Chivalry

by Gavin G. Smith

  It seemed the priests knew well enough when to be quiet.

  “Take them back to the bodypits. They can climb out together.”

  Clawed fingers grabbed Thornto and dragged him away. He was joined by the still-pleading Gritcham.

  Four:

  The Ponce

  Thornto was only peripherally aware of a sobbing Gritcham climbing up the pile of bodies behind him. He wasn’t sure why the grisly ascent, the feel of rotting flesh underhand, of splintering bones underfoot, no longer bothered him. He wondered if it was the burning pain he still felt, though even that was now not at the forefront of his mind. He wondered if it was the alchemical process that he’d undergone, the elixirs that Gritcham had put into his body, or simply the fact that he’d died. There was little to be afraid of now. Any sense of disgust seemed irrelevant. The more he thought about it the more the Red Earl kept on swimming to the forefront of his mind.

  It was night when Thornto’s gore-encrusted fingers clutched the mud of the surface. Whether it was the same night he’d been flung into the bodypits or another, he did not know. The wagons that brought the bodies were parked close by. The landscape was still littered with the dead. The surface carrion eaters – wolves, ravens and other corvidae – were feasting before the dead were fed to the ghouls. There were other scavengers present as well, of the human variety. He saw them moving amongst the thick clouds of flies, steering clear of the wolves as they looked for any loot that the Iron Island soldiers had missed.

  Naked and filthy, Thornto stood in the moonlight surveying the scene. A nearby scavenger, who had seen him crawl from the bodypit backed away from him and fled when Gritcham appeared.

  “Excuse me,” the ghoul asked. Thornto turned to look at him. “I do not wish to fall into the hands of your church. Would you kill me?”

  It was an enticing offer. The ghoul had prolonged his suffering by bringing him back to life but Thornto found he held no anger towards the pathetic creature.

  “You’re an alchemist?” Thornto asked. His voice was that of a stranger but he found he was getting used to it.

  “I am... I was a necrologist...”

  “But you understand alchemy? The elixirs you put in me?” Thornto persisted.

  Gritcham nodded.

  “Does that mean you understand other chemicals? Poisons, black powder, that sort of thing?”

  “Well, to a degree...” Gritcham started.

  “You’re going to help me. Advise me on such things and then, once I am finished, I will destroy you.”

  The ghoul swallowed. The fear on Gritcham’s face looked out of place on such a strange and frightening creature.

  “Look,” the ghoul said, mastering himself enough to speak, “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “You eat people.”

  “No, we eat what’s left once the people have departed. We are not a cruel...”

  Now Thornto’s anger flared and he stepped forward, grabbing Gritcham by the neck and pushing him back until the ghoul was precariously balanced over the bodypit.

  “Then why do I still walk?” Thornto demanded. He felt Gritcham’s bony claws on his skin as the ghoul grabbed at his arm. Down below he heard the faint yipping of ghouls communicating in their own language.

  “I...” the ghoul started but then closed his maw.

  “Don’t tell me about cruelty. If you want to be destroyed then return to your own people.”

  The fear seemed to drain out of Gritcham. He went limp and Thornto almost lost his grip.

  “There is nothing left when the Charnel God consumes you,” the ghoul told him.

  Thornto dragged him back from the edge of the bodypit, pulling the ghoul close.

  “The people I am going to hurt are very bad people,” he whispered.

  Gritcham just nodded.

  Thornto let him go and turned back to the field of dead. It was time to do his own scavenging.

  Even the wolves had scattered at his approach. His trews were leather, taken from the body of a dead man-at-arms. Finding a not too-heavily soiled tunic hadn’t been difficult, a jack more so, though both could do with attention from a needle and thread. He was surprised at managing to find a half decent pair of boots, he got lucky with an old leather coat, but his greatest fortune was finding a hauberk on a Harlanian soldier that just about fit him. Though the difficulty he had in removing the hauberk from the corpse perhaps explained why it hadn’t already been looted. He had been less lucky with weapons. They were too easy to steal. All he had found were a pair of matching daggers that had been overlooked.

  The other scavengers on the field surrounding the bodypit had watched him warily as he went about his business. He could read the resentment in the way they stood and the looks they gave him, even in the darkness. Like the wolves they seemed to instinctively know to give him a wide berth. Ragged, hollow eyed, many of them showing the signs of violence themselves, Thornto guessed they were the wretched from Maranges. The beggars, the poorest of the poor. They were trying to eke what they could from the disaster that had befallen their city. Their fear of him was encouraged by Gritcham’s feeding, the sound of which would have turned Thornto’s stomach not that long ago.

  “Stop that!” Thornto snapped. Red maw, Gritcham turned to look up him from the corpse he was bent over.

  “I have to eat,” Gritcham told him. His voice was different when he fed. It felt like interrupting a wild animal. Thornto had to resist the urge to move his hands to the hilts of his newly found daggers.

  “I will feed you all the dead you can eat,” Thornto promised his companion. Then he turned and started walking towards the city.

  “How are we going to get into the city?” Gritcham asked again as they approached the Western Gate. Thornto ignored him. The gate was open, as he had hoped. It was clear that he hadn’t spent that much time in the bodypits. The Iron Island forces were still camped to the south of Maranges. He reasoned there would be an amount of time before the commanders of the army could regain control of the troops. The gate would be open so that the attackers could return to camp once they had exhausted their revelry at the expense of the city’s inhabitants. Besides, the last he’d heard there wasn’t a Harlanian army with ten leagues of here, and that one was in retreat. He was also gambling that the Red Companies would still be about their excesses. If they were back in the camp it would make his job that much more difficult.

  Maranges was a mass of tightly packed buildings, mostly made of wood, though some of stone. Narrow cobbled streets coiled their way up the steep hill the city was built on. The top of the hill was crowned by the spiked outlines of the Cathedral of Light and the smaller citadel next to it. Having seen the way the conquering army had behaved, and how tightly packed together the wooden houses were, Thornto was actually quite surprised that the whole city hadn’t been burned to the ground.

  “Who goes there?” one of the two sentries said as Thornto and Gritcham approached the gatehouse.

  “Sir Thornto Jenness of the Crimson Companies and companion,” he told them. He didn’t want to use that name. The earl had proven that the Sir was a joke. The name felt as if it belonged to someone else, though mention of the Crimson Companies tended to inspire respect. He could feel Gritcham’s eyes on him, the ghoul’s fear tangible.

  The sentries didn’t entirely relax as he approached but it was clear they weren’t taking their duties as seriously as they could. Thornto suspected they’d been drinking. Both the sentries wore mail and carried halberds. He could hear voices from inside the gatehouse. Laughter. He reckoned another three-to-five soldiers. This was not a prudent approach, but Thornto found he didn’t care.

  “Advance and be recognised,” the sentry who had spoken initially said, squinting into the gloom. Thornto hadn’t broken step. As he closed he saw the sentry’s eyes widen at his appearance. He tried to bring the halberd to bear but he’d let Thornto get too close. Thornto ran the last few steps and rammed one of the stolen daggers up into the sentry’s
stomach so hard it lifted the man off his feet. Sir Thornto had never been a weak man, years of constant martial practice had seen to that. It seemed, however, that if he wasn’t stronger, then his body was subject to different rules now.

  He left the dagger in his first victim and spun at the other sentry. The man hadn’t moved yet, presumably too shocked to react. Thornto had attacked the older more experienced-looking soldier first. If they were on sentry duty then chances are they hadn’t taken part in the assault on the city, and it was often a duty given to unseasoned troops. It was more luck than judgement that Thornto’s wild slash caught the young sentry in the face, slicing open his cheek. The man stumbled back, dropping his halberd, opening his newly enlarged, red mouth to scream. Thornto pounced on the boy like an animal and bore him to the ground, stabbing at his face, the steel blade sliding off bone until he found the sentry’s neck. The blade came down again and again until the man was still, and then continued to come down anyway.

  “Thornto!” Gritcham cried.

  Somehow, Thornto managed to stop stabbing the boy. He staggered to his feet and spun round, dripping knife in hand. The door to the gatehouse was open. Another soldier was staring at him. Thornto stared back. The soldier clearly didn’t like what he saw and the iron-studded door slammed shut to the sound of bolts locking. What Thornto couldn’t understand was why no alarm had been sounded. Did he look that terrifying?

  He looked at the mess he’d made. He knew this was no good. He could fight. He was skilled. His performance during the breach had been because he was afraid, he recognised that now. That naive, frightened boy had died at the earl’s hand. If he couldn’t kill coldly, however, if he couldn’t bring his skill to bear, if he murdered in frenzy, then his enemies would destroy him before he could destroy them. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing at all. He needed to find someone he could practice killing calmly.

  Gritcham was doubled over vomiting onto the muddy cobbles. Thornto turned to stare at him.

  “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,” the ghoul managed through strings of vomitus drool.

  “You eat dead people.”

  “That’s just food!”

  Thornto retrieved his other dagger, cleaned both weapons and sheathed them before picking up one of the halberds. Just over six foot-long, its sturdy wooden haft was studded with iron. There was a spike on one end, used to set the weapon. The other end was an axe head with a pick head on the reverse, and another much longer spike on the tip. It was mostly an infantry weapon but Thornto had been trained in its use.

  He turned and walked deeper into the city. Gritcham followed. A little while later he heard the alarums called by the frightened soldiers who’d locked themselves in the gatehouse.

  They had moved quickly through the narrow streets, choosing tangled alleys at random, going in the opposite direction to booted footsteps, the chink of mail and the shouted commands as the Iron Island troops searched for Thornto and Gritcham.

  “Where are we going?” Gritcham asked again. Thornto wasn’t sure he had a good answer.

  He found the knight riding lazily along one of the wider cobbled streets about halfway up the hill. Judging by his slumped posture, the knight was drunk. Thornto told himself that this had been one of the knights in the room with the Red Earl, but it didn’t really matter. He needed the practice. He needed to be calmer when he killed, and he had seen something he wanted protruding from the knight’s saddlebags.

  Thornto leaned against a wall in a narrow alley that connected to the cobbled street the knight was on. Patches of fog were drifting through the city now. He could feel rats running over his feet, hear them nibbling at the corpses he’d stepped over deeper in the cramped alley. Gritcham was a little way behind him. He hoped the ghoul had the sense not to start feeding here.

  Thornto waited until the knight drew level with him and then darted out of the alleyway. The horse reacted first. Like the wolves it sensed something unnatural, and despite being trained for war it shied away from Thornto. This woke the knight up but too late to do him much good. Thornto swung the halberd with all his might. The pick blade caught the knight just under the shoulder, more by luck than judgement, punctured the mail in the gaps between the knight's plate, and bit into flesh. The knight cried out and then again when Thornto yanked hard on the halberd, pulling the man out of his saddle to send him crashing to the cobbles.

  Thornto wrenched the halberd out of the knight, eliciting another scream. Checking his victim was still prone, Thornto made for the horse, but the destrier reared, forcing him back. Meanwhile the knight was trying to get to his feet, hampered by a now useless left arm. Thornto turned away from the horse.

  “Get the pistols!” he told Gritcham.

  “Wh... what..?” the ghoul asked.

  Thornto had reached the knight, who had managed to draw his sword and was leaning heavily on it to push himself to his feet. Thornto kicked him over.

  “The firelocks in his saddlebags!” he snapped. He had been taught to disdain firearms but that hardly seemed to matter now. He rammed the spike on the bottom of his halberd through the knight’s breastplate, the body within, and into the cobbles. The knight became still.

  “Was this what you were wanting?” Gritcham asked, appearing next to him holding the saddlebags. He heard the clatter of hooves on cobbles as the horse made its escape.

  “How did you....?” Thornto started.

  “The horse knew I didn’t want to eat him,” the ghoul explained.

  “I didn’t want to eat him.” Thornto said standing up.

  “Humans will eat anything when they’re desperate enough, including each other, something no ghoul will do.”

  Thornto took the saddlebags from Gritcham and checked inside. There were two of the firelock pistols, ball, powder, and of course match cord.

  “Do you know how to load these weapons?” Thornto asked.

  “I’m familiar with the principle...” Gritcham started.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes. Are you going to kill everyone you come across?”

  This gave him pause. He had to kill the sentries to get into the city. He had killed the knight to practice and because he’d wanted the firelocks, but this was unsustainable.

  Someone cleared his throat. Thornto looked up. They were surrounded and he hadn’t heard a thing. They looked every bit as wretched as those he’d seen scavenging in the field of bodies surrounding the bodypits. Only these peasants carried weapons and wore a patchwork of armour and only a few of them were much older than children.

  “You are making a lot of noise.” The speaker was a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten. He spoke the language of the Iron Island with a strong Harlanian accent. He had a mop of dirty blond hair sticking out from under a reinforced leather cap and carried a lead weighted cudgel. “Somebody wants to see you.”

  Thornto was aware how easy it would be to kill the children that were escorting Gritcham and himself through the tangle of alleyways. He knew that being prepared to kill children should bother him. That it made him little better than the Red Earl. They had, however, given him little cause so far and he was interested to see who wanted to speak to him.

  Jacamo, the blonde lad who had done all the talking so far, guided them back down the hill. Even the older, near-adult children listened to Jacamo. The buildings had become more and more dilapidated and the children had led them into a particularly ramshackle house only to find that it was a hive-like warren connected to the other nearby buildings. There were more children there, as well as adults who looked to run the gamut from beggars to cutpurses to street thugs. All of them stared at Thornto and Gritcham as they passed.

  They were taken up a winding narrow staircase that their height and Thornto’s bulk and halberd made more than a little tricky. There were so many blind alleys, covered courts and cul-de-sacs that Thornto was utterly disoriented by the time they were shown out into a roof garden.
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  It was a strange garden. It looked as though the plants had been chosen for their aesthetic value, which was something only the wealthiest did. A garden was more normally for herbs and vegetables. It nestled amongst a sea of roofs, so tightly packed together that it would have been easy to walk across them. Despite the steepness of the hill that Maranges was built upon, the garden was overlooked by a number of interconnecting buildings that hid it from the view of those who lived higher on the hill.

  A grotesquely fat man sat on a stool in the centre of the garden, his bulk so perched he cut a slightly ridiculous figure. He was dressed in clothes that were either once fine and had fallen to ruin, or were worn as a mockery of his betters. He looked up and smiled.

  “You’ve caused quite a furore this evening. How many have you killed, exactly?”

  Jacamo, who was lazing against one of the low walls under an exotic looking tree, held up three fingers.

  Thornto became aware of someone standing off to one side in the roof garden’s undergrowth. The figure was only casually concealed. Thornto pointed at her and she, in turn, looked to the fat man. He nodded and she stepped forward. She wore good quality armour made of stiffened leather reinforced by metal studs. She carried a strange looking crossbow that had a box above the bow. In the box were four extra bolts and the weapon had a crank on the side. The hilts of two shortswords stuck up above either shoulder. A hood covered most of her head; what he could see of her face suggested dark eyes and freckles. Her most noticeable feature, however, was the red, X-shaped scar that ran from each temple across her eyelids, nose, lips and cheeks, ending either side of her chin.

  “This is Cross,” the fat man told them, “she is one of my many children.”

  The way the woman looked at them made Thornto think that she was working out ways to kill them both if she had to.