Medi-Evil 1

by Paul Finch

  It hoisted him, squawking and kicking, into the air, drew back its massive hammer, and smote him on the cranium with such force that the whole of his skull shattered, coming apart like a rotten apple. Hurling his corpse aside like so much chaff, it lurched onto the shore and rampaged after the rest of them. A couple of the soldiers fell back to form a desperate rear-guard. One brave legionary dealt a backhand slash at it with his sword, but for all its mammoth size, the ogre was dextrous, stepping nimbly back then thrusting sharply with a straight-arm punch that caught the soldier under the jaw and snapped his neck like a twig.

  As the legionary fell dead, a British farmer swiped at the brute with his hatchet, gashing its belly and drawing blood, but to little avail. He might as well have been an infant child attacking a full-grown adult. It rained blows on him with its gruesome mallet, and the first knocked the farmer senseless to the ground. The next five pounded his chest and face like dough.

  The rest of the men continued to plough their way through the quagmires. Ursus went with them, but his elderly frame was now so wearied that he found himself dropping quickly to the rear. The sweat of terror streamed off him, and he glanced wildly over his shoulder … then stopped and turned. For some inexplicable reason, the ogre had halted and fallen to a crouch no more than twenty paces behind, the hammer held upside-down between its knees.

  At first Ursus was puzzled. Then realisation struck. Maybe thirty paces to the creature’s right, another muddied, gasping figure had come ashore … it was Jusci. He too had seemingly opted to swim when the attack first came. Now the ogre was watching him warily.

  “Of course,” Ursus gasped, also falling to a crouch. “You’re the male, aren’t you … you’re the hunter. You don’t want to abandon your kill.”

  The scout, having taken only moments to recover, now plodded his way towards Ursus in a wide circle, making sure to go nowhere near the watching ogre. Even when he came up alongside the engineer, and threw himself down, wheezing for breath, the monster made no approach.

  “We need only separate … and it risks losing its next dinner,” the Roman said.

  Jusci nodded. “Is not so often, I think, they get good food … like this.”

  Ursus glanced round. Drusus approached warily. Beyond him, the remaining soldier and farmer had also realised the pursuit had ended. They’d stopped running and were down on their haunches, breathing heavily. The engineer looked back towards the monster. Snarling at them, it now backtracked to the bodies of those it had already slain, gathered them together, and then settled down on its knees. It was either working out its next move or waiting to see what its prey did. Eventually, its snarls fell silent, but even from this distance, they could sense its beady eyes fixed on them.

  “Something tells me the gods of this land don’t wish us to farm their fens,” Drusus observed.

  “These are not gods, Drusus,” Ursus replied.

  “Then what are they … in twelve years a soldier, I’ve never seen their like.”

  “I don’t know.” The engineer shrugged, then turned and looked at the scout.

  Jusci shook his muddy locks, apparently equally bewildered. “As a boy, I hear tales of these people … the Magog. But old tales. I think … just stories.”

  His words petered out.

  “Who can say what they are,” Ursus said. “The last of some ancient species, perhaps. A forgotten race, the few remnants of which still linger on in legend and lost places like this.” He glanced at the other men. “These northern lands are full of such myths, are they not … giants, demons.”

  Drusus pursed his lips. “Whatever, they believe in taking vengeance for our trespass.”

  “It moves!” said Jusci sharply.

  Instinctively, the three men readied for flight … but the monster was no longer in pursuit, at least not at that moment. It had risen to its feet but, after staring once in their direction, turned, gathered up its mutilated dead and waded back out into the broad. A moment later, it vanished through the curtain of mist.

  “Can you find the way back from here?” Ursus asked the Iceni.

  Jusci nodded vaguely. “Yes, but … before it return? I don’t know.”

  “Then we’d best start now.” The engineer stood. “By my reckoning, it’s only two hours to nightfall. I don’t particularly want to be hunted in the dark.”

  *

  Livius and his bedraggled troop entered the camp-site only warily, swords at the ready.

  The fire had died down to embers, and the great lump of clay inside which a living man had baked now hung cold and hard from the spit. There was no sound from inside it … no muffled movements, no further agonised keening. Livius tapped on the clay with his sword. Still, there was no reply. He walked around it and on the other side was horrified to see that a tiny hole had been bored, into which a hollow reed was inserted.

  “They didn’t want you to die too quickly, did they, my friend,” he said slowly. “They wanted you to broil first.”

  He turned to survey the rest of the camp. The marshland air, normally muggy with pollen, was here befouled by the stench of offal and excrement, a great heap of which lay in one corner, swarming with rats. Animal skins hung from the surrounding branches alongside fish, ducks, rabbits, otters. The floor of the camp was trampled earth, strewn with fragments of feathers, fur and bone. The air was thick was bloated flies. The creatures’ existence had clearly been of the most basic type … so basic that Livius wanted to retch as he stood there in the midst of it. One other thing caught his eye, however, and distracted him … an aperture in the gully wall, hung over with ferns and snapped-off branches.

  “A cave-mouth,” he said, approaching it.

  The farm-workers held back, very nervously, but the remaining trooper joined his officer. The cleft looked too narrow for either of the two monsters to take shelter within, but perhaps some kind of hoard was hidden there? They peered into the darkness.

  “We need a light,” said the legionary.

  “I agree.” The optio glanced back towards the fire.

  And then growls assailed them. But these were high-pitched growls, laughable rather than frightening. Even so, the farmers retreated in a huddle, and the two soldiers drew back a step or two, swords raised.

  The two beings that now emerged from the cave were clearly young … very young. The hair on their small, thick bodies was fine and downy, their faces didn’t bear the same monstrous, boar-like qualities of the adults. In fact, they resembled nothing more terrifying than piglets. They waddled when they walked, and the teeth in their gaping mouths were white and sharp but also small and straight. Their growls were puppy-like attempts to impersonate their elders.

  Livius was at first surprised, and then scornful. “Kill them!” he cried.

  He and his remaining trooper fell mercilessly upon on the ogre-children, hacking and stabbing in a wild frenzy. The growls became shrieks and squeals. Blood laced the air as the shredding blades rose and fell, but one of the creatures was still able to rake its hand across the legionary’s face, the immature but curved claws gouging both the man’s eyes and instantly blinding him.

  The soldier fell back screaming, fingers clamped over his wounds. Speechless with shock and rage, Livius kicked the man in the chest as punishment for his carelessness, knocking him heavily to the ground, and then turned on the dying creatures, slashing and ripping at them until they were unrecognisable as anything that had once lived.

  When he’d finally finished, the optio turned and looked at the clutch of farm-workers. He was breathing hard, his face dripping red. They returned his gaze, dumb-founded.

  “So die … all who defy Rome,” he stammered.

  If the Britons were impressed, they didn’t show it.

  Suddenly, there was a deafening roar from somewhere close at hand. The men tensed as the precariousness of their position struck them. As one, they glanced down at the butchered child-things … then sprang into life, scrambling away through the ferns. Livius sheathed
his sword and would again have led the escape, had he not needed to hang back and assist the blinded legionary. The man could only blubber thanks and stumble along as the optio led him uphill through undergrowth and boulders. Blood and brown humour streamed from his ruptured eyeballs. It was a pathetic, maddening sight, and it didn’t take Livius long to realise that a man as badly injured as this would be much more of a hindrance than a help.

  The officer stopped where he was, bringing the casualty to a halt as well. He glanced after the three Britons. They were far ahead, already disappearing into the fog.

  “Is … is everything alright, sir?” the legionary wondered in a weak voice.

  “Quite alight,” said Livius.

  But when he drew his sword, the rasp of steel put the blinded man on the alert. “Sir?”

  “Forgive me, trooper.”

  Livius then plunged the blade into the legionary’s throat, twisting it round and forcing it downwards past the collar-bone towards the heart. The soldier died swiftly, with a soft but sickening gurgle.

  Hastily, the optio retrieved his blade, and then threw the body into the vegetation. Several moments later, he had scrambled up the slope and rejoined the Britons, all now atop the ridge but cowering in the foliage of brambles and honeysuckle. Below them, the great miscreated brute that was the male ogre walked slowly through the mist, dragging three limp corpses behind it. It gave another loud cry, this one a call rather than a roar.

  “It’s searching for its mate,” Livius said quietly. “Good … let it search. By the time it finds her, we’ll be on the raft and away from here.”

  He turned to look at the farmers’ sweating, dirty faces. He didn’t know whether they fully understood what he was saying, but they nodded as if to acknowledge that he was still in command. That too was fortunate, Livius decided. These three men, worthless peasants though they were, had been witness to his cowardice when the beasts had first attacked. He made a mental note to ensure that, before this ordeal was over, they would all be put in positions of extreme peril. He didn’t want anyone likely to tell tales getting back.

  They waited where they were for several moments longer, until the figure of the ogre had vanished from sight, and then they scrambled down toward the waterline. The first raft still floated there beside the bobbing wreckage of the second.

  “Quickly!” Livius hissed, sheathing his sword and drawing his vine cane. “Everyone take a pole now!”

  The Britons needed no second telling. Within moments, they were all aboard and shoving the craft into deeper water. Nervously, the optio scanned the shoreline. The emerald green of its sedge had drained away almost completely in the leeching grey mist. Already the island was losing shape and form, its rocks, trees and bushes slowly melting into the fret. This, truly, was another world they had blundered into. Even the air smelled wrong … it was thick and warm, sweet with water-mint. And of course the creatures which lived here defied belief by any standard. Would his superiors give his report even a moment’s notice when he finally made it?

  He shook all doubt from his mind. There was only one thing he needed to concentrate on, and that was getting himself to safety. When one of the farmers approached, grunting that no-one knew which direction they were supposed to go, Livius simply lashed him with the cane. He didn’t know either. The only thing they needed to do was pole. All things had to end eventually, even the cursed swamp …

  What seemed like an interminable amount of time elapsed before they spotted another land-mass. Livius instructed them to pole alongside it rather than make for its shore. The farmers obeyed, knowing that miles and miles of broad had yet to be covered before they could safely leave the raft. All the same, they scanned the island closely and soon heard a commotion of gasps and coughs. They spotted a clutch of mud-caked figures floundering through the reed-beds on the point of complete exhaustion, backs bent, heads hung low, repeatedly tripping and falling as they staggered along.

  Livius recognised the white hair of Marcus Ursus and almost laughed. It always amused him to see dignified persons reduced to a most undignified state, particularly those whose opinions differed from his own. Rather perversely, he was tempted to leave the engineer there with his Briton friends, but Livius had also identified a soldier with the group, Drusus by the look of it … a man who could be useful. In any case, strength lay in numbers. The optio ordered the farmers to pole towards the island. Ursus’s party had already sighted the craft and shouted and gesticulated as they tottered out onto a headland.

  “Th … thank the gods,” the engineer stuttered as Livius helped him aboard. “Thank the gods!”

  “Where are the rest?” the optio demanded.

  “Lost sir,” the tesserari replied, “killed.”

  “Damn it, Drusus! You’ll pay for this!”

  Drusus fixed him with a defiant stare. “By the looks of it, you’ve taken heavy casualties yourself!”

  “Enough damn insolence! We faced three of the hellish things!”

  “Three?” Ursus gasped, stunned that any of Livius’s group had survived at all.

  “Hurry up, the rest of you … get on board!” the officer shouted.

  The last man to climb on was Jusci, his chest heaving, his long red plaits streaked across his shoulders. Livius approached him. “You … which way to safety?”

  The Iceni wiped the sweat from his eyes and then looked around as if to get his bearings. He finally pointed: “Terra Mars. Straight. Beyond … left fork, then right, right again … across lagoon, Terra Venus.”

  The Roman nodded sourly. “That’s all I need to know.” And without further ado, he kicked the Briton solidly between the legs, and as he doubled over, shoved him firmly by the shoulders, toppling him backward off the raft.

  The tribesman hit the water like a sack of stones, going straight under. When he re-emerged, coughing and spluttering, the raft was already gliding away from him. Desperately, he tried to follow, calling for them to stop. Livius watched him coldly, drawing his gladius as if daring the Iceni to try to reboard. On seeing this, Jusci gave up and splashed his way back toward the now remote shore.

  Livius turned. Ursus, Drusus and the four remaining Britons watched him from where they knelt or lay, faces written with disgust.

  “You madman!” the engineer said quietly. “When we return, I shall report you to the legatus!”

  Livius snorted. “Return? You think any of us will return if we don’t start poling? All of you … on your feet! Get a paddle, an oar … anything! Work!” He drew his cane and began to flog them with it. “Work … damn you!” Froth flecked his lips. There was a note of hysteria in his voice, a light of madness in his eyes.

  They complied, but only sluggishly, flinching away from the cane but too weary to respond urgently. Livius was about to shriek at them again when a despairing howl broke out over the fog-bound fens. It came from somewhere far to their rear, but it was long and terrible and heart-rending, and it hung in the dank mist for moments on end, echoing and re-echoing in a ghastly, ghostly lament.

  The men were perplexed, but the optio only smiled.

  “By the sounds of it,” he said, “I’d suggest the father has just returned home.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ursus asked.

  Proudly, the optio told them of the vengeance he had taken: about the female brute, badly wounded, maybe fatally, and about her children …

  Ursus and Drusus glanced at each other in disbelief, the colour draining from their cheeks.

  “Now it will kill us all for certain,” said the tesserari. Swiftly, he turned, grabbed up a pole and began supervising the farmers. “Come … all of you!”

  Ursus stared at the optio through bleak, blood-shot eyes. “Blast you, Livius,” he said. “Blast you and damn you! We’d just begun to consider that it might have finished with us, that it might have felt the lesson was taught. But now it won’t be happy ’til every one of us is ground into frog spawn …you arrogant, mindless fool!”

  Enr
aged, the officer swiped his cane across the engineer’s face, drawing blood from his ear to his chin. “I’m in command here!” he screamed.

  “Get an oar … both of you!” Drusus bellowed. “There’ll be time for recriminations later.”

  Glaring at each other in frozen fury, the two men lifted poles and took positions by the gunwales.

  “I don’t know why you’re so hostile, old man!” Livius spat. “Haven’t you seen what they’ve done to my men … to your friends!”

  “Blood-stained gods!” Ursus retorted. “They’re animals! Don’t you understand, optio! Creatures of brawn and instinct!”

  “They attacked us like barbarians.”

  “They were defending their home.”

  Once again, froth appeared on Livius’s cracked lips. “They’re monsters … things, an abomination! They should be wiped out!”

  Ursus shook his head. “You wanted action, Livius? I’ll see you get it! When we return to Camulodunum, I’ll see you get transferred to a penal company. You’ll spend the rest of your service in the front line of every battle Rome fights!”

  Livius snatched his cane again and made to attack, but Drusus forcibly separated them, the raft tilting as they blundered back and forth.

  “If you two imbeciles don’t start poling, none of us will make it!” he roared. “To your oars … and pray Jupiter we’ve got the strength!”

  A blood-curdling roar – bass with fury – and the sounds of splashing emerged from the fret. Its source was as yet invisible, but it sounded much closer than the howl of pain they had heard. The men took their poles and paddles and began a frantic stroke, forcing their craft onward, hardly daring to glance behind.

  An agonising interval passed, sweat pouring, the muscles in their arms and shoulders throbbing, threatening to seize up. They followed Jusci’s vague directions as best they could, often correcting and contradicting each other, shouting one another down. Every so often, a roar burst from the fog behind, always closer. The men strove with increasingly desperate efforts, their lungs working like bellows, their mouths bone-dry and gasping.