His voice echoed with the timbre of a raving lunatic as his fist struck Mathis full in the face, sending him sprawling again. Battered and bleeding he lay on his back atop the stone tiles, looking like a rotting carcass. He rolled over, crawling towards the shadowy corner where Thomas was standing, watching. The gamekeeper growled like a wild animal. Eager for the kill he gazed down on his victim with sadistic glee. ‘Your hide belongs to me now, and if I don’t spit-roast you and eat your liver, Master Ozhobar will hang, draw and quarter you,’ he said drawing his long serrated sword.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you man?’ shouted Thomas, and before the gamekeeper could strike he spun around, grabbing a matching brass poker and shovel from the hearth, holding them up in the air like two swords.
The gamekeeper laughed, stalking toward him with a hideous smile on his face. Then he paused as though unsure whether it was worth the effort of killing him first. ‘What do you think you can do with those?’ he asked.
Thomas looked down at the poker and shovel he was holding and scowled, when suddenly the gamekeeper lunged at him with his sword. Incredibly he parried the blow with the shovel and lunged with the poker and it caught the other completely by surprise, striking him high on the temple. Reeling backward sharply clutching the wound, he stared balefully at Thomas with murder in his eyes and blood seeped through his fingers from the shallow cut.
Thomas backed away from the gamekeeper, but the other took an enormous leap, punching him hard on the jaw, sending him spinning to the floor. He shook his head to lose the dizziness clouding his mind and rolled to his knees, hammering the toes of the others left foot with the poker. There was a terrible animalistic shriek as pain shot up his leg and through his whole body and the gamekeeper hopped around the room in agony clasping his toes. Thomas cast him a venomous look, rising quickly to his feet, once again getting ready to defend himself with the shovel and poker.
Mathis groaned, rolling onto his back, gazing up at him with a vengeful stare. ‘Kill the bastard,’ he said with a gasp as Thomas swiped with the poker at dizzying speed, knocking the gamekeepers other leg from under him. He hit the ground hard, falling onto his neck, breaking it and didn't rise again. Thomas kicked him with his booted foot to make sure he was dead. And stone cold dead he was.
Mathis stared at the corpse with incredulity. ‘How the hell did you do that with just a shovel and a poker?’ he asked sitting up, holding his aching jaw.
Thomas stared at the two household items in his hands. ‘Not sure I know how I did it. Something strange came over me – some irresistible urge as if my hands and feet knew exactly what to do.’
Astonishment gleamed in the hunter’s eyes. ‘Your speed was frightening,’ he said hauling himself erect, ‘faster than a spreading forest-fire. Do you think you were a swordsman before you lost your memory?’
Thomas shrugged, shaking his head in anguish. ‘I still have no recollection of my past life what-so-ever,’ he said, and then suddenly he found himself trapped at the centre of a nightmarish vision.
He was raping a woman...
Then he beat her to death with bloodied fists…
Suddenly, a man appeared in the doorway...
A brutal fist knocked his teeth out…
A whip cruelly lashed his back repeatedly…
Callous stares ignored his pleas as he begged a gathering mob not to hang him…
He screamed as he approached the gallows, watched by the misted eyes of two young boys from the upstairs window of a tavern…
The crazed mob tied a noose about his neck, chanting for a hanging…
Then everything went black and the pageant of suffering stopped. Twitching, he dropped to the floor, curling into a quivering ball, covering his eyes and his face contorted into a mask of horror. He had witnessed his mother’s brutal murder and his father’s subsequent violent hanging, but wasn’t sure what he'd seen, having no conscious memory of both acts.
*
In the bar at the Dog and Duck, the early morning sunlight filtered through the new stained glass windows. Dardo was fast asleep, collapsed over a table with his head resting on his arms and Dody was snoring beneath it. They were comatose with drink almost every night now.
Since Thomas’ disappearance, that was all they did besides fight. Lira did her best to control the pair and the patrons in the tavern, but she was fighting a losing battle herself. With Thomas’ steadfast influence gone, an icy chill descended on the place each night. Tempers flared, scuffles erupted and then all Hell would break loose. It seemed like the end of days to her.
Lighted candles in the bar that had burned all night dispelled whatever shadows remained, revealing the havoc caused the night before in violent knife fights. Once again there were overturned tables and smashed, splintered chairs littering the room and at least two bloodied corpses adorned the bar top. Her angry eyes scanned the room, surveying the carnage. She counted slowly to ten and then counted again, her face pale, drawn and anxious. Her unforgiving expression said it all and her pent up anger smouldered deep within and then exploded. She shrieked her protest at the nauseating sight, waking Dardo and Dody with a start. Both men jumped as if slapped.
Dody gasped. ‘What the…?’ he said bobbing up under the table, banging his head. ‘Ouch!’
‘Dardo fell backward off the chair with a crash, rolling onto the sawdust covered floor. ‘Arghh. What...? Who...? Where...?’ He rolled to his knees, hauling himself upright covered in wood shavings and with his wild hair ragged and unkempt he looked like a scarecrow. He stood still for a moment, stunned, shook his head and then brushed himself down. Dody rolled from beneath the table covered in sawdust too. Climbing to his feet he searched amongst the broken furniture for his boots. ‘Where are they?’ he whispered. Finally, he found them under the wreckage and put them on.
Lira’s face was a picture of swelling anger and she screamed. ‘You’re going to regret this, the pair of you. Now you can clean the place up because I’m not going to.’ She stormed from the room, slamming the door shut behind her and went back to bed.
Both men yawned and stretched. ‘I know I’m not the sharpest arrow in the quiver but…’ said Dardo looking hurt.
‘...No, you’re not,’ interrupted Dody, ‘but your hearts in the right place and she’s just upset. She misses Thomas. We all do. So don’t take it personally, let’s just clean up.’ He leaned forward placing a broad hand on his friends shoulder. ‘She’s still in the shock of her abandonment. It’s been hard of late for all of us, but Lira’s loss is the hardest of all to bear – particularly when Olivia keeps crying for her daddy and constantly asking when he’s coming home.’ The tinted glass windows reflected Dody’s brooding demeanour. ‘I just keep wishing he’d walk back through the bar door like he used to with that confident swagger of his.’
Light and hope faded from his eyes and a tone of melancholy entered his voice as he turned his head to stare bleakly at the door with a pensive look. He had known Thomas for a few years and had been one of his closest confidants, but now it was as if he had never really known him at all.
The whole place was a mess so they set about cleaning it, picking up the shards of smashed pottery, splinters of broken chairs and shelves, tidying away anything and everything that was out of place, including the two vile corpses from the bar top. Dardo hefted one over his shoulder and Dody carried the other out into the courtyard to await the coming of the undertaker. When at last they had finished a great weariness descended upon them.
‘I enjoy the drinking and sometimes even the fighting, but not the cleaning up after. It’s too much like hard work – know what I mean?’ said Dardo collapsing onto a stool at their usual table.
Dody gasped, weariness overcoming him too. ‘I know exactly what you mean,' he said sitting down beside him.
Both men stared at Thomas’ empty chair picturing him sitting there, and both searched their memories for any clue as to his disappearance. Had he mentioned anything that might lead
them to where he was now? If he had, neither man could recall a single word he might have said to guide them to him. Both men sat in silence with jaded expressions, not uttering a word.
Upstairs alone in the dark, Lira listened to Olivia crying for her daddy. She wasn't a religious woman and had prayed only once in her life. However, God had not answered her prayer then and she and her father had buried her mother as a plague of smallpox swept through the country, causing misery and desolation to the loved ones left behind. Now she prayed quietly again, but this time she prayed for her husband to come home. This time it was an unselfish prayer. She couldn’t stand to look into Olivia’s grief stricken eyes any longer and just wanted her daddy to come home safely.
Olivia sobbed fitfully. 'Mummy, I want to see my daddy again. Can I see him? I miss him so.’
Lira began to cry too. ‘I know sweetheart,’ she said dully, flatly. ‘I miss him too. He’ll be home soon, I’m sure of it.’
Olivia didn’t want to talk, eat, brush her hair or put on pretty clothes any more with her father gone. Her bedroom no longer overflowed with flowers, home-made toys and straw dolls like it used to be, and Lira hated it every time someone mentioned Thomas' disappearance, or pitied her for being left with a child to bring up on her own – as if her husband had gone off with some other woman behind her back. The worst part of all though was that she didn’t know if he was dead or alive. This made them both inconsolable.
Meanwhile, not so very far away, Thomas was having the time of his life. He hadn’t a care in the world. His memory was as blank as a novice painter’s canvas and he still couldn’t even remember his name, let alone his family and long history of violence – which had sometimes shadowed his days. Nevertheless, destiny was painting him a new history. He was now very rich. So was Mathis and Sanson after finding and keeping the Lionheart’s treasure, and the only downside to recent events was that he had begun having all kinds of strange, waking nightmares. Was any of it part of his past, he wondered, pushing them to the back of his mind? Most of them were very violent hallucinations and very disturbing.
He had had visions of farmers being burned alive in a barn…
A branding iron searing flesh…
An old man having his teeth knocked out…
A whip cruelly lashing, flaying skin to the bone…
A jealous husband beating his wife to death…
And so on, ending with an angry mob and a brutal hanging, and then as usual the pageant of terror and suffering would stop and everything would go black.
More days turned into weeks, and then one night Thomas relived his past life in a vivid dream. Lira came to him as a lean, shadowy figure, clad entirely in white. She arrived to reclaim him as her own, appearing before him in a dark landscape with bursts of thunder and lightning flashing all around. Her blue eyes shone like polished sapphires. ‘Come back to me my love,’ she called out repeatedly with her arms outstretched. Olivia was sobbing somewhere in the background but couldn’t be seen, even though more bursts of thunder and lightning lit the heavens as a scorching, whining wind burned his face in the chaos of his dream.
He awoke with a start and sat up in bed, wild eyed with terror, the shutters of the bedroom windows banging in the strong wind. It blew against his face, offering no relief from the stifling heat of the night as it whistled through the hunter’s cabin, taking on a moaning quality that sounded disturbingly inhuman. It also sounded faintly mocking and filled his ears.
Outside, the horses whinnied in fear to the sounds of the keening wind, and a door squeaked loudly as it swung back and forth on its hinges. A weather vane spun wildly on the roof and a tarnished bucket hanging on a rope over the dry well outside clanged noisily as lightning flashed in the heavens overhead and thunder roared.
Again, he could make no sense of the wild nightmare, having no conscious memory of his wife and child, and as the morning came bringing the warm sun, he sat outside relaxing on the porch by the cabin, until suddenly he became aware of men shouting, women screaming and children crying. The tumult filled his ears as the hellish cacophony grew louder and louder with each passing second, and it was definitely coming his way, as were the echoes of speeding hoof beats.
Thomas’ new horse whinnied in fear, almost bolting from the tethering post. ‘Steady, boy,’ he urged, but the awful noise continued its conspiracy to drive the horse nearly out of its mind. Then the tangy smell of blood, mixed with noxious smoke added to the stallion’s alarm. Steam jetted from its flaring nostrils and froth flecked its lips in its agitated state. He leapt from the porch, gripping the reins tightly, fighting to bring the panicked horse under control, stroking its flanks gently.
Instantly, the whole area surrounding the hunter’s cabin was filled with farmers, and their wives and children, running and screaming, followed closely by armed warriors on horseback chasing them. An awful noise filled the air about Thomas as it gathered momentum, the ground trembling and rumbling, and once again his sixth sense told him to take cover and find a hiding place until he could gather his thoughts – so he ran for the nearest barn. Ignoring the stairs he climbed with haste up into the hay loft and his lightning fast reflexes served him well as he landed catlike in the hay, where he hid and watched.
The cries of the victims rang out, nearby barns blazed and cattle bellowed in pain as the warriors laid waste to everything in their path. Thomas saw all the carnage, death and misery wreaked by the evil men and his eyes were cold and grim. The leader laughed feverishly, killing faster, on and on, wreaking more desolation and destruction until at last there was no one else left to kill. Thomas felt terrible, sick to his stomach, but knew there was nothing he could do to stop the slaughter. He cursed silently at his leaden limbs, and for the first time in his new life knew the meaning of mindless fear and panic. Sweat dripped from his hands and his lungs felt as if they were bursting.
Suddenly there was a noise from behind him, the squeak of a rusty door hinge and he rolled over onto his back quickly. Too late – one of the warriors was upon him, stabbing at him with a dagger. He rolled away just in time for the attackers knife to sink into the floorboards beneath the hay with a heavy thud. He jumped to his feet, cannoning his booted foot into the others face as he stood back erect with the knife still in his hand. The move caught the man by surprise, launching him out of the hayloft window two storeys up and he landed, impaled on a wooden fence post and didn't move again. Luckily for Thomas, none of the other warriors saw what he had done and they disappeared back up into the hills after killing every living thing in the surrounding area.
Later, when he was sure they had all gone he walked mournfully through the devastation and carnage. Smoke and brimstone drifted across the land in black trailers partly obscuring the once beautiful view, which was now a horrendous sight. Bodies of men, women, children and animals lay everywhere in pieces, and all had died a horrible, violent death.
Determined not to look at the awful sight any longer he fixed his gaze on the distant Nottingham Road, where a single rider on horseback was heading his way at the gallop, leaving a long trail of dust behind him. He recognised the rider as his friend, Mathis, and finally after a minute or so he pulled up alongside of Thomas, tugging hard on the reins. The horse reared up on its hind legs, snorting and shaking its head, its front hooves pawing at empty air with steam jetting from its flaring nostrils.
Thomas looked up at the man with fear glittering in his eyes. ‘What the hell happened here?’ asked Mathis.
‘A savage slaughter. I saw it all and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it,’ said Thomas, his eyes misted. Taking a slow deep breath he knelt over a young boy's body, searching through his pockets. There was a home-made slingshot, a tiny knitted figure and a single copper coin worth virtually nothing. ‘What's the price of a life?’ he asked holding up the items in the palm of his hand. His eyes filled with tears as somewhere in the back of his subconscious mind he had a vivid vision of his daughter, Olivia. He choked them back, swallowing hard.<
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Both men spent the rest of the day reverently saying prayers, burying the corpses and burning the dead cattle on huge pyres, until finally at dusk with the onset of night their task ended. In the hunter’s cabin afterwards both men sat eating in silence, staring mournfully at each other over the table top. ‘What drives a man like Ozhobar?’ Mathis asked suddenly. ‘Cold and merciless he is.’
‘Is that the warrior who attacked today, killing all those people – the man with the odd eyes that seemed to glow?’ Thomas asked.
‘Aye, he’s the one.’
‘Only two things drive a man like him – greed and pure hate.’
‘He certainly has his father’s seed within him,’ said Mathis, ‘and a great big hole that cannot be filled, even with all the misery, suffering and death he causes – and he certainly has a passionate taste for that.’
‘Is there no one who can stop him? Is there no one skilled enough with sword or bow to end his reign of terror?’ asked Thomas.
Mathis shook his head forlornly. ‘Once there was such a warrior in Nottingham. I never saw him myself because I live out here in the wilds and mind my own business, but his name was Flynn. Passing traders spread rumours that he was a formidable and fearsome warrior, skilled with matching short-swords and fast as a lightning bolt. Then he went missing one day and no one has heard from him since.’
Thomas stood up, yawned, stretched and removed his shirt, leggings and boots that were blood soaked, and Mathis couldn’t help noticing his badly scarred body as he marched off to bed without saying another word. Through disbelieving eyes he stared at the many healed wounds, and that night in bed he had sombre thoughts in his mind and found sleep difficult – but when at last he did succumb, he dreamt of baron Ozhobar. ‘I’m coming for you old man, we have a score to settle, you and I,’ he called to Mathis.
A Violent Man ( the story of Thomas Flynn ) Page 21