The Last Benediction in Steel

by Wright, Kevin

  “The Nazarene…” Father Gregorius bobbed his head like a dog having his haunches scratched. “Absolutely, Your Majesty.”

  “Now, wait—”

  “Nay, Sir Luther, listen.” Father Gregorius brandished his ever-present bible. “Why, you yourself witnessed a similar act with the blackguard Sir Alaric felled by crossbow. Obviously, this Nazarene has the ability to … to confer life upon those who should otherwise embrace death. And, undeath is a term oft used with regards to the state these creatures dwell within.”

  “And Father, you believe this Nazarene to be in a state of undeath?” King Eckhardt took a sip of wine.

  “Most fervently, Your Majesty.”

  “The Nazarene?” I straightened. It’d been something that crossed my mind. And it made sense on some level. King Eckhardt had a point. How else had Rudiger survived those wounds? But on another level, one I couldn’t fathom, something in my gut just felt wrong. “I … I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to know. You aren’t expected to know,” Father Gregorius explained. “You’ve no expertise in such matters. I propose that none at this table can claim such expertise. But King Eckhardt is correct. It is plain as day.”

  Prince Eventine, Sir Gustav, and von Madbury bobbed their heads wholeheartedly.

  I took a sip of sour wine. Made a sour face.

  “You remain unconvinced, I see.” The King rubbed his beard. “Sir Luther, you claimed the Nazarene raised a man from the dead, yes? Did he not? By the book, is that not a commonality amongst such tales of grave-walkers, spawn of Cain, things of such twisted misery?”

  “Your heretic brother’s opinion, notwithstanding,” Father Gregorius added, “earlier, with regards to the incident at the church, you thought it as likely to be necromancy as miracle.”

  “I … well, yeah, I suppose.” I couldn’t help shaking the feeling that the teeth of a hidden trap had sprung, biting into my leg, sticking me fast.

  “Indeed, this risen man may well be in a state of undeath, rather than resurrected life. Indeed, they all may be.”

  I frowned.

  “Your shit-heel brother,” von Madbury leered from across the table, “and where might he be? Strange, he’s not here serving his king? Seems I recall he was preaching leniency with regards to that fat fuck.” He cast a look Father Gregorius’s way. “Think he’s harboring a soft spot for another of his heretical brethren? And is he still calling for my head?” He laid a hand on Gustav’s shoulder. “Or is it mayhap his?”

  “Both,” I confided. “Wants matching bookends.”

  “Well, I—” von Madbury straightened.

  “This is neither the time nor the place.” The King cut him off with a chop of his hand. “Sir Luther, proceed. This man risen from certain death if not death itself, this man, this abomination, this Lazarus, still stalks the land under the thrall of the Nazarene, yes?”

  “Yeah,” I conceded, giving von Madbury a look that translated correctly meant ‘suck my balls.’ “But if Rudiger and the Grey-Lady were his, too, why’d he want them dead? I mean, truly dead?”

  “It lies beyond my ken,” King Eckhardt took a drink from his cup, “yet perhaps such creatures, such devils and demons and the like are akin to men, vying ceaselessly amongst themselves for supremacy?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know,” I grumbled. “Maybe.”

  “They were at odds, that appears obvious,” Father Gregorius barreled in. “Would you not agree?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Hold.” King Eckhardt glanced toward the door. “Your man has returned presently from his sortie. I would that we all hear what tale he has to tell. He seems a man of no small competence.”

  “He’s a moron,” I corrected.

  King Eckhardt blinked, then squinted, studying me as though for flaws in a fine sculpture. He’d find a spidered-web of cracks and in force if he knew where to look.

  King Eckhardt raised a hand toward the door. “Enter, sir.” He turned as Karl entered, flanked by Brother Miles and Squire Morley. “Sit. Please. Have a drink—” The King’s eyes went wide. “By the book…”

  “Yer majesty.” A swath of blood stretched across Karl’s face, down his armored torso, ending at his right thigh. He looked as though he’d slaughtered a cow. With his teeth.

  “Are you injured?” King Eckhardt inquired.

  Karl a waved blood-crusted paw. “Naw.” He ripped off a hunk of bread, chomped a piece, and plopped himself down by Sir Alaric’s side.

  “Sir Alaric, could you—” the King said.

  “Eh…?” Sir Alaric offered his numb gaze Karl’s way. “Oh, aye. Here.” Sir Alaric offered a tattered scrap of napkin.

  “Thanks.” Karl patted his forehead with the scrap then tucked it into the collar of his bloodied mail shirt for I had schooled him vehemently in the art of courtly manners. Sir Gustav snorted which for once summed up more or less what I was thinking.

  Karl poured himself a measure of wine then promptly killed it as swiftly as he killed everything else.

  “Goodman Karl. Ahem,” King Eckhardt started, though where he got the Goodman from was a mystery to me, “how went your foray?”

  “Ahurm…” Karl glanced down the table, taking a deep breath. He wasn’t much for talking in front of a crowd, even one as anemic as this. It amazed me how a bastard as fierce and mad as he, without a care for his own personal safety, could shy from speaking in front of a roundtable of such mediocrity. “I … err … skulked after them scourgers again. Ferreted the fuckers through the Tooth and Old Jewtown. Watched ‘em burn a couple empty cottages til they got bored. Then I tailed ‘em up to the top of yon neighboring tor. Took up station within that largish building atop it. A squatters’ haven. Fortified with a nuisance wall.”He scowled at Father Gregorius. “Looks like a monk’s asylum or some of yer other Godly nonsense.”

  “The leper-house—” Prince Eventine smote the table.

  “Yes,” King Eckhardt said. “Saint Marculf’s.”

  “Aye. Well. Didn’t see no lepers. Only scourgers.” Karl picked at clotted blood flecking his beard. “Infesting the place like rats. Main building and cells. Few outhouses. All gone to misery.”

  “Not full of its usual blissful ardor?” I commented.

  “Fuck off,” Karl rebutted.

  “You entered the grounds?” King Eckhardt asked.

  “Nar.” Karl shook his head. “Couldn’t get no shot with him dallying amongst them lunatics. So I clomb the roof of a neighboring building. Watched ‘em trudge in. The Nazarene’s set himself up inside the main building. They’re all there, bunked down fer the time being.”

  “I want him dead.” King Eckhardt said it quietly. He said it firmly. He said it without any shred of prevarication. It was the first thing he’d said that sounded as though it came from a king.

  Karl crossed his thick arms.

  “We have him.” King Eckhardt’s hand clenched into a fist. “And how would you go about it?”

  “Your Majesty,” Sir Gustav stood, “I’d be most honored to—”

  “Quiet. Sit. Be still,” King Eckhardt snapped. “I asked Goodman Karl.”

  Sir Gustav stood with his dumb jaw hanging.

  A lovely sight.

  “How many men you got?” Karl asked.

  The King eyed von Madbury. He’d been training up some of the small-folk. It’d been slow going, near as I could tell, but with a teacher like him…

  “Twenty-five,” von Madbury said. “Half of that little more than rabble.”

  “Hrmm…” Karl grumbled. “Easiest way? Catch him holed-up. Today. Now. Send in some bastards with oil. Start a few quick burns and stave the doors shut. Windows are high. Narrow. Tough to climb through. A right proper fire’d solve yer problem, I’d hazard.”

  I glanced the King’s way. “You said you didn’t want blood-simple slaughter.”

  “Aye. Yes. Well… It still holds true, and though I rue the situation, Sir Luther,” King Eckhardt took a tentative sip of
wine, “this Nazarene must be ended. He challenges my divine right. And a kingdom divided is destined to fall. It has been struck such blows already. And if he should indeed be a servant of the Lord, divine providence shall no doubt shield him.” The King fingered his jaw. “Yet, if I wished to spare the masses?”

  “Spare the masses?” Karl ran a blood-crusted hand through his greasy beard. “Hrrm… Well then, yer talking daggers in the dark, yer Majesty.”

  …glory there was to be had by all, and the slaughter was prodigious if not wholly complete.

  —War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg

  Chapter 32.

  ON THE EVE OF BATTLE a mad bastard once told me, “The heights of elation in the immediate aftermath of an act of violence are matched only by the depths inevitably to follow.” Tucking another dagger into my belt, already jangling with steel, I couldn’t help but agree. My heart was pounding, palms slick with anticipation. Highs and lows. The during and the after. I’d take a tenfold portion of both over a slice of the before. That queasy quagmire of uncertainty, feet shifting, sinking, wondering, waiting.

  I glared up as Queen Elona slid into my room, closing the door behind.

  “Jesus…” I hissed.

  “No one saw me.”

  “You’re the bloody Queen,” I said through gritted teeth. We’d met twice since that first time and not since the night with von Madbury.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Please. It doesn’t matter.” The Queen shook her head. “Shall my father accompany you?”

  “Why not ask him yourself?”

  “I would, but…”

  “He’d talk to you,” I said. “He wants to. I don’t know what’s between you two, but he would. He worries the hell about you.”

  “He,” the Queen licked her lips, “he’s spoken of me?”

  “No. But I see it in his eyes. Whenever you’re around. Jesus. Whenever you’re not…”

  “Please.” She laid a hand on my cheek. “Beg him off. He’s in no shape to attend to your designs.”

  I swiped her hand off. “And what are my designs?”

  “Murder.”

  “Good,” I said. “At least you’ve no illusions.”

  “And…?”

  “And your father’s a grown man.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he makes his own decisions.”

  “And that means he’s going with you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He insisted. Adamantly.”

  “But you’re the justiciar now.”

  I straightened.

  “And if you’re the justiciar, you can order him off.”

  “He’d kill me if I did.”

  “He’ll die if you don’t.”

  “You don’t know that.” What I didn’t say was maybe that would’ve been better for him. For her. For everyone all around.

  “Have you looked at him?” The Queen turned to the shadows. “Have you seen? He’s spiraling downward. He’s frail. Weak. The drink has him worse than I’ve ever seen. And I have seen.” She pressed a fist to her lips. “Please. Order him to stay. To remain. To guard the gates or … or something. Anything. Please.” She reached for my hand. “Do it for me. Please.”

  I retracted my hand reflexively. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do … what?”

  “I saw you and von Madbury,” I said. “So this, me and you, whatever it is…”

  “What?” The Queen straightened. “How dare you insinuate—”

  “Insinuate? No. It’s plain as dawn. And please. I don’t care. That’s how you keep him in line, yeah? Fine.” I dismissed her with a wave of my hand. “But it was fair obvious from the start. You three are like King Arthur, Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot, the shitty version.” I bit my lip. “Apologies, but only a blind man could miss it. And the King for all his legion of faults is not blind.”

  The Queen straightened, the straight line of her lip trembling.

  “Oh?” I said. “You thought maybe you were slick enough that no one knew? That it was a secret? That’s life in a castle. I knew the moment you sauntered in. So your husband knew. Everyone knew. Everyone knows.”

  She slapped me across the face. “You are—”

  “Your sons know.”

  Cocked back for another go, her hand trembled, faltered, fell, “I—”

  “Listen, I don’t care,” I spat. “It’s none of my business. You don’t owe me anything. Nor I you. Except my sword-arm. But don’t go plucking at my heartstrings, yeah? They were slit a long while back.”

  “Sir Luther, I don’t—”

  “In the wine cellar.”

  She pursed her lips, swallowed. “You don’t know what you saw.”

  “And I don’t care. Like I said. But this is over. Whatever this is.”

  Her teeth bared in a split grimace, “You’re like all the rest.”

  “That means I’m moving up.”

  “No, in point of fact, I was mistaken.” She raised her chin. “You’re worse.”

  “Than von Madbury? Elona, please—”

  “Don’t call me that. Not now.” The Queen rounded on me, finger in my face. “Do you know why you’re worse? Why you’re worse than Eckhardt? Worse than that shit, von Madbury? Yes. Worse than all the rest of them?”

  “No, Your Highness,” I crossed my arms, “why?”

  “Because you didn’t use to be.”

  …they possess a small cadre of warriors seemingly inoculated against any normal means of modern warfare…

  —War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg

  Chapter 33.

  SAINT MARCULF’S leper-house stood south of the Schloss von Haesken, at a major — for Haeskenburg — crossroads a couple blocks west of the southeastern gates. We’d done our due diligence, strolled round the nuisance wall. Taken its measure. The building was shaped roughly like an ant, head pointed north. Two main buildings, hospital and church, the head and body, respectively, with six smaller wings, or legs, in keeping with my shitty metaphor, made up the living quarters.

  “See anything?” Karl grunted up to Stephan.

  “Yeah, your mother,” I grinned, “Goodman Karl.”

  Karl shoved me against the chimney.

  The house we were in was a wreck. It looked like it’d been hit by a firestorm. Char-smeared walls. Naked floor joists spanning above. Floor spongy beneath. All the blessed amenities.

  “Would you two knock it off?” Stephan hissed down through the hole in the ceiling. We’d chosen him, despite the fact he’d only the one hand, for the second-story job of keeping watch. He stood balanced on one of the joists, peering out a ragged hole.

  “Fuck off,” Karl’s stout finger nearly lit into my eye, “with the shit about my mother.”

  “Fine.” I rubbed my shoulder, glared up at Stephan. “Well? You see anything?”

  It was apparent from his scowl that he saw two assholes beneath him, both figuratively and literally, fucking around, but he bit it back, sour taste and all, and swallowed. He was fair adroit at that. But then, he’d had years of practice. “A couple of scourgers and women just stumbled in.” Stephan glared down. “I’m guessing they’re all bunked down for the day. But it’s clear now — hold.” He raised a hand. “Got another one taking a stroll. Wait til it’s safe.”

  “Safe…?” Karl growled.

  “Hang on.”

  The wall surrounding the leper-house was only five-feet and change. It’d been raised more to stifle the eyesore of the afflicted living than any security measure. Not much call for anyone storming a leper-house. Anyone sane, that is.

  “Lou,” Stephan hissed down, “the Nazarene may be the only means to save Abraham.”

  “Yeah.” I glared up. “Heard you the first time. Fifteenth, too.”

  “You heard, but you don’t listen. The Nazarene’s no creature of the night, whatever the King and Father Gregorius claim. You know that.”
r />   “So you’re the expert now?”

  “More expert than you.”

  “That’s like saying Karl’s the tallest bloke in a room full of double amputees.” I tested the edge of my dagger. “King wants the fat bastard dead.”

  “And what’s he done?” Stephan glared down. “Truly? What crimes do we know he’s committed?”

  “Jesus. There’s the priest,” I started counting on my fingers, “then there’s all those poor bastards he crucified in the town square.” I glared over at Karl. “How many, you hazard?”

  “Are we sure—”

  “And how about the Jews?” I asked. “He scourged or burned half of them and ran off the other half.”

  “So says the King and his sycophants,” Stephan countered. “Brother, at least make some attempt at ascertaining—”

  “The King agreed to forgo wholesale slaughter in lieu of one lone assassination. You want a hundred souls on your conscience? Jesus, you should’ve heard Plan A.”

  “After all you’ve cost Abe, you won’t even try?” Stephan pressed.

  Karl scowled.

  “That old chestnut.” I punched the wall, which was always the smart play. Break your hand. Beg off what needs doing for four to six weeks. “This why you came? To save that piece of shit? To falter our resolve while we stand on the brink? Jesus, you don’t think I’ve enough shit on my plate?” I closed my eyes, thought back to Sir Alaric seething when I ordered him not to come. To stand down. His lower lip trembling. Him fighting to hide it. Seeing the last vestiges of his broken spirit crumble.

  “No,” Stephan said, “I came to perhaps save Abe. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, well that’s one thing. But, Jesus, giving Ruth false hope with your bullshit theories.”

  “It’s not false hope,” Stephan spat. “I came here for Abe, but also for you and Karl.” Stephan crossed his arms. “Well, mostly Karl.”

  Karl grinned.

  “We clear yet?” I hissed up.

  “Judas Priest.” Stephan rolled his eyes. “Yes. Get ready.”

  “Bring a stepladder?” I sneered at Karl. “Or are you gonna need ten fingers?”