The Darkest Hand Trilogy Box Set

by Tarn Richardson

  He braced and caught hold of himself, measuring his breathing and his thoughts. Stupid. Remember your training. Calm. Keep calm. Focus. Control. Always control. He removed his hand from the handle of the revolver and stepped forward, muttering an ancient prayer to Saint Joseph under his breath. It was one which had always caught his imagination.

  Oh, St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God. I place in you all my interests and desires. Oh, St. Joseph, do assist me by your powerful intercession, and obtain for me from your divine Son all spiritual blessings.

  He looked up at the figure. He’d never hit her from here, not even with the Saint’s help.

  He walked until the pebbles of the shore slowly turned into rocks and began to climb, passing stones marked with the black etchings of witchcraft. The route up was damp with night mist and spray from the sea tide, seaweed and algae making the way treacherous. But Tacit’s heavy-soled boots bit firm into the rocks, his fingers like crampons within the crannies of the stone.

  He pushed his case onto the topmost rock ahead of him and heaved himself after it, cursing that he’d brought the thing at all. A bullet to the witch’s skull would suffice. No ointments, potions or symbols would be needed on this assignment.

  “So, you have come to carry out justice then, Inquisitor?” the witch called from the far end of the spur. Tacit drew himself upright and stared down at her, her lank white hair running over her filthy brown robes. “I see it in your eyes, Inquisitor!”

  “Through this dusk? That I doubt!”

  “My eyes are keen, Inquisitor, it’s yours that you should be wary of,” the witch called back calmly.

  “How do you know what I am?”

  But the witch did not answer, instead stepping behind a stone and vanishing from view. Tacit grunted and picked up his case, at the same time pulling a revolver from his side. The next clean shot he promised himself he would finish the witch and he’d go back into the warm.

  “So, are you happy upon the path designated for you, Inquisitor?” a voice called suddenly from behind him, causing him to turn, the revolver levelled to the empty darkness beyond. At once Tacit realised the trickery of the witch and looked back to the path he was following and the hole hidden behind the stone into which she had slipped. It led down into a hellish black. He put down his case and extracted a lantern from a deep pocket of his coat. Two clicks and the lantern instantly sprang into white light. Leaving the case behind him, he crept into the mouth of the cave.

  “I asked you a question,” the witch’s voice asked again, seeming to rise up from all around him. Tacit kept his eyes to the path ahead, ignoring any urges to look either side or behind him. “What is it, Inquisitor? Lost your tongue?”

  “I don’t speak to witches,” Tacit growled back into the blackness, “those who shroud themselves in darkness.”

  “No, of course you don’t. But you speak to the lights, don’t you?” the brittle voice asked and Tacit wavered in his step. “You talk to the lights, Poldek Tacit, don’t you?”

  “How do you know my name?” Tacit hissed, crouching a little lower in the darkness, feeling isolated and exposed.

  “Oh, I know far more than just your name, Poldek. I know everything about you. How you were plucked from the bosom of your dead mother. How you were drilled in the ways of the Catholic Church. How you were set on this path of hell-bent destruction.”

  “I don’t know what you mean?” Tacit cried, a fear beginning to form in his throat.

  “Of course you don’t know,” the witch hissed. “You’re foolish, blind to the world around you. Only a fool would allow himself to be manipulated like you have been to serve the needs of your superiors.”

  “I have no such choice,” he stuttered, turning about himself and the dark. “This is my path.”

  “Of course you have choice,” the voice came. “We all have choice. We can choose to do as we are bid, or we can choose to act as our soul implores us to act. Tell me, Inquisitor, do you have a soul that you still listen to?”

  Tacit grimaced and thrust the trigger of the revolver hard into his forehead, scratching at his skin, relishing the dull sting of pain, the focus it brought to him. “Silence witch!” he cried. “I won’t listen to your accursed words any more!”

  “It does not surprise me, Poldek Tacit, that you’re not listening. After all, when have you ever listened? When have you ever acted upon your own desires, your own wishes, your own judgement?”

  “There is only one judgement!” Tacit called back. “The judgement of the Lord God himself!”

  “Oh you are a pitiful one, Inquisitor!”

  “Not so pitiful as to hide myself away. Come out! Show yourself!”

  “All in good time.”

  Tacit shifted himself in the passageway, putting his back hard to the wall. The voice in the corridor continued.

  “Tell me, is that fear that I sense?”

  “I have nothing to fear from the likes of you!”

  “Indeed! You need only fear The Church itself.”

  “Blasphemy!”

  “If your Church was truly so loving, do you really think it would have put you through the trials it has? And what a gracious and fulfilling role it is! Bringing damnation and suffering to all who cross you.”

  “It has prepared me for this role.”

  “You admit it yourself then? That you have needed to feel pain in order to be prepared for all that your role brings? Well let me tell you this, Tacit, the pain you have known has not yet finished. It has barely started. More is to come, far more crippling than you could ever imagine.”

  “I have heard enough! Show yourself to me!”

  “So that you can silence my tongue?” the witch spat and then laughed wickedly. “Patience, Inquisitor! Isn’t that what your training teaches you? To be patient? To wait for the right moment to act, to strike, to bring retribution to your enemies? Well, be patient then! For I have not finished.”

  “Then say it and let us be done with our business.”

  “So, that is what you consider your faith? A business, like the stitching of uniforms and the finishing of artillery rounds?”

  “You speak in riddles, witch!”

  “Very well. A war is coming, the likes of which mankind has never before known. Upon you, Poldek Tacit, will fall the fate of millions. The question is whether, when the time comes, there will be enough of you, of your soul, left to act, or whether you have lost yourself completely to lights.”

  Instantly the darkness was thrown into blinding light from which Tacit had to shield his eyes. He winced through the searing brightness, making out the vague outline of a figure standing a little way in front of him.

  “You stop using that part of you,” the witch’s voice boomed, “and it shrinks and dies.”

  “Enough!” Tacit cried. “I have heard enough. Be done with your message and let me be done with my business.”

  “Yes, let us come to your ‘business’.” The figure opened its arms wide, like a bird about to take flight. “You will choose poorly, Poldek Tacit. You are not nearly as big as you think.”

  As soon as the revolver recoiled, the cave was thrust into immediate dark, taking all sight and Tacit’s thoughts with it.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  20:44. WEDNESDAY, 14 OCTOBER 1914. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  They stood in the darkness in the centre of the square, Tacit staring back hard at the front of the Cathedral. The clouds were now moving fast across the sky. The weather was changing. There was a storm gathering.

  Isabella stood close by watching the Inquisitor, partially lit by the faint silvery shards of moonlight and the fires and light from the surrounding buildings. The dull thump of artillery fire pounded in the distance, occasionally joined with the sharp crack of small arms fire.

  “What is it?” she asked, tracing his stare to the Cathedral.

  Tacit said nothing, staring with his dark eyes until the muscles within them ached.


  “Where are you staying?” he asked, finally. “I never enquired.”

  “The church has given me a private residence, just down from the main Priests’ house. It is fine.”

  Tacit put his eyes back onto the Cathedral. “I don’t care whether it’s fine or not, just be careful.”

  The warning puzzled Isabella. She tried to find the meaning of it in Tacit’s face. She found nothing but a stony grimace. But there was something else. She saw, between the cruel hard lines and the thick spread of stubble, there was a sadness which tinged the edges of his features, a quiet suffering, deep rooted like a contagion within him. She was immediately filled with an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch him, like a mother to an injured child, to take him into her arms and hold him, tell him that whatever sorrow ravaged him, it would pass in time.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Inquisitor!” she called, turning and stepping sharply away from him, her heels rapping hard on the stone slabs of the square. “Been a long day. My bed is calling!”

  “It’ll be a longer one tomorrow,” he called back.

  “That’s what I like about you, Tacit. Ever the optimist. Get some sleep,” the Sister called. “It might do wonders for your mood.”

  Tacit watched her all the way out of the square and then put his eyes back onto the Cathedral for one final time, before retiring to his lowly room above the bar.

  The bar was busy, noisy. The crowd from the previous night had swollen in number, as if the recent barrage had driven people from their homes and beds for one last night of merriment, lest it all end tomorrow. The proprietor looked up as Tacit pushed himself through the doors of the establishment and stomped over to the bar.

  “Welcome back, Father!” he said, flashing teeth and a look which suggested more than just a jovial welcome. “I trust you are well?”

  “Just get me a drink,” Tacit spat back. “Leave the bottle. And some olives.”

  The barman nodded and returned a moment later brandishing a full bottle of Armagnac.

  “The woman,” he asked with a glint, as he put the bottle down in front of the mountain of a man. “Your escort. She’s not here tonight, is she, by any chance?”

  At once, Tacit was across the bar and had the man by the collar, dragging him back over it. Glasses went spinning and crashing to the floor. The banter and noise from the bar immediately ceased.

  “How dare you!” he hissed. “She’s not a prostitute, you bastard!”

  “Very good, Father,” the proprietor whimpered, shuddering in the Inquisitor’s grip.

  “Keep your opinions to yourself.” Tacit gave him a shake and threw him back from where he had come.

  “Now, get me my olives!”

  “Olives!” the proprietor repeated, staggering to his feet shakily. “Of course!” He set a glass next to the bottle and slunk away. Tacit seethed, staring into the depths of the bottle’s rich brown liquid. Without a word, he took the bottle and glass up in his fingers and strode away, heading for the stairs and his room. His shame and anger were too great for him to reside any longer in the bar amongst strangers, their stares and their muttering all set in his direction. As he reached the first floor and his room, he could hear the first strains of music start up and the low rumble of conversation roll into it.

  He thrust the glass down on the table and uncorked the bottle, drinking deeply from its lip without a moment’s pause, instantly feeling soothed by the liquor inside him. He stood, thoughts festering over the barman and his impudent insults, before drinking again and putting those thoughts to the back of his brain. Little ignorant people. They’d get their judgement, one way or the other. He crossed over to the window, gulping at the bottle as he went, and crouched alongside it, his eyes back watching the Cathedral.

  Why was he so drawn to the building? There was something that troubled him about it, something itching in a corner of his brain, an uncertainty, a doubt.

  He sat on the side of the bed and gulped at the bottle, feeling enriched by the drink. Already he felt better. He put back his head and wallowed in the buzz as the first alcohol soothed his mind. He let out a long and satisfied exhale and stretched himself out on the bed, an arm behind his head, the bottle still clutched in his left hand. He peered up at the ceiling of the room, his racing thoughts slowed by the embracing hold of the Armagnac.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  20:50. WEDNESDAY, 14 OCTOBER 1914. ARRAS. FRANCE.

  Isabella set the key in the lock and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her with a comforting crack and stood back, her hands flat against the wood, her head rested hard against it. The young Sister exhaled and blew strands of hair from her face.

  She pushed her weary body forward with her hands and stepped lightly down the passageway to her apartment. The Catholic Church was generous with their hospitality for travelling dignitaries and official personnel. The apartment could have housed four people comfortably. In the lounge, she unlaced her boots and slipped them off her feet, nursing her cramped and bruised toes. The boots she wore were made for practicalities, not comfort; for delivering a hefty kick and scooting out of dangerous situations, not for ensuring toes remained pristine and dainty.

  She unbuttoned her cape and laid it on the back of a chair, stepping into the kitchen and pouring herself a glass of water from the jug. It was warm, but she enjoyed the refreshment of it in her dry mouth. She stood there, glass in hand, staring down at the wash sink, her mind half in, half out of consciousness.

  “This will never do,” she whispered to herself, and set down the glass.

  Her brown travelling gown had been discarded beside her empty glass. She was already unbuttoning her basque as she stepped into her bedroom, clean and tidy, and scented with the remnants of lavender. She liked that about the Catholic Church; little touches left by the maids like adding lavender fragrance to the room for women, a stronger musk for men. She threw her basque to the bed and rubbed her breasts and armpits through her brassiere to sooth their pained and crushed flesh.

  Toes and breasts, Isabella thought to herself, as she unbuttoned her undershirt and let that fall, followed by her corset. She breathed deeply as they tumbled to the floor and she stepped out of them now, wearing only her lightly weighted undergarments. She stretched and bent herself sideways and down to her toes, enjoying the sensation of movement, the tight pull of her tired muscles. She knew why she put herself through the misery of such confining clothes. Men were weak minded.

  It was amazing what secrets could be gleaned, what weaknesses could be exposed by the enticing beauty of the female form. But that didn’t make the wearing of such garments any easier.

  She stood up straight and looked out of the lace-lined window to the darkness beyond. She was suddenly aware that, with the gaslight on in the room and the blinds drawn, people from the street would be able to see her. But who would be passing at this hour, who would be looking in? Everyone would be taking refuge in their homes, the bars, or within the city’s tunnels, not walking the streets whilst bombs were falling. But there was someone, or something, looking, two flaming red eyes staring at her from the other side of the glass.

  She had already turned to run by the time the feral beast smashed through the window, shattering glass to all corners. The odious stench of the wolf engulfed Isabella as soon as it was through the window. She slipped, scrambling to get away, the howling roar of the beast almost deafening her, chilling her to her bones. Glass scattered between her feet and toes, as she found purchase and leapt aside before the monstrous wolf crashed into a nearby table and chairs, flinging them aside, talons rending vast gashes into the wooden floor of the apartment.

  Isabella landed and rolled behind an armchair, her feet torn with glass, terror bringing tears to her eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest, her breast rising and falling like a bellows. She grabbed a peek from behind the chair, shuddering as she watched the grotesque matted form of the grey-black wolf, vast crimson jaws, scalding red eyes, raise itself up to its immense height and
stare down at her.

  It leapt and, as it did so, so did she, rolling and tumbling to the door of the apartment, her hand fumbling desperately at the lock of the door. No good. Her fingers were too clumsy, her fear too great. She could feel the wolf rise up to strike from behind.

  All of a sudden, there was a tremendous thump which sent the Sister sprawling, dazed, to the side of the room. She guessed she’d been struck by the creature, expecting to look down and find herself drenched in her blood, bones broken, her side ripped open and torn, paralysed, unable to move as the creature sank down to feed upon her.

  But her body was untouched, despite the dull ache of bruising. In front of her stood the Inquisitor, standing in the remains of the shattered door, which he had kicked clean off its hinges, thrusting Isabella to one side, silver revolver raised in his right hand. The cylinder turned and the gun exploded. In a blur the wolf was upon him, casting him back through the open door, the pair of them rolling like fighting cats.

  Isabella tried to lever herself up. Her ribs screamed in agony, her head span. In the corridor outside her apartment, barks and roars sounded as if a frightful feeding frenzy was underway.

  “Tacit!” Isabella cried, rising up onto a knee and forcing herself onto her feet. “Tac—!”

  With that, the wolf came sprawling through the doorway, its nose thick with blood and gore. Tacit came after it a moment later, like a great black bull, fists raised, thumping and thrusting as the wolf tried to find its balance. A taloned claw swooshed through the air and Tacit deflected it with the barrel of his revolver, punching hard up into the ribcage of the creature. It lowered its jaws and crunched hard onto the Inquisitor’s thrusting forearm, snapping and tearing like a rabid dog, the Inquisitor’s weapon falling away.

  Beneath his robes, Tacit’s intricately woven dress of steel, forged in the hottest fires of the Vatican’s smithies and hammered impenetrable and light by its most skilled of blacksmiths, hung impervious against the creature’s terrible teeth. Tacit raised his left fist and thrust it once, twice, into the eye of the wolf. The beast drew back, blinking hard. An upper cut and it stumbled up groggily onto its hind legs. It tottered left and then right, floundering into furniture.