Death Knight

by Vaughn Heppner

  Gavin ordered torches lit and passed around. “Let’s do what needs doing,” he told them.

  No one broke from the shield wall. Everyone remained in place. Many looked mulish, frightened-stubborn.

  “Shadows can’t harm us,” Gavin said.

  Sir Ullrick drew his axe, clutching it with a white-knuckled grip. His breathing deepened. It seemed as if he wanted to step out of the shield wall. Soon he scowled, turning away, his big shoulders hunching.

  “It could be a trap,” said Hunneric.

  Gavin studied the castle. The big pile of stones radiated terrible menace.

  A man-at-arms cried out, pointing a trembling finger, “Look! Look! On the walls!”

  Men scanned the ramparts as thunder rolled across the underbelly of the clouds.

  Swan, while a-horse, had been studying the fortress, with her features paler than ever. She moved her lips without making a sound. Sweat glistened on her face and she shivered as when she had the fever. Then she swung a leg over the saddle horn and slid to the ground, marched to Hugo’s stallion and drew the banner, unfurling it, raising it high.

  Men shouted in wonder. The yellow silk flame seemed alight, and as the wind rippled the banner, the flame seemed to waver, as would any fire.

  Swan handed the banner to Hugo. He grinned tightly, waving it back and forth. Then, beckoning Gavin beside her, Swan led the crusaders to the postern gate.

  “We must take back what is ours,” she told them. She plunged through the opening, with Hugo hurrying on her heels. The men followed, albeit reluctantly, with a clack and clattering of mail armor and iron-shod shoes.

  It was a ghost of a place, without a soul to greet them. Gruesome stains marred the courtyard bricks. Offal and worse horribly stank from pits and befouled cisterns. Torture racks and whipping posts had been built and used. Thick, congealed blood lay in gross puddles. Perhaps the worst were the bones littered everywhere, some half-gnawed. Many of the men grew faint. A few vomited.

  With her torch, Swan pointed at the main keep. It was a square tower, and from it radiated the worst wickedness.

  “There lies the evil,” she whispered.

  Men tightened the grips upon their swords, spears, shield handles and licked their lips.

  “We must enter and destroy the malice,” she told them.

  Ullrick had grown deathly pale. He now objected. “We have no sorcerers, no spell-casters to aid us.”

  “We have the banner,” said Swan, “and stout hearts and blades of steel.”

  Josserand smiled crookedly. Gavin found that his palms had grown sweaty and his throat dry. He didn’t want to reenter that awful place where he had witnessed such grim and inhuman butchery.

  Swan clapped Hugo on the shoulder, making him flinch. He took a deep breath and ran ahead, kicking open the main door, entering with the banner into the darkness. A foul odor wafted out and many men hung back. Others gagged. Only the bravest—a mere handful—clanked into the former Great Hall after the Standard Bearer. Their torchlight flickered off a hundred bones scattered across the room. Bizarre, grotesque paintings on the walls sickened them. Dominating the huge hall, the only remaining furniture as it were, was a black altar bespattered with gore.

  For a moment none spoke, so the crackling torches seemed unnaturally loud.

  Then a lean, remote man stepped from behind the altar, startling them. He wore an odd gown that was unlike anything seen in Erin for a millennium.

  “Zon Mezzamalech,” whispered Swan.

  Gavin felt his hair stand on end in supernatural dread.

  The man, Zon Mezzamalech, smiled evilly. He lifted long, thin arms. He began to chant in a tongue that none of them except for Swan in her visions had ever heard.

  Sir Hunneric shouted wildly, half-berserk. He drew his sword and charged the sorcerer.

  “No!” shouted Swan. “Wait!”

  Young Sir Hunneric gave his battle cry and swept his blade at the sorcerer. The sword passed harmlessly through Zon Mezzamalech, to shatter against the stone altar, shivering into several pieces.

  The sorcerer, if such he was, stepped near, clutching Sir Hunneric by the throat, lifting him off his feet. That hand glowed eerily green, and that glow passed into the young knight. Hunneric screamed as if hot brands had been shoved into his belly.

  A bolt flew from Hugo’s crossbow, also passing harmlessly through the sorcerer.

  “Is he real?” roared Ullrick, spittle flying from his lips and with madness in his eyes.

  “Draw your sword!” Swan shouted at Gavin. “Draw your enchanted silver blade.”

  Gavin did so: horrified as Sir Hunneric kicked his legs and vainly tried to free himself from the glowing grip.

  Swan clutched Gavin by the sleeve, leading him toward the sorcerer.

  “How do you slay a wraith?” shouted Ullrick, trailing behind.

  Gavin was amazed to see bright tracings running up and down his blade.

  The sorcerer or wraith holding aloft Hunneric saw it too. “No!” it hissed. “Keep away.”

  “Strike the altar,” Swan whispered in his ear.

  “And shatter my sword?” asked Gavin, as if in a daze.

  “Strike, Sir Gavin! Be bold! Trust for once in your life.”

  Gavin didn’t know if it was her words or Hunneric choking out his life. He swung as the apparition screamed. The silver blade touched the altar. Thunder boomed, blue lightning erupted and the altar stones burst apart.

  Hunneric collapsed onto the ground with a thud. The sorcerer, wraith, whatever it was, vanished.

  Dumbly, Gavin stared at his sword. It no longer had those frightening glyphs, the glowing magic runes. No notch marred it, and it was whole. Most surprising of all, as the dust settled, he saw that the altar had been shattered. It was askew, chunks of it fallen free.

  “Look at Sir Hunneric,” hissed Josserand.

  To their horror, the young knight metamorphosed before them. Furry hair sprouted all over his face as his mouth lengthened into a wolfish snout and his teeth into fangs. His fingernails grew long and hardened into claws.

  “Help me,” pleaded Sir Hunneric. Then he snarled, struggling to rise.

  With his sword and before anyone could stop him, Josserand ran him through the chest, so Hunneric or the beast he had become staggered back against the broken altar. Blood gushed. And the thing that had been Sir Hunneric slumped back in death and no longer breathed.

  The men stared at one another in horror. A few sobbed unashamedly.

  Then the dead thing stirred—although his chest didn’t rise to take in air. He raised his bestial head with coal red eyes like the fires of hell, and he opened his mouth so that wicked laughter issued out that did not seem to be his own. “Fools! You shall never leave this swamp alive! This night will you join the Horde of the Damned and dance a death jig for my amusement.”

  It would have spoken more. But as the others watched in frozen terror and loathing, Gavin swung, decapitating the grisly head. He turned to the others, shouting, “Get out! Run!”

  Swan shook her head in bewilderment. “No. We must burn this place to the ground.”

  Gavin backed away from the broken altar, his eyes wild. He heard flapping and thin squeals. With a flicker of his blade, he struck two bats, cutting them from the air. Another bat fell from the rafters and attached itself to Sir Ullrick’s cheek. The Bear roared in rage and terror, ripping it from him, throwing it down and stomping it with his heel. At that, they broke and ran, Hugo grabbing a reluctant Swan. Outside, from the clouds above, grew a strange sound, a rustling that came from many dark blots.

  “More bats!” shouted Gavin. “Run to the horses! We must ride!”

  They ran, and soon mounted. With blades drawn and horses neighing, the company thundered for the causeway. Bats dropped from the sky, hundreds of them. Later, strangely altered bears, wolf-things, and creatures that once had been snakes hopped and slithered out of the swamp to attack them. The crusaders hewed, they slashed, and they rode
from Forador Castle, killing and being killed.

  The next morning less than thirty reached the toll bridge, all of them stained to the soul by the horrors they had witnessed. Each now knew that they doomfared in earnest.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cuthred trembled as he clutched a bloodied whip.

  The emaciated Master sat upon the Duke’s throne. The Master had the same height as the former seneschal of Castle Forador, the same shock of thick white hair. But the face was no longer fleshly and full. The body lacked Kergan’s once deep chest and heavy arms and legs. The face was skull-like, the raging eyes deep within the sockets. The limbs were skeletal, the hands particles of liver-spotted flesh, tendons and bones. Upon the wreckage of his body, the Master wore a fine-spun Bavarian robe. Upon his sunken chest radiated the eerie amulet.

  The throne room’s windows were sealed, the torches and vast fireplace unlit. A green glow emanated from twin braziers beside the throne, matching the nimbus around the Master’s amulet. The smoky incense of the braziers also helped mask the smell of decay that the Master wore like a rotting cloak.

  The braziers dimly illuminated Leng groveling at the foot of the throne, with his brown robe shredded, his back stained with blood. Vivian watched to the side, she watched with purple-painted eyes wide with fear. Her bound hair was fixed high in an ancient style, with deep red rouge streaked upon her cheeks and with black lipstick. She wore costly rings, a silk gown that trailed at her feet and a necklace of Muscovite amber.

  “They destroyed the enchantment,” said the Master. With his bony fist, he hammered the arm of the throne, splintering it. “They shattered my spell!”

  “Master,” said Leng, from upon a Saxon rug. “I can repair this damage. By the Moon Lady, I swear it.”

  The Master turned his decaying eyes upon Cuthred. “Again, and strike harder this time. You are forbidden to pull your strokes.”

  Cuthred’s huge arm moved ponderously, whirling in an arc. Whip-leather hissed through the air and slashed the sorcerer’s flesh.

  From upon the rug, Leng howled.

  Vivian shrank back, groaning in dread.

  Cuthred grinned, showing off horse-sized teeth. He swung once more.

  ***

  After the Rape of Glendover, the Master had moved into the Duke’s vacated apartments in the citadel. There the bloodiest fighting had taken place, the former Duke leading the defense. Presently, the now lifeless Duke marched in the Horde of the Damned, scaling the walls of nearby castles. Each evening, Death Drummer Joanna took her horde on yet another conquest, refilling her chopped-up ranks with more complete, fleshier recruits. By now, those who had become undead at Castle Forador tottered with their last shreds of flesh. More than one simply collapsed on the march as the last retaining muscles rotted away.

  The Moon Ships had worked to perfection as they had sat offshore that victorious night. Many Glendover folk might have survived the slaughter, but they had hesitated to board ship and face the ghostly sea-warriors. So with daylight and the moon ships’ disappearance, more than one doomed human had known great bitterness.

  Glendover became the Master’s stronghold. Behind the huge stone walls, the darkspawn were safe during the day. Except that a day not so long ago, as dusk fell, the Master hurried to the docks to examine his cogs and galleys, the ones left by the humans. He and Leng had argued over the best use of the fleet, Erin’s biggest.

  As he had hurried, outpacing his brutish guards, a lone human arose. The haggard woman, wild-eyed and dirty, her rags torn, screamed from her secret hiding spot. She screamed and launched herself upon the Master, a spear in her death-grip. She refused to look into the Master’s eyes. She screamed so she couldn’t hear his words. She drove the spear into his belly and shouted in triumph—only to see that triumph turn into disaster as the Master, with a horrible grunt, yanked the spear from his belly and turned it upon her.

  She, too, along with the brave Duke, now marched in the Horde of the Damned.

  With his spells, the Master had stanched the flow of blood. But the withering of his flesh had accelerated. And he had decided that his brute guard had failed him. They now hung by their heels upon the city walls, writhing in the daylight and moaning at night.

  Cuthred became the Master’s new bodyguard. It was a dubious honor even to the giant’s dull-witted understanding. Only Vivian’s presence brought any relief.

  ***

  The Master now rose from his throne, tottering to a nearby window. He unlatched the shutter and gazed over the nighttime city. In the streets below new armies of clawmen, tuskriders, brutes, blood-drinkers and a handful of giants metamorphosed into being.

  “Broken,” the Master said. “The enchanted was shattered.”

  “H-How?” whispered Leng, who still lay on the costly Saxon rug.

  “You dare ask me that?” said the Master. “They have opened the swamp route. Nothing now bars their way from reinforcing the North.”

  “Surely no one in Erin is powerful enough to have broken that enchantment, Lord.”

  “Now you question the certainty of my knowledge? You are brazen as well as willfully stupid.” The Master raised a bony finger.

  “Mercy, Master!” Leng groveled. “Have mercy, O Great One. Let me repair my errors. Let me redeem what my foolishness has caused.”

  “Repair?” the Master sneered. “How could you, a fledgling sorcerer, rebuild such a powerful enchantment? Tell me this secret. Come, let me learn from you.”

  Leng licked his lips and winced as he lifted his head. “Do you know who broke this spell, Lord?”

  “Yes,” said the Master. “And it is another of your failures. You had her in your grasp, but your greed, your lack of wit allowed her to escape.”

  “Swan broke the enchantment?” asked Leng.

  The Master fingered his amulet, frowning.

  Cuthred cocked his huge head. That frown—Seneschal Kergan used to frown like that. Cuthred’s oversized features, the eyebrows like a horse’s mane, the big blunt nose, as big as two fists pressed together, and the puffy lips, twisted thoughtfully. Some of old Kergan yet lingered in the Master. Some—Cuthred’s massive chest tightened. This dark room now seemed cloying and the smell of incense choking.

  Cuthred hated that he had loved the battle in the city. He didn’t know why he kept thinking of that and why now. On the day that they had first conquered Glendover, on the docks as sunlight rose and as people cursed with fear and grief, he had known shame. He had wiped the human blood from his hands. He had slunk from the rising sun like a beaten hound. The shame…it had prodded him, troubled his slumber. He washed his hands every time he woke up and each time he lay down to sleep. Often, when the Master slept, he crept outside and from deep shadows dared peer at the sun. He wanted to remind himself that once he had been human, once he had frolicked under that fiery orb in the sky. He fueled his shame by said deed and couldn’t understand why he did so.

  He had seen something similar in Durren-brute. It had been on that same day, on the morning of Glendover’s rape. Durren-brute’s face had softened as a child had begged for mercy. Durren-brute had lowered his gory sword. He had turned away, unable to strike the child who had looked so much like his long-dead daughter.

  Cuthred peered at the Kergan-frown, and loathing filled him. Loathing for the Master and loathing at what he had become. Yet…he also thrilled to use his strength beating Leng. Ha-ha! The sorcerer wasn’t so smart after all. He squirted blood just like any puny human. He… Cuthred shook his head, shame and joy co-mingling together.

  “Swan leads them,” said the Master. “She has given them—” He stroked the amulet as he frowned. “It seems Hosar has found his dupe. He has given Swan an ancient banner to lead warriors to insane acts of bravery.”

  “But the enchantment, Lord…” said Leng. “Could a banner have broken such a powerful spell?”

  “A sword that I’ve not seen before did the actual breaking,” said the Master.

  “What k
ind of sword, Lord?”

  A scowl appeared on the Master’s ravaged face. “I know not.”

  “Who wields this sword, Lord?”

  “One named, Sir Gavin.”

  Vivian cried sharply. An instant later, as the Master and Leng turned toward her, she put a ringed hand over her mouth.

  “Yes,” said the Master. “You know this Gavin, don’t you, Harlot? What of his sword?”

  “It is silver,” whispered Vivian.

  “Silver and fire are ever Hosar’s tools against Darkness,” said Leng.

  “An obvious truism,” said the Master. “Harlot, tell me more about the sword.

  “That’s all I know about it,” she whispered.

  “Our problem is solved, Lord,” said Leng. “Slay Sir Gavin and steal his silver sword.”

  “The enchantment is still broken,” said the Master. “You have solved nothing.”

  Leng wet his lips, staring at the rug. Then he looked up, a sly smile on his face. “Perhaps the broken enchantment doesn’t matter as much as we think it does, Lord. We have one of the only two ways off the island. One more throw of Fate’s dice, to capture Lobos Port, will seal up Erin for good. Then you can take the fools at your leisure.”

  The Master shook his head. “A mere silver sword could not have shattered the enchantment. Swan must have blessed this weapon, or perhaps through her Hosar did it. I care nothing for your guesses and your wild hunches. Your advice has proven worthless too many times. Swan, the one you let live, led knights into the swamp, into Castle Forador. You said that no one would dare to do that.”

  “Hosar raised up a champion, Lord. So you yourself have said. Therefore, yes, one of my moves has been checked. I had thought to keep Hosar’s champion in bondage, and I suspected she might be the one. My studies on our great foe led me to conclude that he only rises up one such champion each time that he dares move openly against Darkness. Sir Gavin and his sword upset my calculation. I admit that. I will not quibble with you, Lord, on who is most the most dangerous of our enemies.”

  “What will you quibble with me on?” the Master asked softly.