The entire field grows quiet as I stare down at Balthazaar’s lifeless form. At the arms I will never again feel around me, the eyes that will never again peer so deeply into my soul, and the lips I will never again coax into a smile. “No,” I whisper, then cup Balthazaar’s pale cheek in my hand and lay my forehead against his. I know that his love does not die with him, that I will carry it with me always, but that is cold, empty comfort. My breath comes in short, ragged gasps and I am not sure I will ever draw a full breath again. This pain is worse than anything I have ever imagined—I, who have been familiar with pain my entire life.
A trumpet sounds just then—three shorts blasts. I do not know what it means, but the French soldiers do. Reluctantly, with mumbling and dark glances, they sheathe their weapons and point their spears down. A mounted knight comes riding before them and motions them back.
He is chasing them away.
Once they are out of arrow range, the knight turns and nods to me, and I want to shout at him that he is too late.
But others begin to reach us now, as soldiers from the city gate swarm forward, the Arduinnites covering them with their threat of another rain of arrows. Someone grabs me by the arms and tries to pull me back to the safety of the gates, but I refuse. The Brigantians come next, bringing a stretcher with which to carry Balthazaar back. Before they transfer him onto it, they stop to examine his wounds. Two arrows have gone straight through his chest, the arrowheads fashioned in such a way as to pierce even the mail that he wore.
Carefully, the Brigantians break the arrowheads from the shafts, then pull them slowly from his chest. As the shafts leave his body, Balthazaar arches up off his back. He gasps and draws in a huge gulp of air. His face spasms in pain, his hand going to his chest, and I stare down in disbelief.
“It hurts,” he croaks, and I laugh, a giddy, frightened sound.
“Of course it hurts,” I tell him, then bend down and begin raining kisses over his face. “You’re alive.”
He pulls his hand away from his chest and stares at the red blood that covers his palm. “I am alive.” The marvel in his voice matches my own. A shadow falls across us just then, and when I look up, I see Father Effram. “He’s alive,” I whisper, afraid that if I say it too loudly, someone will hear and take it away.
Father Effram smiles. “He is alive.”
“But how?”
He smiles gently at me, but before he can speak, Balthazaar begins to cough, clutching his chest. I start to panic, but Father Effram lays his hand on my shoulder. “This wound will not kill him. The first death makes him mortal; it is the second death that will carry him from this world.”
“How do you know this?”
He looks from me to Balthazaar. I follow his gaze and see Balthazaar staring at him, recognition slowly filling his eyes. He gasps out a laugh, then clutches his chest again. “Salonius.”
Father Effram bows his head. “At your service, my lord.” Then he turns to my gaping self. “I know because I was once a god as well.”
“You are—were—Saint Salonius?”
“Yes.” He turns to Balthazaar once more, his face growing serious. “And this,” he says to the man who was once Death. “Does this put right all that lies between us?”
Balthazaar stares at him a long moment, then nods. “It does.” He puts out his hand. Father Effram grasps it and closes his eyes, almost as if receiving a benediction.
Balthazaar is taken to the Brigantian convent so they may tend his wounds, but it is hard—so hard—to let go of his hand. I wish to accompany him, to stay by his side forever if need be, to ensure that this is real and will not be snatched away.
But I have others I must see to.
A truce has been made, and the Breton forces have left the safety of the city walls in order to recover our dead. Every soldier seems to know that if not for the hellequin, it would be his own dead body being carried back on a litter.
Of the fifty hellequin that rode out, twenty-eight bodies are returned to us, among them Begard’s, Malestroit’s, and Sauvage’s. Slowly, I drop to Malestroit’s side. His face is no longer filled with sorrow but with serenity. I kiss the tips of my fingers, then press them to his lips. “Goodbye,” I whisper. “And thank you. May you find peace at last.”
Sauvage too is much transformed, his terrifying ferocity replaced by a peace so deep, he is hardly recognizable.
Begard looks even younger in death, relaxed, with no pinch of regret or guilt shadowing his face. I bid him goodbye as well. Father Effram joins me, and, together, we walk among the fallen hellequin. He gives them a final blessing and I bid them each farewell.
Some bodies are not recovered, and I do not know what that means. Most of those not recovered were on the sortie to the supply wagons, including Miserere. I think of his fierce, implacable face and mourn
that he may not have found the redemption he so desperately wanted.
It is only when they have all been seen to and tended, and I confirm with my own eyes that the truce continues to hold, that I allow myself to return to the palace long enough to strip out of my blood-soaked clothes, scrub the worst of the filth from me, then head to the Brigantian convent.
I am not questioned at the convent but ushered immediately to Balthazaar’s room. It is clean and smells of pungent herbs. At the door I pause, staring at the still figure on the bed, marveling that his chest rises and falls as he draws breath. Marveling that the pallor of death has left his face and he no longer appears to have been chiseled from the whitest marble.
He is, I realize, pulsing with life.
We have done it, he and I. We not only evoked one last gasp of magic from Arduinna’s sacred arrow but managed to upend the order of the world and create a place for Balthazaar in it. At my side, hopefully, although we have not discussed that.
“It is a miracle, is it not?” I turn to find a grizzled nun standing beside me, her wrinkled face alight with wonder and awe.
“It is,” I agree.
She looks up at me, tilting her head. “Are you the one he did it for?”
Her question makes me pause, uncertain of how to answer that. Did he do it for me? Or because he was finally offered a chance? Perhaps the two things cannot be separated from each other.
Seeing my discomfort, the nun smiles warmly, pats me on the arm, then goes about her business, leaving me alone with him.
“Quit lurking in the shadows.” Balthazaar’s voice rumbles up from
the bed. “That is my role, not yours.”