd. One moment, the god’s other hand was empty and the next, his fingers wrapped around the handle of an alabaster blade.
He stabbed it into the man’s throat.
Bile rose behind my tongue.
The man clasped his hands to his neck. Blood sprayed from the gaps between his fingers with each beat of his heart, forceful at first, but then quickly slowed into trickles. His knees hit the blood-splattered ground with athudbefore he collapsed to the side and twitched.
Frozen in shock, everyone stared at Enosh as he held his hand over the corpse and said, “Watch. Watch and see what happens when you cross me.” When the man’s body had only just stilled, Enosh’s voice verged a dark growl. “Rise!”
The man stood in an instant and turned toward Enosh, struggling to lift his head where the blade must have injured sinew and muscle, yet he snarled, “What’ve y-you done?”
“Witchcraft…” the word mumbled from many mouths at once. “Dark magic!”
Enosh tossed the bone blade to the man—who caught it with ease—before he gazed over the crowd. “Seek me out, mortals, and you shall end like him.”
No sooner had Enosh spoken the words did the man thrust the blade into his belly. He stared down at himself, screaming frantically, stabbing himself so many times the air soon reeked of shit. His tattered cotton trews darkened as urine trickled down his legs, pooling by one foot.
Screams, prayers, curses… Chaos descended upon the town as its inhabitants fled into their homes—as did the remaining men, leaving the priest stammering a prayer.
I pressed a finger against my trembling lips as Enosh mounted behind me, my stomach convulsing in a never-ending cramp. I was no whimpering thing who fainted at the sight of blood, but I’d had about enough for one day.
At the horse’s first step, bone chips fell away from around me. They piled on the ground in a cacophony ofclinksandclanks, like snow crystals hitting a frozen lake in the depth of winter. What remained was another dress of feathers, a soft yellow this time.
“I sense your unease,” Enosh said.
If he expected me to tell him that caging those men behind bone would have ensured our escape just the same, then he underestimated my resolve to seeallpeople rot in the ground.
I wasn’t a fool.
Over time, more such incidents would follow once Enosh rode the lands again, undoubtedly running into religious fanatics and the soldiers sworn to defend their cause. I’d rather him kill them than see the god captured again, sparking such a rage inside him it would take another two centuries to abate, ruining all my efforts.
I might have all of eternity to get Enosh to do his damn job again, but I’d prefer another month, maybe two. Whoever he killed during that time would serve a higher purpose, right? He had warned them; Enosh didn’t kill indiscriminately.
No, he didn’t.
