Dark Crusade

by Vaughn Heppner

  “To me!” roared Gavin. “We must make a fighting circle!”

  A man crashed into him from behind. Gavin pitched forward onto the floor, although he kept hold of his sword. People buffeted him. Someone stepped on his hand.

  “Let chaos rule!” howled Leng. “Let Old Father Night walk among us!”

  Gavin reached up to a table and clutched what felt like a candleholder. Hot wax dripped onto his hand. Yet how was that possible if the wick no longer burned? He knocked aside the candleholder and the black flame scorched his skin. With a shout, he was on his feet, and no matter how hard he strained he couldn’t see the candle’s flicker.

  In this supernatural blackness, but for the baron’s hellish green nimbus, running people overturned a table. Plates and forks shattered or clattered upon the floor. Wine pitchers smashed into splinters. A shard stung Gavin’s cheek. The thud of shoes and boots upon the floorboards made a terrible sound, as did the many shrill cries of trampled people. Then a louder sound, an ominous wood-like groan told of another tragedy. A balcony broke in a thunderous crash. Screams and horrified shouts mingled with moans and the meaty thuds of mangled bodies.

  “Help me! Help me!” cried a man.

  “Feast Old Father Night!” howled Leng. “Grant us your promised gifts of power!”

  Bile rose in Gavin’s throat. To his horror he saw his silent mule-boy spring at the baron. Although he never spoke, the lad always went to the heart of a matter. How the lad had managed to slip past the hunting clawmen and gaunts was a mystery. Despite that, with a dagger in his fist he sprang at the baron. A gaunt intercepted him, and the baron reached out and touched the mule-boy on the head as if blessing him. Green passed from the hand, and the mule-boy screamed as his eyes shone that evil color.

  “Make way! Make way!” shouted Gavin.

  Three clawmen pulled down Sir Durren, although the knight managed to get his massive hands onto the head of one of them. Sir Durren the Strong twisted savagely. Bones cracked. The clawman yelped and his fanged head faced backward as he died.

  Sir Kergan was no longer in sight. Most knights and retainers were down. Gaunts picked up screaming, thrashing people. They brought them to the baron for his dark blessing.

  This was just like Godomar, Gavin realized. To stay was to die. His stomach heaved. He wanted to retch. He loathed the taste of fear in his mouth.

  “We must flee,” Hugo said.

  It was the first Gavin knew his squire was with him.

  “What of Vivian,” Gavin said, “and Joanna and my boy?”

  Hugo clutched Gavin’s triceps. “You can do nothing for Vivian now or for your boy. Once free, though…”

  A lie, Gavin knew. Yet the lie was enough to give him hope. He turned from the baron and thrust his sword. When he met resistance, he hewed. Twice a man cried in mortal agony, once a darkspawn roared. Anyone who didn’t escape tonight was lost. That was a cruel lesson from Godomar. Gavin felt along a wall until he came to a door. A thing howled at their heels. He pulled Hugo after him and slammed the door. Something heavy smashed against it. Claws scratched at the wood from the other side.

  “Let me in,” demanded the beast.

  Gavin dropped the bar. “Go,” he whispered to Hugo.

  They stumbled down stairs, going down, down, twisting, turning.

  “We’re headed into the dungeons,” Hugo said in a barely recognizable voice.

  The hair stood on the back of Gavin’s neck. His sword arm quivered. Blood dripped from the slashes on his cheek. Twice he crashed into a wall.

  “Wait,” Gavin whispered. “What’s that?”

  They held their breath. The background screams had dwindled, enough so they heard a drop plunk into a puddle. It was cooler down here, damper.

  “What did you hear?” asked Hugo.

  “I thought—we need light.”

  “I grabbed a torch off a wall,” Hugo said.

  “Does it yet burn?”

  “What?” Hugo said, “of course not. We would have light then.”

  Gavin had no desire to explain about the sorcerer’s spell. “Do you think you can light it?”

  Hugo released the end of Gavin’s shirt. Metal rattled. Then sparks lit the darkness. The sparks seemed brilliant, each a mote of hope. More sparks flew as Hugo struck his dinner knife against the piece of flint. A spark hissed against the pitch smeared on the torch. The hiss grew into fire, and the dreadful gloom retreated as they stood in a circle of light.

  A long, forbidding corridor of stone stretched in both directions. Heavy wooden doors to tiny cells stood ajar. The stench made Gavin wince.

  “They made the darkspawn here,” whispered Hugo.

  Gavin bent his head. There was that sound again.

  Hugo’s eye widened. “Someone sings. Go that way,” he said, pointing the torch.

  Her voice was faint and the words…sweet and innocent. Some of Gavin’s fear drained away.

  Hugo hurried. A turn, a twist, three steps down, another turn, then a wild shout startled them as a spear-point thrust out of the darkness. Hugo tried to parry with the torch. It spun out of his hand as a razor-sharp point sliced into his forearm. Then the silver sword found the jailer’s throat. The man gurgled and died.

  Hugo pulled out a cloth and bound the wound.

  “Who’s there?” asked a woman.

  Gavin picked up the torch and thrust it at a heavy dungeon door. White fingers gripped rusty bars.

  “It is I, milady; the knight from the feast.”

  “Praise Hosar,” said she.

  “Here are keys,” Hugo said, yanking them off the corpse. He turned the heavy lock and forced open the door.

  The woman staggered into Gavin’s arms, weeping.

  “We must flee,” he told her, stroking her trembling back.

  “The slaughter has begun?” she whispered.

  “They make darkspawn, milady.”

  She pulled away, wiping her compelling eyes. She wasn’t pretty. Her pale skin and hacked short black hair, no, not pretty, but there was something about her… “I know of a way out of here,” she said.

  “A secret passage?” asked Gavin.

  “We must hurry,” she said. “Soon they will be finished upstairs. Then they will come looking for us. We must be gone by then.”

  He took her hand and followed her into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Gavin,” a woman wept in the darkness. “Oh Gavin, you must save me.”

  That sounded like Vivian, the beautiful woman. Cuthred the dog boy, who hid under a table, screwed up his courage and crawled over shattered plates, forks and sticky blood. Vivian screamed as he touched her, but no one noticed. Too many people screamed amidst groans of agony, howls of despair and bestial cries of joy.

  “It is Cuthred the dog boy, milady.”

  Vivian’s fingers dug into his flesh and he guided her to his hiding spot under a table. Holding up the tablecloth that draped over them, he studied the hall.

  A magical light appeared. A red flame flickered in the palm of Leng’s thin hand. The sorcerer’s long face appeared evilly cunning. The flame also revealed ghastly scenes of clawmen feeding, snarling, quarreling and yanking out bloody entrails. Leng ignored the beasts as he strode about the Great Hall, thrusting his fiery hand at people. Some screamed anew. Others sobbed and plucked at his robes. Those he struck so they crawled away.

  “Hold me, Cuthred. Save me.”

  He dropped the tablecloth and held Vivian as they shivered under the table.

  “Are we going to die?” she whimpered into his ear.

  He thought so, but said, “I don’t know.”

  She wept pitifully.

  He licked dry lips, lifted the tablecloth and wondered how to escape. Leng shuffled from huddled masses to stretched-out corpses, searching, while the baron touched more folk.

  “We must leave,” he said.

  “No,” pleaded Vivian. “Let us hide here.”

  “Leng!” shouted a man,
“Leng, save me!”

  Cuthred knew the voice. Sir Kergan crawled on hands and knees over the corpse of his man-at-arms, the one who had stood with him in the swamps. Sir Kergan’s florid face had a gash across his nose, dripping blood. He clutched daggers.

  A terrible smile stretched Leng’s lips. He strode briskly and thrust his flame near Kergan’s face so the big knight flinched. At the same instant, a clawman leaped upon the seneschal as a knight sometimes does a stallion. Kergan roared, twisting, plunging his daggers into the hairy chest.

  “Stand,” said Leng, as if the incident hadn’t occurred.

  Kergan gaped at the sorcerer. Then the big knight scrambled to his feet.

  “Hold my hand,” said Leng.

  “Your hand?” asked Kergan. He stared at the fiery palm.

  “My other hand, you dolt.”

  Kergan took Leng’s proffered hand, asking, “You’ll protect me?”

  “Of course,” said Leng. “Now shut up and follow me.”

  It was now or never, Cuthred decided. He crawled from under the table, drawing a reluctant Vivian with him. A shuffle gave him a second’s warning. Then arms like steel bands squeezed the breath from him. The violence of the squeeze and that his arms were pinned left him defenseless. Cuthred’s ribs grated as his vision blurred. He was only half-aware that Vivian desperately pried at the thing’s arms.

  A chuckle greeted her efforts.

  “Let him live,” Leng told the gaunt. “You, woman, step by me if you value your life.”

  With her cheeks wet with tears, Vivian stepped into the evil red light.

  “Such beauty,” Leng said approvingly.

  “She’s a harlot,” growled Kergan.

  Leng’s eyes narrowed. “You would do well to keep silent, sir.”

  Kergan blushed, and his knife-hand twitched.

  “Take the seneschal’s hand, woman. Perhaps you may be of use to me.”

  “Wh-what about the dog boy?” Vivian dared ask.

  Leng spoke in an alien tongue.

  The gaunt turned a gasping Cuthred toward him. Leng passed two fingers before Cuthred’s face. A red image like a club flickered upon the dog boy’s forehead.

  “Ah,” said Leng.

  Vivian gaped stupidly as the image faded from view.

  “Hold the seneschal’s hand,” Leng ordered.

  As something snarled behind her Vivian hurried to obey. Sir Kergan thrust his dagger in his belt, and then he wrapped his huge hand around hers, the skin calloused so it felt like old leather.

  Leng spoke again in that evil language. The gaunt holding Cuthred followed as they wound past overturned tables and bleeding bodies and toward the baron.

  “Why there?” Kergan asked nervously.

  “Silence!” hissed Leng. He made a fist with his flame-hand, and the flame winked out.

  They entered the circle of the baron’s evil glow. The flesh sagged on the baron’s face so he hardly seemed human, and his clothes draped upon him loosely. His glowing hand looked skeletal, the veins like old twine. A mass of people writhed on the floor behind him, all those he had touched.

  “Master,” said Leng, bowing low.

  With green glowing hand outstretched, the baron lurched toward the sorcerer.

  Leng leapt away nimbly, crying, “Master. May I not serve you better as a sorcerer of Darkness?”

  The baron took another heavy step.

  “Old Father Night!” howled Leng, speaking upward. “Save me.”

  The darkness above seemed to congeal, until an icy chill like that of an open tomb swirled within the Great Hall. The baron paused. For the first time he seemed to consider Leng. As if rusted, his lips moved and a dead voice droned out of him, “Worm, onto your belly.”

  Leng threw himself down.

  The baron worked his lips a second time. “I am almost… almost… alive.”

  “What is your will?” said Leng, groveling.

  The baron seemed confused. “You are a slave?”

  “I am your slave, Master.”

  “I… grow weary.”

  “May I speak, Master?”

  “Speak,” droned the baron.

  Leng raised himself to his knees and with a sweep of his hand indicated Kergan. “That one is powerful and filled with hate, Master. He would make a mighty vessel. Surely better than the flesh you presently wear; and much better than my ancient bones.”

  “Bring him near,” droned the baron.

  Leng rose and motioned to an increasingly worried Kergan.

  “Come,” said the baron. “Show yourself to me.”

  Kergan roared, “Treachery!” and charged Leng. The sorcerer made a clever move, dropping to one knee, ducking low. The massive seneschal flew over him and sprawled onto the floor, his knife clattering into the darkness.

  The baron swiveled and let his boot fall in Kergan’s direction. Kergan scrambled to his knees, his face eerily pale. Perhaps he sensed his horrible fate. The baron reached out. Crab-like, Kergan scuttled against an overturned table. The baron’s glowing hand swung nearer. Kergan slithered back, pushing the heavy table.

  “No, no,” Kergan shouted. “Stay away!”

  In his strange, puppet-fashion and with his boot buckles clinking, the baron drew closer, closer. Kergan leaped upright as the baron’s skeletal hand clamped upon his massive shoulder.

  “WORM, I CHOOSE THEE!”

  Kergan threw back his head, howling, while the evil glow in the baron’s amulet blazed with infernal fire, cocooning them in a nimbus of unholy union. Ever so slowly, with his left hand, the baron slipped the amulet’s chain from his scrawny neck and put it over Kergan’s bull-like one. When the skeletal hand released the golden chain, the baron collapsed in a rattle of bones and whispery dry flesh. The amulet thumped against Kergan’s chest and caused him to stagger backward. His screaming quit on the instant. To Cuthred, Kergan looked dreadful. His eyes couldn’t focus nor could his legs or arms obey normal commands. Kergan blundered first one way and then another, his arms spasmodically jerking. Finally, intelligence entered his bloodshot eyes. Kergan faced them, fingered his torso in what seemed an obscene way. He fondled his neck and face and then touched his mouth. Perhaps finding what he searched for, he dropped his arms and smiled evilly.

  “Yes. Better,” said Kergan, “much better.”

  “Master,” said Leng, groveling. “What is your wish?”

  Kergan, or what had once been Kergan, eyed the dark hall. “Too much bloodshed, not enough,” he pronounced a strange word.

  “Your plan has changed, Master?” asked Leng.

  Kergan glanced at Cuthred. “Ah…I need more like him.”

  “Indeed,” said Leng.

  Kergan spoke. The gaunt stepped forth. Horrified, Cuthred squirmed harder than ever. Pale green light slithered from the amulet and to Kergan’s massive shoulder, down his thick arm and to his ham-like hand. He touched Cuthred, passing the evil witch-green glow into him. Cuthred’s eyelids fluttered as something gross and awful wrenched at his soul. Then he passed out and fell twitching to the floor.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Guilt gnawed Gavin as he parted reeds and splashed through the slime of a midnight-colored bog. His chest heaved. Clawing branches scratched his face and hidden roots tangled his feet. Like a coward, he had fled the castle. Vivian, Joanna, the mule-boy… He was supposed to be their strong right arm, their knight and protector. Instead, he had run like a rabbit. He had sacrificed the others to save his own worthless hide.

  Gavin hung his head. Strength drained away. He staggered a few more steps, thrust his sword into the muddy water and leaned his forearm against a mossy trunk. Something winged overhead, an owl or bat perhaps. Frog-croaks ceased, as did insect buzzing. Behind him, Hugo and Swan breathed heavily. Gavin squeezed his fist as hard as he could. He hated this fear. He dreaded becoming an evil, slobbering clawman or a dead-eyed gaunt. His stomach heaved. He had to get out of here, off this wretched island.

  Mud slopped. An old
and callused hand touched his shoulder. Gavin barely had enough control of himself left not to yell in surprise.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” panted Hugo.

  “Tarry a moment,” said Swan, wheezing.

  Gavin glanced at the girl. He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t a gibbering wreck. Months locked in a subterranean cell amid such horror. If left him empty thinking about what she had endured. Her oval face was difficult to make out in the starlight. It was dungeon-white but no longer filthy, as she had splashed it in a pool. Her long months of confinement hadn’t prepared her for a night march in the swamp, yet she had never once complained. Her eyes seemed only a little less haunted than before. Yet for all that, she had a powerful presence, almost a calming presence. Gavin found it…hard to accept.

  The stars glittered through the breaks in the hunched trees. A cold wind moaned in a lost soul way. Branches creaked.

  Gavin felt a strange need to confess his actions to her. “I ran out on my friends.”

  She waded closer, staring at him.

  “I ran,” he said. “I was afraid.”

  “Everyone but you fell into the baron’s trap,” she said. “You also saved Hugo and me. No one else did so much.”

  “Vivian, Joanna and the mule-boy…they were my responsibility.”

  She nodded. “True, so now you must save them.”

  Gavin blinked at her, and the fear returned in a wave.

  “I don’t mean tonight,” she said. “That’s impossible. But you—we—must devise a method of rescue.”

  “You can’t defeat such creatures.”

  “You did tonight. You slew several. Hugo told me he saw others kill darkspawn.”

  “We bloodied them. They captured hundreds.”

  “They had surprise. Next time we might surprise them.”

  “How?” asked Gavin.

  “You tell me. You’re the fighting man.”

  She was a young girl, barely out of her teens, if that. Yet there was something about her, something of iron, something magnetic, something…