“Love poems?” I wondered aloud.
“Lad…” Sir Alaric warned.
“Relax, old man,” I glanced toward the church, “tell Father Demtry some jokes.”
A hush swept over the mob.
Clomping down the lane came the Nazarene, a massive crucifix borne across his shoulders. Skeleton’s four comrades, penitent in the graveyard dirt, rose salivating, their hands clenching and unclenching on scourge handles.
“By order of his majesty,” Sir Alaric rose, pipe in his mouth, crossbow aimed at the Nazarene, “King Eckhardt Haesken, the Third of his name, you, sir, are under arrest! Lay down the cross and surrender yourself. Smartly now!”
The wagon sat on our right flank, the stone wall to our left. Beyond, it was gravestone and cross for thirty yards to the small stone church. Inside were King Eckhardt’s men, Sir Gustav in charge, waiting on my signal. Von Madbury peeked out the front door.
“Surrender yourself!” Sir Alaric repeated. “NOW!”
Lord, I wiggled a finger in my ear, the old man could yell.
The Nazarene halted in front of the impromptu altar, the massive tome perched atop, scowling as he studied the scene before him. The Tome-Bearer latched onto him, whispering in his ear. The Nazarene’s gaze fell upon us. Sir Alaric’s crossbow was still aimed his way.
The Nazarene didn’t seem much to notice. “Brothers,” he raised a massive paw, “drop your tools of warfare. Shrive yourselves of thine iron skeins. Then come. Join us. Join us in the true religion of Christ. Ken his path through self-mortification. The ultimate faith of spoken word upon caustic road.”
The Tome Bearer barked out a chant, slow and rhythmic and wrong.
“Lad,” Sir Alaric said without looking over, “do it.”
“Done.” I raised a hand toward the church and made a fist, signaling Sir Gustav.
The Nazarene lowered his paws. “What say you?”
We waited.
Nothing happened.
Sir Gustav did not spring forth. He didn’t attack. He didn’t anything.
I caught a fleeting notion of von Madbury, his visage slithering grim back and into shadow, his hooded eye the last image before the door snicked shut, reverberating in my mind like a coffin lid dropped.
“Go brothers!” The Nazarene pointed toward the church.
An arm of scourgers split off, enveloping it, a stout Jesus-bastard wailing away at the front door.
“Lad?” Sir Alaric hissed.
“We’re fucked,” I breathed as they shattered the front door and streamed inside.
Sir Alaric cursed under breath and down the length of his crossbow as the scourgers emerged from round the back of the church. “They’re gone!”
“Fuck it.” All or nothing now. I pointed Yolanda at the Nazarene. “Kneel down and grab some mud.”
“You took the life of a believer in exchange for passage of the damned?” The Nazarene ignored me as he strode toward Skeleton’s corpse. “They have eyes but are blind.”
“Should teach your folk some manners,” I said just for something to say.
“Manners…?” The Nazarene’s eyes blazed. “Your hanged man was a fiend.”
The Tome-Bearer’s chant redoubled, was taken up by the horde as it began to deform, spreading out, encircling us in a palisade of filth and madness.
“Get in the wagon,” Sir Alaric hissed.
“No—” Stephan stepped in my way. “Wait!”
“You daft fucker…” I shoved him aside.
“You…” The Nazarene’s eyes narrowed and set upon Stephan. “The Lord’s light doth blaze within though you walk in shadow. True believer, aye, though you partner yourself with familiars to the devil.” His gaze flitted to me. “Oh, how it will be to burn.”
“Down on your bloody knees.” I swallowed. “You’re under arrest.”
The scourgers jostled around us, pressing clos, jockeying for position, jackals waiting their turn at the kill.
“You think me a liar?” The Nazarene shrugged the massive crucifix off his shoulders, thudding on the ground. “Or perhaps you think me mad?” He looked down at Skeleton and shook his head. “You shall witness the truth. Your faith shall well up inside like a geyser fit to burst.” He knelt and clamped a paw on Skeleton’s forehead. “You have no right to leave me yet, brother.”
The Tome-Bearer hunkered forth, slathering aside page after page, a rictus of glee crippled across his face as he took up a new chant, the horde following suit.
“Fear not, BROTHER!” The Nazarene stretched a quivering hand high to the dawn’s light, gripping the sun in effigy. “Restoration be at hand! A struggle though it be, come back to us! Come back! Follow our voice. Follow our faith. Do your good work.” Glowing in the nascent dawn, his fist whisked down, plunging to the wrist inside Skeleton’s chest as easily as though it were water. “Hallelujah!”
“Holy—” I swallowed.
“Aaaaeeee!” Skeleton thrashed instantly alive.
“Come back, brother.” The Nazarene clutched Skeleton’s throat. “We as yet have need of thee.”
Even Karl gave pause.
“Rise!” The Nazarene clambered to his feet, hand buried in flesh, and heaved Skeleton on high, screaming all the while.
“RISE!” As one, the horde fell to its knees, chanting still, fast now, faster. “RISE BROTHER! RISE!”
“Fear not, brother!” The Nazarene bore him aloft like a babe. “‘What is life?’ be the question.” Skeleton’s eyes bulged, his body shivering, quivering, limbs writhing, flailing, as he screamed, as steam hissed from the fist gouged into his chest. “Duty and pain be the answer!”
“Mother of God,” Stephan whispered.
“Agony, the divine serum!” The Nazarene lowered Skeleton to the ground, setting him upon his feet, steadying him tall, “Easy now,” and tore his fist free, crimson slick with dripping viscera. Clutched in his fist, steaming, was Sir Alaric’s crossbow bolt. “Did Christ not suffer at the hand of his father? Did he not suffer for our sins?” He snapped the bolt in twain then cast it aside. “Did he not sacrifice himself so we might revel in eternal glory?”
Skeleton wilted like a daisy, clutching his chest, his heart, his vitals. Swirls of steam rose twisting in serpent coils.
“Now or never,” Karl growled low, “while they’re down.”
“No—” I hissed back.
If we attacked, we’d take some down, more than some even, yeah, but we’d all die.
The Nazarene stood triumphant. “Rise now, brother.”
The chanting devolved into a slurry of animal grunts and yowls.
Mouth agape, Skeleton lowered his hands, revealing a massive puckered, star-shaped scar etched across his chest. “By the lord…” He wobbled like a newborn fawn, but the Nazarene steadied him, holding him close in his thick-fingered grip. “Steady your heart, brother, your legs, and walk with me a while.
“Like Lazarus, you have risen reborn,” the Nazarene bellowed, “and Lazarus shall I name you. And you shall spread the word of the Lord. By word and by deed and, yea, by presence alone.” His eyes fell to us. “Indeed, all present this day shall speak the word and by such action shall our numbers blossom. Apostles all, I name thee.”
The horde roared, glares locked on us as they rose from their knees, starting forth from all sides, closing in, murder etched plain in grim visage.
“Hold!” The Nazarene raised both hands and the horde stilled. “Our work here is done, brothers. For the now. Let them be. Let them inter their damned. Let them expend their sweat and toil in an act of empty desecration.” He caught Stephan’s gaze. “Come now, brothers,” a trench yawned open through the horde as the Nazarene strode through, a slithering mass of grubby paws reaching to out grope him as he passed, “there are worse evils that plague this land.”
…my hand trembles as I write to Mother that Father fell amid the most dire of circumstances.
By the Lord, how shall I ever again look her in the…
—W
ar-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 19.
FATHER DEMTRY’S excoriated corpse slid into the grave, thudding headfirst into the soggy bottom, all tangled and bothered in an arrested somersault of flaccid limb and contorted spine. His denuded skull leered up, back, over his shoulder, nigh on a hundred and eighty degrees the wrong way.
“Voilà.” I wiped dirt and crusted blood from my hands.
“Excuse me.” Head down, muttering, Stephan shouldered me aside, climbed into the grave and started rearranging the corpse to a more suitable position. As though it somehow mattered. “Jesus please,” I heard him plead softly, “lend me strength…”
“So what the hell just happened?” I turned.
“Which is it you mean?” Sir Alaric sat in the wagon, his beard frazzled, eyes bloodshot, smoking like a chimney. “The standoff? The betrayal? Or the God-damned bloody-fucking miracle?”
“Business first. Always.” I fixed him an eye. “The betrayal. You said Gustav’s a staunch bloke. But seems like he was able to both turtle-up and rabbit at the same time. So, again, what the hell happened?”
“Eh…?” Sir Alaric tapped his pipe on the side of the wagon. “Known him since he was but a lad. Lord. My squire for a time, even. Strong arm. Sense of honor. Tireless. Fond of combat. Over-fond, truth be told. Admittedly, not overmuch to speak of between the ears, if you catch my meaning.”
“He’s a fucking idiot.”
“Aye, lad, hit the nail on the head.” Sir Alaric lifted his pipe. “But even so, I can’t ken how—”
“I can.” I cut him off. “Someone was yanking his chain. Question is, ‘who?’”
“I’d not want to disparage another’s sense of—”
“Von Madbury,” I said without hesitation.
“Not sure…”
“Jesus Christ. Are you blind?” I spat. “Maybe it was Squire Morley, then? Yeah. Must’ve been him that had the power and guile to precipitously call off the dogs of war.” I rubbed my chin. “Think the little fucker even shaves yet?”
Sir Alaric looked like nothing so much as a doleful old hound that wanted only to go back to bed.
“Why’s King Eckhardt keep him around?” Stephan asked, neck-deep in the grave.
“Because he’s weak,” I said. “Because it’s always easier to sit back and do nothing. Hope everything works out. Somehow. Somewhere. Someway. Which is piss-poor policy for a beet farmer let alone king. Or…” I itched some flea bites at my neck, “maybe the fucker has something on him?”
Sir Alaric intently studied the stem of his pipe.
“Now me? If I were king?” I shrugged. “I’d gaff him through the ball-sack and hang him upside down from my gatehouse.”
Sir Alaric ceded a despondent nod. “Aye, lad.”
“C’mon!” I smote the side of the wagon. “We should be dead. Only reason we ain’t is the Nazarene’s off his rocker. That,” I fixed Stephan an eye, “and he’s got a crush on you, apparently.”
Stephan shrugged and set back to making the three-day-old corpse presentable for the wagon load of dirt we’d be shoveling on his mug.
“Gonna make for one hell of a homecoming,” I said. “Madbury’s a fair sword arm, yeah?”
“Better than fair.” Sir Alaric licked his wizened lips.
“Better than fair, huh?” I sheathed Yolanda. “I’ll have Karl kill him, then.”
“Let it lie.” Stephan tossed the shovel up. “We’ve bigger fish to fry.”
Sir Alaric scratched his beard. “Have to see where the King’s thoughts lie with the matter.”
“The bastards abandoned us,” I said. “I’d say we have the moral high-ground. Which is a first for me.”
“Not a first, brother.” Stephan felt for purchase about the grave’s edge. “Decades shorn of practice, perhaps, but not a first.”
“Need a hand?” I stood over him.
Stephan scowled up as he slammed his hook right where my foot’d been before I snatched it back.
“Too soon?” I asked.
He half-smirked then jumped, hauling himself up onto the earth by his elbows and knees, and scrambled out gracelessly.
“Gonna say some words?” I glared down into the pit. Father Demtry did look more comfortable now. It’d been a low bar set, true, but it was fair undeniable.
“I said them when I was down there.” Stephan donned his cloak, tying it off with one hand.
I brandished a hungry shovel. “Expeditious.”
“Sure.” Stephan craned his neck toward the town walls, looming beyond the trees. “Any sign of Karl?”
“Nay, lad,” Sir Alaric said.
“We can’t kill the Nazarene.”
“I’d beg to differ.” I started shoveling dirt. “Once Karl finds where he’s holing up, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.” Karl’d taken off, lagging along behind the horde, tailing, watching, waiting.
“You saw what I saw, brother.” Stephan took up a shovel.
“And what the hell’d I see?”
“A miracle from God.”
“And you?” I glared at Sir Alaric.
“Reluctantly,” he swallowed, “I got to agree.”
“This fucker seem like the type the Almighty wants leading the charge?” I asked. Stephan opened his mouth to reply but I cut him off. “And if you say that the Lord works in mysterious ways, I’ll knock you on your arse alongside Demtry. Then bloody-well bury you, too. The church has summarily excommunicated those lunatics for heresy. The infallible pope himself.”
Stephan tapped his chest. “I’m a heretic, too, remember?”
“Right. What the hell’d we just finish doing?” I stabbed a finger down toward Demtry’s corpse. “And the Nazarene didn’t just kill him. Didn’t just hang him. He flayed him first. That seem like something our Messiah’d condone? Jesus, are you blind?” I turned. “Is everyone fucking blind?”
Stephan leaned on his shovel and wiped his brow.
“Then what was it you saw, lad?” Sir Alaric asked.
“Me?” I stabbed my shovel into the pile and dumped it in. There was something satisfying about it. Maybe it was just that shoveling dirt on a dead fucker’s mug was one of those menial tasks where hard work yielded immediate results. “I don’t know. Black magic, sorcery, necromancy, and shit, maybe, possibly, a miracle.”
“Maybe?” Stephan scoffed. “How do you explain it?”
I straightened up. “Slight of hand?”
“Slight of what?!” Stephan’s eyes blazed. “You think he was pulling coins from kids’ ears? Rabbits out of hats or cards from up his sleeve?”
“No,” I thrust in another shovelful, “but I do think the bastard was dealing from the bottom of the deck.”
…initial penetrations beyond the boundaries of the clan-holt were executed with a diplomatic hand. But Hochmeister Gaunt lead the initial sortie, as it was his venture. A man more obviously suited to warfare I have never met…
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 20.
WE SMELLED IT long before we saw it. Heard it, too. Or the exact opposite. The stillness, the quiet, the dead silence. A void in the body of life around the town square. A stifling quality. No crows. No wind. No scourgers.
Which was good.
Or bad.
Depending.
Between the wattle and daub cottages, a forest stood upright and bitter as the cold morning raw. A dozen crosses, the ones I’d seen from the Schloss’s acropolis. Upon them, the dead watched.
“What did the Nazarene mean by ‘we have eyes but are blind?’” Stephan snapped the reins and we lurched on through.
“Don’t know.” I stifled a shiver. From the cold. Obviously.
A cold breeze took up, fluttering scraps of tattered garment, breathing licks of life back into the damned. Leering faces. Ragged teeth. Skin stretched drum-tight over bone. Crows had gotten at their eyes, their lips, their noses, all the places crows ever got.
“H
e mean them, you think?” Sir Alaric glared up at the dead.
“Think he’s dropping hints in the form of poetic metaphor?” I scowled.
Sir Alaric shut his trap and grumbled.
In the center of the square lay the smoking remnants of the great bale-fire.
“Burn here most nights,” Sir Alaric said.
“Are we certain the Nazarene committed this atrocity?” Stephan asked.
“Fair certain, lad.”
“I saw him and his brethren here last night.” I pointed northeast up the hill to the Schloss’s acropolis, visible through a break in the huddled row of buildings. “Saw them digging. Hauling. Hammering away. It was like something from the bible. One of the shitty parts.” In my mind’s eye, I saw the scourgers toiling, dragging cross and corpse across cobble, digging, hammering, raising them up, one by bloody one.
The nearest had been a woman. Once. Her skin was the dull brown of fresh-churned clay. Her iron-grey hair’d been done up in a failing braid, strands of frayed wire crazing out from stem to stern. A ghost sheen of frost glistened where the sun hadn’t yet hit.
Stephan scratched his chin. “Look like they’ve been dead a while.”
“I heard screaming,” I said.
“Could have been the scourgers.”
“Yeah. Sure,” I conceded. “Can you pull up alongside?”
“Aye.” Stephan snapped the reins, driving the wagon alongside the old crone.
Like the rest, she was trussed round the upper arms and chest. Thick iron nails protruded from her wrists and tops of feet. The timber crosses looked to be old rafters or lintels. Posts and joists. Whatever lumber the bastard scourgers could lay their stigmataed palms on. A child had been crucified across a door and left leaning against an old baker’s busted-up shopfront.
“Did you actually see the Nazarene kill them?” Stephan asked.
“No.” I shook my head.
Sir Alaric cleared his throat, offering a, “Nay, lad, but—”
“Then it’s possible it wasn’t him.” Stephan craned his neck, steering the wagon alongside the old crone’s crucifix. “That good?”
The Last Benediction in Steel Page 13
