The old wound of that beating had been opened again, and, if I lived longer, would rip apart each year of my life.
3
Later, when I had some strength, I reached out to Thibaud Dustifot for support as I stood. “Frey is dead, boy.” I had no tears left, and no feeling in my body or soul.
“No,” he said, and began weeping in a way that I had forgotten there could be tears at all. He wept with the innocence of his age and his heart, and in his eyes I saw all that I had lost on my journey through the world.
I could not comfort him, for I had begun to travel in my soul to a place of ice and fire that was beyond any human feeling.
4
When the camp had been set, for we had not yet opened the great gate of the Kur-Nu, but simply damaged the outer walls of its fortress, I sat with Ewen and Thibaud and whispered to them of what I meant to do. I tell you now that all I wanted was to be dead. I had no love for life, and had even begun to resist the idea of one more day of battle. Yes, I would desert my countrymen and the Hospitallers, and I knew the consequence of this act. I did not care. I had watched the world take my family from me, and my only love, and I had no faith left.
“Before dawn,” I told them. “I will go. I am unclean from this battle.”
“If our unholy enemy has cut down your brother, would it not be better for you to avenge his death?” Ewen asked. “At least for the sake of your country?”
“I have no country,” I said.
“What of Our Lord?” Thibaud asked.
“You remember the Old Ways,” I said, noticing the glimmer in his eye. “What of those gods and goddesses? I have no faith. I am lost.”
“You have the stubborn streak of your blood,” Ewen said, wise beyond his years. “As well as its doom. You must not let humours destroy you. You must not, Aleric. I beg of you.” His face had taken on a reddish hue as he spoke, and his words were more impassioned than I’d heard from him previously. Yet he meant nothing to me, nor did his words have an effect on me.
I grinned, more grimace than smile. “I will never see my homeland again, I will never see my beloved. I am a man who will bring to doom those who carry me in their hearts. It would be best if you abandoned me to this, both of you, friends.”
The boy shook his head. “I am your servant. I go where you go.”
“As do I,” said Ewen.
“Where I go—” I covered my face with my hands. “Where I go, friends, is to the end of my days. When the feast begins tonight, and the boasting and calling, I will be gone.”
“But the Ghul,” Thibaud said, a shadow crossing his young face. “They are out there, master. I have seen them once.”
“Have you?” I said. “Perhaps I shall meet one of these Ghul, and he shall make quick work of me.”
5
To desert the Hospitallers was to court death in many ways. First, deserters would be executed on sight, if found, as they would in any military order. Additionally, because I was part of a payment from the baron to the Hospitallers themselves, I might even be given a torturous execution to further discourage other servant-warriors from imitating my flight. Although I had never seen it, we had all heard the tales of those deserters and traitors who were roasted on spits while they begged for mercy. I did not intend to find out if those stories were true. Additionally, the enemy might take me at any moment on my journey from the Hospitaller encampment, and the foe would be happy to find a soldier wandering unguarded so as to slit his throat or perhaps take him back to their city for a slower death.
But worse than all this was the land itself. It was a land of hills and crags and desert and boulder and the intense heat of a sun that seemed to rise from Hell each day and carry with it brimstone and fire. I had nearly starved to death along our march, and the sunlight could parch even the most well drunk soul. I knew I was going to certain death, and I embraced that. If I had had an ounce of genuine bravery, I would have cut my own throat to end things there, but I felt as if I needed to find a place to die. To be away from all mankind. To find a hiding place among the endless caves and rocks of the wasteland beyond the citadels.
I could not discourage my friends from coming with me. Though I didn’t feel that Thibaud should risk his young life at my expense, he felt as if he owed me his allegiance. Ewen had become as much like a brother to me as had anyone, and as they both slipped away from camp with me, under cover of the dark, I felt as if I had burdened them with my grief and hatred and oncoming death. Hours into our journey along the vast emptiness, I turned to them, drawing my sword.
“You must return to camp,” I said. “I will kill both of you here to save you the hardships of the days to come. You are not part of my hatred. You must live and return home to those you love so that you may not fall in with the wolves of darkness, as have I.” I truly saw my world as one of wolves, not men. I meant to be done with it, and I cursed God for the life given to me.
Ewen shot me a sharp glance. “You are more than brother to me, Falconer. You have saved me more than once in the past. I cannot abandon you to this darkness you hold.”
“You must,” I said. “If you love me. If you care for my soul, you will allow me to make this journey alone.”
“I pray that you will find peace and return,” Ewen said. He approached me, and we embraced. I felt the wetness of his tears upon my neck. Though he had just reached manhood, he was still only a boy in his heart, a boy from the fields of our homeland. I could nearly smell the sweetness of spring grass in him, and as heavy as was my heart, and though rocks seemed to weigh my soul down into dark water, I could not help but hope that he would find a better world than the one I had seen. I ached for home, for love, for happiness, for some peace. But my brother, dead, my mother, burned alive—there was nothing but ashes and smoke in my world.
Ewen whispered in my ear as he held me, “Losing you, my friend, I feel as heartsick as you must have felt when your brother fell. Do not do this to me, or to the boy. I beg you.”
When he withdrew, he turned his back on me and began walking back to camp. We said nothing more.
The boy stood, watching me, as if trying to understand my resolve. Finally, he said, “With you, the wind,” which was an old saying of the Bretons on voyages outland. “And the birds, to find your way home.”
“And with you, the earth,” I gave the response. “And the forest.”
The parting of friends tore at me, but I could not then recognize the love and affection of any. I was set on my course, and had perhaps only been interrupted by the voyage to the battles. I would never see Alienora again. I carried guilt for my mother’s death, and for my brother’s, as well. I did not then understand the powerlessness of mortal life against the greater forces in the world. I blamed myself for much, and saw no good in mankind nor in myself. I pitied all, and spurned what little remained in my heart of kindness and love and hope.
I felt I had already died before I had even met Death.
6
I had heard of a place, and hoped it was not simply a falsehood, a mirage created by soldiers who dreamed of darkness and cautionary tales in this foreign land.
It would take me nine days to find the place where I would die. It was a place I had only heard of in legend from other soldiers who had been in these wars for a decade or more. They told of a Plague City—a city of the Devil Himself—called by some the Devil’s Horns.
7
Here is the legend of this place of the Devil, the great many-towered city that was also called Hedammu. It had been a great stronghold of the infidel, then had been taken by an order called the Knights of the Sword. They had begun as an order of warrior-monks, very much like the Hospitallers and the Templars.
But the Devil’s Horns had changed them. Enchantment and bewitchment were said to be afoot within its walls. Within it, it was said, was a great relic that contained healing and prophetic powers, and which had seemed to be of holiness, but had been revealed to be the head of Baphomet, the reviled and sinf
ul.
The enemy had returned to poison its wells, and had sent in harlots full of disease, whose lips and breasts had been painted with an elixir that smelled of almond and cinnamon, but which brought a slow, burning death to the soldiers who tasted of these women. Soon, all had died within the towers, and the citadel remained uninhabitable. The infidel had razed the land with salt and spices that were poisonous in nature. It was said to be cursed and the mouth of Hell itself, thus the nickname of the Devil’s Horns. In the many years of this war against the unfaithful, more than one great city had met this fate. They became known as the Unclean Places, for disease and pestilence were their only legacy.
They became places where we, the soldiers of the Cross, were forbidden on threat of eternal damnation.
But what light of faith had I left? All my belief in eternity had diminished. All of love had been stolen from me. All of hope. I had been reminded of my lowly station, of my bastardy, of the shame of my mother’s life and execution, of the deceit and betrayal by my master Sensterre and his son, my half-brother Corentin. And just as I thought this foreign land of war and holiness had returned my sense of justice and mercy, I had watched while my beloved brother was cut down, and I had truly grown sick of all the machinations of mankind. I was not for this world, so I needed to enter the next.
And I would do so at the mouth of Hell itself.
I knew the place on sight, for its towers seemed pristine in the last light of day, and its battlements perfect yet in places crumbling. It had remained untouched by all, and was known as a symbol of the wrath of God upon all who had taken to vice and debauchery.
It would be my final home: I wanted nothing more than to drink of its poisons and taste of its damnation.
8
The first dawn, as I wandered just over the rise from the main road, so as not to be spied by either enemy or friend, I had the feeling that someone followed me. I began imagining it was an enemy, then I half hoped that Ewen dogged my steps so that I might not feel this terrible loneliness—the solitary end of my days approaching, torturing me with thoughts of the past and fear of the world to come.
All that day, I stopped, ran up to whatever rise or rock was within easy distance, and glanced back along the road, but I could not see anyone within the shadowy overhangs of rock along the ridge of the hills. As the first night approached, I became more certain that I had a tracker, and wondered who would be following me so far, for surely I had traveled too many leagues to make it worth tracking me and bringing me back in shackles to the camp.
I squatted among a clutch of rocks and waited for the spy who followed, and when I saw a movement, I drew my short sword and leapt down to attack my pursuer.
The one who followed me emerged into the moonlight, and I nearly fell backward rather than cut him down. It was Thibaud, my little friend, a child of the war itself. “You?” I shouted, perhaps too harshly.
He sprang forward, drawing his dagger. He had a fury in his face, the like of which I had never seen except in battle.
“Did you follow me to kill me?” I asked, laughing.
“I mean to serve you,” he said, sheathing his dagger.
“Why do you follow me?” I scowled at him.
“Is there not treasure where you go?” he asked, a gleam to his eye.
“Why, you greedy little thief,” I said. “The only treasure ahead of me is death.”
“Is it made of gold?” he asked.
“Yes,” I laughed. “Golden death.” I raised my sword again to try and scare him into returning whence he had come.
In the moonlight, this scrawny scrap of a boy seemed even more wan and hungry—and I was taken aback by the sorrow in his eyes. What had this world done to one so young? What world was this? He said nothing, but brought out a bit of dried meat and offered water from the skin that was slung over his narrow shoulders.
Once we had made camp for the night we sat before the fire, and I told him he must return the next morning.
“No,” he said. He and I stared at each other a bit, I trying to understand what had driven him to desert, and he, no doubt, becoming more resolved to accompany me to my death.
“What of you?” I asked. “You cannot give up on your life so young. I will not allow it. You have a master among the knights.”
“A terrible man,” he said, then looked deeply into the fire. “Kill me if you must. But I will not return.”
“You must,” I insisted. “You have more life ahead of you.”
“You are my only master,” he said. “You saved me.” He spoke no more that night. We slept, he covered by my cloak, while I sat up on watch, truly unable to do more than drift off a bit just before dawn arrived.
Well before the sun rose, we continued on toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. As the afternoon wore on, and a terrible thirst overcame us both—though I allowed him a ration of water and felt best doing without—he stopped in his tracks and turned back, as if listening. “I am afraid others follow us.”
“If they do, we will cut them down,” I said. “And roast them for our dinner.”
He laughed at this, and ran ahead of me along the narrow rocky path we’d chosen. Twilight came, then night, and by the fire that evening, we spoke of our homeland, and despite my hatred of some there, this recalled my love of the Forest, my thoughts of my brothers and sisters, unknown to me, and of Alienora. It gave me an unfortunate hope that night as I slept. It clouded my resolve, my march toward a lonely death.
By dawn, I felt even greater sorrow, for, several days from camp, deserting our knights meant death, whether we returned to the army’s camp or continued on to the poisoned city. I did not feel a choice once I had begun that journey to Hedammu.
The boy accompanied me as a pallbearer might a funerary procession, following close behind me, and mute, as if he were afraid to speak of our destination. I was too selfish to concern myself with his fate. I had seen children die in battle. I had seen them die of fevers in my home. I suppose, in the back of my mind, I had a hope that his innocence would provide us with a miracle, although I was not so hopeful as to let this thought cloud my resolve.
I felt as if I already knew the end of this journey. I welcomed it. I welcomed the gaping mouth of Hell, for it could not be a worse place than this Earth.
Thibaud Dustifot carried the skin of water, and had stowed a bit of salted goat meat in his pack and among his various pouches. We stopped to sleep, and I daresay that we had rough nights, for storms swept off the sea within a few nights’ travel. During daylight hours, we had to be sure and avoid the Hospitallers, for many scouts and guards were about along the jagged hillocks and desert valleys. Then the infidel had to be avoided, although why I cared if I were captured, I did not know. Death was what I sought, but I suppose I wanted it in my own way and on my own watch. I did not wish to be at the mercy of the enemy, whose many tortures were nearly as well-known as those of my own countrymen.
We rationed the dried meat and water as best we could. The bread, which grew harder and tougher to chew with each day, might last perhaps a few more days if we were careful. I began to imagine that someone did, in fact, follow us, although I never saw anyone. The heat of the sun was intense during the day, while the night was often cold and stormy. It was strange weather, and my superstitious nature began to get the better of me. In weak moments of my resolve, I began to imagine that the Devil truly was along this road, and that his eminence’s castle truly was ahead of us.
I found Thibaud’s attention to my welfare touching, and I begged him nightly to return to the camp.
“You are young enough that you may be forgiven this desertion,” I said. “Do you wish to die?”
“I wish to serve my master,” the boy said, and drew out a bit of bread for our supper.
9
In a few more heartbeats, the light of day would be swallowed, and the breath of the living would cloud the air. It was said, according to my fellow soldiers, that the infidels believed a great dragon liv
ed in the caves of the hills. It left its lair by way of the sapphire sea, drank the sun down into its gullet each night, and defecated the new sun through the bowels of the earth before dawn. But there was no dragon, nor was the sea full of jewels.
Hedammu, Mighty Fortress! Fallen from its height as a center of trade and learning and of the ancient secrets of the people of this region. A poisonous, pestilent whore of a city, long abandoned. The Devil’s Horns. I saw its towers from a distance, and as had been reported, there was no watch and no guard.
It was a golden city.
It was a city of the dead.
The view from the crest showed the dying copper sky as the sun moved languidly toward the metallic blue of the sea. The wind, when it swept across the towers and hills to the east of the sea, seemed like a blasting furnace.
The boy and I approached the open gates.
At the north gate, drawn with blood, the symbol of the Cross. Beneath this, a word that meant nothing to me. Yet, I remember it:
“anguis”
Beneath this word, a drawing of a spiraling circle.
Atop the gates, opened to welcome all those who wished to perish, the pagan scrawls of the infidel, and something older, gargoyles of women who had the wings of eagles and the legs of lions.
“You must return now,” I said, turning to the boy. “It has been wrong of me to allow you to follow me here. You will be taken captive by the enemy, or torn at by wolves. I am not your master, nor am I one who can care for you.”
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