“If the welcome party is over,” Gerard said, frowning, “I guess it is time we go over the plan once more, and then we move.”
“Liane is ready to move,” Léa said. “She only waits for us to be on our way.”
“There’s going to be a lot of work for the six of us,” Bernt said.
“Seven,” Genò said.
He scowled. “What?”
“She’s going to guide me to the temple,” Léa said. “She has some business to settle with the Black Priest.”
Bernt chuckled. “You, babe? Against a Black Priest?”
Léa placed her hand on Genò’s shoulder. It was cold, and the long talons caressed her skin through the fabric of her chemise. “She will not be alone.”
Genò wondered if that’s was a good thing or not.
Thirty-one - Intruders
The commander of the Five Stars forces had taken possession of the burgomaster’s house. This was a square stone house, overlooking a small square in the center of which a small fountain had been turned by the cold into an ice sculpture.
By the small archway that led to the back of the house, Coline and her band wished good luck at Léa and Genò, and watched the two women proceed further and disappear in the darkness.
“She’ll be fine,” Gerard said to Bernt, slapping his shoulder. Then Coline clicked her tongue and nodded, and they hastened along the alley and to the back door.
“Where are all the guards?” Ulf asked.
Gerard shook his head.
Bernt used his dagger to open the lock. “This is too easy,” he hissed, pushing the door open.
“It’s supposed to be,” Coline said, and went in.
The others followed.
“They are ready,” Giso said.
Liane gave her a weird look, but said nothing.
She took a deep breath, and then lifting her Flamberge high above her head, she let out an animal scream, and started running.
By the time the Five Stars soldiers looked over the barricade blocking Main Street, Liane was already vaulting over it, followed by a horde of screaming beast-men.
The sky was suddenly alive with fire arrows.
“It’s closed from the inside,” Genò hissed. She started rummaging through her skirts, looking for a long needle she used to keep the split closed, and as a self-defense weapon and a lock-pick on occasion.
“Wait.”
Genò turned and Léa was no longer there, but a thick billow of dark smoke was pushing around her and against the wood and iron door, insinuating itself in the cracks along the frame.
A moment, and Léa opened the door from the inside, giving her a sharp-toothed grin. Genò walked in.
They were in the eastern nave of the temple, the ceiling arching high above them, and lost in darkness. Candles burned in the niches in the walls, trembling shadows cast over the faces of the Companions of the Venerable Claire of the Hearth. The pews were occupied by a score of children, that were sleeping on the hard benches, curled up against the cold.
“Wake the kids,” Léa said. “And take them out of here.”
Genò stared at her for a moment.
Then a voice spoke. “And what do we have here?”
A group of soldiers in black and red came charging down the Main Street, towards the barricade Liane’s beast-men had just conquered.
In the light of a burning rooftop, Liane caught faces contorted in rage, men and women charging mindlessly and in dead silence, their teeth gritted, their eyes feverish with holy fury. Like something devoid of all humanity. The blue-haired commander shuddered despite herself. “Retreat!” she commanded.
Liuva helped her up the barricade, and they jumped off it together and ran just as the defenders, trampling the remains of their dead companions, started climbing on the wall of amassed furniture and timbers. They were about to go over it, when the barricade burst into flames.
They started screaming, and Liane knew they were human after all.
Thirty-two – Life and Death
In the end the two men with short spears that had been stationed in a nook along the corridor lost their nerve and attacked them too early. Coline laughed, pushed the tip of the spear to the side and pushed inside the guard of the one on the left, and stabbed him in the thigh using the poniard in her right hand. On her side, Gerard caught the second spear-man in the throat with the point of his rapier, and the man fell on the ground, gurgling, drowning in his own blood.
The surprise failed, The rest of the men that had been laying in ambush lost their beat, and when they poured into the corridor they did so without any plan or strategy.
Cook grabbed the spear of the closest soldier and simply lifted him up and threw him through one of the tall windows. By her side, Bernd killed a rushing man with a thrown dagger while he unsheathed his short sword, and parried a slash from a woman in red and black. Ulf met his attackers full on, parrying with crossed blades. Then he kicked one in the groin and dispatched the following with swift stab.
More Crusaders joined the fight, but they were too many, too closely packed, and had no experience of combat in close quarters. A wild glee thundering in her ears, Coline pushed through them, milling her blades wildly, Gerard close behind her, guarding her back.
“Take care of the kids,” Léa said quietly.
Genò was finding hard to take her eyes off the man that was coming towards them along the aisle. If he was a man at all.
She recognized the face of the one that had applied the white-hot branding iron to her skin. The same long face with high cheekbones, the same large ears. The same black habit, with the golden medallion dangling on the chest. But something was off. Something that canceled the uncanny traits of the vampiress.
“Black Priest,” Léa said.
He grinned. He moved like he was gliding, flowing along the polished floor. His black shape seemed to drip, the sleeves of his habit stretching and oozing as he came forward, his outline becoming fluid.
Léa glanced over her shoulders. “!The children!” she commanded.
Genò snapped out of her state, and ran to the benches, shaking the kids awake. They looked at her through sleepy eyes, a wild-haired, big-bosom-ed woman urging them to rise.
Behind her Léa screamed, but Genò forced herself not to turn. She picked up a very small child, took a little girl’s hand, and with the others following her, she ran towards the main doors of the temple.
The beast-men pushed through the ranks of the Five Stars soldiers, hacking and slashing mindlessly, pressing them in the narrow lanes of Saonne, pinning them against the burning houses, using the iced streets, the flying embers and the collapsing buildings, the people running and screaming from the flames against them.
Liane was covered in blood from head to feeth, a sense of joyful elation carrying her forward, her heart singing, Liuva and Giso at her side as she cut a swath of death through her enemies.
The momentum of their charge brought Coline and her band, surfing over dead and the crippled enemies, into the great hall at the end of the corridor. Suddenly free of adversaries, the five warriors slowed down and stopped. There was a great chandelier hanging over their head, and the gilded opulence extracted for decades from the commerce passing through the Pass of Lo and the town.
The marble floor was as polished as a mirror.
“Coline of Bellegarde,” the commander of the Hierophant’s forces said, laughing. “So nice of you to pay us a visit.”
He was tall, lean, wearing the black and red uniform of the Crusaders. There were two guivres, crouching by his side. Scurrying on their short hind legs and on the elbows of their folded wings, they charged at Coline and the warriors of Bellegarde.
Thirty-three – Endgame
Léa retreated swiftly along the aisle, her feet barely touching the floor. The Black Priest followed her, a mad grin on his contorted face. It was like fighting against a wave, she thought. The creature had suffered the slashes of her talons, but the lacerations had healed a
lmost instantly, and when she had tried to grab his head and snap his neck, his skull had simply done a whole turn. He then had tried to bite in her hand.
But it was a game two could play, and when the Priest came at her, his mouth much larger than any man’s, and tried to pin her against the wall, she just exploded into a pack of screeching rats, and dispersed in the darkness.
Genò cursed furiously as she pulled at the latch of the main gate. The kids around her watched goggle-eyed the young woman that was blaspheming the Prophetess of the Hearth in her own temple, while pushing and pulling at the doors, and kicking them.
Then the gates opened, and revealed a landscape of burning houses and screams, and the distant clash of weapons. Saonne was a vision of hell, bathed red in the light of the fires, the smell of smoke and blood heavy on the chilly wind.
Genò crossed the square and stopped under the porch where once a month the herders sold their goat milk and cheese. In the deep shadows, she looked at the kids, and singled out one that was a little taller than the others, with an insouciant smirk on his face. “You, what’s your name?”
“Fouet,” he said, warily.
“Good, Fouet, now you’re in charge. Keep your friends together, and—”
“They are not my friends,” the kid said.
A small blonde girl by his side kicked him in the shin.
“I don’t care. You keep them together and out of harm’s way. If anyone wearing blue and gold comes, tell him you are under the protection of Léa of Nys.”
“But—”
“No buts. Léa of Nys, remember.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She pointed at the gaping mouth of the temple. “In there.”
“It’s mine!” Cook shouted, and ran forward.
The guivre’s head snapped back and then its snakelike neck straightened and stretched, and a big sticky glob of greenish goo shot from its open mouth and splattered the giant woman, caking her face and her body, and dripping on the floor, where it caused the marble to sizzle, producing a foul dark vapor.
With a roar, Cook kept running, her muscular arms flexed, and she slammed her sledge-hammer on the creature’s skull. There was a very unpleasant cracking sound. The guivre staggered, screamed, and crashed on the floor, its barbed tail flailing once, twice. Then it was still.
Cook ran her fingers across her face, cleaning her eyes of the creature’s venom, and braced herself to face the other one.
“Stand back,” Coline shouted to Gerard. Then she whirled across the floor, covered her face with her arm to stop the bulk of the second guivre’s spit, and then crouched low, sword pointing upwards, and pierced the creature’s jaw, the blade cutting through the tongue and the palate, and penetrating the brain box.
The animal thrashed and twisted, tearing the weapon from her hand. She cleaned her hand on the front of her jacket, and gave a nod to Cook.
The Five Stars commander took a step back, and pulled his sword from its scabbard.
“How is this possible—?”
Both Coline’s and Cook’s garments were being consumed by the poison. Coline pulled the tattered jacked off, and stood with her proud breasts exposed.
She shrugged.
“I’ve been told the Flame did a lot of things to us,” she said. She caressed her tit. “Some of them more pleasant than others.”
The commander was staring at her, wide eyed. She scoffed, and turned on her heels.
“Kill me this fucker, darling,” she said to Gerard.
“With pleasure,” he grinned.
“This was unexpected,” the Black Priest said.
He was prowling the aisle of the temple, scanning the darkness, looking for the rats that scurried in the shadows. He could hear the creatures move in the darkness, their tiny claws clicking on the floor.
Then the sound of something larger caused him to turn.
The wench he had branded was walking through the central nave of the temple, between the deserted stalls, the red glow from the open gates cutting her dark silhouette.
“And here comes the little whore,” he said. He rolled, splashed and oozed towards the newcomer. “You screamed nicely when I branded you. And now here you come for seconds.”
His body surged into a tall pillar of darkness, towering over her. “I wonder if you will scream louder when I will fuck all of your holes before I kill you.”
The woman looked up at him.
“Really?” she asked him. “And whose cock are you going to borrow?”
And the vampiress dropped from the ceiling and sunk her fangs at the base of the Black Priest’s neck.
They rounded up the remains of the occupying force, on the market square, the beast-men and a band of citizens, armed with pitchforks and torches. The black and red-clad soldiers huddled together.
“Killing them all will take some time,” Giso said grimly.
Liane shrugged, and accepted a skin of wine from one of the men of Saonne.
“I am Prio the Blacksmith,” he said, eyeing her cautiously. She was still covered in caked blood and gore, and there was a crazy light in her eyes. “It is good to welcome Bellegarde in our town.”
She nodded, and drank some more wine. “The Blacksmith, uh?” She nodded at the prisoners. “Do you have enough chains for all these fuckers? I think my mother the Duchess would come and personally order their execution.”
Prio glanced at the Five Stars men and women. “We’ll find a way,” he said grimly.
“Liane—”
She turned. Liuva was walking across the square, carrying a small blonde girl, a ragtag band of urchins crowding around her.
Liane arched her eyebrows.
Liuva hel the blonde child up. “Tell the blue-haired lady what you said to me,” she whispered.
“I am under the protection of Lina of Nyx,” the girl said, serious. “We all are.”
“You know Léa of Nys?” Liane said, softly. “Where is she?”
The darkness that was the Black Priest was struggling with Léa, shoots of blackness entangling the vampiress’ limbs. Léa was undeterred. Her enemy was using all his resources to keep her entangled and at a distance, but she still managed to sink her teeth into its oily substance.
He tasted foul, burning into her mouth and in her belly, but she could feel his strength waning. He no longer teased and mocked, but he just let out a series of screeches and groans, his head floating like a bucket on the surface of a lake.
Then he suddenly retreated, tossing her as far as he could. Léa landed on her feet, a grim smile on her distorted features.
The Black Priest coalesced into his human form, and his hand went to the medallion on his chest. “Now I will teach you—” he said.
His eyes widened suddenly, and the crown of an iron candelabrum burst through his chest, the candles still burning, trailing black filaments of goo.
The Black Priest gurgled.
Behind him, Genò pushed harder, and the priest staggered.
Léa arched an eyebrow. She ran a hand on her temple, adjusting a stray curl of black hair. “Iron it is, then?” she asked.
She paced towards the priest, and with a tug pulled the medallion from his neck. She held it in her hand, and looked over the creature’s shoulder, at Genò. “Good thinking,” she said.
“There will be others,” the Black Priest gurgled.
Léa smirked. “Bring them on.”
Then he shriveled into a mass of crackling, burnt sheets, and crumbled on the floor, his head rolling under one of the pews.
Epilogue
The Duchess Adele came from Bellegarde to Saonne in a couch, following the old Imperial Road. She traveled with her two bodyguards and her personal maid and therefore she thoroughly enjoyed the four days the travel required. She had found the gentle rocking of the carriage to be conductive of much experimentation. For those four days, the prisoners were kept on the market square of Saonne. They had to endure the wind and the snow, but were fed once a da
y, and Liane expressly ordered they should not be touched. About one hundred men and women had survived the battle, and now huddled together on the flagstones of the square, their black and red uniforms caked with frost.
The Duchess Adele stepped out of her couch, distractedly pulling at the hem of her corset. She ran her hands over the blue and gold dress, and walked slowly around the prisoners, balancing on her tall platform boots, thighs flashing through the cuts in her skirt.
She studied the faces of the men and women sitting chains on the ground before her. Contrary to what had happened weeks before in Tavin, in Saonne there had been no mercenaries, and all the prisoners were True Believers in the Five Stars.
“Is there a way we can turn these men to our side?” she asked.
Liane snorted. Coline looked at Gerard, and Gerard shook his head. “I doubt it.”
Adele licked her lips. “It would be such a waste—”
She took a deep breath, and brushed a stray snowflake from her boob. “I am the Duchess Adele of Bellegarde, rightful lady of these lands—”
“The Crusade will come for you, you harlot!” somebody shouted from the middle of the gaggle. Other voices joined the first.
Adele arched an eyebrow. It always amused her when someone called her a harlot.
“I am willing,” she continued, her voice echoing in the square, “to welcome anyone of you that should decide to recant his faith and join Bellegarde.”
“Fuck you, whore!” a female voice rang out. “There’s a stake waiting for you!”
Adele sighed. “I cannot guarantee any safety to the others.”
“We don’t want your pity, you stupid bitch!” one officer shouted. He stood, and soon many others imitated him. “Here we are!” the officer continued. “We are all ready, here, to be martyrs for the Crusade!”
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