“Faster!” he shouted. His hoarse voice was all too familiar.
When they galloped out of sight, I emerged from the orchard and headed for the next hill.
I soon darted into another orchard of fig trees, these wilder than those I’d left. That troubled me. These looked like healthy trees, would likely produce a good crop of figs. All a peasant needed to do was prune branches and weed between the rows, and later pick the fruit. These trees implied years of neglect. That implied the plague, Great Mortality, the Black Death, whatever one wished to call it, had swept through the surrounding villages years ago. I could not have ‘slept’ for years. That was too dreadful to contemplate.
Sounds ahead drew me out of my reverie. I climbed a boulder. Branches snapped about fifty feet straight down. Hounds bayed at that. Both sounds came from a narrow ravine thick with brush and brambles.
Something silvery broke out of the brambles below. It was a woman wearing a hood. She glanced wildly over her shoulder. She wore a short tunic that barely concealed her thighs and she gripped a bow. She dashed between two bushes. Moments later, human hounds broke out of the same brambles. They panted and gnashed their teeth in eagerness. None had Signor Guido’s nobility, but seemed hopelessly degraded as they sniffed her trail.
I leaped from my boulder and found myself crashing through bushes, plunging down the steep grade after them. My garments resisted the thorns and branches almost as well as chainmail. Then I was through and sprinted in the ravine.
Hounds bayed, and then came a terrible scream.
I drew my knife and burst into a glade. The woman stood at the end of it. She held her bow and sent an arrow at the pack baying to reach her. One hound dragged its hind legs, with an arrow in its side. She missed, coolly notched another arrow and sent it humming into a hound’s mouth. Then the twisted, elongated humans were upon her. They sank human-like teeth into her flesh. They punched, slapped and clawed. It was a horrifying performance. She fought back with a knife and wounded one. Then a hound ripped the knife from her. I expected it to stab flesh. Maybe the creature had forgotten how. Like wolves, they ravaged with teeth.
I shouted the Perugian war cry.
A human hound whirled around. I slashed. Smoke billowed from its face. Then I became like a lion among jackals. Teeth flashed at me. Fists and fingernails hit and cut. I thrust and hacked, and I realized my deathblade was exactly that. Each wound poured smoke. Each cut brought a howl from the twisted creatures. Soon I thrust my knife into the last one’s throat, heard it gurgle and hurled it off the woman.
A horn blared faintly in the distance. Could the others have heard the howls? Of course, they had heard. I knelt by the woman. She bled profusely from three bad bites. The worst poured blood like a maiden pouring water from a pitcher.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Her silvery garments told me she belonged to the Moon Lady.
“Shhh,” I said.
She groped for my hand. I took hers.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she whispered. Blood stained her teeth.
“Let me bind your wounds,” I said.
“Listen,” she pleaded. “I’m dying. I know it. I must complete my task.”
I nodded.
“You must return to the castle,” she whispered. “You must complete the ceremony and become the Darkling. Lorelei lied to you.”
What could I say to that? “I suspected as much,” I said. I wanted to ease the woman’s passing.
“The Lord of Night is cunning,” she whispered. “Erasmo has summoned Orlando Furioso, the black knight. You must beware the black knight. If you’re to survive, you must gain all your Darkling powers.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Return to the castle,” she pleaded.
She was a brave woman, had turned at bay and fought to the very last. I admired that.
“You cannot defeat Erasmo as you are,” she whispered. “He holds the Tower of the East. He—” She coughed blood, too much.
“Be at ease,” I said. “I will do as you ask.”
She looked at me with glazed eyes. Then she died. I brushed my palm across her eyes and closed them. I was sick of running like a frightened peasant. I wanted the hunter who had sent hounds after a young maid and who’d kicked Guido in the side. Signor Fangs for Teeth thought it a joke to fling rocks at my head.
I studied the grim tableau around me, arose and thought about Magi Filippo. It was time to set a trap of my own.
***
I waited in the boulders above the ravine. Riders came on fast. Through the trees, I heard the jangle of their equipment and saw the bob of lanterns. My coin grew heavy then.
“Hold!” a man shouted. His voice came through the foliage and the jangling sounds quit as horses whinnied.
Return to the castle. You must not risk capture, my Darkling.
“That way,” Signor Fangs for Teeth said. “He’s over there.”
I knew then that the hunter was a sorcerer, at least enough of one to sense when the Moon Lady communed with me and in what direction.
I took out the coin and whispered, “You’re giving me away.” Prudence stopped me from saying more.
I tucked away the coin and saw the lanterns approaching. They were supposed to have followed the hounds’ trail and to have found the slain moon maiden. While they examined the dead, I would have crept near enough to strike.
I slid from my perch and couched behind the boulder. I had the advantage of a steep and brambly slope. They could not ride their horses up it and I might possibly attack them one-by-one if they dared climb on foot.
I wondered if the Moon Lady knew the hunter could track through her coin, at least when she attempted to communicate with me. If she knew, then she was trying to scare me off. If she didn’t know, it meant the dark gods had limitations.
Like wild boars and with a great shaking of leaves, the band broke into the open. Dead-faced men rode in the van and in the back. Signor Fangs for Teeth was in the middle. He held up his hand. Riders drew rein and woodenly slid out swords. None bothered looking upslope, but waited like statues. I couldn’t decide if they were true dead men or under a wicked spell.
The hunter removed his wide-brimmed hat and mopped his forehead with a cloth. He fiddled with the crow’s feather, put on the hat and adjusted it to a rakish angle. Then he leaned forward, with both hands on the saddle’s pommel. Leather creaked as he peered up. I saw him smile and expose his signature fangs.
“It has been a good hunt.” He scanned the ridgeline. “But now my master wishes to see you, Darkling. It’s rather urgent.”
I crept from behind my boulder and eased behind brambles. Carefully, I began to descend down-slope.
“He prefers you intact, undamaged. But if you resist too frantically, we’re allowed….” His grin widened. “I shan’t say ‘kill you’, as that’s rather redundant. But I’m sure you understand the drift of my thoughts, signor. It’s said that once you were a gentleman of the highest quality.”
Something crackled down to my left. I peered intently. A dead-faced man crept uphill. I scanned the brambles. There were others. Oh, the hunter was clever. I hadn’t seen them dismount and slip into cover.
I heard a whine behind me uphill.
“Hsst, keep quiet,” a human hound growled.
“It’s odd living in the dark,” the hunter said. “The old ways, they die hard. Perhaps that is why I was at the bonfire with the flagellants. I remember before the change occurred—” The hunter shrugged, and he raised his voice. “Walk down like a gentleman, signor. It won’t be pleasant for you if I unleash the hounds.”
I drew my deathblade. I’d often practiced knife throwing as a squire and had attained a degree of skill. But to trust all on a single cast and possibly lose my deathblade, it was risky. Yet I remembered what had happened to the bondlings when I’d slain Magi Filippo. I slid farther down-slope.
“Here,” a hound howled from the ridge. “Here, here, here, he’s here, mast
er.”
The hunter laughed triumphantly and reached into a saddlebag.
I slid down-slope faster yet. Then dead-faced men dismounted, five of them with swords. They formed a shield wall at the foot of the slope.
I stood up, about halfway down.
The hunter pulled his hand from the saddlebag and raised a thin stick. “You’re wise,” he said. “Now walk down into the lantern-light.”
“You made a mistake,” I said.
“If you mean Guido the hound,” he said, “it’s you who are mistaken. Once I learned of his treachery, others spiked his paws onto wood while I flayed him alive. It was an instructive time.”
I flipped my deathblade and caught it by the tip. “You not only live in the dark,” I said, “but the dark has flooded your soul.”
The hunter pinched the brim of his hat and tipped it. “Well spoken, signor. Now if you’d hurry, we have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Your mistake is in thinking this is a hunt,” I said.
“Do you prefer the word ‘chase’?”
“No. War.” My arm snapped forward. The knife whirled, and I heard a wet thud. The hunter’s mouth sagged. His stick fell from his grasp. Then he toppled from the saddle to crash onto the ground.
Around me, in the brambles and below, dead-faced men collapsed as if someone had cut puppet-strings. While as before, the hounds bayed as if their skin had caught fire, and they fled.
I worked down the rest of the way, put my foot on the hunter’s chest and yanked out the blade. Smoke trickled from the wound, and his medallion winked as if sunlight had struck it. I crouched beside the body and peered at the golden pedant. It was of the Cloaked Man. I reached for the thin stick, thought better of that and searched for an ordinary twig. With it, I prodded the medallion.
“Erasmo della Rovere,” I said, directing my speech toward it. “Can you hear me?”
I waited, but nothing happened. I prodded the medallion again, considered taking it, but rejected the idea. If the hunter had been able to trace me through my coin, surely the Lord of Night could do so with a Cloaked Man medallion.
I forced a grin. “How’s your foot, Erasmo?” I glanced around to see if anyone was near. No one was. I bent low and whispered, “In the swamp, you shouldn’t have run away. You should have fought me like a knight. I had a terrible wound. You might have won. But then the Good Book says, ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth’.”
I rose abruptly, and I kicked the corpse. Erasmo held my wife and children. I stared at the medallion, wondering if it was true that a sorcerer could retrieve images from it. Had Erasmo heard my words? I did not know. Then I continued the journey to Perugia.
-16-
Halfway through the next night I reached the southern end of Lake Trasimene. Stars glittered on the still waters. Fishermen had surely retired at dusk and now slept in their cottages, their boats secured until morning.
Long ago Hannibal of Carthage had invaded these lands. He’d lured a Roman consular army into a trap along the northern shore of Lake Trasimene. According to ancient accounts, Consul Flaminius had marched the legions on the road to Perugia. Wily Hannibal had conjured a mist, hidden his troops near the lake and demanded silence. Hours later, the legions had tramped unsuspecting along the lakeshore, with their gear a-jangle. At the precise moment, Hannibal swept aside the fog. With a thunderous hurrah, his army charged down on the strung-out Romans. The sorcerer of Carthage slaughtered fifteen thousand legionaries that day, along with Consul Flaminius.
Thinking grim thoughts, I trod upon bricks laid down by those ancient legionaries. It made me wonder. How long ago had I ridden out at the head of my horsemen?
I raced upon the road, a dark shadow. I passed empty villages. They’d become homes for owls and foxes. A dog barked once. I investigated, and found a villa where a night watch clattered down narrow lanes, no doubt making their rounds. I leaped up a wall like a cat and sat on a dark battlement. I waited until the watch clanked around a corner. They were ordinary men with lanterns, halberds and helmets. They gave me hope. If altered men prowled the dark, a brave night watch became even more necessary. The dog, a gray mastiff, sniffed in my direction and began to bark hoarsely. The watch shouted. Some lifted lanterns, others their halberds. One man aimed a crossbow.
I dropped outside the wall onto gravel, and continued toward Perugia.
On this section of road, weeds grew between the ancient bricks. Later, I passed what should have been the first Perugian outpost at an overhang of ivy-covered rock. I checked, but found no billet or gallows. What had happened to the outpost? I passed more signs of neglect and signs of encroaching nature. Brush grew thickly and sand had drifted onto the road. In a word, the wilds were reclaiming lands laboriously torn from them, no doubt due to the plague. Yet surely, there would be enough people left in Perugia to keep the road clear.
I neared the turnoff to Velluti. Years ago, Erasmo had claimed it was the Baglioni ancestral village from before Roman times. The town rested on a mountainous plateau, nestled between two groves. Darkness reigned in the village, and a gate lay ajar as if the town was deserted.
In my haste to reach Perugia, I would have passed on but for the crickets. They merrily chirped as I hurried. Then the chirping quit. It was so sudden I halted, frowned and stepped back. The crickets burst into life. I walked forward again. There was an eerie absence of noise. I stepped back a second time, and the world’s sounds resumed as before.
As the prince of Perugia, I’d often led her soldiers into battle. I’d just as often camped in the wilds. If a step farther would have silenced crickets those times, I would have slept peacefully every night. I took that step now, concentrating. The silence swung shut like a door. I peered back. Beside the dirt road, a cricket shifted position, its wings a-blur but silent. I snapped my fingers. The sound was subdued, distant. I kicked a stone. I could hardly hear it.
It is said that a cat will deliberately sleep on a person’s chest, its nostrils near the sleeper’s mouth. The cat will steal the sleeper’s breath until death occurs. That is nonsense, of course, but many believe it. As I stood on the weedy road, it seemed that some invisible thing stole sounds as they were made.
I stepped away again. An ominous noise caused me to whirl. Something big and heavy clopped up the road. It jangled of chainmail and clunked of plate.
I hurried behind a boulder because the noise recalled to mind one of Lorelei’s warnings. I must beware once I neared Perugia. I soon spied a beast of a horse. Its hooves were like a smith’s hammer striking sparks on the paving. The horse was black. The rider wore dark plate-armor and a spiked iron helm.
In the old tales, black knights were villains. They painted their armor to blot out any heraldic symbols. That was to hide their liege or their own identity, or it meant they were landless and poor. Thus, the knight lacked a page to polish his armor. So he painted it to retard it from rusting.
The horse moved at a trot. I sensed power, strength and arrogance in the knight. He rode as if he would trample whatever stood in his way. I recalled the moon maiden’s words, to beware the black knight. She had called him Orlando Furioso, which meant, Mad Orlando.
I knew an Orlando. We all did. He had been Charlemagne’s greatest paladin. In some tales, Orlando and his best friend Uliviero had died at Roncevaux against the Saracens. In other stories, Orlando had gone mad and had departed in Charlemagne’s greatest hour of need. Afterward, Orlando had met a grim fate. All were legendary tales and from a time over five hundred years ago. The knight riding toward me could not possibly be the same man. Yet if a sorcerer could conjure any warrior to his side, Signor Orlando would be an excellent choice.
The rider stiffened as he passed my boulder, and he shifted so his armor creaked. He brought up a gauntleted hand. A chain rattled, one end attached to an oaken haft. At the other end swung a spiked ball. It was a morningstar, an ugly weapon, difficult to use well. Some horsemen preferred it, and for good reason. While on a charging horse
, a sword stroke produced a numbing shock to the wielder’s hand. The morningstar’s ball struck just as hard, but because of the chain, the shock never reached the wielder.
He passed my boulder and turned onto the hilly road to Velluti. The clop, the clink and the leathery creaks quit on a sudden. As eerily, their image wavered as if viewed through water. In time, rider and horse plunged through Velluti’s gate.
I fingered the hilt of my deathblade. This strangeness spoke of sorcery. The black knight was supposedly one of Erasmo’s champions and he had entered my ancestral village. That seemed ominous. With a swirl of my cloak, I glided toward Velluti to investigate.
***
A haunted place meant ghosts or demons. Velluti was dead, without even a moan to suggest lost souls. I passed the village-well, the smithy and sheds. They seemed faded, washed of essence. I spied a rake in the middle of a lane. Elsewhere I saw a hoe and two sickles as if they’d been dropped so their owners could flee faster. In the moonlight, I glided like a shadow from building to building. I stepped over a spool of thread and saw a knife stuck in a shed. In the center of town, I found a smashed church. Every other house or shed had been intact. Here it seemed as if a giant had kicked out the church’s walls. They lay flat, with cracked bricks strewn beyond.
Assassin of the Damned (Dark Gods) Page 10
