Sinner: A Prequel to the Mongoliad (The Foreworld Saga)

by Mark Teppo

  SINNER

  A TALE OF FOREWORLD

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 by FOREWORLD LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  eISBN: 978-1-61109-245-5

  SINNER

  A TALE OF FOREWORLD

  by

  MARK TEPPO

  Many set themselves the aim of rescuing the indifferent and the lazy—and end up lost themselves. The flame within them gets dim with the passage of time. So, if you have the fire, run, since you never know when it may be doused, leaving you stranded in darkness.

  —John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Step 3: On Exile)

  CONTENTS

  LUXURIA

  GULA

  AVARITIA

  ACEDIA

  IRA

  INVIDIA

  SUPERBIA

  HUMILIS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LUXURIA

  He had grown up in this forest. As a child, Otto had hunted rabbits along the band of white ash that grew along the track of the old river. He remembered the last time the wash filled with water, during the unseasonably wet spring in 1226. His uncle, Heinrich, had lost two dozen cattle in the deluge of water that had come pouring out of the trees. For weeks after, he and the other boys had found all manner of treasures buried in the dark silt carried down from the mountains by the floods: shards of earthen pottery, scraps of leather, bits of metal rounded by their long journey. Dierk, the largest of the boys, had found a piece of a broken blade, one of the old swords used by the Romans. They had even found a woman’s arm, battered and torn, wedged among the tangled roots of an ancient oak that had been torn up by the waters. Dierk had thought it belonged to Elsa, a local girl who had vanished during the flood. Perhaps she had been out here, among the trees, with another boy that night when the waters had come.

  Or perhaps it had been something else. Something darker. Something evil.

  Something like whatever was chasing him.

  Otto fled through the woods, and it was as if the trees had moved since the last time he had been in the forest’s embrace. The familiar paths—traveled so frequently they belonged to him as much as to the animals—were hidden from him tonight, even with the assistance of the full moon. It hung, snared, in the spindly and jagged branches of the trees, whose limbs strained and reached for the shining circle like eager children begging their mothers to lift them up. He saw no animals and heard nothing but the shuddering beat of his heart loud in his ears.

  When he did hear an echo in the forest, it was the sound of pursuit. They had been chasing him since he stepped out of the inn to piss. At first he thought they were dogs that belonged to someone local, but then he caught sight of one of them, crossing the field opposite the inn. He wiped at his eyes, sure he had had too much ale to drink, but the apparition didn’t disappear. It came closer, prancing in the moonlight, and his bravery fled at the sight of the ash-whitened skin.

  The next village was a half-day’s journey upriver. Mainz was so far away that it might as well have been the Holy Land. He didn’t know where he was going, and it didn’t matter. As long as he ran away from them.

  He didn’t know how many were chasing him, nor did he want to stop and find out. As a boy, his uncle Heinrich had told him stories of the ghost hunt—the spirits of damned hunters unable to ascend to Heaven until they caught the Devil, but they had been hunting the cloven-hoofed one for so long that they had forgotten who they were, and they were nothing more than vengeful spirits who preyed on sinners. They could smell the Devil’s taint, the corruption that took root in the soul when a man sinned against God.

  He prayed to God when he could manage enough breath to spare for prayer. What have I done, Lord? How have I offended you?

  A rock turned beneath his foot, and he sprawled on the ground. His elbow banged against the heavy root of a tree, and he curled into a ball on the ground, whimpering as pain lanced up his arm and into his shoulder.

  Something dashed through the brush nearby and he froze, his whimper dying in his throat. There had been a flash of white moonlight reflecting off pale skin, and when the second one passed, he clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle his cry of terror at what he saw.

  The third one did not run past like the first two. It crouched in the shadow of a nearby tree, and he could hear its ragged breathing. He stared at the dark shape, trying to pierce the darkness with his gaze while simultaneously praying that what he had seen was not true. The creature in the darkness made a guttural noise. His mind refused to accept that what he was hearing was laughter, and that it was coming from a human throat.

  He scrambled backward, and the shadowy figure leaped forward, grabbing at his trailing leg with an outstretched hand. As soon as its grip latched onto his ankle, he started screaming and kicking. The figure laughed, fighting to snare both his legs, and his cries of terror brought the other two back. They loomed over him, faces that he knew but that were distorted and pale in the moonlight. There was blood and dirt on their faces, and their lips were white with ash.

  “No!” Otto begged. “Do you not know me?”

  The man holding his legs was a goatherd he knew by sight but not by name. The woman kneeling on his right arm worked in the inn; she had served him just the other night. But there was no recognition in her face now. Her eyes were wild and black.

  He tried to shove her off, but the third one, a burly man with an old scar that twisted his lips, caught his flailing arm. He tried to pull free, but the broad-chested man gripped his wrist and slowly pried his fist open. As he watched, unable to believe what he was seeing, the man bit down on his index finger, right around the second knuckle. He screamed as teeth grated against bone, and the man shook his head violently. The other two shrieked with delight as the man wrenched his head back, taking a finger with him.

  “Please,” Otto sobbed. “Please, God. Help me.” Blood squirted from the ravaged end of his finger, and the woman eagerly grabbed at his injured hand, licking and slurping at his bloody stump.

  “God cannot hear you.” The voice came from the trees, and he recoiled at the sound of human speech. He struggled beneath the threesome, who crouched reverently at the voice while still maintaining their hold on their captive.

  Moonlight fell across a robed figure as it approached. The figure wore a misshapen hood, complete with a leather mask and a crown of twisted vines. “God is afraid of the night,” the figure said, his voice a dry rattle in the darkness. “He is afraid of what lives in these woods. What has always lived in these woods. Your God has fled, and we are all that remain.”

  As if these words were permission, the three fell on their captive. Their hands tearing; their teeth biting.

  GULA

  It was hard to tell who thought they were more important: the horse or its rider. The horse, a black destrier with a swath of white down its throat, walked with such a precise and high-stepping gait that it was nearly prancing, though judging from the imperious lift of its head, it would never deign to do something as undignified as prancing. Its rider was a priest in a dun-colored robe beneath a dark blue cloak—which seemed to Andreas to
be one layer too many. The man’s face was clean-shaven, and his tonsure was so white that he appeared to be crowned with a halo that slipped down across his skull. His eyes were blue, like the Northern seas, and they appeared to miss little. They locked onto Andreas as the not-quite prancing horse came abreast of the itinerant knight, and Andreas, always eager to practice his humility, dipped his head.

  The horse snorted, shat (much to the dismay of the rider directly following), and continued on. Andreas stared at the steaming pile in the narrow lane and quietly counted the eight riders following the priest as they carefully avoided the freshly dropped equine offering. Andreas scratched his cheek absently after the party had passed, wishing once again that he hadn’t lost his own horse in a wager.

  It had been a fine animal, though a bit temperamental when the weather turned. It had rained most of last week, and the beast had been feisty enough that he had, in a moment of weakness, offered it up in a wager with a pair of Frankish mercenaries. Andreas suspected the pair had cheated, but as the crowd had become overwhelmingly filled with friends of the Franks, he had thought it prudent to let the matter lie.

  As luck would have it, the storm departed during the night and the last few days had been gloriously temperate. The walk along the Rhine had been pleasant and peaceful, unmarred by anything more strenuous than waving at the occasional boat that meandered past.

  He had never been to Lorsch and had heard stories of its wondrous library; however, his visit had been unceremoniously cut short when he had been informed by the monks at the abbey that the library had been sealed.

  And then there had been the matter with the Frankish mercenaries. All in all, a peaceful stroll along the river for a few days was probably the best recourse. It would give him time to fully expunge the annoyance still laboring in his breast. At least until he reached Mainz and sought an audience with the Archbishop there, specifically to inquire why His Excellency had ordered the closure of the library in Lorsch.

  Andreas adjusted his pack on his shoulder, and whistling tunelessly through his teeth, he continued on his journey toward Mainz, following in the direction of the regal priest and his entourage. He gave little thought as to where the party was bound until he stumbled across them again not an hour later.

  The village was not unlike many of the villages that were scattered along the Rhine between Worms and Mainz, little more than a tiny green surrounded by an inn or two, a trading house, and a few other houses belonging to the local farmers who preferred to be known as owners of land rather than workers of the same. The rest of the residents lived in huts scattered among the fields that surrounded the village. The inn, a more well-to-do building than the last few Andreas had seen, was on the north side of the green. Its broad porch was being used as a dais by the local magistrate and the regal priest to address the unruly crowd. On the western periphery of the crowd, eager participants were arguing over the distribution of freshly cut wood around a tall pole.

  Andreas paused at the verge of the crowd as he realized what he was about to stumble into. He was taller than most of the villagers, and though he stood at the back, he was able to readily scan the crowd for the focus of the villagers’ ire. Near the front, not far from the magistrate, was a cluster of men, holding someone between them. A woman, he surmised, as the sound of her shrieking voice carried over the general hubbub.

  It pained him to walk away, but he knew this was not his fight. He knew nothing of the charges being levied against the woman or the mood of the villagers. By inserting himself in this situation, by revealing who he was, he could cause more strife than the village was already suffering. He did not care for the way the priest carried himself, but his dislike of the recent abuses attributed to some Dominicans in their zealous pursuit of heretics was not a complete condemnation of all priests.

  He might be a Knight Initiate of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, the Holy Knights of the Virgin Defender, but he was one man, far away from home. A company of Shield-Brethren, as they were more regularly known in the Holy Roman Empire and the lands north, were known to strike terror in an opposing army simply by virtue of their appearance on the battlefield, but one Shield-Brother was more a curiosity than a cause for alarm.

  Andreas caught sight of a man seated on a horse to his left. He wore a plain surcoat over mail with a longsword on his person and a shield attached to his saddle. His skin was darker than the rest of the villagers—a consequence of his birth, not the sun—and his hair and beard were neat and short, cut close to the shape of his head and face. His shield bore a familiar rose emblem, not unlike the brooch pinned to Andreas’s cloak.

  One Shield-Brother might be a curiosity, he thought, but two?

  As the magistrate attempted to make himself heard over the crowd, Andreas worked his way around the crowd toward the man on the horse. The rider spotted him coming and regarded him coolly for a moment, assessing him, before returning his gaze to the spectacle unfolding on the green.

  “That’s a nice horse,” Andreas opined as he reached the mounted knight. He was being polite. The animal was magnificent. Its withers were on equal height with his chest, and its coat was such a lustrous gray that it seemed more like Byzantine silk than hair. It wore very little tack, and Andreas assumed such a decision on the part of the rider was due to the animal’s responsiveness to knee and hand. It had white markings on its front legs and face, and when it turned its head to look at him, he was startled to see a rounded bump among the white hair on its forehead—a tiny nub not unlike the sort of protrusion male deer exhibit as they start growing their horns.

  “It is,” the man said, and his accent reminded Andreas of the confusion of languages he had heard during his time in the Levant. “The Carthusian monks breed excellent stock.”

  Further conversation was precluded by the magistrate finally making himself heard over the crowd. The villagers shushed one another—a susurration that ran from the front to the back of the mob—as the magistrate began to shout. “I know you are frightened, but we must not allow ourselves to be filled with fear. If the Devil walks among us, we must be strong in our faith so that we may cast him out. If we quarrel amongst ourselves, then we are divided. We have laws, given to us by God, that protect us, and as long as we uphold those laws, no harm will come to us.

  “The widow”—and this word brought howls from the audience—“this…woman, Gerda, stands accused of witchcraft; of sacrificing her husband to the Devil in return—” The audience started shouting again, drowning out the magistrate’s voice. Andreas could see him waving his arms, trying to get their attention, but the villagers were too stirred up.

  The woman had stopped fighting her captors as soon as the magistrate had started speaking, and the accusations had not stirred her. She hung loosely in the grip of the three men, her face unmoved by the turmoil around her. It was the men holding her who were showing signs of distress, clearly worried that the mob’s bloodthirst would extend to them.

  The magistrate stepped back, raising his hands in frustration to the priest, who took his place at the edge of the platform. The priest raised his arms, palms out, and held still, waiting for the crowd to notice him. When he spoke, he spoke in a normal tone of voice, and such was his presence and his expectation of being listened to that the audience fell silent as wheat felled by the pass of a scythe.

  “We are God’s children,” the priest said. “We are not animals. What has happened here in your village is a heinous crime against God, and I promise you that the malefactors will be found and punished. But the Church believes that each of us—no matter how far we have strayed—may confess our sins and receive absolution. We will hear this woman’s confession, and should it be satisfactory, we will grant her the salvation her poor soul craves. If she is unrepentant in her testimony, we will purge her—and the taint of her sins—from this village.

  “This matter belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. It is my sworn duty as an inquisitor to cleanse this evil from your midst so that it may
not infect others. I am the Righteous Hand of God, and the woman is my responsibility. I will hear her testimony as well as the testimony of the witnesses who accuse her. But not at this time.”

  The crowd jerked as one body, and Andreas could feel them winding up to a storm of noise again.

  But the priest spoke first. His voice was still calm, but there was an underlying anger in his words. “The rules of God and the Church are plain in the matter of the Ordeal. Do you think you know better than God how to discern heresy? Do you think you know better than I the signs of the Devil’s influence?”

  The change in the audience was as dramatic as the sudden cessation of a summer storm. The tension in the crowd vanished in a heartbeat, draining away into a tiny stream of quiet muttering in the back of the crowd.

  “It is your blessed fortune that I meant to take my midday meal at your inn, and I will still do so,” the priest said. “As is my duty as an inquisitor of the Church, I will hear this woman’s testimony and render a judgment, but I will do so in the morning, after a night of prayer for her soul. Until then, she is to be left in my care.”

  He gestured to the trio holding the woman, and they dragged her up to the platform. The priest gazed at her slack face, an exaggerated air of fatherly concern in his features. He gestured again, and the magistrate hurried to open the door to the inn for the trio. The priest turned back to the crowd, raised his right hand, and rattled off a blessing in Latin, calling upon God to watch over the village and its residents until such time that he—God’s instrument—could vanquish the evil assaulting these poor innocents.