“Ride!” Fear cracked Otto’s voice as he remounted his horse, waiting for his masters to bolt ahead of him.
One lord galloped away while the second prepared to follow, but before he could, the old woman jumped from the woods, landing in front of the horse and letting forth an ear-splitting screech, causing the animal to rear high on its hind legs. As it did, the woman drew two curved blades from behind her back and swiftly slit a bloody X on the horse’s belly. The animal’s scream prickled the lord’s hair. The lord thought quickly, and instead of tumbling, pushed himself off the horse and landed on his feet as the beast collapsed forward and onto the ground, writhing in pain along with Victor. The lord ran to Otto, placed both hands on Hans’s back and propelled himself upward to sit behind Otto and on the dead knight. Otto’s horse ran for its life.
The old woman stowed her weapons and scrambled into the woods to chase the lords and knight.
The thing that had roared at Otto rose from the brambles and strode into the road near the dying horse and Victor, who had stopped squirming and rested on his side as offal oozed through his fingers. He looked up to see a horned monster holding a chain in one hand and a strange bundle of sticks, wielded like a club, in the other.
“You’ve been good, Herr Knight, but nothing can save your life now—only end your misery.” It lifted a cloven hoof, balancing itself on the other, and crushed Victor’s head, offering him a surprisingly quick death.
It took two stomps to kill the horse.
Chapter Five
Although Beate Klothilda had been to the Vettelberg Castle earlier that day with Heinrich, she’d previously visited the palace only a handful of times, mostly with Gisela—she considered her friend a superior seamstress and always would—to help sell her wares to visiting nobles or castle workers. But even during those few precious times, she had been relegated to a meager, hastily erected tent fronting the inner curtain walls that protected the great hall and keep—never had she been inside to see its true grandeur.
“The baron is spending the conclusion of Twelfth Night in upper Bavaria,” said Mumfred, the castle steward who led Beate along the outer courtyard’s cobblestone path to the inner castle’s gatehouse. “It’s actually fortuitous that he is. Otherwise the castle would be a madhouse of baking, planning for festivities and so forth. Meaning we’d have to keep an eye on you to make sure nothing goes missing.”
Beate caught a glimpse of Heinrich balling his fists. She squeezed his forearm to calm him.
She knew not to escalate things. “I can assure you nothing of the sort will happen.”
Mumfred led the group, including two squires on the verge of knighthood, to the inner gatehouse’s entrance, where guards began lifting its smaller but no less imposing portcullis.
Beate took the moment to feast upon the gothic castle’s size. The four outer curtain walls, constructed of gray stone and mortar, loomed ninety feet over anyone who approached the castle—after somehow traversing the moat oozing around its perimeter.
Those four walls, each four hundred feet long and topped with battlements, formed a square, with one-hundred-and-twenty-feet-tall rectangular, spire-topped bastions serving as the castle’s corners. Guards, looking outward and down the mountain, paced the wall walks. Standing at an inner curtain wall base, Beate gazed upward, spotting two guards looking down at her. They too stood atop a ninety-feet-tall wall. However, the four walls on which they were perched measured two hundred feet long—creating a small fortress encased by a larger one. And even though the inner and outer walls stood the same height if placed side by side, the inner structures, because they were built on a taller point on the mountain, rose higher.
“Remove your dagger.” Mumfred pleasantly extended his hand to Heinrich. “I’m surprised our squires didn’t think to ask you first.”
Mumfred smirked at the two blushing boys—for that’s all they were—who shot embarrassed glances at each other.
“I suppose that’s why they’re still squires.” Mumfred accepted the sheathed weapon and performed impromptu pat-downs on both Heinrich and Beate. “I believe Otto already did this, but one can never be too careful.”
Mumfred noticed Heinrich’s displeasure as he took his time frisking Beate.
“Now you know why I took this from you.” He jiggled the dagger. “The porter shall return this to you when you leave. Follow me.”
As they walked, Mumfred directed the peasants to view a cluster of small, square apartments constructed in stone against an outer curtain wall’s interior side.
“You’ve already passed the seamstress’s quarters. I’m not sure which it is, but she lives—or used to—in one of them. Perhaps if you please the baroness with your work—because, really, decisions of this nature are hers to make—you can dwell there.”
Beate dreamed of one day living in the castle full time, sewing exotic materials into clothes for its master. But that dream died upon meeting Mumfred.
“Or I could continue to live in the village.” She smiled at the steward, making sure he noticed.
“A village life over one in a castle?” Mumfred dismissed the idea with a grunt. “You jest.”
“Me? Jesting?” She said it innocently. “No, I’m certain the castle already has a fool.”
Heinrich and the two squires fought to suppress laughter. Mumfred furrowed his brow. “Just because you’re a guest of one of the baron’s sons doesn’t mean you’re under the boy’s protection. I run the castle when the baron’s not here. Do you understand me?”
Beate held her tongue and curtsied.
“Whatever. Come.” Mumfred waved them to follow. “Seeing that we cannot expect either of the two lords to set foot into the seamstress’s dwelling, you’ll be sizing them in their sleeping quarters within the solar.”
Beate’s heart fluttered upon entering the inner courtyard. People from miles away could see the bergfried’s churn tower, but to see it now, jutting more than one hundred and seventy five feet in the air.
“We’ll be going up there?” She marveled at the circular tower’s four bartizans, each with a conical top. Those four outposts encircled a tower, smaller in diameter, that served as the entire structure’s spire.
Mumfred chuckled. “Silly girl, that’s the tower of last resort. I don’t expect barbarian hordes to mount a siege while the baron is away, but that’s where he’d be if one happened. Knowing the baron, he’d go down fighting. No, the baron and his family live in a palas in one of the lower, separate structures.” He pointed to what Beate had never accurately seen from outside the castle: an ornate five-story building with several curved archways and windows fronting the bergfried.
“That’s where you’ll find the main hall and solar, and the baron’s sons—eventually,” Mumfred said. “And that’s where we’re going for your meal.”
They were about to enter when Otto’s booming voice caused them to turn.
“Raise it, raise the damn thing now.” It came from a distance away.
“He means the front gatehouse. Follow me, no straying.” Mumfred led the way to the outer courtyard and the main entrance, where the gate began rising.
Knights rushed the wall walks from above and pointed through the battlements to two horses galloping toward the lowered drawbridge. The animals, pushed to their limits by their masters, practically ripped wood from the bridge as they crossed into the castle.
Everyone dismounted. Wilhelm and Karl stood next to each other underneath the spiked gate and drew their bows, waiting for whatever had ruthlessly attacked three knights and two horses to appear. Archers atop the castle walls likewise aimed long and crossbows.
The commotion stirred Heinrich, Beate, Mumfred, the squires and numerous other castle denizens to linger behind the lords, soon filling the archway with gawkers.
Unknown to everyone, two sets of eyes bored through the dense woods. An old woman stayed
in the forest to the right of the path leading to the castle, and a monster hid within the fauna to the road’s left.
Otto took control. “My lords, lower your bows, get inside the castle, now.” He then stood on the drawbridge’s hinges, making sure everyone inside the castle could see him. “Now step back!”
Nobody argued with the giant knight. They backtracked as Otto menacingly marched forward to hammer home the point. Once he was safely out of range of the spikes: “Lower the gate, raise the drawbridge!”
Everyone milling behind the descending gate heard from within the woods what sounded like a man and a woman arguing—loudly—followed by metal clashing against metal, then two distinct beings howling and screeching at each other.
Beate hugged Heinrich, who watched the closed gate and drawbridge as if there was still something to see outside.
“Love.” She waited for him to meet her eyes. “I think we’re staying here tonight.”
Chapter Six
“Whoever you are—or whatever you are—you’re severely hindering my efforts to rid the world of one its most deviant miscreants.” The old woman lurched out of the forest, this time without her pail and sack. She slashed the air with her two knives, preparing herself. “I suggest you step out where I can see you. That’s my prize in the castle, and I’ll be damned if some, some, I don’t know, werewolf is going to claim him.”
“Werewolf?” Deep laughter came from the other side of the forest, and what the old lady had first mistaken for twisted tree branches—long, jagged animal horns—rose from a bramble patch, followed by the eight-foot-tall hairy beast from which they jutted.
“Do you see a full moon? I don’t,” the thing said. “And since when do werewolves run around on hooves?” The creature, holding its chain and club, lifted one of its hooves to show the woman.
“Ah, I’ve indeed heard of you,” the woman said. “At least I think you’re Saint Nicholas’s errand boy.”
“Nice to meet you, Frau Perchta.” The beast exaggeratedly bowed. “The master knows this is your territory and your time of year.”
The thing dropped its chain, but not its club, to let its massive barrel slip off its back. It used one hoof to push the barrel off the road while simultaneously stooping to retrieve the long chain. The hag and the beast assessed each other as they began circling clockwise, twenty feet separating them.
“Then what on earth are you doing here now?” Perchta said. “You and the saint had your day last month. I’m on my twelfth and final one, and this particular brat is proving a lot more troublesome than I’d anticipated.”
“You cannot seriously believe that I can snatch everybody that my master assigns me in one day? Especially when the mark is out of town. Even I need to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the occasional deer snack. And I’m not immune to when nature calls. I suppose I could wait until next year, but some of the wretches do not deserve the luxury of time to commit more of their misdeeds. That’s why I’m here, now, with the mark in that castle.”
“That’s my mark,” Perchta said in a raised voice, and shook one of her knives at the monster. “I’ve distributed the coins I planned on giving today, and took care of one of the two brats who deserved it. One more to go—or two. I’ve yet to decide.”
“No. I’ve been eyeing this kid for months. And I’m not about to let some withered shrew screw it up.”
“Withered? Shrew?” She let the insult linger and looked at her feet, appearing hurt. Then she sprang toward the monster, spinning like a cyclone, her two blades slashing deep gashes into the surprised creature’s belly. She landed and kicked the monster onto its back.
The thing whipped its chain around Perchta’s right wrist and yanked. Bones cracked and she released the dagger, which twirled into the woods. She shrieked and doubled over in pain as the monster pushed itself off the ground and charged the woman.
Perchta stooped and scurried under the horrendously smelling archway created by the monster’s wide stance and used her remaining knife to slash the monster’s Achilles tendons.
It howled and fell to its knees just as the woman scooted from beneath it. She rammed her blade into the creature’s belly, but it was like skewering rock. She saw her two previous slice marks had begun to congeal and heal. She went to overhand stab the monster, but the thing countered by whipping the chain to divert the knife, and then smacked the woman back with its club.
Perchta withdrew and held the blade tip toward her foe.
“What are you?” she said. “How can you heal so quickly?”
It strained to stand on one wobbly leg and then the next.
“You mean how can I heal just as quickly as your wrist?” It nodded at Perchta’s right hand, which otherwise looked straight and healthy, not twisted and broken.
“I know that the people we hunt cannot comprehend what they’re up against once confronted,” she said. “So allow me to finally understand what that truly feels like.”
“I feel pain, as you do,” it said. “But nobody’s come close to ever stopping or eluding me. And I guarantee you that will never happen. I hear like an owl and have a hawk’s vision. My eyesight will never fail me.”
“Very well. I suppose we can fight in circles here while daylight wastes, or we can focus on what we both came here to do.” She tucked the blade into her belt and took a neutral stance.
The thing responded by tossing its club and chain near its barrel on the roadside.
“And how do we do that?”
“Simple,” she said. “You’re up for a good fight, obviously. You enjoy competition. So here’s the fairest way to settle it. First one who grabs the mark gets to punish him. I’ve got an entire sackful of straw that’s destined for that kid’s stomach.”
The thing tilted its head, ruminating over the proposition. “The master has given me freedom to do what I wish with the creeps. That is enough motivation for me to snag him first. What are the parameters?”
“Do either of us look like we follow rules?” Perchta said.
“I tend to think I adhere to a personal code of conduct and—”
“Listen, genius, if you think I’m going to let you just waltz into the castle, you’re insane. If I see you climbing a wall, you better expect me to throw something to stop you. You’ve got your chain over there. Do you think for a second I’d hesitate to use that against you?”
The creature went to answer but—
“No!” she continued. “I fully expect you to whip that thing at me if you see I’m about to be on the boy.”
“I thought we weren’t going to fight each other,” it said.
“That’s right, we’re not. The front of the castle is off-limits. That’s a rule I can adhere to. You take your side of the castle and I’ll take mine. We’ll be too busy trying to scale the walls than to worry about foiling each other.”
“Fair enough. But what about the castle’s rear?”
“We split the castle in two—and not literally, genius. You have your side that will wrap halfway around to the castle’s rear.”
“And you’ll have yours.”
“Riiiiiight.” She drew it out like it had two syllables, enjoying how to plot and win the game of wits and strength ahead of them. “I expect the last thing we want to do is meet in the middle behind the castle.”
“Deal.” The monster nodded, also feeling enlivened by the challenge. “We avoid each other, stay off each other’s side. But once we’re inside, anything goes.”
“Agreed.” She held out her claw-like right and the monster did likewise. She grabbed the tip of its kielbasa-sized finger and shook. “But don’t you go anywhere yet. I need to find my knife.”
“Yeah, my legs need to heal a little more too.” It arched its back to look behind at its calf muscles to see the Achilles wounds mending by themselves.
“You and your hawk eyes could
help me look for my knife, you know. It would speed things up considerably.” She stepped one foot into the forest to begin her search. “By the way, what do I call you?”
It walked into the forest, eyeing her, and grunted, “Krampus.”
Chapter Seven
“And you’re sure he wasn’t missing anything?” Mumfred examined Hans’s body, which Otto had placed on the ground near the closed portcullis—and off to its side stood Heinrich, holding Beate against his body to warm her as the sun began to set.
“His crossbow, sword, he even had some coins in his saddlebag—Victor said it was all there when we found him,” Otto said. Lords Wilhelm and Karl added what they could about the attack on the hunting party.
“We should fetch the bodies,” Mumfred said. “If the villagers see dead knights strewn about the road, they might think the baron and his kin weak. Rumors could spread to other towns, and to our enemies. Uprisings have occurred over less.”
Beate, still surrounded by several Vettelberg workers, said nothing. She stared, expressionless, at the vertical gash made down Hans’s belly.
“That crone cut straight through Victor’s chain mail in one clean swipe,” Otto continued, trying not to let on that he wanted no part in retrieving bodies. “I’m not sure I could pull off something like that. This hunchbacked woman, the way she moved. The feeble only move that fast when they drop dead. They don’t hop on horses and then disembowel them. And I still don’t know what wielded that chain. It couldn’t have been the woman. I’m guessing a marauder dressed in multiple furs, wearing war paint. But I’m not even convinced of that.”
Mumfred, taller than everyone except Otto, addressed the young lords. “I believe the baron would impale me if I allowed you two to set foot from this castle until we have a better handle on things. So you’re staying here. And the baron must be told.”
Twelfth Krampus Night Page 4
