Baptiste had cut the old knight out of his tunic and he sat hunched, sinewy and lopsided, a stick wedged in his jaws, grimacing as she dug the arrows out of him. The man was more scar than man. Star-shaped punctures, criss-crossed gashes, mottled burns. Alex doubted this was his first impalement, let alone his first arrow-wound. There was one mark she kept coming back to, all the way around his arm. Gave her the mad feeling it had been cut clean off then stitched back on.
‘So … you’re one of them?’ Brother Diaz was still mud-caked, still gripping his holy circle white-knuckle tight. Like he was hanging off a cliff and that was his one handhold. ‘One of my … congregation?’
Jakob of Thorn prised the stick from his mouth. ‘I was cursed by a witch and – God damn it!’ As Baptiste wrenched one of the arrows out.
‘Sorry,’ she said, tossing it away.
‘I was cursed by a witch, and I cannot die. God knows I’ve tried – gah!’ And he wedged the stick back in his jaws as Baptiste started to slit the skin around the other shaft.
It hardly bled. Like cutting a wax dummy. Any other day, being cursed by a witch so you couldn’t die was a story that would’ve left Alex with a question or two.
