Dark North (Malory's Knights of Albion)

by Paul Finch

  FROM THE OTHER side of the castle yard, it seemed a futile, almost pathetic gesture – the Malconi pennon collapsing in the rain. But then Trelawna saw Lucan pull down the rope and vanish below the battlements – she wondered if he was attempting to escape, before realising the truth. The lifeless figure he’d been carrying – Alaric, definitely Alaric – was now propped upright in an embrasure, the rope looped around his body. As quickly as he could, Lucan lowered him down towards the courtyard. But there was no movement from the lad; he would land heavily and awkwardly. Trelawna laid Gerta against the door-jamb, and rushed outside.

  “Trelawna!” Rufio shouted. “Don’t be a fool...”

  “She’s chosen which side she’s on,” Zalmyra said, returning to his side.

  “But she’s... she’s...”

  “There’s nothing to be done about it. Come. Urgol is preparing the carriage.”

  Rufio shook his head. “You go...”

  “She has chosen death before you, Felix! I’d have thought even a moon-calf of your sort would find that sufficient reason to move on. But as always...” Zalmyra backed away. “The decision is yours.”

  She descended the lower stair again. Rufio delayed, torn with indecision. Gerta watched him through weak, watering eyes.

  “My mistress is a woman of judgment after all,” she said hoarsely.

  Rufio glared down at her. “You old crone! We could have had a good life together!”

  “She already had a good life. She just needed to realise it.”

  “The Devil take the pair of you!” Rufio said. “And he will!”

  He dashed down the stair. On the next level stood a junction of vaulted passages, where he found his mother, her path blocked – astoundingly – by Emperor Lucius. Clad once again in his polished black plate with its silver enamel workings, the Emperor’s visor was drawn up, and his eyes ablaze with indignation. He wore a gladius at his hip, but was making no move towards them; Zalmyra held him back with her wand, the jade orb burning with intense radiance.

  Rufio could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Slowly, he turned. From the adjoining passages, more tentacles slithered into view, forming equally recognisable figures. He was dumbfounded to see his Uncle Severin, naked and pallid, his throat slit and chest rent open. The bishop held out a pleading hand. Yet when Rufio looked closely, that hand was curved like an animal’s claw, with long, yellow fingernails. Rufio drew his gladius and slashed at it, severing the hand at its wrist. Black ichor spurted, and the abomination leapt at him. In its other hand it clasped a crooked-bladed dagger. It was not a weapon Rufio had seen before, though of course he’d never been party to the sacrifices in his mother’s Pit of Souls. Even now it flashed too quickly for him to visualise, penetrating his battle-skirt, plunging to half its length in the right side of his groin. Rufio gave a gasping screech. The facsimile withdrew the blade and raised it high, grinning dementedly – only for Zalmyra to poke its chest with her green orb. There was a crackle of discharging energy, and the ghastly figure folded up on itself, curling into a blackened, smoldering ball. The tentacle to which it was attached withdrew from view. But there were others circling around them.

  “Mother!” Rufio choked, his voice shrill. He doubled up beside her, but she kept hold of his collar to prevent him falling, and began to incant in an ancient tongue.

  The Lucius apparition advanced with its own gladius drawn. Again Zalmyra held up her green light to ward it off. But this time there was no need. A mighty blow struck the figure from behind, delivered with a colossal iron-headed club, crushing it with such force that its body burst out on all sides in a porridge of black bile and putrid, half-made organs.

  Urgol stepped into view, and kicked the butchered tentacle into a recess to their left. “Mistress... your carriage awaits!”

  Zalmyra hurried past, allowing him to shield her with his vast, hairy body. She dragged Rufio, though he could only stagger, one hand clasped to his wound.

  LUCAN USED HIS last ounce of strength to lower Alaric. He tried to ignore the blows raining on his back, although steel now bit through his fur and mail. If he could just get Alaric to the courtyard without dropping him...

  A hand gripped Lucan’s coif and yanked. He resisted, but then felt the rope slacken. The lad must have touched the ground, if sooner than Lucan had anticipated. He released the rope and swept around, swinging Heaven’s Messenger in a great, butchering arc. Limbs fell this way and that. Caradoc lost both arms from the elbows down, black juice jetting from his stumps. Gawaine had lost one arm, but still aimed a pick-axe with the other. Lucan deflected it and drove his steel at the facsimile’s face, only to see it parried.

  He was exhausted.

  The embrasure stood immediately to his rear. It would be a quicker death, surely, falling thirty feet onto flagstones, than being torn apart by these horrors? Though the outcome would be the same. Suicide meant certain damnation – as if his soul wasn’t already damned enough. Spurred by that thought, he struck at them again. An upward thrust eviscerated Gawaine; a swift backhand sheared through Bedivere’s neck, the head dropping backward on strands of tissue. More black filth exploded over Lucan, but still they pressed against him, now trying to take hold of him rather than inflict wounds. And then he heard a terrible wailing: “Alaric! Alaaaric!”

  He managed to turn and peer down through the embrasure.

  Alaric’s soft landing in the courtyard was explained.

  The ragged, rain-soaked figure of Trelawna’s maid staggered, as though drunk, across the courtyard. But closer, at the foot of the battlements, was Trelawna herself. She was seated on the floor, holding Alaric in her arms, crying out his name, sobbing.

  It was a brief, harrowing moment, though Lucan knew that he should not be surprised. No-one could have survived such a wound for long. And there was certainly no time to lament it – not when those responsible were still within sword’s length.

  His strength revived by hatred, Lucan spun around and launched himself into the horde of abominations. His steel sang as it smote them, laying twitching, limbless forms on all sides. Those struggling to rise were sundered again. Those not yet stricken were impaled, or beheaded, or butchered where they stood.

  “Come one, come all!” Lucan roared. “I summon all monsters to their doom!”

  At first he thought they were falling back because his onslaught was too much for them, but then he realised they were not falling back, but clearing a passage through their mewling ranks – a passage along which, with slow, purposeful steps, a new figure was now approaching.

  In all ways it was larger than Lucan – taller, stouter of limb, broader at chest and shoulder. Yet it wore the same dark mail and black livery, and the same cloak of black fur was draped down its back. Like Lucan, the newcomer had removed its helmet and pulled back its coif to shake out oil-black locks. It might at one time have been as wolfishly handsome as he was, though now those features had been obliterated by a mask of hideous scar tissue. Its eyes were tarnished sapphires, glinting through holes in parchment. The mouth was a lipless tear, the nose a scorched and flattened patch.

  Lucan’s sword almost fell from his hand as the vision glided towards him.

  A gleaming tentacle oozed behind it. Like all the rest, it was the construct of a demonic mind, and yet there was no mistaking it. Even after so many years of tumult, Lucan recollected every detail of the human dragon monster that had once been Duke Corneus, his father. With slow deliberation, the imitation drew its own version of Heaven’s Messenger from its back; this one still bore the unholy runes along its blade. Lucan failed to move, failed to respond in any way. He was mesmerised by the distorted form that had haunted so many of his worst nightmares.

  “Still... a weakling... boy?” it rasped, in that voice of twisting, tortured wood. “Still... a milksop? No guts... no spine... couldn’t even... father a child...”

  “Murderer,” Lucan whispered.

  “Were going... to kill me... were you not?” The atrocious
mouth laughed its terrible, heartless laugh – a laugh Lucan had heard down the decades, echoing from those many places where, without any writ from the King, Duke Corneus’s foes had been hanged, or garroted, or drawn apart by horses, or nailed to the doors of their own castles.

  “Words... boy?” The imitation duke lofted the imitation sword to his massive shoulder. “Only... words? Well... if not battle... prepare for... slaughter. Unless... you beg. Like that weak-spirited... mother of yours. Begging... pleading.... each morn... before her penance...”

  “Murderer!” Lucan shouted, raising his own sword.

  With the speed of a viper, Duke Corneus lunged.

  Thirty-Seven

  RUFIO HAD LOST so much blood that Urgol had to lift him into the black enamel coach, where Zalmyra laid a cloak over him. She closed and bolted the shutters, and sat facing her son through the dimness, while the woodwose climbed to the driving-bench. With a crack of his whip, the powerful team of horses surged out of the undercroft, trundling up the spiralling ramp, running down any figures that blundered into their path, severing tentacles with steel-rimmed wheels. At the top, the two foremost stallions reared, their hooves smashing the doors off their hinges.

  The team crashed out into the courtyard. As they rattled towards the entry tunnel, Zalmyra opened her shutter just once to look out. Amid the carnage strewing the courtyard, she spotted the distinctive golden hair of Countess Trelawna, though it was now plastered across her shoulders and breasts as she sat cross-legged in the rain, cradling the form of a fallen knight. Another figure, the countess’s old nurse, crawled through the flood-waters.

  “What’s happening?” Rufio gasped, too weak to open his own shutter.

  “Nothing,” she said, closing out the light. But she seemed distracted. They rumbled into the entry tunnel; ahead, the drawbridge was already down. Abruptly, the duchess rapped on the ceiling. “Urgol! Stop!”

  The vehicle slid to a halt, and shuddered as Urgol climbed from the bench. He opened the duchess’s door. “Mistress?”

  “Go back,” she said. “Bring Countess Trelawna. She’s coming with us.”

  Urgol nodded and clambered back to the roof to retrieve his iron-headed club.

  Rufio looked up with an expression of almost absurd hopefulness.

  “Don’t mistake me for a caring mother-in-law,” Zalmyra said. “I’ve no interest in your pretty little courtesan. It’s the brat she carries in her belly. Even if we didn’t need heirs, no grandchild of mine will be fed to the Old One.”

  Rufio’s expression changed. “Grandchild?”

  She sneered. “Somehow, your lack of knowledge makes you even more pathetic. You know why she never told you? Because she didn’t trust you to keep it secret. Her annulment is too precious to her.”

  Rufio peered at her, baffled. And then, to her surprise, he cackled – as if genuinely amused. “Trelawna’s annulment is the only precious thing to her,” he finally said. “There’s no grandchild. She wouldn’t let me lie with her until we were lawfully married.”

  “What?”

  Now it was Rufio’s turn to sneer, though he also cringed with pain. “We lay together once, but many years ago.” His cackle became a full-throated laugh.

  Outside, Urgol leapt down from the roof, club at his shoulder, and set off along the tunnel. At first, Zalmyra said nothing, although the look on her face was so terrifying that Rufio, had he not been sure he was dying, would have cowered from her.

  “Urgoool!” she shrieked. The woodwose rushed back to her door. When she spoke again, her marble-white face had blanched to an even more bloodless hue. “Urgol... I’ve changed my mind. Go back there... and destroy the little slut who brought this destruction on us!”

  Urgol nodded and strode away.

  “No!” Rufio cried.

  “Don’t be foolish,” his mother said as he tried to climb out. “She’s as good as dead anyway.”

  “You vindictive bitch!” He gagged with pain as the cloak fell away, revealing a body drenched with gore. Slowly, fumbling, he managed to open the door.

  “Then go and die,” Zalmyra said. “Those who defy the Malconi have earned their fate.”

  “And the Malconi haven’t?” He grimaced as he put his feet on solid ground. “You who stand for nothing good?”

  “Don’t be an imbecile. This is a minor setback. We will rise again.”

  Rufio heaved himself to the ground. “I couldn’t... couldn’t wish for anything less.”

  He stumbled away, and Zalmyra remained alone in the coach, absorbed in the bauble on her wand. The emerald fires inside it blazed. “In which case, my dear son, we must rise without you!”

  HIGH OVERHEAD, THE thunder still raged and the lightning flashed. Below that, with no less savagery, Lucan fought with the facsimile of his father.

  They smote at each other two-handed, dancing back and forth along the battlemented walk, a host of other ghouls watching in silence. Sparks flew as the hate-filled blades bickered, but Lucan was tired to his core. The ferocity of his father’s blows was more than he could endure. Even when, fleetingly, he spied an open guard, and drove through it, embedding his blade to eight inches in Duke Corneus’s chest, the fight continued. Black blood cascaded from the wound, but the demon was neither hurt nor weakened. Lucan tottered backward, and the monster laughed as it came on.

  “Weakling!” it grated, showing long pegs of green teeth which even the real Corneus had never possessed. “You are ailing... I can... feel it. You are not fit... to unfurl... my black banner...”

  “Once this is over, I will never unfurl it again,” Lucan retorted, counter-striking, slashing hard under his father’s guard, chopping through mail and flesh – so deeply that his blade lodged. Lucan tried to yank it loose but it would not shift. Still the duke was unhurt, and Lucan had to draw back unarmed.

  Behind him now was nothing but a drop of thirty feet. More chill rain swept over him. Thunder drummed. Even if, by some miracle, he could dispose of this arch-abomination, another would follow, and another. There were more up here than he could count, and still more tentacles writhed along the battlements and groped up the outer wall, balls of clenched, foetal flesh unravelling at their tips.

  Cruel laughter distracted him back to the vision of his father, slowly levering Heaven’s Messenger from his shoulder. With a scrape of bone and fresh gouts of black gore, he worked it loose – and examined it, seemingly amused that the pagan runes with which the blade had once been inscribed were scored away.

  “And which god...” he wondered, “will save you now? The one you... defile each day... by your very... existence?”

  Lucan backed to the battlements. The drop was perilous. He could not hope to survive it without at least shattering his limbs.

  The apparition cast away its own sword, hefting Lucan’s instead. Rain slashed over the burned features, as the green teeth bared in a rictus grin. “Let me... test your faith... with... a Christian blade...”

  It raised Heaven’s Messenger above its head. Lucan leapt forward, but the facsimile had been waiting for this, and greeted him with a forearm smash in the throat, knocking Lucan flat on his back. He lay stunned, helpless. Towering over him, the living ghost raised the blade on high for one mighty, butchering blow that would split him from cranium to crotch. Lucan tried to pray, but he no longer knew how. The apparition laughed again, and prepared to strike.

  But the lightning struck first.

  The jagged bolt tore down from the firmament in a blaze of blinding blue flame, finding the long steel blade held aloft. There was a detonation like the bursting of Heaven’s vault, and a glaring flash...

  THE POUNDING RAIN had washed Alaric’s lifeless body so clean that there was barely a drop of blood or speck of dirt left on him. As he lay in Trelawna’s arms, he looked as though he was merely sleeping. And now, almost as quickly as the downpour had begun, it started to abate.

  Slowly, in a daze, the countess looked up.

  A pearlescent blue sky wa
s breaking through the ragged clouds. The hiss of falling rain slowly ceased, to be replaced by a trickling in the gutters and a dripping from the eaves – and by the approaching stump of heavy feet.

  Trelawna saw Urgol advancing across the courtyard on foot.

  His thick, hairy hide was wet and matted. For some reason it made him look less like an ape and more like a man, though still a gargantuan, brutish form. His fierce yellow eyes were locked on her; his sharp teeth showed through his snarling lips. When ten yards short, he produced his iron-headed club from behind his back.

  “Lay your head on the paving stone, countess,” he grunted. “This can be so quick you won’t even know it has happened.”

  Trelawna gazed mutely up at him, paralysed. Urgol shrugged, and in two strides was alongside her, his bludgeon raised.

  And with a shriek, Gerta leapt onto him.

  The old woman had little strength left in her frail body, but she summoned everything she had, clinging to his wet fur with one hand, attempting to claw out his eyes with the other. Urgol shrugged her off the way he would an irritating insect. Almost as an afterthought, he swatted at her with the club, catching her full in the ribs, hurling her at least ten feet, a thing of rags and sticks, tumbling end over end.

  Trelawna screamed as much in outrage as in fear, and attempted to get to her feet, but was still hampered by Alaric’s corpse. Urgol turned back to face her – and felt a stinging pain across his left forearm.

  He spun around, and found Rufio rocking back and forth, his lower body drenched crimson, a gladius quaking in his fist. Urgol tried to push him away, but Rufio slashed at him again. Urgol whipped his arm back, snarling. Rufio gritted his teeth in an effort to show that he was unafraid, but it gave him an even more cadaverous aspect.

  “Do what you must, Urgol,” came a sibilant voice, travelling on the wind. His mistress, still enclosed in her carriage, speaking from afar. “Ignore his name, his lineage. Obey my will...”