The Gathering Storm
A horse halted beside him.
“Are you praying?” asked Father Benignus.
He shook mud off his hands before wiping them on his leggings.
“We should all pray, Father,” he said, rising. “A storm is coming.”
The veil that concealed the man’s face shuddered as Benignus shifted his seat in the way an exhausted man fears sliding off into the mire. Yet he did not dismount. He lifted a gloved hand and indicated that Alain should follow him.
Bartholomew had waited at Alain’s side all this time, and he trudged alongside, keeping an arm’s length from the hounds.
“Bitch! These screeching brats can be sold as easily as their sisters and brothers if you sluts can’t keep their mouths shut!”
The rope on Alain’s wrists had been little more than a show of docility. He shook it free now and ran over to place himself between the cringing woman and the stinking, scarred man, who looked eager to crack her across the face a second time. Maybe he was just waiting for an excuse.
“What manner of creature are you,” Alain demanded, “who is such a coward that he must show his strength by bullying those so much weaker than he is?”
“You ass-licking bastard!” roared Stinker, who had the fight he’d been wanting. He lunged.
“Eloie! Eloie! Isabaoth!” He lifted a hand and crushed something in his fist.
Stinker jerked up short an arm’s length from Alain. His scream cut the air, and his face contorted into a rictus of agony as he twitched and danced, slapping himself silly and groaning and shrieking. His leggings soaked with piss, followed by the stink of his bowels as he voided them, and he gibbered and coughed up blood and finally, mercifully, collapsed in a stinking heap on the earth at Alain’s feet.
Silence settled over the camp. The wind died.
One of the toddlers hiccuped a sob before being hustled away by the woman, herself sniffling and choking down tears. The other two children trotted after her on their scrawny legs. Hobbled women scooped them up and stood trembling, eyes lowered.
Sorrow whined and, with a grunt, padded gingerly over to Alain, who stroked him carefully and found the hardening bruise where the staff had struck him along the shoulder. Rage, still growling softly, loped up to stand beside him.
“Don’t touch it!” gasped Bartholomew. “Only Father Benignus is allowed—” He faltered and glanced up to where Father Benignus sat silent, shoulders bowed as if from exhaustion. Ducking his head, he waited for a blow.
No one moved.
Alain peeled away burned tunic from weeping flesh. Stinker wore an amulet around his neck, and it was this crude binding that had erupted into flame and scorched his skin. He stank, indeed, and not just from the pulpy mess he had voided in his death throes. He had been burned from the inside out.
Alain rose and straddled the corpse, lifting his chin as he looked at Father Benignus. “Is this justice?”