Extract from Chapter Fourteen - A Debt Repaid

[necessary_child]

He’d remembered Michael as an honourable soul. They’d been good friends, but Michael had always put duty before all things. If he’d been ordered by Jehovah to kill his own mother, he would have done it.

But it was also true that in some sense he owed Sam his life, a debt that had been repaid in Kaluga after almost five hundred years of neglect.

In the year of Our Lord 1582 Sam Linnfer had been pressing his weary way through an endless, dense forest complete with wolves and bandits. Stopping in his tracks, he found himself staring at the avenging angel ahead.

Sam was wearing a black woollen cloak, and old boots that were in constant battle with his feet as to how fast blisters could be caused, and leading a horse that if anything looked worse than he did. And no matter how good his regenerative abilities, they hadn’t worked fast enough to banish the extensive bruising down one side of his haggard features. His clothes too were torn, as though slashed by the claws of a bear, and when he took his hands from the horse’s bridle, they trembled.

“They tried to burn me,” he called. It was neither an accusation, nor a plea for help. It was a statement, warning the other away from him. The implication behind it was clear. If they couldn’t burn me, don’t think you can.

“I’ve been sent,” Michael said. He was wearing his archangel’s white.

“I can tell.” He was still shaken, and Michael could see it. Even Sam struggled when fanatic mortals tried to burn him at the stake. “Are the others nearby? They’d have to be, if you intend to wear that daft white robe everywhere.”

Michael had begun walking closer, his sword already drawn, the edge gleaming with fire. “I was sent to find a witch. You’ll do.”

Sam watched him approach, his hands not once moving towards his sword. “They tried to burn me,” he repeated. “Don’t you find that ironic? They say I live in boiling pits of fire, and yet they think they can burn me.”

Michael took up the guard position a few feet from Sam, sword ready.

Sam didn’t move. “Why do you have to fight me? I know Jehovah can’t bear my name, because I was right and he was wrong, and his grand Messiah plan failed. But why do you, you, have to fight me?”

“I’ve been sent.”

Sam sighed, and gently slapped his horse on the rump. Obediently it trotted away. He turned his full attention to Michael. “Tell you what,” he said, “you put the sword down and stop being an idiot, and I won’t tell your master. How does that sound?”

Michael was lost in his own world – or one of Jehovah’s making? “You. A Son of Time, a Prince of Heaven, a Waywalker. I worshipped Waywalkers, thought they were almost… godly. And I trusted you, called you my friend. Do you know how I argued with Jehovah when he demanded your death? How I begged him to reconsider – even though he is my master, and not you. He no longer trusts me, you know, because I argued for you. I was cast out of his favour, all because you were my friend. He’s the Son of Time, the Prince of Heaven. You’re just the exile that I thought I knew. I would have given anything to be a Waywalker. And yet you… you…”

His sword whirled, but Sam was already there. His hands moved in a blur, and the silver blade was up as he ducked below Michael’s blow. Expertly he swivelled, swinging his blade up and across as he exclaimed, “These many years on Earth and you learn how to survive, old friend.” A thrust, a parry, an easy spin in which he stuck out an ankle to trip his opponent, who fell, then rolled clumsily out of the way of a tauntingly leisured down-stroke.

“I studied survival in China, in Africa, in France and now here and, you know, I feel really confident with myself,” Sam went on as Michael got to his feet. “Did I tell you about the latest developments in Hell? I’ve actually managed to convince them of the wonders of plumbing. The fact that the temperature is always below zero is a minor difficulty, but, as we say, Time conquers all.”

He ducked another thrust, danced nimbly away from a counter-stroke and in the riposte brought his sword swinging round and down in an elegant arc that pinned Michael’s sword to the ground and locked them each inches from the other’s face.

“You don’t want to be a Son of Time, Michael,” he warned softly. “It’s not worth it.”

Michael broke free, jabbing with his knee at Sam’s gut. But Sam was already spinning away, and used Michael’s off-balance to deliver a ringing sideways blow with the flat of his blade.

“Archangels have it so much easier,” explained Sam in a louder voice as they whirled and thrust across the path and between the trees. “Being created to serve somehow gives purpose to your life. When I was created to serve, things were so much easier. There was none of this self-doubt, none of this agonising over what it’s all about. It’s so simple to have your loyalties, faith, belief and hope grounded in one fairly safe bet. But we still gamble with our souls – every day, Michael. And for every day we lose, a little more of our soul is stolen from us. After a few thousand years of gambling, that’s a lot of debts to pay.”

Sam had only one hand on his sword now. Too late Michael tried to scramble for cover while, palm out, Sam’s free hand came across and up. As it rose, so Michael rose until he was pinned, helpless and motionless in air, his wild eyes and fast breathing the only proof that he was alive.

Below, supporting his involuntary flight, Sam wasn’t smiling at all now.

“They tried to burn me,” he murmured again. “Do not seek to be a Son of Time. Do not seek to see everything you hold dear pass away, to be replaced by new hope that, again, passes away. Do not seek to see as clearly as Time makes his Children see. If you had seen the things that I have seen, or the things that I must see before I die… well, no more of that. You see what you want to see and, while it lasts, that is a marvellous blessing. If we saw what was really there, who would be able to face Time with a steady eye?”

He released Michael from the spell, and the archangel fell to the ground with a heavy thump. Sam brought his free hand slicing through the air, and the effect was like an iron fist to Michael’s face, who slumped, hands opening around his blade and voice giving no cry.

“They tried to burn me,” Sam whispered.

~Catherine Webb, WayWalkers