02 - Sacred Flesh

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  Udo feinted at his encircling pilgrims; others dropped away to saw at the corpse with swords and pocket-knives.

  A familiar voice cried at them from the direction of the abbey. “Scatter! Scatter! They’re readying their crossbows!” Ivo Kirchgeld ran, stork-like, into the tangle of pilgrims, headed for Udo.

  Udo exclaimed in surprise. “Kirchgeld?” Then he saw the line of regrouped Sigmarites, raising sleek, well-polished crossbows to firing position.

  Ivo kept to his course, running.

  Gerhold, palms out, staggered at the Sigmarite crossbowmen. “Peace, brothers!” he coughed.

  “Out of the way, old man,” growled their sergeant.

  Stefan writhed under the weight of the red-faced pilgrim as the man found a brick-sized rock and held it up above his head, ready for the downstroke.

  Ivo bounded past Udo, snatching Elsbeth’s hand away from him. “This way!” he called, beckoning Udo to follow him. A large sack, slung over his shoulder, bobbled and clanked as he ran. Udo hesitated, then bolted after him. They disappeared past the lip of a ledge.

  Gerhold took another step toward the sergeant. “Let reason prevail!”

  “Now!” called the Sigmarite sergeant, to his men.

  The thwangs of released bowstrings reverberated through the crisp mountain air. The line of crossbowmen let loose a rain of metal-tipped bolts.

  Gerhold jolted. He looked down at his chest. It was penetrated in three places. Blood leaked from the impact points on his shattered breastbone. He plunged to the ground.

  All around him, pilgrims fell, crossbow bolts protruding from limbs and torsos.

  The red-faced pilgrim still crouched on Stefan’s chest. A bolt thunked through the back of his neck and exited out the front. The rock tumbled from his fingers. It hit Stefan between the eyes, caving in his forehead, robbing him instantly of his senses.

  It took Gerhold a minute to die; he spent it praying for mercy. Recht would linger for nearly half a day, never regaining consciousness.

  Lemoine stood a hundred yards away, against the abbey wall. He could not bring himself either to approach, or to look away. He crooked his finger into the air, as if petitioning Shallya to take mercy on his fragile senses, and reverse everything he’d just seen, or at least to remove his recollections of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Are they shooting the pilgrims?” Franziskus asked.

  Angelika did not budge. She spoke quietly, her jaw held tight. “Only as many as they need to, I reckon.” They waited for a second volley, but none came.

  “Should we move from here?”

  “Not until it’s safe,” Angelika said.

  Manfried frowned as Elsbeth’s body, now missing a hand, was gently rewrapped and placed on a sledge. Father Eugen stood at his side, worriedly flexing his heavy brow.

  “What was she doing on a cart in the first place?” Manfried asked his sergeant-at-arms.

  The sergeant cast a doubtful look at the mountain slope.

  “Carts do not go up and down mountains,” Manfried enunciated elaborately. “This cart has been here for generations; it was used for the sisters to move items about. But it would not help us get our holy cargo down the mountain, would it?”

  “I accept your censure, father,” the sergeant agreed. “But I respectfully submit the pilgrims would have swarmed any conveyance whether it was suited to the task or not.”

  “Which brings me to my next query—why was it so ill-guarded?”

  “Th-these—”

  The sergeant was reduced to inarticulate stammering. “These were penitents on a holy pilgrimage—how was I to dream they’d stoop to such blasphemous depths?”

  Eugen cut off the impatient response he could see brewing on his protégé’s face. “You have a point there,” he told the sergeant.

  Manfried picked at his teeth with a well-lacquered fingernail. “We need a sledge of some sort. Possibly guided by a system of ropes or pulleys. Find some mountaineers among these pilgrims, who can arrange such a thing.”

  The sergeant nodded. Manfried turned; Richart and Devorah stood several paces away from him. Lemoine hung even further back. Manfried frowned and strode at Richart, pulling him aside.

  “I told you to keep her away from this.”

  Devorah ran to the pile of pilgrim bodies, dropping to her knees beside Gerhold’s lifeless frame. Richart kept close behind her. Manfried shadowed him, clearing his throat unhappily.

  “They were our travelling companions,” Richart said.

  “Some companions, to treat her grace as loot to be pillaged,” said Manfried Haupt.

  A comment came to Richart’s mind, but he declined to enunciate it.

  Devorah cradled Gerhold’s head in her lap. “Gerhold would never have done so,” she said. Manfried shrugged as she spotted Stefan’s body and crawled to kneel beside it. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw that the advocate still breathed, though shallowly. Her healing knowledge was that of a mere novice, but even to her it was clear that Recht was dying. She intertwined her fingers in his. She thought about what Manfried had said, that she might be the inheritor of Elsbeth’s gift. Might she use it, to revive poor Herr Recht? The very concept froze her insides. She shifted to keep Manfried in the corner of her eye. He would catch her at it, if she even tried. She let go of Stefan’s hand.

  Manfried took advantage of the girl’s distraction to speak in a low tone to Richart. “I don’t expect that the loss of the hand will mar our plans completely. Nonetheless, I want it returned.”

  “I’ve already spoken to witnesses,” said Richart, “and I have a very good guess whose stinking little clutches it’s in right now.”

  It was Father Eugen who located the mountaineering pilgrim, Primus Lichtman. After a round of apologies for earlier rough treatment and general indignities, the latter created a system to convey Elsbeth’s body down the mountainside. Lichtman’s companions banged pitons back into their holes in the rock. They set up their pulleys. They taught the other members of the procession how to safely navigate their way down.

  The pallet on which Mother Elsbeth’s body lay passed directly over the alcove where Angelika and Franziskus hid. Franziskus stood as far back from it as he could. Angelika stayed in place. She could have reached up and marked its underside with a piece of chalk, if she’d had a piece of chalk.

  Angelika waited for about three hours before emerging from the alcove. It was a good enough interval of time, she decided—not so long that she couldn’t follow Manfried and his procession, but also not so short that his men could turn back and catch her.

  “Are you certain Manfried still has reason to wish us ill?” asked Franziskus, as he crouched precariously to slow his slide down the glacial slope. “Surely he’s realised by now that it was Elsbeth who sought her own death, and that you helped her under protest.”

  “That could be true, but somehow I don’t feel like confirming it.”

  The mountaineers had left a trail of piton holes behind them, clearly marking the procession’s path across the ice. Franziskus fell on the ice and rose up, rubbing his backside and cursing euphemistically. He resumed his backwards crouch and continued to ease his way down. Below him and off to the side, Angelika moved in the same diagonal, tentative manner.

  Franziskus paused to dolefully examine his frost-damaged fingers. “I thought going down would be easier,” he complained.

  “It would be,” said Angelika, “if you went down extremely quickly.”

  Pilgrim corpses lay neatly stacked beside the path of piton marks. Lichtman’s mountaineers must have moved them there, out of the way as they laid their trail. The fallen pilgrims stared up at Angelika with frozen eyes, their pockets gaping tantalisingly open. She scowled and passed them by.

  Four hours and three falls onto the ice later (one for Angelika, two for Franziskus), the mountain deposited them at the glacier’s hem, on the flat, rock-strewn expanse where they’d rested before the final ascent. They heard
voices; Manfried’s procession had paused there too, in a milling assemblage of priests, warriors, mountaineers and hangers-on. They were at least fifty strong.

  The nearest of them were twenty-five yards to Angelika’s right. She ducked down and scouted for cover. About a dozen yards to her left loomed a menhir-shaped rock, its fat base tapering up to a spiking point. Angelika dashed for it; Franziskus joined her. If they squeezed tightly together, they could both hide from Manfried’s crew. After a minute’s pause, Angelika peered around the rock for a better look at the evacuation party. Watchful Sigmarite guards, perhaps two dozen of them, formed an outer orbit around the rest of the group. Mountaineers and favoured pilgrims gasped and puffed, leaning on pick-axes, or against boxes, or simply sitting on the ground. In the centre of the crowd rested the sledge, a rough coffin of old boards was securely lashed to it. The coffin’s planks, Angelika guessed, had been pillaged from the walls of the shed where she and Franziskus had been imprisoned.

  An angry female voice rang out from the other side of the sledge. It was Devorah’s. The young sister came rushing into view, pursued by a solicitous Brother Lemoine and a worried Richart Pfeffer. Richart caught up to her, taking her by the arm. She pulled away from him, but he danced around to block her path. Manfried, in full black armour, also appeared from behind the sledge. He marched over to Devorah to settle a gloved hand on her shoulder. She drew back from him, treating him to a bitter vituperation that Angelika could not quite make out.

  Angelika ducked back behind the menhir. She leaned into Franziskus’ ear: “Let’s say I told you that they’ve got your Devorah and are keeping her against her will. You’d so something foolish, wouldn’t you?”

  “For the moment,” Franziskus whispered, “I’m prepared to be sensible.”

  They leaned against the big stone, listening as Primus Lichtman strode among the procession, ordering pilgrims and soldiers alike to rest fully and efficiently, to prime themselves for the long downward climb they were about to face. “More injuries occur on descent than ascent!” he warned. “Maximum care must be taken!” Angelika saw two of the soldiers make a throttling gesture behind Lichtman’s back.

  A hubbub arose from the glacier above. Within moments, the soldiers had their weapons out and were pointing up at it. A wave of pilgrims slipped and slid down the glacier’s face, surging toward Manfried’s rest stop. There were about a hundred pilgrims, Angelika guessed, slipping and bouncing down the unforgiving ice-face. Many fell, bowling over others; soon, a cascade effect took hold and a mass of screaming penitents crashed uncontrollably toward the sledge and the travellers gathered around it. The Sigmarites bolted into action, forming a barrier between the sledge and the onrushing agglomeration of shrieking pilgrims. A few readied their firearms but most stood ready merely with their enormous hammers. Brother Lemoine rushed at a guard, trying to push aside the man’s blunderbuss. His altruism earned him a sharp kick in the leg that sent him down to the rocky ground.

  “Overwhelm them!” exclaimed a man perched well out of shot-range, on a small, level shelf of ice about a hundred feet up. “Claim what is ours!” Angelika did not have to look to know who it was, but she did anyway: it was Ivo, goading the pilgrims on. Udo Kramer stood at his side, his posture apprehensive.

  The first wave of sliding pilgrims crashed into the Sigmarites, who roamed among them, punching with gloved fists or crunching down with the butts of their weapons. Manfried had joined them, vigorously kicking and punching and ordering the attacking pilgrims to stand down, in the name of Sigmar and Shallya alike. One scrawny, half-naked old man in an unfurling robe leapt from the ice onto Manfried’s chest. Manfried scrambled back, allowing his assailant to land face-first in the rocks. Then he bent down to seize the man by the neck and by one of his thighs. He raised the skeletal, squalling old penitent up over his head. Red-faced, Manfried heaved the man down, collapsing him into a heap of twisted limbs.

  “How dare you?” he bellowed, reaching for a blunderbuss, which one of his guardsmen held ready for the firing of a warning shot. “You style yourselves true pilgrims, yet you defy the manifest will of Sigmar?” Gun in hand, he pointed the barrel down into the writhing mass of oncoming penitents and pulled the trigger. A mist of blood wafted up, but Angelika could not see who he’d hit or how fatally he’d aimed.

  Franziskus shook her by the shoulder. He’d abandoned their cover and now stood in full view of Manfried’s men. Thankfully they were occupied with the cascade of pilgrims.

  “Look!” he exclaimed, pointing at Devorah, who had broken from the party and was running at full bore across the rock flat and toward the yawning down-slope. There was no one to stop her: Lemoine lay moaning on hands and knees in the rocks, and Richart had joined with Manfried’s other followers to hold off the invasion from the glacier.

  Franziskus ran after Devorah. Angelika shrugged and did the same. Devorah leapt from the rocky shelf, disappearing to the incline below. Angelika and Franziskus reached her point of take-off moments later. They paused to see that she’d selected a spot where the grade was more forgiving, so they jumped down after her. Long-legged Franziskus soon caught up to Devorah and they ran together, half-tumbling down the slope. Angelika chased them. Hearts in throats, the three ran until the path became too steep to safely negotiate. They broke their fall by crashing into a stand of young pine trees. Gravity pulling on them, Angelika, Franziskus and Devorah held onto branches, their chests heaving. At first they could hear only the blood rushing in their own ears, but eventually it gave way to the grunts, shots and screeches of the clash above. Angelika rolled onto her stomach and found a safe, stable position. Devorah copied her and then Franziskus did the same.

  “You’re going to complicate our lives, aren’t you?” Angelika asked the young sister.

  “Father Manfried wants to keep me for his own,” Devorah gasped. “As he did Mother Elsbeth. He thinks I might have inherited her gift. He wants both a dead and a live healer, for his cathedral in Averheim.”

  “Shallya’s teats,” Angelika cursed. “So now he’ll be hunting us…”

  Devorah sobbed. “I’ll go anywhere with you. I don’t care where. I won’t be his prisoner.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Angelika, “we’re bound for Averheim too. Not the best hiding place if you’re running from Manfried Haupt.”

  “She’s decided to liberate Mother Elsbeth’s remains,” Franziskus explained, as moans of pain chorused above.

  Devorah widened her features in shock. “As one of your ghastly treasures?”

  “No, you tedious little—”

  Angelika took a deep breath. Then she started again. To fulfil her last presumptuous wish—to be buried in a peaceful, anonymous grave.”

  “Don’t ask her why,” Franziskus said. “She hates that.”

  Angelika made her favourite rude gesture and wrenched herself up into a sitting position. She studied the steep curtain of stone below them. “There are better places on this mountain to climb down from,” she muttered. “But we’d better get at it. I don’t imagine Ivo’s gang of suicidal cretins will last much longer against Manfried’s guns. And after that—how many days to Averheim, do you figure?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It was eighteen days to Averheim, they decided, give or take. The return trip would be faster, with only one defenceless pilgrim to shepherd. The descent took them the better part of a day; they made their way circuitously down and spent the night in a gully concealed by ground-hugging shrubs.

  The next day, Angelika kept herself, Franziskus and Devorah hidden in the gully. Manfried’s men would be looking for the girl. The three of them would be too easy to spot if they moved up the pass right away. Better to let the procession get a head start and trail after them. Angelika went off, attracted by the sounds of a nearby stream and came back with six fat, silvery fish impaled on a sharpened stick. She permitted them a fire, but for only the time it took to cook their meal. Then they lay with full bellies on the gully floor and
slept in shifts.

  On the second day, they ventured northwards, past Heiligerberg’s footprint and into the Blackfire Pass. Word of Elsbeth’s passing had travelled, reversing the flow of pilgrims, so they now streamed back toward the Imperial border. Angelika found seven freshly fallen corpses and with them a handful of coins (bringing her total to one hundred and fifty-seven crowns), some good sausages and a wheel of barely-mouldy cheese. There was even a hooded cloak in which to conceal Devorah’s face. Even so, a hatchet-faced young man, travelling alone, fell in with them.

  He pointed at Devorah, exclaiming, “You’re the one they’re looking for! There’s a reward for you, you know!”

  Angelika caught him in a chokehold from behind and held him until his limbs stopped twitching. She dragged him off the trail into a thick stand of trees. Then she stripped him to his well-bleached loincloth and tied him to a spindly young oak with his own shirt and leggings. A dozen crowns jangled in his purse but, as he was not dead, Angelika left it at his feet. She rubbed at a shoulder muscle, which she’d pulled during the struggle, before turning to Devorah, “If I have to do that too often, I may just leave you to your own devices,” and tramped back to the trail.

  On the third day, rain poured down from a light grey sky, as a stiff wind twisted low-hanging clouds into troubling shapes. Most pilgrims sought shelter in the trees, and the three made good progress padding steadily on through the downpour.

  On the fourth day, Franziskus said to Devorah: “If you don’t mind my asking—do you have the gift?” Devorah said nothing.

  On the fifth day, Angelika came upon a quartet of dead pilgrims, propped against the grey-barked base of a copiously branching hornbeam tree. She had opened the first one’s purse when the second pilgrim, his chest peppered with shot, opened a weary eye. “Take it,” the man said, revealing himself to be not quite as dead as he initially appeared.