by M. C. Planck
No, he realized, they won’t take my horse, but they might kill it.
He cursed the armored men. “Get a move on.”
“Can we shoot, Pater?” asked one of the boys, a loaded crossbow in his hands. Karl had brought more with him, so now all the boys had one.
Christopher looked to Karl, who nodded.
“For god’s sake be careful,” Christopher said, although he knew it made no sense. This was war.
The boys began opening the shutters, nimbly stepping away in time for the hail of crossbow quarrels that rained down in response.
“At least two dozen,” Karl said.
“Put out that light,” Gregor ordered.
One of the lads clambered to the top of a bunk and covered the light with a cloth. The room went dark, and starlight streamed in through the narrow, open windows.
Christopher’s own crossbows began firing back, with rattles and clunks and bolts slithering through the air. The boys had spent a lot of time practicing. He hoped it would pay off.
“When they get close enough,” Christopher told Kennet. “It’s supposed to be a three-second fuse.” He risked a quick peek again. What in the hell was up with those wagons?
A boy cried out in pain, fell down with a bolt sticking out of his shoulder. Svengusta was already on him, pulling out the bolt with one hand and casting with the other. The boy stopped bleeding, but he was still white-faced with pain. Svengusta was saving his big heals for the important assets.
“The door, you fools,” Gregor cursed, struggling into the last of his armor.
The bar across the door was jiggling, trying to pop open. Two boys rushed to it, held it down, and then collapsed, asleep, along with another one who had moved to a nearby window. Whatever wizard was on the other side of that door wasn’t giving up yet.
“They’re charging,” another boy cried, looking out a window.
Christopher was going to ask what he meant, but the boy fell to the floor as a bolt bounced off his helmet and spiraled through the room. He sat up immediately, uninjured except for the stun, and looked toward the door in fear. Christopher could hear the tromp of feet and something else, a clicking sound that was sickening and eerie and electrified the hair on his neck.
Svengusta was almost to the door, drawn automatically to the fallen boys although they were only asleep instead of injured, when the bar fell off. For a brief second events stood still, while everyone turned to the sound of the bar clattering to the floor, and then the doors burst open to nightmare.
Skeletal figures surged forward, their bare bones clicking on the stone steps, clawing at the wooden doors. Christopher realized they were actual skeletons when he could see right through their rib cages. He might have fled in fear, but it was too much like a horror movie, so instead he stood paralyzed, waiting to see what the next scene would be.
Svengusta raised his rusty sickle, a candle in the darkness, an old man in a nightshirt standing against a tsunami of death and evil, and cried out in Celestial.
“I abjure thee!” His voice roiled with emotion, anger, outrage, hatred, but not fear. “I abjure thee!” he repeated over and over, impossibly advancing a step with each chant.
Incredibly, the monsters shrank back, the empty, grinning skulls chattering in bloodthirsty madness but falling back.
But only the front rank. The next rank surged past them, spilled into the church, groped for the small white-haired figure in front of them.
Without conscious thought, Christopher moved, rushing forward to the old man’s side, drawing his sword as he ran, but not to strike. He held it before him like a signpost, adding his voice to the chant.
His sword shone with its own light, and the monsters quailed, falling back, their mad chattering somehow fearful instead of hungry. They backed away from Christopher, who advanced on them, wholly given over to the power he wielded, mesmerized by the faces of nightmare fleeing before his every step.
He might have followed them out of the chapel and into the yard, but the boys were already throwing the doors closed. Out through the shrinking crevice flew a sparkling, smoking torch, and Christopher only had time to recognize it as one of his blasting sticks before the knot of boys slammed shut the door and hugged against it, white-faced and trembling, holding out the creatures of the dark.
Christopher tried to tell them to move, to get away, but he couldn’t find the words. His tongue was confused between three languages and two cultural contexts.
Shielded from the light of the sword and the sickle, the monsters rallied, pushing and clawing at the doors. They were winning, the doors opening a crack. Christopher finally acted with reason again, shoving Svengusta and himself away from the gap, when the dynamite went off.
The doors surged open, boys spilling everywhere, and a rain of shattered bones and dust blew through the chapel.
The remaining monsters, utterly unaffected by fear or shock, pushed forward again eagerly, but the mercenaries charged past Christopher with what would have been blood-curdling yells if his blood was not already cottage cheese. The armored men crashed into the forest of bones, Gregor’s sword glowing with its own blue magic, and the forest was already thin and tottering from the blast.
In heartbeats the skeletons lay in broken pieces like discarded toys on Christmas morning, and Gregor looked back at him, his face flushed with excitement and righteous anger and life, burning bright against the icons of death scattered all around.
The armored men followed Gregor out into the yard and staggered into a rough line as they charged the wagons. Behind them came half a dozen boys, Kennet and Charles with them, laughing madly, sparkling in the night. Before them quarrels came snarling, but the heavy metal shields and plate bounced them aside with ringing rebuttals.
Christopher followed them out, drawn in their wake like flotsam. Belatedly he charged his sword with its killing magic. Somewhere out here was Bart. A stray skeleton staggered up to him, and he knocked its skull from its neck without conscious thought, his attention searching for the black knight. The monster rattled to the ground like a puppet with its string cut, the skull rolling over and staring up at him with empty eyes.
There was still covering fire from the chapel windows, and now a boy was shooting from the steps. Christopher’s armored men surrounded a wagon but had to duck and hide from the hail of fire from within.
Christopher shouted something; he wasn’t even sure what, but Charles looked at him and so he pointed to the wagon. As the two boys ran toward it, Gregor understood and ordered his men to fall back. The horses were frightened now, lunging in their traces, but the brake was fixed and the wagon did not move, even while the sparkling stick of dynamite arced inside.
Christopher could not understand why the men were not trying to escape, forgetting that they did not recognize the danger, and then one of them came sailing out, propelled by fire and smoke as the wagon exploded. The blast overwhelmed the brake, and the horses bolted forward, dragging the flaming and shattered wagon behind them as bodies and wood fell from it with every jolt.
Kennet fell to the ground without a sound, Charles screaming in fear and shock for him. The boy had grown a quarrel in his chest. Christopher yanked it out and healed him, but he used the wrong magic, a ranked spell instead of an orison. Kennet sprang from the ground, fully healed, his face aflame, and reached into the satchel again, dragging Charles after him.
Christopher himself sank to his knee, crumpling over a brutal gut-shot. He looked down, stupefied, at the quill feathers stuck in him. He only had time to register that the feathers were black, not white, before the pain arced through his mind, shutting out all other thought.
But then he was standing again, alert and ready, Svengusta tossing the bloody bolt to the ground beside him.
“Find Bart,” Christopher bellowed.
A bolt clipped his ear, and he realized he should have at least put on his helmet. A single shot to the head could kill a first rank, as Lalania had shown in the forest battle. He
ran for cover, finding some in shadows before wondering why there were shadows at night. But the battlefield was lit by fire from the south. His barn was in full flame.
He moved out from the corner he’d hidden in, tried to advance to the barn. In his way was a battle, three of his boys against one chain-mail-armored foe who had gotten ahead of his fellows. The boys were being driven back, the man swinging the sword with deadly menace, when one boy, possessed of insane courage, leaped upon the man’s shield and clung to it like a dead weight.
He dragged the man to his knees. The man stabbed at him, the boy now using the shield to protect himself, but not well enough. The boy screamed in pain as the blade found its mark, but he did not let go. His comrades rushed forward, thrusting with their spears. One stepped on the sword as it slid over the ground and trapped it.
The man let go of the sword and grabbed the boy’s leg. Instantly the boy froze, toppled like tree. The man grabbed at the other one on his shield, and immobilized him, too. But the boy hadn’t let go of the shield yet, so the man had to leave it on the ground, locked in the frozen grip. He stood, unarmed save for the chain mail he wore, and in the light of the fire Christopher could see his hand was deformed and discolored, a putrid green with long black nails that glistened.
“You,” growled the creature in Hobilar’s voice. The two men faced each other again in the village square, and this time there would be no mercy.
“You,” Christopher said, still amazed. “Your hand . . .”
“Do you like it?” Hobilar snarled. “You’ll like it better when I shove it up your—”
But he stopped talking and started gurgling. A crossbow bolt had appeared in his chest. Reflexively he reached up with his terrible hand to pull it out, but the black nails accidentally cut into his flesh, and he froze, too, a look of horror on his face, and fell to the ground.
The last boy screamed in rage for his fallen comrades and plunged his spear into Hobilar’s body, leaning on it until it went all the way through and into the ground. Then he started kicking the corpse. Christopher thought about pulling him off but went to check on the casualties instead.
The boys still breathed, their eyes tracking him. They just couldn’t move. He stopped the bleeding of the injured one. Then he reassured them, told their still forms that magic would free them later, hoped he wasn’t lying, and moved deeper into the battlefield.
From somewhere came another blast. Christopher could hear shrapnel ringing off metal armor. The mercenaries were deep into the territory held by the enemy archers, the boys coming out of the church and backing them up, firing constantly. Bart had started out with more crossbows, but Christopher’s boys had started with better cover.
And then the second wagon surrendered, the men throwing out their bows and raising their hands when Gregor knocked on the wagon side, threatening fire and doom in a voice that could not be doubted.
Christopher bent over an armored mercenary lying motionless on the cold ground. He was still breathing, so Christopher used a small spell to stop the bleeding and continued on, trying to get to the burning barn without getting killed.
Then there was a melee, a thick knot of men with spears and shields, the handful of mercenaries hesitant to throw themselves into the thorny hedge, until Kennet ran up, fire in his hands, and the wall crumbled under the threat, the men throwing their weapons and their bodies to the ground, crying for mercy. Kennet had a difficult heartbeat before he managed to pull out the fuse.
“The barn!” Christopher’s screams were hardly less shrill than the screams of the horses.
He ran to the flaming building, threw open the door, but was literally forced back by the wave of heat. Inside he could hear someone keening in fear and pain, and he wept in rage, helplessly listening to the dying horse. He pushed against the heat, but it would not budge. He had no spell that would let him walk through fire, and so he sank to his knees as the barn fell silent, save for the roaring of the flames that mocked him.
“Bart is gone,” Gregor said without sympathy. “Get up, you have wounded to tend.” He pulled Christopher to his feet, threw him away from the fiery wreckage.
Belatedly Christopher realized the blue knight’s horse was in there too. He staggered back toward the village where the enemy sat on the ground, their hands over their heads, fenced in by the mercenaries’ swords and glares.
Svengusta’s normal personality had been replaced by efficiency. He directed Christopher to bleeding men and boys, told him what to do. When they were out of magic he started binding wounds with long, clean strips of cloth. By the end the paralyzed boys were recovering on their own, moving in slow fits and starts.
Karl was injured, the left half of his face dotted with red like a pepperoni pizza. There was something wrong with his eye, too, but he stopped Christopher with an upraised hand.
“I’ll live,” he grated, “and the eye can wait. Bart is gone.”
“I know,” Christopher said. “He stole my horses and ran away. Again. He killed . . .” Looking at Karl’s face, suddenly the horse didn’t seem so important. “How many did he kill?” he asked instead.
“Svengusta says none.” That was the way of this crazy world. No matter how bloody the battle, if you carried the field, your losses would be light. Wounds were rarely fatal instantly, usually killing through organ failure, blood loss, or infection. The astonishing healing powers of the priests made victory cheap at any cost.
“How many did we kill?”
“We’re still counting body parts.”
It took Christopher a moment to realize the young veteran wasn’t telling a gruesome joke.
“Your fireballs were quite effective,” Karl said. “I just wish Kennet would learn to throw them with a little more caution.” But this was too much like an actual emotion, so Karl went back to the facts. “It looks like Bart brought forty men and a dozen or more of those horrors. We’ve got at least ten corpses, but Svengusta says we’ll have more by morning.” The healing magic had not lasted all the way through their own men. There was none left over for the enemy. “That still leaves you over two dozen prisoners to deal with. All commoners, as far as I can tell. If Bart had knights, they left with him.”
“And we know he had a mage,” Gregor said, coming up to join them, “and I’ve found no sign of him either.”
“What do I do with them?” Christopher looked out in dismay over the prisoners.
“Have mercy,” cried one, seeing that they were the object of discussion. “We had no choice but to serve our lord.”
“You killed my horse!” Christopher’s anger snapped like a string, and he was suddenly standing over the cringing man with his sword in his hands.
The realization that he had almost killed a helpless man did not chill him as much as the fact that Gregor and Karl stood by, watching, without any particular comment. They weren’t going to stop him.
He made his brain function. Would he do this if Royal still lived? He put away his sword slowly.
“It’s just a stinking horse!” the man cried, his fear replaced by fury once the dreadful blade was back in its sheath.
“You didn’t have to kill it,” Christopher answered.
“We did as Lord Bartholomew ordered. What choice did we have?” The man was groveling again, the switch between anger and fear instantaneous.
“You did not have to become a soldier,” Karl said. “You could have remained a peasant.”
“And left our women and children at the mercy of his whim? Do you not know he beheaded two whole villages to boil their brains?”
Karl was unmoved. “That does not justify the violence you have inflicted on others.”
“If your goal was to protect your families,” Gregor said with brutal ice, “you’ve failed. He’ll drain them first, now.”
“Let us go!” the man cried, and several others joined him. “Let us go home to save our wives and children!”
Christopher was torn, but Gregor was unyielding.
“You’re boot-lickers,” the knight said. “If we let you go, you’ll lick Bart’s boot the minute you see him.”
“Mercy!” they cried back, and Christopher agreed. He turned to the knight, the question in his face.
“You want to show these men mercy?” the knight barked. “Kill them now. Kill them before daylight. If you turn them over to your Church for prosecution, Bart will have a spy in the courtroom. He’ll kill the families of every man who surrendered, whether he needs their tael or not. He’ll torture them to death as an abject lesson. If these men die now, then perhaps Bart will be concerned with other things. But if they are named as cowards, then he’ll punish their families in ways no sane mind can dream of. Send them home to Bart and he’ll do the same, but in front of them, before he kills them for being deserters.”
With a cry of inarticulate rage, the kneeling prisoner charged Christopher, who stepped aside and knocked him down with a well-placed knee. On the ground, the man writhed in pain, but not from the force of the blow. The silence of the prisoners confirmed the terrible words of the blue knight, and they hung their heads in despair.
“Every one of them is guilty of rapine, murder, and torture, Pater,” Gregor said. “Your Church will hang them all, anyway. Give them a warrior’s death. Conceal their cowardice from the world. That is all you can do for them and their families.”
The prisoners didn’t look like they wanted a warrior’s death.
“Why did you put me in this position?” Christopher asked them. “Knowing all this, why did you surrender?”
“Because they are cowards,” Gregor said with contempt.
Karl had more insight into the peasant mind. “Because they were hoping you’d gotten Black Bart.”
“So if we’d killed Bart, then I could turn these men over to the Church for judgment, and possibly atonement.” And I wouldn’t have to choose between fueling terrorism or running an abattoir, his mind whispered. “He’s got a long ride home. If we had horses, we could chase him. If you hadn’t taken so damn long to get into your armor, we could have saved the horses.” He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice.