TWENTY-FIVE
It was harvest time, and Meredith had never seen the like. The sun was huge and golden, exactly the colour of the haystacks that stood all about the fields. They resembled monuments to fruitfulness, and their scent filled the mellow air, making her head swim. Her senses felt renewed, and she was a child again, playing hide and seek with a girl whose delighted laughter she could hear somewhere among the stacks. Meredith would have liked to stand inhaling the autumnal scent while the gentle colours of the landscape settled like balm on her eyes, but she was not alone, and so she ran to find her playmate.
The bales receded into mist and distance. There seemed to be no end to them, and no sign of the other girl. The fields were unfenced, and so Meredith had no idea what boundaries she might be crossing, unless there was just a single field so vast that she would never find its limit before nightfall. Only the laughter of her unseen playmate led her onwards, past rank after rank of hulking bales that had begun to darken and drip with mist. The stubbled earth had grown dank too, and toadstools sprouted where the hay had been cut down. Had a mocking note crept into the girlish laughter? Meredith ran in the direction where it seemed to be, but was rewarded only by the harsh call of a crow that flapped up from behind a haystack. The bird must have been pecking at a mass of fungus, which looked unpleasantly suggestive of a supine body discoloured by corruption. Meredith hurried past the prone shape and then had to swing around, because the shrill laughter was now at her back. She saw a figure dodge behind a shaggy bale, but when she ran to pounce on it she found that it was another crow, which pranced away from her with an arrogant nonchalance suggesting that it and its fellows owned the land. Then it turned its cruel beak towards Meredith and fixed her with its utterly black gaze, and emitted its call. But the sound that emerged from the gaping beak was not the harsh cry of its species. It was a little girl’s laughter.
In a moment it was answered from all around Meredith, and the members of the chorus strutted from behind the haystacks. They were crows, a dozen of them. Their black eyes were as emotionless as bits of coal, and yet their childish laughter sounded gleeful. They hopped forward, flapping their wings as though to drive Meredith to her fate, and she whirled around in search of a way of escape. Just one avenue was unguarded by any of the monstrous flock. She dashed along it, between the towering hulks of vegetation that looked grey with rot as well as with the mist that was closing in. The mist had engulfed the sun and blurred the haystacks ahead; the massive squarish shapes might have been composed of grey stone. She glanced fearfully about, and saw that she was indeed surrounded by the ancient stones of a pagan site, unless the place was devoted to some older magic. As the megaliths loomed above her, black shapes hopped and flapped between them, and she heard hoofbeats galloping to encircle her. In a moment the rider emerged from the mist. At the sight of his mask she cried out and awoke.
The smell of hay was still in her nostrils. She was lying in the barn, covered with a ragged mass of straw. However feverish her dream might have been, she was no longer shivering, even if her limbs ached with a reminiscence of the chill. The rush-light was almost spent, but it showed her that she was alone on the floor of the barn. She had no means of judging how much time had passed since the boy Thomas had brought her food and a change of clothes. She was fighting off the dread that the nightmare had left behind, and wondering how soon Thomas might be able to sneak her away from the farm, when she heard a little girl’s muffled laughter.
For a dreadful moment Meredith thought the dream was real, and then she grasped that the sound of laughter had been the germ of the dream. Was the girl Thomas’s sister? She might come into the barn, and Meredith was looking for a place to hide when she heard a man’s voice just outside the door. “Is she in here?”
The voice sounded rough with anxiety. The man must be searching for the little girl, and the nightmare had left Meredith so dazed that she only just refrained from calling out that the child was not in the barn. In any case he was bound to look in there, and Meredith was burrowing under the straw when Thomas spoke. “Father, why do we need to do this?”
“Why do you think, boy?” Even now Meredith thought they were talking about the boy’s sister until the man said harshly “If Malachi’s soldiers find we’ve been sheltering her they’ll burn us out.” Emotion weighed his voice down, so that Meredith barely heard him add “Or worse.”
“She lost her family,” Thomas pleaded.
“So did we,” his father said.
The words reawakened Meredith’s grief, but she had no time to yield to it. She rose swiftly to her feet, wavering a little as her head swam, and stared about the barn. Could she hide in the hayloft? She was making for the ladder that led up to it when she froze like an animal that has sighted the hunter. The little girl whose gleeful laughter she had heard was seated on the edge of the hayloft, swinging her legs. She was the witch who had marked Meredith’s palm.
She gave Meredith a grin that seemed almost conspiratorial. Grotesquely, she looked no worse than childishly mischievous. Her eyes gleamed at Meredith and then turned towards the ladder, and Meredith knew there was no refuge up above. She glanced desperately about and saw a pitchfork leaning against a wall. Outside the man was saying “I’ll not lose anything more just to save a stranger. Show her to me.”
Meredith darted to grab the pitchfork. She was afraid that the witch would be effortlessly swifter, but the shaft was not snatched from her grasp. She swung it in front of her with both hands as she turned to confront the witch. But the loft was deserted, and the only movement to be seen was a solitary wisp of straw floating down from the loft. Meredith might have wondered if the apparition had been a last trace of her dream, but she had no more time for thoughts, because the latch of the barn door had been lifted with a clank like the fall of a trap. “Find her for me, boy, or I will,” the man said.
As the left half of the door creaked open Meredith dodged behind a ragged bale of hay. The flame of the rush-light was flattened by a draught, and all the shadows bowed low as if deferring to the man in the doorway. Meredith did her utmost to keep herself and the pitchfork still. “Go on, boy. Do what you must,” his father said under his breath.
There was a stubborn silence before Thomas lurched into view, obviously having been pushed. He trudged to the straw where Meredith had slept and began to spread it apart with both hands. Though he must have been able to see at once that she was no longer there, he continued to sift the straw. He might have been playing a joyless game, delaying the moment when he would be forced to find her. His antics gave her time to steal around the bale of hay, but it was no use; if she retreated his father would see her, and if she stayed where she was the boy would. Eventually he stood up, and she thought he meant to tell his father that she was nowhere to be found, but he could not avoid seeing her now. As he met her eyes his mouth worked, and he muttered a phrase low enough for a private prayer. “What are you saying, boy?” his father urged.
Thomas gave her a stricken look, but she could not find an expression in response. “She’s here,” he said with a defiance that might have been aimed at Meredith as much as at his father.
His father tramped to scowl at her. He was a brawny red-faced man with thinning hair and too many wrinkles around his eyes. He looked haunted by memories and starved of sleep, but grimly determined. As he paced towards Meredith she backed away, raising the pitchfork, and glanced accusingly at Thomas. “You betrayed me,” she told him.
The boy’s lip trembled. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Leave him be, girl,” the man said, “and put that down. There’s nowhere you can hide.”
“Just let me go,” Meredith said and gripped the pitchfork harder. “Nobody will know I hid here. Let me go now and nobody will see.”
“I cannot.” The farmer shook his slow head as though her suggestion were a burden he had to dislodge. “Malachi’s creatures are everywhere now,” he said. “Anybody who denies them will be killed. We have
to show our loyalty.”
Perhaps Meredith glimpsed regret in his eyes, but it was quickly suppressed. “By sacrificing me?” she protested in rage that felt close to grief.
“If need be,” the man said and lunged heavily at her.
Meredith stood her ground, because there was no way out other than the door beyond him. She jabbed the pitchfork at him, and he made to knock it aside with one muscular arm. He seemed almost amused by the sight of her presuming to take him on. His reaction enraged her, and she darted forward, thrusting the pitchfork at him with all her strength. The tines penetrated his shoulder, and she felt them dig deep into flesh until he recoiled, yelling as much in outraged surprise as pain. Meredith held onto the pitchfork, and his retreat pulled it out of his shoulder. As he stood in the middle of the barn, recovering from the assault or from the shock of it, Meredith sprinted to the door.
It was not just capture that she was desperate to escape; it was Thomas’s reaction. His cry of dismay had been louder than his father’s yell, and she had glimpsed the boy’s distraught look. Meredith had become indistinguishable in his eyes from the evil that had invaded his life – that had snatched away his family. Captain Kane had assured her that there was no evil in her, but he and his faith had deserted her. As she clutched at the latch she might have been seeking to flee her own self. She threw the door wide, to be confronted by the figure that was waiting in the dark.
His gaze was as cold as the expression of his lipless mask. His minions were massed behind him in the farmyard, cutting off even the slimmest chance of escape. All the same, Meredith jerked up the pitchfork and drove it with the last of her strength into his chest. She felt the tines pierce leather and flesh, but the only response he granted her was a thin chill laugh, hardly more than a mocking whisper. He dragged the pitchfork out of his body and wrenched the shaft from Meredith’s hand.
For a moment she thought he was about to turn the weapon against her. A quick death seemed almost welcome; it would return her to her family, at any rate. Instead he flung the pitchfork in the mud and fastened his gaze on her like a predator inspecting a victim. As she attacked him she had heard Thomas cry out once more, and his father’s groan of pain or apprehension. Perhaps at least she could save them as she had been unable to save Samuel and her family. “They did not know I was here,” she said as steadily as she could. She was praying that the masked figure would believe her as its head leaned down towards her. For another moment the eyes held her with their unreadable gaze, and then a black-gloved hand came down like a mallet on her skull.
TWENTY-SIX
As Kane took a breath that smelled worse than any tomb, it seemed to draw the scrawny figures closer all round him. The light of the torch on the floor of the crypt glistened on the teeth in the snarling mouths and flickered in the feral eyes as if it was taking the place of every lost soul. He was struggling to regain the strength that the fall had knocked out of him when one of the creatures, braver or more famished than the rest, darted to fasten its teeth on his leg.
Kane kicked out, driving the creature backwards before it could savage him, and snatched a pistol from his belt. In the enclosed space the shot was deafening. It splintered the ghoul’s ribs, flinging the creature into the arms of several of its fellows. They fell on it at once, rending it apart with their claws and tearing mouthfuls out of it with their teeth.
As more of the pack turned on the fallen victim, Kane lunged to retrieve the torch. It was not the only object like a stick on the floor of the crypt. There were bones gnawed by fangs, and they had once been human. Kane had scarcely closed his fist around the gnarled shaft of the torch when two of the ghouls sprang on him, clawing at his legs. Perhaps they sought to disable him, if they had anything in their minds besides hunger. Kane roared in pain and fury, twisting on the floor to thrust the torch into their faces. They cowered back with screams of bestial fear, but they did not retreat far. They were poised for a renewed attack as Kane rose to his feet and glared about the crypt.
While the ceiling was low, the trapdoor was out of reach. Beyond the pack of ghouls he saw passages on every side, leading into darkness. A narrow corridor should be more defensible than the space in which he was presently trapped, but he had no means of judging where any of the passages might lead. As a ghoul sprang at him, baring its teeth like a rabid animal and reaching its claws for his throat, Kane smashed its skull with his pistol butt and dodged towards the corridor beyond. Before he could gain it, several ghouls were on him.
Though their strength was not considerable, the combined force of the attack almost sent Kane sprawling. He felt claws tearing at his garments in search of his flesh and teeth attempting to close on his back. He whirled around in a rage, jabbing at the soulless possessed faces with the torch, and blew a ghoul’s scalp open with a shot from his second pistol. A pair of ghouls began to fight over the contents of their fellow’s skull, but most of the pack converged on Kane. Alternately slashing at them with his sword and thrusting the torch at them, Kane retreated into the corridor.
It was lined with sarcophagi. Some had been broken open, and the torch revealed the incompleteness of their contents, which Kane glimpsed as the ghouls swarmed into the corridor. There was room for three abreast, and Kane sliced open the whitish belly of one with his sword, and slit another’s throat, and cleaved the head of the third ghoul half off its shoulders with a downward stroke. This did little to hinder their fellows, who trampled over the bodies without lingering to ravage them. They were too eager for fresh meat now – Kane’s flesh.
How many of the ghouls were there? How large had the village been? More of the creatures than he had seen in the central room were crowding hungrily into the passage. He was suddenly afraid that he might be backing towards a dead end. He thrust the torch at the foremost ghoul and set its ragged clothes on fire.
The creature staggered away, prancing like a hellish puppet and clawing at itself. In seconds its flailing arms were ablaze. It backed into its companions, which filled the passage like worms in a cadaver. Its torso was aflame now, and the flames spread to several of the ghouls as they scrabbled at it to fend them off. Their claws only dislodged burning chunks of the victim. As the way was blocked by a press of blazing flesh that snarled and shrieked and rent itself with its overgrown nails, Kane turned sickened from the spectacle and ran along the corridor.
It ended at a wall. Kane was about to voice his frustration and rage when the flames at his back and streaming from the torch showed him that there was a junction ahead. A few strides brought him to the transverse passage. He could see no light in either direction, and he was holding the torch high in the hope that it would show him the right way when a louder outburst of snarling made him glance back. The mindless hunger of the pack had overcome the obstruction. The impetus of those behind had thrown the burning bodies to the floor and sent several of their kind sprawling on top of them. As more of the ghouls clambered over the bodies, heedless of their dying struggles, Kane dodged into the right-hand stretch of corridor.
He heard the ghouls swarm snarling after him. He had no chance of reaching wherever the corridor led before they could see him. A nervous shadow drew his eye to a niche in the wall ahead of him, and he was taking cover there when the ghouls reached the junction. His sword was ready in his right hand while his left held the torch in a corner of the alcove as he used his body to hide its light. His pursuers crowded out of the passage, and the inhuman wordless chorus rose in pitch and volume. Then it turned away from Kane and receded along the left-hand corridor.
He was about to step into the open when he thought he heard another sound – a muted snarl. It was not repeated, and in a few seconds he ventured into the corridor. He came face to face with a ghoul that was creeping towards the light Kane had not entirely concealed. As it sprang at him Kane impaled its throat with the sword, and it lurched backwards, choking on its tainted blood. Then it gave a gurgling cry, and the last of the pack swung around to glare along the corridor.
It saw Kane and emitted a shriek of hideous triumph. The sound could well have been the call of its unnatural species, because the rest of the pack turned as one in response. With a chorus of snarls that resembled the voice of a single rudimentary mind they rushed at Kane like maggots spilling out of a rotted carcass, and he ran down the corridor.
The flames of the torch fluttered like a flag without an emblem. The light danced mockingly ahead of him, feigning to discover exits that were only shadows. The sarcophagi in this section were intact, which made him feel more trapped. Then the light came up against a wall directly ahead, and showed him darkness leading away on both sides of the junction. As he dashed towards it the darkness drew into itself and lost its false perspective before vanishing into either corner of the wall. There was no junction. He had reached a dead end.
He was about to turn and make a last stand, if he could not fight his way past the abominable horde, when the torchlight steadied, allowing him to see that it had blinded him to another light. It was the merest sliver, visible through a crack in the roof at the end of the passage. It was moonlight, which had found the gap between the halves of a trapdoor.
The door was reached by a ladder. It must be, since it was so high overhead, but there was no ladder in the passage. Kane gripped the shaft of the torch with both hands and prayed that the door would not be locked as he thrust at it with the blazing end. The left half gave and then reared up, tottering erect for a moment before it fell open with a thud on stone or packed earth. He shoved at the other half, and it fell away too. He was about to hurl the torch at his pursuers, to gain himself precious moments while he attempted a desperate leap, when several of the pack seized him from behind.
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