Stronghold (tomes of the dead)

by Paul Finch

  When they reached the top of the stair, the doors to the Great Hall stood in front of them. They were partly open. Without hesitation, Ranulf barged through.

  "In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God," Benan cried, throwing his voice to the vaulted ceiling. "We undertake in full confidence this battle against the enemy."

  Darkness now filled the chapel like swamp water; things writhed and oozed in its murky depths. An appalling odour seeped through it. From all the surrounding chambers came a thunderous cacophony of destruction.

  The priest's forehead ran with sweat. "Let… G-god arise," he stammered, his throat dry. "Let His enemies be scattered. Let those who hate Him flee before Him…"

  Slowly, his words tailed off.

  His fearful eyes had focussed on a spectral figure, which had just come in from the entry passage and now glided across the bottom end of the church. Benan could not believe what he was seeing. It was a bishop — dressed in Easter vestments: the glorious white and gold tabard glittering, the jewel-encrusted mitre worn at an irreverently jaunty angle. The figure was moving swiftly, but with humility, its hands crossed on its breast. Benan had to look again, his eyes straining in the dimness. The figure's feet hardly seemed to be moving. For a fantastical moment, the priest wondered if some radiant soul had risen to help him. Then he saw it stop by the baptismal font, bend down — and begin to drink.

  In great, sickening slurps.

  Tears of terror dripped down Benan's cheeks.

  "Oh Lord… save us," he whispered.

  The Great Hall was a grim reminder of what Grogen Castle could have been in happier, more peaceful times.

  In due course, if the land had settled and Earl Corotocus had come to feel at home in the stronghold, this vast banqueting chamber would have been transformed: a fire would roar in its immense open hearth, the floor would be strewn with fresh rushes, the tapestries and battle standards, now fouled and defaced by the Welsh, would be replaced. The mouldering food and broken crockery that strewed the table-tops after that rabble of Bretons had roistered here would be swept aside and a feast fit for a king laid out. A scent of roasted fowl and venison would fill the air. Wine and ale would flow. There'd be singing and celebration, a harmonious lilting of pipes and lutes.

  But at present, lit dolefully by the first rays of dawn, the place was a desecrated shell filled with wreck and ruin — and with the dead.

  Perhaps thirty corpses were present, having come in through the casements or ascended via the hall's second staircase. Against such odds, no sane man would have progressed even a single step, except that none of Ranulf's band had any choice. An even greater number of corpses were clamouring at their rear.

  "Straight through them!" Ranulf bellowed.

  But it was an impossible situation. The dead didn't just meet them with swords, axes and knives, but they flung javelins and spears from the minstrel's gallery. Three Englishmen went down before they'd even engaged the foe. Ranulf ducked one missile, leapt onto a banquet table and ran down its full length, vaulting the blows aimed at his legs, striking to the left and right with his sword. Gurt tried to take the same route, but was grappled with by a pack of them. With desperate efforts, he flung his attackers off, picked up a bench and, holding it horizontal, drove them backward. As they fell, he trampled over them, and the men coming up behind chopped at them. But those English at the rear were pressed together in the confusion until too cramped to move, and then hewn mercilessly from behind.

  "Ranulf!" Gurt screamed.

  Ranulf had reached the far end of the hall. Another passage lay ahead of him. The way, it seemed, was clear through to the baronial State Rooms. But he turned back. Gurt was still using the bench to protect himself, but it was being hacked to splinters. He tried to duck behind it, only for a blow from a mattock to tear the helmet clean from his head.

  Ranulf went back into the fray. A corpse hove in from his left. It wore only a loincloth and its body was gashed and slashed all over. A blow from a war-hammer had smashed its rotted face. Its nose was crushed and shreds of black tongue hung through a mesh of mangled teeth. For a weapon it wielded a burnt log, which it had lifted from the hearth.

  Ranulf fended off two blows and severed its weapon hand at the wrist. It responded by grabbing his throat with its other hand. He slammed his mail-clad knee into its groin, but to no effect. He beat its skull with the pommel of his sword. The skull broke open. Another foul fetor engulfed Ranulf, making him choke — the exposed brain was like a lump of mouldered cabbage. Still the thing tried to throttle him. Only when Gurt appeared, and, with a single blow, shore its arm at the elbow, was Ranulf released. A second blow took its legs from under it and it fell to the floor, a twitching, limbless half-man.

  "You were supposed to be helping me!" Gurt shouted.

  "Next time remind me not to bother!" Ranulf retorted, only to cry in pain as a set of broken teeth clamped on his left ankle.

  "God's bread!" he roared, striking down five times at his persistent assailant, the fifth impact so heavy that his blade cut through meat and bones to the flagstones beneath, and promptly snapped in half.

  "Jesus," Ranulf groaned.

  The weapon that had seen him through countless battles was now less than a foot long and squared off where it should have been pointed.

  "Never mind that," Gurt said. "We have to flee."

  The rest of the Great Hall was like a butcher's yard. All the other English had fallen, though the dead still ravaged at their bodies, beating their heads with stones and logs, wrenching their limbs from their sockets, hacking them with every type of blade. Gurt and Ranulf might themselves have been overrun, had someone else not suddenly become the centre of the dead horde's attention.

  Though Ranulf had barely noticed Morgaynt Carew during the later fighting, mainly because his broken hands and scattered wits had left him incapable of wielding weapons properly, the semi-demented captain of the Welsh malcontents had run with them from the Constable's Tower. But now, at last, his dead countrymen had their claws on him. Incredibly, Carew still lived despite having been impaled on a spear, which had been thrust into his body via his anus and up through his bowels and innards, until re-emerging from his gagging mouth. His eyes rolled from side to side as they raised him upright, planted him on the open hearth and began piling timber from the broken benches around him.

  Even with every other atrocity Ranulf and Gurt had witnessed, this was an astonishing sight. And yet Ranulf was no longer surprised. It seemed to him that, as the battle had progressed, the dead had become more and more like the living — as if whatever demonic force possessed them had grown used to its new mantle. Their grunts and mewls had turned increasingly to screams of fury. They had been organised from the start, but whereas initially they'd lumbered like puppets, soon they'd become faster and more dexterous. Worse still, as this grisly spectacle proved, they were showing increasing levels of vindictiveness. No longer were they mindless vegetables acting on pure instinct. Now, as though sensing all together that in Morgaynt Carew they had a real enemy, they gathered around the hearth in a mob, howling in monstrous glee, waving their weapons on high as a firebrand was produced and flame touched the kindling.

  Did this reflect the nature of the force controlling them, Ranulf wondered, or in the putrid sludge of their brains, did threads of the worst kind of human emotions still linger?

  "Ranulf!" Gurt screamed into his ear. "Come on, while they're distracted!"

  Ranulf nodded.

  They turned and headed into the next passage. But the dead weren't distracted for long. Even as the two knights ran, a group of corpses broke off in pursuit. Those few that had been poorly armed before were well armed now, having taken possession of swords, flails and maces from their English victims. They twisted and staggered as they came, travelling on limbs that were smashed or pierced, or on stumps from which the feet had been shorn, but they showed frightful speed. Their torn faces, crusted with the mingled blood of their victims and their
own clotted mucus, were contorted by the madness of the damned.

  Father Benan could feel their eyes on him as they advanced like shades through the darkened chapel. The storm in the other rooms had reached a terrifying crescendo, but he continued determinedly with the rite, his body drenched and shaking.

  "Behold the cross of the Lord!" he cried, holding up the iron crucifix. "Flee, bands of enemies!"

  Still they came, horrible manifestations of the night, the stench of carrion pouring off them in waves so thick the very air swam with it. One by one, they smashed the pews, ripping them up from the stone floor and casting them aside.

  The priest held his ground on the altar.

  "The Lion of Judah, the stem of David has triumphed!" he shouted, but his voice was lost in the tumult. "God the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ thine son, may thy mercy be upon us all." He had to duck as a something was flung at him. It missed his face by inches. But he had the fleeting fancy that it was somebody's torn off hand.

  "We drive thee out, unclean spirits, whoever thou art!" His throat was raw with shouting. "Every devilish tribe, in the name of God and by the power of Our Lord Jesus, be thou uprooted and driven from those fashioned in the likeness of God and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine Lamb."

  He made a hurried sign of the cross. But no scream of tortured souls greeted this powerful symbol, no reek of burning flesh. The thing in the bishop's vestments was at their forefront; now that it was close, its once ornate robes looked filthy and had been shredded as though by an eagle's talons. Benan tried to focus on this fiend in particular. Had it really once been a bishop of the Christian church? Had the dark magic that had invoked this army of the dead seeped down into some cathedral crypt, where sacred bones lay in tranquil repose? As it stepped up onto the altar, he moved forward to meet it, hoping to recognise its face and maybe reason with it. But all he saw, when they were almost nose-to-nose, were the startled features of Otto, the earl's portly cook. They had been torn from the Brabancon's head in one piece, and draped bloodily over this abomination's own desiccated visage.

  Benan backed away, fighting to suppress a scream.

  "Dare no more, malicious serpent, to persecute God's children! May the Almighty God command thee!"

  He made another sign of the cross, but now they were filing up onto the altar from his right and his left. One of them, more bones and filth than actual flesh, had bobbed hair, wore a scarlet fustian gown and a fashionable beret with a rolled brim, indicating that high ranks of layity had also joined the unholy legion.

  "May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit dispose of thee, foul demons!"

  With each incantation, he made signs of the cross, but still they advanced. He scrambled around the altar table and limped to a smaller table at the back. Here sat a leather satchel containing his most precious belongings. From inside it, he took a lidded chalice. As he opened it, he continued to pray.

  "May Christ take thee in His hands!" He opened the chalice, thumbing out three blessed wafers, and turned back to the invaders. "He built the Church on firm foundations and promised the gates of the Underworld would never prevail against her."

  He broke the wafers into fragments and scattered them around him in a semi-circle.

  "Thou art commanded by the sign of the holy cross!" He thrust his crucifix at them. "And by the mysteries of the Christian faith. Thou art commanded by the sublime virgin mother of God, Mary, who from her conception has trodden on your crown."

  Again, he made the sign of the cross and, momentarily, their advance seemed to falter — but only for fleeting seconds. If such a thing was possible, the expressions on their decayed faces seemed to have changed, from inhuman anger to something like curiosity.

  "Thou art commanded by the apostles! Thou art commanded by the blood of the martyrs!"

  One by one, they circled around the altar table.

  For the first time in his life, despite all that he'd turned a blind eye to in the service of Earl Corotocus, Benan felt his faith begin to ebb. Never had he imagined he would face an enemy like this, though perhaps, in private, he might have said that he could manage it — that with the fist of the Almighty clenched above him he could stand off the hounds of hell. But still they approached.

  "We exorcise thee, cursed dragon!" He lifted the cross as high as he could. "And all these, thine apostate followers! By the living God, by the true God, by the holy God!"

  Their hands clawed as they reached for him.

  "Flee, Satan!" he screamed. "Thou inventor and master of every deception, thou enemy of Mankind!"

  As one, they halted.

  Benan gazed, blinking, from one to the other. Though they crowded around him, only affording a few feet of safety, an absurd hope suddenly rose in his breast.

  Had the ancient rite succeeded? It would have amazed him if it had. Though Benan had scorned Earl Corotocus for his excesses, he'd feared from the outset that his long record of collaboration with the nobleman had damaged him in the eyes of Heaven. He had simply known that God would not send his angels down to assist. That Christ would not appear by his side, armed with a flaming sword.

  And yet the devils' advance had apparently ceased.

  Benan glanced down. The fragments of sacred wafer lay in a distinct line between him and them — like a barrier. Not one of them had set foot across it. His heart rate increased; he felt the beginnings of hope.

  "We command thee! We command thee…" Benan's voice rose triumphantly, only for his words to tail off again.

  For with slow, malicious pleasure, the thing in the Episcopal vestments shook its head from side to side and with a single, deliberate step, crossed over the holy fragments. The others copied it and, raising their claws, took hold of the shrieking priest from all sides.

  Benan dropped to his knees. His eyes were screwed shut as multiple dead fingers groped through his hair and over his tear-sodden face. His heart throbbed in his chest, but, with a core of steel that even he didn't know he possessed, he proceeded with the exorcism.

  "Make way for Christ, in whom thou couldst find none of thy works! Bow beneath the mighty hand of God…"

  He dared to look up at them again. It seemed that every demonic face in creation was peering down at him. Crushed, pulped, rotted, scabrous masks of what they'd once been, and now possessed by some force of evil no man could understand, exuding it like a fog of death.

  "Tremble and flee at the invocation of the holy name of Jesus, before which all Hell will shake. At the name of Jesus, to which all powers on Earth and in Heaven are subject, which the cherubim and seraphim unceasingly praise, saying 'holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts."

  Fascinated, they ran their hands over his plump, naked flesh. They found his many welts.

  "Our help is in the name of the Lord," Benan croaked. "The name of the Lord! God of Heaven, God of Earth, God of angels, God of apostles and martyrs…"

  His voice rose to a castrato screech as, one by one, they dug their bony claws into his wounds.

  "…who has the power to give life after death because there is no other god than Thee."

  And then they ripped, tearing the wounded tissue from his body like fabric from a seamstress's dummy. His keening howl might have shattered the eardrums of anyone human.

  "For thou… thou art the creator of all things visible and invisible," he sobbed. "To whose reign there shall be no end. We humbly prostrate ourselves before Thy glorious majesty… deliver us…"

  He screeched again as more meat was rent from his bones.

  "… deliver us from the infernal host…"

  He batted at them with the iron crucifix, until the bishop-thing snatched it from his grasp.

  "Hear us, Father. Hear us…"

  But his words ended and all that came from his mouth were scarlet bubbles. The white-hot fire that engulfed him was fading, but he had no strength to stand, and they had to hoist him to his feet. His vision was darkening. The end was coming, he knew. Though it
hadn't quite come yet, and he was still compos mentis enough to feel wonder that the bishop-thing was now offering the crucifix to his lips.

  How strange, Benan reflected, that after everything they'd subjected him to, they were giving him a chance to make good his martyrdom. He leaned forward to kiss the holy symbol, as so many saints had done in the past while bound to racks or nailed to crosses — but the object was withdrawn before he could make contact.

  To his pain-fuddled bewilderment, it was lifted up above his eye-line, where he lost track of it altogether, until he felt its cold iron base placed on top of his cranium, in the very middle of his tonsure. Other dead hands now clamped Benan's head to keep it steady. His confusion lingered a little longer, but a whimper of understanding broke from his blood-slathered lips as the bishop-thing began to press the crucifix downward with crushing force, driving it inch by agonising inch through his skin, his bone, and finally into his brain.

  The last thing that Father Benan realised, before his world winked out of existence, was that, if nothing else, when he too walked with the dead, the sign of his faith would be planted in the top of his skull.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Like the Great Hall, the State Rooms, which would normally form private apartments for the castellan of Grogen Castle and his family, had been ransacked; their exquisite furnishings were smashed or stolen, their tapestries and wall-hangings torn down. Welsh profanities had been written in excrement on the whitewashed walls.

  The casements here, while not exactly arrow-slits, were still tall and narrow, set in deep embrasures, and had been covered with sheets of tinted horn, though many of these had been shattered, for grapples had been shot through them.