Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 825: Dusk Tolls

Tucker Thor climbed the fortified wall of the New Holy City and walked slowly toward the blotched parapet.

It was probably the most peaceful Months of Demons the stronghold had ever known.

The wall had always been kept clean — ice and snow scraped away on schedule, a tactic against the demonic beasts, which left it standing out year-round against the vast white wilderness like an ash-gray giant regardless of snowfall. But now Tucker’s boots left clear prints in a fresh layer that no one had troubled to remove. He walked through them without thinking about it.

All traces of the autumn battle had been buried. Lumps in the flagstone, blood in the crevices — covered over by snow, as though nothing had ever happened here. It would have been impossible to imagine before. He stood at the parapet and looked out at the white expanse below and felt, not comfort, but a strange, detached clarity.

He had thought the Holy City of Hermes would be overrun by demonic beasts. Every believer had believed the same — had prepared to die within the cathedral walls. What had actually come had barely tried to reach them. The few beasts that appeared had not even attempted the walls.

While everyone was still absorbing that astonishment, still moving between relief and something like gratitude, the second blow arrived. It arrived the way the worst things arrive: quickly, in the dark, without any of the dignity of battle.

The church had lost heavily in the war against Graycastle. The urgent work of winter had been to elect three new archbishops and fill the senior positions emptied by the fighting. Young believers had been promoted rapidly. Tucker himself had been elevated from Chief Justice to acting bishop, one of a handful of survivors who still knew how to hold the structure upright.

Then, on a windless night, the cathedral fell.

A pit opened beneath it. The tower came down. A number of senior executives were killed in the collapse — men and women who had survived the war, survived the beasts, and died in their beds inside a building that had stood for centuries. Tucker had been out on patrol and so had lived. He did not consider this luck.

No one knew precisely what had happened, though rumors moved through the surviving believers like weather: a great fire in the underground chambers beneath the church, a demon-beast incursion into the deep passages, something gone wrong in the sealed areas that only the pope could authorize anyone to enter. The acting pope, Reverend Tayfun, had disappeared without explanation. Without his permission, no one could access the passages beneath the church and find out what had actually occurred.

The collapse of the Hermes Cathedral was a more complete defeat than the war.

The war could be explained — poor communications between commanders, the treachery of enemies, the failures that war always produced in retrospect. But the fall of the Tower of Babel, which was the spirit of the church made stone, could only be read one way: they had been abandoned by God.

The church had moved quickly to seal off the site. The news spread anyway. It always does. The outer residents — masons, tradesmen, people who had never put much faith in the church to begin with — began to leave first. Then the fear crept inward, spreading through the outer city and into the inner city like a plague, and unlike a plague there was no divine cure being promised.

Tucker had organized a prayer ceremony on the wall. The whole Judgement Army had assembled, and the priests, and they had prayed together in the cold, asking the deities to look again at this last human stronghold, to protect the living from the evil power beneath. The deities had not responded.

He remembered Pope Mayne telling him once that power was the only true defense against evil. But he could think of nothing here that constituted power anymore. He could only pray, and God was not listening.

“Your Eminence.” A woman’s voice, behind him. “The unit sent to pursue the fugitives has returned. But…”

“Some of the soldiers fled as well.” Tucker turned. He didn’t make it a question.

As he had expected, the report came from Farrina — one of the surviving Judgement Army commanders, who had taken over his former position. Her face reminded him of Alicia: the same set to the jaw, the same quality of bearing that came from having chosen conviction over comfort. Alicia had died when the beasts reached the cathedral wall, holding her position with more than half her comrades already gone. Farrina had held the army together in the weeks after the cathedral fell, when everything else was dissolving. They were alike in the essential way — both capable of remaining when remaining was the harder thing.

Farrina’s jaw tightened. “Yes. The new recruits were useless. More than twenty went out after the fugitives and one or two came back. They weren’t killed by refugees — I’d stake my life on that. They ran. If I find them, they’ll learn what betrayal costs.”

“It was inevitable.” Tucker looked back at the white valley below. “How many remain in the Judgement Army?”

“Five hundred and sixty-four. They’re holding the inner city gate. That should keep the inner-city residents from leaving.”

He knew the full count. Those five hundred, plus roughly a hundred God’s Punishment Warriors camped in the rubble of the collapsed cathedral. That was the sum of what remained. He had understood, since he first stood here and did the arithmetic, what that number meant: there was nothing these six hundred soldiers could do against the demons when they came. The old plan — unify the kingdoms, field the God’s Punishment Army, hold the line at Hermes, survive the Battle of Doomsday — that plan required numbers and time and an intact cathedral and a living pope. None of those things existed anymore.

What was the purpose of holding a plateau fortress with no walls that could matter?

There were five hundred people alive here. At least he could see to that.

“Go east,” he said. “The Kingdom of Everwinter or Wolfheart — whichever is closer to the coast. Find somewhere near a harbor. We’ll build a new holy city there.”

If the demons came and swept through the Four Kingdoms, a harbor meant ships, and ships meant distance, and distance meant a few more years. Not victory. But continuation. Some small thread of the human race still present when the darkness passed, if it ever passed.

Farrina stared at him. “Leave Hermes? Your Eminence — if we leave, who defends against the demonic beasts?”

“If demonic beasts breach the inner continent, we blame Graycastle for failing to hold the line.” He kept his voice measured. “Our priority now is to preserve what remains. We can build a new cathedral. We cannot replace the believers we lose here. When the Four Kingdoms are overrun, people will remember the church again — but only if the church still exists to be remembered.”

The demons are not truly the point, he thought. The enemy from the deep of Hell is beyond anything these six hundred can address. What I can still do — the last thing I can do — is move them far enough away from the battlefield that they survive it.

Farrina’s brows drew together. “The pious ones — those who mean to fall with the Holy City — may not accept abandoning Hermes.”

Tucker was quiet for a moment. “The Holy City exists wherever its faithful stand, child. Explain it to them. They will understand.” He paused. “This is also the acting pope’s order: preserve ourselves, preserve the spirit of the church. Is that clear?”

Let the fugitives go, he thought. Let them carry the news. Let Graycastle absorb them — Roland will be quick enough to take in people who might be useful to him. And we will be elsewhere.

“I understand, Your Eminence.” Farrina hesitated. Then: “Your Holiness.” She curled her right hand into a fist, pressed it to her chest, and bowed.

She turned and went down toward the inner city.

Tucker stood at the parapet.

The sky had shifted while they spoke — the dull gray of a winter afternoon giving way to something warmer and stranger. Orange light broke through the cloud cover at the horizon, streaking the fresh snow with color. He watched it. He had not seen light like that in a long time.

“Does this mean the Months of Demons has ended?” Farrina’s voice drifted back up the stairwell, bright with sudden hope.

“Yes. The snow will melt in no time.” He raised his voice just enough. “Go and spread the word. If they start preparing now, we can leave in two or three weeks.”

“Yes! Right away!” Her footsteps quickened, receded, were gone.

The evening bell began to toll in the city below. Nine strokes — the signal for believers to close their eyes and pray.

Tucker Thor did not pray.

He took the crown from his head and set it on the parapet. Then he straightened and looked at the last of the sunset: the light thinning at the edges of the clouds, the snow below still holding its color.

There was one more thing he needed to do to convince the last believers to leave. He did not mind it. By doing so, he would be reunited with the companions who had stood beside him through everything the years had required of them.

This was not only a twilight for the church.

He shut his eyes. He leaned forward over the wall.

Farrina heard a soft sound behind her — something giving way, something falling — and turned around.

The city wall was empty.

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