The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death

by Brendan Carroll

  “Take my hand!” Ramsay shouted to her as she dangled between the staff and side of the pit.

  She looked up at him in shocked horror before letting go of the staff long enough to grab his hand. The ground lurched against them as one of the worms started climbing the terraced steps cut into the pit directly below them with one of the cut blocks balanced on its long pinchers. The ground shook continuously as the creatures flipped the blocks back and forth, polishing the surfaces. Von Hetz and Ramsay clung to the slippery rock face while Valentino hung suspended against the wall just below them. The thin veneer of topsoil, loose sandy pebbles and sprigs of grass fell into her face, making it difficult for her to see them and vice versa. Another of the cutting creatures in the pit rose up and began to spray a line of the acidic liquid along the face of the wall below them, cutting the bottom surfaces of what would be a new row of blocks. The two Knights fought to drag the woman up and out of the way, but they couldn’t get enough traction against the slippery, smooth surface of the stone on which they lay without tumbling in after her. Valentino screamed as the acid crossed her back just below her waist and then her grip went limp in their hands. They both tried to hang onto her, but saw there was no hope as the lower half of her body was neatly severed from the top half.

  Ramsay heard his own voice join with the last of her dying screams as she slipped from his hand. It was the fourth time in as many days he had made such a noise. He thought his heart would stop in horror and God would strike him dead on the spot. He rolled over onto his back and gazed up at the murky sky above his head. It was too much. Unbearable. Blackness threatened to close in around him.

  Von Hetz climbed to his feet slowly and then helped d’Brouchart recover the baculus from the brink of the precipice. The Master inspected the globe of the baculus for damage and clutched the staff to his chest protectively. They started away toward the side of the hill again and the path leading back to the house. Von Hetz shouted over his shoulder to the Knight of Death to get up and move before one of the beasts made a building stone of him. He lay frozen on the hard rock, staring up at the cloudless sky. The ground continued to shake and roll as the mindless creatures went about their work oblivious to the human drama playing out in their midst.

  Mark Andrew covered his face with his hands in despair and squeezed his eyes shut against the vision of Cecile’s face. This nightmare receded instantly as the breath was knocked from his lungs when something heavy landed on his chest. He opened his eyes wide, gasping for air and looked into the face of Thomas Beaujold. The man just wouldn’t quit. Mark slid his right arm out sideways, attempting to grab his sword, but it was a few inches out of reach, lying next to Beaujold’s silver sword where he had laid them in his haste to assist von Hetz.

  The wild-eyed Knight wrapped his hands around Mark Andrew’s neck, choking him ruthlessly, simultaneously banging the back of his head against the rock.

  Stars danced in front of his eyes where Valentino’s face had been only seconds before and blackness of a more physical nature closed in on him. He made a grab for the man’s ears and saw one of the huge creatures rearing up behind him. With every bit of strength he had, he pulled on Beaujold’s head rolling them both over and over on the stone as the crazed Knight of the Sword refused to let go of his throat. A hissing line of steam arose very close to them as the worm went about constructing its portion of the grid. Mark could feel the heat from the chemical reaction all along his right side. He let go of Beaujold’s head and punched him on his left side where he knew he had inflicted the severe wound during their last encounter.

  Beaujold loosened his grip and cried out in pain, grabbing his side with both hands. Mark Andrew hit him again under his chin and knocked him off balance onto his back directly onto the steaming line of hot rock. The Knight of the Sword shrieked anew and scrambled up from the rock while Mark rolled away from him in the opposite direction, coming up with both swords. The man stood facing him unarmed, still unwilling to yield.

  The worm reared itself above them again, making ready to spray them both with the searing liquid. Ramsay slashed out at its bulging underside with Beaujold’s sword. The thing let go a high-pitched trill and collapsed like a gossamer balloon made of spider web thin material.

  The wind caught the empty shell and draped it over the Knight of the Sword. The man fell screaming and kicking in agonized madness under the seemingly harmless looking material that resembled the collapsing canopy of a parachute. Ramsay stood staring at the incredible sight unable to comprehend the situation until another of the things raised up from the pit next to him, much too close for comfort. He turned and ran toward the rest of the shocked spectators who stood watching in morbid fascination as the mythical Insects of Sherma dismantled the bedrock, methodically cutting and polishing the enormous slabs of stone, making them ready for the long dead architect and builders of King Solomon’s Temple.

  “What now, Master?!” Simon shouted above the noise.

  “I must send them back where they came from!” D’Brouchart answered him and then held out the baculus toward the monstrous insects. He began another incantation while Ramsay left them quietly and went to find Christopher and Merry.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Sir Ramsay caught up with Christopher Stewart just as he was nearing the entrance to the old bomb shelter. The ground was still shaking and trembling from the tremendous works going on atop the hill. Water alternately gushed and trickled from the opening which was now clogged with tumbled down boulders and debris.

  Merry clung to the apprentice desperately and the young man did his best to comfort her. He could hear Christopher using the same soothing voice that he most often employed whenever he was speaking to his pair of deerhound pups back in Scotland. Mark Andrew took hold of her arm and turned her around abruptly, eliciting a short shriek before she recognized him. He looked into her eyes and saw there a mixture of conflicting emotions. She blinked up at him, frowning in bewildered confusion; her deceptively innocent beauty seemed permanently marred by an expression of total fear and incomprehension. He kissed her lightly on the lips, hugged her briefly and then released her before repeating the same actions with his apprentice.

  It was the embrace of a brother for a sister and he realized that his feelings for her had changed radically in a very few short minutes. He still loved her, but his duty to the Order had crashed in on him and brought him to his senses. No matter the nature or depth of his feelings for her, there was no hope and he had buried them in the deepest pit of his mind. It was the only way he could cope with the present intolerable situation.

  “Take her down to the house,” he told the young man. “Stay with her until I come for you. Don’t let her return here.”

  Merry caught his arm. “No!” was the only word she could manage as fresh tears sprang to her eyes. He knew that she was saying no to more than his return to the top of the hill and he could do nothing for her. Nothing for himself. Mark Andrew could not look at her again or he would have taken her and run.

  Christopher dutifully took hold of her arm and pulled her along with him beginning his litany of reassuring phrases, sounding much like a priest or a father speaking to a child. She stumbled after him, trying to look back as Mark Andrew retreated up the trail.

  He had to go. There was no other way. Mark did not dare even the shortest glance back.

  When he reached the summit of the trail, the sight of the devastation appalled him and renewed his own fear of the magick his Master had wrought here in the bright summer sun. Huge gleaming blocks of limestone lay neatly arranged in rows of threes across the flat top of the hill beside a gaping pit from which wisps of steam drifted. The terrible insects were no longer working the quarry. The only evidence of their existence was the flapping, blood-smeared silk that looked like a downed battle flag, lying directly in front of him. It was the remains of the creature that he had slashed with Beaujold’s sword. There had been nothing in the thing, but air… no blood. The bl
ood looked too red, too real in the brilliant sunshine. This was the place where he had left the downed Knight of the Sword. The bright red streaks on the white limestone reminded him of the Templar Cross and white mantel. The Templar Cross on the white shield. The Templar Cross on the white disc on his sword. Blood, the color of life and white, the color of divinity. There was nothing but death and destruction on the hill top and the sight chilled him to the bone causing a deep shudder to pass through his soul.

  This was the blood of the Chevalier d’Epee and with a sinking feeling in his stomach he knew that the Knight was beyond help this time. Even so, someone would have to finish the job, though he was not sure that it should be him. It was now up to the Grand Master to decide what would be done.

  Sir Edgard d’Brouchart stood with his four remaining Knights surveying the scene in wonder and awe. The Grand Master turned to look at Ramsay as he approached them slowly and the others followed suit. Mark stepped over the lifeless body of the security agent; his eyes were locked on the big, red-haired man holding the staff of twisted ivory. He knelt on one knee in front of the man, laid his golden sword on the ground between them and bowed his head, exposing his neck for them to do as they would.

  He closed his eyes and waited. Rough hands closed on his shoulders and he was pulled to his feet. He opened his eyes and saw the face of the Grand Master very close in front of him. The watery blue eyes searched his face briefly and then he received the kiss of greeting.

  “Brother Ramsay,” d’Brouchart said simply. “The Chevalier d’Epee has fallen. Attend to his needs.”

  Mark Andrew retrieved his sword from the ground and walked purposefully to where the gossamer strips of the destroyed insect waved lazily in the light summer breeze. Only the Knight’s knees and lower legs were exposed as he lay wrapped in the bulk of the remains. Sir Ramsay used the Knight’s silver sword to cut away the light fluff around the man’s upper body. It floated away on the breeze, disappearing like wisps of steam or ghosts of tormented spirits, fleeing in the heat of the noonday sun. He had to close his eyes as he steeled himself mentally against the sight of the Knight’s face and fought down the waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. He crossed himself and knelt beside the inert body.

  Sir Thomas Beaujold was no longer recognizable as the man he had been for so many years. There was no skin and very little flesh left on his upper body. His blue eyes were exposed in hollowed sockets and his teeth grinned up in a skeletal caricature of his former self. Bare white bone made up his forehead and scalp and his ears were missing along with his nose. His arms and chest and everything else that had been touched by the skin of the worm were bloody masses of muscles, tendons, exposed ribs and breastbone. The man’s breath rattled in his chest and even his lungs could be glimpsed expanding and contracting through open slits between his ribs. He still breathed, but how could it be so? Why did it have to be he who looked upon his Brother’s dying moments?

  Ramsay caught his breath sharply as the light blue eyes moved in their sockets. Not only alive, but conscious!

  “No!” he said aloud and brought one hand up to cover his mouth.

  “God is merciful! God is merciful!” he said the words that he no longer believed and almost bolted when a bloody, bony hand suddenly took hold of his collar, pulling him down over the grotesque face. Sir Thomas was trying to speak to him. He leaned closer and held his ear very close the lipless mouth.

  Three raspy words rattled in the man’s throat and escaped through his teeth.

  “Shrive me, Brother.”

  The hand dropped away. Ramsay scrambled away from him and stood on his knees beside him with his forehead pressed against the hilt of the Flaming Sword of the Cherubim, breathing hard, trying to master control of his emotions. He had seen nothing like this in ages. The Knight of Death inhaled deeply and then leaned over his downed Brother.

  He tapped him lightly on the shoulder and nodded before saying “Your sins are absolved, Brother. Go in peace.”

  “Forgive?” one last word rattled from the Knight’s throat along with his final breath. Mark Andrew knew he would have only twelve minutes to complete the ceremony before…

  He raised his eyes to the bright, blue sky and then held the sword in both hands, point up.

  “I am he that liveth and was dead and behold, I am alive forever more in God, the Creator of the Universe. I hold the key of Death. I have seen the work of thy labors and have been witness to the devotion of thy trust, O Brother. By this act I commend thy soul to the Creator of the Universe and set thee free of this broken body. Until we shall meet again in Paradise, I bid thee farewell. Dominus vobiscum. Pax vobiscum.”

  He bent over the Knight of the Sword and kissed the bare teeth before making the sign of the cross on the bare bone forehead. His Brother’s blood was all over him and the cross stood out in stark relief against the ghastly background, a reminder in blood and bone of the Order he served. He had seen many things, but this qualified as one of the worst so far. He placed his hand on the cold surface over the red cross and paused as the knowledge of the Secret of the Knight of the Sword was transferred from the dying man’s mind into his own. In the heat of the battlefield, this would be one of his most vulnerable moments, when he could do nothing but sink into several moments of complete oblivion to the world around him.

  The weight of the Chevalier d’Epee’s mystery bore down on him as if one of the limestone blocks were crushing him temporarily and then subsided as the knowledge made a space in his head. He released his hold and got wearily to his feet. When he raised the gleaming sword above his head, the sun flashed off the blade as he brought it down in one resounding blow, slicing cleanly through the man’s neck and well into the rocky ground beneath him. The sword’s song of death wafted eerily across the space between the Knight of Death and the tiny band of mourners, waiting near the trail’s head.

  Ramsay turned away, took two steps and sank to the ground. He looked up at the clear sky and spoke directly to God “Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness. Forgive me, O Lord, for I am lost.”

  Brother Simon and Brother von Hetz were beside him suddenly, helping him up and literally dragging him away from the scene. He remembered nothing more until he opened his eyes again sometime later. The blue sky was above his head and he lay on the flat boulder near the mouth of the collapsed tunnel leading down into the ruined hillside. Pushing himself up tiredly, he found his sword lying next to him. He was alone. They had left him. A good sign at least that he would be welcomed back into the fold, though his penance might be heavy, it would be bearable and then he would go home to Scotland. To his home.

  He picked up his sword and walked determinedly down the trail leading back to the red brick mansion set amidst the dark green trees in the shallow valley between the limestone hills. The sky seemed bluer here and the leaves of the trees greener. The roses in the garden were pinker and the gazebo whiter. Everything in this place stood out, sharply defined, acutely burned into his mind. He longed for the soft colors of the meadows, the cloud-smeared skies and the deep shadows of the ancient and holy places where the oaks spread immense limbs overhead and he could lie on the fragrant grass and listen to the songs of the faeries next to some aged standing stone covered with ancient moss.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Merry sat in the wicker peacock chair in the library, staring out the window with a blank look on her face. Her crystal blue eyes moved, but they did not see, as they scanned the garden paths under the trees for something… anything. Christopher Stewart stood near the window watching the same garden paths below the patio. His face lit up when he saw Mark Andrew making his way quickly down the path toward the house. The apprentice threw open the glass doors and stepped outside. His Master glanced at him briefly, nodded curtly and then disappeared into the house. Christopher heaved a long sigh of relief that his Master had been spared. He stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a little tune as he clumped down the steps i
nto the garden. He paused under one of old weeping willows and glanced back the house as if unsure whether to stay or go up the hill again. The sounds of shouts drifted down from the new made quarry as the others struggled to clean up the mess. Christopher turned and jogged up the path toward the sounds of the voices. His Master would have to deal with Miss Merry alone and he would be in enough trouble without at least attempting to make amends to the others by volunteering his assistance. Christopher could offer his Master no comfort, nor could he help him avoid this unpleasant business with the woman or the even more unpleasant business yet to come.

  Inside the library, Mark Andrew knelt in front of the Pixie one last time and took one of her hands in his. The blank expression had been replaced by one much harder to bear. Her eyes were full of profound sadness.

  “Merry… Meredith,” he said her name and realized inanely that he didn’t even know her last name. Valentino’s disembodied voice rang in his ears. How so very typical!

  “Merry,” he began again. “I have come to say farewell.”

  “I know,” she nodded and placed one hand on his cheek before touching the silver earrings entwined in the dark strand of hair above his right ear. There were no tears, no protests. “I love you, Mark Andrew.”

  He smiled at her, slipped the little silver ring from his pinky finger and dropped in her hand before pressing her fingers to his lips.