Five Bloody Heads

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Cruhund had been lucky to find the keep, even luckier that it had been abandoned generations before. He never knew who the previous masters of the keep were, their bones lining the ramparts the same as the bones of any other man. He had often wondered how it was that the keep had fallen and could imagine that it was only from disease or that the occupants had turned on themselves. In the first weeks, he only had found rotting tapestries, rusted swords and those damned crows. Then he found the treasure room hidden deep in the tunnels.

  But despite all that Cruhund had seized, the crows danced like they were kings of all they could see.

  Cruhund quickly grabbed another stone and hurled it. It smashed into hundreds of pieces, an explosion of white dust, and the crows barely lifted from the boulder, hopping and screaming.

  Half an hour later he reached the granite steps. The heavy wooden doors were shut. They must have seen him coming. Why hadn’t they opened the doors to greet him?

  “Griope, open the doors, you lazy shit!” yelled Cruhund. “Where the hell are you? Griope, you sack of rat turds, open the fucking doors.”

  The crows now lined the battlements atop the wall of the keep. They had ceased their screaming as if they had only raised their voices to torment Cruhund on the hard climb up to the fortress. He wondered if they also would harass outsiders and enemies or if they only saved their spite for him.

  The doors rose before him, ancient wood, braced with iron bands. On the stone arch above the doors, forgotten words had been carved. Few of his men could read and those who could only shook their heads, unsure of the unfamiliar script.

  Cruhund was about to shout again when the heavy chains groaned from deep within the walls and the metal footings of the giant wooden doors scraped against granite landing. He was greeted with a swirl of dust that caused him to cover his eyes with his forearm. He pulled the horse behind him and entered his castle.

  Even with a handful of braziers lit in the outer courtyard, it took him a few moments for his eyes to adjust the gloom of the keep. The sun never reached the courtyard this time of year, and he wondered whether it would even at the height of summer. A keep built in perpetual shadows. Across the courtyard, the doors to great hall were ajar. He suspected those men he had left behind had tapped the barrels of cider again. Some men had no ambition.

  In the tower, built into the cliff, the balcony doors to his chamber were shut, even the shutters to the windows had not been opened.

  He wondered if it had happened yet. He wondered if he returned to a keep or a crypt. Had she passed while he was gone?

  The chains clunked, reversing themselves, and the great doors swung shut again, closing with a thud that shook the ground beneath his feet.

  “Where’s the stable boy?”

  A boy darted from the darkness of the great hall, ducked beneath Cruhund’s backhand, and grabbed the reins.

  “Weren’t expecting you back.” Griope, half his face frozen in a sneer of paralysis and one hand curled against his chest, leaned out of a window of one of the gate towers. His red hair hung unbound and greasy at his shoulders.

  “Ever?”

  “Not alone is all I meant. Had my eye for the whole of you, not a single soul.”

  “More likely you had both eyes closed,” said Cruhund. “Useless shit.”

  Griope harrumphed. “The others were supposed to keep watch, too. Not just me. They haven’t left those barrels. You ask Yriel, and she’ll tell you that Griope did his duty. It’s them others you want to worry about. You need to keep an eye to them.”

  Cruhund found the rest of his mercenaries in the great hall, half of them crouching or sitting before the fireplace, bone die rattling on the floor; the other were in various states of sleep in the furs lining the walls, or hunched at the long table, faces on the planks, hands clutching emptied cups.

  “This is how you greet your warlord?” boomed Cruhund.

  Curses filled the air and the men scrambled to their feet, or at least those that were not passed out.

  “Just taking a short break,” said a tall lanky man with a drifting eye. “Griope was on watch. Said he would give a shout if any came. Fucking lazy sack of shit was probably napping again.”

  “The others come in a day or so. I expect you to be prepared,” said Cruhund. He knew he should come down harder on them but he was tired and he wanted nothing more than to peel off his armor. The soles of his feet burned, stuck too long in hot boots. Despite the thick leather of his boots, they had offered little protection against the sharp edges of the scree-filled hillside. His feet would be bruised. A cold plunge in a tub would soothe them.

  Griope shuffled in through the door, his misshapen body a shadow against the gray Northern sky. He wagged a crooked finger at the others.

  They frowned at him.

  “How is she?” Cruhund asked, his gaze rising to the chamber above.

  The others looked to Griope. “She hardly touches her food. It’s warm like you asked, and I tried to coax her with some of the dried apricots like you suggested but she only nibbled a little at the edges and then made me leave.”

  “This morning?”

  “You think I’d not bring her food and water? This is Griope you are talking about. These others can’t even keep track of the days.”

  “Answer me! Did you bring her food this morning?” Cruhund stormed towards Griope.

  “Of course, you… your warlordship.” Griope backed away, glancing at the others. “That stable boy. He better be grooming your horse. Lazy sack of shit! He’ll get a switch to the backside. So drunk he probably won’t even feel it.”

  Cruhund left them in the hall and climbed the stairs to his apartment.

  He hesitated outside the door, one hand on the wood, his palm absorbing the cold. Waiting would not change anything.

  He entered the room.

  She lay in the bed, a low mound beneath twisted sheets, lit by the flickering light of a single candle that left the corners of the room in impenetrable shadows. The stifle and rot of her disease seeped into his nostrils. He gagged.

  “Yriel,” he called.

  He was answered by a sharp rasping cough.

  “I did not hear the men return,” she said.

  “I arrived alone.”

  “Alone.” The sheets were pulled high against her throat. Her dark hair curled more tightly than he remembered as if in the time he had been gone the Dhurman half of her blood had been bolstered. But if that part of her had been strengthened, the rest of her had been weakened. Her eyes sunk deeper into her skull. Her skin was taut and wrinkled, like old parchment paper, as if the flesh was slowly being eaten and what remained was skin and bone. Her cheeks jutted where once they had been plump and even rosy at times, especially on those cold winter mornings in Cullantown where they had first shared a bed, the one that she had once shared with Spear before Cruhund took the town for his own. The color in her lips had also vanished and now a pale gray film bordered her mouth.

  “I wanted to come back to you. We have enough coin.”

  “Enough? I see nothing in your hands.”

  “The others are bringing it up from the river. We wait for Molgi.”

  “You left the coin in the hands of those faithless men? You can be such a fool sometimes. Get me water!”

  He poured water from a pitcher into a small ceramic cup and then lifted her head so she could sip.

  “They know to fear me.”

  “They only fear you when you are in front of them,” said Yriel. “You need to keep them under your thumb. Can’t trust them! Not a single one!”

  “Did something happen while I was gone?”

  She cackled. “Of course nothing happened. I am death. They fear that what eats me will eat them, too. Only Griope is brave enough or stupid enough to cross the threshold. I think the latter. Either that or just fear of what you would do to him if he neglected me.” Her words fell away into a spasm of coughing. He held her hand, rubbing it furiously as if that would somehow eas
e her. She tore her hand from his.

  “You show them weakness and you will be theirs. You know that, Cruhund. We finally have the beginning of what we wanted and you’d expose yourself. They’ll stab you in the back and take what you have. Leave you with nothing in your hands.”

  “I killed Big Haran. Made an example of him in front of the others. No knives coming for me in the night. I have bought us time.”

  “Open the doors. I want light.”

  Cruhund left the bed and leaned against the heavy wooden balcony doors. They opened easily behind his weight. Light poured into the room. The cold wind from the valley lifted the torn tapestries on the walls, the shreds fluttering. He stepped out onto the balcony for a moment. After the stifle of the room, the air was crisp and he inhaled deeply.

  Down past the walls on the keep, the hillside widened into the trees below. Beyond that, great swaths of grass and forest stretched until the mists swallowed the distances. That view held the dream that one day he would rule everything he could see. One day he would have his own kingdom in the North, free of the clans, an equal to the Dhurmans, a collection of villages under his rule, men bending their knee to his throne. His people.

  When he returned inside, Yriel had propped herself up. “You need to go back down there and bring the coin here. Why would you leave that to those donkeys? By the gods, they are probably halfway to Dhurma with our coin. What good is all this if they steal right it from under us? If you want to be a warlord, then you need to act like one. Not running back to your sick lover. You don’t think they see that as weakness? They wait for that, for that moment, and then it’s knives in your back.”

  “I wanted to see you. Yriel, I could not help myself.”

  “You’re weak. And they smell it. Once you were hungry for this. Now, I don’t know.”

  The light from the windows deepened the shadows on her face, and made Cruhund think she was closer to the death.

  “They fear me.”

  “You fool. Everyone of them comes for you. Comes to take everything you have won. All this hard work. They come for your men, your stronghold and for me. You are more of a fool than I ever thought.”

  Cruhund stormed out to the balcony. The world stretched below him, within sight but out of reach, slowly being swallowed by a distant storm.

  “You are mine! You belong to Cruhund!” he shouted to the distances.

  Beneath him, hunched on the parapets, the crows answered with laughter. He looked around for something to hurl at them, a stone or a ceramic pot to silence their chiding, but he could find nothing, and their laughter rose in a broken chorus, echoing throughout the valley, filling the world with their discord.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SPEAR HEARD THE screams from the farmhouse.

  The rain, hard and sheeting, had returned with the darkness, and the eight bandits gathered in a stand of trees, the branches of the pines offering little protection from the storm. Across a flooded and furrowed field, light spilled out of the farmhouse through an open door.

  It was a squat structure, built of interlocking logs and plastered mud with a sodden thatched roof. It looked to have been built by Dhurman axes. Spear wondered why a Dhurman family ever would have ventured so far from the lands under the protection of the legions. Even when he held Cullantown, few Dhurman settlers would cross the Black River to lay a claim to a farm. Why would these settlers choose to carve out a life in the chaotic borderlands? Were things that bad in the south? But regardless, it was a choice they had made and now they lived with the consequences.

  He turned to Seana. She sheltered beneath her shield, hopelessly trying to find relief from the wind-driven rain. He whispered in a voice only she could hear. “Now we’ll go do some rescuing. Heroes, huh? The man you want me to be.”

  “Bastard,” she hissed.

  He spoke to the rest of his crew, his voice gravelly beneath the screams coming from the farmhouse. “Stick together, move quickly, and make for the stable. The dark and rain should mask us. If they see us, forget the stable and right through the door.” He poked Bones in the chest. “You’re in front with me. Right through that door. Earn the fucking roof over your head!” He looked back at Longbeard. “Bring up the horse. But not until we are in the house. You wait until my signal.”

  “I’m the strongest fighter! I should be in the front!”

  “You belong in the back.”

  Spear drew his sword, pulled the hood of his cloak over his helmet, and ran into the field. The mud sucked at his feet, each step threatening to pull off his boots. Bones trailed behind him, cursing, his breath ragged. They followed the dark furrows towards the house, straight as if to make for the door; at twenty yards out, they veered right towards the stables.

  As Spear turned, he had a glimpse the inside of the farmhouse. Blood glistened on the walls, bare limbs groped, and shadows stretched into inhuman shapes.

  Several horses were stabled in the small structure, two jammed into the single stall, one tied to a post, so tight that its neck had rubbed raw against the wood. The pink glistening flesh had drawn small black flies even in the storm. The bandits, arriving on Spear’s heels, clumped under the small overhang of the stable. The rain drummed against the thin planks. Water streamed through the gaps between the wood.

  Spear grabbed Val by the arm and shook her hard. “This time, girl, no running ahead. Ruin our surprise and your head will roll in the mud, and then I’ll let Longbeard stick his grimy hands all over your dead body until he finds those gems. You stay here. Don’t move. You only come when I call. Biroc, you stay here with her. Your arrows won’t be any good in the house and god knows you can’t wield a sword properly. Any of them come out that front door fill them with arrows. The girl runs for the door, another arrow.

  “You bastards ready?”

  Spear did not wait for a reply. He charged into the rain. Cold drops lashed against his eyes forcing him to squint and keep his head bent. The earth here was solid, compressed by the hooves of the horses and the boots of men. But still a thin layer of water pooled over the dirt, each step sending a splashing ripple across the surface. He felt as if he were running on the surface of a lake.

  Within a few breaths, he reached the house and squatted against the timber wall, just to the right of a window. Rays of light cut around the edges of the closed shutter. The other bandits folded behind him against the wall. It was another half dozen steps to the door. The screams were louder but he also heard laughter and cursing.

  He put an eye to the space between the shutter and the window.

  Blood streaked the white washed walls. Splatters of blood. Red hand prints. Dripping smears. Two men, pants dropped, were raping a woman on a bed, her wrists tied to the frame. A child huddled on the floor wailing into a blood-soaked cloth. Another man, black-armored, one ear deformed in a lumpy hardened mass, sat at a table, gnawing on a piece of bread. His armor had the stitching of the wolf, one of Cruhund’s men. Another door opposite opened to the darkness beyond.

  Spear waved Seana and Kiara to him. “Around to the back. There’s a door. Kill them if they run.”

  As the women ran in a crouch around the building, he turned to Little Boy, Bones and Night. “Three of them in there. Three heads, three gems.”

  With a few quick steps, Spear covered the distance between the window and the door and then he was in the flood of light. The black-armored man tried to turn in his chair but only made it halfway around before Spear drove the bottom of his boot into his chest. The blow sent the man skidding towards the fire. His head cracked against the stone hearth. Even as Spear made contact with the man, his other foot slipped out beneath him, all traction lost in the wet pool of blood. He floated in the air for a second and then the floor so hard that his breath escaped.

  Little Boy, Night and Bones thundered by him, drops of blood flying from their feet. The two rapists had lifted their hands to protect themselves but it did not matter. Little Boy’s axe cut through a raised arm, scattering finger
s on the bed, before lodging deep in the man’s skull. Night was at the other one, the Northman’s cloak swelling and then suddenly swallowing the rapist. They turned together one united mass and then the rapist was spit back out, his hands at his throat, blood streaming between his fingers. He stumbled forward only to be clubbed by the flat of Bones’s sword, over and over, until the man collapsed to the ground. Then Bones poked the tip of his nicked sword into the man’s exposed back a half dozen times.

  “That’s it? Easy as that,” said Bones. The old man laughed and then bent over in a dry heave. He fell to his knees, his hands wide in a pool of sticky blood. Then he threw up the food he had eaten at Grymr’s Hold.

  The bodies of several men – three or four Dhurman settlers – and another woman had been hacked up. Arms and feet lay scattered around the room. One of the dead could have been a boy still. Pools of blood, unrecognizable body parts, guts, broken chairs, a splintered chest…

  Night was cutting the woman free when the black-armored man moaned from the hearth.

  Spear picked himself up off the floor and went to the man. He ground his boot on the man’s hand until bones cracked beneath the pressure. He put the tip of his sword in the man’s eye, holding it there, letting the man’s warm blood mix with his tears.

  “Goddamned animals!” the fallen man groaned. “Who the fuck sent you?”

  “A little broken birdy,” said Spear.