by Paul Finch
Ulf swooned from his saddle, the gorge rising in his throat. Ramon dismounted and sank to his knees. Thurstan was lost for words – he closed his eyes, unwilling to acknowledge the vision. Men died in war, that was taken for granted, but not like this: to be flayed, eviscerated, then displayed like scarecrows! And what about the dead? Dear God, it had even ploughed up the dead! What kind of monster was this?
“Have you ever known such a thing?” Ramon finally asked, his voice a whisper.
Thurstan clambered from his saddle, shaking his head. Beyond the grisly exhibits, he spied a bridge; an extremely flimsy bridge – little more than sticks and rope – but spanning the river to its far shore. Beside it, there was a low granite pillar, to which three horses had been tethered.
He cursed. “I hoped the wretched thing had taken Count Gilles as well, and his son and their bloody guard-dog … but I doubt it would’ve tarried to secure the horses.”
Ramon spotted the animals too. He was confused. “Then … where are they?”
“Where do you imagine?” Thurstan laughed bitterly. “Beyond this river lies Uruk … the treasure house of ancient Persia.”
Ramon rose unsteadily to his feet. “He could leave these men like this? His own retainers … who’ve followed him half way across the world! He could leave them hanging here, just to find trove!” His voice rose to a hoarse shout. “How could he do that? How?”
But before Thurstan could answer, Ulf gave a hysterical scream: “IT’S HERE! IT’S COME FOR US!”
The two knights spun around – and went cold.
On top of the slope behind them, the djinn had re-appeared in all its swirling ferocity, only now it seemed enraged, for it was red and seething as if dense crimson dust was mingled with it. With a howl of elemental fury, it swept down the hill towards them. Though it was still a hundred yards off, the horses shrieked and bolted. Ulf staggered backwards towards his two companions, though both of them were grey-faced with shock at the sight and fury of the monster
“It isn’t toying any more,” Thurstan said slowly. With sudden determination, he ripped the longsword from his scabbard. “Over the river with you both … hurry!”
Ramon stared at him. “What are you going to do?”
“My job. As household champion, I must always be first into battle, last out.”
“Are you mad?”
“Remember Nicaea, Ramon … where our rearguard held the sultan at bay for a whole day.” He drew his dagger as well. “The siege-lines held, remember? The Turks were completely broken.”
“But this is a spirit, a devil!”
Blades levelled, Thurstan advanced. “Away with you. Don’t make my last glorious gesture a futile one.”
Ramon gazed dumbly after him, before turning to Ulf, who, waxy-white though he was, could only shake his head. “We can’t leave him, Ramon.”
The knight grabbed the boy by the shoulder and thrust him towards the bridge. “We must!”
Thurstan had ridden countless jousts, fought many a duel to the death in the name of his overlord: land and tenure disputes, impeachment, trial-by-battle. But never had he met a foe like this. It roared and growled and spat out broken rocks as it thundered towards him. Since he’d last seen it, it had grown to immense proportions, expanding its height to thirty feet at least, its girth to fifteen. Even then, the sight of the warrior approaching seemed baffling to it. Its livid hues temporarily faded, the headlong charge faltered. Instead of coming mindlessly on, it slowed, shifting sideways as if circling, sizing him up before it attacked.
Thurstan gave a belly-laugh and hefted his sword. “You don’t fancy this, hey? Maybe cold steel can hurt you after all.” He pulled up his coif, and sank to a crouch. The muscles bunched in his powerful legs. “They call my people ‘the sword-bearers of Christ’!” he shouted. “We fear no-one … Danes, Bretons, English, Franks. We’ve beaten them all! ”
The daemon surged towards him. Thurstan sprang to meet it.
*
The bridge over the Euphrates was a perilous thing to cross. It was so narrow that only one man could pass over it at a time. More worrying still, its planking had rotted in many places, while the hemp ropes were loose and frayed. The structure swung and creaked as they picked their way across. The river surface was only ten feet below, but it clearly ran deep and both Ramon and Ulf still wore mail. To make things worse, they were only half way across when a figure appeared at the far end, blocking their path. Ramon stopped, watching as the figure advanced onto the bridge.
“Who is that?” Ulf said from behind.
“De Vesqui,” Ramon replied. “And for some reason, his blade is drawn.” He didn’t need to turn and look to know that the safety of the western bank was a long way behind them. With a sigh, he loosened the strap on his sword-hilt. “Remind me, Ulf, if we ever get back to civilisation, that I am too old for stupid, foolish games like this!”
He proceeded, the boy following, but they’d only crossed two thirds of the bridge before de Vesqui stopped them. He now stood directly in front, grinning ghoulishly, the teeth very white in his bristling, dog-like face.
“Lord Gilles, Count of Cerne, Leopard of Gerberoi charges me with defending this position,” he said. “I am obliged to follow that order until further notice. Henceforth, none shall pass.”
“Don’t be an imbecile,” Ramon snapped. “Stand aside.”
“None shall pass!” de Vesqui reiterated, hefting his longsword. After so much battle, it was notched and scarred, but it still had a keen edge. More to the point, of course, the man wielding it was notoriously an expert; only Thurstan could match him, and that would be more through brute strength than genuine skill.
Reluctantly, Ramon drew his own sword. “I will tell you one more time, Aquitaine. I am Knight-Commander of Cerne, and you must step aside.”
De Vesqui’s response was an amused grin, a shake of his head, then a furious chestwards lunge
*
The Leopard and his son found Uruk all they had dreamed of, and more.
The moment they stepped out from the narrow gully in the low hillside, they were there – in the heart of ancient Sumer, the most celebrated citadel in all antiquity lying empty and open before them.
Hasif forgotten, de Vesqui forgotten, all else forgotten, they’d staggered breathlessly forward and now were wandering dazed among monuments of a size and grandeur neither Rome nor Athens had ever dreamed of. Much of what they saw was green with age, cracked, overgrown by vines and brambles, yet still it bespoke the pomp and richness of a lost heroic era. On all sides, gargantuan columns – cut from onyx or marble, veined with quartz – soared to portico roofs. Triumphal arches led through to vast squares and amphitheatres floored with intricate mosaics. There were statues of shimmering bronze, ornate friezes, temples adorned with ancient symbols and arcane glyphs.
Of course neither of the Norman warlords was overly entranced by this. They were hard men, cold men, whose court was the military camp. They had no real taste for things they had never known, like beauty, luxury. Wealth, on the other hand – wealth was a different matter. Eagerly, they sought it out.
*
They battled on the rope bridge, blow for blow.
De Vesqui struck with savage, swiping strokes, which Ramon needed every ounce of his strength to parry. His own counterattack, vigorous and repeated, was deflected with ease, and already blood streamed from fresh slashes on his face and hands. His bone-weary legs quivered beneath him.
The longswords clashed and clashed, the combatants grunted, the ropes and timbers squealed and hummed. Ulf could only encourage his master. The narrow passage prevented him coming alongside to help, and in any case such a thing would have been dishonourable. Not that he cared about that now. His lord, he saw, was exhausted, mouth agape, face running with sweat. Again de Vesqui caught Ramon, this time across the belly, the ripping sword point laying bare the felt beneath the mail. However, on this occasion Ramon responded well with a hefty thrust to the Aquitai
nian’s throat, causing him to grimace and draw back a step – and to overbalance. De Vesqui grabbed wildly at the support ropes, briefly leaving himself unguarded, allowing Ramon to thrust again, catching him in the shoulder with insufficient strength to punch through the chain and leather padding. Enraged, the Leopard’s man fought back, aiming hack after hack at Ramon’s head, the aged timbers groaning beneath his stamping feet.
Ulf found himself clinging on for dear life as the bridge swung and tilted. He needed to act, he realised, or they’d all be drowned – and his moment came sooner than he’d expected. For with a chilling crunch, part of the footing suddenly gave, the timbers under Ramon breaking.
Desperately, Ramon flung himself to one side, trusting his entire weight to the support rope. De Vesqui leaped after him, slamming an elbow into his throat, forcing him back further. Ramon gagged and chopped downwards with his sword. De Vesqui, now chest-to-chest with him, was too close for it to make impact – but this left the way open for Ulf. The boy launched a terrific stroke, which, if it had caught de Vesqui on the cranium would have split his head in two. In the last fleeting second, de Vesqui sensed it. He wheeled, parried the blow, and crashed his fist into Ulf’s chin – only for Ramon to seize the advantage, throw himself forward and butt the Aquitainian on the bridge of the nose.
A scarlet ribbon fell down de Vesqui’s face, and he squawked, lurching backwards – and stepping into the gap left by the broken plank, dropping through it to the depth of his thigh. His sword flew from his grasp, his guard was lost, and both Ramon and Ulf swept in with their own blades, hitting him simultaneously. The knight slashed deeply into de Vesqui’s neck; the squire drove his steel under the flailing left arm, jamming it hard between the ribs. De Vesqui gave a hideous, gargling groan. Black lung-blood sprayed from his mouth, from the wound in his side, from the severed arteries in his neck. He clawed the air, twisting where he was lodged.
With an angry curse, but more through mercy than viciousness, Ramon raised his foot and stamped as hard as he could, twice. With a rending crackle of wood, the shattered corpse slipped through and dropped into the river.
It vanished quickly, leaving only a reddish smudge on the surface.
*
Was there any person in the world Thurstan could not slay in single combat?
Always before, he’d been able to rely on his prodigious strength, his lightning speed, his precision of hand and eye – yet now, in the midst of this swirling torrent of heat and dust, the figure which danced before him seemed always to flit out of reach just as his sword struck home. So swiftly did it move that he caught only flickering details of it: blink-of-eye glimpses of filed teeth, slanted, cat-like eyes, long hands with knife-blade fingernails. But this alone was not the deadliest force he dealt with. From all sides, mighty blows were driven into him – his legs, his arms, his torso. Unseen talons rent and tore. He was thrown in all directions, side to side, up and down, round and round like a dervish, nauseated, confused, hurled to the brink of madness.
He tried to focus, cutting and stabbing at the prancing, darting figure with everything he had, but never once did he make contact – if contact was even possible. And when a savage but invisible fist smashed into his ribs with battering ram force, and the bones simply cracked, the knight knew his death was upon him.
*
The Leopard of Gerberoi and his brutish son had searched a dozen streets and courts before they noticed the filthied, rotted shades slowly emerging from the dark places between the temples.
At first they were too incredulous to respond, and many more of the diabolic things – shambling, stinking wrecks all – had appeared by the time they understood that the guardians of Uruk at last were stirring.
It might have occurred to Count Gilles that this, in essence, was unfair; neither he nor his son had collected so much as pewter goblet yet – they hadn’t even found one, if the truth was told – but fairness had never been an important factor in the nobleman’s long, violent life. In any case, his thoughts were now otherwise engaged, for as the rancid, crumbling spectres spilled out ant-like from every nook and hidey-hole, cramming the streets in an army of walking putrescence, fully encircling the baron and his wildly-shrieking son, he saw them for what they truly were: formless globs of death itself, each one some lost or forgotten soul, either trampled and broken in his own battle steed’s wake, or maybe bled white on the sacrificial slabs of ancient, barbarous Sumer.
Count Gilles drew his sword and laid about him, to no avail. The guardians converged steadily, limbless, mindless, surging like the sea; no blade could wound them, no mailed fist stun them. In a silent tide of suffocation, they closed around the intruders, cloying, all-enveloping, until at last the Leopard’s half-choked screech joined that of Joubert’s – in abrupt and smothering silence.
*
The thing Thurstan fought was invincible.
It was lithe and ferocious as a jungle cat, and it now clung to him with irresistible strength as his life ebbed out in ruby rivers. His weapons long broken, the knight could only grapple with it bare-handed, though its slick and oily flesh was firm with iron muscle, invulnerable to his clenching fingers. Every part of Thurstan’s body was bruised, broken, pulped. His vision flashed with stars, a bottomless chasm opened slowly beneath him.
And then – in an instant, it was over.
But Thurstan wasn’t dead. At least, he didn’t think he was.
Briefly he was a bird, weightless, floating in warm air, the jewelled and rippling Euphrates far below. Next he was a man again, awkward, heavy as clay, plummeting.
He fell faster than he’d ever believed possible. Before he could draw breath, the icy waters hit him with a clap of thunder, enclosing him in green, glinting shadow. For a short, strangely comforting time, Thurstan drifted careless, wrapped in fronds. And then foul fluid was pouring into his nose and throat, and he was coughing, choking – and suddenly hands were dragging at him, hauling him upwards and out.
Thurstan opened his eyes properly.
At once, the pain began – all over his body. He winced, gasped. In the space of a second he recalled every inch of his fight with the djinn, and he wondered how he’d survived it.
“Surely I’m drowned?” he croaked.
“Almost,” came a tired voice.
Thurstan looked left, though it hurt to do so, and saw that he was lying on a shingle shore. Ulf was sitting there, staring over the river. Ramon was also visible. The knight’s mail was hacked and freshly blood-stained, but he seemed unharmed.
“Lucky we saw you,” Ulf added, almost indifferently.
With some effort, Thurstan glanced down and noted that he’d been ravaged as if by a wild animal. Scraps of mail and leather remained, but the flesh that was visible was black and blue, and riddled with bleeding gashes. With much cringing, and no little coughing up mud and water, he managed to lever himself into a sitting posture. From the row of gibbeted corpses on the far side of the river, he surmised that he was now on the eastern bank. About thirty yards upstream, he saw the rope bridge. He looked at his rescuers again – they still seemed distant, perplexed.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Not a brick standing on a brick?”
Ulf shook his head. “There’s nothing there at all … not even rubble. We went through a gully … the same way the Leopard did. But it’s just an empty plain. A sun-baked wilderness.”
“And where is His High and Mightiness?”
Again Ulf shook his head. “There’s no trace of him. None.”
Thurstan switched his gaze to Ramon. “And what did you find?”
“As the boy says, there’s nothing there.” Ramon sniffed, shrugged. “I doubt there ever was.”
Thurstan was about to reply when he spotted movement on the high ground to the east. They looked and saw Hasif on the crest of the ridge. He rested a spear on his shoulder and stared down boldly at them, before drawing a strip of turban across his lower face and strolling out of view.
�
�He knew what we’d find here,” Ulf said.
“So did we,” Thurstan replied, climbing painfully to his feet. “There’s no sorcery in that.”
“But why have we been spared?”
Ramon snorted. “Who says we have?” He pointed west. “Christendom is a thousand miles that way.”
“We’ll get there,” Ulf said, moving towards the bridge. “If God wills it.”
“Aye.” Thurstan limped after him. “Perhaps.” He was feeble from blood loss, and promptly staggered. He would have fallen had Ramon not put an arm out to steady him.
Their eyes met, Thurstan’s registering surprise.
“If God wills it,” Ramon agreed.
COLOSSUS
“My job?” Sam said with an impish grin. “It’s not so easy. Well … I wouldn’t say it was difficult, but it can be hairy. I mean, how would you like to look after the powder when you’re under fire? It’s no wonder we always keep the supplies wagon a good thirty yards from the gun.”
Tom Caxton listened as they each hauled a wheeled cart loaded with twelve-pound cannonballs back across the open heath.
“Mind you,” Sam added. “The most dangerous part of all our jobs is defending the gun. We’re usually so far back you may not think enemy cavalry can get to us, but at Waterloo they did. We were fixed in a battery on the Mont St. Jean Ridge. When the French Horse attacked, we had orders to take cover in the squares, but our officers wouldn’t let us. They said the Brunswick militia were likely to run so we had to keep pounding, to take the pressure off our infantry. Which we did, to great bloody effect, though a few squadrons got close and that was a nasty tangle.” He shook his head at the fearful memory.
Tom nodded sobrely. He’d found out early that the quickest way to get round Sam Clegg was to ask about his exploits in the field. Sam was probably only two years older than Tom, fourteen at the most, and was still hugely impressed that he was already a hardened veteran.
