The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 28 - Father Kogan's Sacrifice

What is Seen is temporary, but what is Unseen is eternal.

 — Credited to Lupistano Uscelana, Black Moon apologist

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The trap door opened, and Miles's worried face, illuminated by candle light, peered down through the hatch.

"The knights is gone, Father. Getting harder to please, though. They're gonna get mean next time."

Father Kogan climbed from the trap and closed it behind him. "Still asking for me, then? Thought they'd forget me by now."

Kogan extended an arm and examined it. The white had mostly gone, but it stubbornly persisted in places.

"They say they know you're hid up somewheres in the valley, Father, and that someone must know where, so they're fixing to make 'em talk."

Father Kogan frowned. "I don't reckon they mean you."

"No. Seems they got their sights set on some others. But I hate to bring misfortune down on anybody else."

"Time I led 'em away from this valley, then, Miles. I reckon I don't glow so much no more."

"Might be a good night for it, Father," Miles said, a note of eager encouragement in his voice. "I reckon the rest of that glow we can cover with mud and grease, too, so it won't shine so. I'll have Marta pack a sack with cheese and sausage."

"You're good folk, Miles. Luck smile on you." He laid a grateful hand on the man's shoulder, then ducked through the door into the yard.

The night air smelled of new-mown hay, and the stars shone down in perfect clarity. The constellation of Arkus—creator of Arkendia, rebuke of the West, author of the Three Laws—shone down on him. He piously spit at it and muttered, "I'll help myself, thankee." Turning his back, he made his way to the barn to give his arms and braids a final scrub, and black them over with charcoal, just to be sure.

From the northeast came the pop of distant spitfires. His hunters, perhaps, camped in someone's fields for the night. Luck be thanked they didn't camp at Miles's or he'd have starved in that cellar.

When he'd finished his charcoal scrub he felt sure he was just as black as he'd once been white, and chuckled at what he anticipated Marta would say if he tried to enter her house as a walking smudge. He charcoaled the carpets of his smothercoat, for good measure, then slipped his head through the slits, and strolled into the yard.

A sound like the bark of a dog in the distance greeted him from the northeast. He halted, stomach going cold, and strained his ears in silence. He heard it again, coming from the little wagon track that led to the place from the northeast. It wasn't a dog. Something else. He pried through darkness with his eyes until he picked out the track. On it moved a tiny dark spot against the lighter dust of the track.

The figure sobbed. That was the sound he'd heard. A boy or girl, he guessed, of some ten years. The child gasped, weaving as if it had run a long way.

Kogan retreated to the dark beside the barn, and watched. Caution taught him that those who run in the night are often pursued, and he did not wish to be spotted if the pursuers were his own lordly enemies.

The boy threw himself against Miles's door, and pushed into the house as if he knew the place. Crying and sobbing began in earnest. Murmurs of consolation from Miles and Marta.

Kogan watched the road, waiting and listening. Snatches of the boy's cries came to him, and he pieced together what had happened at a neighboring farm. Knights had come. They killed the family pig. They made his family serve them. They hurt his sister. Hurt his granny. Not just bad hurt. Horrible hurt.