At a signal I never saw, the attackers turned and galloped away in the direction they had come, through the avenue of pines. Two of the men were barely able to stay in the saddle and one of the others had lost his helm. I started after them, then drew in as my mind came back to me. I could not battle five men alone, though two were wounded. I pulled in my panting horse and turned back toward the bridge. Now it was painful to move and I heard the rasp of the breath in my throat. I felt for the first time the raw agony of the wounds I had sustained and felt my own blood soaking my leggings under the mail, and filling my boot. There was a gash over my knee and a swelling bruise on my back where a mace had struck over the cover of my shield. I had been lucky; without the shield to break it, such a blow was fatal.
One of the attackers lay dead, propped up against a tree where he must have crawled to be away from the hooves of the horses. I saw that he held an Alexandrian talisman in his ruined hands, and I damned him for such blasphemy. The man whose leg I had opened was moaning, and his horse stood not far from him, cropping grass at the side of the road.
The Metropolitan was off the bridge, near his dying horse. His helm was off and I could see the red froth on his lips; his face was gray.
I dismounted and limped toward him, filled with despair. When I was close to him, I heard the wheeze and rustle of his breath. In anguish I crouched over him, letting my sword fall at last.
He had taken a mace blow directly on the ribs, and they had splintered. Blood foamed on his side, running with the mail he wore. The steel links were broken where the bones poked out. He tried to speak, but the blood choked him and the agony of coughing was hideous. With tremendous effort he beckoned to me. “Boot.” He gasped and the breath whistled through the wound. “Boot.”
“This one?” I touched him, my hands wooden.
“Dis ... patch.”
It was not possible to remove the boot without adding to his pain, and so I did it as quickly as I could and tried not to listen to the sounds he made.
“Ring.” One hand moved weakly. I nodded.
“Yes. I will take it.”
Two of his fingers trembled as he made the blessing. He fixed me with his eyes. “Strike deep.”
With no feeling at all I drew my sleeve dagger, and drove it hard and true under his ribs to the heart.
* * *
The man I had wounded said little, though I worked on him for a short while. He admitted that he had come from Lukash Nizety and that he was to prevent us from reaching Lodz for the Thing. The rest was babbling and heretical Alexandrian prayers, and I left him by the road, took his horse, the dispatch and the Metropolitan’s episcopal ring, and rode to the treason at Lodz.
That is my testimony, and it will not change, no matter how long you keep me in a penitent’s cell. I say that Archpatriarch Honorios rules in Lodz by treachery and that the lords of Erl Dru who have claimed the throne of Poland are murderers and heretics. It makes no difference that the Alexandrians have come to Rome; they are still officers of the Southern Church and my foes for as long as there is breath in my body. I saw the Standard of Christ raised by bloody hands on Saint Hubert’s Thing, and no prayers of yours will erase that defilement. Nothing you do to me, though you kill me, will change my mind: I am by Holy Right King of Poland and you will die with my curse upon you.
About On Saint Hubert’s Thing
While researching the background for an historical horror novel set in the 5th century that I was never able to sell, I began to wonder what would happen if Christianity had split north/south instead of east/west. This puzzling eventually led to imagining a mystery-religion Christianity centered in Alexandria, and a Russo-Teutonic hierarchical religion centered in Kiev. Then the characters introduced themselves and we were off
This was originally published as a chapbook, handsomely produced by Cheap Street Press and beautifully illustrated by Alicia Austin.
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