Wergild
A Heartwarming Tale of Coldblooded Vengeance
Boris L. Slocum
Copyright © 2019 by Boris L. Slocum
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: 2019
3B Independent Publishers
347 W. Franklin Street
Paxton, Illinois 60957
CONTENTS
part I
The Fiend
The Foreigner
Blackwood Barrow
The Flight
The Knight
The Foundling
The Barrow Boy
part II
Lust
Gluttony
Sloth
Greed
Wrath
Envy
Pride
part I
The County of Blenheim
Deirdre didn’t recognize what it was at first. It was early morning, and that rumpled thing down the path looked like nothing more than a pile of trash or a hamper-load of soiled linens the felons had dumped in the road the night before. The Gheet forever were doing such things to torment — or simply because they could. And why not? There was no one to stop them. It was only when she drew close that she realized the truth of what she saw and began to scream.
It was a screaming that one way or the other, inside or out, would be with her for the rest of her life.
The Fiend
They buried her sister Fiona three days later, two days later than custom and religion said they must. The men had their mewling and other such craven bleating to attend. Men? If they could be called that. Even now, every pious and decent one of them sat before the shroud that contained her dear sister’s broken and lifeless husk, being preached at about the Walking God, the god who lived amongst them, by an asinine ape of a preacher the Gheet had insisted they hire.
Deirdre hardly could stand it. The stone of the church strangled and smothered her, the cloy and meaningless words of the minister choked her, and the filthy complacency of their so-called friends and family … her own family. She couldn’t breathe. Knowing what was beneath that shroud, she couldn’t breathe. Every shuffle, every cough, every impatient voice-clearing was a profanity. The senseless droning of a feckless, treasonous minister was a heresy.
What use were such words? No one had done anything.
She couldn’t breathe.
The neutered and spineless township trustees had boasted they’d gone to the local Gheet baron, and afterward they’d bragged of having been awarded wergild. In truth, they’d left the baron’s keep with three ducats, the price of a sheep, no doubt grateful they’d quit the place without a swift kick in the pants, the usual reward for troubling his lordship with “idle gossip” of rape and murder. Not even shame had kept the township worthies from crowing it was the price of a prize sheep. Her sister. Her sister. Her best friend. A sheep.
She couldn’t breathe.
Twice her mother had reached for her hand from where she sat in the pew next to her, hoping to calm Deirdre and to settle her writhing and twisting. What will the neighbors think? The same neighbors who had stood by impotent and now couldn’t wait to get out of the church, to get away from the lifeless young woman whose death so shamed them, to get away from their annoyance and their utter guilt.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t, she couldn’t … she couldn’t. By a power not her own, she found herself rising and walking the few paces to her sister’s remains. She couldn’t breathe, her throat so choked and frozen with emotion that not a word could come out. But when she went to speak, words burst from her like a thunderclap.
“Damn you all straight to Hell!!!” shouted a quavering voice she scarcely recognized. “You miserable, spineless curs! You men who are less than women! Less than children! Cower in your homes! Tremble in fear! It’s all you’re fit for! They hunt us like animals, they use us for sport, and you … you do … nothing!”
Her father, mortified, stood and approached her. It was as nothing to her that a man she’d loved and feared her entire life now, in anger, sought to corral and silence her.
A madwoman possessed her.
“And now you pray to this useless god. Where is he?! He’s supposed to walk among us. Where is he?! You worship at an altar led by a priest who sucks the tit of the men who murder us. False priest, false god, false men!! Damn the cowards of Edwin Township straight to Hell!”
An iron grip seized her right shoulder, and she lashed out with all her might. The shocked look on her father’s face as he stepped away moved her not at all. It was too late.
“And damn you, you miserable man,” she spat at him, her voice still choked with rage. “I’ll have what’s mine. I’ll have my vengeance. I’m going to the Fiend!”
Deirdre fled through the church doors and made a hard right for the trail to the upper meadow. She’d never before been to the barrow, but everyone knew where it was. It was the place in the far distant woods to which no one ever ventured. None who still lived had ever seen the Fiend that lived there, but it was known without dispute that was its lair. Three wretched souls in Deirdre’s fourteen years, fools all, had taken the journey, had travelled to Blackwood Barrow, a place only the most desperate or pathetic dared.
None had returned.
Three years before, the affianced of Deirdre’s murdered brother, Beleric, had been the last. For three days, an armed group from the township had scoured the woods around the barrow looking for sweet Twila Gandy. The men hadn’t the nerve to seek justice for Beleric, but they’d at least searched for the girl. It had been the last act of courage in Edwin Township.
Deirdre continued at a run as she passed the upper meadow. Her long and strong legs propelled her through the dense copses where the timbermen worked, past the wooded hummocks where the crofters foraged, and into the Blackwood where only the hunters dared go.
By that time, the thicket had slowed her to a walk, but her entire course had been beset by the water that streamed from her eyes and the heaving sobs that racked her grieving body. The past was gone, everything was dead and gone, and she could never return.
Many was the silent night she’d lain awake wondering what had become of Twila, whether the Fiend had dragged her to Hell, or bandits had made off with her. Only Fiona’s warm and loving reassurances in the bed they’d shared had comforted her. Now, all gone.
So, she continued on her path, which by that time had narrowed to a faint trace leading ever northward into the hills.
It wasn’t clear how much time had passed when she stumbled upon a faint clearing in the forest. Her stomach rumbled, and the sun seemed near its zenith, but she hadn’t thought to bring anything to eat. She continued onward into the clearing that appeared to be some sort of footpath, one far wider than necessary for the passing of game.
It was only when she made the third turn along the winding way that she was accosted by a voice.
“May I help you?”
The deep and buttery voice had come so abruptly that she leapt in the air, and now a tense and trembling Deirdre peered into the shade of the nearby wood to determine its source. At first, there was nothing. And then she discerned — or she thought she discerned — a figure near the bole of a large maple at ten paces
distant. She dared not go closer but instead sidestepped for a better angle and peered more closely.
“What brings you up into the Blackwood?” the voice intoned in the deepest bass. “I don’t often get visitors out this way.”
The new words sent another jolt through her, but soon after, her eyes focused, and she made out the shape of what could only be the ugliest and dirtiest little man she’d ever seen. He squatted on his heels just inside the shade of the maple and regarded her carefully.
She moved to speak, and nothing came out. Was this some vagrant? A highwayman in the hills who preyed on the lost and the desperate? The villain seemed filthy enough to do most anything, and his voice was … there was a cream, a honey, a smoothness to it that set her nerves on edge.
“I …,” she finally managed to spit out. She otherwise stood trembling while twisting and wringing her fingers in front of her, as if that act might ward off some menace. “My … m …,” she tried to continue, uncertain what to say, if anything. The man seemed small, and she was a swift runner. The mere thought of running caused her muscles to bunch for just that purpose.
But before she could think to bolt away, the man leaned forward and stood erect to his full height. In two strides, he stood in the path before her, and he was simply gigantic, at least half again as tall as the tallest man in the township and equally lean and powerful. What had seemed dirt and soil upon his flesh now appeared to have been an illusion, as thorough as his sudden change in size, for his skin was mottled and dark, colored in shades of black, grey, and sickly blue. His eyes … his eyes were jaundiced orbs, and there was no hiding his teeth. Even with a mouth half-closed, the tips of grisly canines were visible top and bottom.
Deirdre’s sturdy farm legs betrayed her, and she soon found herself supine on the ground, where a horrid smell assaulted her.
She’d soiled herself.
The Foreigner
Isabel stared down shocked and terrified at the broken and lifeless body before her, the body of a man who had been her friend and protector, and to her horror and shame she found herself only able to tremble at her own future.
She’d never seen a dead body before arriving in the kingdom of Albion a year before, but she’d seen many since. This was a violent land of warlike folk, and Isabel Castellan, late of Savannah, Georgia, was a radio DJ who had a Friday-night talk show to which no one ever listened. One year before, she’d wanted nothing more than to take a long weekend of hiking and camping at Blood Mountain to clear her head and to chart her future. Instead, her future was decided for her. After three days lost in the woods, she’d emerged at a small hamlet in the County of Blenheim, in a place called Albion, and she had no idea how to find her way back home.
Sir Utrecht Simon had been her savior, the true knight in shining armor she had never believed actually existed. Well, his long chainmail armor hadn’t shone quite so bright, but he was kind, brave, and patient. And he had taken her in after the wretched farmer, who first had sheltered her, had demanded certain compensations for his troubles.
The young knight had demanded no such intimacies, but had befriended her and given generously of his guidance and protection. She had abided with him for nearly a year at a small blockhouse in northern Blenheim, where she’d learned the local dialect, which was surprisingly similar to English once she’d worked out the complex flow of it, and had come to understand the local customs.
She and Sir Utrecht had traveled and visited with neighbors and friends often. Two days before, they’d arrived at the manor house of a local aristocrat, Sir Reynard Lisle, a friend of the Simon family. The assembly had been large and diverse, but the looks she’d received from some of the knights and nobles at the small festival should have told her to run. But Sir Utrecht was there, and he’d assured her there was nothing to fear.
Late the evening before, a quarrel had erupted between Sir Utrecht and a nobleman, Sir Etienne de Margot, by all accounts a man of wealth and influence. Such things weren’t uncommon among an armed and honor-bound gentry. Yet Isabel’s senses had told her something was not right this time. Utrecht was brave and strong, but in her time with him, she’d not known him to seek a quarrel with anyone. And his reassurances prior to the duel had not comforted her.
And now her friend and protector lay dead, and something still was terribly wrong. None of his friends or retainers had hastened to his assistance when he fell — clearly his wound was mortal, his death quick — but neither had any ventured to recover his body. Even now, she felt the mood had shifted ever so subtly. No one present had moved to comfort her in the way she’d come to recognize as typical after a single combat. There was something wrong, something terribly, terribly wrong.
Above the shouts and cheers of the entourage of de Margot, the pompous tenor of the nobleman himself could be heard. He praised the now-dead Utrecht for his courage and honor — such things were the custom in this strange and demented land — but even as she listened, still gripped by shock and fear, she discerned from his thick and cultured Ghitland accent a declaration that, naturally, he would undertake the protection of Lady Isabel.
Those last words should have come as a surprise to her, but they did not. She’d never been vain, never thought of herself as a great beauty, but everything she’d sensed the last two days had told her that an all too typical and pathetic male lust and covetousness was the cause of the tension around her. Etienne de Margot wanted her, and he was willing to kill a noble young knight to have her.
Her passage back to the tent was easy. No one wanted to see her. Strangers didn’t know her, and those with whom she was familiar didn’t now have the heart to meet her eyes. Back at the pavilion, she grabbed her rucksack and shoved her meager belongings within. She was mere feet outside the tent and moving toward a nearby tree line when strong hands accosted her, rushing her along and whispering in her ear.
“Go west, follow the main road, but don’t stay on the road. They’ll be looking for you.” These were the words of Lewis Ville, a friend of Utrecht and the master of hounds for Sir Reynard Lisle. She and the huntsman reached the woods, and he hurried her along. “Sir Etienne means to have you for his cousin Sir Everett Dupuis.”
“Why …?” she finally began.
“Lady Isabel, I know your ways are different, and I wouldn’t wish Dupuis on any woman … neither would Utrecht.” He stopped and pointed. “Go that way, follow the setting sun, and keep the King Star on your right at night. I’ll run the hounds in a different direction, but that will only delay them so long. Stay out of sight and keep heading west, and in a week or ten days you’ll come to the lands of Sir Brian Mayfield, a friend of Sir Utrecht. Tell him your tale; he will shelter you.”
Isabel hesitated, wanting to thank the man, to throw her arms around him — but yet uncertain how she would make such a journey alone in a violent land.
“Child, hurry,” was his urgent plea.
With a nervous nod, she thanked him and fled into the forest.
Blackwood Barrow
The Fiend — for this creature clearly was it — stared down to where Deirdre lay on the ground. After some moments, the monster spoke with a slight gesture.
“There’s a stream yonder, ’round the next bend, if you want to clean yourself.” The enormous thing strode in the direction indicated without further word.
Deirdre wanted nothing more than to fly, to flee, to jump up and get away. But in the end, her pain and rage were greater than her terror. She would stay, because she had to. The screaming in her head would brook no other action. She would stay and sell her soul.
And yet, it took her some minutes to quell the trembling in her body and to rise from the ground.
By that time, the Fiend had passed around the bend in the path to which he’d recently pointed. His absence made rising possible, but when she came awkwardly to her feet, Deirdre stood for some minutes, head down, moving her feet in place as if that mere action would propel her toward her destination. She was frightened beyond wo
rds, but slowly, ever so slowly, in mincing steps, she began to creep after the Fiend.
It was a walk that should have taken mere moments, but it must have taken nearly an eighth of a bell. And when next she spied the Fiend, it was sitting on a broad patch of grass beside a quiet stream, its legs spread before it, elbows on knees, gazing into the forest beyond. Nearby, there was a broad pool formed on a bend in the stream, and it was to that spot Deirdre slowly repaired. The Fiend appeared to pay her no mind, and she struggled not to look in its direction.
Thankfully, as she often did, she’d donned that morning knee britches under her dress and did not have to bear the shame of undressing completely before the monster. Still, it took her some time to wiggle from her britches, clean herself, and then properly launder her garments, both inners and outers. All the while, the Fiend sat patiently, apparently disregarding her entirely. Its mere presence caused her to shake uncontrollably and for her breath to come in shallow pants.
The young Surrey girl had never been so frightened.
But her inner torment would not allow her to leave, and the moment she finished her ablutions and rearranged her now damp dress, she walked, head down and in short steps, toward the lawn where the Fiend was couched. Stopping ten paces before it, she struggled to speak.
“You should run along home, now,” it said. “Your parents will be missing you.” Its voice was still deep and malevolent, but it lacked the buttery cream of before.
It took Deirdre some moments to compose herself. “I can’t go back.”
“Nonsense,” replied the Fiend. “Are your parents looking to marry you to some toothless imbecile? Is that it? You look to be of an age. I assure you, it won’t be all that bad. Just run along.”
True. Deirdre was fourteen, nearly of an age to marry, but … “that’s not it. I’ve come to sell my soul.” Those last words left her as a mere squeak.
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