Page 15 of The Devils

See to the Holy Land

Everyone’s scared all the time. That’s the thing you’ve got to tell yourself.

They might be scared of different things from you. Things that don’t scare you a bit. Like heights, or failure, or wanting to piss then not being able to go. But everyone’s scared of something. And even if they’re not, it helps to think they are. The brave ones are just good at pretending, and pretending’s just lying by another name, and when it came to lying, Alex was up there with the best. Ask anyone.

So she made straight for the place she least wanted to sit. Stuck one leg between Vigga and Baptiste, plumped her arse on that narrow stretch of firelit log, and wriggled her shoulders between them.

She’d been hoping they’d give her room, but the log was only so long. Baptiste couldn’t move without falling off, and Vigga didn’t shift at all. She might as well have shouldered a tree. A hot, clammy tree covered in warnings with an earthy piss smell.

So that’s where bravery gets you. Wedged like a cork in a bottle between the most experienced woman in Europe and a proper Norse werewolf.

Baptiste peered down her nose at Alex with one black eyebrow high, like a shepherd at a sheep she was thinking of selling for mutton. ‘Pray join us, Your Highness.’

‘Just did,’ said Alex, digging at her stew and shovelling in a mouthful, having to pretend to be comfortable as well as brave, then having to duck as Vigga waved lazily into the darkness. She managed to dodge the flailing arm but was nearly knocked off the log by the sour waft from her hairy pit.

‘Where the fuck are they all going anyway?’ asked Vigga, peering towards the other fires, the other groups of pilgrims, the other sets of fears.

‘Most to Cyprus,’ said Brother Diaz, who wasn’t even pretending at courage, and had settled on a damp but generous patch of turf between Baptiste and Baron Rikard. ‘To the Basilica of Saint Justine the Optimist. They mean to climb the four hundred and fourteen steps up the Campanile. They will touch the great bells, which were cast from the armour of the righteous soldiers of the First Crusade. It’s said that from its roof, on a very clear day, one can see to the Holy Land.’

‘You eating that?’ asked Vigga, her toothy grin only a few inches from Alex’s nose. Maybe it was the smell, or the bunched and tattooed mass of her so close, or maybe it was the teeth, or the clear memory of what those teeth had done to Marcian’s head, but Alex couldn’t help thinking that pretend heroes might feel good, but honest cowards likely last longer.

Everyone’s scared all the time. She wondered what a werewolf might be scared of, and decided she’d rather not know. She clutched her bowl very close.

‘I’m eating it,’ she squeaked.

‘Uh.’ Vigga stuck out her bottom lip, which had a line of runes tattooed down the centre to the scarred cleft in her chin. She started licking out her own bowl with a shockingly long tongue. ‘If they want to go to the Holy Land …’ And she turned it and licked it again, then tossed it into the bushes. ‘Why not go to the Holy Land?’

‘Well …’ Brother Diaz left off prodding at his own food to stare in outraged amazement. ‘There is the tiny issue that, for the best part of the last century, to the great dismay of every right-thinking person in Europe, the Holy Land has been infested with elves.’

‘Uh,’ grunted Vigga, as if an elf infestation was something she’d tried and had no strong opinions on.

‘No one could call Vigga Ullasdottr right-thinking,’ murmured Baron Rikard. ‘Or even wrong-thinking. Still less a person.’

‘We’re talking about the greatest catastrophe of recent times!’ said Brother Diaz.

‘And with some stiff competition,’ said Baptiste. ‘I’ve taken part in several catastrophes that are right up there.’

Jakob gave a grunt of reluctant agreement.

‘Holy Land. Roly-Poly Land.’ Vigga waved it away, wildly enough that she almost spooned Alex in the face. ‘Ain’t it all just sand? I’m a pagan.’

‘Oh, please,’ snorted the baron. ‘Calling you a pagan is an insult to actual pagans. You don’t believe in anything beyond your own twat.’

‘My twat is a fine article of faith!’ snarled Vigga, spraying spit into the fire and making Alex flinch.

‘You can’t deny it exists,’ murmured Baptiste.

‘Anyone with a working nose is well aware of it,’ drawled the baron. ‘Dogs, from half a mile away or more.’

‘My twat has done more good for the world than any saint I know of!’ Vigga waggled her eyebrows at Brother Diaz. ‘Only say the word, it shall perform for you a miracle.’

‘Please,’ the monk flashed a nervous smile towards a group of pilgrims frowning over from a nearby fire, ‘can we have fewer twats , miraculous or otherwise? The point is elves can’t swim—’

‘They can,’ said Jakob.

‘They bloody can,’ said Vigga. ‘I’ve seen Sunny swim and it is a thing of wonder. When she swims, she has a queue of fish behind her hoping for lessons. You eating that?’ She got up to peer hopefully towards Balthazar’s bowl and the whole log lurched, so Alex had to clutch at Baptiste to keep from falling.

Balthazar shook his head disgustedly. ‘A queue of fish, I swear.’ And he tossed Vigga his bowl so she had to juggle it in the air.

Brother Diaz was gripping at his temples with both hands. ‘We have strayed far from the point!’

‘You will get used to that in this company,’ said Baron Rikard. ‘The point will become so distant a memory you will wonder if it ever truly existed, or was but a mirage, glimpsed from afar in a dream.’

‘There was a point?’ grunted Vigga, treading in the fire with one bare foot and apparently not even noticing, then dropping back down on the log and making it lurch again.

‘The point ,’ snapped Brother Diaz, ‘is that, occasionally, one can see the Holy Land from the Campanile of Saint Justine the Optimist. It’s the closest one can get since the elves captured Aleppo.’

‘Infested it,’ growled Jakob. ‘The Church tells us the elves are unclean.’

‘ Official doctrine is that elves are neither clean nor unclean. They have no souls. They are animals, like goblins or trolls.’

‘We had a troll once,’ said Baron Rikard.

‘God, yes.’ Baptiste wrinkled her nose. ‘What an arsehole.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Alex.

‘Vigga killed him.’

‘Arsehole,’ snarled Vigga, chopping at the air with her spoon and spattering the front of Balthazar’s habit with stew.

‘We had a goblin, too,’ said Baptiste, grinning. ‘You remember?’

‘Iris.’ The baron smiled into the fire, eyes shining with reflected flames. ‘She was quite the joker.’

‘A riot!’ said Vigga, grinning broadly.

‘What happened to her?’ asked Balthazar, brushing stew from his front.

Baptiste sighed. ‘Vigga killed her.’

‘I miss her,’ said Vigga, two fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Then she sniffed, and stuffed in another mouthful of stew.

‘Are the elves … really all that bad?’ asked Alex. ‘I mean, I’ve met loads of people, and a lot of them were horrible.’

‘Uh,’ grunted Vigga, nodding along.

‘I won’t say most …’ Alex thought about that, ‘but maybe most. I only ever met one elf—’ Brother Diaz noisily cleared his throat, nodding towards the other fires, and Alex leaned forwards, dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘I only ever met one elf and, honestly, she seems pretty likeable.’

‘Umm,’ grunted Vigga, nodding to that, too.

‘I won’t say the most likeable here …’ Alex glanced around the company. ‘But, you know …’ She trailed off into awkward silence.

‘Well?’ Baron Rikard glanced over at Jakob. ‘ Are the elves really all that bad?’

The old knight looked into the fire for so long it was a surprise when he finally spoke. ‘I fought in the Second Crusade.’

Brother Diaz snorted. ‘That must’ve been a hundred and fifty years ago!’

‘A shade more,’ said Jakob. ‘After the siege of Troy was lifted, we recaptured Acre. Didn’t look like a city that had been sacked. Nothing broken, nothing burned. Cleaner than before the elves came.’ He considered the flames, unforgiving shadows in the hollows of his scarred face. ‘But no people. William the Red led us into the cathedral. I remember looking up, and seeing a forest of chains, and dangling from them, hundreds of carcasses. They had turned the place into a slaughterhouse. And I mean that literally. It wasn’t bloody. It wasn’t cruel. It was clean, and calm, and … efficient. There was no hatred in it. No more than the butcher has for the cattle.’ Jakob gave a long sigh. ‘We heard the elves sent some of the citizens east. To breed, maybe. To fatten up, maybe. As gifts, or slaves, who knows? None ever came back to say. But most they ate.’

‘Saviour protect us,’ whispered Brother Diaz, making the sign of the circle on his chest.

‘Considering how skinny they are,’ the baron gazed thoughtfully up at the stars, ‘they have grand appetites.’

‘It’s a holy duty, for the elves.’ Jakob raised his scarred brows. ‘To eat us. A righteous mission. To consume all humanity.’

There was a silence. ‘So … I think we can say Sunny’s one of the better ones,’ said Baptiste.

Alex set down her bowl. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’

‘Magic!’ Vigga snatched it up and began to shovel the leftovers into her mouth. ‘So, they go to fucking Malta—’

‘Cyprus.’

‘—and into this church—’

‘Basilica.’

‘—and they slog up Saint Justin’s tower—’

‘ Justine’s Campanile. ’

‘—and, you know …’ Vigga showed her pointed teeth as she grinned, ‘they handle his bells. Then what?’

‘Then … well …’ Brother Diaz fumbled for the right words and sagged ever so slightly. ‘They come back.’

Vigga squinted across the fire at him. ‘Eh?’

‘They come back. Absolved of their sins.’

There was another silence, while they all considered that.

Baron Rikard stared into the flames, looking almost wistful. ‘If only vampires could be so easily redeemed,’ he murmured.

Everyone’s scared all the time. Alex wondered what a vampire might be scared of.

She decided she’d rather not know.