by Dan Davis
“This is what happens,” William was snarling through gritted teeth. “This is what happens to those who defy me.”
The archbishop’s cry of defiance was cut off as William’s blade sliced through his windpipe, the momentary whistling sound of air escaping from his neck was stoppered by the gushing blood. Hugh’s eyes darted about, looking for help. He looked to me but I could not help him. Even had I not been caged, I was not certain I would have moved to help. He had plotted to poison his king, after all. I stared back at him until he squeezed his eyes closed.
William’s men scurried forward to collect the stuff as it spurted and fell from the wound that grew wider and wider. Much of it poured into the stone channels in the floor and they collected it from the crater by the altar. After a few moments, Little John and his men threw Hugh’s body face down on the floor. His blood continued to flow from him, running into the basin in the floor.
William stepped back, panting not from the effort but from the rage he was feeling. William nodded at me and I thought I was to be next. Instead, they bought a cup of the bishop’s blood to me. I did not hesitate. I drank to heal my wrist and to be strong enough to fight my way free whenever the opportunity came.
The archbishop’s blood, coming as it did from William, was more powerful than mortal blood. It coursed through me like fire in my veins. I felt like I could bend iron bars with my bare hands. Instead, I sat and focused on controlling my breathing while the strength filled me.
They dragged out the huge body of Hugh. William retired and the men washed much of the remaining blood from the floor.
Then I was alone again. Alone, with guttering candles and the body of Eva upon the slab.
“Please God,” I prayed. “I wish I treated your priests better. I am sorry for that. I will try harder if I ever get the chance to. But please do not take Eva. She is a good woman. Well, she is not as bad as many of us. She is a good fighter. Let her wake. Let her wake and remain herself. And let her free me from this cage. Then I will cut off the head of every man in Eden, for you, Lord. Amen.”
God rarely listens. Or, perhaps he does, for I have always been lucky. And what is luck, if it is not God either helping you or getting out of your way?
In the end, though, it was not Eva that freed me.
Chapter Fifteen – Tree of Life
Before the power of Hugh’s blood faded, I worked to free myself from my cage.
The thing had rattled within its frame when Little John had struck it. I was sure that I could break it free of the timber supports if I thrashed around enough. But that would stir William, from the room beyond, and whatever other guards were close by. If I were to succeed in knocking my cage over then I would simply be in a cage laying on its side.
The one chance I had was in prising open the bolted door. It was half the height of the cage and narrow but almost the full width of one side.
“Hold on to life,” I said to Eva. “Do not give up. I will get us out.”
I pushed and pulled on the bars of the cage door, heaving and shoving, looking for some weakness.
I could not budge it.
Eva groaned and writhed on the oaken altar. The veins stood out on her temples and forehead. Her fists clench and her back arched, straining her bonds.
“Do not die,” I said. “Please, Eva. Come back to the world, woman, come back.”
She thrashed her head left and right and groaned. Her eyelids flickered, opened, closed again.
“Stay with me,” I said. “If you live then I will look after you. You will always have a place with me whether you want to share my bed or not. I’ll see you right. I’ll take care of you.”
Eva fell still. Silent.
Was she dead? Her chest did not seem to be moving.
Footsteps approached and I pretended to sleep. My one prayer was that someone would open my door to pass me a bucket or some such. More likely, if a man approached alone I could grab him though the bars and force him to open by threatening his life.
I listened to footsteps shuffling into the cave. The person stopped still in the doorway for a long moment. I expect he was looking at Eva’s form, the bloody linen shirt clinging to her cold chest and flat belly in the candlelight.
They approached my cage.
I readied myself. I would get never more than a single attempt at it.
A low voice whispered. “Richard? Richard? By God’s eyes, do not be dead, Sir Richard or I will kill you myself.”
There, just beyond the bars of my cage door, was Swein. He was cloaked in green and dressed in one of the green hoods that William’s men wore.
His face, mostly in shadow, lit up with joy when he saw what must have been my astonished, ecstatic face. I had a hundred questions about how the sneaky little bastard had gotten inside undetected but they could wait.
“Draw back the top and side bolts,” I whispered.
He slid them back out of the floor. They both screeched as they ground iron against iron. I cringed, looking at William’s door and over Swein’s green-clad shoulder at the entrance to the underground room.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked him as I eased myself through the cage door. I straightened, suppressing a mighty sigh of satisfaction as my back cracked.
“They await us beyond the gate and walls,” Swein whispered. “We must find Marian and flee before I am discovered. And before they discover the men we stole the clothes from.”
“You killed some of William’s men?” I whispered.
“Outside the walls of this place,” Swein said. “Arrows in the face. You say these men are powerful but I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”
“Listen,” I whispered. “Most of William’s men are ordinary. They live in the hope of tasting William’s blood and gaining temporary strength. Just like those you killed back in Ashbury and the men whose clothes you now wear. There are a few, though, I am not sure how many who are very strong. Made strong as long as they drink blood, like Tuck. You must not attempt to fight those men.”
Swein nodded. “An arrow to the head kills them, too, though?”
“Yes, praise God,” I said. “No let us go. First, let us take Eva.”
“Surely, she is dead?”
I stepped to the massive, thick altar and felt her chest and cheek. “She is bone cold,” I said, my own heart racing. “But I think she breathes.”
Her neck was thick with blood but I felt underneath the black scab that had formed over the slash through the great vein. The scab flaked away.
Underneath, the skin was whole.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “It worked.”
“But where is Marian?” Swein said, his eyes wild and dark inside his hood.
“In there,” I said as I untied Eva’s bonds. “With William.”
Swein stared at the heavy door. “Is it locked?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Give me your sword and I will go inside and kill him.”
“What is he doing to her in there?” Swein said, his eyes bulging.
“Give me your sword, quickly.” Without waiting for him, I pulled the blade from his scabbard. It was an old thing. Sharp at the edge, though nicked. The iron not particularly hard and it had been straightened so many times I feared it would snap at the first contact with another blade.
“Can you kill him?” Swein asked, mistaking my hesitation for doubt of my own abilities.
“Be ready to take Marian,” I said. “And I will carry Eva. What is your plan for escape?”
“Put a sword in your hand and stay behind you,” Swein said.
Eva groaned and rolled over toward me. I steadied her before she rolled right off.
“What is happening?” Eva mumbled.
“You are alive,” I told her keeping my voice low. “We are escaping Eden. Can you stand?”
She sat on the edge of the thick altar top, swinging her legs off.
“I am thirsty,” she muttered, wiping her mouth.
“I will get us both some b
lood from the first man I kill,” I whispered, holding her shoulders. “Which will be William.”
Her head snapped up, clutching at her fully healed neck. “They made me one of them.” She looked at me, eye to eye, a dozen emotions fighting upon her face.
“No,” I said. “Well, yes. But you will not be mad, as they are. You are made from my own blood. Perhaps that will make a difference. And you shall have me to look out for you.”
She squeezed my hands upon her shoulders.
“We must hurry,” Swein whispered. “Hurry, hurry, speed is the key. We do not have long.”
“Eva,” I said, “do you feel like you could stand?”
We helped her to her feet. She pinched the front of her shirt away from her body. It was halfway stiff with blood. “I feel like I could kill.”
“Good,” I said, praying that she would be strong enough to help me rather than weak enough to hinder our escape. “Give me room to move,” I warned them both. “But if you can get around us while we fight then you can grab Marian.”
“Marian is in there?” Eva said, frowning. “Since when has she been?”
Something that William had said came back to me. That an acolyte had tried to rape the ladies in their chamber. I grabbed Eva’s arm. “Have you seen her elsewhere?”
She shook me off. “Marian and I were held together, in a chamber of the house above. Until they brought me here. How long have we been here? What day is it?”
Swein and I looked at each other.
“He called to her, as if she was within, when I first arrived,” I said. “The evil sod was toying with me. Marian was never in there. That petty, spiteful shit.”
“How was she?” Swein whispered, eyes shining in the lamplight. “Was she well treated?”
“I suppose so,” Eva said, looking down at herself. “Considering.”
“So William is alone in there,” I said, staring at the heavy door. “
“Let us go get Marian,” Swein said. “You can always come back for William.”
“I may never get another chance,” I said, my voice low but growing louder in my desperation. “I can go in there and cut off his head while he sleeps.”
“If he wakes, though. You two clashing swords will wake this whole place and the rest of us will never get out,” Swein said, standing up to me like a man. “Is that what you want?”
“God give me strength,” I prayed and I passed Swein’s blade back. “Stand aside.”
Eva and he moved away while I leaned across the huge, bloody, stinking oak altar top. The thing was three feet wide and six feet long. The wood was about three inches thick and the wood was as dense as iron. I heaved it up. It barely shifted. I heaved again, it grinding against the stone supports beneath, juddering loudly.
Swein hissed a warning, frantic that I would make enough noise to wake the dead.
I took a breath, bent my knees and heaved up, lifting with my lower back. The great thing rose with me, with my body along it, one arm on the far edge, the other on the edge near me. I tilted it up, spun it carefully around and waddled over to William’s chamber door.
Once, many years before when the lodge had been built, William’s room might have been the lord’s treasury at one time, or perhaps a dungeon gaol cell for woodland miscreants. Indeed, it was a room able to be secured from entry or exit. The door was thick oak, reinforced with iron bands.
William had removed the oak beam that locked the door from the outside but he had neglected to remove the iron cleats on either side of the frame. I eased the altar top into those long iron hooks. I shoved it upright, checked it was secure. The oak altar top covered the door from halfway up, almost to the ceiling.
From the other side, the door rattled.
“Open this door,” William commanded from the other side, his voice barely audible through the many inches of solid oak. “Whoever it is, I swear I shall forgive you when you open it up.”
“I shall come back for you, William,” I said.
He roared and smacked his fits into his door. The altar shook but held.
I shouted through the door, “Perhaps not today, William, but know that I shall come back for you and I shall-”
“Quiet,” Swein hissed. “You will wake all of Eden.”
On the opposite side of the room to William’s chamber, the other door scraped open and I heard a man’s voice.
Swein and Eva froze, as surprised people tend to do, staring at the doorway.
Running past Swein, I snatched the sword from his hand, leapt over the stone legs of the altar and closed the distance as the door opened.
Two of William’s men pushed their way inside.
Both carried a spear but neither expected to find any trouble. The first got my borrowed blade through his neck. He fell, his bucket and spear clattering as he did so.
The man behind turned to flee but I continued past the first man and slammed into the second, crushing him against the rough stone wall. His spear bounced between the walls of the corridor, rattling loudly.
I stamped on his face and neck and chest until I was sure he would never rise again.
Swein and Eva had good sense enough to come after me, eager to flee. I waited for them, listening along the long corridor for any signs of life.
William pounded on his door from the other side. His blows were massive, like the kicks from a horse, but so was his bloodstained altar top.
It held.
“Is it day or night?” I asked Swein as he drew near.
“Should be getting light soon,” he said. “Your blade is bent.”
The bloodied tip had bent a hand’s width from the point. I placed it against the wall and pushed it straight as I could.
“Jocelyn waits beyond the walls?” I asked him. “With horses for all of us?”
Swein nodded. “My men are hidden in the place they fight best,” he said. “In the trees.”
“Watch the corridor,” I said to Swein, handing him the sword.
I picked up the first man by the shoulders. He was one of the ones who had provoked me before.
I drank from the wound I had slashed through his neck. His head flapped back.
After I had a few mouthfuls, I held him out for Eva.
She stared at the blood on his neck and licked her lips.
“Decide now if you wish to live or die,” I said to her. “This man is dead. He will never need his blood again. You, on the other hand, must drink in order to live. Drink from him and find such power that you have never known. You will be able to defeat any swordsman, survive deadly wounds. But only if you drink.”
William pounded on his chamber door again, shouting words we could not quite make out.
I held the dead man up for Eva. Her lip curling, she bent her neck to the bleeding wound and sucked the blood out. She gagged but kept swallowing.
Eva gulped it down, jerked her head away, eyes shining. “God,” she said. “Holy God Almighty.” Her chest heaved while she stared at her hands, flexing them open and closed. “Is this how you feel all the time?” Her eyes were wide.
“Someone comes,” Swein said from ahead down the corridor.
Eva and I took up a spear each and ran forward to where the corridor turned into a twisting stair. Footsteps and voices came down.
Swein whispered to me. “Sounds like four men? Should we wait here, take them as they come around the bend?”
I could not wait even a moment more to kill the men who had captured me, humiliated me and used me as if I was cattle. Without considering, I ran up past Swein with my spearhead held up and out and I came upon the first man. One of Little John’s armoured fellows, as were the three men above and behind him upon the stair.
Their mail had been stolen from better men. Most of it did not fit the wearer and was often rusted, split and then tied bound together with thongs or strips of cloth.
The first man wore no amour on his legs so I slid my spear up into his groin, twisted the head and pulled it out. He shrieked an
d fell past me, down to where Swein and Eva could finish him.
The next man barely had a moment to flinch before I ran my spear up into his chin. My blade bit into the bone. With surprising swiftness, he grabbed the shaft and attempted to yank it from my grip. Instead, I pulled him down, sending him tumbling by me. The third man had time to draw his sword and he swatted my blade away, slipping inside the reach of the point and thrusting down toward my unarmoured head. I shortened my grip, yanking the spear shaft through my hands until my lead hand was just behind the iron, so I held it almost like a dagger. I slipped aside the sword thrust, charging up the steps, grabbed his sword arm and stuck my own blade through a rent in his mail between shoulder and neck. The spear shaft bounced off the wall and I missed my strike. He drew his own dagger and managed to rake it up my arm before I could thrust into his throat.
The man above had retreated back up the stairs.
I took the sword from the dying man at my feet and charged upward, Swein and Eva behind me.
My fear was that the man would shut us behind some sturdy door but instead, he fled along the corridor up there, shouting for help.
At the top of the stair, it was daylight. Morning filtering through the holes in the tiled roof of the old, stone built building. It was filled with that acrid stench of old urine, shit and unwashed human bodies.
The corridor had closed doors every few feet along it, four on either side, with one at the far end. The fleeing man banged on the farthest two doors, shouting that those inside should wake up, then kicked open and ran through that far door. It opened to reveal a rectangle of green beyond, lit with the pale blue of a summer dawn.
“Where is Marian?” I called to Eva but already she ran beyond me to the second door on the right. She lifted the bar across the middle of it and bounced it aside.
The two doors at the far opened, one after the other. One of William’s men poked his head out, rubbing his eyes, another came out with a sword already drawn.
“We must hurry,” I said and went after Eva who threw open the door before she rushed inside.
