by Matt Turner
What? Simon jerked his head around to see that a knight mounted on a white steed was riding barely a foot to his right. The man’s approach had been so unnervingly silent that Simon had been completely unaware of his presence. “Who are you?” Simon demanded angrily. The knight’s surcoat bore the coat-of-arms of House de Montfort, but his visor was down, obscuring his features from view.
“Another abandoned son.” There was something strange about the man’s voice, as though it were emerging from the depths of an abandoned well. “But I don’t blame you, Simon, I really don’t. You do what must be done—you always have, and you always will. I admire that.”
The strange knight reached out with a gloved hand. Simon instinctively recoiled from his touch, but the stranger’s grip was inescapable. He laid a hand on the back of Simon’s right shoulder, and in spite of his armor, Simon felt a horrific burning sensation. A bolt of pain exploded in either direction, down his arm, and up into his throat, and he felt a yelp burst from his lips.
But Simon was no stranger to pain. He tore his sword from its scabbard, ready to disembowel the stranger—and turned to see that no one was there. It was just him, riding up the ridge to where his cavalry waited, with his small retinue of knights following some twenty yards behind.
“You all right, m’lord?” one of them called out.
It was nothing, Simon tried to tell himself. Just nerves before battle. Whatever the vision had meant, it was gone—even the newfound dull pain in his right shoulder was likely just some residual soreness from his training the previous day. “An illusion, nothing more,” he mumbled to himself, and resolved to purge such weakness from his mind.
At last, he reached the crest of the ridge and gazed down at his massed cavalry. They were a magnificent sight: steeds anxiously pawing the ground, the glimmers of the sun reflecting off armor, the way the banners decorated with the de Montfort sigil rustled in the faint breeze… With such a force, he reckoned that he could conquer Hell itself. But there was no time to bask in the glory of his army, for he could already hear the sounds of battle from the siege camp.
“No time for words!” he bellowed out in a roar that echoed for half a mile in every direction. “The heretics are here! Now follow me, and KILL THEM!”
The crusaders cheered, and within seconds the mighty host was tearing up the slope after him. Simon didn’t bother to watch their approach; he had already jerked his stallion about to gallop back to the camp as fast as the beast would carry him. The thunder of hooves grew louder as the front rank of knights drew level with him.
Before them, the camp was in utter chaos. The thin stockade the besiegers had thrown up had not slowed down the enemy faydits for even a minute—it was nothing but broken wood and bloodied bodies now. Whatever other defense the camp had mounted had already been crushed; a great mass of besiegers frantically fled in all directions as Cathars gleefully hacked down those unlucky enough to be caught.
“Make way!” Simon bellowed. His horse instinctively bridled at the sight of the panicked, onrushing crowd, but he brutally kicked his spurs into its flanks, ignoring the animal’s whinny of protest. The mass of routing besiegers attempted to scatter away from the newly arrived cavalry, but many of them were far too slow. A man-at-arms limping from an old battle wound staggered into Simon’s path. There was no time to stop or even slow down, so Simon kicked his spurs again. The soldier barely had enough time to let out a hoarse scream before the half-ton warhorse trampled him down beneath its ironshod hooves. Even Simon, who had killed men a hundred different ways, winced at the sickening pulp that sprayed in the air.
Out of the chaos of the camp, a roaring fire suddenly emerged into Simon’s line of sight. One of the campfires, he realized—it seemed that in the confusion of the attack, it had spilled out of its fire pit and ignited an entire row of tents, making an impassable wall of flame. “God damn it!” Simon cursed in fury. “Around, around!” He spun his horse about, searching for a new angle of attack.
The boulder came so close to his head that he felt the wind of its passing brush his hair. It exploded against the ground barely twenty feet away, instantly crushing four of his knights and shredding a dozen more with shrapnel. “Mangonel!” a voice, far too late, forlornly called out over the cries of the wounded.
We’re out of range of the walls. They must have brought it out of the city. And now his knights, already hindered by the fleeing refugees, the difficult terrain, and the fires, were slowed even more by the bodies of their own comrades. Another boulder, this time escorted by a score of crossbow bolts, shrieked overhead, only adding to the confusion.
“God damn it,” Simon repeated. He spun around to face the wall of fire that blocked his path to victory. One of his knights galloped toward him, a desperate plea on his lips, and then toppled into the fire with a scream as a crossbow bolt sank into his chest.
To hell with the fire, Simon decided. “Crusaders! To me!” he howled. As if sensing its master’s wishes, his horse bolted for the flames. Within seconds, the heat was nearly unbearable, but with one last burst of energy, the horse made a final desperate leap over the charred remains of a tent, and Simon found himself on the opposite side of the flames.
A faydit atop a gelding jerked in surprise at the lord’s sudden landing, but it was already too late. Simon’s blade was already drawn, and he neatly gutted the man with a single swing. Another one of the traitorous knights emerged from the fog of war to avenge his comrade, but at the sight of Simon, he immediately jerked on his reins and stopped his horse in its tracks. “It’s the Butcher!” he cried out. “The Butcher is here!”
Simon charged the heretic. The faydit halfheartedly raised his shield, but Simon’s blow easily tore it to splinters. He kicked his spurs into his warhorse, slamming the beast up against the heretic’s smaller animal, knocking the enemy off-balance. The faydit desperately tried to keep his balance while unsheathing his sword, but Simon’s blade was already crashing down into his helmet—
“Butcher!” a voice screamed.
A sharp pain stabbed up into Simon’s gut as the tip of a steel pike slammed against his abdomen. The breath went out of him in a whoosh, and the blow that should have crushed the faydit’s skull merely sank into his shoulder instead. Simon whipped his head around to see the Cathar pikeman who had stabbed him. His armor had held, just barely, against the blow, but he judged the pikeman to be a greater threat, so he wrenched his blade from the faydit’s armor, readjusted his grip on the hilt, and slashed the heretic’s head open from ear to ear.
“He’s here! The Butcher!” The faydit took advantage of Simon’s momentary distraction to regain his balance and kick his horse a few yards away. He lifted his visor to reveal a young face filled with hate. “You will pay for your sins today, de Montfort.”
Simon tore his blade free of the pikeman’s head. “Shut your mouth,” he growled as he stole a quick glance around his surroundings. The smoke obscured his vision, shrouding the burning tents and splintered corpses of the camp in a dark fog. None of his cavalry were visible. Where in blazes were they? He had crossed the inferno still blazing behind him—why hadn’t they?
A crossbow bolt spat out of the fog, narrowly shrieking past his unprotected head.
“The Butcher!” someone else called out in the smoke. Another voice took it up, then a dozen. The pool of blood gathering by the dead pikeman’s corpse ever-so-slightly began to ripple to the vibration of many running feet.
“It’s over, Butcher.” The faydit backed his horse several more yards away, trusting in the distance to protect himself. “You’ll be roasting in Hell soon.”
With a roar of rage, Simon slashed his spurs into his stallion and charged. A half-dozen crossbow bolts whipped through the smoke as he galloped forward; two missed, but three slammed into his horse, drawing a geyser of blood, while the fourth ripped into the meat of his right thigh. Only the sheer momentum of his charge kept him going until he body-slammed the heretic. The two men went down in a cra
sh of steel and dying horseflesh.
Something heavy smashed at Simon’s breastplate, threatening to cave his chest in. He blindly lashed out with his boots and sword, felt something fleshy connect with his blow, and was rewarded with a scream of animal pain. “Fuck.” He groaned, and he rolled to the side, burying his face in ashes, just as a steel-clad hoof sank into the ground where his head had been.
“De Montfort!”
He glanced to the side, saw a pair of tattered boots running toward him, and lashed out with his blade. The newly arrived pikeman howled in pain and fell to the ground. In one smooth motion, Simon plunged his sword into the small of the man’s back and used him as a makeshift lever to wrench himself back upright.
He was greeted by a scene out of a nightmare; all around him, dozens of ragged heretics bearing pikes, crossbows, even the odd sickle were emerging from the smoke. Most of them were nothing but peasants, covered in rags and stinking with filth. Simon spat on the ground in disgust. These were the rabble that were going to kill him? “Damned if I die today,” he snarled. He placed a boot on the whimpering pikeman’s throat and crushed it with a single savage stomp as he tore his sword free.
“Take him alive!” a hoarse voice commanded. The crowd swelled as more and more of them emerged from the smoke; there must be nearly a hundred of them now.
My cavalry will be here any minute, Simon told himself. Any second now, a line of his knights would storm out of the flames to tear the heretics to pieces upon their lances.
But no help came. “Remember Minerve!” a man-at-arms snarled. “We’re going to rip off your cock, Butcher.”
I’m going to die here, Simon realized. He would die, completely alone, surrounded by hundreds of his enemies. Damn Amaury, he inwardly cursed. Damn Vaux, damn his cavalry, damn all the weak, incompetent fools who forced me down this path. He felt his despair morph into rage, and then into an all-consuming desire to bleed the heretics as much as he was able.
“Come on then!” he called out with a wild laugh. Pain exploded in his right shoulder where the stranger had touched him, but there was no time to even acknowledge it, for the enemy was charging him from all directions.
Rational thought vanished, all semblance of sentience fell away as he became a screaming, howling beast that hacked apart bones, sprayed the air with blood, bit out throats, and killed, and killed, and killed, until it seemed that the whole fucking world was dying around him. There was barely a place to stand so he leapt and danced on the broken, bleeding corpses, ignoring the steel that punctured and tore through his body. But it didn’t matter; he was a god of death, and he no more needed a body than the God he claimed to serve—
His sword was long gone, buried in the hill of bodies, so he hurled himself at a young crossbowman, his bloodied hands extended. The heretic screamed in fear and fired the crossbow; the bolt tore into Simon’s hand, taking away three of his fingers and a solid chunk of his palm. But enough of his digits remained to sink into the youth’s eyes and gouge out the bloody pulp behind them. A brutal shove rocketed the blind, screaming man onto the pikes of three approaching infantry, buying Simon just enough time to turn with a snarl to guard his flank.
A knight bearing the de Montfort coat-of-arms calmly stood among the carnage, intently staring at him through the darkness of his visor. He looked so out of place among the howling, bloodied mob that for a precious second Simon hesitated.
“Magnificent,” the knight whispered. His voice was low and his face hidden, yet his words easily cut through the curses and screams surrounding them. “Magnificent!”
An arm wrapped around Simon’s throat. He bit at it with his broken, shattered teeth, drawing blood, but another strong pair of hands seized him, wrenching him backward. He fiercely struggled, but all his former strength was gushing out through the dozen wounds his body had taken.
“Come and find me.” The knight took a step closer.
Sweat and blood stung at Simon’s face, turning his vision into a crimson blur, but just enough remained for him to make out a pair of sunken golden eyes peering at him from behind the steel bars of the visor. He would have recoiled at the sight, but nearly a dozen men were clawing at him, preventing him from so much as moving a muscle.
In the smoke-stained sky above, something shrieked at an unimaginable speed—a dark blot on the clouds that grew larger at a terrifying rate. The swords and pikes tearing at Simon, ripping his priceless armor to rags and destroying his body, were nothing compared to the fear that he felt as he saw the massive projectile arc downward toward him. A boulder from a mangonel, he realized in horror.
“In Judecca,” the strange knight breathed.
A second later, the half-ton boulder sheared into Simon’s skull, exploding his brains out in a fountain that spattered every man for ten yards. The boulder crashed into the ground beyond Simon’s headless corpse, crushing half a dozen men-at-arms and injuring twenty more as it rolled into the mass of Cathars surrounding the dead crusader.
Nevertheless, after a moment of shock, the gathered crowd gave a great cheer, for at last the hated Butcher was finally dead.
5
It was a good day, Vera judged, for her riding habit. The garment was loose enough, particularly over her rail-thin hips, to sufficiently conceal her deadly equipment, but tight enough in the arms and chest that it would not significantly hinder her movements. Besides, the dark outfits were all the rage in St. Petersburg—if there was one thing the bloated bourgeoisie did know, it was fashion. She cocked her hat at a jaunty angle and smirked at herself in the mirror. Lovely as always.
She stepped over the lieutenant’s pale corpse and knelt to retrieve the precious carpetbag that she had hidden beneath the bed. She carefully opened it to survey the contents, then delicately removed a single stick of dynamite. Petyr would bellow at her for wasting their precious weapon, but even he did not know how much of the explosive she had gathered on her own dime, largely thanks to lonely, gullible men like Lieutenant Krakowsky, formerly of the living. I could destroy an army, she thought with relish. How ironic that the capitalist system had created the very weapon of its own destruction!
A flash of pain suddenly stabbed into her left ankle, making her cry out in pain. It was only quick thinking that kept her from dropping the bag and perhaps leveling the entire city block. “What the hell—”
She looked down and gasped. Before, she could have sworn that Krakowsky had rolled over to die on his belly, his hands locked around his throat—but now the corpse was lying spread-eagled on its back, grinning up at her. One of its hands was lying suspiciously close to her left heel. And now that she looked down at the corpse, was there something different about its face? A hint of gold in its eyes that hadn’t been there before?
Nonsense, she told herself. It was only rigor mortis that had made the corpse’s lips turn up at the corners. She looked down at her ankle to see a large red welt swelling on her skin. Some sort of insect bite. Nevertheless, some nervous part of her heart made her drop the bloodstained pillow on the lieutenant’s face so she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
Besides, she had other matters to attend to. Vera was intelligent enough to know that there was a good chance that she would not live to see the end of the day. The prospect did not scare her. The other members of the People’s Will would undoubtedly carry on her legacy and ultimately achieve victory, but it was too tempting to not leave a final gift for the bourgeois henchmen who would almost certainly be investigating her room later.
She took the lone stick of dynamite, carefully tied a string to the blasting cap on the end, and ever-so-gently slid it into the dead man’s boot until only the string was visible. She then took the excess string, and carefully tied it around one of the bedposts until it was very nearly taut. When her work was done, she took a few steps back and carefully surveyed it. She had done her job well; the string leading from the lieutenant’s boot to the bedpost was practically invisible against the bloodstained rug. If anyone were to m
ove the corpse even a few centimeters, the string would go taut, the blasting cap would activate, and boom.
My enemies depend on life, but I depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident. She could not remember the nameless anarchist who had said that, but his words had always rung true to her. With that defiant quote echoing in her mind, she picked up her carpetbag and smiled at the thought of its contents. If anyone dared to try to stop her, everything within a hundred meters would be wiped away.
With her trap laid, she strode to the door and left the seedy room. She locked the door behind her, then proceeded down the stairs to the main room of the inn. The crowd was long gone, leaving only a handful of slumbering drunks and the bartender.
“Do you have your key, miss?” the bartender asked, not even bothering to look up from the glass he was cleaning.
“Yes,” Vera said. “I just have to run a quick errand. I’ll be back later to fetch my things.”
“Good, good,” the bartender muttered. He paid no more attention to her as she left the Traktir na Pyatnitskoy and onto the busy streets of St. Petersburg.
The crisp spring air was incredibly refreshing after the stuffiness and blood-tinged atmosphere of the room she had rented. She reveled in it as she made her way through the Tuesday crowds, a faint smile on her face and the slightest swagger in her hips. This is what freedom tastes like. She took a deep breath of the cool air. When the People’s Will ends the monarch, all other Russians will be able to taste it, too. At worst, she would live on forever as a martyr of the Revolution. At best, she would be an architect of the new order. Oh, what changes I’ll make.
It was nearly six o’clock when she finally arrived at her destination. The Catherine Canal, a relatively crowded train station built up over a small artificial river some five meters, was unremarkable except for the excited group of reporters and wealthy elites milling about and the armed guards standing watch over the tracks.