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by
Peter McLean
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August 14 - August 23, 2023
‘If you must break the law, do it to seize power.’ —Julius Caesar
Dramatis Personae The Piety Family Tomas Piety: An army priest, a veteran, and a businessman. Leader of the Pious Men. Your narrator.
Will the Woman: We called him that because every time Will kills a man he weeps afterward, but he’s killed so many men it ain’t funny no more.
This is such a badass backstory for an unusual nickname
Desh: An Alarian lad from Hull Patcher’s Row. As far back as he could remember, he always wanted to be a Pious Man.
«Goodfellas» reference!!!
After the war we came home. Sixty-five thousand battle-shocked, trained killers came home to no jobs, no food, and the plague. What the fuck did Her Majesty think was going to happen?
‘What’s disbanded?’ ‘Means they’ve stopped paying us,’ Anne grumbled. She was right. Our regiment had gone from being three thousand paid, organised murderers to three thousand unpaid, disorganised murderers. That had gone about as well as might be expected.
I stood in the muddy yard behind the inn, pissing into a thin morning rain. It was cold, and everything seemed to have taken on the colour of fresh shit.
‘How are you a fucking priest?’ ‘I said the words,’ I told him. ‘I took the vow.’ ‘And that’s all there is to it?’ ‘Pretty much,’ I said. The ministry of Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows had little in the way of doctrine, or scripture. She wasn’t a goddess for learned men, for mystics or merchants or politicians. She was a goddess for soldiers, and most soldiers can’t even read.
That was how it was done, to my mind. A little trust, a little responsibility, increasing bit by bit until they were yours.
‘This is the Mother Inferior,’ Aunt Enaid said to me. ‘How dare you!’ the other woman screamed at her. ‘I’ll have you switched to within an inch of your life for that!’ ‘Switch this,’ Aunt Enaid said, and punched the Mother Superior full in the face.
Ok, I love Aunt Enaid
We went back out into the courtyard again. Eleven men were out there waiting for us. Anne was about to yell for the crew when I held up a hand to say be quiet. This lot were from the biggest, best-armed and meanest gang in Ellinburg – the City Guard.
Jajajjajajajajajja XD
There were Queen’s Men in the city, and they wanted me to work for them. Again.
Hold'up, AGAIN???
Wars need to be paid for, in gold as well as blood. Blood might be cheap but gold had to be wrung out of the provinces, by force if necessary. I’m no politician, but even I knew that.
I was Tomas Piety, and in Ellinburg I was a fucking prince.
Knowing your men, knowing which levers move them, is a big part of leadership, to my mind.
Grieg from my original crew confessed that he had hurt his girl last night, in the house at Chandler’s Narrow, and that was how he liked it. I stood him up and I belted him in the face, and felt his nose shatter under my knuckles. When he stopped choking on the blood, he admitted he didn’t like it when someone did it to him, and I forgave him and sent him on his way.
Tomas is such a real one for this
a god who had nothing better to worry about than who you might choose to fuck didn’t sound like he was worth much, to my mind.
‘Did you expect to die, in Abingon?’ ‘I did.’ ‘Did you hope to?’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. To start with. But you see things, in war. I don’t have to tell you, Father, you were there. Among all the pain and the suffering, you see things that give you hope.’
Once you know who the spy is, you’re halfway to controlling the flow of information.
we drank in the sort of shaky silence that always follows harsh work. There would be jokes and boasting in the morning, and tales grown tall in the telling of who had killed the most men and how, but that was for later. These were hard folk used to hard deeds, but shock is shock and no one is immune to it.
She drained her brandy in a single swallow and went through to the kitchen to wash the blood from her hands at last.
This has a double meaning that wasn't lost on me
‘Cunning is about real things in the real world, not stars and demons and debating high ideas. Sorcery, the magicians call that. Low magic. They look down their noses at it as being beneath them. Maybe it is, with all their money. A man as rich as a magician has servants to lay his fire for him, but a cunning man don’t so he makes his life easier the best way he can. A cunning man can set fires and quench them, mend hurts and cause them. A cunning man can tell you things you’ve forgotten you knew, and divine what tomorrow might bring.’
Sometimes a man has to balance two evils in his hands, and choose the lighter one.
Where is the difference between holy and possessed? I wondered. When does miracle become magic, magic become witchcraft? Is it in the nature of the deed itself, or in the eye of the beholder? Is it decided in the telling after the fact, and if so does it depend on who does that telling?
‘You remember what the captain told us about battle, don’t you, Bloody Anne? “Always cheat, always win,” he said. Well, if I haven’t got the men to do this in an honest fight, then I’m going to fucking cheat.’
The only unfair fight is the one you lose, to my mind. In a year’s time nobody would remember the details of what had happened or how it was done. They would only remember who had lived and who had died.
One thing I have noticed in life is that the men who speak the most of honour are usually those who have the least of it.
I prided myself that I hadn’t told him a single lie that night, although of course many truths are open to interpretation. I should know. I’m a priest, after all.
Blood is bad for business, everyone understood that, but all the same sometimes it’s necessary. The threat of it, at least, can be a strong bargaining tool.
‘Your business was built on violence,’ she said. ‘No, it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘It was built on the threat of violence, and the capability for it, but very seldom the reality of it.
knowing that a thing is foolish and doing something to change it are different matters.
Ruthless bastard he is, too, from what I hear. Bloodhands, they call him, though I’ve not managed to hear why.’ I almost fucking choked, and Ailsa’s face told me this was news to her too.
We all agree that every reader almost CHOKED with them at this point
‘Burn it all,’ I snarled at Billy the Boy as I passed him, and I found that I was weeping. ‘Burn it to the cunting ground.’
Took the words out of my mouth
‘You should have married,’ I said. ‘A long time ago. Made some poor man a terrifying wife, and left me alone.’ ‘And done what, raised brats?’ She snorted. ‘This country has twice the mouths it can feed already; that’s why we’re always at bloody war.
‘There’s a devil in you, Tomas Piety,’ Enaid said. ‘There always has been, and there’s no blaming the war for it. I remember how you were, even as a lad. You were twelve years old when you came to my house in the dead of night with your little brother at your side and you said “Da’s dead”, and there was no sorrow on your face.’ No, there wouldn’t have been.
When you lead, you have to know the levers that move a person.
Ailsa grabbed my arm as I buckled the Weeping Women around my waist. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she hissed at me. ‘Distance yourself, I said.’ I gave her a hard look. ‘Fuck. That.’
The hammer and the anvil, that was how we cleared the corridor in Chandler’s Narrow. That’s a terrible thing in such a confined space, and we butchered them until all of us were red to the elbows and it was done.
Some people aren’t your friends, however much you pay them. They’re just scared to be your enemy. If someone finds a way to scare them more than you do, someone like Bloodhands, then you’ll lose them. I knew that well enough.
You’ve become a fucking priest of bones!’
That's the title of the book!!!
We fell upon them like the wrath of Our Lady. A glorious charge, in the light of the rising sun. It sounds so grand. It sounds like the stuff of legends, the act of heroes. Well, we were no heroes, and we were outnumbered and exhausted and hurt, and it was a fucking disaster.
When people have run out of food, and hope and places to hide, do not be surprised if they have also run out of mercy.
