The second battle now advanced, employing pole-axes and spears to keep the hideous coils at bay. Behind them, the crossbowmen took to the field, seeking to shoot the undulating mass that continued to stream down from the rent in the sky. Their bolts fell far short of the target, clattering down upon the heads of their own embattled comrades. The boom of the French cannons was equally futile, the cannonballs sweeping past the infernal tendrils to plough into the trees of Agincourt woods.
Havoc and destruction had descended upon the French. The day was lost to them, Vashtar’s sorcery had secured victory for Henry. The King, however, felt only a terrible foreboding. It was more than the horror and dishonour of winning the battle in such a ghoulish manner. There was something here that went beyond the conflict of kings and countries. The druid had called to something that should not be, drawn it out from whatever hellish realm it belonged to. As he watched the slaughter of French chivalry, Henry noted a hideous correlation between the tear in the sky and the decimation of d’Albret’s men. He saw the Constable himself drawn up into the horror’s grip, his black armour falling from his writhing body in decayed strips. At the same time, the hole widened, allowing a little more of the abomination to spill out into the sky.
“Once more unto the breach,” Henry whispered.
The thing Vashtar had summoned, the monstrosity that was decimating the French, it was somehow using the essence of its victims to widen the tear and thrust more of itself into the human world. Whatever barriers had held this terror at bay, the druid’s spell had created a breach and now the thing was spilling through the hole.
“My King! My King!” The despairing cry came from behind Henry’s line. He turned around to find the Welsh soldier Pistol rushing towards him. The man’s face was stained with tears, his skin pale. “The baggage train, sire! They have been massacred!”
The anguished report shook Henry to the core. He knew it was no French attack that had claimed the English baggage train. It was by his own doing they’d been struck down. In his plotting with Vashtar he’d failed to imagine the enormity of what the druid intended. The wizard had gulled him into believing it would need but a single martyr to fuel his ritual and defeat the French. Instead the fiend had claimed them all, slaughtered them to call the Gate and summon the Key in a manner far beyond the spell he’d worked in his lair. By agreeing to the sacrifice of one man, Henry had condemned them all.
No, he had done more than that. Henry realized that Vashtar had deceived him as to his intentions. The druid didn’t care about the conflict between Englishman and Frenchman. It had been a ruse to secure what he needed to open the breach and allow his monstrous god to penetrate the barriers of reality. Now, with the foothold afforded it by the wizard, the abomination was securing for itself the lives it needed to widen the hole. What would happen when the thing emerged completely was a question Henry didn’t want to see answered.
Henry turned, raising the Duke of Gloucester from his knees, disabusing him of the religious adoration falling from his lips. “That is no manifestation of God, but a sending from Hell itself!”
He looked about, calling to his men, demanding they attend his words. “The horror that assails the French in this moment will soon enough reach out for us, for such a monster will make no distinction between English and French blood. If we stand aside and let it devour our fellow man, though they be our mortal enemy, who can say how far it will rove to sate its hunger? Nay, I say this abomination, this spawn of Satan, must be brought to heel here and now, while it struggles to pull itself down from the sky!
“Yeomen! Nock your arrows and raise your bows high!” Henry pointed his sword towards the embattled knights and the soldiers striving to fend off the tendrils spilling down from the sky.
“The crossbows of the French are unequal to the task demanded of them! Remind our foe the strength that is in English yew and English resolve!”
At their King’s command, thousands of English and Welsh archers took aim. Though the fear was upon them, loyalty to Henry steadied their hands. With a cry of “Loose”, volleys of arrows went flying upwards, sailing towards the ghastly rent in the sky. As the first volley drove home, hundreds of the shimmering spheres burst open, discharging their temporal venom back into the void. Several of the descending vines lashed about in agitation, reacting to the sudden injury inflicted upon the thing. For an instant, the monster’s assault upon the French faltered.
“Iä Yog-Sothoth! Iä!” the frenzied shouts of Vashtar boomed across the field of Agincourt. At the druid’s call, the ovoid ropes returned their vicious attentions upon the French knights, disintegrating and evaporating entire clutches of nobles with each lash of the undulating coils.
Whatever the horror in the sky was, Henry realized there was some sympathy between it and the wizard. The abhorrent monster had been drawn to the field of Agincourt by Vashtar’s sorcery; now it seemed the obscenity was being guided by the druid. Perhaps not commanded by him, but at least focused by Vashtar’s urgings. If the wizard were eliminated, if the connection between Vashtar and the thing seeping through the breach could be broken, maybe it would withdraw back into its own infernal realm. If nothing more, the wizard would make for a far more natural foe than the entity he’d summoned.
“With me, brave comrades!” Henry called to his bodyguard. He pointed his sword towards the border of Tramcourt woods where Vashtar’s voice continued to shriek and rave. “Lend me your blades and let us settle the villain who calls the Devil onto this field of honour!” No cheers greeted the King’s decree, only a grim and stony silence. Sir Erpingham, the Dukes of Gloucester and York, hundreds of men-at-arms of both noble and common breed, these formed ranks around Henry, denying the terror in their own hearts as they followed him towards the forest.
The field of Agincourt was becoming a mire of blood and death. Thousands of Frenchmen had been slaughtered by the spherical tendrils, their mortal debris splashed across the earth in loathsome puddles. Half-dissolved horses, men with their chests crumbling to dust, knights screaming from inside the molten ruin of their armour, these and hundreds of other gruesome sights met the English as they rushed across the field.
Henry noted with apprehension that the sky above them was darkening. Soon a second breach, smaller than the first, ripped the air. A pair of shimmering coils flopped down from the rift, striking at the advancing English. Henry didn’t know if the coils came from a second monster or simply an extension of the first. All he was certain of was that the tendrils stood between him and Vashtar.
“Sire, the French!” Sir Erpingham cried out. The knight swung around, his sword at the ready.
Against all odds, a small cadre of French warriors had won their way through the havoc, rushing towards Henry’s retinue.
Among the French, the black armour and beaked helm of Count d’Alencon stood prominent. The Count led his men, sword clenched tight in his fist. As he neared the King, however, d’Alencon reversed his grip upon the blade, holding it by the edge rather than the grip.
“A truce, King of England,” d’Alencon cried out. “This day is unfit for quarrels between Christians, even when their cause is just. If you fight against this hellspawn demon, then I would set aside my vow to see you dead.”
Henry motioned Sir Erpingham and his guards to step aside. “A truce it is,” he declared. Pointing to Tramcourt woods, he indicated the barbarous figure of the druid. “There is the one who brought this monster out of the netherworld.” He hesitated, deciding it would be imprudent to provide the details behind how Vashtar had worked his magic. “If we cannot hurt his monster, it may be that we can still visit justice upon the wizard.”
D’Alencon nodded. “We are with you,” he said. “The reckoning between us will await the finish of this fight, King of England.”
Reinforced by these boldest of d’Albret’s warriors, Henry led his followers through the morbid debris. The shrieks of Vashtar were more distinct now, his cries of “Iä Yog-Sothoth!” becoming more frequ
ent and frenzied. The second breach began to widen, more of the coils spilling downwards. A dozen English soldiers perished as one tendril whipped about them. The Duke of Bar was reduced to steaming paste when one of the spheroid nodules growing from the lashing vines burst open upon the horned crest of his helm. The Count of Nevers and his brother, the Duke of Brabant, were both caught up in one of the coils, wrenched up into the sky, their bodies withering into dust even before they could be drawn into the unnatural rift.
Henry could see that Vashtar had turned and was now facing towards the King and his comrades. The druid was shouting entreaties to the horror in the sky, fixing its attention on the warriors making for Tramcourt woods.
One of the ropey vines whipped through Edward, Duke of York. The nobleman collapsed in a quivering heap, his body undulating with the abominable energies inflicted by the demon. It was mercy rather than malice that caused Count d’Alencon to drive his dagger into Edward’s mangled body and bring the English lord’s life to an end.
The Duke of Gloucester was the next to fall, his mind cracking as he watched the knight running beside him corroded by the temporal venom of the monster’s tentacles. Casting aside his helm and sword, the Duke simply sat down on the gory field and began to weep. Henry rushed to his vassal’s side, determined to fend away the lashing coils should they seek to finish the horror-stricken man.
Instead it was the King who was attacked, one of the tendrils striking at him from behind. A shout of warning from Pistol had Henry turning just as the writhing coil would have caught him. The ovoid vine passed close to him, so near that its noxious energies seared a section of his crown and left it dangling broken and twisted from the rim of his helm. Part of his red-and-blue surcoat withered into a mess of frayed threads, but no harm came to the King himself.
A second rope of shining spheres and translucent bubbles came slashing at the King. This time the attack was met by Count d’Alencon. With cold deliberation, the Frenchman warded off the assault with his sword, granting a respite to the man he’d vowed to kill. Henry was unable to repay his enemy’s gallantry. Before the King could act, another coil came spearing down from above, stabbing through the top of d’Alencon’s helm and piercing the nobleman within. Ghastly energies twisted and mutilated the corpse as the tendril started to pull d’Alencon into the sky, a meaty froth of mortal corruption dripping earthward as the tentacle retreated towards the breach.
“We shall never win our way through!” Erpingham cried out.
Henry’s heart grew sick when he realized the knight spoke the truth. Vashtar’s incantation was drawing more of the coils striking down at them with every heartbeat. It was only a matter of time before they all suffered the doom that had claimed the Duke of York and Count d’Alencon. In his distress, however, the King spotted one of his yeomen, his English longbow slung over his shoulder as he dashed alongside the knights and nobles.
“Yeoman!” Henry called to the man. When the soldier turned the King was surprised to find him to be none other than the archer who’d challenged him the previous night. Michael Williams was a man weathered by a rough life, his face severe and grim, his eyes dark and intense. The hauberk he wore was split and torn, his leggings stained with the muck of disease and war, but the yew bow he gripped was polished to a pristine sheen, the fletching of the arrows in his quiver as sleek and sombre as sable coat. Here, Henry knew, was a man who knew his duty. “A purse of silver if your aim is true!” Hurriedly he pointed to the howling druid standing at the edge of Tramcourt woods.
With a haste surpassing that of his King, Michael Williams put arrow to string and let fly. The renowned skill of the English bowmen was served justly when the bodkin pierced Vashtar’s breast. The druid staggered for an instant, his cries faltering.
Perhaps a single arrow wouldn’t have been enough to settle the wizard, but Williams’s shot served to break the power of his spell. The focus that Vashtar had urged upon the horror in the sky was broken. Spitefully, the demon struck out at him with its tendrils, bubbles of temporal energy closing about him, at once advancing his malformed body to extreme decay and retarding it back to foetal slime. Screams rose from the sorcerer as the god he’d invoked wrought its ghastly due from his damned flesh.
As the druid’s life faded, so too did the awful rents in the sky. The monstrosity withdrew back beyond the rift as the breaches closed. Long after it was lost to sight, however, the violating stench of its obscene presence lingered over the field of Agincourt.
Henry looked over the devastation, the litter of dead, dying and insane left behind by the devil’s wrath. It was a sight to curdle even a King’s blood.
Henry negotiated with the French as to how this strange and horrible event should be reported to the French King and, indeed, to his own court in London. Marshal Boucicat, representing the French army after the death of d’Albret, agreed that no mention of the monster should be made. He shared Henry’s fear that should news of this event spread then some other witch or wizard might seek to conjure the demon Vashtar had summoned. A more mundane account of the battle was devised, crediting the English with an astounding victory while maintaining the courage and valour of their French foes.
The losses to the French had been incredible. While the English had lost only a few hundred men to the monster, the French dead numbered in the thousands. No less than a hundred dukes had been destroyed by the monster, the very flower of French chivalry. Hundreds of knights had survived the battle only to emerge in a hopelessly crazed state. Montjoy advised it would be more merciful for their families should these insane men be extended the mercy of a swift death, a mercy that it fell upon the English to administer. Even then, there were some among the mad too prominent for even the English to countenance executing. Duke Charles of Orleans, Duke John of Bourbon and others of similar status would be taken back to England as prisoners and held in the Tower of London. Their condition would be kept secret and such ransom as their families might offer would be quietly refused.
Sir Ysmbert d’Azincourt, lord of the nearby village, led a band of knights into Tramcourt woods to find Vashtar’s lair and put its contents to the torch. When they were finished, the only evidence of what had occurred on this bloody St. Crispin’s Day would be locked inside the memories of those who had survived it.
For King Henry V of England, they were memories that would haunt him to an early grave. For his remaining years he would be feted and celebrated for a victory that wasn’t his.
Never again could he look into the sky without watching for some sign of another rift, some trace of the monster’s return.
Indeed, on dark nights servants would find their King gazing out from his window, quietly murmuring to himself.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...”
A Tiger’s Heart,
A Player’s Hide
Josh Reynolds
The body was a devil’s mess, and the heat of the day had done little to help matters. It sprawled on the floor of The Red Wolf, limbs stiff, jaws wide, leaking copiously from the knife wound which had reduced it from man to meat. Despite the stink, Doctor John Dee leaned forward, his gloved hands carefully probing the strange lesions that dotted the cooling flesh. They were not the marks of plague. Or, at least not the plague one might expect.
“Curious,” he said. “Most curious.”
“And what do you make of it then, Master Dee? Dead, or only mostly so?”
Dee turned a gimlet eye up at his apprentice. “Were it the one, rather than the other, rest assured you would know, young William,” he said.
“God’s truth.”
William Sly was well named. The eyes of an imp peered out from behind a cherub’s face, and he smiled too readily, and too long. He poked the body with the tip of his sword.
“Still, conclusions are but the cliff of ignorance, or so I’ve heard tell.”
“From whom, I wonder?”
Dee glanced around the common room of The Red Wolf. The alehouse
was empty now, thanks to the poor offal currently befouling the floor. The man had wandered in off the street, gibbering, clawing at patrons and generally making a nuisance until someone had thrust a dirk into him. The patrons had then fled, either out of fear of the gallows or the plague – or both.
“I cannot recall,” Sly said. He shrugged and tapped his fingers against the pommel of the Turkish dirk thrust through his belt. “Perhaps I made it up.”
Shaking his head, Dee bent over the body to continue his examination. “You would do well to still your tongue and speed your eyes, young William. Else you shall learn nothing of my art, and be even more useless to me than you are currently.” The marks were not the familiar rosettes of the pestilence currently sweeping through London, but instead curiously-shaped encrustations. It put Dee in mind of a dream he’d once had, in which he’d seen himself naked, with his skin patterned like velvet, and strange words lost in the folds.
Sly laughed. “Still of more use than this poor fellow.” He made to poke the body again. Dee caught his wrist.
“Stop poking the corpus, William.”
“Faith, Master Dee. I do but examine it.”
“Examine it without poking it,” Dee said, firmly. He squeezed Sly’s wrist, and was rewarded by a wince from the younger man. Despite his advanced years, Dee was still strong and healthy, a fact belied by his appearance. Clad in dark robes and frayed ruff, with a worn skullcap on his round, white head, Dee looked the very image of a scholar gone ever so slightly to seed. There was some truth to the illusion, and more than Dee cared to admit.
“As you say, Master,” Sly said, as Dee released him. In contrast to his aged master, William Sly was a rakehell in dress as well as demeanour. But for all his frippery, the hand that sheathed his sword was calloused and scarred, and his features, though round with youth, were nonetheless etched with the hard lines of experience. Sly had been a soldier of sorts, once. Now he fought a different kind of war, as Dee’s aide-de-camp.
Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu Page 10