Death Knight

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Vivian, Joanna and the mule-boy…they were my responsibility.”

  She nodded. “True, so now you must save them.”

  Gavin blinked at her, and the fear returned in a wave.

  “I don’t mean tonight,” she said. “That’s impossible. But you—we—must devise a method of rescue.”

  “You can’t defeat such creatures.”

  “You did tonight. You slew several. Hugo told me he saw others kill darkspawn.”

  “We bloodied them. They captured hundreds.”

  “They had surprise. Next time we might surprise them.”

  “How?” asked Gavin.

  “You tell me. You’re the fighting man.”

  She was a young girl, barely out of her teens, if that. Yet there was something about her, something of iron, something magnetic, something…

  “We don’t have time for self-pity and recrimination,” she said. “A crypt has opened and out of it has a-risen a thing from the grave.”

  “From the grave?” asked Hugo, his voice hoarse. He had been wiping Gavin’s sword, scouring with his sleeve any vestiges of mud. A tremor twitched across half his face. The other, stiff half remained steadfast. “How do you know what you say is true?”

  Swan spoke solemnly. “I was in the dungeon. There I gained knowledge that will haunt me until I die.”

  Hugo wiped away the last speck of mud and handed back the silver sword.

  Gavin hefted it. He had slain darkspawn tonight. Her essential logic held. If you could kill one, you could under the right circumstances kill more. Yet the grim lessons of the cold wastes said that the powers of Darkness could always make more darkspawn. The right thing to do was flee, have nothing to do with fighting such creatures. Leng had captured Vivian, Joanna and his mule-boy. Would the sorcerer turn them into darkspawn? The answer was too bitter to answer.

  Gavin asked Swan. “Can this…this dead thing be destroyed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it immortal?”

  She frowned as frogs resumed croaking. “I don’t think so.”

  “Mortal or immortal, it’s too powerful for us,” muttered Hugo. “We must escape Erin.”

  Trust the squire the state the obvious.

  “No!” said Swan.

  Her vehemence shocked Gavin, as did the radiance shining in her eyes. What was going on here?

  “We must put it down,” she said.

  “You intend to fight?” asked Gavin.

  “With all my might,” she said. “With everything I have. Yes. I mean to put that thing back in the grave and make sure it stays there forever.”

  Gavin grimaced. This girl didn’t know what she was saying.

  “You won free from the castle,” she said.

  Gavin laughed bleakly.

  She clutched his arm. “What could you have done differently this night?”

  She had strange eyes, deep and compelling. “I could have ridden on before the feast began and thus saved my people.”

  “You couldn’t have known this was going to happen,” she said.

  “I felt the evil.”

  “I felt it too,” Hugo said.

  Swan’s brow creased. Soon she smiled grimly. “Good. That means it isn’t all-powerful. It can’t fully disguise itself. Yes. This gives me hope.”

  “Hope?” Gavin said. “There is no hope.”

  “There is always hope,” said Swan.

  “Not for our friends.”

  She pondered that, glanced at Hugo. “What do you think?”

  As they had fled through the swamp, Hugo had dropped hints about Novgorod, Muscovy and their ill-fated crusading there.

  “I don’t remember the Sword Brothers saying you could save a man after he’s darkspawn,” Hugo said slowly.

  “But did they say it was impossible?” she asked.

  The old squire shrugged.

  “Then we must believe it is possible,” she said. “And if it isn’t… We must warn others. We must raise an army to destroy this evil before it befouls everyone in Erin.”

  Gavin laughed.

  “You escaped this evening for a reason, Sir Knight. The reason is to destroy this evil. Thus you must vow on your lost comrades to right this wrong.”

  The idea of voluntarily fighting darkspawn—it was ridiculous.

  Swan dug her fingers into his arm. “You must fight. You must strike back. You must help me kill this thing or Erin is doomed.”

  “Milady, if it’s that powerful you need more than a jousting knight.”

  “You are more than that,” she said, her voice ringing with conviction.

  Gavin turned away. Her eyes, he didn’t like their compelling nature. “I’ll help you escape from here.”

  “You must strike back,” she said, with a pleading note, sounding her age then.

  “We are striking back,” he said, “by surviving.”

  She released his arm.

  He felt diminished in her sight, and that troubled him. That’s foolish, he told himself. She’s just a young girl. She’s raving. “I’ll help you to Banfrey. I’ll buy you passage aboard ship to Albion.”

  “I accept your help, the part of getting me to Banfrey. The king must hear of this. Yet I ask you to consider my words. You must stop running or you will never conqueror the fears that haunt your life. They are a deep wound and still bled.”

  Gavin thrust the silver sword into the scabbard, and he resumed the march, deciding it was the only way to silence her babble.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The nightmare began as a trio of gaunts tore off Cuthred’s clothes and drove him naked down creaking wooden stairs. They prodded him with sharp sticks, their torchlight smoldering upon damp stone corridors. Putrid straw lay strewn in the chosen cell, with beetles scurrying under it as the chief gaunt snapped a manacle onto Cuthred’s ankle. Then the gaunts stepped back, regarding him with ghoulish hunger as drool dripped from their cavernous maws. Reluctantly, with cannibal lusts unfulfilled, they shuffled out and slammed the cell door behind them.

  The tormenting hate began the next night as hunger drove Cuthred to crunching the rancid beetles between his teeth. The cold, fear and his aching bones, and the evil worming into his thoughts, made his head beat with pain. He recalled a thousand insults, a thousand sneers and hurts. It hadn’t only been Kergan. The castle bullies had picked on him. Oh, yes, indeed, all the slurs, all the boot-kickings, the pummeling fists and the laughter at his expense, all the things he had endured year after year bubbled in his acute reexamination. He seldom slept. When he did, he dreamed of rapine, bloodshed and sacrificing goats on dark altars. He awoke drenched in sweat, shivering and terrified.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he shouted into the blackness. “Why am I down here? What have I done wrong?”

  No one answered. In the eternal dark, no one cared.

  Then one day, or night, he knew not which, torchlight proceeded jailers. A key turned in the lock. The door grated open, and he cowered before the light. Two shambling things in the shape of men dragged a mewling, spitting boy into the cell. They snapped fetters to the boy’s wrists. A third man-thing thumped a raw and bloody haunch of horsemeat before Cuthred, along with a huge water-skin. Then the clawmen retreated, taking their hateful light with them.

  Ravenous, Cuthred fell upon the meat. Nor did he consider his prodigious appetite unusual. He ate the entire haunch, his belly-skin stretching beyond anything human. Sleep soon overtook him.

  In blurring time, the manacle chafed against his skin, rubbing it raw. He fingered his ankle. It didn’t seem swollen. It was impossible the manacle had grown smaller. He didn’t understand. The jailers returned, tossing him more bloody haunches and giving him new water-skins. The boy, hairy now from crown to heel like a panther, gained a modicum of freedom when they unlocked one of his fetters. He too was given raw meat, although not nearly as much as Cuthred.

  Then came the day Leng entered the cell. He wore a long black robe with a golden sym
bol. At a gesture, fish-eyed gaunts approached Cuthred so he cowered. They snapped a new and bigger manacle to his other ankle. Then they sprung the first restraint; it fairly popped off his swollen flesh.

  Torchlight flickered across the boy, the one who had never spoken no matter how many times Cuthred had pleaded with him. The boy had grown considerably since last time. His arms and legs had elongated and become lean. His fingernails were claw-like. Worst of all, his mouth protruded in a lion-like manner.

  Cuthred fingered his own mouth. It seemed as before. Despite his horrible situation, he thanked… He wrinkled his brow. Once he had called upon the Lord of Light. He shuddered, dreading thinking about that blazing-eyed one who scorched and burned his foes. Cuthred thanked…fate. Yes, thanks be to fate that no change had occurred to him.

  In the cackling torchlight, Leng eyed him coldly. “Are you lonely, dog boy?”

  Cuthred forced out words, having to concentrate to speak. “Yes,” he said, in a voice deeper than he remembered. The ache of loneliness tormented him. He actually felt thankful for Leng being here.

  “I see that you retain too much humanity,” Leng said ominously.

  Cuthred didn’t understand.

  Leng turned, gesturing. Shambling creatures with wolfish snouts entered the cell. They held heavy clubs.

  “Beat him,” said Leng.

  Cuthred howled in despair as the clubs fell. He cowered, throwing up his arms. Mercilessly, the clubs thudded upon him. Bones cracked. Blood flowed. When they left, heavy haunches of beef lay around him.

  He dreamed of revenge, of a day he would take each clawman and twist off his head. He dreamed of Leng, smashing him against a tree. He wanted to even the score with his tormenters. The chance never came. Instead, they returned and beat him senseless anew. Sometimes the clubs fell on his head. His thoughts grew less each time, more jumbled.

  Finally, one dark night after the club-wielders shuffled away, the boy growled in a hideous way, “Why do they beat you?”

  Cuthred took a long time answering. The manacle chafed again and the cell seemed smaller than before. Endless darkness and beatings must have warped his thoughts. Then even that much sanity fled as he felt his aches. He roared at the boy, staining against his chains as he tried to reach him. Rend, destroy and beat to death. That’s all he wanted to do, with all his strength.

  “Do you hate me?” growled the boy.

  “I hate everyone!” roared Cuthred.

  “Me too,” growled the boy.

  That stilled Cuthred’s ravings. “Who…” The words came hard. His head hurt at such concentration. “Who do you hate the most?”

  “Sir Gavin the traitor.”

  Cuthred only vaguely recalled the knight. He had no idea how much time had passed, only that the days of Cuthred the dog boy seemed like a lost world, a time he could only recall as faint dreams.

  ***

  The sound of approaching footsteps woke Cuthred. Torchlight flickered outside the cell. He cowered, and he wet himself like a frightened hound. The lock rattled. Leng stepped within. Behind him came clawmen with snouts and heavy shoulders. They resembled the boy chained to the wall. Only they had nothing majestic about them, only baseless mockery of things that had once been human.

  The boy, however, had lean limbs like a panther. Where the bestial creatures had hands with wolf-like nails, the boy had true claws. He snarled in a feral manner as they poked him with torches, singeing fur. Like a jungle cat, his claws flickered in and out of skin-sheathes. The tormenters stayed out of range of his feet—one quick kick with those could disembowel any one of them.

  “You are almost a fravashi,” Leng said approvingly. “Soon the Master can use you.” The sorcerer faced Cuthred. “Hold out your arms.”

  Trembling, Cuthred did as bidden. Reluctantly, two clawmen approached. They snapped heavy cuffs onto his wrists. Only then did the other clawmen shuffle near. Three grasped each chain. Another bent low and unlocked the painful manacle, which flew off his ankle. Cuthred trembled at this freedom and almost attacked them.

  “If you’re good,” said Leng, “we’ll take you outside.”

  “Outside?” rumbled Cuthred.

  “Out of the dungeon in which you were born,” said Leng.

  Cuthred rose slowly, and crouched low indeed, so he didn’t bump his head on the ceiling. He hadn’t recalled the cell being so small before. He had to crawl out the door, turning sideways. Claustrophobia gripped him in the narrow confines of the corridors. Then he half-slithered up the creaking stairs and squeezed through another door. He stood upright for the first time in a long time, seeing that he stood in the Great Hall. It had changed since…since then. A huge stone altar stood in the center of the Great Hall. Blood smells lingered, and a horrible presence filled this place.

  Cuthred shook with fear.

  Thankfully, they took him outside, under the light of bright stars. Strange smells filled him with wonder. He sniffed carefully, naming to himself charcoal, worked metals and animal smells. Hammers rang incessantly, hooves clopped as wheels and gears groaned. Even more strangely, things stood motionless in the darkness. Ranks upon ranks of them waited silently. They had the stink of death, corpses.

  The clawmen led him outside the castle to stand beside a huge hole.

  “Jump down,” ordered Leng.

  Cuthred frowned as he peered into the deep hole. Something…something was different about him. He sensed it, but he couldn’t quite discern what it was.

  “In,” said Leng.

  Cuthred studied the small clawmen around him. They shrank back. One, however, dared bare his fangs. With malignant cunning, Cuthred nodded to Leng. The clawmen released the chains. Cuthred snatched the fang-barer. He laughed like a demon and jumped into the hole. The clawman howled. He tried to fight. Cuthred grabbed a furry limb in each hand. He yanked, and with a rip and snapped bones, he tore off both arms. He hurled each bloody limb out of the hole. Then he ripped off the head in a single, savage twist, tossing that out too. Finally, he threw out the twitching body. Only then did it occur to him how small the clawman had been. Once they had been bigger than he was.

  Cuthred stared at his bloody hands. They seemed…larger than before.

  Leng peered down, waiting, watching.

  “What’s happened to me?” Cuthred asked dully.

  The sorcerer lips twitched in mockery.

  “Am I…” Cuthred struggled with the word. “Am I…different?”

  “You stupid oaf,” said Leng. “You’re a giant. You’re more than twice as tall as you were, maybe five times as massive, who knows how much stronger.”

  As the meaning came home, Cuthred sank into a corner and moaned. He was a giant, a freak. Then he thought of what he had done to the clawman. Evil delight filled him. He stood and raised his huge arms, shaking his fists at the stars. “A giant!” he roared. “I’m a giant!”

  They covered his hole with boards, leaving him in darkness.

  ***

  Scratches at the boards woke Cuthred. A tiny chink in the planks indicated that it was daylight outside. That terrified him. He didn’t want anybody to see him like this.

  “Cuthred,” it was a whispered word.

  He knew that voice. It brought…longing, a bitter ache that had nothing to do with bodily pain. He concentrated, but that made his eyes water.

  “Cuthred, are you there? It’s me, Vivian.”

  “Vivian?” he said, dimly recalling soft lips against his ear.

  “I heard Leng tell…tell whatever Kergan has become that he placed you outside. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “…you?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “I’m Leng’s toy, so I know why he lets me remain human. Why does he let you stay human?”

  He groaned.

  “Cuthred, what’s wrong?”

  “Vivian,” he moaned. “Vivian!”

  “Shhh, keep your voice down.”

  “Vivian,” he said more softly, mournfully. “I’m
no longer human.” When there was no reply, he said in panic, “Vivian?”

  “Shhh. I’m still here. What do you mean you’re not human? You’re not a clawman, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You can still talk. Few of them can do that.”

  “Few of…of what?” he asked.

  “Joanna, she’s— Oh, Cuthred, what have they done to you?”

  “I’m a giant.”

  “A giant?” she said.

  “Big. Strong.”

  “Oh, Cuthred, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Uh-oh. A patrol of clawmen is coming back. They’ve cleaned out the last swamp dwellers. I have to go. But I’ll be back. And Cuthred?”

  “What?”

  “Will you help me escape if I help you?”

  He heard the desperation. Part of him wanted to lie, that yes, he’d help, only to rip her apart the way he had done the clawman. Yet there was another part of him, a vestige of the old Cuthred.

  “I’ll help,” he said dully.

  “Good-bye, Cuthred. Don’t forget me.”

  “No. Not forget.”

  “I’ll come back when I can.”

  “Bye Vivian.” But there wasn’t any answer. He sank into the corner and fell into another of his horrible nightmares. The time of vengeance would come. He awaited its arrival with relish.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You can let go now,” panted Gavin, his legs trembling with fatigue.

  Swan murmured incoherently, her hot breath tickling his ear. Several days ago, fevers had struck her and now she rode his back, with her arms around his neck.

  He pried her fingers apart and with Hugo’s help gently set her against a cypress tree, careful to perch her on a humped root, out of the sluggish water. Her head lolled to the side as she began to shiver. Hugo draped the marten cape over her and rubbed her hand.

  The moon was a silver sheen, high and mocking. Slime squished in Gavin’s boots and damp garments stuck to his skin. The croaking, chirping, branch-creaking sounds of the swamp seemed never ending.

  “We must build a fire,” whispered Hugo. “She’s too cold.”