by Pete Kahle
Lambert had felt the rage return. A burning, liquid sensation that rose from the pit of his stomach, one that flooded his body, demanded he succumb, surrender to the darkness within. To hate. To rage…
No!
“Captain Lambert. I am ordering you, for the last time, to give chase and retrieve my colours!”
Lambert stared at the shadowy figures on the darkening battleground. The harsh cry of ravens filled his ears. Carrion crows had circled since the grey dawn, knowing there would be rich pickings at the day’s end. It would not be long before the human ghouls came, pillaging the dead for their meagre coin and valuables.
It was ever thus, he thought. It did not disturb him, it was merely a fact of life; a gruesome but thankfully predictable epilogue to the business of soldiery.
A business. Not an upper class adventure as this fool takes it for. Lambert looked again at the ensign’s corpse, heard the last gasp of life from the sergeant, and made his decision. He spat at Meekings’ feet.
“Prepare yourself for surrender, my lord. Be an honourable prisoner. I am done with you.”
Lord Meekings’ cheeks were as scarlet as his sash. He took a step forwards, but halted when the captain placed a hand on his flintlock.
“You have no respect for His Majesty’s forces, Captain! Mayhap you would prefer to fight for Parliament!”
“Mayhap I would,” Lambert sneered. “Cromwell and Fairfax understand what it is to be the professional soldier. Their coin is as good as the King’s.”
The blow seemed to come from nowhere. Lord Meeking’s fist whirled with lightning speed and connected with the captain’s lacerated cheek.
“Nothing but a mercenary!” Meekings spat. “Just like those others who fought on the Continent! You have no honour, sir!”
The blow did not hurt, but the shock was so great Captain Lambert was thrown into instinctive action.
No honour? Before he knew what he was doing, he had the fallen ensign’s rapier in his hand. The red mist descended, anger and hatred for this idiot of a commander who had dared to strike one of his own officers, who had no shred of decency, honour or humility.
Not even in Germany, where he had fought against the ranks of the Swedish rebels and witnessed atrocities beyond imagining, had he been assaulted by one from his own side.
The twilight was replaced by the same red mist that descended over the Parliamentarian soldier who had butchered the ensign. Once again, a mortuary hilted blade wielded by an Englishman hacked into the body of a fellow Englishman.
The red mist became corporeal, a liquid presence that filled Lambert’s nostrils and throat with the scent and taste of death, blinded his eyes with splattered life fluid.
“In God’s holy name! Stop!”
The sole trooper’s voice filtered through the red mist. Captain Thomas Lambert wiped his eyes and stared in bewilderment at the butchered remains of the Royalist officer. A piece of meat that had once been part of the lord’s limbless torso twitched and shivered, before expelling steaming ordure.
Lambert’s breathing was harsh and rapid, misting in the cool evening air like the gases from Meekings’ belly. His arm and shoulders ached with the exertion of the butchery, and he realised he had expended more energy on slaughtering his commanding officer than fighting the Parliamentarians. The slaughter was not a novel sight to him – but the lack of restraint, the sheer fury that had powered it, was not his own doing.
In God’s name, what caused this? Was I possessed?
He saw Meekings’ surviving retinue advance, their movements wary and cautious, but emboldened now they saw the confusion in his eyes and how spent his energy was.
Aye, possessed. Just as that young trooper was…
He glanced around him, saw the few returning harquebusiers turn curious eyes in his direction. The coming of night and the dip in the field had obscured the murder from all but the sharpest eyes.
Few eyes were as sharp as Lambert’s. He noticed the orange colour of the sashes, and knew instantly which side these men were on.
He saw his chance. He broke the hold of Meekings’ men and ran to the cantering Parliamentarians.
Surrender first, then offer my services. Even if they refuse, mayhap I can talk sense into that young lad, ensure he does not follow my path….
He ran without looking back. To do so would be death. The battlefield was treacherous with holes gouged from the soil by hoof and artillery ready to ensnare and break a wrongly-placed ankle, but that was the least of his worries.
“Halt, traitor!” Behind him, Lambert heard the striking of matchlocks, the hiss of powder flaring in the pans and the thunder of musket balls. He fell to the ground, twisted his body into a roll that spared him the musket volley but planted his head firmly in the corpse of an infantryman. Lambert felt the skin burst beneath him, and the cold, gelatinous innards reached up to smother him.
Matthew Collier stared in horror at the forest of poles. It was far better to keep his terror-filled gaze on the ash shafts and their coating of black blood and intestinal juices than lay his eyes once more upon the things that crowned them.
Pike shafts. They would have been each sixteen feet tall at one point, unless some of the pikemen had opted to cut a few feet off for ease of mobility. Now they thrust a mere eight feet into the night air, the points of the shafts deeply buried in the soil to ensure they held the impaled bodies of the Parliamentarian garrison upright.
Upright, and squirming. Still alive. They could not cry out with their suffering because the pike points had come up through their sternums before piercing their lower jaws.
Moonlight turned parts of the leaf-shaped points that were not coated in blood a cold silver, and illuminated the whites of the dying men’s eyes. Blood bubbled from the thinner, younger infantrymen, their light weight ensuring they took longer to slide down the pole. They took longer to die.
A forest of pikes...an entire troop, put to death with their own weaponry! What could do such a thing?
Now he looked up, tried to follow a path through the impaled pikemen to the garrison hamlet of Haverton. He clapped his hands over his ears to block the sounds of the ash poles creaking in the ground, the bubbling of blood on lips and the trickling of life fluid down wood, and the muffled croaks of men breathing their last.
One pole was lower than the others, and the clothes of the soldier were more flamboyant, more expensive than those of the soldiers surrounding him. The pole was lower because it was shorter. A partisan, a pole-arm wielded only by the senior officers.
Colonel Lewis!
Matthew Collier froze as the pole supporting the colonel shifted. There was a wet, rending sound, and the blade of the partisan pressed further upwards and parted the lips wider. Was it only a few hours ago that those lips had parted in a wide smile, a friendly laugh as he called out: Well done, Master Collier…now, take up that piss-stained rag and return to Haverton. Post haste, Master Collier! Post haste!
Matthew’s trembling hands clutched the flagpole. The flag was soaked in marsh mud and blood, and felt heavier than before. Either his strength was failing or the fluids had made the silk heavier. Was there any point taking it further? What use was it to his regiment now?
He stared through the final poles: to the gateway of the churchyard. Where this troop of the regiment was billeted.
Will there be any survivors? Will there be sanctuary in God’s house?
He lifted the flagpole with a great effort and hoisted it over his shoulder. The movement reminded him of the last time he had lifted it: brandishing it at the defeated enemy, a taunt. Now it taunted none but himself and his dead comrades.
He broke into a run, but the tip of the pole caught the unsteady shaft of Colonel Lewis’s partisan. Matthew stumbled, caught his heels on the sodden flag that wrapped around his ankles and thighs like a winding sheet. He crashed to the ground, gasping in pain. His vision blurred and his head swam. The stars spun on invisible cartwheels and the forest of impaled pikemen with th
eir fruiting corpses reared above him like the spars of a foundering ship.
One of the spars crashed to the deck, unfurling a shroud. The expensive cloth and finery of a gentleman officer gave way to the exploded innards of a dying man. The steel edge of the partisan blade missed Matthew’s head by inches, but he was unaware of this small mercy. The moist, rubbery insides of his commanding officer smothered him and sent his mind screaming to a darker place.
By the time Lambert regained consciousness, one of the three harquebusiers had pulled him from the exploded corpse and sat him upright next to a shattered gun carriage. He blinked, coughed and spat blood and intestinal juice. It had the familiar tang of gunpowder. He spat again and looked up at his rescuer, was about to speak when the scream of a man behind him made him freeze.
The screams of the dying held no discomfort for him, but this was different. It was the searing cry of a man being violated as he died, accompanied by the moist, meaty sound of a wooden pole penetrating damp earth. The scream rose as the man was hoisted into the air.
The ground trembled behind Lambert as the pole sank deeper into its securing hole. The sound of steel slowly penetrating flesh and organs was only just audible over the rapid panting and barely human screeching of the impaled man.
Not since he had seen his first battle over twenty years ago on the Continent had Captain William Lambert felt such terror that rooted him to the spot. He could not move, dared not look behind him. He only raised his head to face the dismounted trooper when the point of a sabre pressed under his chin and jabbed upwards.
Moonlight silvered the pott helmet and breast plate of the harquebusier. The three vertical face protectors of the helmet looked like the desiccated ribs of some strange animal. The face was hidden by the shadow of the helm; nothing but blackness greeted Captain Lambert.
Now his terror mounted. He cast his eyes downwards, wished he could blot out the sounds of sadistic murder behind him.
The orange-tawny sash around the trooper’s waist that Lambert took to be a mark of Parliamentary forces was strangely stiff and unyielding to the night breeze. It had more of the texture of tanned hide, or…
A cry escaped Lambert’s lips. He knew what that material was.
Skin. Flayed, human skin.
The scudding clouds allowed the moonlight to give the impression the hide still moved, still had life. That the face of the child it had been taken from was animated by an agony from beyond death.
The trooper leaned closer, but the moonlight still did not reveal his face. Instead, it showed the contents of the helmet.
The blackness was thick, a physical entity that had a life of its own. A darkness that had corporeal presence, a force that had no right to walk the land. Lambert felt the rage that emanated from it; hatred and wrath that could not be human. A force that was not alone. Over the keening of the impaled men behind him, Lambert heard the soft footfall of spurred boots. Horseman’s boots.
He remembered there had been three of these harquebusiers on the field. The other two had finished their duty and were now coming for him.
“Are you for the King or for the Parliament?” His words were flat and toneless in the night, until the giggle escaped him. Madness stroked the edges of his consciousness, and he was grateful to succumb.
There was no reply to his words. Gauntleted hands fell upon his shoulders, lifting him to a standing position. The gloved fingers imparted a chill that cut into him like knife blades. He could barely remain upright, his legs trembled so much.
“Neither. We war for all.”
The words soughed around him, whispers on the breeze that could have been the parting breaths of dying men.
The innards of Colonel Lewis slipped from Matthew’s face. He felt the weight of his dead commanding officer lift from his body, and warm, soft hands upon his sweating brow.
Still he would not open his eyes. I cannot witness anymore!
“Be still, child. You are safe… from me, at least.”
A woman’s voice. One that was familiar, and despite the hint of a foreign accent, oddly comforting. Now he opened his eyes.
Moonlight to the left cast shadows of writhing, dying men on their execution poles against the pale stone walls of the church; a shadow play of agony and inhumanity. It also illuminated the face of his companion. Through a bonnet of blood-spattered crinoline, startlingly green eyes stared back at him with motherly concern.
Those eyes glanced at the forest of corpses behind him without so much as a shudder. Instead, there was a flicker of hatred.
He gratefully took her hands and allowed her to help him to his feet. She pulled him up with a strength that belied her diminutive frame, then regarded him with a faint, weary smile.
“Master Matthew, is it not? Matthew… Collier?”
That accent again. Where does she hail from? And those marks on her face…
“D’you not recognise me, child? I’m Máire.”
He nodded dumbly. Máire. One of the ‘Leaguer Ladies’, whores who attached themselves to the baggage train and attended the soldiers when their blood was up and could not be satisfied by alcohol, battle or plunder.
The prostitutes were generally well-treated, but Máire was the exception. The mottled bruises on her cheeks and forehead, the odd cast of her nose where it had not been set properly after being broken, and the simmering fury in her eyes were all enhanced by the cold moonlight.
Coming from Ireland, it was small wonder she had been so ill used, particularly by those soldiers who remembered all too well the atrocities of the Irish Uprising and the massacre of English Protestant settlers at Portadown. He had wondered why she had never returned to her country: why continue to service the needs of men who hated her countrymen so?
“You’re cold, child. Come in to the warmth.”
Framed by the lych-gate, he saw small fires in the glassless windows of the ruined church. A sense of guilt overcame him as he followed her: most of the glass had been intact when his troop had been billeted here, as had been the carved likenesses of saints. Peppering the stained glass with musket fire, and destroying the statues with sword and cannon: target practice after nights of drink-fuelled revelry.
It mattered not at the time. Even Colonel Lewis had not protested too much when the chaplain had complained. Far better Popish images than able soldiers, chaplain!
Matthew sighed and picked up the flagpole. It felt even heavier, the silk sticking to the ground, as if a force within was unwilling to allow its entry to hallowed ground.
The booty of a murderer! his inner voice screamed. It has no place in God’s house, and neither do you!
He ducked his head in guilt as he went through the lych-gate, relieved to be putting space between the soldiers who would not be destroying anything ever again. Máire hunched forwards as they made their way to the shattered nave, her breath misting in the air.
It no longer appeared like the inside of a church. The altar railings had long been stripped for their precious metals. The pews were smashed, rendered to so much firewood. Small fires lit the entrance to the nave, the sacristy and the chancel. Indeed, each doorway that led into the building was marked by a fierce fire. Yet the light did little to dispel the shadows in the far reaches of the building, and little warmth was imparted by these fires. If anything, it seemed colder here than outside.
“Are you alone, Máire?”
She waited until they had passed the headless carving of some unknown saint before she turned to answer. “As are you, Master Matthew. The Lord surely watched over you when your comrades succumbed.” Her eyes fell to the flagpole. Even the firelight could not impart any life to the mud-splattered mess.
He remembered his butchery of the ensign, the demonic rage that powered his sword, and wondered what sort of God would watch over him while allowing him to perform such evil. He swallowed, tasted bile and prayed it was his own.
“What… what happened, Máire? When I did leave the field of battle, we had routed the King�
�s men. What unholy reserve army did they have waiting for us?”
“’Tis not the work of men, Master Matthew.” Máire’s green eyes blazed in the firelight. “What killed your comrades did take those on the baggage train as well. The wives who could not bear to be left behind… and the children…”
“Children?”
“Only three o’ the poor little mites… oh, dear God, how they suffered…”
The fire did not warm him. He wondered if he would ever feel warm again. “What did this?”
She removed her bonnet and ran a withered hand through her hair. What remained of it was a coppery gold colour, unwashed and thick with grease and blood from the scalp where locks had been torn away.
“In the Old Country, we called them the Wrathful Ones. An enemy without a war, always seeking man’s hatred and rage to feed their power. My husband, may he rest in peace, did see them on the Continent when he fought against Gustavus Adolphus… and right richly did they feed upon man’s inhumanity there.”
Matthew stared, wide-eyed. Spirits? And yet… he had heard of the atrocities in Ireland, and in the Low Countries where the Wars of Religion incited brutality beyond belief. Now the stories he had heard from the veterans were no longer the tall tales he had dismissed so casually.
“I never did think to see them, not in my lifetime, and not on an English battlefield.” She glanced at him with that curious mixture of sympathy and distaste she had given the impaled infantry. “Because I never did believe anyone would be so cruel, so evil, to perform the rite that brings them to battle. ‘Tis a terrible thing, Master Matthew, to think that your own countrymen, who so despised my people for their actions in the rebellion – indeed, soldiers on your own side - could flay a child alive.”
“We war for all,” the words soughed again, and then Captain Lambert realised.
The flayed child’s skin, the impenetrable darkness behind the helmet, the incorporeal presence that inflicted such barbaric punishment upon the living.
