DEVIL’S ROW

by Serafini, Matt

  He slipped his cloak over his scabby head and pulled it down, finding the girl standing nose-to-nose with him. Her mustard eyes were narrow and when she opened her mouth to speak, fangs pinched through her lower lip. They were so dry that he expected puffs of dust to shoot through the punctures.

  “I do…”

  He silenced her before she could talk and then started past, moving up the winding incline that carried them through the cavern’s stomach and into the forest above. He would not wait for the others. They were followers, and would do precisely that.

  The girl kept pace like an eager stray while the rest ambled in casual pursuit far behind them.

  When the top was reached, Codrin stopped and threw his hands on either side of the stone opening. He stuck his neck out to savor the night sky, tasting flesh, crisp and juicy, on the tip of his tongue. An enjoyable delicacy when he had the luxury, even if it was a precursor to what mattered most.

  The blood.

  They were here for the blood of course, and on behalf of an entire village lying in baited wait. Withdrawal dulled his senses, their senses, rendering them a cabal of inefficient predators. The ability to hunt was never truly gone, but it wouldn’t come easy after the passage of so much time.

  He closed his eyes out of habit and the forest came alive around him. Jittery cicadas danced beneath leaves, restless Dalmatian pelicans shuffled in an overflowing nest above, and far beyond everything, a wolf danced with the men trying to kill it.

  Codrin started into the wilderness when her fingers coiled around his shoulder, yanking him so hard that he might’ve toppled.

  “Where are we expected to follow you?”

  “Can’t you hear it?” It was impossible to mask his impatience. That she would rather sew apprehension made her dangerous. Not only to the others, but also the village. No one else could witness this fractured leadership. Not with survival on the line. The others were as desperate as him, and no telling how they’d react if they thought she had a better plan.

  “I hear you,” she said. “We are too spent to go rushing off like this…”

  “Better that we waste away?”

  “We can never truly waste away.”

  “We’re not getting any stronger. What will happen if we go another season without sustenance? That witch will put us in those cages when she gets desperate enough. You want that?”

  “She would never…”

  “Listen.” Codrin eyed the rest of the men who now joined them at the bottleneck. “There is food out there.” He took the girl’s decayed hand in his and eased her outside. “Smell it.”

  She closed her eyes and took a long, greedy whiff. Around them, the cloaked men filed out and did the same.

  “We can have it,” he said. “The wolf. The men. We will be heroes. Saviors.”

  She was nodding now.

  Codrin sensed trepidation in all of their minds and they were right to feel it. Home was a distant memory, so alien now that the cave’s belly almost felt more like it. Combating a field mouse in this condition was an uphill battle, and if they waited any longer, they wouldn’t be able to best one of those, either. Success this day was going to take time and require cunning.

  Nevertheless, he intended to deliver, and would reassure his men of that. When they returned, everyone would be indebted to Codrin. Perhaps then he would find respect among the elders and be allowed entry into their inner circle.

  It was about time they heard his ideas for assured survival.

  More growls tumbled down that mountainside. A rush of blood drifted through the air like mist. The others weren’t so weak that they couldn’t smell it, too. Somewhere up there, it had been shed.

  He looked at her and caught a glimpse of concession in her eyes. She wouldn’t admit that he was right, but possessed the good sense to understand what needed doing. That was something.

  “Shall we go,” he said, and started into the trees.

  “We shall,” she said and the rest of the men followed.

  Men of Order

  Sebastian Miles watched the girl spiral to her death. Later, breath returned and his pulsing heart slowed.

  At last, it was done.

  Four men stood inside the clearing, not a word exchanged between them. Two months ago, they were fifteen strong and packing enough silver ammunition to genocide every monster in the region.

  Four remained. A legion of those creatures had been slaughtered between there and here, but Sebastian wasn’t about to sleep any better because of it.

  He doubled over, sucking air and thinking about the madness along the way. Could he return to hunting London lowlifes? Would he ever sleep again knowing what was really out there?

  Their leader, Garrick, stacked the bodies in the clearing’s center. He tended to the dead men first and then piled the wolf’s severed appendages on top.

  Timothy sat at the clearing’s edge, as far away from the bloodbath as he dared venture. His blunderbuss rifle was tucked beneath his arm while his nose hovered over yellowed and worn book pages. His eyes bore through the words, as if this madness could be explained away by philosophy.

  Sebastian felt for him. Truly. The kid hadn’t signed on for this hunt. It had gone far beyond the parameters of thief-taking. Their usual business was raw and bloody, but often predictable. Desperate men could be counted on to act desperately. Always.

  He wished to be back home—his dive loft above the Piccadilly Tavern on the corner of Croft and Thorne. You had to step over a pile of shivering jemmys just to get in the door, and the fumes of spilt rye wafted up through the creaking floorboards so often that the wood was warped and smelled like you could get drunk just by licking it. You might even hear a whore’s moans in the alley if some lucky sod had enough coin to float a tumble.

  Nostalgia aside, Sebastian could make due with this quest. The guilt he felt was for dragging the kid along. He walked across the clearing, still gasping for air in the wake of the assault. They were victors, sure, but this didn’t feel like a cause for celebration. His mind glimpsed the mutilated wolf woman tumbling over the edge, the bloodiest and most broken body he’d ever seen, and his heart suffered a sting of pity for the beast. She deserved extinction, but not like that.

  The late October air was thin up here, a welcome respite from the sweltering heat that had greeted them throughout the first leg of their journey. Sebastian tugged the loose linen shirt beneath his frock coat as he walked, pools of sweat gathering beneath his arms and across his steel-grey chest.

  The other men had recovered much faster. He didn’t like admitting it, but age had long since slowed him.

  S’ok, he thought. I’ll never have to work again after this ride.

  His hand tapped against the gin flask that dangled off his belt. As parched as he was, as much as he needed a sip of home, his thoughts returned to the first of their fallen, Evan.

  The fate of his oldest friend and fellow thief-taker had been sealed by men desperate enough to err on the side of unpredictability. Men who did more than run. Men who decided to circle back through the night and slit the throats of their hunters.

  Evan’s throat was as far as they got. The killers were outgunned and, without the element of surprise, revealed themselves as cowards who would quickly flee a straight fight. The ensuing hunt lasted for two days, hot pursuit that turned colder than steel to the throat. As signs of gnawed grass became commonplace, it was Timothy’s realization that they were following horses without riders. Fleeing killers wouldn’t have allowed so many breaks, and it became clear they had abandoned their animals in a last-ditch evasion effort.

  Sebastian had them reverse direction and follow sporadic tracks back to a main road, to a badly damaged travel coach that had spilled into a gulley off the dirt path.

  Neither man had been in a merciful mood then, executing the unarmed killers—who had already murdered the wagon travelers—to avenge their fallen friend.

  Their weapons were still swirling with smoke when Garrick
and his mercenary army found them. The witch-finder, or whatever the hell he fancied himself, had been impressed with their abilities and brutality. He offered the chance for them to put their skills to the test.

  “This battle will make you rich…if you survive it,” he’d said.

  Sebastian and Timothy stood roadside, attempting to savor their hollow victory as Garrick repositioned his offer as a noble cause, preying perhaps upon their vulnerable states. The offer of gold didn’t hurt, but maybe they resembled men whose next job could have a bit more gallantry.

  If only they could have known.

  But the past is for reference and not residence. Sebastian decided there was no point in dwelling there. Both he and the boy had made their choices then, and they stood on the brink of a brighter future because of them.

  Assuming you can forget the things you've seen.

  He thought he’d earned enough gin money that it wouldn’t be a problem.

  “It’s over,” Sebastian said, and announced himself as he circled around to face the avid reader.

  Timothy was glued to the pages, his eyes rummaged them, as if searching for hidden meaning between the lines. The kid had reluctantly grown to accept that life was more than oft-quoted creeds found in scholarly pages, but that never stopped him from taking comfort there.

  “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

  Sebastian listened to the kid’s oration. Every word was codswallop to his ears, and there was no place for it out here. Garrick was too occupied at the moment to pay any attention to Timothy and his books, and for that he was thankful. He was much too tired to mediate another disagreement between the two.

  Garrick hated it whenever Timothy quoted John Locke, and Timothy hated that Garrick knew who John Locke was. One habit the kid had yet to kick was assuming that everyone in his path was an uncultured sloth.

  “Once we catch the wolf woman, pup,” Garrick would say each time Timothy challenged him, “convince her that what she really needs is a hellspawn government.”

  Sebastian agreed with the witch-finder in secret. He could never tell Timothy that, nor would he chide him for rejecting their cynicism. It got to everyone sooner or later, and there was no reason the kid should have to deal with it prematurely. The longer you thought you could make a difference out here was reason enough to get out of bed some days.

  Timothy’s breaking point was inevitable. It would come once he saw, first hand, that the solution to lawlessness was more than the simple establishment of order. Sometimes bad men and vicious monsters needed their brains blown out to keep the world spinning.

  Months after the retaliation for Evan’s killing, the kid continued to struggle to accept his actions. Retribution was a reflex that couldn’t always be suppressed. He struggled to accept this, and regret followed him on their easternmost journey to hunt the Raven. He retreated into his books, surfacing only when he was required to perform the tasks he now abhorred.

  Timothy Hackett was a changing man in these wilds, and his eyes reflected a person at ideological odds with himself.

  “All that’s left for us is to claim that reward,” Sebastian said.

  Behind them, Garrick and Ritter finished stacking bodies. They spoke inaudibly, and Sebastian had no desire to know what about. The job was finished where he was concerned.

  They were strangers in a strange land. A place far removed from the comfort of decaying London. The old city wasn’t much these days, but it was home and he knew how to traverse it. When families hired him to find the thief or killer that had wronged them, Sebastian did so in a matter of hours—usually. His web of lowlifes kept their eyes wide and their ears open. The information they’d gleam was often enough for him to bring his target to justice in time for morning bacon.

  Petty crimes were glossed over to attack the worst of it. Sebastian slept well by that coda most days. If a lord or lady had to get fleeced out of some pocket riches so that he could bring a rapist to justice, so be it.

  Out here was a different story. No barmen to consult, no corner pickpockets to grease. It was fair game, kill or be killed, and that was a real pisser.

  Once the bodies were stacked, Garrick called them over. He offered a few comfortless words, and then asked if anyone had anything to say about the departed. A ring of silence passed around them.

  The witch-finder shrugged and lit a match to set the corpses ablaze.

  It was always the same. A thoughtless prayer spoken over a shallow grave. They pretended to mourn, but relief was their reality. Glad to have been spared to fight another day. No one seemed especially proud to think that way, but it was a silent understanding in Garrick’s dwindling army.

  Sebastian watched the bonfire. It was hard to shake the feeling that he could’ve easily been among that pile, or any of others just like it along the journey.

  They had followed the Raven, no one knew her real name, and her army across the Holy Roman Empire, losing most of their men during battle at an isolated border estate called Freywald.

  Freywald was a small village surrounded by pastures and meadows on the Hungary border, the only place that hadn’t yet become a haven for the lycanthropic plague. Its inhabitants were too scared to leave their homes at night, and were lorded by an agricultural estate that had almost completely withered and was unable to keep its population healthy or safe. With supply lines dried for good, desperate souls ventured for help and were never seen again.

  Garrick had sensed that Freywald was a trap, theorizing that Raven had abandoned her army there. Everyone felt the gaze of hungry eyes watching from the forest and knew it wouldn’t be long before the enemy called.

  The battle came on the first night and everyone who could swing a sword was tasked with fighting.

  The wolves had poured from the trees in every direction—a clever onslaught that prevented them from fortifying the perimeter. Areas with high defenses were quickly flanked. The fight raged until dawn and without interval. The sun was high but the wolves kept attacking, a torrent of teeth and claws that demolished almost all living things.

  Victory came at the price of Freywald’s existence. The streets were devastated, and Garrick examined every wolf body with bugging eyes.

  “She’s not here,” he’d screamed on more than one occasion. “Raven has to be here.” Half their men were dead and Freywald was one night away from becoming a ghost town. The cost of this war was high, and Garrick was only getting started.

  He demanded the head of the raven-haired bitch, and screamed worse on several occasions.

  To ensure that reality, he ordered the men to collect the injured wolves and deliver them to the estate house. The hunter holed up there and forbade anyone to progress beyond the entry hall. Sebastian and Timothy tended to their own dead in the village below while tortured screams haunted the hilltop for days.

  Sebastian was allowed entrance on the third day. There, he learned that wolves harbored an allergy to silver. Exposing them to the metal could be motivating. His glimpse into the estate of horrors revealed spilt entrails, disembodied heads, and mercy pleas from the lips of former enemies. Their mouths had been jammed up with silver coins so that their facial features were swollen and bloated.

  At the center of it all, the witch-finder stood nearly nude, wearing only a pair of linen shorts. His molded physique was covered in splatter, and yet the dark ink of several tattoos came through. He wore symbols as others wore jewelry.

  “I have it,” he had said. “Her.”

  The extracted information sent them galloping east at a breakneck dash through an area controlled by the Habsburgs. They resupplied in a village called Pest before storming onward into the Transylvanian mountains and beyond.

  To this place. And last night’s battle.

  The bodies were on their way to a crisp and Garrick had broken off from the group. He stood against the cl
iff and peered out across the cool sable sky.

  “We have to get down there,” he said. “Raven is hurt, but she will recover.”

  “Can’t wait to find her,” Ritter said, rubbing his hands together as though his mind had hatched a devious scheme.

  “Ah, yes,” Garrick said. His words popped as he made a small circle around the man who had sliced open the she-wolf. “You are determined to stick your prick inside her, yes?”

  Ritter’s smile was black and rotted. “Best quality whore I’ve ever glanced…don’t care if she is gutted and shot. If she draws breath, I’m screwing her ’til she don’t.” He looked to Sebastian and Timothy with an impassioned plea for support.

  “A rousing set of values,” Garrick said.

  Ritter’s face hardened against the firelight. “I followed you this far, Garrick. Listened to every miserable order you gave…including those that got my brothers killed. If I want to have a slice of that cunny…”

  Garrick drew his six-shooter and fired. The gun sparked between their heads, and through a haze of gun smoke, Ritter stumbled back with a splat. Their companion in the broadest sense only toppled while the hunter holstered his gun and turned back to watch the open sky.

  “Morality is always the first thing to go,” he said with complete composure.

  Sebastian thought back to the bloody aftermath inside the Freywald estate and wondered how Garrick could make that statement, then decided to bite his tongue. They were nearly through this.

  However, Timothy could not bite his. “These men lost theirs a long time ago,” he said, “before this journey.”

  “Everyone has a choice, pup. Even Ritter had one.”

  “When the only world you know is one where men in power take what they wish from those who have nothing, what can you expect?”

  Garrick scoffed. “Just ready yourselves. We’re leaving.”

  Sebastian reloaded his single-shot flintlocks. He carried two in holsters set against the small of his back. Once, he had asked Garrick where to obtain a weapon that fired six shots without reloading.