by Dan Davis
The Flagellants alone had not fled, and I stalked toward them, wiping blood from my eyes and licking it from my hands.
A dozen of them rushed me with their flails and walking sticks. I smashed their skulls with my sword and threw them aside as I approached the Master, who stood his ground and prayed. His three attendants chanted some mad prayer and came at me with willow switches in one hand and wooden crucifixes in the other. I stabbed the first in his guts, cut the right hand off the next and the third dropped to his knees, weeping and praying to God with his head bowed like an invitation. With one swing, I cut off his head and kicked over his body.
The Master shook and tears streamed down his face into his beard.
I dropped my sword and seized him by the shoulders.
“Who am I?” I said, my voice low like a growl. It did not sound like my own. “Who am I? I am a sinner. I am a murderer. I am the wrath of God.”
I sank my teeth into his neck and ripped out a chunk of flesh that I spat onto the ground. He screamed as I sucked the blood from his neck.
Walt grabbed me by the shoulder.
“People will see, lord.”
“Let them see.”
“These folk will talk.”
“Let them talk!” I snarled. “Let them all talk. Let all France talk and let them tremble at the word of our coming. Soon, I will kill my way across France and they will fear me.”
I drank more from the dying man until his heart stopped and I threw him down and raised my voice.
“Englishmen will drink the blood of the French.” I shouted it so my voice echoed hard from the houses walling off the square. “Spread the word. The English will drink the blood of the French until we find the knight of the black banner. Spread the word. You fear the pestilence? I am the pestilence. I am Richard of Hawkedon and I will murder every soul in France until I find the knight of the black banner. We are the English and we will bring death to France!”
Walt recovered our horses and together we rode slowly out of town with eyes peeping from shuttered windows and half-open doors all around us.
We left scores dead and a market square drenched in blood.
It was a start. But I needed more.
16. Strength
“Do you feel stronger, sir?” Walt asked.
We had made it to the border of Normandy, coming at it from the south, and would soon be within striking distance to the coast. Then it would be a matter of finding a ship that would sail us home. I wondered whether Eva and Thomas yet lived.
Our camp was once more made amongst the trees away from the road. The weather had turned with the seasons and everything was wet. It reeked of mushrooms and brown leaves stuck to everything. My shoes were rotted almost away and the fires never dried us completely.
“Stronger?” I considered it. “Somewhat, perhaps.”
Northern France had been ravaged by the plague such that it seemed at times that everyone was dead. Entire villages were empty. Others had no children or old folk. Everywhere was misery.
Walt sighed. “We need to kill more people, then.”
I shook my head. “Killing these poor, starving villeins will not make me stronger. Not by much, at least.”
Priskos had told me that the best blood came from unborn babies, and children, and from pregnant mothers, and from young maidens just into womanhood.
And also from great warriors.
Try as I might, I could not imagine killing babies, women and girls. Not even to save the lives of my companions.
I had tried.
In one hamlet, a starving girl of fourteen or so was alone in taking care of her very young brother and another little girl. Looking down at them after they came to beg for food, I considered cutting their throats.
“I will lay with you for some bread, lord,” she said without looking at me, her skinny arms wrapped about her.
We rode on after I gave her all the food in my pack. Walt shook his head at my idiocy but I saw him quietly hand the boy an entire cheese. I was pleased to note that I yet retained some sense of morality. Did that mean I would never be strong enough to beat William?
“Could we not take some people and drink from them at will? As you do with your servants, sir.”
“That is one way, indeed. It seems that is the way of many immortals that I have killed. It helps them to maintain the illusion of normality for the mortal world, just as it does for our order.”
“So, am I now a part of the Order of the White Dagger, sir?”
“Good God, I suppose I shall have to swear you into it.” In truth, I did not wish to sully the quality of our order with the likes of Black Walter, so that was all I said.
“You reckon we should take some slaves from the locals, then?”
“Priskos claims that one’s power grows by drinking the blood of one who dies as you drink. They release their essence into you at the point of death.”
Walt frowned. “That true, sir? It’s better when they die?”
“I believe I have noticed a difference.”
“Do you think that’s what your brother William has been doing these centuries past, and that when he returns from the East he will be stronger than you?”
“Shut up, Walt.”
There was nothing for it but to seek out strong men. And to kill them.
We found an ancient tower a few miles from Normandy outside a place called Senonches. The village was dead. It was surrounded for miles by dense oak woodland, all turned to gold and brown and decay.
The tower, though, was guarded by men.
It had been built probably centuries before and was no doubt even older than I was. The mortar between the stones needed repairing and grass and weeds grew from the cracks. A wooden palisade surrounded it, far newer but still rotting.
We reached it at dusk.
Smoke rose from within the walls and the sound of men’s laughter drifted across the cleared ground to the trees where Walt and I crouched. Our horses tethered in a clearing half a mile behind us, we were dressed for war.
“How many, you reckon?” Walt asked.
“It does not matter.”
I stood and walked across the soggy ground, pulling a cheap helm down over my head. Walt followed quickly. I considered going to the gates of the palisade but I knew I could not convince the men within to open the door so I aimed directly for the nearest corner of the stone tower. The ground was soft underfoot and I sank down into an ancient ditch up to my knees and fought my way out, emerging in a fouler mood.
Climbing the ancient walls was simple enough but not easy. Not in a wonky helm, and a gambeson with a sword dangling at my hip. I scraped the steel against the stones as I climbed, and I could hear Walt doing the same. If I could have taken both hands from the wall I would have ripped the useless helm off and thrown it down but I was committed.
As I rolled over the battlements, I knocked a stone from the wall onto the wooden boards of the roof, making a great bang. I helped Walt over and heard a noise behind me.
The hatchway onto the roof was opened by a man who stared, open-mouthed, as I ran at him across the roof. He pulled the hatch shut but I yanked it open before he could bar it and I jumped through into the chamber below.
The fall was greater than I expected it to be and I landed heavily, falling onto my face. I rolled and jumped up as the first man and another came at me. They were proper men-at-arms but they were not armoured and I wasted no time in stabbing the first in his chest. Walt slipped down the ladder and sank his dagger into the neck of the second.
Removing our helms, we each drank from the man we had killed until he was dead.
Walt stared at me with joy in his eyes as his man fell at his feet.
I nodded to him and we ran down to the chamber below.
To my surprise, it was a bedchamber, dominated by a great four-post piece with a sagging canopy. An old man lay abed with his sheets drawn up to his chin.
The door burst open and Walt killed the man as he came throu
gh. Three or four men behind, coming up the stairwell, turned and fled at the sight of it. Walt followed and I knew that he would have no trouble, for he had been a savage fighter even before being gifted with the strength of the immortals.
“Invaders,” the ancient lord in his bed muttered. “Murderers.”
“Who are you, old man?” I asked, crossing to him.
He raised his chin, exposing a wrinkled neck and unshaved white whiskers sprouting from his chin. “I am the lord of this place. Sir Pierre of Senoches. This is my tower. You shall leave, or die.”
“Killed many men, have you? In your younger days, I mean.”
He quivered. “Every death I brought was in honourable war. Your vengeance means nothing.”
“Vengeance?” I replied. “You misunderstand, sir. I am not here for justice. You have not wronged me in any way. I am pleased that you were a strong knight. I honour you.”
I slit his throat and drank his blood. It tasted old and wrong, for he was riddled with the diseases of the aged, but I hoped that some of the power he had in his youth had gone into me.
In the bailey below, I found Walt drinking from a dying man while two others huddled against the base of a section of the damp palisade, staring at us in horror and fury.
“Fight for your lives, you cowards,” I said to them. “Where are your weapons? Fight and die with honour or die in the mud like worms.”
They were mere men-at-arms, retainers in the employ of an impoverished lord whose tenants were all dead or gone. And yet they fought like heroes, thrusting with their spears and wrestling us with daggers in hand as they fell to our strength. We drank heartily from them and I felt my power grow.
At the coast, four days later, a company of eight men stopped us as we went from village to village to find a boat capable of crossing the channel so late in the year. I knew at once that the men who surrounded us were veterans of the recent wars. They were grim and wild-eyed. Most were scarred, missing fingers or an eye. Thin, desperate and iron-hard men.
It felt good to kill them, to cut them open and taste their strength. I could almost taste the evil acts that they had committed to survive the years of war and plague.
On the wide banks of the Seine where it becomes the sea, we found our way home. A trader and his family dragged their boat back into the water in exchange for a heavy bag of silver and for our horses. The crossing was unpleasant in the extreme and I thought for certain we would be dashed against the cliffs of Dieppe or sunk in the churning dark waters. But the winds, strong as they were, turned mostly in our favour so that we made the crossing in five wild days.
We went overland to London with all the haste we could manage and arrived in the middle of November, having been away for little more than three months. With my heart in my mouth I rode into the courtyard, threw myself from my horse and hammered on the door of the house, shouting for Stephen.
Eva and Thomas were alive.
Opening my veins for them, they drank.
Each drank so much of me that I fell to my knees and then myself collapsed and was only revived through hot spiced wine and three cups of servant’s blood.
Praise God, they were cured.
After two days with no relapse into sickness, dearest Eva wept with relief and embraced me closely.
When I was certain they were truly well, I told them what had happened. What I had done.
And Thomas was furious.
17. Recruitment
“You did what?” Thomas asked me, his eyes shining.
“It was the only way.”
Two days after my return, sure as we could be that they would not fall back into sickness, we ate in the hall.
After dismissing the servants, I had relayed the events of our journey to the south. Walt sat in silence and kept shovelling food into his face. We had both grown thinner but I had appetite solely for wine.
Elbows on the table, Thomas lowered his face into his hands.
“You murdered good men to save our lives?” he asked, without looking up. “I would rather have died.”
Hugh, sitting beside him, patted Thomas on the back.
Stephen drummed his fingers on the table. “Hardly murders, were they, Thomas? It sounds to me as though Richard and Walter defended themselves when attacked, as any man would have done.”
“And the knight in the tower?” Thomas asked, lifting his face. He seemed tired. Drawn. Months of illness had taken their toll, perhaps not to his immortal body but certainly to his soul and to his heart. “That knight and his men were no threat to you.”
“Enemies,” I said, waving my cup and spilling wine over the side. “Enemies of England who would have fought us one way or another, one day.”
“There is a truce,” Thomas said. “You know they did not deserve their deaths.”
His ingratitude was beginning to grate on me and I stared at him, feeling the anger burn in my chest.
“Well,” Eva said, placing a hand on my forearm. “It is done now. The strength Richard gained through these actions has cured us and now we can go on, Thomas.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, bowing his head. “I am not ungrateful. It is simply that… for so long you have ensured we act entirely within the terms of the truces arranged between the kings. We do nothing that might risk them. And now…”
“I understand. As you benefit from my actions, you feel as though you had a hand in them. Do not trouble yourself with guilt. If there is sin here, it is mine.”
He was unhappy and wished to say more but he was tired in his heart and he merely nodded.
I was irritated by his weakness.
Yes, I had sinned by killing when I had not needed to and I would have to atone. My sins had brought Thomas back from a terrible living death, and Eva too. They had wakened from an endless nightmare only thanks to my acting more like my brother and Priskos instead of by the code of chivalry.
A part of me had expected Thomas to fall to his knees and express everlasting gratitude for his deliverance. Part of me wanted him to do so.
“What I struggle to comprehend,” Stephen began, “is that there are clearly many more immortals in the world than we knew of.”
I nodded. “Yes, there are three more. Priskos, Peter the false priest, and the giant Christman.”
Stephen opened his arms. “Are you certain? It is astonishing to think of this blood. The blood from you, Richard, that you have given to us.” He rolled up his sleeves and examined the veins of his wrists, touching the skin reverently. “This blood that is in us, comes from so great a pedigree. It is the blood that flowed in the veins of Alexander. In the veins of Caesar. Think of what this blood has accomplished.” He looked at us, eyes shining joy and not a little hint of madness. “This turns so much of history on its head, does it not? How many men like us have been turning the wheels of history down the centuries? How many famed ancients have been of this blood? It could be hundreds. Thousands.”
“Only if this old man was speaking the truth,” Eva pointed out. “He may be as mad as William.”
I nodded. “Priskos may have been lying but I do not believe so. Mad, perhaps. But not a liar. And his strength.” I closed my eyes and suppressed a shudder. “I cannot convey to you the power in him.”
Hugh had his fingers across his mouth. “Surely, Richard, he cannot be that much stronger than you.”
I scoffed at his ignorance. “Consider the chasm that exists between each of you and a mortal man.” I looked around at each of them to see them nod as they recalled it. “That was what I felt when I struggled against the giant Christman. Perhaps that would also be the distance in strength between myself and Peter, the other son of Priskos. But the father himself.” I grasped the edge of the table as I pictured him holding me aloft. “His fingers were iron. His arms unbending as an ancient oak. One might as well attempt to fight a mountain.”
“Like a god,” Stephen muttered.
“What was that?” Thomas said.
Stephen sat upright. “The
pagans believed in gods that walked amongst mortals. They had stories of Hercules and Mars and Jupiter. Gods who acted like men, who could defeat monsters and cut down men like wheat.”
Thomas snorted. “Pagan nonsense.”
“Of course,” Stephen said, waving his hand.
“He criticised God,” I said, almost blurting it out. “He said that Jesus Christ was a god of death. The god of a desert people who was never meant for us.”
“Disgraceful,” Thomas said. “Surely, Richard, you put no stock in such blasphemy.”
“Of course not,” I lied. “And yet, Alexander displayed knightly virtue in his conquest of the East, and in his conduct with his enemies, and with women. And Alexander was a pagan.”
Thomas scowled. “He had no choice but to be a pagan. We have no such excuse. The truth and the light has since been revealed to us. To all mankind. For the sake of our souls, we must worship God and His son Jesus Christ. You see what becomes of a man who has not welcomed Jesus into his heart. This Priskos is a brute. A savage. And it is because he rejects God. Only through God can man rise up to take his place above the creatures of the earth, else we are condemned to forever act like beasts. All pagans were like this before Christ and all pagans are like this in the world today.”
“You are right, of course,” I said. Though I still had my doubts.
“Are we going to kill them?” Eva asked, looking at me. “Priskos and his sons.”
I finished my cup and filled it again. Placing the jug carefully back on the table top, I picked up my wine and took a great gulp.
“The Order of the White Dagger exists to find and to destroy the immortals that William has made and to kill my brother for the evil that he has wrought in the world.” I took another drink. “Priskos has done evil. Perhaps even greater evil than William. But he and his sons are sitting in a quiet corner of the world, doing harm only to the villages and people in the vicinity. One day, it may be necessary to cleanse them from the Earth also. Until that day, we may ignore them.”
Stephen held up a finger, tilting his head. “Could Priskos or the sons be the progenitors of the black banner knight and his men?”