Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  “Why don’t you show it? One of the hunters doubts you’re human.”

  “It is not pride that makes a leader stoic, Turi.”

  But you’re not the leader, Aaron is.

  But Galen was right, if Aaron and he gave conflicting orders during a fight, the hunters would obey Galen.

  “Why then?” Arturus asked.

  “When hellhounds travel in packs they are vicious things. They will attack large groups of men, even when the hopes of winning are small. They will fight fiercely and to the death so long as their pack leader is strong. So it is with men.”

  Arturus felt the sweat cooling on his body. His breathing had returned to normal. He had never felt so relaxed as he did now, wounded and blind, lost in the Carrion.

  “People are different,” Arturus said.

  “When there are no guns or arrows, entire armies will stop their fighting to watch their leaders duel. They wait to see whose champion will be victorious. To see whose hearts will be broken.”

  It dawned on Arturus that it was for this reason that Galen was who he was. Why he never showed happiness and sadness in great degrees. He was too busy being a leader.

  I don’t want that life.

  But he had it already. Even as the hunters would follow Galen’s orders in battle, Arturus realized, they would follow him in peace—particularly if Galen and Aaron were gone.

  Patrick died.

  He realized now why the man’s death had made him so sick. He could have stopped it. It had been his responsibility to find a way to quiet the man.

  But I sat back, instead, waiting for someone else to find the solution. Looking to another for strength.

  “I could have saved Patrick,” Arturus admitted aloud.

  “Feel no guilt for that,” Galen told him. “Only make sure that you learn from your mistake. Are you rested?”

  “I am.”

  “Then follow me.”

  Arturus crawled towards where Galen’s voice had been. He reached up above himself to see if there was room to stand.

  There wasn’t.

  He could hear Galen’s body armor shifting ahead of him. He followed the sound.

  “Watch out. Wall,” Galen warned.

  Arturus searched with his arm until he found the stone. “How far?”

  “We are very close, it is best now that you be very quiet.”

  “Stop here.” Came Galen’s whisper.

  Arturus could feel strange vibrations through the rock. They were oddly rhythmic. A series of lesser tremors followed by two final deep thrums. He could almost hear them now, having felt them with his finger tips. He laid down his ear to the stone and listened.

  Drums.

  “Put this on,” Galen’s voice said.

  Cloth hit Arturus’ shoulder.

  He heard the sounds of Galen unbuckling his body armor. Arturus took off his own clothes. With his fingers, he inspected what Galen had passed him. He identified by touch a pair of rough pants, a shirt, and some sort of robe.

  “Leave your weapons here,” Galen said. “I’ll have some on me, but they probably won’t fire, so try and keep out of trouble.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re going to go down into the ritual. We may be a little late. I can hear the drums already. Slaves aren’t held to any specific order, though they usually pack together with the clan they came with. There are many clans. Keep out of trouble and wait for me to make contact. I’ll wave you out once I’ve found a friend, and we’ll come back up this way. If I show you my thumb, follow me. We may have to exit through a different passage. You’re dressed as a slave, so do anything anybody else tells you to. Try and keep out of notice. You’ll stand out a bit, though, since you’re healthier than the average slave. I’d dress you as a warrior, if you weren’t too young for it, and I’d leave you here if I was sure we could come back this way.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Almost.” Arturus said, pulling on his shirt.

  The cloth was surprisingly cold. He put on the pants next, and then the robe. “Ready.”

  Light poured up into the chamber as Galen removed a block from the floor. The warrior looked down into the room below. Arturus could see his father’s clothes, which were dark like the ones worn by the Carrion soldiers. He caught sight of his own, which were colored grey, like the ones worn by the slaves.

  Galen seemed satisfied that no one was looking and motioned Arturus down.

  Arturus lowered himself through the hole. The drop was nearly one hundred feet. He was in an alcove, very similar to the one he had climbed up before, only much higher. The room itself was perhaps fifty feet wide and had hundreds of alcoves running up its sides.

  Arturus put his back against one wall, his feet and hands against the other, and let himself slide slowly down. Galen followed from above, placing the stone back into the ceiling.

  I better remember which one of these to climb back up.

  The color of the room was a rich, dark purple. The ambient light was soft. Low compared to the wilds around his home, but far brighter than the rest of the Carrion.

  He could hear the drumming more clearly now. Some chanting accompanied the percussion—a low single monotone which stopped just in time for the sound of two deep and final drum beats. The pattern repeated again and again.

  “How can they make so much noise?” Arturus asked.

  “Because of rooms like this,” Galen answered. “Their ritual chamber, and all these buffer chambers, are sealed off but for a single entranceway which they control. . . and ours, of course.”

  Galen was no longer whispering. Arturus could see now that he had a shotgun strapped across his back, and a pistol at his belt.

  The same as the other warriors.

  Arturus came down to the ground and got out of the way. Galen dropped the last few feet and started walking towards an exit. He stopped for a moment and made a chip in the rock wall with the butt of his gun.

  “Remember that,” he said.

  That chip is where our exit is.

  The drumming became louder as they moved through the next few rooms. Those rooms were wide, tall and full of alcoves. Many side passages broke off from each chamber, but the main path seemed to be spiraling in towards a central point. It wasn’t long before they ran into other people. A few of the slaves bowed in deference towards Galen, but the soldiers ignored him. There were more men in the next room, and more still in the room after that.

  The drum music was even louder, and the chanting alone was almost able to drown out Galen’s voice. “Keep your head on straight,” Galen said, shouting over the clamor. “These rituals can sometimes be. . . barbaric.”

  They made their way into the final room. The wave of body heat was a shock to Arturus since the rest of the Carrion had been so cold.

  He pushed his way through a crowd of adults, a sea of angry faces and grey robes. Many of them were gaunt, so poorly fed that their clothes appeared to be hung on sticks, not shoulders. Others, the soldiers, looked different. Their pale faces were calm and cruel. There was no spare fat on them, surely, but they weren’t malnourished either.

  Arturus broke through into an open space in the room so he might take stock of it. This chamber was shorter than the rest, only thirty feet tall or so, and its purple walls were lined with black pillars. Topping the pillars were a series of black arches. Carved into the center of each arch was the torso of a man, half encased in stone. Spidery letters were etched into the stone, long, thin, and silver.

  He felt Galen’s form as his father came up behind him.

  “It’s amazing,” Arturus said.

  “What?” Galen shouted back.

  “Amazing!”

  Galen nodded.

  Galen forced his way deeper into the room. The Carrion people, seeing his soldier costume, made way for him. Arturus had difficulty following him. Often the crowd would close in behind his father, so he was forced to fight to keep up. They stopped beneath one of the black
arches. Another young man in a grey robe had managed to climb up the side of one of the pillars. Though the lip around the base of the pillar was thin, Arturus managed to copy him.

  He was able to see almost the entire room from his perch.

  The Carrion people were gathered around a raised central stage of flat, polished granite. Towards the back of the stage was a hellstone throne. It had strange steel rings protruding from its arms and legs.

  Who are these people?

  The chanting grew louder, as did the double beat of the punctuating drums. Arturus could feel the beats in the hollow of his chest. The sweat of the Carrion people was starting to make him nauseous. Much of their perspiration had soaked into his robe.

  Pillars of fire erupted from the corners of the stage. The heat grew even more intense, and the air became even harder to breathe. The smoke from the fires drifted towards the ceiling before coming back down upon them, leaving a haze thick enough to obscure the far walls. Arturus found it difficult to keep his balance, so he leaned on Galen.

  His father looked up at him for a second.

  There were screams, and at first Arturus feared that devils had somehow found their way into these sacred chambers, but they were not screams of fear or pain—they were screams of rapture.

  The men around the entrance of the chamber began to stir. Arturus tried to see what was going on, but though he was high enough, the entranceway was on the same wall as he, and the pillars blocked his view. All he could see coming in was a tight pack of darkly clad warriors, standing shoulder to shoulder, struggling to clear a path into the crowd.

  High pitched and ecstatic screams filled the air, sometimes drowning out the low chanting. The men nearby the warriors began to jump up and down, waving their arms with abandon. Arturus saw a grey cloaked head disappear, as if the commotion had caused him to faint. The head did not reemerge.

  The Carrion soldiers were making progress now, shouldering the common people out of the way. The drumming’s pace increased, catching up with the rhythm of Arturus’ heart.

  Behind the soldiers, walking gracefully into the space that had been cleared, were two priestesses. They wore the black cloaks which Arturus had seen before, but their hoods were thrown back. They alone, in this sea of madness, seemed calm. Their faces, pitiless and beautiful, were harshly angular. Their hair, both a dirty blonde, was worn identically, pulled back behind their heads and falling in layers behind their shoulders. Braided in with their locks were black feathers.

  At the sight of the priestesses, the Carrion men seemed to lose all control. They fought in earnest against the black wall of warriors. They reached out longingly over that human barrier, trying to touch one of the two women. These men, so hopeless and so underfed, seemed to have found some strange energy within them. There was something coming up behind these priestesses too, and it was being carried forward, but Arturus couldn’t clearly see what it was yet.

  Waves of euphoria swept through the Carrion people. They stopped pushing against the soldiers, but let themselves be swept away. Many more fainted.

  “Gagaev!” some shouted.

  “Gorgon!” yelled others.

  Six soldiers, arrayed in two single file lines, followed the priestesses into the room, bearing the front of a giant litter on their shoulders. The screaming became so intense that Arturus could no longer hear the drums, he could only feel their vibrations in his chest.

  Their litter was wide enough to carry two men. Chained to it was a Minotaur. Arturus felt Galen shift beneath him.

  The Bullman had been chained face up, and its nose was bleeding into its brown fur. Arturus could see its one exposed wild eye. At its neck, the fur gave way to dark brown hairless skin. Its shoulders were more muscular than Arturus had seen on any man. They were broad, and black veins stood out amongst its rippling muscles as it fought, perhaps mindlessly, against the chains. Where its torso ended, the fur picked up again. Its legs, stocky and well muscled, ended in thick black hooves. At the back of the litter were six more soldiers, and following them were two more priestesses carrying a black trough. Slaves and soldiers alike scrambled to get out of the litter’s way.

  The procession moved easily through the room now.

  Arturus looked down towards Galen, but he could only see the back of his head. He swallowed deeply, his eyes watering from the smoke, his ears throbbing with the music.

  Sweat poured down his body.

  The Carrion people screamed still louder. Something else was coming in through the chamber. Something that must be even more terrible that even the Minotaur.

  “Maab! Maab! Maab!”

  Those nearest the entrance fell together to the ground. Some of them had fainted straight away. Others had fallen to their hands and knees. A woman emerged from behind the pillars. At first Arturus could only see her head over the crowd, but as more and more succumbed to her and fell to their knees, he could see her from head to toe. She was clad in a dark satin sheet which clung to her figure. Her hair was full, spread back from her face like a lion’s mane. It was golden blonde, and where her priestesses had black feathers braided in, she had white. Her hairline was covered with a shimmering white band. Her eyes and eyelashes were painted over with a dark black paint. A light blue shade shadowed her eyes and continued along the sides of her face to her temples. She was imperious, and voluptuous in a way which Alice could never hope to match. It was as if someone had taken all of Molly’s attributes and managed to fit them on Alice’s slender frame.

  But for all this, she walked like a man.

  There was no sway in her hips, no real grace to her movements.

  Galen was shouting at him, but though he was only inches away, Arturus couldn’t hear his father at all. Reluctantly, he looked away from the woman and leaned even closer.

  Galen shouted in his ear.

  “What?” Arturus yelled back.

  “My friend. I’ve seen him.”

  Arturus nodded.

  “Head on straight.”

  Arturus nodded again.

  “I’m sorry that—” Galen’s voice was lost in the crowd’s noise for a moment. “—first time you see this. I’d wanted it to be different for you.”

  “What to be different?” Arturus shouted back, as loud as he could, but he couldn’t even hear himself.

  “I’m sorry.” Galen moved away, leaving Arturus clinging to the pillar.

  Don’t leave me.

  His eyes returned to the woman. She had come to the foot of the stage.

  “Maab! Maab! Maab!”

  The Minotaur had already been taken up on the granite platform. For a moment, even though it was bound tightly in its chains, it was able to stand. The Bullman was perhaps eight feet tall. Soldiers swarmed all over it. The thing struggled, but its arms and legs had no room to move. It toppled. The darkly dressed warriors struggled to lift the beast. It took nearly a score of them to force the thing onto the obsidian throne. They ran its chains through the rings at its hands and hooves.

  The slaves’ screaming did not die away or lessen at all—it was the chanting that became louder. More soldiers entered the chamber, carrying huge stone bowls in their hands. They offered these up before themselves, looking down at the ground as if the sight of what they carried was too glorious for them to behold. The four priestesses at the foot of the stage disrobed as the bowls neared.

  The sight of their flesh nearly caused Arturus to fall from the pillar. He had never seen a naked woman before. He looked towards the main woman, but she still wore her black satin. The priestesses turned and dipped their slender white arms into the bowls, covering themselves up to the elbow in whatever liquid they contained. The smoke was thick in the air, and it played tricks with Arturus’ vision. The light from the pillars of fire swirled in the haze, clinging to the nude bodies of the young women. With their arms covered with a slick and dark brown substance, the four of them made their way up the stage’s stairs towards the Minotaur.

  Arturus felt the wrongn
ess in his heart.

  The women moved towards the bull’s genitals. Arturus looked away. He searched the crowd for Galen. Most were on their hands and knees, but others stood together in packs around the edges of the room, screaming as loud as they could. Galen had to be in one of those packs.

  Why? Why are they doing this?

  He glanced back at the Bullman and was horrified. He had never seen anyone touched like that. He could not imagine what insanity must have a hold of them, what demons had planted lies into their souls to make them do such a thing. Instinctively, he was revolted, the image of the demonic bestiality bringing bile into the back of his throat.

  This is wrong.

  He could not find Galen, and now nearly half of the room was blotted out by the smoke.

  “Maab! Maab! Maab!”

  The woman ascended to the stage.

  “Maab! Maab! Maab!”

  That’s her name. That’s Queen Maab.

  She disrobed at the top step.

  Arturus could not take his eyes off of her.

  She approached the bull.

  No.

  The priestesses had the thing ready.

  Arturus looked away, staring at the faces of the men that still stood around him.

  There is lust in their hearts. But how? How could they lust while watching this?

  He dared one more glance. Maab was standing on the Minotaur’s knees, her back to the seated thing. Slowly she squatted down and lowered herself onto it. The chanting and screaming grew still louder. The Carrion people who had fallen to their knees reached their hands up towards the ceiling. The beats of the drum came in a steady stream, shaking Arturus to the quick. He let himself fall from the pillar and leaned back against the walls. He had hoped they would be cool, but they had taken in the heat of the room.

  This is wrong.

  He was the only one not watching. Those around him were crazed madmen, shouting as loud as they could, so full of emotion that they were shaking.

  Then he saw someone else not facing the stage. The man was searching the crowd instead.

  Not the only one.

  For a second he thought it was Galen, but nothing could have been further from the truth. That soldier was as filled with malice as those around him were with lust. His pale skin was stretched tightly across his spiteful face. His hair was cut short, almost clean shaven. His armor was an odd, greyish color.