Scar Night Page 0,42
execution. They waited silent and motionless beneath the rusted mass of chains around the watchtower, but Mr. Nettle sensed an urgency in the air that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
Low in the west, spears of sunlight punched through growing thunderheads. Scar Night was close.
Barraby’s watchtower reached up through the chains—a fist of crumpled, fire-blackened battlements. They had bricked up the door and window two thousand years ago, but it was said that footsteps could still be heard within, or even the braying and cackling of demons.
Mr. Nettle shoved his trolley forward under spans of chain, clipping shins and ankles as he went. Flies buzzed around him. He made his way around the killing stage to where the temple carts waited, piled high with offerings for Ulcis: worked iron, copper and wood, flowers and swords, each gift the finest sample of the giver’s trade. After the execution, the carts would be brought back to the temple, and the gifts cast into the abyss.
A bloody waste.
Two temple regulars in half-plate stood guard over the carts. At the sound of Mr. Nettle’s trolley, the nearer looked up. “What you got there?” he rumbled. “Iron?”
Mr. Nettle grunted. “Nothing for you.”
“These shows aren’t free.”
“Didn’t come here to watch no pilgrims bleed.”
“On your way, then.”
Shoulders hunched, Mr. Nettle brushed past. Nothing worse than soldiers with nothing to do. The man ought to be grateful he had a job, as there were fewer than nine hundred regulars still in Church employ, the bulk of those garrisoned in the river towns. Thousands more had been demoted to the rank of reservist. They received no pay: nothing to show from their days spent in the army except their weapons and armour, and they had to keep those clean and sharp for regular inspection, on pain of the Avulsior’s displeasure. Deepgate’s cavalry had been similarly reduced, the warhorses sold to merchants for cart-work, or to the Fleshmarket butchers and the Gluemen.
A murmur swept through the crowd, and Mr. Nettle turned to see Ichin Samuel Tell, the Avulsior himself, climb the stairs to the killing stage. A hollow-faced man in black robes, his thin beard oiled and sharp as a spike, Ichin Samuel Tell was head of the Spine. He spoke quietly to one of the two temple guards present, who straightened, then nodded, and began to drag the first pilgrim forward.
The bark-skinned Heshette warrior did not struggle or even raise his head from his chest. His eyes were closed: evidently he was praying. The rest stood in a line behind him, wrists and ankles raw from their manacles. Half a dozen men, two women, one young boy sobbing, they all wore rags the colour of sand.
Mr. Nettle quickened his pace, shoving his trolley on past a flock of perfumed nobles and matching the glare of their bodyguards with his own. Maybe this cull was right, and maybe it wasn’t: he didn’t much like to think about such things. But, darkness take him, he was not about to stay and watch it.
The Avulsior consulted a scroll before he turned to face the crowd and spoke out in a dead voice. “This man is a heathen and a blasphemer.”
The crowd roared. “Redemption!”
“So be it.” Ichin Tell then muttered blessings while the first temple guard opened the Sinners’ Well—a shaft through the killing stage into the abyss below—ready to receive the body after the soul had been redeemed. The second guard tightened a noose around the pilgrim’s neck, before he stooped to unwrap the hatchets and wire saws from their burlap covering. Redemption by rope alone, the Spine had long ago discovered, lacked enough flavour to satisfy the mob. Blood must be shed over Sinners’ Well.
Blessed blood, but…Mr. Nettle saw the same look in every face in the crowd: avid revulsion mixed with a hunger for the horrific and the grotesque. And more than that: the need to witness something dangerous, to feel that space between each heartbeat. Baiting hell to validate the abyss.
Two faces of the Church of Ulcis: Sypes with his angel, the Spine with their Sinners’ Well. An uneasy balance of power between them, but for how long? Most folks thought Sypes had grown indolent, or even senile.
Only one angel in the temple now, and the old man’s to blame for that. Should have made Gaine take another wife. No shortage of girls who would become martyrs. Mr. Nettle glanced again at the eager faces around him, and grunted. Or families who’d force their daughters