Twelfth Krampus Night

by Matt Manochio

  He momentarily eased off her, freeing her arms, and smiled. “See? What did I say about urges? You came around quicker than I thought.”

  “You won’t like this urge.” She grabbed his erect penis and drove the needle sideways, making a bloody cross.

  Karl howled and sprang off the bed. Beate rose and realized her right leg was perfectly aligned. She booted his testicles and dropped him. Karl squealed as Beate yanked open the door and fled. She retraced her steps as best she could, aware that Karl’s anguish likely could be heard in France.

  She ran with enough speed to extinguish candles lighting the halls, and looked for a winding stairwell that led from the solar to the adjoining great hall. Spying it, she circled her way down the stairwell and burst into the great hall, where servants were lowering by chain the wooden chandelier to blow out its candles. Mumfred sat one table across from Heinrich, who drank deeply from a beer tankard. The castle steward tapped his foot, eager for the blacksmith to finish so he could be escorted to the former blacksmith’s apartment, not far from the seamstress’s small quarters.

  Beate spotted Heinrich, who smiled and raised his mug.

  “Lord Karl said we could have anything we wanted—you should try this.”

  She lowered his hand to set the mug on the table and spoke softly. “Get up, we must leave. Now.” She grabbed both of his wrists and pulled him to stand, at which point Mumfred rose.

  “Something the matter?” He circled from his table to the young couple.

  Heinrich’s beer intake hadn’t prevented him from noticing genuine fear in Beate’s eyes.

  She kissed his cheek and whispered, “We’re in danger. They will kill us.”

  He nodded and they made to leave the hall.

  “I find it strange that neither Karl nor Wilhelm escorted you back, young lady.” Mumfred obstructed their path. He looked at her hands clasping Heinrich’s and noticed red stains. “What have you done?”

  Wilhelm ran full speed into the hall and stumbled to stop. Out of breath, he pointed and glared at Beate.

  “I think not.” Mumfred’s gangly appearance belied his strength, and he seized Beate’s forearm. “Too bad your girl doesn’t know her place.”

  Wilhelm regained enough composure to join Mumfred and grabbed Beate’s shoulder from behind, only to be spooked by a deep roar of pain and hate that rattled the castle walls.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The guard, Kristoff, posted on the outer curtain wall walk lining the castle’s left side, concealed a crossbow under a heavy bear-fur cloak. He strode by torches placed within holders on every other battlement. He couldn’t see the woman from his perch halfway along the walk, but he’d heard her.

  He also heard faint sounds of clip-clops, the kind made by shoed horses striding along stone. He poked his head over a crenel and saw darkness below. Had there been daylight, he’d have seen a small stone perimeter lining the castle. Such little space made it difficult for invaders to scale the wall.

  Otto and Franco considered Kristoff a good, mindful guard who followed the correct hunches. And now he had a hunch something was wrong.

  The clip-clopping returned and he watched the blackness, imagining where the sounds had originated.

  Then he heard shuffling and faint clanks of a chain, followed by a soft thump. Kristoff grabbed the nearest torch from its iron holder and dropped it over the crenel. The little fireball whipped through the wind and hit the stone perimeter, but stayed alight, enough to illuminate what appeared to be a giant barrel propped against the castle wall.

  Kristoff stepped back to unveil the cocked crossbow from underneath his cloak. He again loomed over the side to see fading torchlight suddenly flicker as an immense dark shape swooped by it. The clip-clops grew in speed and intensity. It was running.

  Kristoff followed the sound, picking up his pace, not realizing he was running, tailing some unseen thing. Otto, from his position atop the wall walk spanning the gatehouse, saw Kristoff and abandoned his post to join him.

  Kristoff noticed a deep grunting sound, made simultaneously with the clip-clops ceasing. He overran the point where the noises changed, unable to slow his momentum.

  Two giant hands, their hairy brown fingers the size of sausages tipped with yellowed talons, latched on to a crenel ledge.

  It jumped. No man can leap that high, Kristoff thought, unable to process the sight of talons boring through stone to tighten the grip of the thing dangling below.

  He’d heard Otto speak of a hairy, cloven-hoofed, chain-wielding devil. Then the stories his parents had told him as a child came roaring back: how Saint Nicholas’s dark other half pursued young deviants from one end of Europe to the other; how he’d swipe and stow them in his barrel to devour them alive in his cave, or tie them in an enormous weighted sack and toss them in the Rhine. The monster, the Krampus, would beat them into repentance with his ruten, and if he felt benevolent enough, allow them to live—Saint Nicholas gave Krampus considerable leeway, according to Kristoff’s parents. No matter where the brats cowered, Krampus would find them.

  Strained grunting, and then two twisted horns crested the crenel edge, followed by beady black eyes reflecting hatred in the torchlight. The beast opened its mouth and disgorged a red forked tongue, flicking it in and out to scare the guards who now lingered in disbelief around Kristoff.

  One muscular tree trunk of an arm reached over the crenel to hasten the creature’s crawl over the wall.

  Kristoff’s ears hadn’t failed him all night—he’d been in enough battles to know the sound of a thrown knife splitting air, and the moment he saw a handle jutting from the thing’s triceps, he braced himself for the roar.

  The monster howled and lurched over the crenel.

  More flitting—and two successive sounds of splitting skin.

  Two throwing knives poked from its back, and for the first time Kristoff saw weakness and acted. He booted the monster in the face, sending it back over the ledge, but it still kept its grip and pulled itself up to glare at Kristoff, who fired a crossbow arrow into the monster’s forehead. More roars. Then Otto, holding a torch, stood next to Kristoff.

  “I’ll die before you breach this castle.” Otto jammed the torch into its face, sending aloft ember plumes. It released the crenel and roared the entire length of its fall.

  Otto leaned over the edge and didn’t see it, but heard a gloppy splashdown. He spit over the side. He stood and handed the dead torch to Kristoff, who remembered the sounds of chain links clinking, and seeing the barrel. He doubled back to the spot on the wall where he had earlier removed the torch to drop it over the side.

  The fire hadn’t died. Kristoff grabbed a second torch, aimed for the faint red spot, and released. The flames smacked down, and what Kristoff saw sickened him. He collapsed and sat against the wall. Otto ran to him and got on his knees.

  “What was it? What’d you see?”

  Kristoff, dazed, “The barrel’s gone. It’s alive.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Beate used the lingering roar to her advantage. She grabbed Heinrich’s tankard, whirled, and crushed it into Wilhelm’s face, knocking him over a table. Heinrich punched Mumfred in the diaphragm and then rammed his head onto a tabletop, leaving the steward in a dazed heap on the floor. Heinrich and Beate fled the great hall, frantic to find the inner courtyard.

  Realizing they had not passed anyone as they ran, they slowed to walk out of the building, as if nothing had happened.

  “We have to hide.” Beate casually pointed toward the gatehouse. “We’re trapped in here as long as the gate is down.”

  “Maybe not.” Heinrich grabbed Beate’s hand and they hastened their pace to the gatehouse, the interior of which was awash in candlelight. An oafish guard with a scraggly yellow beard wandered out.

  “State your business.”

  “Lord Karl is allowing us to st
ay in the seamstress’s and blacksmith’s quarters for the evening, and that is where we wish to go,” Heinrich said.

  “Pleased to meet you. This is our first time in the castle. It’s so…” Beate lingered for the word, “…majestic.” She smiled at the guard. “And to sleep in one.” She flirtatiously brushed her hand against his chain-mail-covered shoulder. “You are so lucky to do so every night!”

  The guard sheepishly grinned. “Well, I mean, I get to sleep on the floor. I’m not a knight—not yet. I still must prove my worth to the baron and—”

  “I am so sorry to interrupt, but Lords Karl and Wilhlem have provided us with so much excitement, I’m now woozy, and I really must lie down.” Beate swept the back of her hand against her forehead.

  Heinrich nervously glanced over his shoulder, looking at the great hall’s moonlit entrance, dreading Mumfred and Wilhelm would burst from it.

  “Well, all right. I remember seeing you two come in here with them. Enjoy your stay.” The guard poked his head through the gatehouse door. “Open it!”

  Beate and Heinrich bounced on the balls of their feet as the spiked door clanked open. “Thank you,” they said simultaneously and rushed under it—Heinrich nearly scraping the top of his head on a rusty spike.

  “She must really be tired,” they heard the guard mutter, and then made their way toward the seamstress’s quarters.

  “We’re not hiding in there,” Beate said. “That’s exactly where they’ll look.”

  “Along with the blacksmith’s,” Heinrich said.

  “Then where?”

  Beate and Heinrich approached a cluster of six small apartments—one-room dwellings wedged together—lining the curtain wall. Two rooms appeared occupied based on the wavering candlelight visible through shuttered windows.

  “Do we know any villagers who stay here who could hide us?” Beate said.

  “Let’s just knock and ask to come in.” Heinrich approached the crude wooden door resting against the entrance.

  “Anyone caught hiding us will be in as much trouble as we are,” Beate said. “We can’t endanger them.”

  She turned to Heinrich and her eyes widened. Heinrich pivoted, saw the danger and sprinted to save Beate, yanking her from the doorway where an arrow struck a second later.

  “Stop them!”

  They recognized Wilhelm’s voice and saw, next to the raised portcullis, a dark figure pull an arrow from the quiver behind his back. They assumed the tall figure standing next to him to be Mumfred, and a third person, leaning against the wall in obvious distress, to be Karl.

  Beate and Heinrich raced toward the stables built between the curtain walls on the castle’s left side. Arrows whistled by the couple and smacked the stone walls. Wilhelm ran alongside the gatehouse’s front wall to intercept them. They charged by a corner and were momentarily out of Wilhelm’s view. They knew he’d round the bend and see them taking shelter in the stables, which spanned the length between curtain walls, creating a barrier to the other side. It was their only option.

  The two-tiered building had twelve stables visible from the front. Heinrich knew the leftmost part of the building, featuring a closed wooden door, housed the marshal. Someone was always inside, especially if guests were staying in the rooms built on the structure’s second floor.

  “Can you jump?” Heinrich called to Beate.

  “I hope so!”

  “Follow me!” Heinrich didn’t slow as he approached the third closed stall from the right. He planted both hands on the five-foot-tall door, jumped and vaulted into the stall. Beate felt an extra kick of adrenaline and did likewise just as an arrow split through the stall door.

  The unoccupied stall’s rear opened up top so that a horse could loom over the rail. It was dark enough for the pair to hop that opening and stand in the aisle separating the twelve stalls visible from the front of the building from a dozen similar stalls opening behind the stables. A few horses poked their heads into the aisle, hoping for a carrot.

  From their darkened position, Beate and Heinrich saw Wilhelm charging toward the stables along with more men—guards, they reasoned, summoned to hunt them.

  “Do we cut through the stables and keep running?” Heinrich said.

  “Uli!” Beate gasped, excited to see Heinrich’s horse in the stall to the left of the one they had scaled. The horse eagerly dangled his head over the interior door so they could stroke him.

  “I forgot that they housed him here after we arrived.” Heinrich patted Uli from his forehead to nose.

  Beate looked around. “I have an idea.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What’s good for the wretched, shit-smelling goose is good for the gander!” Perchta hid in the forest’s shadows a distance away from the castle. She held a long knife at the ready as a foul monster—its barrel again strapped to its back—trudged toward her.

  “If you’d be so kind as to return my knives,” she said.

  “First things first.” The beast picked the crossbow arrow from its forehead as if it were no more than a splinter and snapped it in half with one hand and then turned its back to the hag. “Take them.”

  She lingered on her tiptoes to pluck the three throwing knives protruding from Krampus and then sheathed them in her boots.

  Both of them stunk of fetid water and shit. The hag ripped the mucky fur cloak from her body and flung it into the woods. “I cannot fathom the cleaning bill on that one!” Her dress clung to her body and made wet sucking sounds when she moved.

  “What about the rules?” Krampus said. “You went right for the castle’s entrance. That was out of bounds. I was perfectly justified knocking you in.”

  “Are you serious? Rules?” Perchta tucked the long blade into her belt and wiped away the gunk that constantly trickled into her eyes. “I said that so you’d go around the side and give me a clear shot at the front.”

  Krampus shook himself like a dog, sending Perchta for cover behind a tree. She reemerged once the splatters against the trunk stopped.

  He paid no attention to her and focused on the castle, torchlight zooming back and forth along the wall walks. “They will be expecting me to jump again.” Krampus turned to the hag. “Or are you expecting them to lower the drawbridge anytime soon?”

  She eyed him, tapping her foot, and then glanced away. “No. I’m stumped about how to get in there.”

  Krampus again viewed the castle, looking at the outermost stone corner closest to him. “Hmmm. That might work.”

  “What might work?” She strode right next to him and repeatedly poked his ribs, demanding an answer. “Every guard and knight left in that castle will be lining the upper walls. If you so much as poke your big ugly mug between the battlements, they’ll shoot or hack at it.”

  He didn’t reply, but then his body flinched, not in fright, but in recognition of something so patently obvious that he was surprised it hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

  “Are we even here for the same person?” Krampus said.

  “What do you mean?”

  The giant reached into a small pouch that he’d nailed to his barrel and pulled out a tied-up scroll that mercifully hadn’t been soaked with waste. He removed the twine and unrolled the parchment, looking for the desired spot. Finding it, he held open the scroll in both hands and shoved it in front of Perchta’s face.

  “There, the name that’s not been scratched out—you see who I’m after?”

  “It’s pitch-black out!”

  “What? Oh, yeah. I forgot. Hold this.” He handed her the scroll. “Keep it open and wait right here.”

  Krampus lumbered toward the castle, emerging from the darkness and onto a patch of clear, flat rock under moonlight. The torches held by guards scrambling along the walls began converging in one spot, facing Krampus. He grumbled, out of annoyance, and then roared to announce his arrival.

/>   From the castle: “Fire!”

  Dozens of flaming arrows flew from atop the wall, arching like little comets to rain on Krampus, who hopped and wove out of the paths of all but one that sizzled straight toward his head. Figuring its trajectory, he stepped aside and, at the precise moment, tilted his skull sideways.

  Perchta from within the shadows grimaced when the arrow struck. Then she straightened herself, realizing why he had deliberately made himself a target. Krampus trundled back and plucked the flaming arrow from the base of his left horn and held the burning stick toward the scroll in Perchta’s hand.

  “Now do you see who I’m after?”

  She focused on the name that hadn’t been cut through in red. She squinted at the slashes.

  “Is that?”

  “Yes, blood,” he said, growing impatient. “Are we after the same person?”

  “No. No, we’re not.” She handed the scroll back to Krampus and grew reflective, stroking her chin while watching the castle. “Then there was really no reason for us to fall into a lake of shit.”

  “We probably should have discussed all of this beforehand.”

  “I just assumed we wanted the same scummy urchin. I won’t get in your way if you won’t get in mine once we’re inside,” she said. “How do we get in there?”

  Krampus slid off his barrel and plopped it in front of Perchta.

  “What of it?” she said.

  The monster pulled out a link of chain, bigger and heavier than the one he had used to slap her in the moat. The links kept coming.

  “How can they all be in there?” she said.

  He coiled the chain on the ground. “How did Jesus feed thousands of people with seven loaves of bread?”

  She stayed quiet, and then said, “But why do you need so much?”

  “To get into the castle.”

  “How?” she said.

  Deeming he had enough chain, he pulled the last link from the barrel and left it in a pile. He then stomped his hoof on the ground, hitting dirt. He continued until he struck solid rock, and made a satisfied noise. “Get your knives ready.”