The Fallen

by Tarn Richardson

  THE FALLEN

  TARN RICHARDSON

  This eBook 2016 by Duckworth Overlook

  LONDON

  30 Calvin Street, London E1 6NW

  T: 020 7490 7300

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  © 2016 by Tarn Richardson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  The right of Tarn Richardson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  eISBN:

  UK: 9780715650813

  Typeset by Charlotte Tate

  DEDICATION

  For Maurice East, Tacit’s right-hand man, and mine too.

  In memory of Anthony John Maddocks 1944–2015

  “Let not the dead live, let not the giants rise again.”

  Isaiah 26:14

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Part Two

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Part Three

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Forty Four

  Forty Five

  Forty Six

  Forty Seven

  Forty Eight

  Forty Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty One

  Fifty Two

  Fifty Three

  Fifty Four

  Part Four

  Fifty Five

  Fifty Six

  Fifty Seven

  Fifty Eight

  Fifty Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty One

  Sixty Two

  Sixty Three

  Sixty Four

  Sixty Five

  Sixty Six

  Sixty Seven

  Sixty Eight

  Sixty Nine

  Seventy

  Part Five

  Seventy One

  Seventy Two

  Seventy Three

  Seventy Four

  Seventy Five

  Seventy Six

  Seventy Seven

  Seventy Eight

  Seventy Nine

  Eighty

  Eighty One

  Eighty Two

  Eighty Three

  Eighty Four

  Eighty Five

  Eighty Six

  Eighty Seven

  Eighty Eight

  Eighty Nine

  Part Six

  Ninety

  Ninety One

  Ninety Two

  Ninety Three

  Ninety Four

  Ninety Five

  Ninety Six

  Ninety Seven

  Ninety Eight

  Ninety Nine

  One Hundred

  One Hundred and One

  Part Seven

  One Hundred and Two

  One Hundred and Three

  One Hundred and Four

  One Hundred and Five

  One Hundred and Six

  One Hundred and Seven

  One Hundred and Eight

  One Hundred and Nine

  One Hundred and Ten

  One Hundred and Eleven

  One Hundred and Twelve

  One Hundred and Thirteen

  One Hundred and Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  About the Author

  Also By Tarn Richardson

  Also By Duckworth Publishers

  PROLOGUE

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1877.

  PLEVEN. BULGARIA.

  “Whoever knew men could bleed so much?”

  The Priest’s knees trembled as he took a step forward from the assembly of clerics into a landscape of nightmares. A hand caught and steadied the ailing figure, holding him firm until his nausea had passed.

  Everywhere was covered in blood. In the cloying, churned earth, dashed across the rocks, gathered in curdled puddles from the heat of the day. Over the carpet of bodies piled on the cold ground.

  “Is this really a vision of our dream?” the Priest asked, as a taller cleric, bearded and dressed in a black satin robe inlaid with carefully laced fabrics and glistening jewels, pushed past him to stand ahead of the gathered congregation. Slowly he surveyed the ruined, blasted battlements, where a mighty fortress had stood only a short time before.

  “No,” he said, beside a shattered column of rubble, once a vast support for the Turkish southern defences. He turned his head to look at the Priests who had accompanied him to this hellish place. “This is no dream. It is a nightmare. One that will soon embrace the entire world.”

  All in their party fell quiet, the only sounds those of the battlefield being cleared by those who had survived. The sounds of suffering and disorder polluted the silence, the moans of the wounded and the dying, the shrill whinny of horses trying helplessly to rise from the dirt onto shattered limbs, the panicked shouts of Russian officers attempting to regain control of their broken troops and urgently strengthen defences at the hard fought site.

  The clinging stench of smoke, the stink of gunpowder and butchery drifted across the battlefield, ravaging senses, choking throats. All life had been torn from the land with the weight of the conflict, leaving everything black and grey and crimson, everything smashed, turned to stones and wooden splinters. Every inch of the landscape had been burnt and charred, as if a great fire had been unleashed on the Turkish defences that had guarded the place and consumed almost all within it. Blackened craters littered the ground, filled with contorted bodies, twisted and torn, soldiers blown apart and lying where they had come to rest, so that they looked as if they were emerging from the fetid earth, clawing their way into the light.

  For those not blasted away into bloodied hunks of meat, their bodies had taken on a drawn pallid hue, slaughtered and left to ripen under the infernal sun. Blood still dripped from the open wounds, nostrils and mouths of those caught by shrapnel, rifle bullets or the bayonet’s charge. In places, Russians and Turks lay side by side, some in an embrace as if holding onto each other in a fi
nal death pact.

  One of the Priests cleared his throat. “General Skobelev has taken the southern fortresses. He will hold them –”

  “– until the Turks return,” answered the great bearded Priest, his skin as white as the dead about him, “and in greater numbers too. We must work quickly.” He peered back across the dusky landscape to the valley on the far side from where they had first entered the battlefield, towards the bleached white tent pavilion nestled on the grey granite hillside.

  “They are watching,” spoke the cleric who had come to close to fainting. “Czar Alexander and the Grand Duke.”

  “Of course they are watching us,” replied the High Priest, casting his black glittering robe wide. “We promised them a miracle. Let us not leave them disappointed.”

  He went forward, his eyes fixed on the corpse-ridden floor over which they walked, as if searching for a specific spot, a certain location upon which to draw down his spell.

  “The enemy might come back at any time!” called one of the party, his eyes trained to the far horizon.

  “They will return,” replied the Priest, “but not yet. Not till our work is done. It was so decreed. Here!” He commanded with a finger thrust towards the shattered ground, close to where a lone tree still stood, so much of it blasted away that only its twisted trunk and a solitary branch remained. Blood dripped from its bark, as if it were bleeding. “Set down the items here.”

  At once the Priests scurried forward and laid out the elaborate relics with well-trained efficiency and speed. A large silken black cloth was unrolled and set out on the churned ground, over which they laid a length of white ribbon and black candles, as thick as a man’s wrist, set as the points of a star.

  The moon, still drenched in the blood-red of sunset, had risen so that it sat like a dull orb in the heavens, weakly illuminating the spot where the Priests worked. Barely a breeze now graced the place the High Priest had chosen, as if nature itself had fallen silent to acknowledge the dark powers gathering.

  A shard of crimson moonlight shone through the remaining tangle of twigs of the single branch, catching the folds of the Priest’s dark cloak and making the gemstones sparkle like watchful eyes. He stepped back to the black cloth and regarded the assembly of objects laid before him. It seemed to please him and he smiled, turning his head heavenward, studying something within the stars. Around him the Priests had formed a circle, every eye trained on him alone.

  “Will it be enough?” someone whispered.

  “We have followed the ritual. Mirrored the sins. We have done all that was required of us.”

  “Twenty thousand lives?” another said. “Surely that is ample?”

  “For them is anything enough?”

  The bejewelled Priest drew himself up to his full height, his eyes staring hard into the fiery sunset. He drew a staff from his cloak, the head of which had been whittled into the image of a horned ram. At once lightning began to flicker in the heavens, and he turned his head to admire it. Thunder rumbled from the deep valleys leading down towards the Black Sea far in the east. A storm was growing. All eyes turned to scour the heavens for signs as to their coming, evidence that a link had been made. Crows, drawn by the summoning magicks and activity, had gathered in great numbers around the jagged stones and blasted trees, croaking and yammering angrily.

  “For too long they have lain chained deep within the Abyss,” the bearded Priest began, his voice deep, like the rumbling thunder. “They are blind to all but darkness and fire eternal, unable to feel anything but their jailers’ wicked instruments of torture upon their calloused hides. But they have heard our every word, and they hear our words now! We call out to them, beseech them to prepare, for the time of their returning is nigh.”

  Lightning flashes streaked across the black heavens, the dark sky slashed open by forked barbs of slivery blue.

  “They who would sacrifice all and nothing for their master, they who would fight and die, and yet can never be destroyed, for his majesty and his safe returning and reign, for they are as old as the foundations of time itself and created in the very fires of when time too was made.”

  He threw his arms wide as if crucified on an invisible cross, his left hand still clutching firm to the staff.

  “Deadened eyes. Torn bloodied skin. Branded tongues burnt from toothless mouths. These are signs pleasing to our Lord. He has seen the sacrifices we have made for him here on this plain, ensuring the nourishing life-blood of the fallen has seeped down into the bowels of his domain. For too long this world has been full of light and life. A new age is coming, foretold by many, an age of apocalypse and ruin for those who choose not to believe, not to follow, not to give themselves entirely to his darkness and might.”

  At once, the storm seemed to dissipate and everything fell deathly still. He let his arms drop to his side. “Bring the final offering!” he called in a clear ringing voice. The crowds parted and a haggard beaten man was dragged out. He was bound by his torn wrists, but still wrestled as best he could between the two heavily muscled Priests who bundled him forward into the circle.

  “Does he carry the marks of those who went before?” the bearded figure asked, as the man was thrown to his knees on the sodden bloody earth. “Of those who walked the earth as giants long ago, whose veins beat with the blood of Satan? The Nephelim?”

  “He does,” answered one of the Priests flanking the prisoner, reaching down and pulling up his bound hands so that the High Priest could see them clearly in the light of the pale moon. On both hands the man possessed six fingers.

  The bearded Priest nodded approvingly. “We have soaked the lands with the pure blood of the innocents,” he announced, drawing his arms once again wide. “Into this let us spill Satan’s blood, the blood that courses within his descendant’s veins before me.”

  A pair of ornate knives flashed from the Priest’s belt and he held them high above his robed head. The grips were lined with finger holes, six of them on each dagger. A bolt of white light clashed with the glowing red dusk in the west.

  “Please!” pleaded the bound man on his knees, weeping and spluttering, pressed down into the earth by the weighty hand of one of the guarding Priests. “Please! Let me go! I don’t know what you mean! I’m a good man! A farmer! I know nothing of Satan!” Through tears he looked up desperately at the circle of Priests around him. “You’re Catholics, like me. I recognise some of you. From local Mass. Whatever is the matter with you?”

  The High Priest sneered, as if the man’s words were blasphemy. “Gag him!” he commanded. “Let his tongue not tarnish this moment or erode the incantations of the spell.”

  At once a rag was produced and pushed roughly into the man’s mouth.

  “Abaddon, Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Abyss,” the Priest called to the heavens, the veins in his neck protruding at the force of his voice. “I summon thee and thy six princes forth from your chains of Hell! Cross over the Abyss! Ascend, and make manifest yourselves within our mortal world and with our mortal semblance. For he is to return soon and he must be protected. We are willing servants but unable to provide him the succour and protection he requires as he prepares to ascend once more to his throne. Only thou, and thy lieutenants, can offer him the solace of the shield and the mace. Share with us thy thoughts and make known to me thy will, for thou art our guardians, and we are thy foot soldiers.”

  Abruptly the candles flickered as one and were extinguished by a phantom breeze.

  “The flames have gone out!” someone exclaimed.

  “There are new lights!” a voice cried from the opposite side of the watching circle. “Coming from within the star upon the cloth!” Tiny pin-pricks of light, red and yellow spheres of flame and sparkling emeralds of fire had begun to manifest within the space above the pentagram marked out on the black background, turning and swirling as if stirred by unseen hands.

  “They are gathering!” another voice called. “They are come!”

  “It is them! They are comin
g across! They are coming!”

  The dark High Priest stood unwavering, his eyes dazzled by the fire show he had summoned.

  “With these blades we commit this final sacrifice.” He spoke the words like an oath, before turning to stare at the gagged man. “Your fate has been decided by the blood which courses in your veins, that of the descendants from the city of Gath, those of the Nephelim, those of Lord Satan. Through your ancestry, your role is prophesied.” The man shook his head and hung it low, sobbing into the choking cloth in his mouth.

  “Let the blood of this sacrifice, given willingly by one of your descendants, merge with that of the others fallen in this place,” the High Priest began, “be as a lifeblood to their returning. We have praised you in the three sins, we have given you this mass sacrifice to provide succour for your thirsty tongues. Now we ask that you to come across the great divide and be amongst us, to act as his defenders, his lieutenants, and guide us all for when he returns.”

  With this, the man’s hands were cut free and the daggers presented for him to take. He hesitated, and heavy hands took hold of him roughly round the neck, forcing him towards the ornate blades. The weeping man grasped the hilts weakly, his six fingers slipping into the six assigned holes, and looked to his left and right, considering his chances of fleeing. But, as if those who guarded him read his thoughts, heavy hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled up his wrists so that the knife blades were held tight to his throat.

  “You have a choice,” the High Priest revealed, and the man immediately looked up through his tears, “whether to live a thousand lifetimes within the deepest prisons of hell, your soul condemned to the damnation of the head jailer’s whip, or”– his eyes narrowed on the prisoner – “to cut your own throat.”

  The bearded Priest looked down at the gagged man, his eyes boring into him, commanding him to act. The man could feel the pristine edge of the knives against his neck, the sting as they marked his skin. Once again he looked to either side, where all around the Priests were gathering closer to witness this final act. He knew there could be no chance of fleeing now, no way out of his predicament. For the last few weeks he had been held by these Priests, snatched from Mass at his local church three weeks ago and kept locked in a horse-drawn carriage as they had crossed mountains and borders to reach this place, wherever this place was. At first they had spoken kindly to him, fed and watered him. Assured him through the bars of the carriage door that he had nothing to fear. But now he knew what their intentions were. Death could be his only escape. He was a God-fearing man, but he feared the Devil even more. The thought of a thousand lifetimes within the confines of hell tormented him. He wept and remembered how painless the deaths of his goats seemed when his own butchering blade was drawn firmly across their necks.