Five Doves Bloodied
Berat 'Five-Doves' Harafam is a man of honor.
(Five Doves Bloodied is a black-hearted villain.)
Berat is a Juror of the Sword-Altar Standard, warden of the peace and order of the Eternal City of Nachivan, sworn to its protection, sworn to the Patriarch, sworn to the Spiral of Truth, to the righteousness and might of the Kingdom of God; all look upon him, and know this.
(Berat is the last spoken lie of a broken, dying order, a lie that believes itself even though the liar has long ceased to believe; when the principle is gone, and the norm is gone, and only the form remains. Berat is a hollow doll of a man, but he is not hollow because he is empty; his stuffing has long ago rotted away, and the mold has begun to spill out of his button-eyes and his wooden clacker-mouth.)
Berat is an unbending blade of the law. He is one whose keen sight cuts through inequity, who adjudicates punishment as is fit, off whose stark uniform and proud bearing bribes slide down into the mud where they belong.
(Berat's mind is quick-witted in justifying extortion under the pretense of the law; he believes taking bribes to be the sign of moral complacency and a weak mind, but squeezing schismatics and witches ensures they do not rise above the station appointed to them in the divine order of the world, and thus is holy.)
Berat is a harsh and ascetic man, who does not drink, does not gamble, and does not seek the company of women besides his wife, whom he rarely beats; his only vice is the tobacco leaf. He practices self-restraint, strict bodily exercises, and trains with his arms more than he is required. Other Jurors find him a dreadful bore, but they still love him as a brother, for Berat is quick with advice born of long wisdom, and ready to bring a generous hand to his purse for any of his brethren in need, or to make a stand for them against their enemies.
(Berat is the standard of his Standard, and all who do not fall under the banner should stand in awe and reverence of him. Mouflons and low priests who fail to give him or his brothers adequate - which is to say excessive - deference and meekness will be punished with the stroke of his cane, of his sheathed sword, of his boot, of his spit. For a mouflon's kind and loyal dog in whose carelessly-spilled leavings Berat has put his polished boot - a pistol shot.)
Berat is called 'Five-Doves' for in a shooting competition he once shot down an entire flight of released doves with a breech loading rifle, a feat of incredible marksmanship and speed which made him the hero of his barracks. Berat last of his brethrens sees the perfection of his skill as his calling; with the rifle, with the pistol, with the sword, riding a horse or a moa, he aims to be the best of his standard. He is a terrible automaton of powder and blade, fearsome in motion.
(Berat is called 'Five Doves Bloodied' for it once came to his knowledge that the waitresses of an establishment known as the Five Doves were seeking redress against the establishment's owner, though they knew not where to find recourse as such abuse was done during the moonlit hours in which they worked as nightwomen, against the law. Berat took it upon himself to visit the inn, where he beat the innkeep bloody, striking him so hard against the face that the man lost the use of an eye. Then he took his whip, and flogged the poor waitresses, driving them weeping, bloody and half-naked into the streets. In the commotion an oil lamp broke against the floor, starting a blaze. Berat held the water-carriers back, just long enough that even though the rest of the neighborhood was saved, the Five Doves were burned to a cinder.)
Berat Harafam is a righteous man.
Berat prays.
But not often.
Berat is the willing blade, the blood-stained edge. What needs to be done will be, for the will of the Jury of Nachivan must be the will of God. Are those who fight in his name not closest to him? Every bullet is consecrated in the act of being fired. The Juror is consecrated in the shot taken against the rebel. Reaction is consecrated in the fact of its victory. Berat has spilled blood before; Berat will be asked to spill blood again.
The komandir asks Berat into the dark chambers, and he tells him: There is a man who must die.
And Berat asks: By blade or push? By which he means, must it be known to all that this man was killed, or must they be made to believe it was an accident?
And the komandir answers: There is no blade truer than yours, Berat, who is called Five-Doves; and Berat knows, and nods, and inside his coat feels the comforting hardness of the lacquer mask.
When Berat puts on the mask he is no one, he is nothing. He is the Jury. The is the Sword and the Altar in one, an apparition of death, whose blank face betrays no thought, no feeling, no doubt, no humanity. When he and his fellow Jurors fall in lockstep, cloaked and be-sworded and masked, they are one. A blade to cut out the cancer which grows in the heart of Nachivan. A surgeon's strike, methodical and precise, before the Kingdom as a whole is led astray.
That night Berat sees God.
God appears to him in the motions of a boy's arms and legs, in the set of his brow, in the calm of his voice. The boy is not God; no man can be. But the boy is with God. And he says, Watch how I soar, into the world to come. And Berat's friends fall before the gestures of the divine like wheat before the stalk. But Berat is the blade of righteousness, and the gun is in his hand.
Like so many years before - like on the day he earned his nickname - the dove, beautiful in flight, is struck by lightning, frozen and still in an image of perfection, for a moment. Then it falls. Berat's hands shake at what he's done. He doesn't remember ever killing one so young, or so beautiful.
His friends come to their senses, they pull the man with the broken arm away, they slink away into the night-shrouded streets. Later, they take off their masks, sweaty, shocked, confused men with disheveled hair and imperfect faces and greasy hair, and Berat sees none of this. His eyes haunted, he asks for the first time he can remember to borrow one of his men's flask; and as the liquor burns his throat, he rubs his eyes, and looks again. But nothing has changed. He sees their faces unmasked, and all he sees is the boy, watching him with all their eyes. His face is so pale, now that his blood has left him.
Berat prays that night.
He remembers why he so rarely does.
Now.
Shots ring out against ancient cobblestone. The roar of small artillery, its whistle as it pounces on the prey, the cry when bags of sand and piled furniture erupt in smithereens. The shouts of orders, the wailing of the wounded, the smell of blood and smoke thick in the air.
Berat is huddled against a wall made out of wheat sacks, rifle in his hand, watching a few men look at each other. They're scared, which is natural in the heart of battle. This Berat expects. What he does not expects - what scares him - is that they are also confused. Are we not Sword-Altar? their faces say. Are we not the Jury of Nachivan? Do we not simply roll our banners and sound our horns and charge, and the pitiful mob scatters before us? We were meant to simply march to the Heavenly Mount, scattering our enemies' blood like strewn petals before us, and take custody of the patriarch. Why are we taking cover? Why are we having to fight? And Berat knows - for he is a starshy officer, and it is his duty to know such things, and Berat is nothing if not duty honed to a razor's edge - that this confusion will soon leave place to doubt; that the Jurors will think, 'if I do not understand why this is happening, then maybe it isn't supposed to be happening, and perhaps I should not be here,' and then they will rout.
He must rally them, and leave this cover, for the jury's victory, for these men's lives, and for no other reason; not because he knows behind their masks lurks the boy's face and his pale bloodless cheeks, not because he must run away from them, even knowing they will pursue, that he can never escape this face. No; for the Jury; for the Kingdom of God; for victory eternal.
So Berat adjusts his mask, and he lets out a cry, and the men look at him fearfully; and he says, am I not Berat, who is called Five Doves Bloodied? And they agree, and so he says, follow in my wake.
He leans over the barricade, sees the plumes of smoke from the other side, and in an instant identifies the weaker point where the furniture is piled too low against the wall. Bullets fly in his fingers, each one loaded and fired in clockwork motion - a man dies first, his expression one of surprise, a woman next as she tries to line up a shot on him, a younger man in fear as he turns around to dive under the barricade; three are dead and the defenders are cowering.
In that breath of fear, that moment of blindness, Berat flies over the bodies-strewn street like a smoke-wreathed crow, aiming for that spot where the barricade is thin, climbing it with rifle in hand.
Berat sees not the bodies around him. He cannot afford to. He knows - if he looks down - they will all be staring at him with the eyes of the dead boy.
They see him crest the barricade and for a moment are struck with the terror the Jurors were always meant to inspire in the wicked; they see the mask without humanity, the black cloak stained with gunpowder and blood, they see the glinting bayonette, and they see that the shadow of Death has been sent to stalk them upon the earth. The dark abscess has burst, and its corruption has spilled in the form of this killing-shade.
He fires from above, and an old, wizened man's face becomes a beautiful crimson flower. A bullet flies, missing Berat. He drives his bayonet down as he leaps from the barricade, not thinking about his target. A woman of what he does not know to be the Gunpowder Eucharist is skewered through her breast; she gasps, eyes wide, blood spilling from her lips. Berat freezes as these eyes stare into his mask, and see nothing. They see something greater, something beyond him, and the woman falls with a smile.
Berat tries to remember - cannot remember - is the sin of killing a woman worse than the sin of killing a man? Is it worse than the killing of a youth? How are accounted the bodies which must be piled on the way to peace and order and orthodoxy eternal, free of schism and doubt, how are they accounted in the balance of Berat's soul?
His ears are ringing; his vision is hazy. Take a hold of yourself, he thinks, he says aloud, even though the woman laying with her open breast looks so much like she could have been the boy's mother. He touches his face, and is surprised to find it warm, and slick - and then he realizes a bullet has grazed him, and finds the shooter. But of course this rabble, barely trained to wield a rifle, could not hope to strike him in close range, where doubt makes their hands shake. It is not really a thinking gesture when he takes his pistol out of his belt and shoots the foe in the chest, it is mechanical and orderly, like a doctor's prescription.
He blinks, the double vision fading, and sees the young man lying in the dirt. His brown hair is framed by a red-and-gold headband. Was he nineteen? Twenty? Not a boy, but barely. He was the age that other boy might have grown to reach, had he not met Berat, who is Five Doves Bloodied, who cut the boy down with the cold trigger of a gun when he moved with God. And what of it? What then, had he lived? He would only have been there, to meet him again, a little older, and bullets would have been cold still.
Berat moves among the death he has wrought, one hand twitching compulsively, blood on his boots, blood on his trousers, blood on his jacket, blood on his mask. His men are spilling over the barricade with the courage that is born not of faith, not of conviction, not even of the inspiring sight of a hero, but in the simple thought that the tide has turned, anchored to nothing but fleeting certainty and a strong man's back. Rebels ahead pull back to the next barricade, firing parting shots to stop the Juror's advance, and Berat barely notices them ringing around him.
One man, sporting the same red-and-gold headband as the younger man, is on his knee bracing his rifle to his shoulder. He aims at Berat's chest with an eye full of scorn and pulls the trigger. Berat would die; but the hammer strikes, a puff of smoke comes out and then a choking sound, and the rifle jams. The man lets out a cry of fury, tosses his rifle to the ground, and falls into a stance - and Benat's heart skips a beat, for he sees the hallowed movement ahead of him, and the boy's shadow is moving in that man's, and it is his voice that speaks when the man opens his mouth to say:
Watch how I soar, into the world to come.
Berat thrusts his bayonet, spear-like, and the man deflects it with the palm of his hand, wrenches it out of Berat's grasp, and strikes his chest with enough force to rattle his ribs. Berat coughs, pulls out his pistol, the man pulls his wrist out of the way and the shot goes wide while his fist strikes Berat's mask like a hammer, cracking the lacquered wood. Berat is staggered, the man braces. In the empty space between them, Berat sees death for one of them. The man goes for a grappling hold which will make Berat a toy in his hand. Berat instead draws his officer's sword from its scabbard in one slicing motion, a move practiced a thousand times. It crosses the void faster than the grappling hand. Blood spills; the man falls.
But he's no longer a man.
None of them are.
Berat staggers forward, past the man's body, his ears ringing, his skull split with pain, his vision a haze.
It's midnight when it should be the bright of day. Berat does not see the smoke or hear the cannonfire. All he sees are the bodies scattered around him, fell half by his hand, half by the wake of death that follows after him.
And they are all, each and every one, the boy in the street, with the flower blooming from his chest and the pale cheeks.
And they are all of them looking at him.
A step forward.
There's a child in his way.
As young as the boy in the street. Different; a little shorter, a little scrawnier, with a sharper nose and lighter hair. As young or younger. Half-seated, for he tripped and hurt his ankles when the older rebels were pulling him towards the barricade, and in the confusion he fell there, in the open, and now he can't stand and run.
But he can hold a pistol, though his hand shakes. And he can aim it at Berat, though his eyes well up with tears.
And Berat is fast and skilled and has the sword in hand, and he could cross the distance, and he could cut that child down like he did the first.
But the blood trickles down his chin, and his skull is pounding, and the fever is devouring him, and the shadows are haunting him, and in his eyes he is not here, he is in that street at night, and it is the boy whose name he does not remember who is in his way, not half-seated and trembling but standing straight, breathing calm, voice steady, aim firm. And Berat looks at him, and he opens his mouth, and he says, I want you to show me God.
And the boy says, I will.
There's nothing special to hear, when the city is aflame and shots ring out everywhere.
Only you can see - the dark figure toppling - the shadow breaking. Death, stopped in its stride, sways for a moment, then falls.
And it's only one man dying, but it's the one leading the charge, and it's Berat, and it's five doves shot down with a single bullet. The Jurors who were pulled forward by nothing but the fleeting certainty of victory and the back of a strong man freeze, and cry out, and turn coats and run, and the rebels overcome their shock and cry triumph and shoot at their open backs, falling half a dozen men in the time it takes them all to find the cover of the barricade again.
The doll has clattered to the ground and its long-rotted wood has broken open, revealing its hollow insides, spilling nothing but mold. There was nothing inside this terrible scarecrow. It was only ever a tale to frighten children.
Berat Five-Doves is but another body among the many.
