They are not to be slaughtered, Edward.
I kick him backward and he falls against two of his afflicted brethren. All three crash into the water, at the feet of the plaguers behind them.
“Tristan, Morgan, keep them at bay for a moment.” I back away. My hands shake so much that it takes three tries to hang the lantern on a flint stub in the wall. I shove my hand cannon at Morgan.
“Keep them at bay?” Morgan holds the gun crosswise and shoves at the plaguers as they advance again. But there are scores and scores of the afflicted. We will be overrun. Knocked down or pushed back to the entrance, pinned against the gate. We will be crushed, our armor ripped away, our flesh torn from us in strips. I try to calm my breathing.
Someone screams behind us. It is Tarviccio. Again.
“Someone shut that Italian’s bloody—”
The words die on my lips. An arrow juts from the crossbowman’s shoulder blade.
“Death from the front, death from behind!” Gerald shouts. “When I am an old man, I will sit in the sun and smile at the memory of this moment!”
“Tell me that story again, Edward,” Tristan says, grunting. “You had . . . a cannon pointed at him . . .”
The Italians, all save Tarviccio, turn toward the gate and fire, shouting as one: “Death to de harless carrot farmars!”
The Genoese know their work.
Their sudden attack is so swift that only Gerald and the archer next to him sees it coming. The two men leap to the side, and the eight crossbow quarrels rip into the soldiers behind them. The shrieks of Gerald’s men echo in the tunnel.
“Die, Edward!” Gerald’s voice is pitched high and warbling with madness. “Die, miserable wretch!”
“Keep holding the plaguers at bay!” I fumble through my shoulder sack.
Morgan groans against the weight of the advancing horde, skids backward a foot. A woman clamps her teeth around his gauntlet and he uses his knee to break her jaw. “How can we hold a hundred plaguers at bay?”
“One hundred and thirty-two!” Gerald is beyond madness. He is in a state of rhapsodic fury. His cackling fills the tunnel.
“When we get out of here,” Tristan says, “I’m going to tie him up and laugh at him for hours. I won’t hurt him. Not at first. I’ll just laugh.”
“If we get out of here.” Morgan aims his cross at a woman in a filthy dress and she recoils from it. Tristan uses his hand bombard to shove at a plagued soldier whose livery is so muddy I cannot make out the sigil.
“We will get out of here,” I shout, still fumbling in my shoulder sack.
“How?” Morgan screams. “How?”
“We’re going to walk forward, into that horde, and the plaguers will protect us from Gerald’s arrows.” I cannot find what I am looking for. Did I lose it? Have I condemned us all?
Tristan and Morgan look back at me, then at each other.
In these times of madness . . .
“And what,” Tristan replies, “will protect us from Gerald’s archers?”
I find a ceramic jar in the shoulder sack and draw it out. “This.”
. . . only magic will save us.
The Italians work their windlasses, but archers are much faster than crossbowmen. Another arrow slashes into the tunnel. Another Italian cries out.
Tristan and Morgan are shoved back again, and I am forced to retreat. We are less than fifteen paces from Gerald.
“I hope you have a dozen knights in that jar,” Tristan shouts.
“Better than that.” I throw off my gauntlet and strip the wax seal from the jar, glance at the pink ointment inside. “The old magic.”
“What?” Tristan and Morgan say it together, one with hope, the other revulsion. Both of them stumble back as the plaguers press forward.
“Shoot again!” I have never heard Gerald shout so loudly. His cries are deafening in the echoing tunnel. “Keep shooting!”
I glimpse more archers outside. Moonlight paints the curve of at least three bows bending back. One of the archers makes a choking sound and falls backward. Tarviccio screams again, this time with fury. He lets his crossbow drop to the waters and slumps sideways against the wall.
“Edward!” Tristan bellows. “We can’t hold them back!”
I reach two trembling fingers toward the open jar, but Morgan and Tristan stumble into me and I nearly drop it.
Another Italian shrieks as an arrow finds flesh.
“There are too many!” Morgan calls. “We need more light!”
“I hate this tunnel!” Tristan howls.
I scoop two fingers of paste from the ceramic jar.
“This was worth waiting for!” Gerald screams. “The Lord says good things come to those who wait, and this is surely the greatest thing I have ever witnessed! Are you dying yet, Edward? Are you dying?”
The plaguers push against the two hand cannons. Tristan stumbles on a rotting body and falls back on his arse. Plaguers reach for him. He jabs with his sword but one of them, a man with a filthy beard, falls onto him, grabs the bottom edge of his helmet. The plaguer’s beard is so grimy it looks like pudding. I reach forward with my bare fingers, thrust the pink paste at him.
And he recoils, tumbles backward and kicks away from me, into the other plaguers. I thrust the paste closer and he shrieks, lunges again and again against the legs of those behind him. There is a madness of colliding plaguers. Bodies fall. I pull Tristan to his feet. Rub the paste along the flat of his sword blade.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Enchanting your sword,” I reply.
He jabs his blade forward and the plaguers back away from it in a ripple.
“It’s a miracle,” Morgan whispers.
“It’s magic,” Tristan says, grinning. He advances, waving the sword. The afflicted in the first few ranks try to back away farther but there are too many behind them. They are shoved toward Tristan and Morgan, howling and hissing at the sword and cross.
Frederico howls at me. “Ci stanno uccidendo!”
Morgan glances at his cross, then at Tristan’s sword. I know what he is thinking. The same thoughts came to me in Rougham, when Alison-with-one-L helped me prepare the paste of fish oil, flour, and some red lichen from the stone circle outside her home.
Morgan thrusts the cross forward. The plaguers thrash and tremble and hurl themselves backward against the wall of their afflicted brothers and sisters.
I reach into the jar and draw out another dollop. One of the plaguers stumbles forward, shoved by someone behind, and knocks into Tristan. He knocks into me and the glob of ointment flies from my finger onto the wall. I growl. There is not enough of the cream for it to be wasted.
I scoop out more of the balm and smear it onto Tristan’s great helm.
“We’re going to push into them,” I shout. “One at a time. Go, Tristan!”
Tristan looks in my direction and manages to express shock and incredulity with a tilt of his helmet.
“Go!” I roar.
He stares at the afflicted mass for a moment, then lunges into them. The plaguers roar and fall to the sides of the tunnel. He takes another step into the crowd.
I smear the paste onto Morgan’s helm and clap his shoulder. He shoves at the plaguers with the staff of my cannon again and they recoil from him.
The crossbowmen unleash another volley at Sir Gerald’s men. One of the Italians lies in the water, face down. Arrows jut from several others.
“Frederico!”
He glances at me, his hands fumbling with his windlass.
I do not have time to explain. I smear the ointment on his face. He slaps at my hands. “Che cazzo stai facendo?”
I point a shaking finger toward Tristan, then realize that I cannot see him anymore. He is lost in the crowd of plaguers. Only Morgan remains, shoving at the plaguers with the cannon.“You have to go in there!”
Frederico shrugs violently and attaches the windlass to his crossbow.
“We have to run,” I shout. “Throug
h there.”
He shrugs again and steps into the stirrup of his weapon.
I push him and point deeper into the tunnel. He looks at the plaguers, then at me. I smear paste onto my vambraces and step beside Morgan, thrust my arms forward at the afflicted. They howl and fall away from me.
Frederico touches his face, looks at his fingers. I nod.
“Flee!” I point into the plaguers. “Flee for your lives!”
Frederico looks back at his men and shouts to them in Italian. Two of them finish loading, fire a volley toward the gate, and fall back to Frederico. I dredge their names from my memory. Domenico and Ermolao. One devout, the other slow-witted.
I smear their faces with the ointment. There is not much left of the paste.
Frederico shouts at his men in Italian, pointing past Morgan toward the plaguers.
Ermolao shakes his head. Domenico crosses himself. The Genoese are a disciplined lot, but I do not think there is a soldier on this earth who will run into a crowd of plaguers without hesitating.
Frederico shouts again and lunges at the plaguers. They hiss and thrash, backing away from him. “Ora, andare!”
The two men exchange glances, then walk gingerly forward. Frederico and I exchange glances, too, and shove the men into the crowd. Ermalao shrieks, but the plaguers leap back from him. The two Italians push their way through the crowd as the next two crossbowmen fall back to Frederico. Tarviccio’s face shines with sweat and he grimaces, but I do not think the arrow in his shoulder will kill him. Joseph, the marksman, is at his side. I apply the paste to both of them and we shove them into the horde. I pray I am not sending them to their deaths.
Sparks light the tunnel for an instant as an arrow strikes the wall beside me. The tunnel curves here and the archers have trouble finding a clear shot.
“What are they doing?” Gerald shouts. “What is happening in there? Where are they going?” His voice cracks with fury.
Magnus stumbles back to us, the massive siege crossbow hanging from his shoulder. An arrow juts from one side of his chest, another from his thigh, but he drags a crossbowman through the waterlogged tunnel. I smear ointment on his thick, bare arms. The man he drags is Riggio, drinker and jokester. I do not think Riggio finds anything funny about the arrow in his flank. I scrape the last of the ointment from the sides of the jar and rub the paste onto Riggio’s face. Frederico makes the plaguers recoil again, demonstrating the old magic, and speaks in Italian. Magnus kisses a cross dangling from his neck and drags his friend into the plaguer horde.
Morgan glances back at me and I nod. He tucks the cannon to his chest and drives into the throng, after Magnus.
I drop the empty jar and look back toward the gate. An arrow strikes the wall and shatters, sending fragments of wood clattering against my helm.
Three archers at the gate draw back their cords. I have no time to unsling my shield. Frederico and I dive to the floor. I try to flatten myself as much as I can. The water gushes through my visor and washes, cold, upon my face.
I rise a moment later, when I am sure the archers have fired, and scrabble toward the plaguers. Frederico does the same. Something thuds against the shield on my back. Another bloody arrow. I am glad I did not have time to unsling my shield.
We dive into the mass of plaguers. They are Heaven’s soldiers, and they will protect us, for we are the champions of the dead. They are God’s armor, and they will shield us from Gerald’s arrows.
I shove my way deeper into the afflicted. A man wearing a hood tugs at my helmet.
“Let go!” I shout.
A woman with one long, dangling earring grabs my breastplate at the armhole and yanks.
“Leave me be!”
Teeth scrape against my helm.
I raise my vambraces toward them. “Fear the old magic!”
A gangly woman breaks teeth on my mail skirt. A bald man snaps at my bare hand and I pull it away at the last instant.
I look at my arms. There is no trace of ointment on them, only beaded water.
Frederico screams.
God’s armor is eating us.
EPISODE 8
Chapter 46
I tear myself from the grasping plaguers, spin, and fall onto my hands and knees. My palms slide against the sludge of mud and rotting bodies covering the tunnel floor. The afflicted crush against me. Legs and hands and gnashing teeth. I crawl past them, drag myself through a river of death, rip myself free of their clutching hands. Teeth click against the steel of my armor. Bodies fall onto me and slide off the shield on my back.
A plaguer grabs my foot. I kick with my other leg, lashing with the iron spur, and feel flesh yield beneath it. The plaguer howls and releases me. I pull myself forward.
Where is it?
“There!” Gerald shouts. “There he is! Shoot him! Put a shaft in his skull!”
Where is it!
The lantern still hangs from the flint stub, and a patch of pink shines on the wall. Brighter than any stone. I lunge for it. A plaguer grabs my great helm, pulls me back. I slam my elbow into his chin and he lets go. More hands pull at me as I stretch forward. More teeth searching for weaknesses in my armor. My fingers touch the wall, scrape the glob of paste from the stones. I reach back with the ointment and the plaguers pull away from me, then fall forward as the rear ranks shove them. I smear the paste onto the bridge of my helm.
Frederico howls and tears free from the crowd. He falls, with a splash, at my side. Points to his face, where I had smeared the ointment. “Questa merda non funziona!”
An arrow drives into a rotting body a foot from my face and an archer outside shouts that there is not enough light to see us.
“Just keep firing!” Gerald shouts behind us. “Don’t stop!”
“How did you not get bitten?” I say, rubbing my fingers over Frederico’s face again, dabbing the last remnants of the old magic onto his skin. He squints at me and I wave him off. “It doesn’t matter.”
An arrow slashes into a plagued woman. She screams, the horrible plaguer scream, and tries to back away from us, but she cannot push past the plaguers behind her. Another arrow plunges into her stomach. And then another strikes my shield.
“Edward!” Tristan shouts from somewhere beyond the plaguers. “Edward, we can’t see!”
I whirl around in the water and an arrow thumps into the shield on my back. I groan and grab the lantern from the wall, crawl forward. An arrow splashes into the water beside me. Another glances off my helm. I stumble to my feet and push forward, feeling God’s armor part and nestle around me.
“Where are they going?” Gerald shouts. “They’re killing themselves! Are they mad?”
The plaguers nearest to me back away, hissing. Other plaguers shove past them, then they, too, hiss and back away. They are like eddying waters, roiling about me in impotent rage. Frederico lumbers behind me. We thrust our way through the afflicted, squeezing past endless rows of bodies, nestled so tightly against the plaguers that I can smell their foul breath. They howl and flinch from me when the heated metal of the lantern touches them.
The tunnel opens wider after a dozen paces. Tristan, Morgan and the crossbowmen are huddled at the center of a small chamber. Their eyes are wide, their hands clutching weapons tightly. Tristan lets out a deep sigh, nods to me. He glances at the back wall, now illuminated by the lantern. “There!” he cries. “There’s the ladder.”
I stride toward the steel rungs but Tristan beats me to them. “You can go last this time,” he says.
“You have nothing to worry about,” I reply. “The plaguers won’t climb after us this time.”
“I’m always last,” he says, clambering up the ladder. “And there are always plaguers climbing behind, reaching for me. Not this time, Edward. Not this time.”
He reaches the trap door, shoves at it tentatively and it yields, rising a few inches. He glances down at me, then shoves the trapdoor firmly. It opens.
A multitude of plaguer faces look down and hiss, their arm
s grasping at Tristan’s helmet.
“God hates me!” he cries, lashing out at the plaguer arms with one hand. “How are there plaguers in the monastery?”
I barely hear his words.
The trap door was unlocked.
Gerald entered the monastery.
Tristan throws his helmet off and pulls the plaguers down one by one, yanking on their arms until they plummet to the chamber floor. He screams in terror the entire time.
I wince each time one of the afflicted strikes the mud, but there is no other way. Most of the plaguers rise from the mud and recoil from the ointment on our armor. The ones that cannot stand writhe and pull themselves along he mud, away from us.
“Hurry, Tristan!” I clench and unclench my fists the entire time. When the last of the plaguers is down, scramble up the ladder, my boots clanging dully off the iron rungs.
Tristan climbs into the prior’s chamber ahead of me. I hand him the lantern and climb the last steps into the monastery.
“Wait for the others!” I cross to the door and yank it open.
The moonlight cascades upon St. Edmund’s Abbey; a central church, taller than most cathedrals I have seen; a prior’s palace as opulent as any duke’s; breweries, gilded chapels, a refectory, stables, kitchens. It is a glittering city within a town. But it is not the fine architecture that draws my attention tonight. It is not the statues of saints and bishops, or the studded minarets rising into the night sky that make me stare. It is the half-dozen lurching shapes in the churchyard.
“How did they get in?” Tristan stands behind me and looks over my shoulder.
I do not respond. The trap door was open. Gerald got inside.
My heart hammers against my ribs, a condemned prisoner rattling the gates of his cell.
The trap door was open.
I run across the churchyard, ignoring the shouts behind me, around to the entrance of the great abbey church, where I left my Elizabeth. I dart through an archway, and throw open the mighty doors, remembering the horror that awaited me inside the first time I arrived.
Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) Page 27