Niles
Credits: 'The name of the One God is Mercy...' is from WTNF, p. 353.
A/N: Well, as it turns out, each of the chapters will be focussing on one particular character - canon and original - playing a prominent part in it. After meeting the new Patriarch in the last one, this one will deal with one of the Hunter's servants. I've always wondered which kind of men could willingly have a part in such evil, and for what reasons. Are they all psychopaths just burning to act out their sadistic inclinations? Do they lust for power or want to take revenge on mankind for a real or imagined wrong, or could it be that they aren't that much different from the man in the streets at the end of the day? In honour of the holiday spirit, I opted for a somewhat benevolent approach, giving them a human face, so to say. Gerald Tarrant won't make an appearance until the fourth chapter in person, but I hope that I can keep you sufficiently interested to read on, nonetheless...
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Ten days later, on a crisp late autumn morning with temperatures barely above freezing point, Damien was standing at the northern gate of Jaggonath, keeping an eye out for the legation from Jahanna. He had used the short reprieve for settling his affairs, making his last will as well as writing letters to Her Holiness and his older brother. Pretty close in their childhood, they had become estranged from each other in his mid teens when he had refused to worship the deity Yoshti like the rest of his family and entered the seminary in Ganji-on-the-Cliffs instead. Aaron didn't really need to know what exactly had come to pass in the last three years. He would only throw his hands up in horror and call him a complete and utter nutcase. But as it was very well possible that he would never see him again, he had thought it better to drop his sibling a few words concerning his latest suicidal mission. Just in case.
The former priest wasn't the only one on the lookout. If he had had his way, he would have drawn the veil of silence over the whole questionable affair until they had a bit more substantial to show than the vague hope that the men posing his escort would bring the prisoners along. But discretion didn't seem to be among Temchevar's virtues. Not quite twenty-four hours after he had left the Patriarch to his own devices, the whole metropolis had already been buzzing like a beehive with rumours about the impending exchange. As was to be expected with regard to the human nature, the tales grew ever wilder with each retelling. Word had it that the surviving crusaders had been tortured half to death in order to make them apostatize from their old faith and swear allegiance to the Unnamed instead. As for the womenfolk, well, it didn't take much imagination to picture their fate, being at the complete and utter mercy of fiendish creatures who had forsaken their human birthright and wholeheartedly embraced evil long ago.
Over the last days, the mood of the public had become more and more heated, and Damien didn't harbour a sliver of doubt that it would take only a small spark to make the metaphorical powder keg they were sitting on explode. There was no denying that most people were deadly afraid of the Hunter and would rather cut off their own hand than raising it against one of his servants, but there were always hotheads prone to using their brawns instead of their brains. He didn't even want to imagine Tarrant's retaliation campaign if the citizens of Jaggonath dared to displease him once again so shortly after the failed crusade against his domain. It certainly wouldn't be pleasant.
Somehow, the thoughts of the Lord Mayor on the matter must have lead in roughly the same direction. When Temchevar had done nothing to mitigate the situation, he had imposed a strict curfew, starting at ten o'clock last night. Those who weren't absolutely indispensable at work, mainly healers, nurses and police officers, had to stay at home, whether they liked it or not. But there was no chance in hell to enforce suchlike restrictions on the concerned relatives and friends hoping for the release of their loved ones. Apart from the fact that they least of all people would be foolish enough to attack the delegation from the Forbidden Forest, such a crime against humanity surely wouldn't make a good impression with regard to the next election campaign.
When the riders came into view at long last, the crowd fell so utterly silent that one could have heard a pin drop. An eyewitness of the adept's capacity for cruelty on more occasions than he actually cared to count, Vryce had braced himself for receiving a group of ragged, humiliated individuals half frozen to death, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Tarrant evidently had spared no expense kitting his involuntary guests out, nor had he let them starve in the long weeks of being under his thumb. Wrapped up in splendid white fur coats even royalty wouldn't have been ashamed to parade, each and everyone of them looked well-fed and in high spirits. But it was something else entirely that made him blink in astonishment.
From his one visit at the keep, he remembered the Hunter's servants as shadowy, human-shaped figures swathed in black which somehow seemed to elude any closer scrutiny. However much he had squinted his eyes and tried to recognize their features while handing his mount over to them, they had remained faceless, rather resembling insubstantial spectres than living, breathing humans.
Things evidently had changed profoundly in the meantime. The ten men accompanying the prisoners were garbed in the blue-and-silver livery of the Neocounty of Merentha, the early morning sun glittering on their tresses and richly adorned bridles of their mounts. The tallest of them, a dashing young fellow in his early twenties, even carried a silken banner many an exotic caterpillar must have given its life for, displaying the yellow Earth sun rising over a book whose cover was adorned with golden, interlinking circles, the symbol of their faith. It was a splendid sight.
Feeling as if he had been transferred into the Revival period all of a sudden, Vryce couldn't help but stare, his mouth slightly agape. He hadn't even halfway processed what he was seeing when an outcry cut through the cold winter air like a finely honed blade. "Alannah! Oh my God, is it really you?"
Her arms outstretched, a middle-aged woman broke free from the crowd and ran towards the arrivals, her long skirts trailing behind her. Her call didn't go unheard. One of the female captives, a young beauty with long, raven black braids woven through with silver threads, threw up her head. For a moment she hesitated, trading glances with the standard bearer. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them, but then she tore her gaze away and flung herself off her chestnut gelding, right into her mother's waiting arms. It had a signal effect. All at once, Damien was surrounded by people hugging each other breathless. Others, the less lucky ones realizing that they had been waiting for a miracle in vain, wailed in anguish or cried silently into their handkerchiefs.
His heart heavy with grief, Damien turned towards his mare, but was stopped by one of the Hunter's servants leading a spare horse. "There's no need for riding such an old nag, Mer Vryce," the man said with amazing kindness. "The mounts carrying our guests are staying with them. As a compensation for their... troubles. Trust me that there's a fair amount of gold in each saddlebag. More will follow, for anyone who can validly prove that the Neocount of Merentha has done him wrong. Or her, for that matter. However, His Excellency sends this black stallion with his kindest regards. It's yours to keep wherever you go. A real beauty he is if you ask me, and I've seen a lot of damn gorgeous beasties over the last fifteen years."
Having a closer look at the animal in question, Vryce realized that the man wasn't exaggerating. The stallion was indeed one of a kind, his coat a glossy black that gleamed in the sunlight and his carriage proud and elegant. He was a horse lover's dream come true, but his mind reeling with the revelations just sprung upon him, Damien couldn't quite appreciate the generous gift.
Every now and then over the last four hundred years, a woman had returned from the Forest alive, if not unharmed by any stretch of the word. Aside from being in a bad physical condition, most of them had gone insane during the hunt, just like the poor thing who was locked up in a mental asylum by now. Remembering her flickering eyes and, worst of all, Tarrant's voice coming out of her mouth in an utter perversion of nature, the warrior knight couldn't help but shuddering. He prayed with all his heart that she would be alright again one fine day, but his hopes weren't high.
Anyway, those unfortunate women hadn't made it on their own but had been allowed to escape for the Hunter's sinister purposes. In one of the seemingly endless starry nights aboard the God's Mercy Gerald had told him that he could have taken each of them down easily if he had so chosen, but had refrained from killing them in order to keep their successors' hopes alive that they might be one of the few to see the sun rise again. And then, in those last desperate moments ere the break of dawn, he would pounce on his prey, tasting the death of her hope as it was drowning in a sea of terror.
It didn't sound any less unsavoury now than it had then, but he presently had more urgent matters at hand than Tarrant's lamentable eating habits, for example wondering why the hell the man hadn't killed his latest five victims in a row but had sent them home instead, four of them apparently none the worse for their ordeal. He had even lavished presents on them, including one of his priced true horses each, and offered wergeld for the lives taken in the past. It was an unheard-of sensation.
No less astounding was the survival of some of the crusaders. Three years ago, the adept would have slain them to a man without batting a golden brown eyelash, just to move against the initiators of the raid against his domain immediately afterwards, dealing a blow hard enough that no one would dare to oppose him ever again in decades to come. Letting a bunch of zealots who had been foolish enough to wage open war on him live, let alone reimbursing them for their captivity, simply wasn't his style, a fact settlements like Mordreth could testify to.
Not that Damien minded the sudden turnaround. It was an improvement, after all, but he couldn't quite fathom that a creature who had thought nothing of torturing and killing innocents for nigh to a millennium seemed to have changed into something of a pussycat overnight. Gerald's overt threat to execute the prisoners in case his conditions weren't met he could understand, if not approve of. He wouldn't have expected it otherwise. But this simply didn't make any sense.
"We'd better get going now, Mer Vryce, while everybody's attention is focussed elsewhere. His Excellency cautioned us against lingering. He thought that the mood might change, and I don't want to be here when it happens, especially because we're strictly forbidden to resort to violence."
One more item on his already long list of mysteries. By now, the warrior knight was quite sure that Tarrant's brilliant but twisted mind had hatched just another one of his notorious schemes. The bastard had never done something without a reason, and he certainly wouldn't stray from his chosen path in his advanced age. It just remained to be seen whether his sudden reform would turn out for the better or the worse. So far, the Hunter behaving out of the ordinary had rarely boded well.
Stifling a sigh, Damien mounted his stallion and kneed him into motion. Under the given circumstances, it was utterly futile to agonize about things beyond his sphere of influence. In a little more than a week from now, he would meet Gerald again and see what the man was up to. Everything else was in the Lord's hands.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nine days later he found himself at the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. It was bitter cold, and he was glad that the leader of his escort had decided to camp instead of hurrying on through the icy darkness. The servants of the Hunter huddled around the blazing fire, whiling away the hours playing dice and nursing mugs of hot grog. It was an astoundingly peaceful scenario. In any case, the men weren't quite what he had expected them to be. With the exception of Niles, the young standard bearer, they kept mostly to themselves and only talked to him unless absolutely necessary, but all in all, they seemed no different from any ordinary fellow one could encounter in a tavern.
Serving evil incarnate for many years must surely have left its mark on them, but however corrupted to the core they might be, it didn't show in their demeanour at all. The tone between them was amazingly civil, utterly devoid of the profanities and lewd allusions so very common in groups consisting purely of males, and Damien hadn't failed to notice that more than one had given their youngest comrade who'd been pulling a wry face since their departure from Jaggonath a comforting pat on the shoulder in passing. They took care of each other, and that was more than could be said about many folks having a fitting pious saying on their lips at all hours of the day.
Strangely restless in spite of his aching bones, Vryce struggled to his feet and headed for the darkness under the trees. Nobody bothered to hold him up. And what for? He hadn't come within a leisurely day's ride to the keep just to make a bolt for it now, and even if he tried to sneak away under the cover of darkness, he very likely wouldn't get far. A great many things could be said about Gerald Tarrant and not all of them were pleasant, but the adept was no more inclined to leave something to chance than to greet the dawn. Without a doubt the vulking son of a bitch was monitoring his every movement, using their unique channel to his advantage. Running off in the Hunter's very own realm, the perfectly balanced ecosystem he had so painstakingly created and wherein he was unrivalled master of it all, would be tantamount to courting disaster.
Damien paused in a small clearing no more than roundabout eighty yards away from their camp. As he was gazing up at the multitude of stars glittering against the backdrop of the night skies like precious jewels, he thought of a pair of no less dazzling silver eyes, and a sigh escaped his throat. At the mere thought that he would face his former ally again in just a few hours, his insides twisted into a tight knot of apprehension, and a tangle of emotions bobbed up to the surface of his mind he'd rather not investigate too closely.
He still abhorred the demonic aspects of the Hunter persona, his unabashed cruelty, sadistic pleasure in the suffering of his victims and utter ruthlessness and nothing would ever change this, but what he had told Temchevar about being thoroughly fed up with Tarrant and everything connected to him was only half the truth. As a matter of fact, he felt pretty lonely without the bastard annoying the hell out of him at least once a day, missed even the man's damn arrogance and caustic wit, let alone his amusing vanity.
There was no denying that the Prince of Jahanna was an abomination no less fell than any starving demonling, a bloodthirsty monster lurking just beneath the aristocratic, cultivated veneer, but a tiny spark of humanity still smouldered in the ashes of his former identity as the Knight Premier of his Order and founder-father of their common faith. Whenever that spark flared up, allowing a glimpse of the man he had once been, Damien found that he was rather enthralled by the human soul locked up in a body which had been transformed into something far beyond the mortal plane.
As unlikely it might seem, Tarrant had grown on him until the enemy he had sworn to kill what felt like an eternity ago had become a brother-in-arms at first and then a fire-forged friend for whose redemption he would have given an arm and a leg at the end of their acquaintance, but it hadn't been meant to be. Freed from the yoke of the compact he had struck with the Unnamed nigh to a thousand years ago at long last, the adept was still undead, trapped in a vicious circle of hunger and feeding on the vital energy of man. In this regard, he had mucked things up on a grand scale, one more item on his ever lengthening list of regrets, but weighing more heavily on his soul was the sneaking suspicion that his feelings for Gerald were anything but merely brotherly.
"Do you have a minute to spare for me, Reverend Vryce?"
Damn! Having enough problems on his own, the warrior knight could have done with a bit of peace and quiet, But registering the miserable undertone in the voice of the lad he had quite come to like over the last few days, he didn't have the heart to say no. "Strictly speaking, I'm not a priest anymore," he said gently. "But of course we can talk. What's bothering you, Niles?"
"A lot of things. Don't really know where to start, actually." Tarrant's servant let out a low sigh. "You aren't... going to harm His Excellency, are you?"
"As matters stand, I'm much more concerned about it being the other way round."
When the young man's brow knitted into a confused frown, Damien forced a smile. "Don't you worry about your precious Excellency's well-being. He can be quite a pain in the ass, but I bear him no ill will. Not after all the shit we've been through side by side. If he doesn't do anything stupid, I won't lay a finger on him. You have my word on it. Does that make you feel better?"
"A little bit. He's a good master, you know. Not of the kind and caring sort. That's simply not in His nature. But He's just, never punishes you for something you haven't done. And He doesn't require those... those things of me. Like the merchant who bought me from the orphanage."
"'Things'? What the heck are you talking about?"
It was hard to know in the eerie twilight under the starry sky, but it seemed to him that Niles was blushing furiously. For a few seconds, the silence was near to absolute save for the hooting of a hunting nocturnal bird and the sound of a small mammal scuttling through the undergrowth, but then the lad squared his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "What no one should suffer against his will, least of all a child," he breathed. "You know what I mean, don't you?"
"The son of a bitch forced himself on you."
Niles nodded. "It started when I turned twelve. Old enough for the pleasures of the flesh, as he put it. I tried to fight him at first, Father, I really did, but it was no use. He flogged me for defying him and locked me up in the coal cellar for two days, naked and bloody. It was dark, and I had nothing to eat, no water. So I learned to hold still however much it hurt. And it did hurt, so badly that I couldn't help but screaming into the pillows. He just laughed and called me a sissy. And worse."
"And so you ran away from him," Damien forced out between gritted teeth.
"Not quite." The young man swallowed convulsively. "One night, Mer Rashin had been particularly rough and I was crying my eyes out on my straw pallet, His Excellency was there all of a sudden. Materialized right in the centre of the room as if He were a ghost. I was scared stiff at first, but He quickly reassured me. Said He weren't after my life and could offer me something better than this nightmare. As always, He was true to his word. I arrived at the Keep a complete illiterate. He taught me to read and write and allowed me to use His library. I owe Him. All of us do, in one way or the other. Just take Rob, the man who brought you your stallion. He tried to drink himself to death after his wife and children had succumbed to a plague ravaging the northern lands in twelve twenty nine, and now he's our stable master, found a new purpose in life."
"But you're aware of what Tarrant is, aren't you? What he does?"
"Of course I am. He isn't called the Hunter for nothing, I suppose. But you have to understand that whatever the gossip mongers say about us, we're just humble servants. Most of us, like myself, don't have a clue about sorcery. We mainly care for our master's horses, brew Jahanna's famed beer, keep the rooms nice and tidy and run errands. Until recently, the creep Amoril was responsible for the more... sinister tasks. I think I can speak for my companions when I tell you that his demise isn't mourned. Anyway, what I'm saying is that we hardly come in contact with His victims at all. The prisoners we brought to Jaggonath are an exception of the rule."
The warrior knight cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at him. "So your conscience is clean."
"No, it isn't. Far from it, in fact. All the rivers on Erna combined couldn't wash away my guilt. That special night, when His Excellency came into my chamber, He suggested that I should teach my owner a lesson, show him how much it hurts. His face was a mask of ice and His voice perfectly calm, but the hatred in his His eyes, the cold fury... I had never seen anything like it before, and I pray I never will again. It kindled something in me I hadn't even known existed. I got up as if in a trance and followed Him into Rashin's bedroom. May God help me, but the bastard's expression of utmost terror when he woke up and saw us looming over him was balm for my wounded soul. Try as he might, he could neither scream for help nor stir a limb, was as helpless as I had been so many times, and I seized a poker and..."
Overwhelmed with his memories, he buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. Vryce's heart clenched with pity. Not quite trusting his own voice, he placed his sword hand on a trembling shoulder and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. "Don't, Niles," he muttered at long last. "What you did was a terrible thing, but you were just a boy then. A miserable, traumatized boy vulnerable to the insinuations of evil. Who knows better than I how very convincing your master can be? If you truly repent your deed, the Lord in His wisdom won't hold it against you."
"But you don't understand, Father! Alannah promised to marry me, but what if she ever finds out what kind of man I am? And her parents... being stout believers in the One God, they'll never give us their blessing."
Damien blinked. Now this was an interesting development. Witnessing the non-verbal communication between those two young people, something had struck him as rather odd right away, but his mind on other things, he hadn't paid proper attention to it. No wonder that the lad had been out of sorts since he had been forced to leave his sweetheart behind, unsure if he would ever see her again.
At first, he felt slightly revolted at the idea of such an ill-fated union. However affable Niles might be, one couldn't rationalize away the fact that he had been serving the Lord of the Forest for many years now. Sanctioning his affair with one of Tarrant's innocent victims simply didn't feel right. But then he thought of his own emotional dilemma, and his ears reddened with embarrassment over his hypocrisy. Who the hell was he to judge, a former priest harbouring a formidable crush on the real mastermind behind all this evil, the very creature who'd hunted the girl for his wicked pleasure? It certainly couldn't get any worse than that.
"Listen, Niles," Vryce said much more calmly than he actually felt. "If you're absolutely sure about your marriage plans, I could talk to Alannah's parents. Subject to the condition that I will be alive at the end of this little adventure trip, that is," he added with a wry grin. "As I've already pointed out, I'm not a Reverend any longer, but I'm still a Knight of the Order of the Golden Flame. That might count for something on their tally. Should things go awry, I can always remind them that the nature of the One God is Mercy and His Word forgiveness. Thus the Prophet of the Law taught, and his words are no less valid among the faithful nowadays than they were in his lifetime. And now you'd better take a nap. It's already past midnight, and we're supposed to break camp at the crack of dawn. Sleep well!
It was a sound advice under the given circumstances, but musing about the redeeming power of love, the warrior knight found it pretty hard to act on it himself. He kept tossing and turning in his sleeping bag as if he were laying on an anthill until the first tentative chirps of the birds who hadn't fled to warmer climates were heralding the beginning of a new day. Only then he managed to fall into a fitful slumber at long last.