The Execution (31 page)

The two sat silently for a long
moment, Henri allowing the opium tar to mix with his own saliva,
cutting in short time the pain that was his daily
disposition.

D’ata sighed softly, oddly comforted
by the familiarity of his friend’s habit. Henri had been introduced
to the rare drug by a Persian merchant, a trader of linen who’d
visited the estate for the purposes of business. The unusual fellow
had taken a critical liking to the fine horses the Henri’s breeding
program produced and in return, beside Eastern gold, he’d offered
the drug to monsieur Cezanne and to the stable master. Henri had
become dependent upon the relief that the unusual black tar offered
him, and it allowed him respite from a disease which would have
otherwise put him under a long time before now.

The younger one reached an arm around
his old friend, pulling the crooked little man underneath his arm
and smiled. “It’s all right, Henri. If you cannot help me—it is all
right.”

Henri harrumphed, struggling to free
himself from the hold of the young farmer-priest. He grumbled,
finally swallowing the sweet, bitter relief, already comforted by
the strange medicine. “I didn’t say I would not help you, only that
I think you’ve taken all leave of your senses.”

He struggled to stand, slapping away
the hand that D’ata offered. “Keep your mitts off me! What? You
take me for an invalid now?” He shuffled off unsteadily towards his
little room, taking the lamp with him. D’ata hesitated and Henri
stopped, glancing back over his shoulder, pointing at him with one
of his canes. “Well? Get off your ragged ass and come with
me!”

D’ata grinned and stood, following his
friend.

Merely an hour later, D’ata stole away
from the Cezanne estate. Inside his shirt was a carefully scrawled
map, scratched out by the old horse trainer onto a deed of sale for
a long deceased horse. It would guide D’ata to Julianne.

He rode an old mare, much like the one
Julianne had ridden to find D’ata three months before. The horse
plodded along. Her stride was heavy and slow, her cadence
immutable. The heart of the one who rode her soared as though they
both had wings.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

†

The Dungeon: Two a.m.

Ravan nodded to no one in particular.
The confines of the cell had been reduced to the small, safe space
the brothers shared as the stories pulled them away from the
terrible here and now.

Obviously, D’ata sat there with Ravan
and—Julianne did not. It did not need to be spoken aloud, but the
sorrow the young priest wore as his second skin was starting to
make sense to the prisoner. Something had happened—something
unspeakable.

It was just about then that the
transition began to occur as they became human to one other. The
bond which had been torn from them twenty-three years ago rose from
beneath the depths of their being to claim its birthright. They
were becoming the brothers they’d always been.

D’ata mourned the torture and
heartache that Ravan, the child, had endured at the hands of
Duval.

Ravan shifted in the straw, his mind
also elsewhere as he envisioned D’ata on the outskirts of
Marseille, plodding along on an old horse—in love. He was deeply
lost in his thoughts about this, rubbing his chin absently, when
something caught his eye from down the black hall from between the
cells. “Did you see that?”

His brother looked up, pulling himself
back from the dregs of the past as well. “What?”

“
I don’t know—something. I
thought someone was there.” Ravan squinted, peering into the
darkness.

“
It’s the dungeons I
think. Remember that happened to me a while ago,” D’ata brushed it
off.

“
I suppose so. Truthfully,
I should be totally mad by now.” Ravan discarded the odd moment as
well.

Apparitions vanquished, the two
stepped back into the pulse of their memories and were swept back
into the journey of their past.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

†

Renoir never made it back to the Inn
to kill the Fat Wife. The slow cranial bleed Ravan gifted him with
on the practice grounds sent him sliding from his horse eight days
later. The animal made its way to a farm several weeks later and
learned to plow a field. Renoir, quite alive but barely able to
move, could not defend himself at all when the wolves
came...

* * *

Ravan fought.

Whenever and whomever Duval wished for
him to fight, he fought. Day after day on the training grounds
Ravan was defeated. Every time he hit the ground, he rose again
until he could rise no more and LanCoste would half carry the boy
back to his quarters. It was mind numbing, and it served to help
Ravan displace the pain in his heart. Renoir had not yet returned
with the head of the Innkeeper’s wife, but of one thing he was
certain—Duval would have his way. She was dead.

In Ravan’s mind, the Fat Wife had been
murdered, and it was his fault. He would not make the same mistake
again, would not allow it. There were the orphans, the daughters,
and the Old One to think of now. He was determined that others,
including himself, would suffer long before he would allow those he
loved to endure the same fate.

Ravan was isolated at the fortress.
There was no outside contact, no information, and no communication.
A man without mercy had forced him into a position that afforded no
options. It was an imposed job, and a dreadful one. He was a
servant of oppression, allowed nothing other than training, eating,
and sleeping.

As the days turned into weeks and
weeks evolved into months, his wounds healed and his strength
returned. More seldom did the young man hit the dirt on the
training grounds and, one by one, his opponents backed away. One
evening, when LanCoste looked him over at the end of battle
training, Ravan shook his head and returned to his quarters
alone.

The boy disappeared and in his place
stepped a man, his body sinewy and strong, his demeanor fierce and
cold. From the outside the man was unflinching. From within,
however, his heart was fractured and beyond repair.

Ravan swallowed his hatred like rancid
bile, closing it away into his core, locking it into a place where
it could not escape. Caged, his hatred only grew stronger, filling
in short time the recesses meant for love. The salve he spread upon
it was the ferocity with which he fought. It was the true armor he
wore—the shell of the chain mail and plates only dressed it
out.

He knew it was unacceptable to kill
even one of Duval’s men, but he brutally thrashed any sparring
partner LanCoste now paired with him.

In no time at all, the thin,
half-starved adolescent became a tempered and polished soldier. He
ate ravenously, his body greedily replacing thready sinew with
heavy muscled mass. His reflexes became lightning quick, his hands
deadly, his mercy—forgotten.

His hair grew long and he braided it
into a single long rope down his back. With his maturity came a
dark mask on his face, his beard adding a sinister element to his
already stoic and primitive nature. Coupled with his uncanny
instincts, Ravan had become in very short time Duval’s deadliest
mercenary. Before long, none sparred with him other than the giant.
There was no need and none were compelled to take him
on.

Again he lapsed into silence, speaking
only when absolutely necessary. He was alone. Even the initial
friendship he thought might develop with the giant was only a
splintered possibility.

In his sleep, Ravan dreamed of the
Innkeeper’s wife. He would awaken confused with wet eyes and a
cold, tear stained face.

As always, there was the memory of
Pierre, somewhere in the shadows, watching from the corners of his
memory. He wondered if Pierre had helped Renoir murder her,
compounding his grisly ruminations with visions increasingly
graphic as time went by. Before long, Ravan intended that revenge
must be served. It was a death task, something to be completed
before he died.

Sitting alone next to the smith’s
fire, Ravan was tempering arrow tips when this thought of sweet
revenge brought the glimpse of a rare and fleeting smile to the
unhappy face of the young mercenary. Carefully he laid the barbs
into the bed of coals with the smith’s tongs, allowing the metal to
turn a deep, glowing red.

The fire warmed Ravan’s face on this,
one of the last cold days of spring. April was gone and May was
whispering softly to the trees as the boughs sagged heavily with
warming snow. Winter held long this year. It had been that way for
several years now, and people suffered for this as crops grew
poorly. Ravan, however, didn’t notice this. All was a dark despair
in his world.

Hammering the steel carefully, he
looked up as another slough of snow fell from an overloaded branch
to splat upon the ground nearby. The sun was faintly warm on his
back and he wore only his battle leathers, his chain plating
hanging nearby.

He went back to his task, intent on
perfection. There were weapon smiths within the compound whose
tasks were simply to make weapons. Ravan found them inadequate and
rejected their work. They didn’t even rival the arrows he'd
fashioned as a boy back at the orphanage.

The hammer struck again, sparks giving
way to perfection beneath.

Concentrating, he created a
masterpiece, whetting the edges of the arrow tip on the stone
before meticulously placing it into a poplar shaft that he’d hand
picked and then honed until true. The swan feathers were placed
with precision, seated into the fine grooves he filed and finished
with glue. Then came the filaments, wound perfectly with not one
thread overlapping.

As he finished the arrow, he tested
the weight and balance of it, standing casually to look down the
length of it to a distant target. Methodically, he stepped out from
the smith’s shed into the sunlight, pulled the yew bow from his
back, and seated the arrow with mechanical precision and swiftness.
Without hesitation, he let it fly. True as its maker, it rose into
a speeding arc, descended like a sliver of death, and found the
heart of the practice target. He did not notice as more than a few
of the mercenary soldiers paused to watch in silent awe.

With his expression unchanged, Ravan
turned matter-of-factly back to his work to temper the next tip. By
day’s end the target would carry a quiver’s worth of the deadliest
weapons ever fashioned.

* * *

Duval watched from a vantage point on
the tower, nodding his approval as the young man worked. He had a
month earlier witnessed Ravan effectively and methodically disable
five of his best men in the courtyard. It was unnatural. He knew
that none other than LanCoste sparred with the mercenary now, and
no one but the giant could even draw Ravan’s bow.

“
He is ready, LanCoste. It
is spring. I wish to send Ravan to battle.” Duval announced as he
studied his mercenary in the courtyard below.

The towering LanCoste regarded his
master dispassionately and only nodded.

“
I will send him to
Tuscany,” Duval continued. “Charles has need of troops to defend
Paris from the Jacquerie. Ravan will have opportunity to amply test
the waters of his new skills.”

Greeted without response, Duval looked
up into the blank eyes of the giant. “Do not fail me, LanCoste—I
have invested much.”

Silence and an unreadable expression
were agreement enough. The giant turned and left to prepare a
battalion for Paris.

* * *

Nicolette arrived at Adorno’s massive
and elaborately decorated room as per Moulin’s order. She tapped
softly on the door with her fingernail and stepped elegantly into
the room. Glancing slowly about herself, she again noticed the
beautiful but macabre pieces of art which Adorno chose to decorate
his sleeping chamber.

Nearby, on top of a dresser was a
caged bird. She walked purposefully to the cage, reached within,
and grasped the dove, cradling it in one hand as she went to the
nearest window. Shoving at the exquisitely bejeweled rose window,
she thrust open the sash, fracturing one of the stone mounts as she
did.

The emerald fell twenty meters,
shattering upon the stone walk below. She watched, expressionless,
then released the bird. It found its wings, swooped elegantly down
and disappeared into the forest below.

Leaving the window ajar, she turned
and walked slowly to one of the walls, passing a pale hand over one
of the paintings. There were wretched portrayals of the fall of
man, beasts fornicating with humans as they descended to hell, men
coupling in godless orgies.

Nicolette recognized the theme of the
dance macabre and the underlying masterpiece of the works and even
recognized the signature of some of the artists. She mused that
nowhere was there a piece of simple beauty and paintings of
children were not allowed. Nicolette wasn’t shocked at all by this
and neither was she disturbed by it. Instead, she was oddly
detached. It was simply an observation.