[ This is part of a series of short stories/vignettes around Gorm the Witchfinder, a warrior priest attempting to redeem himself for his past as a witch hunter. ]

“You mistake me,” the witchfinder mutters, meeting the woman’s livid glare with his one good eye.

“Yer a pig blooded zealot, same as the rest of ’em,” she snarls. “Claiming dominion over common folk. Like you ain’t a sinner same as us.”

“Worse, I imagine,” the old man sighs.

The woman is sat, wounded, against a godawful altar – a haphazard stack of bloodied bones and wood, arranged to perilously support an open, thin tome. The book shivers and twitches like a living thing, the pages whipping back and forth in a whispering flurry.

“Enough, then,” she mutters. “Do yer damned work, cleric. Put an end to it.”

“What made you turn to it?” the old man asks. “Devilry, I mean. Did you not know the risks?”

“What, of sanctimonious wrinkle-souls barging their way in?” the woman returns. “Aye, no, wasn’t in me scheme, I fear.”

“Not what I meant,” the witchfinder says. “You know what I meant.”

The woman stares hatefully at him for a long, quiet moment.

“There weren’t any food left,” she mutters. “The soil just…just gave out. Not a thing would grow.”

The witchfinder listens. He himself has leaned, nursing a cut along the side of his neck, against the doorway.

“We prayed, aright, day and night, til our throats were raw and our hearts half the same,” the woman continues. “Prayed until our tongues sat fat and swollen in our mouths – the only fat in our mouths. All the animals – you have to feed beasts, or they turn on you, and deathly starved meat ain’t much meat at all for anyone.”

She drags herself painfully up a little, biting back a sound of hurt.

“Do you know what we got for our troubles? Do you know what the gods gave us, for our swollen tongues and bleeding throats?”

The witchfinder knows. He doesn’t say.

“Nothing,” the woman spits. “Nothing. All that screaming, all that crying, and not a one of them listened. Do you understand what that’s like, old man? Screaming up into silence?”

The witchfinder wants to tell her he does – but it isn’t what she needs to hear right now.

“I’ll tell you – someone answered,” the woman breathes. “From down below, o’course. Made all sorts of promises. And d’you think I didn’t know the risks? D’you think I didn’t try to close every opening in the spell, in the wish, in the ask? Thought I did. Thought I did.”

Outside of the smashed-in church, the square is littered with the bodies of dead villagers, and covered in the ashen remnants of banished devils. Inside, the witchfinder sighs as he straightens up, then puts a hand around the hilt of his great sword.

“Right then,” he says. “To it.”

“To it,” the woman mutters. “Get it over with, witchfinder.”

She braces herself as he approaches – and then gasps as the great sword crashes down on the altar, smashing the macabre thing into scattered, crackling pieces. The book is shorn in two – spattering a strange, thick ichor from its severed spine, akin to blood, before it falls into stilled halves across the slickened cobbles.

“Your wound – I can’t help with it right now, because divine magic would tear you apart, as lousy with devilry as you are,” the witchfinder mutters, kneeling next to her. “But it isn’t fatal. When the sun comes up, drink this.”

He has produced a glass vial with something thick and red in it.

“It will soothe the worst of the pain and mend you enough to travel,” he says. “Two days solid walk south of here is another village. They keep to themselves, mostly. No witchfinders because the path up the mountain is too much trouble to send supplies up and down regularly.”

He isn’t looking at her – instead he’s looking past her, watching the doorway leading outside.

“Nobody has to know who you are or what you did,” he says. “All they need to know is that you need something to eat and a place to stay, and that you’ll earn your keep. You’ll be safe. You can start over.”

He looks back to her. She’s staring at him like she’s discovered an entirely new color.

“There’s nothing left here,” he says. “Not for you, not for anyone.”

In the sudden absence of fear and hatred, guilt begins its terrifying advance on the empire of her mind, halted by the sudden sensation of his hand on her shoulder.

“You were at the end of it,” he says. “You tried to do something good, and it did not work, and you need – need – to let that be the whole and sum of it, do you understand? You tried something. You had to try something. And all you can do now is try something else. Something for yourself.”

“But – how can you forgive me -“

“That’s not my job, forgiving. It wasn’t my job to judge, either,” he says, standing up. “My job is doing my level best to save people. The only one left to save is you. That means you can’t waste it, you hear me?”

She doesn’t respond – he can tell she’s struggling to hold onto the adrenaline, her only shield from a hurt that threatened to eat her from the inside out.

He hopes she can find peace. He knows she won’t. He tries not to think of silent gods and desperate prayers. He doesn’t pretend to understand any of it. He can’t. All he can do is try to save people.

“Two days south. Start over. Make it…make it mean something,” he says. “Stay safe.”

And then he’s gone, quietly headed past the sunken doorway out into the smoldering square, and toward the road leading out of here. He tries not to think of the woman, who lets free the wail building behind her lips as he begins making his way north.

That’s the ticket, he tells himself. Gods save souls. Gorm saves people.

It takes him two days to sleep a full night again, even so.