Devil of the 22nd

by Richard Nell

  He shoved a clump of the foul ooze in his mouth, embracing the sour, awful taste without letting his mind wander, without pretending it away, accepting the horror with open eyes. He chewed.

  * * *

  “Just lift him. Get him up! There’s more coming.”

  Men’s voices struck Kurt’s ears and temples like hammers. He covered them with his bloody hands and maybe screamed, or wailed, as even the sound of flesh on flesh scraped like iron on rock.

  “Sir? Are you alright? Sir?”

  ‘Hello, Other Kurt. Yes, I see you. You can’t hide from me now.’

  Kurt blinked and saw red eyes and jagged fangs in the darkness. He looked at Clara and saw maggots popping from festering sores on her face, exploding out of her lip. He looked at his men and saw walking corpses, shuffling like broken bodies held upright with strings. He looked right at them, and laughed.

  “Do you think that frightens me, demon?”

  The sound of his own voice seemed to shatter his skull. The world darkened as he staggered into his men’s arms, and he saw only dirt and rock as it dragged along beneath him.

  Iron and stone and flesh clashed as men fought and died. Kurt felt like he was dying, too, like he’d drunk two bottles of whiskey and then smashed the bottles and swallowed the broken shards.

  “God damn maniac. Damnit Kurt snap out of it, you’ve god damn done it this time.”

  Kurt laughed. Yes, yes he had, and yes he was.

  “Temple clear?”

  “Is for now, Captain. Twenty corpses.”

  “Twenty corpses,” Kurt repeated like an insolent child, then laughed again, knowing it was madness but unable to stop it.

  “The colonel…?”

  “Is recovering. Find a damn cart up top. We’ve got gold to carry, and probably him.”

  Rock and stone became open air. I’m falling, they’ve dropped me from a cliff. I can fly!

  Kurt waved his limbs like wings, then he was in new arms and lifting and breathing air that smelled less foul.

  “He won’t survive.” Clara’s voice. “And when he dies, that creature is going to rip through his body and slaughter us all. It can’t be killed.”

  Flesh slapped against flesh and the world spun, clouds ringed with little white fangs, red eyes glaring from their centers.

  “If he dies, you die. Clear?”

  Kurt whimpered, or maybe someone else did. Then someone must have chopped off his legs and replaced them with wheels, and he rolled across black, scorched earth upside down.

  ‘You’ve been very bad, Other Kurt. So much death. Very bad.’

  Kurt the Cart laughed. He’d never doubted it. And they’d promoted him, hadn’t they? Course they had. He was god damn Kurt Val Claus. He earned that name, wasn’t born with it like the sons of royals with their silver spoons. He killed that son of a bitch Vinck the Miller when he was twelve for hurting his sister, hadn’t he? Yes, he had. And he’d escaped the noose. And he’d been a soldier and survived when all the other snot-nosed brats his age were used for arrow-bait or bum-boys or else just starved. He’d saved a bloody duke. He’d taken Helvati ridge, and now Pyne valley. He’d led two thousand men beyond empire and built bridges and walls and formed a band of killers he’d gamble against the hardest men on earth.

  At these memories the other voice in Kurt’s mind reduced, or maybe fell, but still yelled up at him as if from the dark pit from whence it sprung.

  ‘They won’t help you. Not against me. You’re alone, here. You’re all alone.’

  “Captain!”

  Kurt the Cart tried to rise to non-existent elbows and see the world.

  “Rest Old Man, we’ll carry you.”

  Kurt laughed.

  “Hear that, demon? Not alone. Not yet. Even if they hate me.”

  As Kurt said the words he found he wished they weren’t true. But his masks were gone or trapped or useless, and he wept at the injustice—at the misery of broken men, bound together by blood and death. He blinked away the shield of tears, and saw Harmon staring, almost amused.

  “Aye. Maybe we hate you. But you’re ours and we’re yours and we’ll all die together.” His voice softened. “In hell maybe we throw ourselves a little coup, eh Old Man? Change the management.”

  Kurt saw the Captain’s devil grin—the familiar reflection in his empty, mad eyes. He howled and raved and spit down the well of his mind as the clouds above became trees with twisted faces.

  “Hear that, creature?” Kurt whispered. “We’re all going to hell together. Let’s see which one of us burns.”

  Chapter 10

  By the time they reached the river, Kurt could stand.

  “Are you alright?”

  He gave his boots some weight and the earth felt solid as iron.

  “Yes.” He licked his lips and tasted blood, then almost retched as he tasted the sour, awful stink of the pit and dried demon crusted on his face.

  “You look terrible.”

  Kurt grunted and blinked and wiggled his fingers and toes, nearly gasping as pain flared in his right arm.

  ‘I did that. I hope it rots.’

  Kurt sighed and rubbed his eyes with his fists. He squinted and tried to observe his surroundings with the minimum of sight and agony.

  Soldiers were busy ferrying gold across the river, others tended to wounded men. Kurt counted twelve, most of whom could walk, or at least hobble. The healthy had apparently stolen the original imperial cart from the temple and loaded it with their dead and plunder.

  “So we made it.”

  Harmon smirked, then dropped it. “We did. Though the fuckers chased us. Celtus and his men met us halfway, otherwise things might have been a little grim.”

  Kurt nodded and opened his mouth to ask about Clara, then saw her sitting on the ground. Harmon had tied her hands behind her back and left a purple welt to spread across her cheek. She stared, maybe half curious, half enraged.

  “Well at least there’s no maggots in your face,” Kurt said, mostly to himself. She didn’t respond. Harmon cleared his throat.

  “What in God’s name was that thing, Old Man? You said we’d find an animal. You said keep her away from it, so we did. But why the hell did you, er…eat it?”

  “I’ll explain.” Kurt winced and put a hand to his fragile head. “When we’re in camp.”

  For the moment he sat on a fallen tree and tried not to vomit. He waited on the riverbank with the others, hoping to regain his senses fully before stepping on the shaky raft. But no matter how long he waited he still felt tired and weak, and eventually let the others paddle and pull him across. The men cheered him and the veterans on the other side, nearly shattering his skull with the sound.

  He raised a bloody arm in submission, and the men left him alone long enough for a surgeon to see to his wounds. The man raised an eyebrow at the strange cuts. Kurt shrugged.

  Together the war party marched back to the valley in fine spirits and with no sign of the Helvati.

  In total they’d been gone a week, though to Kurt it felt more like years. Once or twice on the march he tried to speak to the still-bound Miss Lehmann. But she ignored him, save to clench her jaw and say “It will kill you, or drive you mad,” before turning to stone.

  So far, the latter seemed more likely.

  ‘Where are we going? I don’t like it here. You stink. It’s cold and the sky is too wide.’

  Kurt’s ‘creature’ never seemed to shut up. In fact after the bluster and threats and struggle for his mind—which Kurt felt entirely confident he’d won—the ‘demon’ sounded very much like a scared, lost, whiny child.

  He tried ‘thinking’ to it, which failed, but it could clearly hear his words when he spoke.

  “Shut up for God’s sake, my head is pounding.”

  ‘Good. I hope you die.’

  “Join the club.”

  “Sir?”

  Kurt waved in dismissal at the soldier who’d heard him, then hopped off the cart to walk. Despite the wounde
d and difficulty moving the heavy gold-cart through roadless field, they’d made swift progress. The two-hundred odd soldiers marched in loose formation, Celtus and his scouts watching their flanks and rear, Kurt’s cavalry in the center. The valley was close, and Kurt decided it would be better to enter on his feet.

  Though they’d gone South for two straight days he could still smell smoke. Whether this was in the air or burned in his nostrils he didn’t know. He’d scrubbed his face raw and washed his mouth a hundred times at the second river, too, yet still he could taste the foulness of the Helvati pit.

  ‘It lives in you, you can’t wash it away.’

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  The demon gurgled and perhaps laughed.

  Guards hailed Kurt and his men at the edge of the valley. The vanguard waved, then exchanged comments about the guardsmen’s mothers, and soon soldiers were calling and beating drums to welcome them home.

  The two days of walking had at least dimmed Kurt’s headache. He stood in the front with Harmon and led the march to the muster field for counting and dismissal, smiling as he saw bare-backed soldiers toiling at the outline of new walls and towers. They’d also begun digging another well, built a new pen for animals, and started a fence around the houses.

  At least a thousand camp followers now swarmed the old Helvati village. They’d begun setting up carts and stalls as make-shift shops, stacking goods into a sort of bazaar in the center of the burgeoning town. Women and children moved freely amongst the houses, carrying water or supplies and turning savage shacks into Keevish homes. Shepherds walked their sheep and goats along the edges of the valley. Men chopped and stacked lumber at the forest edge with steady strokes as they sang.

  Kurt glanced at Clara, who gaped at it all with her mouth slightly open. He smiled.

  “Amazing what men can do when someone actually makes a bloody decision, isn’t it?”

  He meant this purely as a taunt, but she glanced at him, and for a moment he swore he saw an ounce of agreement. With perhaps a small twinge of confusion, and maybe disappointment, he ignored this and took his men home.

  “Three casualties, ten minor wounds,” Adalard read from his sheet, “not counting the men lost at the river.”

  Kurt nodded, and raised a brow.

  “Have you been drilling the heavy infantry?”

  “Yes, sir.” The eternally expressionless quartermaster winced, and cleared his throat, but said nothing.

  “Good. Well. Dismissed.”

  Adalard clearly heard him but remained still, his expression strange. Kurt had known the man near a decade but couldn’t quite read him, nor was he a man who hesitated to speak his mind.

  “May I just say, sir,” he said at last, as if struggling with each word, “it’s good to have you home. It makes my job considerably easier.”

  Kurt blinked and stared at the hard, icicle of a man, who had never once in ten years uttered a kind word.

  “Well. Thank you. Dismissed.” Kurt found any other words impossible, and managed only to stare as ‘Larder’ stomped in salute and walked away.

  ‘You should be nicer, our smell works better.’

  Kurt blinked and checked to see no one was in earshot.

  “What the hell are you on about?”

  ‘Our Kurt-smell. Our…boon. Our magic. Your man-words are terrible—your language is unclear and nonsensical. Our Gift. Yes? Our strength. Our mark.’

  Kurt scratched at his side and froze, then unbuttoned his uniform. The ink he’d traced haphazardly had thickened and deepened into his flesh, the skin around it turned red as if burned.

  “You’re telling me…that demons like you really do give magic powers, and yours…is to smell nice?

  ‘Yes, very nice. Very useful. You are welcome.’

  Kurt blinked repeatedly then closed his eyes.

  “Creature, I am told knights of Vandia grow so strong they can throw horses, and that they live forever. And you do what, you make people like me?”

  ‘Yes. Sometimes. What is horses? Men bring us meat and nice things now, yes? We are hungry.’

  “No I am hungry.”

  Actually the thought of food made Kurt sick. He dropped into one of the plain, wooden chairs by his field tent and wished he had the stomach for brandy. For a moment he cursed his luck and stupidity and wondered how the hell he’d get rid of this thing. Then he steadied himself, and thought back to the pit. He considered Harmon and his concern over Kurt’s wounded body; he thought of Clara’s little break in resolve; he saw the men as their hard eyes softened ever so slightly as they looked on him, and now the strange, complimentary words of Adalard.

  “Dear God.” Kurt took a breath. “How does it work, demon? Do I just..speak with them? Is it all the time?”

  ‘Meat first, questions later.’

  “I’ll eat a whole cow if you like, for God’s sake. Just tell me how it works.”

  ‘Two whole cows. And what is cow? Just be nice to man-things, Other Kurt. Touch them, yes? Soothe them. Heart-fire grows but must be kept warm. It must be fed. Just like us!’

  Kurt leaned back and tried to understand, to believe. He felt no different save for his sickness and injuries—and of course the insane voice rambling in his mind. But that needn’t be some demon living inside him, that could just be madness. But no. I feel it. And why should madness strike precisely as I eat the flesh of that…thing. And what the hell was it if not a demon?

  No. He knew he now lived in a world where magical creatures existed, it would just take time to sink in. No man would accept it so easily, embrace it so easily, he thought. He would need time to experiment, to watch and understand, to test the limits.

  With a groan he rose and wandered towards his messengers, asking Rald to find him pork, venison, and maybe even beef if they had any. As the competent young man turned to go, Kurt stopped him, and tried a new, friendlier mask. He put a hand to the boy’s shoulder.

  “Private, I just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate it.”

  He meant to say more but found the mask strange and alien. He watched the boy’s eyes. The pupils flit back and forth, searching, perhaps for mockery. Then a trace of wetness grew and hung ready to spill from the lids before Rald nodded.

  “It’s my pleasure, sir, my great honor.”

  With that he turned and shook his head once, then damn near sprinted as he shouted for Kurt’s supper, clapping his hands and rallying the other men to race out as if the camp were on fire.

  “Huh.”

  Kurt watched them all scurry, then did his best to hide his limp as he wandered home. He thanked his bodyguards and patted their backs, too, and they straightened and gripped their swords as if they meant to kill right there.

  Feeling tired and weak Kurt at last settled into the dead Helvati shaman’s only rickety chair and slept, waking perhaps in an hour to a plate of assorted meat set out before him. He nearly vomited, but then the feeling passed and replaced by a hunger stronger than he’d never known. He shoved in handfuls and closed his eyes as he chewed, for a moment utterly content, utterly satisfied.

  ‘Yes, we like cows. Have men bring more. Try other thing, yes there! That one next.’

  Kurt felt what the demon meant and obeyed, and then maybe felt the demon’s pleasure, too. It seemed almost separate and distinct from his own, yet not intrusive or harmful—like a new sense of touch, or a new organ.

  “Is this all you care about? All you want?” He asked with his mouth full of food. In the dark, quiet solitude of his home he tried to block out the world and listen, or maybe feel, or at least perceive the creature. He closed his eyes and paid attention only to the feeling of his body.

  ‘Yes. And no. With Other Kurt we like winning now, maybe. Yes. Meat, and winning.’

  Kurt smiled, relaxing a little. He thought maybe he could actually feel the demon, if he tried—like a second stomach, lodged snugly next to the other.

  “Demon,” he chewed, and swallowed,
trying to feel the second stomach fill. “I know you don’t want to be here, and that you want to kill me. But barring that, I think we’re going to get along fine.”

  * * *

  “What do you want?”

  Kurt met Clara’s glare with a smile. He had cleaned his faded uniform, even shining the buttons and boots and greasing his short hair. He pulled her chair out from the table.

  “The men gave you a house, and some privacy?”

  She paused, but eventually stepped forward.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  It was evening now and Kurt had set out candles to light the officer’s hall. Several covered plates sat on the table filled with every vegetable and meat the camp could currently provide, though for now she would have to settle with potatoes instead of bread.

  “Please.” He gestured. She stared and clearly considered just turning around and walking out. But after a pause, she sat. He let his fingers touch her shoulders as he stepped around the table opposite to join her. “I realize I’ve not been…the most welcoming host.”

  She glared.

  “Yes, well,” he cleared his throat, “perhaps that’s not quite strong enough. I’ll speak plainly. I didn’t trust you, and I should have, but it’s been a long time since I trusted anyone. I took this creature of yours and I didn’t understand what I was doing. I’m afraid you’re right, that it will be my undoing. I wish I hadn’t and wish I’d done many things differently. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. And I’m sorry.”

  He swallowed, as if afraid, eyes downcast and repentant. Perhaps I should learn how to cry.

  When at last he looked up from the table he saw the same, icy glare. But, he believed, yes there, the forehead, the softening lines!—perhaps it was melting. By God, he thought, trying not to show it, incredible. She hates me, she despises me, no question, and yet…

  He cleared his throat.

  “The truth is, I’m a patriot. I’m an Emperor’s man.” When she didn’t spit in his face outright, he almost laughed. “If tomorrow the Emperor sent for me and my men and told us to help him re-claim his lands from usurpers, we would march, I swear to God. All the way to hell, Ms. Lehmann…Clara.”