Dark Crusade

by Vaughn Heppner

  Dark Crusade

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2010 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Swan’s cell was blackness and stench. It was misery and sickness. As she lay on a damp cot, her skin burned with fever. In her delirium and pain, she called upon Hosar, the Lord of Light.

  For a time, nothing happened. Then a strange speck oozed from the ceiling, as if it had taken time journeying this far underground. The speck twinkled like a star on a pitch-black night, and it brightened, shining a ray on Swan’s clammy skin. A foul vapor trickled past her bleeding lips, the vapor increasing each time she exhaled. The ray blazed as if with wrath. Like a snake, the vapor twisted and retreated into her mouth. The speck of light followed the vapor, and the cell became dark again except for a red glow from Swan’s cheeks. She whimpered. She twitched upon damp straw. Then ashy smoke puffed from her mouth as if from a charred house, and she lost her wretched wheeze.

  More occurred as Swan’s bleeding lips scabbed in an instant and then grew soft. The sickly hue of her skin became pinkish. Then the speck of light floated from her mouth and soon hovered near the ceiling, although its brightness had diminished. Swan cried out, using a long forgotten language.

  The speck blazed with light.

  Swan moaned in her feverish sleep, and she began to dream strangely. She dreamed she was a mote of light floating through the subterranean ceiling, leaving her wretched prison cell. As the mote, she passed through stone and dirt and then through a castle. She soared into the air and sped at a passing crow of unusual size. As the mote, she entered the crow.

  In this dreamy state or vision, Swam peered out of the crow’s eyes. She became the crow and felt the working of breast and wing muscles and the exhilarating rush of air. Oh, this was like no dream she’d ever had before. It felt real. The flock flew above trees snarled with spidery moss, the trees mired around slimy ponds from which floated fetid odors. They flew toward the bloated orange sun that sank into the horizon.

  Swan forced the crow to look around, and through its eyes, she spied an ancient keep of old stones choked with ivy and moss. In the keep’s depths is where they held her body prisoner. A limp flag hung from a broken tower, the lightning-shattered tower seeming more ruin than functioning castle.

  Swan cawed in alarm, for she sensed evil, something that had just awakened. It saw her! It stirred, and a smoky dart, a spiritual javelin, flew from the castle and at her. As the crow, she veered wildly, and the bird lost its smooth beat and tumbled out of the formation. The evil manifestation brushed Swan. Like a filthy coating of oil, it soiled her. She no longer felt exhilaration at flying, although the crow regained its beat and flapped hard, rejoining the flock. The feeling of freedom had vanished from Swan, as had the comfort of an otherworldly benevolence. She felt trapped now within the crow, and the sense of foreboding grew until it became a grim certainty that she was about to witness a wicked thing.

  Other flocks joined theirs, a grand summoning of crows. Each flock glided toward a swampy clearing. Each flock flew to an assigned hangman tree, the crows alighting onto the twisted, mossy branches. Out of the crow’s eyes, Swan noticed that the flocks peered—

  A vile compulsion drew Swan’s gaze. She fought it, hating this overtaking of her will. She soon weakened and stared at a lonely shack. Recognition came, more from repute than ever having seen it before. The shack’s boards were filthy, warped and old. It only had a single door, and smoke trickled out of a hole in the roof. There were no windows. Around the shack, leaning against it, were piles of carefully stacked old branches. The door opened with an eerie creak and out shuffled a humped-shouldered man wearing a sooty cap and coat. He knelt, raised a hatchet and chopped branches. He was the local charcoal-maker, and soon he carted wood into the shed, closing the door with a bang.

  Bushes rustled then and Swan knew loathing and horror. A creature with long hairy arms and brutish shoulders shambled toward the shed. It had inhuman features, a snout full of yellowed fangs and—Swan wanted to caw and caw and caw. She tried to scream, but that dreadful compulsion that had originally reached out of the castle yet controlled her. She recognized the creature, or enough of his twisted features to know that once he had been Kerold the Carpenter, strangely vanished seven months ago. What evil had taken hold of his soul and turned him into that? Poor Kerold, he had been a simple man yet always greedy for coin, always ready to believe the worst of anyone.

  Before the creature that had once been Kerold the Carpenter reached the shed, the door rattled. The creature made a soft hooting noise, picked up a branch and rushed forward with obvious malice.

  Out stepped the charcoal-maker. He raised his head, grunted, hesitated—perhaps in profound shock—and then reached for his belted hatchet. By then it was too late. With a terrible thud, the branch struck him between the eyes and the charcoal-maker collapsed onto the ground. The creature hooted and danced with his bowed, shorter than human legs. He also continued to thump the inert body. Then the creature bounded into the shack. Loud bumps and noises began from within. In seconds smoke billowed out of the roof-hole.

  A shriek sounded. The creature shot out of the shed, his fur ablaze. He screamed, tripped, rolled several times and thereby put out the flames. For a moment he lay on the ground, panting. Then he looked up at the silent, watching crows. The thing that had once been Kerold the Carpenter scrambled upright. He hunched his head and shambled away in the direction of the castle.

  Smoke poured out of the shack until flames licked the open door. That roasted the charcoal-maker and caused a wicked stench.

  Still the crows kept silent. They watched as here and there a black bird ruffled its feathers. Soon orange flames roared. Sparks whirled into the twilight. Wherever they landed, the sparks guttered out with a hiss because of the damp soil. The shed burned as its flames blackened the branch-piles around it, until they too blazed into crackling life. Finally, with a crash of red-glowing wood and a geyser of sparks, the shack fell inward. The blaze grew again, briefly, and then weakened until the spent, charred wood flaked into glowing embers.

  It was then the crows stirred. Swan felt the compulsion and although she tried, she couldn’t resist it, nor could she leave this nightmare. Her loathing for the evil under the castle grew, as did her terror of it.

  With the rustle of hundreds of wings, the flocks swooped upon the destruction. They landed on hot ashes, and against all sense of self-preservation, they pecked at the embers. Each bird grasped a fiery coal and then exploded into flight. Ten, twenty, thirty crows flew away at a time. The rush of air fanned their embers, yet if anything, they tightened their hold.

  Swan nearly fainted at the red-hot agony. She grew nauseated as her beak smoldered. The flocks were like a living stream, beads of fire in the night. Swan wanted to shriek, to caw, to dive into the dark waters below, but that evil force kept her holding onto the ember.

  Soon the crows swooped upon a nighttime village, a shabby housing of swamp dwellers. Each hut had a reed roof. A limping watchman with a lantern and hound patrolled the lanes. The first crows winged for the shrine of Hosar, a large hut fronted with a tall post and a spike hammered in it. Like a spent comet, the lead crow thumped upon the shrine’s roof. The bird wiggled its beak, stuffed the ember into straw and broke the coal apart. The ember guttered and died. The next coal brought by the second crow caught with a curl of smoke.<
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  Now the night rained crows. They thumped onto roofs.

  A shout went up as the night watchman clanged his bell and his old hound woofed tiredly.

  Divested of her coal and with her head fogged with pain, Swan hopped to the edge of the roof. A savant in a black cassock ran out of the shrine. He had a long white beard.

  Swan recognized old Ran of Cathal Village. He had headed the delegation against Leng the Scholar, the foreigner she had accused of sorcery. Ran had also argued against the baron’s counter-charge against her of witchery. The savant waved his arms as villagers fled screaming out of their pitiful huts. Dried reed roofs smoked and burned as demented crows swooped upon the people. The mad birds used talons and beaks to grasp and peck.

  The vile compulsion tried to make Swan attack the savant. She cawed wildly. She grasped her talons around a reed roof, fighting the summons. Nausea filled her. Dizziness disoriented her. She gathered her resolve like a shredded coat, clutching it as if to garb nakedness. She sensed a weakening of the evil, that it had too many things to control at once, that it had spent itself this dreadful night. Therefore, Swan tried once again to leave the crow, to exit this foul dream.

  In that moment, Swan realized this was no dream. Her spirit eased out of the crow. That bewildered her. It was frightening. She looked around, and a beacon of light flared with brilliance. The beacon drew her spirit hard, fast, and she slammed back toward the castle.

  A turret rushed near. Guards there rattled dice in an ivory cup. They hunkered under a lantern. Swan wanted to vomit, but as a spirit, she had no stomach. In the yard, gory-handed boys wrung chicken necks for the baron’s supper. A hound barked wildly. Then the Earth gulped her. She sank. In a vault, the wine steward selected a cask. Swan scratched and clawed for purchase, trying to halt her terrible descent deeper underground. Small, subterranean cells held men, or what had once been men. Many of the creatures hooted forlornly. Others snarled more savagely than wolves.

  On a lower level, Swan’s spirit came upon the baron in his frock coat, a lanky, yellow-haired man. He set his lantern onto a pile of rubble. Moisture pooled on the low ceiling, dripping into puddles. His eyes were wide and wild, his features twisted into a frozen snarl. The sight shocked her. Swan had always known the baron as an urbane nobleman who read arcane literature and collected ancient artifacts. He often referred to past events that no one else understood. The baron dropped to his knees and clawed at the rubble. His fingernails bled, and his strange intensity…

  Something lurched below the baron. It was under the rubble and deeper in the ground. It was evil. It slept in a crypt, and it stirred.

  Swan recoiled in horror. She fled this wicked place. She hurled herself toward a last cell in a corridor, the source of the beacon, her own body. Through the heavy, barred door and into the moaning girl she went.

  Swan’s eyes flew open in the darkness. She shivered and drew a thin blanket to her chin. She lay on damp straw, and from the cell’s corners rustled cockroaches. She moaned. It had happened again. She hated…had Hosar the Lord of Light sent her a vision? She shook her head. Hosar had surely begun the vision and then something—the thing deep in the crypt—had taken over. Yet this had been more than just a vision, a feverish dream. What she had seen through the crow’s eyes had happened. Her spirit had broken free of her dying body—what had been her dying body down here in the dungeon.

  Iron hinges groaned and interrupted her thoughts. The grim sound came from down the corridor. Stone grated against stone. Hooting erupted, barking and snarling.

  Swan shuddered. Once those had been cries from pitch sellers, horse traders, eel-fishers and pilgrims. Once they had begged for release and proffered coin, service and then any oath Leng cared to name. She swallowed hard. Kerold the Carpenter—is that what had happened to him?

  Boots scraped and stamped along the corridor. Metal jangled. Harshly spoken orders for silence stilled the barking. In its place ruled a cringing quiet. Crackling torches became audible and the flickAnorg light grew. Swan breathed deeply and was amazed that didn’t hurt her lungs. She struggled up and squinted at the painful torchlight. Yet that didn’t make sense. She had just seen through the crow’s eyes, had witnessed the sun’s last rays of daylight. That didn’t seem to matter to her own body, however, to her own eyes.

  The torches brought revealing light. Slime clung to her cell’s walls. White cockroaches scurried under straw and through cracks in the bricks.

  From the other side of the door, steel slid from scabbards. Visors clicked shut. Someone rattled keys, inserted one and twisted the door’s tumblers.

  “You will have to step back, milord.” The jailor grunted, swinging open the door.

  There was a shuffle of feet, the clink of mail and the banging of shields. Two knights entered. Each wore a helmet with the visor down and each aimed his sword at her. By their size, these two could only be Sir Durren and Sir Kergan, the baron’s hardiest knights and cousins. Behind followed the stump-footed jailor, with his stubby fingers curled around a torch. Leng stepped in last. He was tall, lean and wore a brown robe like a priest, with a cowl thrown around his head. His eyes were inky pools and he had a beak of a nose. In one pigskin-gloved hand, he held a torch. The other hung onto a chain with a golden pendant that bore a woman’s portrait, the image bringing a curl to Swan’s lips.

  “What have you done?” Leng asked. “Tell me. I command it.”

  Swan frowned, perplexed by the question. They had incarcerated her here for months. What did he mean, ‘what had she done?’

  “Do not play the innocent with me, witch,” Leng said.

  Both knights turned toward him.

  “Keep watch of her, you fools,” Leng snarled.

  Swan chuckled, even though the effort made her shiver. “They are as bemused as I at your charge of witchery against me.”

  Leng dared approach and thrust his torch nearer as he held up the golden pendant like a shield.

  The heat felt wonderful upon Swan’s cheeks. It had been so long since she had truly been warm.

  “Look at her lips,” Leng said, his lean, remote face full of wonder. “They’re smooth. And her skin is no longer splotched, nor does she spew the noxious fumes as before.”

  “Kill her,” grunted the biggest knight, a massive man.

  Calculation entered Leng’s dark eyes. “She wields power, sir. That is obvious, for otherwise she would have already been dead. It is seldom wise to throw away such power.”

  “She is no witch,” the second knight said.

  “Perhaps not,” Leng admitted. “But it is clear that she is a mystic.”

  “You say this of Swan?” asked the second knight.

  “Look at her,” said Leng.

  The knight shrugged.

  “Can’t you see it?” asked Leng.

  “You keep hounds in the dungeon and marvel at a girl’s skin,” said the knight. “What you need is a wench instead of your dusty volumes.”

  Swan was amazed. Did Sir Kergan think those howling creatures in the nearby cells were hounds? Didn’t he realize they had once been men?

  “Yes,” muttered Leng, who watched her closely. “Your eyes have been opened. What did you just do, eh? Oh, don’t think that I don’t know. None here can practice their mystic arts without my knowing.”

  “Then you are a sorcerer,” she said.

  Leng stepped back, and he glanced at the two knights sidelong. “See how she plies her subtle words? She is filled with guile, with trickery.”

  Swan turned to the knights. “Stop the baron,” she pleaded. “You’ve no idea what he tries to unearth. It is evil beyond calculation.”

  Leng laughed in a brittle manner. “Still spewing the same old lies, eh, witch?”

  Inspiration struck Swan. “Examine the baron’s fingernails. They will have grown cracked and bloodstained. Tell me, sirs. Why does your learned cousin scratch at the earth like a maniac?”

  Leng retreated out of the cell. “She practices her spel
ls. Hurry, get out!”

  The jailor almost tripped over his feet in his haste to follow. The knights glanced at one another. Sir Durren shuffled out backward, his sword and shield aimed at her. Sir Kergan touched her throat with the tip of his sword.

  “What are you doing?” cried Leng. “You have no idea of the danger you are in.”

  Sir Kergan leaned his visor-hidden face closer to her. His words were low-voiced. “Why does our scholar fear you? What can you do to him? Tell me truly, lass.”

  Swan reached out a hand.

  “Don’t let her touch you!” shouted Leng.

  Sir Kergan flinched, his sword point pressing against her throat.

  Swan touched the blade as her gaze deepened. “You will meet a knight,” she whispered. “But for you, Sir Kergan, that will not be as dangerous as the knight’s woman.”

  “What’s this?” growled Kergan low under his breath. “Are you hexing me?”

  Swan tried to peer past his visor, to see his eyes. “Beware of Leng,” she whispered. “He will betray you soon, to your everlasting horror.”

  “I’ll gut that weasel at the first sign of treachery,” Sir Kergan said.

  “You will not, sir, if the baron digs any deeper into the crypt,” whispered Swan.

  “If she bewitches you,” called Leng, “we’ll have to lock you in with her.”

  Sir Kergan backed away. Then he turned and strode out of the cell, jostling Leng. “If you ever threaten me again, you Muscovite swine, I’ll gut you like a hog.”

  “Shut the door,” said Leng.

  The jailor strained, pushing it closed it with a thud and a click.

  “Stop the baron!” called Swan. “Don’t let him dig up the evil. We’re all doomed if he does. If you don’t believe me, Sir Kergan, examine the creatures in these cells that you think are hounds. Look at them closely and remember that once they were men.”

  “Silence, witch!” shouted Leng. “By the Moon Lady you will not cast your spells on us.” He spoke to the others. “The mystic is sly. She casts enchantments upon your sight. Beware of whatever you see while in the dungeon and remember that it was your cousin who ordered her here.”