Falling Idols by Brian Hodge Page A

charnel houses.
    “Where is everyone else?” said Father Guillaume. “I dared believe by now they would be rejoicing.”
    “They’re terrified even to look out their windows. Would you be any different, if you didn’t know?” Giselle looked at him without pity. “Be proud. He served you well.”
    She left him to dog her footsteps through the clinging mist, and returned to the rectory, the warmth of its fire that had fed well through the night. Giselle huddled at the table and wondered why she hadn’t gone back to the priory instead, then realized she had more to say. She waited until Guillaume hunkered at the fire to add a fresh log.
    “Tell me,” she said. “How do you justify this before God? Aside from your feelings about the Germans — I know those well enough — but instead, Nomad? How do you justify condemning him to carry such added burdens to his soul?”
    Father Guillaume straightened at the fireplace with a weary groan. “Nomad doesn’t have a soul, Giselle.”
    “By what authority do you make that decision?” she cried.
    “By the authority of the Church!” He returned to the table and sat heavily, angrily, in his chair.
    “Then the Church is wrong!”
    Guillaume pointed wildly in the direction of the village. “That creature was never conceived like a man. Even a horse, or an ox, or a dog comes into this world by natural birth, but we don’t consider them to possess souls. How much lesser a being than them is Nomad, then? In Nomad I endangered nothing. Because there is no soul within to endanger!”
    She drew into herself then, feet like ice, heart like broken fragments of stone. There would be no arguing with the Father, for there was nothing in his mind left open. And what of Nomad? She could not believe that he too lay below in a cottage, one more casualty of the night. Had he wreaked his havoc, then fled, unable to face her? He had to know she could forgive him anything.
    Sadly, though, there were more immediate and pressing matters to be concerned with.
    “What of the Germans’ reinforcements?” she asked. “They will come, you know. Later today, tomorrow. How do you propose to explain where the first have gone?”
    “It’s not our duty to explain anything a German decides to do,” he said. “We take the bodies and we bury them, or hide them beneath haystacks, or haul them by ox-cart to the lake and weight them with stones and sink them to the bottom. We clean up their blood. And they remain the secret of this village. For as long as it takes.” He shook his head. “They were here, and they left. That is all we know.”
    Giselle tried to keep from shivering. Dawn was cold, but this priest’s heart was colder still. How gentle he’d seemed, for years, while concealing the scheming heart of a murderer.
    She was about to leave his table when she heard a scraping outside the door. Heavy feet upon flagstones, unsteady, and then the door swung open.
    He filled the doorway, Nomad did, then entered with the slow and painful gait of one who ignores wounds. She sought his eyes, and when their gazes met, the yellow smoldering fury in them seemed to soften, and she knew him capable of tears he would never allow. He had purpose, and now, at least, she was not it.
    He strode past her, and after a brief pause to glance about the cottage, continued to the bookcase where Father Guillaume’s dusty and cherished volumes sat like wise old friends. One arm swung up, to add something to their company.
    “For the love of God!” Father Guillaume screamed. “You brought that here? Here? ”
    Giselle shut her eyes, quickly, grateful she could, so she didn’t have to see those of Lieutenant Streckenbach staring dimly from across the room. His mouth hung frozen half-open in perpetual surprise, and by now the skin of the head was waxy and pale.
    “I thought you would be pleased,” explained Nomad, in loss and sorrow and the pain of lifetimes of broken promises.
    He shuffled a few more steps to sag