The Watchers Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by William Meikle

  A tall knight and a group of men dig the chalice out from the temple in Jerusalem...William of Rennes welcomes the knights into the brotherhood of the Others...the head of the pale Other is placed in the chalice, and a vile power once more glows in its eyes...William of Rennes leads a division of Others to the aid of the Bruce at Bannockburn...the chapel at Ross-Lynn is built, a small army of mind-slaves labouring under William of Rennes’ guidance until they drop, exhausted...at a dark ceremony in a small, high chapel, Charles Edward Stuart, the Boy-King, is turned while yet in his mother’s womb. The thing in the chalice giggles, and William of Rennes looks on...London burns in a Great Fire, as does the Boy-King, but William of Rennes carries him out of the fire and on to a black ship moored on the Thames...a ceremony is held in the high chapel, and the Boy- King’s burns heal as he is bathed in the blood of Baphomet.

  “Baphomet recognises you as one of his,” the tall knight said. “Now put the chalice down, and show penance to the King of Kings.”

  The vice-grip in Sean’s brain strengthened, and he placed the bowl back on the altar. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he strained, and could only watch as the tall Other stepped over to Campbell and took the crucifix from his hand.

  “This bauble may frighten these newly turned,” he said, motioning at the three Others who were still keeping their distance. “But to a true follower of Baphomet, it is only a symbol of what your kind do to ours.”

  He spat on the cross and threw it away into a corner of the chapel before turning back to Campbell.

  “I know you,” Campbell said. “You are the one they call ‘The Frenchman’. I thought you perished in the Great Fire.”

  “It takes more than a few flames to quench the blood of Baphomet. And I know you, Scotsman,” he said. “I was at Glenfinnan with the King. You are his wife’s father.”

  “She is no wife of his!” Campbell said. There was defiance in his eyes, and he brought his sword round between himself and the Other. “I will not allow it!”

  “You don’t get a choice in the matter,” the Other said. “Although a grandfather should be present to see the true birth of his grandchild, don’t you think?”

  He laughed.

  “But only such as us are allowed in the castle chapel,” he said. “So I will be forced to bite you first. I hope you have washed? I am quite fastidious in my eating habits.”

  He knocked Campbell’s sword aside, too fast for the Scotsman to react, and bit him, deep, just above the shoulder.

  “No!” Sean shouted. The eyes of the severed head flashed, but their compunction had lifted. Sean heard a high, melodious, singing in his ears.

  “Empty your soul,” he heard Lennan’s voice say, and suddenly he was able to move.

  He leapt over the altar and threw himself towards Campbell’s attacker, but the three remaining Others grabbed him and held him tight, forcing him to watch as his friend was bled.

  When the Other stood back, Campbell was still conscious, but there was terror in his eyes...terror and disgust.

  The knight lifted Sean’s sword, taking care not to touch the silver hilt. He studied the weapon closely.

  “A fine piece of workmanship,” he said. “But a bit light for my liking.” He broke the blade over his knee and tossed the pieces into the same corner as the Scotsman’s cross.

  “It is no loss to you,” he said to Sean. “For you are within a hair’s breadth of being one of us. By the time we hold the ceremony on the morrow, you will be ready to partake at the letting.”

  “I’ll see you staked first,” Sean said.

  The Other laughed. “Bigger men than you have tried—and failed,” he said. “But by the morrow you’ll see the error of your ways. Bring them.”

  One of the Others holding Sean moved to lift Campbell. It took the Scotsman’s sword and tossed it into the corner beside Sean’s broken weapon and the cross. Sean saw with dismay that the Scotsman was slumped over, barely able to lift his feet. His face was pale, almost translucent, and his eyes were sunk deep back, like black pebbles in snow.

  The knight lifted the Chalice, the two others led Sean, and Campbell was brought along at the rear. As if in procession, they went out into the night. The heavy iron doors slid silently closed behind them.

  The rest of the night seemed like a waking nightmare.

  In the first mile Sean was able to bind the wound in his forearm. It wasn’t as deep as he’d feared, and it had already stopped bleeding. A portion of cloth from his shirt was enough to keep the lips of the wound closed and ensure it was kept clean.

  They walked for nearly two hours at a fast pace. From the first Campbell was barely able to keep up, and after twenty minutes he stumbled and fell.

  “Carry him,” William of Rennes said, and it took Sean a long second to realise that he was being addressed. He bent to the Scotsman.

  “Stay away from me, laddie,” Campbell said, his voice weak and throaty. “I saw the fangs. You’ve turned. And I’ll be not long in following you.”

  “Quiet, man,” Sean hissed. “I might have the teeth, but I don’t have the thirst. I don’t know what I am, but I am not an Other.”

  “Maybe not yet.” Campbell said, but the man allowed himself to be lifted over Sean’s shoulder.

  The road underfoot was built of heavy cobbles which made treacherous going in the dark. It didn’t seem to bother the tall knight, who strode forward, eyes straight ahead, the chalice held out at arms length in front of him.

  Sean found it hard going to even stay upright, never mind walk. Then he felt it again, the shifting inside him, and a tune formed in his mind.

  He hummed it to himself...and immediately Campbell felt lighter, and he could no longer feel the cobbles beneath the leather boots. The pain in his arm was gone completely.

  He doubted if this song was as potent as the one which had sustained Martin, but it was enough to enable him to follow William of Rennes into the dark.

  It seemed that Lennan’s blood was doing more than just giving him the ‘sight’. Sean prayed that it was also still fighting against the Other.

  He lost track of time in the routine of putting one foot in front of the other. Campbell was a dead weight, and, despite the sustaining song, it felt like he was getting heavier by the minute. It was only when he looked up that he realised they were walking up a hill. He looked up higher, and saw a deeper, blacker shadow in the gloom ahead.

  The castle sat like a huge black toad on top of the hill. Stark turrets jutted skyward from colossal walls and dark flags fluttered from poles tens of yards high. No...they were not flags. As Sean got closer he saw that they were the dried, bloodless skins of what had once been men and only men.

  The fortress dominated the skyline, and Sean didn’t want to go anywhere near it. He thought of trying to flee, but that would mean leaving Campbell to his fate. He couldn’t do it. Besides, it looked like they were being taken to where the ceremony would take place. That is what they had wanted all along—only not as prisoners. He hoped that he would be given some time with Campbell so that they could come up with a strategy for saving Mary Campbell. For now, it was time to pretend to go along with the Other’s plans. Sean saw that rough huts had been built up on either side of the long road up the hill to the castle. Slack-mouthed faces peered out of doorways; these weren’t Other’s, these were more mind- slaves, Watchers. The huts were like hovels—foul muck lay everywhere, a mixture of bodily excretions, dead birds and blood...black, clotted, blood.

  The huts got slightly grander towards the top of the hill, some of them two or even three stories tall, but they were still made mostly of wood, with roughly thatched roofs. And the road still ran with the foul smelling ooze.

  As the small procession approached the castle itself, small numbers of Others lined the side of the road. These were clean, all dressed in the same black robes as William of Rennes. They bowed as the Chalice passed them and hissed at Sean and Campbell. Sean showed them his fangs, and they stood back, confu
sed.

  The road opened out into a wide, open esplanade surrounded by rows of seating. The ground here was smooth and sandy. Vivid red patches stained the soil and Sean guessed that this might be an arena for whatever games Others played. He remembered the open cage from his vision, and shuddered.

  And another of the woodsman’s visions hits him.

  It is night, and the arena is lit by ranks of tall torches. The esplanade is packed full of Others, a screaming horde stamping their feet in time to a bass drum and baying for blood. All of the seats are taken...some four thousand watching the “entertainment”.

  A man, full human, stands in the centre of the arena. He is dressed in the red uniform of the Protector’s Army, and he carries a sabre in his left hand and a stake in his right. His eyes show how afraid he is, but he stands, straight-backed and proud. Sean senses his thoughts—he is an officer in the army of the Protector. An Other walks into the arena, and the volume level goes higher. He is a Scotsman, replete in highland regalia in Stuart tartan, with a thick leather jerkin. He carries a heavy claymore and round shield. His hair is tied back in a long ponytail and waxed until almost stiff.

  He raises his hand and the crowd goes wild, then completely silent as he strides forward to the Protector’s officer.

  There are no formalities.

  Combat is joined in a flurry of steel. It is over quickly. The Other is too strong and smashes the officer to the ground with a series of heavy blows. He throws the claymore and shield aside and pins the man down as he feeds.

  After he has fed, he tosses the body into the stands, where the crowd erupt in a bloody battle for a trophy.

  And just as Sean’s sight fades, another red-vested officer is brought out onto the parade ground.

  Sean stumbled, and almost fell before getting himself back in control.

  “I won’t give you the pleasure of taunting me in the arena,” Sean said. “I’ll die first.”

  “I’m sure you will,” the knight said, and laughed again.

  Sean spat at the knight’s back, but the knight didn’t stop. He walked straight ahead, and on through a massive pair of black iron gates into the castle proper. As they passed through, it felt to Sean as if an oppressive weight hung over their heads.

  The path got steeper here, and there were more cobbles underfoot. Sean tripped and almost fell again. His strength was going fast and he couldn’t summon up a woodsman’s song to sustain him. The Others behind kicked him in the calves to move him on, and Campbell mumbled something incomprehensible. Sean locked his eyes on the back of the tall knight, gritted his teeth, and kept moving.

  The castle loomed above them on at least two more levels, but Sean wasn’t given a chance to see them. William of Rennes stopped in front of a squat stone building and knocked twice on an iron door.

  The door swung open inwards, revealing only a deep blackness beyond.

  “Your quarters,” the knight said.

  Sean felt a hand push at his back and he overbalanced. The combined weight of his own body and Campbell on his shoulder toppled them both forward into the blackness where they fell together in a crumpled heap onto a stone floor.

  “I cannot trust you until you are turned fully,” William of Rennes said from somewhere above them. “So you will stay here until it is time for the ceremony.”

  There was a low thud, as of a door closing silently, and then the distinctive noise of a key turning in a lock.

  Sean and Campbell were left, alone, in the dark. It was almost full black; Sean couldn’t even see his own body.

  There was a shuffling in the darkness, and he realised that Campbell had moved away from him.

  “Just do not come near me, laddie,” the Scotsman said out of the darkness. “I’ve got a weapon, and I’ll use it on you if you so much as touch me.”

  “I told you,” Sean said. “I am not an Other.”

  “Maybe not yet,” Campbell said. “It may be that Lennan’s blood is slowing the process, but I saw the fangs, and I saw your speed when you fought the Other. You were near as fast as him; no man and only man could have fought that Other with a sword and survived.”

  Sean had no answer to that. The fight had been like all fights—fast and furious with little time to think. Maybe he had been preternaturally fast...and maybe he’d just been trained very well.

  Sean spent a minute checking the dimensions of their cell. He heard Campbell shuffle around ahead of him as he walked around the walls. It was less than eight feet square, of thick stone, and the entrance above was out of reach of his outstretched hands.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked as he sat down with his back to the stone wall.

  “I cannae trust you, laddie,” the Scotsman said. “But I am going to try to hold off the Other that grows inside me just long enough to have one last chance of saving my daughter. You might be with me—and you might be agin me—but you’re not going to stop me.”

  “But you’re bitten sore, man,” Sean said. “And there are no doctors, no bulb to burn it out. You will turn.”

  “Aye,” Campbell said. “And so will you. The question is, will we be men enough to do our duty before that time comes? Now be quiet. I need to make my peace with my God, while I still have time.”

  Sean sat, staring blindly ahead, while Campbell muttered a confession into the darkness.

  Chapter 6

  DERBY 8TH NOVEMBER 1745

  It started slowly.

  “You should stay in your tent, sire,” Menzies had said. “It is your base of command, and your officers will know to find you here.”

  “Should I cower in here like a craven coward? You think so little of me?” Martin replied, and the old man grinned.

  “I had to ask,” he said. “But I expect you’ll be out on the wall with your men?”

  “Aye,” Martin said. “It is what I have been trained for all my life.”

  He spent the first watch on the wall with his lieutenants Barclay and Hillman. An attack was expected at any time, but in that first hour they stared out over the wall into nothing but a normal autumn night.

  The wind was light, but there was a chill in the air, a warning of the winter which would soon be on them. The clouds were high overhead, and a nearly full moon was just beginning to rise above the hills to the east. Over the wall, there was no sound at all. No birds sang, no cattle lowed.

  Hillman was nervous. He kept up a steady flow of chatter about his family, about his town, and most of all about how the young Thane slew the Dark Lord. He was on the third retelling when Barclay finally stopped him.

  “For Jesus’ sake man, be quiet! Your men are frightened enough already without them knowing that you are scared enough to shit,” the old soldier said.

  “That is easy for you to say,” Hillman said. “You were a career soldier, and you’ve seen many battles.”

  “You were an army man yourself once,” Martin said. “You told me as much on our journey here.”

  “Aye,” Hillman replied. “And the nearest I got to battle was when three of us got into a fight in a bar in Belfast. The wars were long over when I enlisted.”

  “But you’ve had military training,” Barclay said. “And when the time comes you’ll be ready for it. You’re no coward, man. I can see that.”

  Hillman seemed to straighten, as if some steel had been added to his resolve. But his eyes still betrayed his tension as he spoke.

  “Aye. If the young Thane here can slay a Dark Lord single handed, then surely I can stand beside him on the wall. I just wish they would come; I’m near to wetting my breeches.”

  “Just watch your stretch,” Martin said. “What will come to pass will come soon enough.”

  He turned to the old soldier.

  “Are we ready?” he said, and the old man nodded.

  “As ready as men ever are when they know a battle is coming and there’s no way out of it,” he said.

  “You have stood watch on other nights like this?” Martin asked.

&nb
sp; “Yes, sir,” the old man said. “In Ireland, in the colonies, and in India. And every time the Protector’s army prevailed. We will send that dark bastard back where he belongs.”

  Martin clasped him on the shoulder.

  “If all our men were like you, he’d never even try to take us,” he said, and the old man’s chest swelled with pride. Martin looked out over the darkness. “Will they come tonight?” “Aye,” the old soldier replied. “He’ll let us wait, but he’ll come. I feel it in my water.”

  Martin sent Hillman to be with his own men further south, and Barclay left to inspect his troops. They had men spaced at a four-foot interval along this whole length of wall, each armed with silver shot in their muskets, and a bucket of water suffused with the bulb at their feet. Every ten yards there was a cauldron of oil bubbling over a brazier.

  Some of the men wore large wooden crosses at their chests. More than a few had leather sashes across their shoulders which held a row of sharply pointed stakes, their points sharpened slowly over a flame.

  Back in the town itself, Menzies was supervising the construction of new sets of bellows, and Fitzsimmons was trying to find barrels, or at least some coopers who could make them quickly. After he’d found the barrels, Fitzsimmons had promised that he would find more silver to smelt as shot.

  His other new lieutenants, John Barr and Toby Smith, were in their billet beneath the wall, as were their men—they would be on watch after midnight. Gord and Megan walked the wall, dispensing weak ale and bread to the watch.

  Down below in the courtyard, women and children crushed the bulb to infuse it in buckets of water that were being brought up the wall by a human chain made up of residents of the town. Many had volunteered their help. Other townspeople were stoking the fires under the braziers, and yet others were collecting kindling set beside the braziers in ever growing piles.

  Down below, in the streets, cannon were deployed and more oil was placed at strategic locations in case the watch was forced from the wall. Tall wooden crosses were placed at the entrance to each street, and spare muskets, already loaded with silver shot, were leaned against the walls.