Why had he stayed in the fields? He knew it was dangerous. He’d seen the ripped corpse of Peter the miller’s son a fortnight back. He hefted the hoe in his hands and didn’t take his eyes off the spot at the edge of the wood. Was there a dark shape behind the rich green of the midsummer leaves? Was that branch swaying in a breeze, or because something had touched it?
Now it was darker. How long had he been standing there? He had no idea. He couldn’t see the thing in the wood, but he knew it was there as certainly as he knew his own name. His blood pounded in his head, roaring, drowning his senses. He felt himself held in the thing’s thrall like a rabbit facing a fox. He couldn’t move. Any moment darkness would fall and it would rush—
A voice came from behind him: “Don’t look at me.” Lug jumped an inch, and stumbled in a half-turn.
“Don’t look at me! Keep your eyes on it. Look away and it knows your defences are down.’
Lug dragged his gaze back to the edge of the wood. “What—who are you?’
“A traveller. A friend. I want you to get behind me. Move slowly. Don’t stop looking at it. Then move as I move.”
“What if it attacks?”
“Do as I say!” and Lug did, unable to refuse the command. The speaker was half a foot taller than him, the side and back of his head hidden by the hood of his studded leather cloak. He carried a heavy pack on his back. One hand rested inside the cloak, probably on a weapon. The rest of the details were lost in the twilight.
The stranger moved sideways to the earthen path between the wide strips of barley, and Lug moved with him.
“How close are we to Alburgh? Which way is it?”
“Four furlongs, maybe five.” Lug pointed without taking his eyes off the wood. In the corner of his eye the steeple of the church was just visible against the darkening sky.
“I’m going to walk backwards till I reach the old road. You must move too, but keep me between it and you.”
“I’ll try.” Lug said.
“You’ve got a name?’
“Lug.’
“Do as I tell you, Lug, and you won’t die today.”
Lug swallowed, his throat clogged with fear and the day’s dust. The stranger took a backwards step and he took one to follow, stumbling on a clod of earth.
“Pay attention, Lug, and keep moving.” There was a note of humour in the man’s voice. It was strangely reassuring. “Tell me, this thing watching us, have you seen it before?”
“No.”
“But you know what it is?”
“We call it the beast.”
“When did it come here?”
“Last full moon. It’s killed two men.” They had reached the road, the weeds between its ancient stones dry from the lack of rain. Other than their footfalls there was silence: the breeze was gone, the insects quiet, the landscape still. The smell of dry grass and ripening crops filled the evening air.
“Now turn round,” the stranger said, “and be my eyes to lead me to the village. Don’t look back.”
Lug stared down the shadowed road towards Alburgh, and took a step. There was a crash from the wood beyond the field, a great black shape exploded from the undergrowth, and a guttural roar split the gloaming. The stranger pulled on a leather strap and his heavy pack fell to the ground, then he tore a strange curved sword from under his cloak and raised it to strike as the beast charged through the barley towards them.
Lug threw his hoe aside and sprinted away, down the road towards the village. Behind him the sounds of desperate fighting faded until all he could hear were the slap of his shoes on the ancient flagstones, the ragged rhythm of his breaths, and his sobs of fear.
It was only later, as he sat in the reeve’s hall cradling a cup of ale and telling his story for the third time, that he realised the roar had not come from the thing in the wood, but from the man who had saved him.
At the head of the hall the reeve John Kiteley sat, with his sons on either side, listening. When Lug had finished and the hall had emptied, the villagers heading back to their homes in scared groups, the reeve spoke.
“What do we make of this stranger?”
Robert, the younger son, spoke first. “A brave traveller, no more. We bury his remains tomorrow.”
“No.” Edward raised a hand. “Maybe not dead yet. And tonight is a bad night to find strangers in the lanes.”
“Bad?” John asked. “Bad for whom?” But Edward had lowered his face and said no more. John turned to Robert. “I want no terrified villeins, not with harvest so close. We three take watches from the church tower tonight. Robert, you first. This beast may be able to kill a peasant or traveller, but we’ll see how it fares against three good swords.”
As their father leaned forward to rise from his seat, Edward learned back and caught his brother’s eye.
“This is the sequence I have told you of,” he said.
“What?” John asked. But Robert just nodded and turned away.
Will Godley woke to a sound of knocking. The room was dark, and no light came from the window—of course, there was no moon tonight. He slipped from under the blanket and made his way through the dark hut to the front door. His hand paused on the heavy bar that held it closed. What if the visitor was not some parishioner troubled by dreams of devils and things in the wood, but something darker? But man-killing monsters were not known to knock on doors, and it was his work to serve to all God’s creatures.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“Alms and aid,” came a man’s voice, ragged and weak. “Aid for a pilgrim.”
That was not a response he had expected. Will lifted the bar and opened the door. Outside a dark figure clung to the doorpost. Even in the starlight Will could see the blood on his face, and the deep wound it welled from.
“God welcome you, come in!” He grasped the stranger by the arm and half-carried him across the room to a low bench, then rushed to stir up the cooking-fire, making new flames send light dancing across the room. He poured a beaker from the water-jug and turned back to the stranger, who was peeling off his blood-soaked clothes. Will passed him the cup of water and he swigged it, then splashed the rest across his face. Bloody water splattered over the straw on the floor, more blood welling from a deep cut across his forehead. There were other wounds on his chest and his left arm. They looked like bite-marks.
The stranger held out the empty cup. “Can you heat some more? I must clean my injuries.”
Will filled a pan and set it on the fire. “Are you the man who saved Lug Finer?” he asked.
“The lad in the barley field?” The stranger grimaced. “I am, and lucky he is. I was afraid there might be more of the things along the road.”
“Did you kill the beast?’
“No, only wounded it. It was wanting an easy kill, not a fight, and it ran after the first good cut. Sprained my leg badly before it went, though. I had to crawl most of the way here.” Now clean of blood, his strong features and proud nose showed the touch of Norman lineage. Dark eyes stared out from under heavy brows. His voice was low and rich, his accent not local but still familiar.
“We must tell the reeve,” Will decided, turning to the door, but stopped as the stranger’s hand closed around his arm.
‘
“Tell me about this beast first,” he said.
“It has killed two people in as many weeks,” Will said. “We hear it howling in the woods at night. People say it’s the devil.”
“You agree?”
“I think the devil has more important business than a village of poor farmers.” He turned to face the stranger. “Have you come to deliver us from it, then?”
The man’s face was unreadable in the shadows as he scrubbed his cuts clean. “Something like that.”
“I have prayed for divine aid,” Will said, “but I am not so naïve as to believe in angels. Who are you?”
“Just a pilgrim.”
Will shook his head. “Too close to harvest-time for pilgrim
ages.”
“See my cloak if you don’t believe me.”
Will picked up the heavy, bloodied leather from where it had fallen and the silver badges, brooches and buttons gleamed up at him in the faint light, thickly studding the back of the garment: scallops and ampullas by the score, and among them the badges of St Giles from Winchester, St Cuthbert of York, and Thomas Beckett of Canterbury. He saw the Virgin of Walsingham and the beheaded martyr from the great abbey at Bury Saint Edmunds, and others he didn’t recognise. So many badges, so many pilgrimages, so many miles walked. This was either a man of great faith, or a man with a great sin to atone for.
“What’s this?” Will asked, pointing at a figure of a woman.
“Saint Catherine, from Rouen.” Will looked blank. “France,” the stranger clarified.
“This one I know—Saint Peter of Rome. One of my tutors wore it. But this I’ve not seen before.”
“Croix Bellaert, from Sinten. Here is Saint Barnabus, from Cyprus. And this,” the stranger touched a gold crucifix, crudely cast, “this I made in Jaffa in the Holy Land. We melted down jewellery we had looted and fashioned pilgrim badges for ourselves. So close.” He paused. “We could see Jerusalem from its walls, but we did not go there. King Richard led us back.”
Will understood. “You’re a crusader.”
“I was.”
“Our lord went. Geoffrey of Wilton, with his sons. Did you fight with him?”
A grim laugh. “I did.”
“Some men from the village too. Robert and Edward Kiteley, the reeve’s sons.”
“They went to the Holy Land?”
“Yes.”
“You hesitate. What are you not saying?” the stranger asked.
Will paused. The reeve was his friend and protector, and as the village priest he owed his loyalty to him and his family, not to this vagabond with uncertain motives.
“They came back different men,” he said finally.
“As did I. War changes all.”
“Not like that. Edward—his faith has changed.”
The pilgrim’s head jerked up, his eyes focused. “Say more.”
“I cannot. He does not speak of it in public.” Only in the confessional, he thought, and that is between him and his god.
“But you know something,” the pilgrim said. “You must tell me.”
“I will not.”
“You will,” and in a movement the sword was in the man’s hand, pointed at Will’s breast. “I have to know. Your life may rest on it.”
Will said nothing. His mind was calm, calmer than he could possibly have expected. Nobody had ever pointed a sword at him before, and he had no doubt that this taciturn, bloodied man would use it to get what he wanted. But his faith was strong.
There was a lump of fear in his throat. He tried to ignore it.
He walked forward, a slow step at a time, until the point of the curved sword was pressed against his ribs, sharp against his skin.
“Are you really so fearful that you cannot trust anyone?” he said. “Or is your pilgrimage so personal that you must do it alone? You asked me for aid. Do you now turn it away?”
There was silence in the low hut. The pilgrim’s sword did not move, and neither did Will.
Finally the stranger sighed and lowered his sword. “You are right. I beg your forgiveness, but this night, this matter…”
“It taxes us all,” Will said.
“This is not the road I thought my life would follow,” the pilgrim said.
Will was about to respond but suddenly the stranger reached across and grasped his wrist. The meaning was unmistakable: be quiet. He stopped abruptly.
Something was moving outside the cottage. Something, not someone. Heavy feet padded slowly around the outer wall, and moments later a sound of snuffling came from the crack at the bottom of the door.
A dog? A loose pig?
Will looked at the bloody water on the floor, trickling towards the threshold, and knew it was something worse. Something had tracked its wounded prey here.
The door swung inwards as the creature outside brushed against it. He hasn’t barred it shut. He cursed himself silently.
The door began to open, pushed by something unseen. Will sensed its presence: heavy, alien, malevolent. It made a sound from deep in its throat, half grunt and half chuckle.
In a single movement the pilgrim threw himself across the room to the fire, grabbed the water-pan there and flung it towards the doorway. The main force of the water hit the intruder full in its face. There was an inhuman shriek, the thing reared up and for a moment it seemed that it would leap into the room, but then it was gone, fleeing back into the darkness.
Will slammed the door shut and pushed the bar back into its place. The stranger lay sprawled on the floor where he had fallen. The priest helped him to a sitting position.
“That was the beast?” Will asked.
A grimace. “As a man of God shouldn’t you ask me how I am first?”
“I’m sorry. Are you—”
“I’ll live, but I twisted my leg again as I went down. Have you studied Galen? Do you know the healing arts?”
Will knelt before the stranger, his hands feeling the man’s thigh, knee and shin. “This hurts, here?”
“It does.”
“The bone is damaged below the knee. Not broken but twisted, almost sheared.” He looked up at his face. “If I asked you to rest it you would not.”
“Not tonight.”
“I thought you wouldn’t. Well, I can splint it and bind it and rub teasel-root and horsetail into it, and it’ll hold together if you don’t do anything stupid like starting a fight.”
“I’ll do nothing stupid.”
“No fights?”
“No stupid ones.”
Will sighed. “It is the best healing I can offer. For more you must talk to the witch.” He went to the shelf and got down some salve and strips of willow-bark to fashion a splint.
“A witch?” the pilgrim asked, surprise in his tone.
“Call her a wise woman then. Mother Oatley. She lives by the river. She can aid you.”
“You’re an odd one, priest, consorting with witches.”
Will shrugged. “While my wife was dying, Mother Oatley helped her when prayer did not. You are a man of learning—you know faith is not as simple as good and evil. God works through all of us, even if his ways seem strange to our poor understanding. So it is with this woman.”
“Then let us go to her.”
“Why such haste?” Will asked, rubbing a thick paste onto the pilgrim’s leg. “The beast is still out there. The door is secure. We are safe for the night, and you need rest.”
“I cannot rest,” the pilgrim said. “Not this night.”
“Why not?”
“You know what today was?” Will looked blank. “It was the solstice, Will, the longest day of the year. The old Saxons called it Litha. Tonight is a powerful dark, the last moonless night before the harvest comes in. Such a night comes only every thirty years.”
“And what happens on that night, do you believe?” Will asked.
“It is hard to say. An opening of ways or a channelling of powers, perhaps. There would have been a ritual a few weeks back, maybe under the new moon, to bring the beast here.”
“Someone called the beast here? To what end?”
“Protection. To keep people away from whatever tonight’s purpose may be.”
Will grimaced, trying to recall a conversation he had dismissed at the time. “Mother Oatley said she heard something strange a fortnight back, a high keening in the woods. Said her mother had spoken of such things.”
The stranger stared at him, pulling himself to his feet. “That was it. Come on. Pass me my cloak. I must talk to your witch this minute.”
Will helped wrap the cloak around the stranger’s shoulders, then moved to unbar the door. He could see a faint glow through the cracks between the wooden planks. His hands lifted the bar.
B
ut this night is moonless, he thought. So what light—
The door thudded inwards, knocking him off his feet. Something rushed towards him with great arms outstretched to grab him as he fell. He felt himself lifted and flung against the wall, his limbs flailing. His skull cracked against the rough plaster and he fell to the floor.
A great shaggy form stood above him.
It had not fled into the night, he realised. It had stayed outside the door, waiting.
Its breath was foul. Everything about it was foul.
So this is what the beast looks like, he thought absently, as its huge claw descended and ripped his throat out.
Robert Kiteley had seen the fire from the top of the church spire and had sprinted down the stairs. A hut was ablaze, over by the river, its dry thatch sending high flames into the night sky. He needed to wake the village and get help. Whose hut was on fire? Not many people lived over by the mill.
He reached the ground and ran from the church, through the graveyard and past the priest’s house. As he approached he saw strange lights and shadows leaping on the ground, thrown from inside. A second house afire did not bode well, and his path would take him past the door. He stopped for a moment, then drew his sword and moved on, uncertain of what he would find.
But then there was a flash and a roar of flame from within the hut. Fire flickered through the doorway, and a tall inhuman figure rushed out through the door, smoke trailing from its body. It ran for the woods and was gone into the darkness.
“The beast,” Robert whispered.
Behind it came a man with a limp, a body in his arms. Robert did not recognise them, but ran towards them.
“All safe?” he called.
“It killed him,” the man said. “Don’t go in. There’s nothing left.” As if in answer something inside the house fell with a crash and a rush of flames and sparks. Robert threw up a hand to protect his face from the sudden heat. When he lowered it the stranger had laid down the body he carried, and was making the sign of the cross over it. Both men moved away from the blaze.
“God rest him,” Robert said. “Who are you?”
“A pilgrim. The man who saved Lug Finer. The beast followed me and killed the priest. I drove it off with fire. You?”
“Robert Kiteley. I was standing watch. Another hut is on fire, by the river.”
The New Hero Volume 2 Page 10