The eyes of the Black Goat herself were even more terrible: perfectly formed spheres of liquid blackness, relieved only by the scarlet horizontal pupils. The jaws gaped, a tongue lasciviously licked her lips as her claws played with the erect nipples of her breasts, and there was fresh movement from the abomination that was her womb.
The serrated vaginal lips pulsated with energy, the bush of the serpents’ tails writhing as sickeningly as their bodies and heads, a sensuous dance of lust and sexual hunger. It was joined by a human hand, the only part of the grey knight Shadrach could see. He watched in disgust as the rejuvenated Crusader played with the vaginal lips, the grey knight’s thick fingers caressing the jagged teeth that lined them. The serpent tails became a flurry, a blur of movement, and the Black Goat’s eyes closed, a bestial sigh of pleasure emanating from her mouth.
“Mother of All,” the grey knight murmured. “First Mate of Adam. How I have longed for your touch. All these years, to finally be at one with you…”
A further purr of pleasure from the Black Goat. Her head titled backwards, and the smile widened, the lips parted, and the purr became a rumble of thunder that shook the loosened blocks of masonry. More dust fell to the ground and sparkled as the motes were consumed by the unholy lanterns of human fat.
The noise filled Shadrach’s ears, every moan an assault, a cry against human morality.
The candle flames flickered and flared, then gusted as the door opened. He stared in disbelief as James Palmer entered, his face a mask of blood. The young captain’s eyes widened only momentarily, then narrowed, his face filled with grim resolution.
As though he has seen an even more monstrous vision than this, Shadrach thought. He remembered what Lewis must have become and smiled, nodding to the captain.
The flintlock pistol rose steadily in Palmer’s hand. A crack, a cloud of white smoke, and twin screams rent the air: one human, from the grey knight; one unearthly, alien, a scream from the very bowels of Hell itself, as the musket ball blew through the grey knight’s left hand and rendered it to the same mess of blood, ravaged flesh, and splintered bone as his assailant’s.
Smoke filled the cell, obscuring the inhuman fury of movement that followed. Only the scarlet slit pupils of the Black Goat, and the burning glare of her crown of serpents, remained visible.
Shadrach took his chance. He turned to the table and hastily placed the book and the pouches of stone fragments in his snapsack. Hoisting it over his shoulder, he grabbed the powder charges, holstered the hybrid, and hugged the end of the room, inching his way to the doorway.
“Palmer!” he hissed. “Take these.” He heard the sound of a pistol thrust into a waistband, then a hand reached out to him.
“Shadrach? My God, what have they done to you?” The words were barely audible.
“Never mind that! What happened to Lewis? He has transformed, yes?”
“Yes.” The smoke began to clear, and Palmer’s gaze turned from Shadrach’s mutilated chest to the shrieking obscenity in the circle of candles. “In the name of Christ…”
Shadrach took his hand, closed the trembling fingers over the cartridges, and moved into Palmer’s line of sight. “Do not look at her! Listen to me: time is short. Kendall’s men will be free of the Taint, but not for long. Marshall them, supply them with ammunition. Destroy the thing in the nave, then get to the woods.”
“The woods! Are you mad?”
“The monastery will fall, and the Goat’s Young will make their way here. The powder in the charges will keep them at bay while I deal with the knight.”
Palmer stared at the tubes in his hand. They were not the paper powder cartridges he was used to; they had the feeling of parchment. As the light returned, he saw foreign lettering upon them. Ancient script, one he did not recognise. “These…what are they?”
“Like my hybrid, they are a weapon from another time, a distant land. Now, it is time for you to lead, Captain Palmer. A true commander will unite men of opposing sides, even faiths, if he can show leadership in the face of such horror. Go.”
* * *
Palmer raced up the stairs, the pain in his hand forgotten, the sight of the unholy beast burned in his mind. If it had not been for the monstrous image of the Black Goat he would have hesitated to return to the nave and its hellish visitor, but the young captain would sooner face that than stay one moment longer in the blasphemous crypt with its Satanic guest.
And Shadrach…Palmer shook his head as he pushed open the door with his shoulder. Shadrach could take care of himself. The man was inhuman; no one could survive a wound like that and survive.
Who better to fight Satan? I just pray he is on the side of the angels…the door refused to give, stuck in the jamb. He pushed harder, felt a fresh fall of masonry dust, and then was set free.
A face greeted him. The young soldier’s features were more animated now, showing the youth and energy that had been eclipsed by the spiritual darkness imparted by the Black Church.
Kendall’s men will be free of the Taint, but not for long. It was fear that fuelled this infantryman; a fear that was doubtless shared by his comrades.
They need a commander. Show leadership, confidence. He smiled and withdrew his pistol, passing it to the infantryman with one of Shadrach’s parchment rolls.
“Powder and shot, soldier. Prime my weapon.” He lifted his ruined left hand. “Your captain has…somewhat incapacitated me.”
A nervous glance over his shoulder. “Weapons are no good against that…that thing. We must flee –”
“We cannot. Behind us is only the sea, before us the woods. Make no mistake: this creature is only the first. What is your name?”
“Easton. Percy Easton.” He stared dumbly at Palmer’s flintlock.
“Well, Percy. I am assuming command. Load my pistol, and then call those who are still able to fight. Quickly, man!”
He stepped past Easton and narrowed his eyes at the devastation wrought within. The beast had halted in its advance, the trio of goat-legs kicking fragments of stone from the ruined flags into the fissure beneath. Its branch-like tendrils increased in length, and now extended along the vaulted ceiling. They writhed, but with purpose: questing, seeking for weakness in the compromised structure.
To bring the Black Church crashing down around us.
The serpent heads of the monster’s limbs found purchase, shrieking with delight as they bit into the stone ribs, as though devouring meat.
Palmer saw Easton’s comrades had already decided on flight. They had taken advantage of the beast’s pause to run past it, and now congregated at the far end of the nave. Torches illuminated the porch and shone upon the gravel outside, swiftly obscured by the gun smoke from the volley that followed.
Palmer glanced at the misshapen discs of lead around the thing that had been Jethro Lewis and turned back to Easton. The infantryman had done as instructed: the pistol was primed, ready for firing. As he passed it back, his face fell upon the circles of spent musket balls.
“Yes, lad. I know.” Palmer sighed. I hope your gunpowder is as special as you hinted, Shadrach. He thumbed back the flintlock and stepped forward.
The gap between him and the beast was less than six feet. Smoke remained in the far end of the chancel, the Taint of the church was less oppressive, and the flames of the torches and cressets showed the true horror of his opponent.
The limbs and trunk were of the same wood that made up the dead oaks in the unholy forest, yet they moved with a serpentine swiftness, pulsing like the nest of snakes in the idol’s hair below. Palmer shuddered as the serpent heads of the thin tendrils paused in their feeding upon the vaulting to face him. They swayed, hissing, their eyes gleaming a hellish scarlet. Sweat greased the palm of Palmer’s pistol hand, beaded his forehead, and he felt hot flushes of fear coursing through his body.
The Young of the Black Goat. You are definitely your mother’s child.
The fissures in the trunk were more than gaping holes. They were mouths twiste
d into the same mocking grin Jethro Lewis sported whenever he had despatched a soldier. All that was missing was the cruel, contemptuous glare; it had plenty of eyes with which to see, and just as hateful.
He raised his pistol, ignoring the screams of terror from the men by the porch – more of your brethren? I will wager Morton and Overy’s faces will show again – and aimed for the central grinning maw, imagining it was still Lewis’s human face. He squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Shadrach felt another shiver course through the flags of the crypt. He heard the door above slam, knew Palmer was in the chancel. The Black Goat ceased its writhing, and he watched with detached amusement as a small, flattened object – once spherical – appeared at the apex of the vaginal lips. The flattened musket ball slipped out, glistening with black ichor, and landed on the cracked flags. The Crusader had tried to retreat, but the serpents’ tails held him close to his mate.
“It is time, grey knight,” Shadrach said, twisting the tube of powder into his upraised barrel. He dropped a fresh ball in, then rammed a piece of wadding tightly into the barrel. More powder.
The knight’s face retained its unnatural youth, but now it was wracked into a grimace of terror, the physical pain of Palmer’s musket ball momentarily freeing him from his madness.
“You now realise what you have summoned forth, grey knight?” Shadrach capped his powder horn and carefully placed it in his snapsack. He primed the hybrid’s pistol.
“Musket shot and gunpowder, Shadrach? You cannot stop this in that manner!”
“Nay.” Shadrach levelled the hybrid, the point of the blade glinting in the dying candle light. “I cannot.”
“A mercy killing, little Saracen?” The grimace faded, became a mocking smile. “I need not your pity!”
“You will not have it. Your passing will be worse than you can imagine.” Then he swung the pistol into the direction of the crown of serpents. The Black Goat hissed, her lips parting in a mocking grin.
“Feast on the gunpowder of Ibn-Ghazi.” He pulled the trigger. The flint struck powder.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The light dazzled. Blinded. Burned. The entire chancel, nave, and the vestibule – the cracked flags, the fallen chunks of masonry, the soldiers gathered by the door, and most of all, the thing destroying the Black Church – were frozen, emblazoned upon Palmer’s eyes, accompanied by an unearthly white light that banished all traces of the black Taint Shadrach had referred to.
The tree-beast remained frozen, even after the flash of light vanished. The tendrils were motionless, their heads half-buried in the vaulting ribs.
Palmer became conscious of the pain from the recoil and he knew the power unleashed from Shadrach’s powder was far greater than anything he had shot before. There was no smoke, either; the effect of his shot was not obscured by the usual white mist that arose from every other firearm.
No smoke, but plenty of fire. The chasm-like mouth had widened, splintered and fractured, and now smouldered with the spark that flared in its darkness: a star, kindled by an earthly weapon with unearthly ammunition. The bark erupted in flame, but even this was like no fire Palmer had witnessed. It had a flowing, viscous quality; it moved like oil – or blood – and the flames were contained, like a moving image from a colour woodcut rather than a sheet of fire.
The skein of flames wrapped around the multitude of snake-branches, diagonally climbing stripes of scarlet and orange that coated the writhing limbs. The snake heads screeched, but this time in pain rather than hunger and triumph.
The white light from the gunpowder of Ibn-Ghazi faded, and Palmer blinked. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw a curtain of unearthly white and a silhouette from Hell. And from the vestibule, four more normal figures; frozen into immobility, hesitant.
“Easton! Easton!” He had to shout to make his voice audible over the roar of serpents. The young infantryman continued to stare at the tree-beast, a man in thrall to the gaze of Medusa. Palmer thrust the flintlock in his hands. “More powder and shot. Follow me.”
Palmer averted his eyes from the flaming beast, not daring to meet its eyes lest it break free from the spell binding it. He stepped over fragments of pillar and vaulting ribs, keeping as close to the wall as possible. Over the fallen companions of Percy Easton, some twitching their last, others staring with beseeching eyes. He ignored them. They are lost. I can only lead the living.
Shadrach was right after all. On the ride to Fairlight, he had said: You feel unworthy; you take the losses personally. You have yet to learn detachment…but that will come.
Palmer gritted his teeth, grimly amused by how quickly his lesson had been learnt. They were the dead. Already, they seemed to be subsumed into the blackness of the Taint, fading under a thickening carpet of darkness. He frowned, glanced up.
The cressets and torch lights seemed brighter than before, and he realised the Taint from the walls and ceiling vaulting had gone –
No, not gone. The floor…’tis darker than before!
Pooling. Spreading. Moving. He halted, fearful lest it run up his legs and claim him. But it parted before it met his feet, oozed past him, then rejoined.
What in the name of God…
The Taint rippled, roiled as it moved past the Lewis-creature. Palmer saw the darkness pool around the base of the doorway he had exited moments before. Rivulets dribbled through, and in the light from the torch mounted above the doorway he saw it embrace the steps leading downwards.
To the blasphemous goat and its unholy master. To Shadrach.
* * *
The flare of white light vanished, and as Shadrach suspected, the blast of gunpowder had done little to damage the Black Goat. But it had at least distracted the beast. Shadrach took his chance.
He hacked through the forest of serpents with his hybrid’s blade. They hissed, fell apart like coils of rotten rope. It would not be long before Shub-Niggurath regained her advantage, restored her power, and her crown of thorns would be whole and deadly once more.
But for now he eased past the twisting mass of disembodied snake heads, retching with the stench of ichor, and reached for the grey knight with his free hand.
The arm was limp and sticky with blood from his wound. He howled as Shadrach pulled tightly on the damaged limb, screeched when fingers dug into the ravaged flesh of his palm.
He dragged the grey knight across the rumbling floor, oblivious to the fallen masonry attempting to trip him.
The door…
The grey knight was a dead weight, and it took all of Shadrach’s strength to pull him through. He stumbled on the first step, but Shadrach hauled him upright.
“Nay, Sir Knight. Not down. You are going up.” He twisted his prisoner about and forced him up the winding staircase. Light spilled on the steps, dryer than the ones below, and Shadrach was thankful the beacon was still alight.
“Why – why? Shadrach, the monastery is fallen! We will perish if we do not reach solid ground!”
Shadrach did not answer. He pushed the grey knight upwards, stabbing the broad shoulders with the tip of his hybrid. His prisoner cried out and stumbled again. Another stroke from the Damascus steel; this time a diagonal slash that parted the habit and opened flesh.
The grey knight continued his climb on hands and knees, crawling. The light was stronger, the heat more intense, as they reached the summit. A doorway with no door, and the heat from the beacon took Shadrach’s breath away. He threw the knight to the floor – undamaged, seemingly impervious to the destruction wrought elsewhere upon the monastery – and inspected their surroundings.
The lighthouse was a covered beacon; an octagonal building of ancient stone whose walls tapered to a point a mere four foot above their heads. The apex of the structure had a small ventilation hole to allow smoke to escape, but that was the sole access to the outside world. Each wall was centred with a foot-square pane of glass, curved in a convex manner so as to amplify the light to seafarers. It also amplified the heat within. Swea
t poured from Shadrach’s body, dribbling into the chest wound and stinging like serpent venom.
The nearest window looked out on the dead wood below. The moonlight shone upon an empty glade; the woods had thinned.
The Young are on the move. His jaw tightened. Time was short.
The cresset that comprised the beacon to the outside world had been fed a few hours previously, and it would be many hours before the fire turned to naught but glowing embers.
The fire would burn more brightly than ever in a few moments.
But will I have sufficient time?
The grey knight tried to shrink back from the cresset, whimpering when his fingers made contact with the red-hot iron. Shadrach placed a foot on the hand and slowly pressed his boot heel down. The cracking of finger bones filled Shadrach’s ears with a pleasing symphony; it sounded just as before, when his own hand – belonging to a different body but the same soul – had been crushed by the knight.
Not part of the ritual: purely payback. Now, his selfish human desire for vengeance satisfied, he began his sacred task.
The grey knight was stripped in a matter of moments, the Damascus steel slicing through heavy cotton and leather like butter. He lay face down on the small flooring, his back drenched with sweat and fresh blood from the earlier slash.
The hybrid blade flashed again, but this time the work was more arduous. The knight shrieked, writhed and twisted with each cut the blade made. His rejuvenated flesh was strong, his muscles and tendons as firm and powerful as the day he and the man known as Massoud had first met.
Dreaming In Darkness Page 21