Dark North

by Paul Finch

  “Wait, you damn fool!” came a harsh voice.

  Zalmyra and Urgol blocked the gallery door. The translucent black gown was plastered to the duchess’s statuesque form with human gore. Her beautiful face was also spattered; ruby droplets dabbled her glossy black hair. Trelawna stared at her, aghast.

  “Stay exactly where you are!” Zalmyra said, moving to one of the arrow-loops.

  Below, Bartolo crawled away on his belly, smearing a crimson trail behind him. From overhead came a cacophonous rumble of thunder. Lucan glanced up, before turning to face Alaric, who was approaching warily, one hand on his sword-hilt. But before the lad could issue the inevitable challenge, he spotted something to the rear of his lord. Lucan turned: from a nearby door, which had opened behind him, a figure had emerged.

  To both their amazement, it was Trelawna – looking dazzlingly beautiful in a fitted gown and kirtle of virginal white. Her joined hands were woven with rosary beads as she prayed and regarded her husband with a look of deep sorrow and remorse.

  AT FIRST, LUCAN could not move. Alaric responded more quickly.

  He dashed forward, passing his overlord, drawing his sword in the process. Before he reached the countess, he turned, but continued to back towards her. “Enough is enough, my lord! Your honour must surely be satisfied by now.”

  Lucan briefly admired the courage in the youngster he had reared and trained, but then reminded himself that he still had a purpose here. His fist tightened on Heaven’s Messenger’s hilt as he slowly advanced.

  “Another step, my lord, and we fight,” Alaric shouted. “I swore an oath.”

  Alaric stood directly in front of the countess. If nothing else, he told himself – even if his weapons broke – he would shield her flesh with his own.

  That was when she grabbed his neck with a pair of eagle talons – and dragged him back through the door into the darkness beyond.

  In the same instant, lightening seared the sky. Thunder reverberated, and the rain followed in cataracts, whipped by a wind that came howling out of nowhere. Lucan stood rigid in the heart of it, eyes riveted on the empty doorway, unable to comprehend what he’d just witnessed. Slowly, astounded, he removed his helmet.

  IN THE HIGH gallery, Rufio was equally dumbfounded, though Trelawna had sensed that something horrible was about to occur when she’d seen her doppelganger first emerge.

  “Azdalah,” Zalmyra said with cold satisfaction. “Better known as the ‘Old One’... one of the most feared demons of Babylonian myth. It emerged from my Pit of Souls like some colossal sea-monster. Hundreds of its tentacles now wind their way up through this castle, each one capable of producing at its tip a facsimile by which it can lure its prey.” Her face cracked into a malevolent smile. “Once they are snared, there is no escape. They are dragged down into the very depths of the world, where unimaginable suffering awaits them.”

  DOWN IN THE yard, rain swept over Lucan in drenching sheets. A dozen yards away, Cohortis Bartolo still slithered on his mangled belly. He knew that he was dying, but he had one last purpose – because a figure he recognised had appeared in a doorway ahead of him. His young wife, Rosa – dressed as though for a summer day in a long toga and sandals, her dark curls filled with blossoms. She beckoned him to crawl out of the rain and nestle in her arms as he breathed his last.

  “Rosa...” he gasped, the strength fading in his limbs – though there was still enough left for him to cover those final few yards, at which point Rosa snatched him up, broke his back across her knee with a sound like a splintering branch, and dragged his corpse backward into the darkness.

  “THERE IS NO way to fight this abhorrence,” Zalmyra chuckled, looking down through the arrow-loop. “Or even control it. It will infest the entire fortress, and from here will depredate the surrounding countryside. But it will be worth it.” She turned a venom-green eye on Trelawna. “Just as it was worth it to shed my own brother’s blood to invoke this horror of horrors. The Black Wolf of the North, my dear, has finally met his match.”

  Thirty-Six

  BEYOND THE DOORWAY wherein Alaric had disappeared lay a downward stair.

  “Alaric!” Lucan shouted, hurrying down into a depthless maze of darkened passages. There was a stench like spoiled meat, and as his eyes attuned to the half-light, ghastly objects emerged on all sides – glistening, gelatinous tentacles snaking forward. Each one was padded along its underside with saucer-shaped suckers, and yet at its tip had sprouted an even more horrible appendage; a curled foetal ball which, even as Lucan watched, would slowly unknot itself, straighten up and assume the proportion of a full-grown man. Lucan could only gape in disbelief as, one by one, these figures strode forward. Despite the pulsing root to which each one was still attached, their crude, half-made features swiftly transformed into recognisable humanity. They were even wearing clothes, in some cases mail, and they bore weapons.

  “Bedivere...” he whispered, as the closest stepped into the half-light.

  And yet he knew immediately that this was not his brother. Bedivere’s patrician features and chestnut curls were unmistakable, but there was no emotion in that bland visage – no love, no frustration, no annoyance. And that was not the way of Bedivere.

  Lucan struck at the apparition with his sword. A gout of black ichor sprayed over him. But the thing did not collapse – it grabbed at his arm with one claw-like hand, and with the other attempted to draw its own weapon. Lucan hacked at it in a desperate fury, closing his eyes as Heaven’s Messenger clove his beloved brother’s skull, severed his shoulder, bit deep into his torso. More black foulness erupted over him, but at last the ghoulish facsimile was down, and Lucan spun around to face more enemies. Two of these, Lancelot and Gawaine – he could scarcely believe he was facing such opponents – had already drawn their swords, and by their glint, these were made of real steel.

  Sparks flew as the blades clashed. Neither of the two monsters boasted the skill of the knights they imitated, but their blows were relentless and brutal. It was all Lucan could do to fend them off. He found himself backtracking – only for a faint cry to remind him that Alaric was in the grasp of these devils. He lunged forth in earnest, slicing the throat of the Lancelot facsimile and lopping off its left arm at the elbow. The other he disarmed with a backhand slash, before driving his dagger to the hilt in its chest. Undaunted, it reached for his throat with both hands. He struck them off at the wrists, and cut its legs from under it. And yet, as the monstrosities floundered in gore and filth, they began to reform.

  The Bedivere facsimile was already reconstructed, though in horrible, disjointed fashion. As it rose to its feet, it was crooked and mangled – the way a battlefield casualty would really be had he been patched together by a butcher rather than a surgeon. Lucan cut the thing down again, striking its cranium with both hands, splitting it to the breastbone. On all sides, more gleaming tentacles slithered forth, familiar shapes blossoming like grotesque flowers on their tips. Lucan barged his way through them, reaching the top of another stair and descending.

  At the bottom, the figure that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.

  It was tall and slender, its youthful looks offset by its bald pate and long beard. It wore a loose robe belted at the waist, and carried a knotty staff.

  “Merlin...” Lucan breathed. For near-fatal seconds, he was transfixed.

  Merlin: the sage, druid and foremost counsellor of Arthur’s court. When Lucan had first arrived at Camelot, it was Merlin who had taken him aside and advised that evil was not to be found in a man’s heart as though implanted like a seed, but in his mind – where he had planted it himself, and from whence, if he had the will, he could draw it again like a weed.

  “Merlin, I...”

  With a corpse-like rictus, the facsimile raised its heavy staff in both hands – and Lucan glimpsed the pulsating tentacle to the rear of it. So he struck first, Heaven’s Messenger slicing the throat and neck and, with a grating crunch, the spine. Merlin’s head toppled, but the blinde
d abhorrence struck this way and that until Lucan skewered it through the midriff. As it dropped, quivering, into its own black innards, Lucan stepped over it to chop at the tentacle. It comprised thick scale and sinew, but Lucan cut and cut like a madman, and at last it came apart in glutinous strands. The Merlin horror, already attempting to reconstitute itself, immediately transformed into a puddle of oily slime.

  There was another hoarse, and this time agonised, cry – much closer to hand.

  Lucan found Alaric on the next level down, still in the grasp of the false Trelawna, though the alluring figure had melted back into something only half human. On his arrival, it sprang upright from where it was crouched over the lad, and Lucan saw that Alaric’s throat was torn open and gouting blood.

  With a roar, he charged.

  The half-formed horror, its face a lumpen mass, raised both hands, which again were giant talons, and a maw appeared where its mouth should be, broken snags of teeth framed on seething corruption – but Alaric, choking and gasping as his life throbbed out from him, still had the strength to draw his dagger and jam it upward into his captor’s groin. The monster was distracted in time for Heaven’s Messenger to also strike it, shearing the cords between its neck and shoulders, plunging into its festering innards.

  It collapsed in a heap, and yet it again attached itself to Alaric, clawing at him, tearing at him. Lucan stepped over it to attack the tentacle. With three heavy blows, it was cloven, and the Trelawna-thing dissolved into a foul, fish-smelling unguent.

  “My lord...” Alaric choked, as Lucan tried to aid him. He bled profusely; the ragged hole in his throat had exposed his windpipe.

  Lucan cursed as he searched for something with which to staunch the flow. The only thing in reach was Trelawna’s scarf – still knotted around the hilt of Heaven’s Messenger. It was little more now than a rag, thick with gluey filth, though there was sufficient of it to tie around Alaric’s neck. Lucan ripped it loose, using his teeth when his gloved fingers failed him.

  “Keep your hand on that,” he said, when he’d fixed it in place.

  Alaric mumbled something in response. He’d turned white and his eyelids were fluttering – but he still had the strength to point at something behind Lucan’s back.

  Lucan spun around. Turold was standing there, rent and torn as he had been after the baboons had finished with him. He produced a war-axe and raised it on high. Lucan catapulted himself forward, barreling headlong into the figure, knocking it backward over its own muscular tentacle. Lucan smote at this first, laying it open, then turned his sword on Turold, catching him with such a blow that he was severed in two.

  Lucan spun back to Alaric, picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.

  The journey to the surface was even more terrible than the journey down. Tentacles swarmed after them. From every side, familiar figures offered challenge: Bors, Kay, Lancelot again. Even Wulfstan. Lucan held back, mesmerised by the sight of his old scout, but when the thing shrieked like a bird of prey and jabbed out with a steel-headed lance, he retaliated in kind, driving his blade through the aged, once-trustworthy face, ripping it downward so that the abomination’s entire lower jaw fell off.

  Lucan panted and sweated as he twisted and turned, seeking a route up to the light and yet constantly having to battle his way through the imitations of friends. Bors struck his face with a spiked club, knocking him dizzy. Benedict attempted to snatch Alaric from him. Both went down beneath Lucan’s frenzied blows, yet always it seemed the mutilated husks he reduced them to rose back to their feet, reshaping before his eyes into nightmarish parodies of what they once had been.

  “Whoresons!” Lucan roared. “Hell spawn!”

  The face of Sir Gareth swam into his vision. He smote it. Bedivere stepped into its place again. “They took my hand, Lucan!” he howled, holding up his gory stump.

  But in the other hand he held a dagger, and he thrust it at Lucan’s eyes. Lucan shoulder-charged the figure, toppling it down a stairwell.

  Now at last there was a doorway through which daylight vented. Lucan stumbled towards it, only for another figure to step into his path. This one wore a white surcoat bearing a red dragon, and a golden crown on his helm. He had a neat beard and moustache, and a sunny-brown, square-cut mane.

  It was Arthur himself.

  He held a shield in one hand, and in the other a battle-axe, but Lucan could not bring himself to run steel through his lord and King. Perhaps he was too exhausted to think straight. Sweat stung his eyes. Saliva and blood drooled from his mouth. He turned away as their hands reached for him, as their swords struck at him – and he spied another door, only a short distance away. He hobbled drunkenly towards it, Alaric a dead weight. But beyond the second door was a stair, which spiralled upward.

  Lucan halted and looked back.

  There were so many of them that they stumbled and tripped over the mass of slippery, fleshy tentacles lying back and forth across the floor. The closest was Sir Griflet; Lucan parried his blow and sundered his breastbone. The next was Wulfstan, still missing his lower jaw, what remained of his human features collapsing inward like melting wax, though he now lashed at Lucan with a morningstar. Lucan caught the chain around his forearm, and cut his friend down again, tearing him open from gullet to crotch. But always more of them stepped into the gaps, hedging the room thick with moaning, gibbering, blood- and ichor-spattered abominations. There was only one option. He commenced the arduous ascent, his back bowing beneath the burden of his unconscious friend.

  STREAKS OF LIGHTNING split the sky. Thunder bellowed through the mountains. The rain lashed incessantly, rivers gushing from every roof and gutter. It was no weather to be travelling, but Duchess Zalmyra had made up her mind.

  “Be warned,” she said. “Stay close to me as we descend to the undercroft.”

  She had produced a wand made from rowan wood, a jade orb fixed at one end, from which an emerald light burned; she held it aloft as they hurried down the switchback stair. Zalmyra walked at the front, and Urgol brought up the rear, a huge, iron-headed club at his shoulder. In between, Trelawna and Rufio struggled with Gerta, who they had managed to rouse, but only with difficulty. They reached ground level, where a narrow door opened into the courtyard. Trelawna glanced through as the sky again flashed with celestial fire. Cacophonous thunder rolled. The deluge intensified.

  “Not that way,” Rufio said. He indicated an internal door, and a stair descending beyond it; Zalmyra’s green light was already receding into the regions below.

  Trelawna adjusted Gerta at her shoulder and was about to follow, when movement caught her eye on the far side of the castle. She looked once, and then again.

  It was Lucan. He’d emerged on an upper gantry, maybe thirty feet above the courtyard. He had a body draped over one shoulder – to Trelawna’s horror, it looked like Alaric – and was now backing along the battlement, using one hand to fend off a horde of slowly pursuing figures. Though he wielded Heaven’s Messenger with his usual might, cutting them down like chaff, they always rose to their feet again and continued. He had perhaps another five yards in which he could retreat and then, aside from a single flagpole flying the Boar’s Head pennon, he’d be at a dead-end.

  Rufio reappeared at her shoulder. “What are you doing? Mother’s patience is...”

  “Your mother can rot in Hell!” Trelawna snapped. “Look!”

  Rufio gazed across the courtyard – in time to see a fleshy tentacle grope from a cellar window and slide serpent-like up the wall towards Lucan, a humanoid figure riding on its tip.

  “That looks like Arthur,” Trelawna said with disbelief.

  THE KING ALIGHTED on the battlements.

  Lucan had now retreated as far as he could, and laid Alaric down next to the flagpole. Once again, he was confronted by his lord and sovereign. Arthur’s visor was raised, but the face below it was solemn. “You are a great warrior, Lucan,” he said softly, “but evil is rooted in your soul. It’s a burden you were born with, b
ut even so, everyone at Camelot hates and fears you in equal measure.”

  “You’re lying!” Lucan shouted, his throat sore with gasping.

  “I tolerate you, Lucan, because you direct your wrath at my foes. But one day my foes will be dead, and your usefulness will be done. Hell will be grateful to receive you!”

  “You’re not my King!” Lucan roared, but still, when he struck at the figure, it was with the pommel of his sword rather than its point.

  The first blow dented the King’s shield. The King retaliated with a stroke of his axe. Lucan parried, severing the axe-haft. More by instinct than design, he followed this through with a lethal backstroke, which ripped through the King’s aventail and sliced his throat. The figure staggered back, arterial black gore spurting outward.

  “You are not my King!” Lucan wept. He kicked the wounded figure in the chest, toppling it through the embrasure.

  With renewed howls, the others launched themselves forward. Lucan hewed an alleyway through them. Benedict went down with face cloven, Bors with neck sheared, Griflet with lungs and heart exposed.

  Gagging for breath, Lucan fell back again. He had bought himself but a fleeting respite. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Alaric’s lifeless form. If he could just get the lad away from this place... but there was no time. Lancelot ghosted towards him with a maul in one hand and a mattock in the other. Lucan blocked both blows, and chopped Lancelot’s legs from under him, and the horde of horrors was held in brief abeyance as the corpses in front melded themselves back together. Lucan swung around and cut the flagpole rope.

  FROM THE OTHER side of the castle yard, it seemed a futile, almost pathetic gesture – the Malconi pennon collapsing in the rain. But then Trelawna saw Lucan pull down the rope and vanish below the battlements – she wondered if he was attempting to escape, before realising the truth. The lifeless figure he’d been carrying – Alaric, definitely Alaric – was now propped upright in an embrasure, the rope looped around his body. As quickly as he could, Lucan lowered him down towards the courtyard. But there was no movement from the lad; he would land heavily and awkwardly. Trelawna laid Gerta against the door-jamb, and rushed outside.