Dark North (Malory's Knights of Albion)

by Paul Finch

  More and more of the baboons now appeared, hemming in the small party of warriors. Though squatting or crouching, they were the size of men. They snarled, roared and screamed, their fang-filled mouths gaping horribly.

  At the far end of the street the horses panicked, ripping their tethers and bolting this way and that. One ape, a grotesquely vast specimen, had smashed its way in through the gate. It must have been concealed somewhere down the valley, following the men in to spring the trap, closing off their only avenue of escape. With a deafening howl, it grappled with one of the packhorses, lifting it bodily and bouncing it down across its knee, shattering its spine.

  This was the signal for attack.

  With a chorus of demonic screams, the simian tribe hurled their missiles and surged forward, leaping and scrambling over each other, two or three to every man. The mesnie fought back with a courage born of desperation. Gerwin buried his pole-axe in a baboon’s skull. With a single stroke of Heaven’s Messenger, Lucan cut clean through one simian neck and shore deeply into another. But the assailants were stronger, faster and fiercer than their human opponents. They shrieked like damned souls as they battered and tore and bit, dragging their hapless targets to the ground. Brione of Bullwood had his faceplate rent away, and his eyes clawed out by jagged, dirty fingernails.

  Alaric fended them off with his shield, before it was yanked from his grasp. He drove his sword through the belly of one baboon, only to be struck on his sallet with a heavy stone, which knocked him senseless. He toppled to the ground behind Lucan. Lucan spun around, distracted by that and by Wulfstan, who he saw face-down in the dirt as two of the beasts pounded him with rocks.

  Lucan lunged, his blurred steel striking in lightning flashes, shredding flesh, fur and muscle. On all sides, his men were beaten with clubs and mauled by claws and teeth in a frenzy of speed and savagery. Hundreds of the apes flooded the compound, and now their gigantic leader, having killed three horses, lumbered forth. It grabbed two men up, one in either hand, and slammed them on the ground, like a washerwoman drying rags. Its third victim was Malvolio, who, having fortuitously impaled one of its smaller cousins in the breastbone, was snatched into the air before he could even shout. The abomination glared at him face-to-face, and then flung him, cart-wheeling, over the heads of his comrades.

  Maximion had grabbed up a spear, and tried to hold them off with its barbed point as he backed towards the nearest longhouse. “Earl Lucan!” he cried. “Earl Lucan!”

  Lucan glanced around. Maximion was pointing into the building. It would be easier to resist this ravening horde in an enclosed space than out in the open. Two more baboons came at him, leaping, howling. He smashed the iron boss of his shield into the face of one, and smote the other in the groin, dragging Heaven’s Messenger sideways, ripping the brute in half, its blood and intestines exploding.

  Another beast barrelled into him from behind, jumping onto his back, wrapping its black, crooked claws around his helmet and yanking it off. Lucan dipped his shoulder, flipping it over his head, and the monster dragged him down on top of it. Its gnashing, froth-slathered fangs were less than an inch from his throat; its fetid breath spilled over him, making him gag. This close, Heaven’s Messenger was useless, so Lucan dropped it, freed his dagger from his belt and plunged the blade to its hilt in the creature’s left eye-socket. Another baboon leapt at him, landing both feet in his chest, and Lucan hurtled backward. But when he rose to his feet he had a falchion in hand. The baboon charged at full speed, head down. Lucan side-stepped and caught it a slashing blow to the back of the skull, laying its brains bare.

  “The building!” he bellowed, retrieving Heaven’s Messenger. “All of you, inside!”

  Alaric and Wulfstan still lay nearby, showing signs of consciousness. Lucan grabbed them by their chain aventails and, one by one, hauled them to their feet. Blood was trickling across Alaric’s face and Wulfstan was still in a daze.

  “Into the house!” Lucan shouted, pushing them stumbling in that direction.

  A few yards away Turold was having less luck with Benedict. He attempted to haul his squire to his feet, but the lad’s helm was so crushed out of shape, red-grey sludge leaking though its many apertures, that Benedict must have been dead.

  “Turold, leave him!” Lucan shouted.

  “My lord, he’s not...”

  “He’s gone, damn it! Now leave him!”

  In ones and twos, the brutalised knights and men-at-arms tottered towards the open door. One of the archers had already got there, and now stood guard. Another had emerged in one of the upstairs windows. Both were stringing arrows and letting fly with speed and precision, feathered shafts thudding into any apes that came close. But this did not stop the assault. No sooner had the men still on their feet staggered inside the building, battening doors and hatches, than the tribe swarmed all over the exterior, hammering the shutters with claws and fists, even digging through the thatch of the roof. Inside it was chaos: packed, noisy, dark, rank with the stench of sweat and blood. When daylight suddenly shafted in, it was blinding; a shutter had splintered from its hinges and a squire standing in front of it was dragged bodily out. Before anyone could try to retrieve him, two feral forms came scrambling through the aperture. The first went down under a flurry of axe and mace blows, while the second was skewered to the wall by Lucan, with Maximion’s spear.

  Outside, those who hadn’t made it into the refuge screamed as the apes beat their heads and ribs with stones, or flung them back and forth, ripping off what remained of their armour, chewing through their limbs, gouging their eyes, breaking their backs, rending their bellies open and hauling out ropes of guts and pulsing organs. The gigantic baboon upended one poor fellow, rent him asunder by yanking his legs apart, and hung him high to drink his innards as they gurgled out. Still not sated, the giant cast the corpse aside, wiping gore and faecal matter across its brutal mouth, and hurled itself at the house, the entire wood-and-daub structure shuddering from floor to roof. The archer above fell from the window with the impact. The apes caught him and carried him away, froth spurting from his mouth as he shrieked.

  Inside, Maximion cornered Lucan. “There’s something you must see...”

  Another crashing impact shook the building. Another shutter was punched inward as the giant struck it. More baboons attempted to force entry, only to die under storms of blades and mattocks. Lucan followed Maximion up a twisting timber stair to an upper floor, where the windows, out of reach of the crazed simians, had not yet been shuttered.

  Maximion led him to a window at the rear. “Our only chance is to find a place to hold out. I suggest up there.” He pointed beyond the stockade, which lay some ten yards behind the house. Maybe a hundred feet above the valley floor on a rising hillside of stony rubble, a dark niche was visible. It looked like a cave entrance. “Even if it’s only a cubby-hole, we’ll be defended on three sides and only need face them from the front. You understand the strategy – you employed it at Sessoine.”

  Lucan glanced down. “We’ll need to clear the stockade first.”

  Maximion indicated a joist in the ceiling overhead, a squared-off pine log perhaps twenty feet in length. “Hack that loose and we can make a bridge down to the top of the stockade. The men can escape over it...” As Maximion spoke, there was another mighty jolt downstairs, timbers crunching as they broke.

  “Axes!” Lucan hollered down to the ground floor. “Bring axes.”

  Only three of the remaining men had axes. They brought them up and set to work on the overhead bream. Wood-chips flew as the gleaming blades swung and swung until, with a cracking and tearing, the oaken shaft collapsed under its own weight, dragging bundles of thatch with it, sunlight blazing through behind it. With grunts and shouts, the rest of the men now manhandled it to the window and thrust it out. It dropped to the top of the stockade, forming a fragile bridge.

  “Down!” Lucan shouted. “All of you!”

  One by one, his warriors clambered down. The narrow alle
y between the house and the stockade was still empty. At least two fell into it – both landing heavily and awkwardly, but they wasted no time staggering to their feet and scaling the stockade.

  Lucan moved again to the top of the stair. “Anyone else left down there?”

  Only the gibbering of the baboon tribe greeted him, their feet and claws pounding the treads as they came. He turned. Alaric was the last other man in the room; he had removed his dented helm, his face bright with sweat, his locks matted with blood.

  “Go,” Lucan said. “I’ll hold them off. Climb to the cave.”

  “My lord, I...”

  “GO!” Lucan thundered.

  Alaric clambered into the window-frame, just as a clutch of monstrosities entered from the stair. Lucan fell on them in a tumult, his longsword and falchion windmilling, parting flesh and bone as a flame melts butter. Blood and brains splattered as he slashed and clove. The apes fell before him like corn to the scythe, tumbling back down the stairs.

  Alaric watched from the window, astounded, never having dreamed a man could show such ferocity. The falchion split one brute to the tip of its snout and lodged fast, but it mattered not to Earl Lucan. Heaven’s Messenger sang its song, and as it shore through them he grabbed up a battle-axe and laid it on skull, limb, neck.

  “My lord!” Alaric screamed.

  “Go, lad!” Lucan shouted back. “I’ll follow you.”

  Alaric clambered frantically down the joist, while Lucan turned again on his tormentors, though now at last they were quailing before him. So many carcasses were piled around him, so many cluttered the stair, so much blood and hair streaked the walls of the stairwell that for a brief time even these demented horrors thought better of attacking. But ultimately, even through his fury, Lucan knew the collapse of the house would be the death of him. It shook and shuddered under the blows of the giant outside, until the roof came down in a torrent of twigs and dust, more apes leaping down and cavorting around him. Lucan butchered his way through them as he stumbled towards the window. The room was now tilting, the floor up-ending, there was a drawn-out whine of twisting timbers. One last baboon grappled with him. Lucan stove its cranium with the pommel of his sword, and as it slumped, drove the battle-axe blade deep into its spine. Then the window-frame, already warping out of shape before him, was suddenly clear – and he leapt through it and tumbled head over heels down the joist, just before it dislodged and fell to the ground.

  As the house imploded, splinters and dust gusting out in all directions, Lucan swung his body over the sharpened tips of the log palisade, hung with both hands and dropped. He hobbled up the rocky slope in pursuit of his comrades while the monster ape and its minions leapt and howled in the wreckage behind him.

  Higher up, wounded and exhausted men clung to the boulders like survivors of a shipwreck. They regarded Lucan with white, haggard faces as he clambered among them. It was difficult to count how many were left – no more than twelve, certainly. Turold was one of them. His sword, still slathered with blood and ape-hair, was tight in his fist, but he had thrown off his helmet. His fair hair was a sweat-soaked mop, his tear-soaked features livid with rage.

  “Up there!” Lucan shouted, pointing towards the cave.

  Turold nodded tautly. Lucan continued up, encouraging the rest of the men to climb. They obeyed, although when Lucan reached the cave a wild shout from Alaric drew his attention back down the slope. Turold remained below, shrieking as he tottered towards the advancing baboons.

  “Benedict!” he screamed. “This is for you, lad!”

  One of them bounded forward and he felled it with a massive back-stroke. But another took its place, and when this was dispatched, another, and in short order they had swamped Turold and were dragging him down, burying him beneath fur and muscle.

  Lucan watched from the cave mouth, helpless.

  The giant baboon now thrust its way through the smaller ones, clutching a sharpened pole from the stockade. When Turold reappeared, the apes had ripped off his mail and woollen under-garb, and now they forced him face-down, yanking back his head by the hair and spreading his legs apart. The larger one, ululating with evil, positioned the sharpened pole point-first to his rear end.

  Turold glanced to Davy Lug, the last remaining archer. “How many arrows do you have left?” he asked.

  Lug produced a single shaft. “Just this, my lord.”

  “Make it quick and clean, and half my lands and titles are yours.”

  Lug nocked his final missile, drew its feathers to his ear and – as Turold’s distant shrieks took on a new, more piercing note – drove it down the slope. The arrow flew straight and true, striking Turold’s open mouth and plunging clear down his throat into the vital organs below.

  The captured knight fell dead – long before his impalement was completed.

  “You’re a rich man when we get home, Davy Lug,” Lucan said, grimly.

  “Half your estate for killing a comrade-in-arms?” The archer sneered and spat. “Only a man vain enough and mad enough to have brought us to this fate in the first place could think I’d agree to such terms. You keep your blood-soaked lands and titles, my lord.”

  Lucan glanced after him, but was distracted by a fresh outburst from below. The apes screamed and gibbered with rage, as their leader seized Turold’s body in both hands and flung him down on the rocks, again and again, until every bone in his corpse must be smashed to fragments. When the creature gazed up the slope to the cave, drool frothed from its maw – but an immediate attack did not follow.

  Tense minutes unfolded as the tribe roared and howled and gestured, but made no advance. The men watched them tensely, drenched with sweat.

  Lucan, trying not to think about the fate of his friend – the fates of other friends were still his responsibility – turned and stared up past the cave entrance. The rocky slope soon became sheer; there was no possibility they could climb further. He entered the cave. It narrowed quickly, so that no more than a handful could find shelter in it for long. It was not a cul-de-sac, but a passage formed naturally between fallen boulders. Though it tightened until it was barely passable, it appeared to wind on and on into the hillside, a darkened chink which might afford salvation to someone.

  “No way through,” Maximion said, appearing alongside him with a firebrand.

  “Not for all of us,” Lucan agreed, taking the flame and peering through the gap as far as he could. He turned again. “What’s happening here, tribune? This is Italy, is it not? A civilised land. And yet we’re overrun by a tribe of killer apes?”

  “Elementary devilry for a sorceress of Zalmyra’s skill.”

  “This is her work? Even though it destroyed one of her own villages?”

  Maximion knuckled the sweat from his eye. “The Malconi care nothing for anyone but themselves. She’d think nothing of unleashing demonic forces, no matter what destruction they wreaked.”

  “And which demon is this? The great ape?”

  Maximion, so indifferent to pain or fear up until this point, looked haggard as he shrugged. “I heard tell of a story once. After Queen Cleopatra and her Roman lover, Mark Anthony, committed suicide, Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, was forced to flee Alexandria. A group of Praetorians were sent in pursuit, but they never reported back. At length, they were tracked along the Nile delta to an abandoned citadel, where their remains were found. Each man had been disembowelled alive. It seemed they had been lured to this place by Egyptian patriots. It was once sacred to Babi, a desert demon who appeared as a hulking, ferocious baboon with an insatiable craving for man-guts. The stories hold that he could summon endless forces of cannibal apes.”

  “My lord!” came a cry from outside. “They’re coming again!”

  Lucan moved back into the light. Further down the slope, the baboons were venturing upward in a slow, cautious wave. The giant one – Babi, if that was indeed its name – was in their midst rather than leading them, which seemed to Lucan a cunning strategy; a simple a
nimal would charge frenziedly, but a thinking creature would have self-preservation in mind.

  “We can stand in this entrance two at a time,” Lucan said. “While two fight, the others rest. We change over when we can.”

  Grey-faced with fear, the remainder of his mesnie nodded and hefted their weapons.

  “Not you, Alaric,” Lucan added.

  Alaric looked startled. “My lord...”

  “Take your armour off, go to the back of the cave and worm your way through – find out where it leads. I ask because you’re the leanest.”

  Alaric glanced towards the cleft in the cave’s rear wall. Blackness skulked beyond, but what his overlord said was true – no-one else could insinuate himself through it. Reluctantly, he began to strip off his mail.

  DURING THE BABOONS’ first attack on the cave, Gerwin fell.

  The best fighter in the whole of Earl Lucan’s retinue, save the earl himself, he had volunteered to stand alongside Lucan for the first guard, but almost immediately was hauled from the entrance by three or four of them, dragged to the ground and hammered around the bare head with rocks and stones. Lucan fell upon them, but the gigantic one – Babi – lurched forward, and Lucan was forced back into the shelter.

  Babi’s attack was the signal for a full-on second onslaught, the beasts cramming into the narrow arch. Lucan, now with Wulfstan by his side, let fly with a torrent of flashing steel. Monkey limbs fell; monkey faces were split from brow to chin. But the two knights were bitten and rent even through their mail. Hands strong as vices clamped around Wulfstan’s throat and started choking the life from him. He gasped, wheezed, and slid down the cave wall. Another of the brutes sidled past and infiltrated the cave proper – it took Davy Lug’s dagger to rip its belly open and spill its entrails. Lucan dispatched his two opponents and rounded on the one throttling Wulfstan, shearing through the nape of its neck.

  Baboon corpses now filled the entrance, and this was enough to impede the third onslaught. Lucan stood back, leaning on the pommel of his sword, panting, sweating in rivers. Others took his and Wulfstan’s places, yet more baboons soon vaulted over the barricade of dead flesh. Swords, axes and mallets rang on bone and sinew in that dark recess, now foul with blood and the stink of dying breath.