The tavern was alive with merriment.

The arbalest drunkenly staggered through a hornpipe with a whore on each arm, and the grave robber was tossing her knives at the jester. He caught each of them deftly, incorporating them into the circle of blades he juggled at chest-height, laughing as though there wasn't the slightest chance of losing fingers. The hound master diced with the man-at-arms as his dog went begging from table to table, and the vestal's lovely voice—usually reserved for hymns—was raised in song. The verses were relatively clean, but her cheeks were still flushed red as cherries.

The loudest revelers were either the newcomers, who knew nothing of the horrors surrounding the hamlet, or the veterans, who were desperate to forget them. Dismas was currently being harassed by one of the former group.

"You're the one called Dismas?" the bounty hunter asked, pulling up a chair beside him at the table.

The highwayman nodded an agreement, taking a sip of his beer so that he was spared from having to reply.

"The highwayman Dismas?"

"Have you met another?"

"No. I was just expecting someone… taller." The bounty hunter's lip twitched in a smile.

Dismas grunted, hand straying to his dirk under the table. "There are advantages to being shorter than most men," he said. "For one, it's so much easier to slit them open at their belli—"

The dirk was only a third of the way out of its sheath when the bounty hunter grabbed him, slamming Dismas onto the table and wrenching his arm up behind his back. Beer spilled across the splintery wood. The dirk clattered onto the floor. Dismas groaned, then gasped as pain lanced up his arm.

"You're getting old, highwayman," the bounty hunter growled into his ear. "And slow."

Dismas made a protesting noise against the table. Beer was soaking into his hair.

"You also have quite the bounty on your head, which I'm tempted to collect—there's a certain righteousness to bringing in killers of women and children."

Reynauld's armored boots came into view. In a voice that had cracked across a hundred dusty battlefields, he spoke: "Enough. We have come here for redemption, not blood money. Release the highwayman."

There was a pause, and then the bounty hunter gave in. The pressure of his hands vanished from Dismas' body, and the highwayman staggered upright. He left the tavern, tripping over a chair leg in his haste and then gasping in the cool darkness of the autumn evening as the door closed behind him. The wind cut like a knife through his shirt, and he pulled his overcoat tight around himself. His head cleared somewhat.

He wasn't that kind of killer. He had his morals, grey and tattered though they were. No bullet or blade of his had ever touched a woman or child, except—

Except. That damning except.

Dismas drew a shuddering breath and rubbed a hand over his face.

A square of warm yellow lamplight was thrown against the highwayman's back as the tavern door opened, a burst of laughter and song issuing forth into the night with it. Both were swiftly cut off as the door closed again.

Reynauld's voice, softer this time: "You dropped this."

Dismas accepted his dirk with a mumbled thank-you, fumbling once as he tucked it into its sheath. He didn't look at the crusader; he didn't need to. Reynauld was the very figure of a knight out of a storybook: tall, strong, practically oozing righteousness and piety. It made Dismas want to spit.

A nightjar called somewhere nearby. Crickets chirped. The wind blew. Neither man moved.

"It was an accident," Dismas said, voice hoarse.

The crusader said nothing.

"I had no idea who was in the coach. I never meant to kill them."

The crusader remained mute and the silence pressed down around them, as weighty as a mountain. Dismas clenched his hands into fists to stop their trembling. The nightjar called again, its piping a saw against his spine.

At last, the highwayman's nerve broke. He whirled around, voice shattering the peace of the night: "Say something, damn you!"

"I knew."

"You…"

"I know your sin, Dismas." The crusader's face was as calm as that of a saint facing judgment. "When you were irrational in the Weald, you spoke of it."

Dismas blinked. "I don't remember that."

Reynauld shrugged. "You spoke of it," he repeated.

Dismas eyed him warily. "And?"

Reynauld looked back at him. His face softened from its mask of sainthood, mouth twisting into a bitter smile that made him beautifully and terribly human. Dismas loved him for that smile. "And I am in no position to pass judgment, considering the depth and darkness of my own sins."

The highwayman opened his mouth, then closed it again. The crusader was a staunch bulwark of the Light, so much so that there were times when it was easy to forget that he was only a human man. Like all the rest of them, he had come here seeking redemption. Dismas had never asked what for.

"Come back inside," Reynauld said. "The night is cold, and there's no joy to be had out here."

"I think not," Dismas replied. "If that brat could get the drop on me so easily, I'm drunker than I should be. I'm going back to the barracks."

"Then let me join you."

Dismas shrugged, seemingly indifferent, but made no protest when Reynauld put his arm around his shoulders. He wasn't tall enough to reach the crusader's shoulders in turn, but the weight at the back of his neck was a welcome one, the closeness even more so.

Thanks for reading! I'd really appreciate it if you shared your thoughts about the story.