Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

If the angels were real, why had she been abandoned now? And why weren’t they helping anybody when they got sick?

“The plague doesn’t care about nice. Stay away from there.” “I can’t remember her name.” “She doesn’t have one anymore.”

“How do you know all this?” Mother, she wrote, and a smile broke so gently on her face that Thomas bit his tongue viciously to keep from weeping for his own.

Im gonna throw up everywhere

“This is beyond our power, brethren,” said the priest. “God forgives us the oaths we make in ignorance. Let us return to town before we make the thing stronger on our fat and our blood.” None of them protested.

Fair enough dude

“I was hoping a cup or two might extract some knightly oath from you. You are a knight? Or were?” “I was. I still am, I suppose. But it feels more like I was. It feels like a long time ago.”

:-(

“No,” the priest said. “You wouldn’t rather a goblet of wine than your honor back. Your joking is pleasant, but it doesn’t hide the hole in you.” Thomas turned his eyes away from the priest’s warm gaze.

Hey random priest why are you going for the throat immediately OUCH

“Matthieu Hanicotte,” she said, calling the priest by his true name, which he had never told her, “you say these words because you fear to leave your little home. But I turn your words upon you; if Death means to take you, he may do it here as easily as on the road. He is already in this house.”

“I will not dine with you troop of pigs,”

But you did for like, hours, dude

Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.

:,((

“What are you called, little bird?” “Delphine.” They cried together and held each other as the priest looked at Thomas and Thomas looked down, deeply ashamed. In their weeks together, neither man had ever asked her name.

DELPHINE I love you so dearly Im sorry you're with zero people who know how to show emotion

Thomas breathed in, as if to exhale some oath, but he had mellowed with the telling of his tale. He suffered the priest to put his hand on his shoulder, then hung his head. Now the woodcarver sat up and put his hand on Thomas as well.

Just dudes bein bros

That was when they heard it. A baby’s cry.

THIS IS TERRIBLE WORK WHAT THE FUCK WITH ANNETTE THERE U SICK SICK MAN (bawling)

Or were the dead ringing their own bells?

Thomas broke the silence that followed by saying, “So that’s what the reaper looks like without his robes.” The priest laughed after a pause, but the girl just blinked rain out of her eyes and looked at them for an explanation.

Imagine going through The Horrors (literally) and cracking this joke as a crazy naked man with a scythe runs away. Unmatched comedy I fear.

“What the hell kind of story is that? The adulterous wife wins out? The noble werewolf is deceived and banished?”

Thomas has a wolfsona

“I don’t know,” the priest said, fidgeting. “Maybe. Something about the deceiving nature of woman.” Thomas stared intently at the priest in the firelight, and it was difficult for him to tell whether Thomas was being jocular or actually growing angry. “That explains it, then,” he said. “They tell priests stories about how bad women are so they won’t fuck them.”

Thomas said -_-

“Do you want me to finish? Because I can’t when you keep interrupting me to show how clever you are.” “Ooooooh,” Thomas said. “I stand rebuked. So the naked knight.” “They give him a robe.” “So the knight with the robe.” “The knight is not important now.” “So the unimportant knight.”

Insane Dadcore right here he's pissing Del OFFFFF

“Go on!” he shouted, reaching for his sword, but the eyes just blinked at him. He got up, and the face disappeared; they saw the naked old man run by the door, looking wildly in at them. “This is MY BARN!” he said, outraged, and ran into the rain again. There was no question of Thomas catching him.

this random old naked man coming back again is the most random shit ever but yknow what hell yeah

He could even distinguish the young man’s cough from the rest of his congregation.

oh this is gonna make me so sad ily gay people..

it was said the pope heard audiences between two fires to burn off pestilential air,

POINTS - NAME OF THE BOOK

What troubled him most was his feeling that God could see into his heart and knew that his love was twisted.

:,(

“No,” the priest lied. “What good is confession if you lie?”

RRAHHHHHHHHHHHH

“I wouldn’t leave you,” a small voice said. The priest looked down and saw that Delphine had come from the barn. “If it was the boy,” she continued. “I wouldn’t leave.” He smiled at her and wiped at his eye with the back of his hand.

IM GONNA BE SICK THIS JUST STABBED ME

“It was you,” she said. “The only bad baby ever was you.”

Thomas getting called a bad baby is comedic peak

The priest sat up, stiff from his night on the rocky ground, and noticed her at her game. “What are you cooking for us, daughter?” he said. “A stew!”

SHE'S PLAYING LIKE A LIL KID IM GONNA CRY

“Good luck on your crusade,” the priest offered. “Go to Hell,” the squire in yellow said,

oh ok word

“What, God-in-Heaven? The only thing I say to God is my daughters’ names. And it’s not a prayer. It’s a rebuke. We’ll thank you not to say any blessings at dinner.”

*snapping my fingers at this and nodding*

he was glad to do something good that was also entertaining.

thomas is kinda evil i love him

I can’t plow. I can’t build. But I can suffer. God wants suffering now.”

crickets...

How was she to believe man was anything special when he looked so much like any other animal in death?

made better at messages than war.

Why must you hurt her she’s so small

this not swag anymore tears in my eyes

“Not even for wine?” He smiled, too. “Not even for wine.”

“What did you tell him?” the innkeeper asked, crossing himself. She looked into her empty soup bowl. “I don’t know.”

??????

Instead, the massive armored man with the scarred cheek and broken nose looked mildly at the boy and said, “Don’t.” The boy didn’t.

Dad Thomas moment fr

For the first time, Thomas allowed himself to think they might just get to Avignon, and that whatever the girl had come to do might just get done.

Man i fuckin HOPE so (im gonna be gutted by this book istg)

Delphine set the cages down and opened their doors, taking one docile bird and then the other into her hands. She kissed them both, then released them. One flew up into the sky; the other went toward the bank.

She just like me fr

Nobody saw the second finch fly into the squash field, where it stayed for a moment before flying up again and into the clouds. Neither did they see the jester now get to his feet and run toward a farmhouse in the distance, no longer limping.

BRUH

“Are men who swear foul oaths during a conversation about God fit to point out sin in someone else?” said the girl. And she ate her fish right down to the tail, looking more than a little proud of herself.

And the stinging began again.

The sting-en-ing (i cracked myself up with that one)

The poison in him stopped his heart. He went still and sank.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO GUILLAUME!!!!!!!!

The knight would never forget the image of the faltering priest holding the girl up; how like the raising of the Eucharist it looked.

“Don’t die, bugger,”

he might bro :((

“I’m not afraid.” “Neither am I.”

“I’ll talk later. Our priest dies tonight, but not in a field.”

If my fruity priest dies rn ill be so mad

“You might not have been a soldier, bugger, but you’re tough.” “Stop calling him that,” said the girl. Thomas turned an angry glance at her but softened it immediately. “Yes.” He put his hand on the priest’s chest.

SOBS

From that day forward, three taps of her ring on anything meant, Do you remember our wedding day? and three taps on his part meant, God, yes.

alright I need to get up and take a walk this is the most gutting line I have ever read ever they were in love or whatever AHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

He wanted to turn his gaze away at this talk of love between men, but couldn’t; he knew it was the last he would see of this flawed priest who had become so dear to him so quickly.

He breathed three more hard breaths, each one longer in coming, and then he stopped.

I think I wont ever read anything ever again why would u do this to me author WHY

PLEASE! she thought, He’s so good I need him please I love him. Now the fluttering, different than her racing heart. Now her answer. Leave him with us, little moon.