Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  “I have made my decision,” the baron rumbled.

  The hunting party took place a week later, on the occasion of Gregory’s birthday. Though he had relented, the baron was leaving nothing to chance. A retinue of men-at-arms and bowmen, as well as Gilles and his company of knights and squires, all accompanied the noblemen down into the forest. Also, for his magical abilities only, the old bore Tertullion was carried on a litter with the party, his white, oval face flushed with the wine he drank.

  They rode away from the shadow of the Chambourt, to an area where direct sunlight broke through the canopy of leaves. Riding between Gilles and his father, Gregory jabbered with excitement.

  “Will we hunt boar, father?”

  “Yes,” the baron said. “With the lance.”

  The boy turned to Gilles. “And deer? I would like to test my archery skills on a moving target. Will we hunt deer?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Sir Gilles said with a laugh. He flashed a smile across at the baron, and was pleased to see that he shared his good humour.

  Tertullion, his goblet refreshed by a servant-girl, bobbed alongside on his cushion.

  “I must say, my lord,” he slurred, “that the effect of this hunting party upon the young prince, already a fine figure of burgeoning manhood, can only be beneficial.” He raised his drink. “A capital idea.”

  It was to be the last wrong thing he said. The arrow entered through his eyeball, cracked his skull apart, and left through the back of his head.

  He was but the first.

  “Beastmen!” cried one of the soldiers from the front. Horses whinnied as a volley of arrows came from the trees. Screams. The thud of arrowheads on shields.

  Pulling the reins of his steed in tight, Sir Gilles quickly assessed the situation. Arrows were coming from all around. They were surrounded. He spurred his house through the confusion of panicked noblemen, to the men-at-arms.

  “Form up! Form up!” he yelled. “Shields high!”

  At his word the bowmen scurried forward, taking up places behind the pikes. They fired a volley into the trees. Bestial cries of their victims rang out. Pulling his visor down, Gilles peered into the murk. The shadows moved; suggestions of horns and hooves, tentacles and twisted, Chaos-tainted limbs. This was no opportunist beastman raid, he realised. They were well organised. And there were hundreds of them.

  Screaming in their foul, ululating tongue, the enemy burst forth from the trees. Wave after wave fell to the bow and the pike, but each time a gap was left. Under Gilles’ command, the soldiers shored up, but the protective circle was getting ever smaller. And the arrows kept coming from all around.

  Gilles looked across at Gregory. To the boy’s credit he showed no fear. His face, as he kept close to his father, was fixed with a look of stoic determination. He was calm. He had his wits. He would make a fine warrior.

  A clamour of clashing armour from one side of the circle announced another attack. The beastmen were concentrating on one area. They hacked at it, burst through, splintering shields and cleaving skulls, cutting down bowmen. They were in.

  His horse rising onto its hind-legs, Gilles raised his sword skywards, gave a rallying cry and went to join the fray. An arrow found a gap in his mount’s armour-plating, piercing its side. It fell sideways. Unable to free his foot from his stirrups in time, Gilles went with it.

  He heard the crunch as his leg dislocated. His sword snapped in two as it connected with a rock. Fighting against the pain, Gilles was unaware of the beastman, a stocky hunchback with the head of bull, standing over him with a club. Raining blow after blow against his armour, it beat him into the blackness.

  Gilles awoke to find himself bound. He had been stripped of his armour and was lying on a slab of stone, his arms and legs pinioned by ropes. He was covered in bruises. Blood had dried over his head. His broken leg was numb and would not move. From a torch set on the wall, he could see that he was in some sort of cave. The vicious points of stalactites jutted out of the darkness above him.

  “Sir Gilles?” a voice called. It was hoarse as though from sobbing.

  “Gregory?”

  Gilles craned his head, wincing against the pain. The lad, tied to another slab of rock, appeared unharmed. He was trembling, his face once again that of a frightened boy.

  A man entered the room. Towering, his head almost touching the jagged roof, Sir Gilles recognised him of old. He had grown his long hair back. The witch.

  He lowered his disfigured face, his hair brushing against Sir Gilles’ face. He hissed, opening his tongueless mouth, a string of saliva winding its way down onto the knight’s forehead. Sir Gilles gazed defiantly upon the witch, unflinching.

  The witch stood up, a rattling, gurgling laugh coming from his throat. He clicked his fingers. Two beastmen lumbered in, hooves clattering on the rock, and took Gregory up from his slab. He started to cry, kicking uselessly against them as they took him from the cave.

  “Where are you taking him?” Gilles cried out. “I warn you now, witch! Do not harm that boy!”

  The witch stood in the centre of the room, facing Sir Gilles. He pulled out a knife. Wide-bladed and so sharp its edges shone, it was inscribed with the eldritch signs of the witch’s evil master. He held it above his head in both hands, stumps knotting with the fingers that remained, blade facing the floor. He brought it down, plunging it into an imaginary victim. His body shook with deranged, guttural laughter.

  The witch strode from the room, dagger at the ready. Desperately, Sir Gilles began to struggle against his bonds.

  In the forest, the cries of the wounded and dying filled the twilight. Soldiers busied themselves digging graves for the dead men. A pyre was stacked high with slaughtered horses, the stench of burning meat all pervading. Subdued and utterly defeated, the men performed their grim duties like automatons. None of them spoke of the likely fates of those men whose bodies could not be found.

  Amidst this pitiful scene, surrounded by a circle of troops, the baron sat on a rock, staring into space, his grief by now impenetrable.

  “The head-count has been completed, my lord,” the sergeant-at-arms said quietly.

  Barely registering the man’s presence, the baron waved a cursory hand at him to continue.

  “Upon the field are the bodies of thirty men, five of them of name. Ten more are severely wounded and are not expected to live long.”

  The baron shuddered, closing his eyes slowly. It was all his fault.

  “There is one more disturbing detail,” the sergeant went on. “As well as your son and Sir Gilles, we could not find the bodies of a further ten retainers. From the testimony of the men, confused by the chaos of battle though it is, they appear to have been taken away alive.”

  “But why?” the baron demanded, as much of the darkening forest as the sergeant.

  A horse came galloping from the forest, carrying on its back one of the baron’s scouts. The man pulled his mount to a halt and dismounted. He stood, panting, trying to find his voice, sweat dripping from his head.

  “My lord,” he said, breathlessly. “My lord, I think I have found them!”

  Sitting up on the slab, Sir Gilles untied the last of the bonds around his feet. He swung round and planted his good foot on the cave floor. Wincing, he limped up the rough slope in the direction the witch had taken. Supporting himself on the limestone wall, he looked down into another chamber, beyond which could be seen a moonlit clearing in the forest. A bonfire was burning and the unholy mutterings of the beastmen could be heard. Somewhere, drums were being pounded.

  Sir Gilles crept out of the cave, hoping that the night and the flickering shadows of the fire would provide enough cover to prevent his detection. It was then he heard the first scream.

  Squinting in the darkness, Sir Gilles could make out a terrible sight.

  With several flat-topped stones arranged around him in a circle, each with one of the baron’s soldiers lying upon it, the witch stood in his robes, his knife in one hand, a severed head i
n the other. Blood trickled down his arm, glistening in the flames. He moved on to his next victim.

  Issuing a silent prayer to the Lady, Sir Gilles called upon his last reserves of strength and courage and took action. He deftly broke the neck of the nearest beastman, took its weapon—a rusted broadsword—and went to work.

  Swinging rhythmically, lopping off heads, opening throats, he hobbled forward, screaming out the ancient battle-cries of his order. The beastmen, drunk and distracted by the blood-letting ceremony, were slow to react. And Sir Gilles had his righteous anger on his side. Wounded though he was, he was unstoppable.

  More screams rang out as the witch continued to add new heads to the pile at his feet.

  Sir Gilles was by now on the other side of the bonfire and could see the witch and his unholy ritual clearly now. The prince was tied to a tree, slumped unconscious, arms above his head and feet crossed over like a martyr of old. The witch was working on the last of the men. The knife, blunted on the other victims, hacked laboriously through windpipe and bone, sending blood rising through the darkness. Occupied with fending off beastmen, Gilles could only listen helplessly to the strangulated cries of the man’s prolonged agony.

  Standing back, the last of the heads in his hands, the witch held both arms aloft, the power of his sacrifices flowing through him. He moved towards Gregory.

  A beastman came out of the darkness at Sir Gilles, its large hooves kicking up cinders and dead twigs. One arm was a lashing tentacle, the other a thick, almost-human arm, wielding a large club. Its head was that of a horse. Deep-set eyes glowed with rage. Its mouth was crowded with needle-sharp teeth. Expertly side-stepping Sir Gilles’ first lunge, it retaliated with an unexpectedly swift upswing that caught the knight in the stomach. Winded, he staggered backwards. The beastman leapt at him.

  Beyond the horse-creature, Sir Gilles could see that the witch had not yet harmed Gregory. He stood instead by the tree, freeing Gregory from his bonds, no doubt in preparation for moving him to one of the plinths.

  Blocking club with sword, Sir Gilles pulled his arm back ready to punch, but found it held fast by the tentacle. The beast dropped the club and gripped the knight’s sword arm instead. Its strength was too great. Sir Gilles felt the blood fleeing his fingers. He dropped his weapon.

  A cracking noise. The beastman let its lower jaw dislocate like a snake’s, the bone hanging loose in stretching skin. The teeth, coated in spittle, glistened in the flames.

  Sir Gilles tried to struggle but the beast held him fast. He prayed to the Lady. Not this way. Not like this.

  With a roar the horse-head sank its teeth into his neck and bit down hard. Then stopped.

  The tentacle uncoiled itself, and the fingers around his sword arm went slack. The beastman pitched forward, a dead weight.

  Scrabbling back out from under the monstrosity, one hand to his neck to stem the flow of blood, Sir Gilles saw that an arrow protruded from the back of the creature’s neck, lost in the mane.

  Not having time to question his good fortune, and losing blood fast, Sir Gilles drew on the last reserves of strength and pounded across to the witch.

  Lowering Gregory to the ground, the fiend did not see him.

  Gilles knocked him to the side, rolled over with him, pinned him to the ground. One punch destroyed his nose.

  Choking on blood that flowed down his throat, the witch stared up at the Grail Knight. His eyes were wild with shock and, though Sir Gilles dare not think it, what looked like fear.

  Starting to lose consciousness, Sir Gilles brought his fist down once again. The witch went limp.

  More arrows flew out of the darkness, bringing beastmen down as they closed in on Sir Gilles. The others stopped to sniff the air.

  Clambering off the witch, Sir Gilles went to Gregory. Felt for a pulse. The boy still lived.

  The beastmen started baying in alarm. A crashing of undergrowth. Horses’ hooves. The clank of armour. The glint of weapons in the flames. The baron had arrived.

  The slaughter was great. Not a beastman was permitted to live. Though the fire burnt still in the centre of the clearing, the baron ordered that their bodies should be left to rot, their heads put upon spikes as a warning to others of their kind. To prevent desecration, the bodies of the ten sacrificed soldiers were taken back to the Chambourt, together with the witch. For him, the flames awaited.

  It was a stark, cold morning. The entire town was assembled outside the castle grounds. For a week now, the pyre that would claim the life of the witch had been under construction. Every household had contributed wood. Many trees had been felled. It towered above the crowd, in competition with the castle itself, a man-made cousin to the peaks beyond. A scaffold had been built around it, enabling the chaos-worshipping fiend to be marched up to the stake at the summit.

  Having been put to the torture for the entire time his execution was being prepared, he was at last a broken figure. Pale and hunched, head scabbed over where his hair had been burnt off in a bucket of hot coals, he stumbled upwards, each step an agony. From a platform at the base of the pyre, the baron noted with grim satisfaction that the witch’s eyes, where defiance had burned so long, now seemed confused and bovine.

  “Help me to the window, Gregory,” Sir Gilles said in a faint voice. “I wish to watch the monster’s final moments.”

  Pale, drawn and confined to his bed, the Grail Knight’s health had deteriorated since his ordeal. His leg had not set well and the bite mark, through which he had lost a lot of blood, was not healing satisfactorily. That morning, Blampel, the old fool, had muttered something indistinct about a possible infection.

  In contrast, Gregory, his cheeks ruddy with the flush of youth, was as sturdy as ever before.

  He lifted the old retainer from his bed and supported him while he hobbled on his broken leg to the window. Sir Gilles rested himself against the sill, his breathing shallow, his thoughts scattered and vague. If this was a taste of old age, he said to himself, then he prayed that his end would not be long in coming.

  Tapestries lifted in the wind as Gregory opened the windows. A low rumble of conversation drifted upwards from the crowd. The occasional cry of a hawker advertising his wares.

  The window was level with the top of the pyre, towards which the crippled figure was being marched. The gaoler tied the witch to the stake and made his way back down the steps.

  Sir Gilles stared, unblinking, at his hated enemy.

  The monster strained forward from the stake, feebly struggling, the filth on his face streaked with tears. A distressed shrieking came from his empty mouth. He seemed more like a child than a man.

  The gaoler handed the baron a flaming brand. All chatter in the crowd died. The witch was screaming down at the baron, neck fully outstretched, eyes bulging, demented. Though his words could not be understood, it was clear he was pleading for mercy. At last, thought the baron. At last.

  Making sure he maintained eye contact with his enemy, the baron slowly put the torch at the base of the pyre.

  With a crackle of dry tinder, the hungry flames leapt up.

  At the sight of the orange glow far beneath him, the witch hysterically started to repeat the same word over and over.

  The same word, over and over… Sir Gilles felt the hairs on the back of his neck and arms bristle. A prickling sensation came to his face. The word. The word sounded like—

  He turned to look at Gregory. He stood, arms folded, impassively surveying the grim scene. His mouth was curled into a sneering smile. Sir Gilles started to shake.

  The wind brought the scent of burning flesh into the room. Arms still folded, Gregory waved a dismissive hand at the knight. “Die,” he commanded.

  The flames licked up. The baron forced himself to keep his eyes on the witch. The fire seared his flesh now, billowing through his clothes. Still he screamed out the same word, rasping and harsh.

  Sir Gilles staggered back from the window. He dropped to his knees. Felt the air fleeing his lungs. A sharp p
ain in his head. Tears in his eyes. Blood in his mouth.

  Deadly malice flashing in his eyes, Gregory paced around him in a circle.

  “Old fool. You did not think to question the nature, the purpose of the ceremony.” The Grail Knight started to shake.

  “The ceremony, the deaths of those ten men, wasn’t merely to satisfy my blood-lust. It had a purpose.”

  “No…” Sir Gilles croaked. “No…”

  “That night, by the unholy power of my dark master I took the body of the baron’s son.” The man that called himself Gregory came close to Sir Gilles’ ear. “And bequeathed him mine.”

  Outside, the screaming had stopped. Framed by the small window, Sir Gilles could see all that remained of the witch’s body, a column of black smoke.

  The darkness of death crowding in on his mind, Sir Gilles locked his hands together in desperate prayer. He knew now what the word had been.

  It was over. The people were still silent, awe-struck by the terrible sight they had witnessed. The flames roared on, hungrily consuming the last of the wood.

  Suddenly exhausted, the baron let his head drop. The acrid smoke stung his eyes. He moved towards the edge of the platform, his guards stepping aside to allow him onto the steps.

  The crowd cheered him as he walked, but he barely heard it. An inexplicable sorrow hung heavily on his heart. He cared nothing for his land, nor his faithful subjects. Only one thing mattered to him now. His son, his heir: Gregory.

  Watching the dead knight, his aged face contorted with the anguish of his final moments, the witch’s eyes flashed with triumph.

  The sound of the baron’s approaching footsteps on the cold stone echoed along the corridor.

  Transforming Gregory’s features into a suitable mask of sorrow, the witch opened the door and fell into his father’s arms.