“Yeah. I don’t know.” I scratched my chin. “That fucker wants something. And I keep feeling like he’s getting it.”
As if to punctuate my thought, another screamed ripped out from beyond the wall.
“Thor’s hammer—” Karl stuck a finger in his ear and twisted.
“Fucker can scream,” I admitted.
“Who is it?” Stephan whispered.
“Don’t know,” Karl grunted. “Everyone sounds like that, you push ‘em far enough.”
We ducked beneath the ribs of the church, laid bare for all the world to see. Half-constructed arches of stone, supported by braces of pressure-bent wood loomed above. The screams reverberated distorted and weird through the forest of pillar and stone.
“It’s a man.” Stephan crossed himself.
I licked my lips. “It’s the King. It’s Eventine.”
They both looked at me. Neither disagreed. Von Madbury had done what I knew he’d do, what I’d warned King Eventine he’d do. And so the King was crying. Reeling. Begging for forgiveness. Contrition. You name it.
And it was awful.
Words the Nazarene had said tolled in my mind like funerary bells. You’ve only made it stronger…
“We have to do something.” Stephan grimaced.
Wincing, I clutched my side. “We are.” But my feet were sizzling on red embers listening to it.
“We aren’t.”
“You want us to march up to the gates? Demand they stop torturing the fuck out of him? Forthwith? Oh, and throw unconditional surrender in for shits and giggles, too?” I planted my feet. “You’re the one said we can trust him, yeah?”
Stephan pursed his lips and nodded. Reluctantly.
“Then trust him.”
Another buffet of screams ripped past.
Karl gripped his singed beard. This was even digging at him.
“Fuck him.” I drew up, tried acting tough, using my last reserves of bravado, but it fell flat, false, hollow. The scream slid up and down my spine like the tines of a rusted fork. And it wasn’t cause it was King Eventine. It was cause if von Madbury were torturing him, he’d probably done the same to everyone.
“Towers this side got only one bastard apiece.” Karl squinted up at the wall.
“Yeah…” I followed his gaze. Equations of murder-math streamed through my mind.
Killing a man’s easy. Under the right conditions. But these weren’t those. And killing one tucked up in a tower? Even a shitty tower like the Schloss laid claim to? No mean feat. And doing it before he alerted his blackguard comrades? We’d need a miracle from the Lord.
Stephan winced at each and every scream. “Brother, please…” was all he said.
“I know. I know.” I could feel it, too, the steam kettle whistling. “Shit.” We were gonna do it. Whatever ‘it’ was. And you could be sure ‘it’ was gonna have a fistful of stupid seasoned in.
“Karl,” I stared up at the tower, calculating, “take a double-time and gander.” Raucous laughter boomed from the far side, and King Eventine’s screams hit a trilling crescendo. Von Madbury was taking his time. Having his fun. “See how many are manning the far wall. If those towers are skeleton-crewed, too.”
“Already did.”
“Then do it again,” I barked.
Karl gave me the eye, but ceded.
“Whoa—” I collared Stephan when he tried following. “C’mon, little brother. This is my show. We stay. And we wait.”
“But—”
“We. Bloody. Wait.” I stormed through the church foundation, dragging Stephan past piles of stone and lumber stacked haphazard. Jags of raw-cut lumber rose like ribs from the foundation’s midst, arcing over and meeting doppelgangers from the far side. Block and tackle cranes littered the landscape. Then I saw it. A ladder. Stephan was on it in a flash.
I stomped it out of his hands, clattering to the stone.
Stephan turned back. “But—”
I cut him short with a slash of my hand and pointed. “Grab that rope.”
Eventine was still screaming. I couldn’t call him king anymore. Only authority a man sounding like that had was over his own bowels, and then only a limited while.
“No, we—”
“He knew what road he was walking, brother.” I forced out a breath. “Where it lead. One look at that one-eyed bastard and you know his soul.” I fixed him a glare, daring him to argue. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I can’t judge a book by its cover. Tell me.”
Stephan looked away.
“You think that bastard’s going to sit all prim and pretty and do Eventine’s bidding? When he’s the one training up the new men? Whispering all the while in their ears? And the kingdom’s in upheaval and ready for plucking? Saw it the first time I laid eyes on him. We all did. Every one of us. Hunger. Ravenous. Rabid.”
“He wants to be king,” Stephan said.
“Better king over a heap of shit than a turd-lump at the bottom.”
Karl stepped over a pile of squared stone, blowing snot out one nostril.
“How many?” I asked.
“Same as before. Two at the gates. One in each tower.”
That meant six total, watching the whole of the Schloss von Haesken’s vaunted entirety.
“So he’s running a skeleton crew while he cuts on the king?” I said.
“Yar.” Karl spat.
“And another twenty inside,” I said. “Twenty at least.”
“What are they all doing inside?”
“I don’t like this,” Stephan said.
“Who does?”
“We need to go, brother.”
Karl said nothing, but I could read his warning glare. We could still just haul arse.
“Yeah. Shit. I know,” I said. “But I can’t make you come, either. So if you want out of this cluster-fucked madness, I won’t squawk.”
Karl snorted. “Piss off.”
“Good. So. They’re all inside,” I said. “Drunk off their asses. Having their fun. We hope.”
“A lot,” Karl growled.
“Yeah. Jesus.” We were all thinking the same thing.
That it was a trap. That von Madbury was cutting on Eventine, baiting us in.
“He must know the King’s not the best bait,” Stephan said.
“Might be all he has left.” I let that sink in, cursing as I shouldered the ladder. “We clear?”
“Yes…”
“‘Course we are. Rest of the town’s already dead.” I frowned. “We come at it midway, it’ll give us the longest stretch.”
“Brother, we have to—”
“No. We wait. Just a moment longer,” I almost said again for maybe the fiftieth time, but the rumble of feet stomping, trudging, marching, emerged from the sadistic delight blaring from beyond.
Karl craned his neck, popping vertebrae.
Up the hill, through the narrow streets, the horde was coming. Men and women and children. Scourger and farmer and fisherman alike. They clomped forth in a mishmash of swagger and song. And gimping along, leading the way, trudged the lumbersome bulk of the Nazarene.
“Thank the Lord.” Stephan crossed himself.
“Yeah, sure,” I grumbled, “but I still ain’t sure the Lord’s got much to do with it.”
…T’is but a simple matter to remand criminals to the ‘oubliette’ whence they are quickly forgotten.
Later, under cover of night, the long marched commences at point of blade back up to the old keep…
—Haesken Family Treatise: King Eckhardt Haesken III
Chapter 56.
THEY MARCHED UP THE STREET in a riot of masticated glory. Torn banners snapped in the gale wind, followed by chanting. Dancing. General merriment. It wasn’t until they were nearly upon us that their menace lay bare. A troupe of broken Jesuses spear-headed the march. Scourges rusting in ribbons of torn flesh dangled over lacerated shoulder.
I hunkered back to the shadows.
I’d said before that riots aren’t prepare
d. Well then, this no riot. This was a company. A brigade. An army. A full-bore bloody cavalcade. They came bearing tools and makeshift weapons of warfare. A scattering of shields and armor. Axes. Plowshares straightened to swords. Sticks and bloody-fucking stones. Amidst the center of the surging serpent, they bore an axe-hacked, torch-blackened tree trunk, roots flared out behind, grasping like kraken arms.
“Good diversion.” Karl shouldered his end of the ladder.
“Not many better.” I took a breath, clutched my end, but didn’t budge. “We stick to the plan.”
Stephan stood lookout over the street. “What’s the plan?”
“Same as always.” I forced him to look me in the eye. “Get in. Get out. No heroics. No bullshit. No suicidal pacts with destiny.”
“Ain’t this exactly that?” Karl rumbled.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said.
A cold drizzle fell as the mob reached the Schloss’s gates, and Jesuses and cobblers and blacksmiths and who-the-hell-knew-what proceeded to spread out along the wall. The guard nearest us scrambled towards the gate. A warning cry belted out from the far towers. A gate-guard fired a crossbow bolt down into the army. Thunk! A scourger roared in pain and fell away from the ram, clutching at the bolt sunk deep into his chest. Another stepped in to take his place.
“OPEN THE GATES!” The Nazarene’s voice rang.
Lightning fissured the sky and the heavens opened up, rain pouring down.
Another gate-guard ducked back to reload, yelling to his compatriots as the Nazarene emerged like madness incarnate. He ambled tall and ungainly toward the gates. The right side of his head yawned open, cracked jagged, like the maw of some hellish jack o’ lantern. Within lay only corruption, sloshing, spilling over his shoulder, down his side, staining half of his body in a black tarry woad.
“TARRY NOT, BROTHER, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS UPON YOU!”
The gate-guards were up again and aiming. Probably shitting their pants, too, and I was right there with them. Kingdom of heaven notwithstanding, the Nazarene looked more like something from the pit than the on-high aeries of the Almighty.
Shouts sounded from beyond. Feet stomping up stairs, across cobbles, sucking through mud. The guards shot again. A bolt took the Nazarene through the chest. He didn’t so much as flinch. Through the black woad staining his body, the Nazarene slathered his hand. Dripping liquid midnight, he pressed it splayed wide against the metal-studded gate. White steam began sizzling.
More guards mounted the gates.
“Shoot him!”
Bolts rained down on the Nazarene, piercing him through the shoulder, the abdomen, the neck.
Teeth grinding, the Nazarene wailed aloud, a cold lonely peal bereft of warmth or life. The ground seemed to pulse, to shiver, puddles rippling, pebbles dancing. A yawning groan as the gates shivered.
“Now?” Stephan swallowed. His hands opened. Closed. Opened again. “Brother—?”
Guards hauled down the ramparts.
I held up a hand.
Karl pawed at an axe at his belt.
“Onward, brothers!” The Nazarene turned toward the horde.
The scourgers lugging the battering ram started forth at a walk, a disjointed jog, evolving into a stumbling gait, synthesizing into quick synchronization, becoming more fluid, more one, as they barreled ahead, lunging forth full bore, the axe-hacked point of the ram ragged and leading them onward.
Scourgers screamed. Roared. Chanted. A murder of bolts flew.
The Nazarene’s eyes blazed as he stood in the ram’s path, lurching aside only at the final instant. Fire-hardened wood struck the gate, shattering it as though made of glass, sheets of shard and splinter raining down.
“Usurp the usurpers!” the Nazarene bellowed. “Defy the defilers!”
The Nazarene lurched through the gates, over a fallen scourger, the battering ram laid across his chest, one of the ragged branch handles piercing his neck. Others poured through after, streaming around him, past him, a river of ragged madness pouring forth, whooping loud for black bloody murder.
“Now?” Stephan’s eyes nigh on bulged from his skull.
Karl and I were both thinking the same thing. Let’s get the fuck out of here.
But we didn’t.
“Let’s go do this,” I said finally, and off we charged into bliss-less oblivion.
…the famine which has lingered far longer than any before.
There is a critical dearth of suitable subjects, and the kingdom, I fear, shall suffer if I cannot find…
—Haesken Family Treatise: King Eckhardt Haesken III
Chapter 57.
THE GALE WIND nearly ripped me off the ladder, rain blinding my eyes as I fought for grip on wet rungs. Reaching the top, I ducked back as a shadow pounded past, along the rampart, toward the gates. Mail rustling. Weapons jangling. Jostling. The wooden crenels afforded cover to either side, but I had to poke my head out for a better view. Empty … for a stretch.
I leapt off the ladder, dagger drawn, and froze.
Below, in the center of the courtyard, a great bale-fire burned. Flames whipped and licked fifty-feet high despite the sheets of cold rain pouring down. Bodies lay strewn across the courtyard.
“Jesus Christ…”
Atop the scaffold and before the conflagration, Eventine lay on high. I couldn’t hear him but imagined a slurred mewling slopping liquid from his lips. And with fair-good reason. They’d lashed him cruciform across the breaking-wheel. An under-stuffed scarecrow, his limbs contorted at impossible angles. They’d broken his arms. His legs. Shattered them, bent them, interwoven them through the charred spokes. Above. Below. Above again.
“Down!” Karl barked.
I ducked reflexively, slipping, falling onto my arse as a shadow loomed and blade slashed past.
“Shit!” My dagger skittered off the rampart.
The shadow growled, tugging at his blade entrenched in the crenel. But only for a moment before abandoning it, reaching behind his back.
Splayed out across the rampart, I kicked out. My boot-heel glanced off his thigh as he raised an axe two-handed above his head. I crab-walked praying backward as he stepped forward. Then Karl was hurtling off the ladder, man-handling the blackguard barrel-assing headfirst down into the courtyard.
I groped shakily to a knee, inched forward, glanced over the edge.
Splayed out in the muck, the shadow made a fair imitation of Eventine. Karl levered the blade free of the crenel and tucked it under his belt.
“Don’t have enough?” I winced against the rain.
“Never.” Karl squinted off toward the gates. “Take the stairs?”
Mercenaries and Jesuses fought amidst a mad scrum on the gate-tower stairs. The Jesuses outnumbered the blackguards two to one, three to one, ten to one, but they had the low ground and the blackguards had actual weapons of warfare, not makeshift implements of self-mutilation and madness. “I’ll pass.”
Stephan appeared huffing atop the ladder. “Rope.” He ducked the coil off his shoulder.
Below, the stables would shield our descent, which was good. The bad? There were blackguards bolting everywhere.
“We can’t leave him like that.” Stephan grimaced as he made a quick loop and tied it off.
“Who?”
“Who?” Stephan shot back.
“Listen—” I grabbed him by the throat. “We’re here for our own. Eventine made his bed. Let him lie in it.”
Stephan stifled a snarl and ripped free, tossing one end of the coil off the rampart.
Karl was on it before it hit ground, scrambling down like some simian fiend, short legs kicking, rope zipping through his gauntleted hands. In a blink, he was on the ground, perched atop the ribcage of his new best mate.
“Watch it—” I grunted an instant before I landed atop of the dead guy, bones breaking beneath my feet.
Stephan was beside me on his arse a second later. “Oooof—”
“Break your arse?” I hissed down.
“Aye. And if either of you bastards say anything about a crack…”
“Language, young man.” I held out a hand.
Karl guffawed as we hoisted Stephan to his feet.
“C’mon.” I started along the stable wall toward the Schloss and froze.
Karl seethed by my side, raring to go. But Stephan. Jesus. The fucker hadn’t moved. Was just standing there, jaw clenched, shaking his head slowly, back and forth. That look in his eye, the set of his jaw.
“Come on—” I growled.
He shook his head. Just a twitch.
“He’s a dead man.”
“Not yet.”
“You can’t save him.”
Stephan shook his head, “I have to try,” and bolted toward the maelstrom.
“Fuck,” I roared as I gave chase cause he was a stupid-martyr-bastard fuck and all, but when it came down to the few things of this world I gave two shits about, he was nigh on it.
…a cold, haunting beauty, Lady Catherine remains as stunning as ever, even despite the malady gripping her soul. How she has pieced together so much of my family’s sordid history lies beyond my ken, but hers is an offer I cannot refuse…
—Haesken Family Treatise: King Eckhardt Haesken III
Chapter 58.
EMBERS RIPPED whistling through the gale, coruscating in vortices of orange hail. Heat and by turn freezing rain blasted me as I stumbled on after Stephan, hurtling over bodies, through sucking mud, into the courtyard, toward the bale-fire burning in its midst. The battle engulfed the courtyard. Von Madbury’s blackguards fell back to the keep. The Jesuses drove them back but paid in the body and blood for each and every step.
A crippled rictus flashed before me, attached to the body of a starving Jesus, his ribs stark across his torso as he slashed a scourge. I blocked it whipping about my forearm, the end licking my face, and ducked under, gut-punching him with Yolanda’s hilt then hurling him aside.
Behind, Karl roared, hacking with his axe.
Ahead, Stephan skidded to a halt, clambered up the scaffold, alongside Eventine. “Mother of God…” Stephan knelt by the massive wheel, by the man, the thing, the detritus of humanity crucified across it. Skin strained taut against broken bone. Eventine screamed as Stephan tried to untangle one of his arms from the spokes. “Judas Priest,” Stephan turned, “where do I even start?”
The Last Benediction in Steel Page 32