Casavir learns many things.
He learns that dying people do not understand that they are dying and must be given the small grace of that ignorance. All those schoolbooks that instilled in him the simple rule 'a paladin does not lie' failed to mention that there are days when a paladin must lie twenty times a day, and Tyr will not strike him with his wrath, because there is no way a living being can tell the truth to a child in fever who asks if he will get better despite the black, gaping sores all over his little body.
Casavir was first ascribed to the task of tending to the dying because he is stronger than many servants of Tyr, and these people needed to be lifted to change their sheets or help them see the sky for the last time. He also carries them out when all hope is lost and their bodies are but empty shells. His back hurts at the end of his shift, but it is nothing compared to how his heart hurts. The temple is full of the dying who hoped to get help here or wanted to keep their families from the infection and the horror of their last days. This horror belongs to the temple now, and Casavir learns that a human body is fragile, that it aches and smells and produces all sorts of liquids, that the mind often lags behind in comprehending the changes the body is experiencing, that feverish people will try to rise and will hurt themselves, that he needs to keep his voice quiet and steady even if he is on the verge of tears.
Soon there are too many patients, and not enough space for them, and some of the priests at the temple die, too. Not all of them die of the plague though – the kind-hearted Father Farlon works himself into exhaustion, softens every soul with his warm smile, keeps up small talk with critical patients; Casavir brings him a jug of water as the carefree Father strokes the hair of a woman who smells of graves and cemeteries, and not for the lack of hygiene – and later that night they find Father Farlon hanging off the meat hook in the cellar. This is the first time he hears Catherine swear like an angry pirate, and Tyr does not take his grace from her either. There are human limits that their stern god understands.
The winter days are short, and the night sky has an orange shade from all the bonfires that burn on the streets. Initially many people did not believe in the plague, and now there is no ignoring it. It enters every district. The quarantined city is on the verge of an open rebellion: many citizens are eager to flee the plague-infested city, but the city guard have blocked all the gates so that the plague does not sweep through the whole coast. It makes sense to check the spread of the disease, and grateful towns send food and supplies; it is very cruel towards those healthy individuals that must stay in. Many families have locked themselves in their homes, and here and there you can see sealed windows and barred doors. Others are not that lucky – losing a job means losing the rent means losing the shelter and living on the streets where the plague reigns.
Casavir learns that even if not one of the infected has been healed, they still hope and crawl to the temples, camp around them in the piercing March wind, ask for a blessing even if they can see that the grim youngster with a beardless face is no priest. They see the symbol of Tyr on his neck and hold out their hands and ask for any acknowledgement of the simple fact that they are alive. They grab him with their shriveled, blackened hands and hold on to him until he says something – even if it is a modest "May Tyr be with you" which has next to no divine magic in it. Now that the inflow of patients overfilled the wards, the temple, the gallery and spilled into the square in front of it, Casavir is one of those who give out bread and soup once a day and water three times a day outside the temple, and every morning he carries the corpses of the unfortunate to the pyre in the church cemetery. Fenthick Moss sent him here himself when the temple decided that they would only let children and young mothers inside, and most of them weigh little, so his strength can be applied elsewhere.
Fenthick also advised Casavir to look stern and imposing so that the poor people outside let him do his work and believe he would be fair in distributing the food. Casavir can only hope his unsmiling and exhausted face can count as imposing.
Over that month, the crowd grows thinner, and Casavir realizes that it literally dies out. Death tolls continue to rise, and the city guard and militia have lost half of their forces to the plague and sporadic outbreaks of violence. The plague is contagious, and people who are in direct contact with the sick often contract it – guards, priests, traders, beggars, hookers. However, here and there one hears stories of locked houses full of dead bodies, of whole families that succumbed to the disease in complete safety and isolation. Rumours are flying, and conspiracy theories are running rampart. The fact that neither magical nor regular healing can cure the plague adds to the panic. The fact that none of the paladins at the temple have caught the disease despite continuous exposure suggests that this is no ordinary epidemic.
In April, the long winter retreats further to the North, and though the death is feasting on the city as greedily as before, the citizens grow tired of being afraid. Casavir learns that with time people can get used to anything including the stench of plague-infested bodies by their door, or the constant danger, or even death of the people they know.
The warm weather lures hesitant walkers out. Green leaves and apple blossom and nesting birds obscure the horrors around. Bakers start to bake bread again, smiths work their anvils, psychics tell the fortune, young couples sneak out into the parks, rich people even host parties and complain of the quarantine. The city is a surreal combination of contrasts, and Casavir is alarmed to notice them everywhere: two people kissing in the glow of a funeral bonfire; kittens playing with a boot of a dead man; horses in ornate livery pulling an expensive carriage – and ugly fat rats scuttling away from under their hooves. At the temple they still have no time to take a breath, but outside the citizens stopped worrying and decided to go down with a flourish, drunk and loud.
With fewer people turning to the temple for help, Casavir is assigned a different duty. He walks from house to house and picks up the dead. In the small district to the south of the temple which he patrols daily he finds ten to twenty every day. All respect has flown down the gutter, and families now dump their dead right on the side of the road, too afraid to touch them to carry them to the burning bonfires. Casavir pulls a cart, pick up the dead, hauls the cart to the bonfire site, chops communal wood left there by the city guard once a week, builds a pyre, says an appropriate prayer, and starts the fire.
At times he loses all sense of age or time or place and feels like he is not sixteen anymore – an ancient man, a man so old that there is no counting his years, and he is afraid that he is going to see these sights again many years later, that this vague apprehension is a harbinger of horrors to come.
When the numbers of the recently deceased stop scaring the population and turn into empty news, familiar and regular like the sunrise, Casavir takes it upon himself to look into the face of each corpse he burns, to spare a minute to observe whatever signs of individuality he can find, and to record his daily labour in as much detail as he can after a long day of work. A middle-aged human woman, short chestnut hair, brown eyes, rather short and petite, clad in a dark green tabard over a brown skirt, a birthmark on her left cheek, an old crescent-shaped burn mark on her right palm. A young dwarf, forty years or so, his red beard in curls, blue eyes, crooked teeth and top right canine missing, clad in leather trousers marred with tar and charcoal stains and a grey tunic with elbow-long sleeves, no obvious scars. An elderly man, bald with long grey whiskers, eye color unknown, sea-related tattoos all over his forearms, the most memorable a squid wrapping its tentacles around a coffin, poor clothes of indistinguishable colour and fashion. Casavir keeps his records in the temple library and hopes that someday in the future the dead he burns will have their names back when their relatives come looking for them and recognize them from his notes.
Yet there is life even in the middle of worst disasters, and he is a sixteen-year-old. Like green grass bursting through the pavement, smiles and little moments of mirth burst through the dire days. There are jokes and pats on the shoulder and friendly nods and thankful patients and creative curses and silly yet harmless mistakes. What is more, some people do recover, and every miracle of this sort is worth all the fatigue and labour.
In May, Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande requests healthy people of faith to be reassigned for patrolling the Beggar's Nest. Rumour has it that some of the dead rose from the streets and linger as zombies. Fenthick Moss needs all the hands he has at the temple, but he does not have the heart to outright refuse the love of his life, and they keep exchanging polite remarks – she insists, he complains – until Casavir shows up in the passageway with a load of fresh linens for the ward. It is the end of the day, he is mortally tired, and he only picked up the linens on his way because Sister Arian asked for his assistance, so he stops as if in a haze when Lady Aribeth calls for him to approach. She measures him up and he can see a flicker of recognition in her almond-shaped elven eyes, even if she does not remember his name.
"You, lad. You know how to wield a sword, and carrying baskets is not helping anyone," she shrugs contemptuously and Casavir is too tired to disagree or explain, so he just nods to the part about swords and wielding. "We need more armed men in the streets, the Beggar's Nest is now infested with the undead. Will you go there and fight them?"
For some reason, Casavir cannot refuse her, not when her voice is ringing and she looks stunningly fierce as if Tyr's light surrounds her. He hears himself answer before he registers a silent 'please no' that is cast all over Fenthick's honest face:
"I will, my lady".
"Good." Aribeth gives a triumphant look to Fenthick Moss. "Show up at the militia headquarters by the East Gate tomorrow at sunrise. Have your bag with you, you will probably move there for several weeks."
She turns on her heel and forgets about him immediately, and Casavir takes it as a dismissal. When an hour later Catherine confronts him about his volunteering to leave the temple, he sighs and shrugs and tells her he was not really volunteering. He did not have the heart to refuse. Catherine gives him a healthy punch in the shoulder and rolls her eyes in a way that makes her twenty years younger.
"I should refuse to be your mentor, boy. Do you even remember I am supposed to advise you and keep track of your progress? Do you even try to consult me before making any decision at all? Well, don't blame me if you die out there. May Tyr have mercy on you, stupid, silly, brainless puppy." She is not really angry though, and Casavir takes the scolding for what it is: her unique way to apologize that during these months she as good as forgot about her apprentice. They all had other things to do.
He learns that no matter how awful everything is, it can always be worse just around the corner. The Beggar's Nest is more like hell than part of a once prosperous city.
After some heavily moustached sergeant grumbles for a good hour that they are recruiting children now and that every piece of simple leather armour is either short or wide on his frame, Casavir is paired off with Jane, a serious middle-aged woman from the city guard and leaves for the militia's temporary headquarters in the poorest district. During the day, they patrol the streets to pick up and burn as many corpses as they can, help the survivors block the doors and ground windows, escort those who have some place to leave for. During the night, they defend the headquarters from the undead and catch some sleep in the bunk beds upstairs in between the attacks.
He learns that if nobody answers his knock at the door, it is better to break the door, for there are corpses inside. And he is lucky if the corpses are not walking. He learns to wear leather gloves at all times because rotten bodies easily disintegrate under their own weight. He also learns that the undead do not feel, even if it is a little girl clutching a remnant of a toy in her skeletal hands, but he is discomforted with killing them anyway.
One of these days he is patrolling the smaller northern side streets alone because Jane is down with something that might be the plague, but hopefully is just a fever. Later he will remember this day as a typical one: knocking on doors and asking the locals how many people are inside and if they are all alive and healthy; breaking into one lifeless house to discover two zombies loitering in the kitchen, one of them very hostile and the other completely disengaged from their fight; burning two more bodies in a bonfire. This is also the day when he meets the Hero of Neverwinter.
The said Hero is a young mage, hardly five years older than Casavir himself. He is wearing a simple brown robe, his hair is so blond and full of soot that it looks grey, and he is resting his weight against a long crooked staff wearily as he asks Casavir pointed, no-nonsense questions. A burly half-orc is looming behind the mage, his face is seemingly disinterested, but intelligent and alert. Casavir does his best to provide answers: there are more undead now than there were a week ago; they are not particularly strong; they do seem to be much more active at night; no, the paladins at the temple do not get sick, and he seems to be the only paladin on patrol duty; yes, paladins are generally immune to death magic; he did take his vows early, but these are testing times; no, he normally has a partner, but she is sick today; no, he did not see any animals in the street this week; no, he has not heard about Waterdhavian animals; yes, he has heard about the attack at the Academy. The mage gazes into his face with his most ridiculous sea-green eyes and asks about his name. His full name, he insists when Casavir touches the holy symbol on his neck and replies that he is Casavir of Tyr.
He abandoned his family name in January – with the vows. He is Casavir, simply that. Casavir of Tyr is more than enough. His family name deserved no tribute; it had a weight of its own, and what a heavy weight it was. His god deserved better than the vanity and ritualistic greed of continuity of people who hold on to their names as if they explain anything about them. For some reason, he puts it all into words for the young sharp mage, and the mage nods and introduces himself before going about his way.
This is how Casavir will know what the Hero of Neverwinter was called when the mage is banished from the city and his name is lost to intrigues and public lies and uncomfortable secrets. He will hear this name once again when the plague is over because the young mage with green eyes retrieved the cure and found out that the Helmites had been part of the cult that cursed citizens with their blessings and that Luskan was behind this epidemic. He will hear his name for several times in the war that will follow at the heels of that discovery. When people around him tell of a valiant hero, or a cynical betrayer, or a grim lunatic, Casavir will think of an angry young man with a quiet determination in his eyes and place little trust in these accounts.
In July, the undead quiet down as if the summer heat disagrees with them, and their team has more burying than fighting to do again. When heralds trot through the streets and declare that the long-awaited cure has been obtained, Casavir returns to his temple only to find it in disarray: it turns out that street preachers were lacing their blessings with curses, and when their leader went down, he took Fenthick with him. The gentle-hearted head priest is now imprisoned in Castle Never and he is going on trial for high treason.
Casavir cannot believe that the kind and selfless half-elf who took so many deaths so close to heart might be at the core of the conspiracy, and surely the judges will know that. He tries to rally the others to write a letter to the court to bear witness to what kind of person Fenthick Moss is, but nobody seems to support the idea. He writes the letter himself and offers the templars to sign it, but only Catherine and a couple of nurses do – and Catherine seems to do it out of pity rather than genuine conviction. He attempts to approach Judge Olaf and volunteer to be a witness of character at the trial; Judge Olaf keeps silent for a long time and says reluctantly that there will be no witnesses this time. Fenthick Moss confessed and pleaded guilty. Casavir is dumbfound. He works through that week in a fog and at last concludes that Fenthick must feel guilty of what happened even if he is not truly guilty in the gods' eyes. His request for an audience with the prisoner is refused, his attempts to seek Lady Aribeth are ignored. He is a sixteen-year-old boy in mismatched armour, and the world does not care for his opinion.
On the day of the trial Casavir goes to the court square – the process is public, so a podium is erected in front of the castle, and around it there is an angry, roaring sea of plague survivors. He is smothered by the crowd and he realizes with horror that everybody around him is out for blood. They loathe the poor priest on the podium, they curse his name and scream obscenities at the shaking form kneeling before the judges. Casavir cannot hear a word of what is being said, he tries pushing closer and cannot. He sees Judge Olaf stand up, raise his hands, and enquire the crowd – this must be the final question, and Casavir tears his throat raw screaming "Innocent!" at the top of his lungs.
His voice is drowned by the storm of anger around him, and several good citizens turn to him and decide to release some of their frustration and shut him up by the oldest and very satisfying way of several heavy blows into the jaw of the trouble-maker.
With a spectacular bruise on his face, Casavir returns to the temple and goes up into the dorm without a word. He does not go to the execution; he burns with grim anger as if it is some sort of fever. An innocent person was hung, a servant of justice found no justice, the one who sacrificed so much for the sake of the city was shown no mercy, and the city was greedy for his death. Casavir deals with this injustice like he deals with everything else: he buries it deep and throws himself into work and training so that his every waking moment is occupied. He tells himself that this execution is not Neverwinter, but rather its corruption by the plague, that the raw hatred he witnessed at the square was like the anger of a wounded animal who kicks and bites because it is in pain, and even if these people made this terrible mistake, they still deserve protection and justice. Whoever sent this plague is to blame for Fenthick Moss's death.
Catherine sets him fifty pages of daily reading as an extra chore. These are books he did not have access to before – thick volumes on monsters and beasts, orcs and trolls, undead creatures and fey, devils and demons: their anatomy, their advantages in combat, their weaknesses, their habits, their cultures. Everything in these books of elven origin is about killing them with as much efficiency as possible, and Casavir cannot but question whether there used to be books like that on humans and dwarves as well. He learns whole pages by heart studiously and reports his progress to Catherine once a week at dinner; she nods and dumps a fresh bucket of distantly relevant stories on him so that his education has some semblance of practicality.
In October, Luskan invades Port Llast, and a bloody war follows at the heels of the plague. Casavir tends to the wounded delivered to the temple and trains until he can barely stand. The troops march north, refugees flood the city instead, and everybody can feel a black shadow approach as the news relays defeat after defeat. The temple is now a war hospital, with hundreds of the wounded delivered here from the frontline. There are soldiers who lost a limb; there are soldiers who caught an arrow and it was easier to transport them for a full day than kill them by pulling it out on the spot; there are soldiers with wounds and burns and fractures. Most of these things could have been healed if there were an experienced healer at hand, but healers are counted by tens and soldiers by thousands, so priests in the field must assign priorities: first those who need a little magic to stay alive, then those who need a little magic to stay in the fight. Everyone beyond these two categories must die or be sent to the city. In the city, there are soon priorities assigned as well: everyone who can heal naturally should heal naturally, scars and pain and all that, and the priests will try to help as many of the others as they can.
On his name day, Casavir works well into the night. He is dizzy with hunger. He has been on his feet since last night, and somehow food has never made it into his list of immediate priorities. Every time he paused to think of it, there was another soldier in front of him whose wounds needed dressing or cleaning; leaving the hospital for something so mundane as food seemed selfish. He lies down on his narrow cot in the dorm and stares at the ceiling. He can feel his fate tighten into a knot, and here is another moment of ringing clarity that staying in the safety of the city walls will mean losing a part of what he is. People are dying out there, and he will not be able to look into the mirror and respect himself if he keeps off the worst that is happening.
He has turned seventeen, and this is the appointed minimal age for recruits, so in the morning he informs Catherine that he cannot stay behind anymore and goes to the subscription office. An old lieutenant slaps him on his shoulder, writes his name down, asks if he wants the cost of his armour deducted from his allowance, shoves a military backpack into his hands, and sends Casavir to the sanitary tent for the briefest health inspection he has ever witnessed.
In the chilly November morning of the following day, their company marches off through the northern gate.
