“Yar. You can start with this one.” Karl offered me one.
“Now—” Stephan hissed.
Karl piled out the door, thick legs pumping, ripping ragged across the street. He leapt and grabbed the top of the wall, pulling himself up and over, disappearing an instant before I jumped and pressed myself up. Over. Down.
We landed on the far side, in damp shade, behind one of the cells. There was still snow here, wedged against the wall, tucked out of the sun. For a piece, we hunkered and listened, waiting to see if anyone had noticed. A hawk soared past overhead, two crows squawking after. “Gonna be us before we know it.”
“We the hawk?” Karl rumbled. “Or the crows?”
“Only time’ll tell.” I rose from my crouch. “C’mon. No rest for the wicked.”
The leper-house loomed atop Savior’s Tor, comprising the bulk of the southern half of Husk. Smoke trickled up from the chimneys. Smaller, single cells lined the inner yard. A small cemetery lay in the northwest corner.
I followed Karl as he loped clockwise along the compound’s wall, keeping it on our left, the line of monk cells screening our right. He paused at each break, peering out. Refuse littered the yard.
Karl dropped to a knee. “Hold.”
A haphazard gaggle of scourgers and women staggered up the rise, laughing, glugging back, tossing bottles, tricking in one by one.
That tightness in my chest cramped suddenly down, crushing slow, squealing like a rusted vice. Rudiger’s teeth gleaming. The Grey-Lady screaming. Burning.
Karl fixed me an eye. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
The door opened again, and a scourger lurched out, staggering to one of the crosses upright in the mud, swigging back a bottle of something before collapsing piecemeal to the ground. Splayed beneath the cross, he rolled onto his back, onerously, his tumescent, belly engorged, pale, straining, naked to the sky.
“Sorta reminds me of you,” I forced out.
“I ain’t the one with the history of ‘can’t hold his drink.’”
“Always been an avid student of history.” I squinted toward the open door beyond Drunk Jesus. “Think that’s God telling us something?”
“I don’t listen to pissants.”
“Don’t let Stephan hear.” Rubbing my chest, I strolled out into the open.
Karl followed.
Our gear was back with Stephan. We’d both donned plain-spun robes. I had a ring of thorns wrapped round my forehead — I’d clipped all the prickers on the inside cause, unsurprisingly, they hurt like hell. For about the hundredth time, I patted the daggers sheathed on a belt inside my robes. Karl had a pair of hatchets and daggers and his maniac strength. We each had a scourge wrapped over our shoulders, too, the only weapons we could carry out in the open. I was missing Yolanda something fierce, but there was no way I could fit her under the robes. Same with Karl’s thane-axe. Commit to assassination and you go to the last full measure. Halves get the wrong bloke killed.
As we passed Drunk Jesus, laid out across the lawn, at the foot of a lilted cross, his head palsied up. “The glory of God be with you, brother…” He burped, winced, forced a swallow. “P-Pardon.” He blinked, squinted, fighting for focus. “Eh?” He fought to elbow himself up. “Do…” he swallowed, “do I know you?”
“Sure,” I forced a grin, “we’re the very best of chums.”
“I…” he glared back toward the leper-house, gears lubricated with gut-rot turning, “I think not.” He opened his mouth to holler.
“Go back to sleep.” I knelt on his arm, pinning it, the dagger I’d drawn sliding between his ribs in a gush of blood and bubble before he knew what was happening, forcing him down, back, into the mud, my hand muffling his gob. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” I stifled his cry, pinning him til his thrashing quelled, til I couldn’t feel the pulse of his heart hammering through the hilt of my blade.
It didn’t take long.
I closed his eyes, leaving my hand atop his forehead as I offered some gilded prayer in case unseen eyes were prying. “We good?”
The cross loomed overhead.
“Aye, good…” Karl grunted, kneeling on Drunk Jesus’s other arm, shielding us from the leper-house, his head on a swivel, wolf eyes all agleam. “Definitely. Maybe.”
“Not overly reassuring.” I unsheathed my dagger from Drunk Jesus’s chest, wiping it surreptitiously on the inside of my robe.
“Weren’t meant to be. Roll him over on his side. Fella’s just sleeping one off.”
“At the very least.” I did as Karl bade then was up and strolling for the door.
It was dark inside, the air thick and humid with the stench of unwashed body, the blue smoke of smoldering fire. Of soiled linen. Of corruption from both body and form. A struggle just to inhale. But exhaling? A May Day parade.
The wing was, indeed, living quarters. Or had been. Subsistence quarters, more like. Rickety cots lined the walls end to end, some overturned, some broken, some barely hale. Scourgers lay atop them, splayed out haphazard, limbs lolling over the side like cataracts of flesh, a few snoring, some dead as Drunk Jesus. Well, nearly.
A caterwaul of black laughter boomed in the confined night, reverberating of stone walls, shivering the fume hanging thick and acrid in the air. I kicked a bottle skittering across the floor —shit — and froze.
Karl glowered.
The bottle rotated there in the world’s least sexy game of spin-the-bottle, coming finally to rest, pointing at some lucky fella lain out across a bent bed, his hairy feet poking from the ends of his ragged robe.
“Oy,” someone barked, “close the bleeding door! Yer letting all the heat out.”
“And the air in,” I muttered, breathing through my mouth.
Karl wisely ceded to the unnamed voice’s demand, yanking the door shut and trapping us in the fetid swamp of stifling twilight. Random torches sputtered here and there, casting dim ripples across staid slivers of rationed daylight. Shadow demons slid along the ceiling. Rats skittered underneath from cot to cot. I canted my head toward the far end of the room and started toward the church-proper, the garrulous laughter booming in the gloom. The air vibrating. The floor shivering. Or was that just me?
I knew that voice. That laughter.
Karl stiffened. So did he.
Moving through the room was traversing an obstacle course, stepping over bottle and limb, maneuvering around overturned bed and broken chair.
“Oy…” A pumpkin-sized face leered in through the door. Shit. Lazarus. By one long loping arm, he hung there, a bottle of wine raised to his lips as he lurched past, laying a hand on my shoulder, “Bless you, brother,” before stumbling onward, long-legged as a drunken stork.
“You as well, brother,” I grunted back, sliding through the doorway.
Twin rows of pews filled the massive space. The ceiling vaulted up some fifty feet, disappearing into the hazy gloom. A stained-glass portrait of Saint Marculf, patron saint of lepers, decked out in festering boils blooming rose-like across his face, illuminated the room along with a bonfire crackling smoky and low. A haphazard mishmash of entwined, engorged, entangled flesh lay strewn amongst the remaining pews.
“Yes…” the Nazarene’s voice hissed from afar.
Bent down, practically on our knees, we crept towards a dark mound looming beyond. The sound of glass cracking, crunching, tinkling in a scintillating cascade, and wood bending, yawning, creaking, all accompanied a chorus of sharp animal grunts.
I raised a hand and crouched, Karl at my back.
“Yes…” the Nazarene’s voice reverberated.
Ahead stood the mound. Broken pews’d been axed and split and piled high, sharp edges and nails jabbing up. Atop the pile sat a makeshift throne, all crooked and jagged, hewn together by bent nail and twisted will.
Squinting, I crept onward, masked by the pews, trying to suss out who sat atop. I had a fair guess.
“YES!” The Nazarene gripped th
e throne.
The grunting. The heaving. A beast. Two-backed. The Nazarene and some wench.
“Maybe yer religion ain’t so fucking dumb?” Karl hissed.
I couldn’t argue. It was the most moving Mass I’d ever witnessed.
“Yes…” the Nazarene lounged back, one leg up on the makeshift armrest as he licked the neck of the wench straddled across him. Her legs splayed wide, entwining round him like vines as she moaned. His fingers entangled in her long hair.
“This normal?” Karl rumbled.
“No,” I whispered, “it’s usually a priest and altar boy.”
“Uhhg…” she moaned, her hips working, sliding up, sliding down, sliding long, sliding slow. “More…”
“The Body…” The Nazarene took a slurp from a chalice then raised it high, dousing them both in dribbling crimson, “and the Blood…”
The wench arched back, mouth open, tongue lolling, lapping in the sacrament. When the cascade ended, the Nazarene cast aside the chalice and stood, bearing her still astride him, turned and wrestled her down, flopping atop, arching his back as he thrust. Blood oozed down his frame from the blistered road-map of lash and scorch marring his flabby back. Puckered old star-shaped puncture wounds stood out, matching those from his chest and abdomen.
I couldn’t watch, and yet, I couldn’t not.
Karl on the other hand was already moving, a dagger back-swept in his fist. He tapped me on the arm.
I snapped out of it and followed, moving at a crouch along the ends of the pews, each one holding another in a long treasure trove of shit I didn’t ever want to see. Glazed eyes goggled back as I passed. Bodies lay strewn. Hairy backs heaved. At the front row, Karl paused, looking back.
I held up a hand, signaling, Wait, as I forced myself to breathe, long and slow, willing the vise gripping my heart to loosen.
The Nazarene lay flopped still atop the wench, fairly near to closing the deal. If we took him now, we’d have to deal with the wench and that meant shutting her up. And there was only one sure-fire method.
“YES!” The Nazarene grunted, clutching the creaking throne, arching, shivering, collapsing. “A benediction from the lord.” A moment later, he struggled up to his knees, shards of wood clattering. Catching his breath. Drool coursed in a long tendril dangling from his lip.
He wiped himself off with his half-shorn robe, cast it aside, and clambered down the wreck toward the back. A vanity partition, engraved with intricate bas-reliefs of Saint Marculf blessing a legion of lepers, cordoned off the far end of the church sanctuary. The Nazarene snatched a bottle off a comatose scourger, ripped a swig, then pulled open the door and trudged through.
I signaled to Karl, Go.
He scurried toward the door.
Blade in hand, I followed him, moved past, slid through.
Karl closed the door behind.
The Nazarene stood in the corner, leaning tripod-wise against the wall as his piss splashed, steaming up from the cold floor. “You aiming to fix me in the most holiest of holies?”
I froze.
All he had to do was raise his voice and hell’d come calling.
“Nothing to say?” The Nazarene shook himself off. “Had plenty to jaw on about the day you thought you had the drop on us. Yer cocks all faltering when that blackguard in the church turned yellow, though, eh?
“And here you come stealing in for more murder.” The Nazarene smirked, his teeth all crooked and brown. “You hazard yer the one on the side of the Good Lord?”
“Hazard I ain’t,” I said, “but, then, I ain’t the one pissing on his floor.”
“Well.” The Nazarene took a swig of wine and wiped his chin. “A right honest feller, eh? Then why keep doing it?”
“Same reason you crucified all those people.”
“Well now, sure enough, I crucified them all, Father, I do confess,” the Nazarene cocked his head, studying me, “but I didn’t kill none. Not a one.” He swiped a hand across his balding pate. “Merely planted ‘em up where yer King’d be like to see them. See what he done. See what he hadn’t.”
“Hadn’t done what?”
“‘Hadn’t done what?’ he says.” Wine trickled from the corner of his lip. “Lord, forgive him. The ignorance. He knows not what he does. Says. Dribbling excrement all the while.” The Nazarene winced as he straightened, “Ah…” his back popping in succession. “Failed in his mandate from the Lord. In his duty to protect the small-folk. His small-folk. King’s supposed to, aye? First rule, ain’t it? Most important? His manifest-fucking duty. Supposed to dub knights like you to shield them from wrong. From dark. What a head-scratcher it is when it turns out you all are the dark.”
“And what’s that make you?”
“Me? Heh. Oh, I ain’t nothing, truly. Just a vessel. A conduit. A nexus.” The Nazarene tossed the bottle. “Look at me. Journeyman work at best.” He scratched absently at one of the scars puckering his chest. “Heh. Don’t suspect I’ll amount to nothing in the end. Nothing but bones and marrow and worm.”
I gripped my dagger. “Karl…?”
“Door’s shit,” Karl rumbled. “Wall’s shittier.”
The Nazarene squared up. “That time already?” Those brown teeth again, his thick arms open, wide, inviting. “Well, come to me then, brother. Word of advice, though—” He gripped a fistful of flabby abdomen. “Might need more pig-sticker than that.”
Balanced on the balls of my feet, licking my lips, I froze. “What happened at the church? At the mill? The fire?”
“Have to be more specific.” The Nazarene’s eyes squeezed in suspicion. “Was a lot happened.”
“You pulled a crossbow bolt from a dead man’s chest. Then raised him up. And the Grey-Lady, the woman—”
“Woman?” The Nazarene leered. “That weren’t no woman, brother. Not no more.” He settled back a moment, smiling something broad, something horrid, fingernails picking at another scar. “Yer eyes don’t see. And yer ears don’t hear. So how can you trust them? How can you know what you think you know?”
“Tell me about the man with the bolt.”
“You must mean old Lazarus.”
“Didn’t look so old to me.”
“Man was dead.” The Nazarene shrugged. “Can’t get no older than that. Methuselah old. Now he’s beyond old.”
“Beyond death, you mean?” Words of the King and Father Gregorius echoed through my mind. “You mean he’s undead?”
“Undead? Him? Lord above.” The Nazarene scowled. “You’re twisted round and round and inside out. Should read the Good Book. Miracles of the Lord inside, brother, miracles of the lord. It’ll untie yer knots. Stretch yer eyes. Widen yer senses. Listen to yer brother. Can see him gleaming inside and out. The powers of Jesus? Privy to us all when we possess the faith. The will. The gumption.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why should I care if you do or don’t?” The Nazarene straightened, rising to his full height. “You ask me about undeath? About death? About murder?” He pointed a thick arm. “Go ask yer King. He’s the expert. And ask him about strigoi, too, while yer at it. See what fork-tongued lies the bastard spews.”
“Strigoi…” I swallowed. My thoughts ranged to Abraham, laid up in bed, dying, maybe dead. “Can you heal the sick?”
“Heh… You come to kill me?” A greasy smirk stretched across his broad mug. “Or beg me for help?”
“Ain’t sure yet,” I answered truthfully.
“Well then, let me share with you a little secret—” the Nazarene raised a hand aside his maw. “It ain’t mine to offer.”
“Lad—” Karl warned.
I turned.
From beyond the sanctuary partition, scourgers started screaming.
…we had learned the name of our foe. It was an ancient name full of fell purpose…
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 34.
SALLOW SMOKE SLITHERED from underneath the partition door, breathing in
through the wall joints, forcing inside the sanctuary in grasping tendrils of hell-spume. Muffled screams erupted from beyond, the sound of bare feet flapping, of choking, gasping, wheezing. A window shattered, glass shard raining across stone.
“Do you hear it, brother!” The Nazarene’s eyes bulged razorback red as he charged at me, growling like some pit-bear shorn of its chains.
A bank of smoke rolled over, consuming me as I met the Nazarene’s charge, hooking over and under his arms, trying to pivot in place, let his force flow over me, past me, but he hooked my leg with his and we both went tumbling as one.
A moment’s panic. Pant-shitting terror.
But I caught my footing, jerked him right and threw him over my left hip, feet arcing, him hanging on, both of us crashing into the partition.
“Fuck—!”
The whole partition ripped free, toppled down, wood shards raining as we landed at the foot of the mad throne. The acrid choke of thick smoke as I landed atop. Him flailing, smashing, bashing with blunt arms. Shadows cavorting through the fume. Visions of Hell. But even from his back weren’t the fucker strong? He arched to roll me, but I braced with an outstretched arm then ripped up with the dagger I’d somehow stuck in his flank.
“Yes!” he cried, the bloody-fucking weirdo.
The altar-throne loomed above, catching fire, detritus avalanching around us.
“Brothers!” The Nazarene’s paws worked up my neck, taking a grip on my ear, my hair, jaundiced thumbnails digging into my cheeks, gaining purchase, inching up like maggots for my eyes.
“Fuck you!” I ripped the dagger free and shoved it to the hilt in his chest, forcing him back down at arm’s length. Then I did it again.
“Absolution!” He cried, blood bubbling, as he muscled me down. Crooked brown teeth bit into my cheek, and I screamed murder. He gnashed and spit and bit again.
“Motherfucker—” Twisting my dagger and hammer-fisting his arm, I wrenched my face free, yanked the dagger and stabbed again and again and again.
He roared as I pried his head back, slashing an elbow for his face, missing, overbalancing. Instantly, a body tore past in the smoke, knocking me sideways and the Nazarene rolled atop me, grinning crimson as he wiped his chin. Bale-fire burned up the rafters of the church. “The body and blood!” He tore my dagger from his chest and raised it above. “A benediction!”
The Last Benediction in Steel Page 21