Chapter 56: Leonard the Accident – The people from Debur
Debur had become carrion with the Emerald at the center, where Henrique still nested. Olivier came, eliminated the revolution and left without putting Debur back on its tracks. He erased the revolutionary leaders but put no one in their place. Soldiers dispersed. Some stayed with their king, by inertia, others went looking for Neville of Fabec, but Leonard didn’t know what happened to them when they found out that Fabec was no more.
Deran was ruler-less and lawless. Bandits took over the city: thieves, murderers and worse. Nobody dared walk alone. At night, people hoarded together like mice. One day there came a man. Nobody knew where he came from or who he was. He walked slowly like a big cat, eyes half-closed.
He was not alone: Leonard the Accident walked with him.
The pair of them walked carefree down the Deburian streets, like in the times Rimbaud’s Caravan still visited Debur. The unknown man had black beard and white moustache. They were cornered and attacked, but the man with the black beard and white moustache killed their attackers with his bare hands. He fought with savageness and ease. Killing was a game and he needed no weapons.
Sometimes, after killing, he sat by the corpses and took a few bites from the still warm meat, chewed it raw and swallowed with satisfaction.
‘This is Jean,’ Leonard told those who asked.
Another man joined them. This one, Debur had already seen and kept away from, even the murderers avoided him. He was a one-eyed man, with a patch of leather coverint his lost eye. The leather was sewn to the skin. The one-eyed man carried a sword rusty with blood. He said:
‘Why clean it if I’ll just dip it in flesh again?’
Jean, the one-eyed man and Leonard the Accident. Anything that went against them died. People began to follow them. In their shadow there was some sort of law: the law of the strongest.
‘Jean isn’t human,’ said Leonard, ‘even so people follow him.’
‘People follow monsters,’ said the one-eyed man, ‘because monsters have power’
‘Better to follow a monster than to become a monster, I suppose,’ said Leonard.
‘We believe that, if the monster leads us, everything we do is forgiven,’ said the one-eyed man. ‘If the monster goes first, he opens the way and we can fix everything back later on. But the truth is we frame ourselves to their shadow.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I served in Patire,’ said the one-eyed man. ‘I walked in Fulbert’s shadow.’
One day Jean left Debur. The one-eyed man went together; the Accident went together, lots of people followed them, soldiers and civilians.
‘It’s too many people,’ the one-eyed man said on the road. ‘Jean is a good monster, not a good leader. The people need order.’
‘You can command them,’ said Leonard. ‘You can at least organize the soldiers.’
The one-eyed man laughed humourless.
‘You do it,’ he said. ‘I’m but a shadow.’
‘You are a man. I am na Accident.’
The one-eyed man didn’t care. That people could all jumpo off a cliff, it didn’t matter. Leonard remembered every time Maëlle, the librarian from Debur, spoke of the grey. That man had ash in place of soul, he only existed because no-one had killed him yet. Leonard thought of Neville’s mother, then of Neville’s father, than of Neville himself. One of them would bring order to that chaos.
Leonard decided to try. He faced the dissdents and told them to form groups. They needed scouts, hunters, people to find water. Jean was the only one who had managed to satiate his hunger by eating bits of a cadavar they found by the road. The vultures flew away when he came near, then returned when he was gone. He ripped na arm off the corpse and ate it as he walked.
Most ignored Leonard’s attempt at order. Some laughed, a woman spat at him. Suddenly, the woman was in the air, screaming. She fell on her stomach at Jean’s feet, her wrist broken. He picked her up and threw her high again. She hit the floor and something broke in her. Jean pulled her arm, bit her, threw her up again. Every time she went some five meters into the air, then broke something when she landed. Jean shook her by the neck, tore off a piece of her ear with his teeth. SHe tried to crawl away from him, but Jean smashed her ankle with his foot and stood watching as she tried still to wreathe away.
She cried, she screamed, she begged. Jean seemed to be toying with her. Some people had seen it before, when thieves tried to attack Jean in Debur. Nobody thought that attacking Leonard would also lead to one of Jean’s playful deaths. Sometimes it took him hours to kill his victim. Jean picked the woman and threw her up in the air again. When she fell, a rusty sword pierced her chest.
The one-eyed man sheathed his bloody sword.
‘I have served in Patire.’
It took Leonard a moment to make the connection between Patire, Fulbert and torture. In Baynard there was a lot of talk about Fulbert’s terrible punishments and he tried to imagine what it must be like to serve under a king like that. What must the one-eyed man have seen? How did he lose his eye?
To put na end to that woman’s torment was the least grey stuff Leonard saw the one-eyed man do since they first met in Debur. Jean poked the dead woman with his foot, but lost interest when she didn’t move. He went to sit at Leonard’s feet. After a moment of silence, Leonard repeated everything he had said before. People oebeyed. Jean stretched his back and let Leonard scratch behind his ears.
Though more organized, thesoldiers remained impatient. They missed the discipline, the routine, training that gave them the sense that they were doing something with their lives. It was the one-eyed man who said that. They followed toward Tuen. Leonard convinced the one-eyed man to at least exercise and parry those men, not only to keep them busy, but also because it felt wise to have a small trained army marching with them. Leonard didn’t know what to expect from Jean, nor how long Jean would stay with them. He could disappear as quickly as he had appeared.
The one-eyed man gave Jean his blood-rusty sword. Leonard asked why.
‘Swords kill faster,’ said the one-eyed man.
The man who wasn’t a man moved the sword from one side to another, held it by the hilt and the blade, snuffed the leather and tasted the blade with his tongue. Jean liked the taste of blade and steel. He kept on licking, like a lollypop.
They met a soldier on the road, a scout from Tuen, who asked them who they were and what they wanted. Jean used the one-eyed man’s sword on that soldier. The man fought back but Jean was too fast. He cut off na ear, then a finger, then slashed the man’s forearm.
‘Enough,’ said the one-eyed man. ‘Enough torture.’
Jean made a deep gash on the scout’s face. Leonard came closer to Jean, he glanced at the one-eyed man and saw the colours fading from his face. Hurt, tortured colours that fled the skin and hid away. Leonard put a hand on Jean’s arm and Jean tilted his head, curious.
‘Enough,’ Leonard said softly, scratching Jean’s black beard. He gently pushed Jean’s arm down and Jean put the sword away, then went on walking, paying no more attention to the scout on the road.
Leonard didn’t see the one-eyed man’s colour anymore. Had it been his imagination? After so many years listening to Maëlle talk about hidden colours and missing ashes, Leonard decided that what he saw had been true. That was why the one-eyed man avoided everyone and everything; that was why he remained a shadow of something unhuman. He had lost his colours.
What about Leonard? Why did he follow Jean? Leonard avoided the question, focused on something else. He grabbed the idea that he needed to organize the migrants, especially the soldier. Warriors left to idle were bound to find something to break or kill. Yes. That was what he had to do. The migrants now listened to, even obeyed him because of Jean, but Leonard had observed Neville too long to understand the meaning of leadership. He was not a leader and the respected warriors of Debur had fled to Fabec, after Neville, who was missing.
Nobody wanted to believe he had died in Fabec. Leonard knew this was more hope than logic, but there were rumours that he had invaded Patire and killed Prince Faust outside the Mouth of War. On one hand, that was heroic and amazing; on the other hand, the War was loose.
And Leonard had a small army with him. Impatient, disorganized and anxious, but an army. It the War had crossed the Loefern to Lencon, it wouldn’t take long for it to come to Tuen, especially now that there was no Fabec and no Neville to stop it.
The night came veiled in clouds and the moon remained hidden. The road disappeared in darkness, but Jean kept on walking. Under Leonard’s instructions, people reached the shoulder of the person in front of them so they wouldn’t get lost in the dark. Nobody touched the one-eyes man, Leonard or Jean. They could see Jean in the dark, he was like a distortion, smoke.
Every now and then the clouds thinned out and the disperse moonlight made everyone look like ghosts. Then they saw another light, also flimsy and thin, but warm and human: a city’s light.
‘Tuen,’ said someone in the dark.
There was a mutterning, some excitement; they began to walk faster, but someone said:
‘Where is he?’
The people from Debur turned to the light, but Jean went the other way, toward a gigantic block of blackness in the night. The castle of Chambert. At the castle’s gates, the people of Debur hesitated. Even Jean. The journey’s exhaustion added to the weariness after the revolution, to the four hundred years of war, to the loss of Neville, the fear of the dragon, the fear of Fulbert. Chambert’s gates were open and they breathed darkness on the road. A cold darkness that smelled of storms and ancient scrolls. It smelled also of what was written on the scrolls.
The breeze that came from inside the castle changed as the people of Debur approached, like a slumbering beast that wonders who dares come near. Leonard felt like a million ants walked over his skin.
Jean walked through the gates. The castle seemed to move aside, a little curious at first, but soon uninterested. It went back to sleep.
The one-eyed man followed him, stretching his hand in front of him, like someone testing the temperature of water. Onte by one the people of Debur walked in, but they stayed near the gate, making camp there, closer to one another than they used to. Jean disappeared in Chambert’s depths. Leonard thought he heard a wolf howling, but it was just an echo that lingered inside Chambert’s walls.