by S. A. Swann
However, this patch of Christendom had since been reclaimed, as shown by the Teutonic standard flying above the remains of the bell tower. The black cross whipping in the summer breeze lifted Erhard's spirit. It showed that no defeat of the righteous was permanent.
It did trouble him somewhat that there was little sign of anyone reclaiming the mission here. He saw no monks as he approached, only armed men bearing various tabards over their armor, all quite serious in their bearing. Erhard could tell by their dress and the varied ways they wore their hair and trimmed their beards that these men were all secular.
At least this house of God is well defended.
He rode up and one of the guardsmen took the reins of his horse as Erhard dismounted.
“You must be our new Landkomtur,” came a voice out of the entry.
Erhard turned to face the voice. “Brother Erhard von Stendal,” he said, squinting. The intense sunlight rendered the shadows in the recessed entry near impenetrable, and his host's approach had been masked by the fact that he wore black, from tunic to trousers to worn leather boots.
The man stepped into the sunlight to meet him. “I am Brother Semyon von Kassel.”
Brother Semyon held out a hand, and Erhard noted that he even wore black gloves. Erhard took his hand and said, “Hochmeister Hermann von Salza sends his greetings.”
Brother Semyon smiled. “But more important, he sends you.”
There was nothing particularly unusual about the man, other than his choice of black clothing in the summer heat. Brother Semyon was about Erhard's height, if more slightly built. His face was lined by approaching age, but his hair still held most of its color, white only invading at the fringes of his temples and around his neatly trimmed beard. His eyes were gray as a stone.
The face was unremarkable, but the smile ...
There was something in Brother Semyon's smile that made Erhard uneasy. There was knowledge there—knowledge that probably was best not shared.
“I am here,” Erhard said. “But I've not yet been told why.”
“Why? To serve God, and the pope.” Brother Semyon chuckled and let go of Erhard's hand. “Come, I have much to show you, and we have much to discuss.”
***
Brother Semyon and one of the secular guards led him down a corridor black with shadow. It was a relief to be out of the sun, but the dimness rendered the brother little more than a darker shadow beside him. Erhard had the uncanny sensation that the darkness here was more than the absence of light.
“You've been given quite the honor. To be first to lead one of our special 'provinces' is a unique duty, and one that the Hochmeister only trusted to the most disciplined and discreet knight of the Order. Your command will be exclusive. You will have no peers.”
“I assume you're going to tell me what this command is?”
“All things in their proper order.” They stopped in front of a massive door. “Do you know why you were chosen?”
“I have not been enlightened.”
“The reasons are manifold. In the Holy Land, you proved adept at the more subtle arts of warfare—attacking the heathen in the mind and the soul as well as the body. You are adept with spies, subversion, and assassination.”
“I serve the Lord, my God.”
“And you do so with an admirable lack of sentimentality.”
Brother Semyon's guardsman opened the door. It swung inside silently on well-oiled hinges. It revealed a corridor beyond, lined with several long cages. The cages were new, the black iron bars showing no rust, the stones forming the floor flat, even, and closely fitted together. The cages were tall and narrow, along the single outside wall, and lit only by vent holes in the upper wall no larger than Erhard's fist.
Even so, after the darkened corridor, his eyes were adjusted well enough to see the cages in their entirety. They were barely wide enough for a man to spread his arms inside, and about twice that long. The occupants were uniformly naked, each chained by one leg to a heavy staple set in the center of their cell.
Children.
Six of them, male and female, all about eight years old. All of them were quiet, looking down at the floor as Brother Semyon led Erhard and the guardsman down the aisle in front of the cages.
Erhard said a quick prayer for his own soul then turned on Brother Semyon. “What is this? Are these children baptized? What are they being punished for?”
Semyon laughed at him. “No, my good knight, you would no more baptize these children than you would your horse.”
Erhard felt the first prickings of horror. “Why would you deny them Christ? Absolution of their sins?”
“Sir, sin is the province of humanity. These you are calling 'children' are far from human.”
Erhard couldn't credit those words.
He looked at the prisoners and saw nothing to distinguish them from children anywhere. Except, perhaps, one thing—
They were unnaturally silent.
These children did not babble, did not fidget, did not respond to his presence at all. The only indication Erhard received that these creatures were even aware of their surroundings was when he caught one girl's steel-blue eye furtively watching him from behind the ragged strings of her blond hair.
“I am deeply troubled, Brother. You say these children are not human. How can I accept those words when I see this?” He waved at the cages.
“You will see more,” Brother Semyon said.
“Why do they say nothing? Are they mute?”
“No. They are merely well trained.” Brother Semyon shifted his speech to the barbarian tongue of the Prûsans. Fortunately, the grand master had sent Erhard north with some Prûsan slaves to be guides and to tutor him in the language. “Only speak when spoken to. Isn't that right, Rose?”
“Yes, Brother Semyon,” whispered the naked little girl with the stringy blond hair. She didn't straighten up and, despite answering, didn't raise her head or turn to look at him. The one eye that Erhard could see through the tangled hair remained fixed on him.
“Staring is impolite, Rose,” Semyon continued in Prûsan.
At the brother's words, the eye blinked and the girl's head shifted. Now her face was completely hidden.
“Who are these children?” Erhard turned to look at Brother Semyon. “What are you doing here?”
The brother smiled at Erhard and resumed speaking in German. “I am doing things you could not have conceived of when you spoke your vows in Jerusalem. However, before I explain, I must show you something.”
He turned to the guard, who until now had silently stood by next to the wall. “Please ready yourself,” he told the man.
The guard walked to a rack on the wall that held a number of iron rods and polearms. The guard selected a long spear that had a broad leaflike blade that shone silver in the dim light.
But that wouldn't actually be silver, would it?
Erhard turned back toward Rose's cage. Brother Semyon had already slipped inside, closing the barred door behind him. He crossed the floor, bent by the little girl, and unlocked the manacle binding her ankle. Erhard thought he might have seen a glint of silver in the manacle as well.
Brother Semyon returned to the front of the cell, opposite Erhard. He commanded, in Prûsan, “Rose, come here.”
Reluctantly it seemed, the girl walked forward, next to Brother Semyon. The other children, Erhard noticed, had finally turned their attention toward them.
“Give me your right hand, Rose.”
The girl held out her arm, hand open, trembling slightly. Semyon grabbed her wrist with his left hand. His grasp nearly pulled the girl off-balance.
“Very good, Rose.”
Still holding her like that, Brother Semyon turned toward Erhard and resumed speaking German. “Would you be kind enough to lend me your dagger for the purpose of a small demonstration?” He held his right hand through the bars.
The girl's detachment started to crumble. She made small sobbing noises, and those steel eyes pleaded
openly with Erhard. But she didn't struggle.
Erhard whispered a Pater Noster to himself.
“Please? I cannot hold her here forever.”
Erhard had always been a decisive man, not disposed to debate things with himself. His service had never been one he doubted. But seeing this girl held by Brother Semyon was causing some of that certainty to crumble.
“Landkomtur Erhard! Should I remind you who sent you here, or whom you serve?”
Erhard's vows were more important than any momentary doubts. He drew his dagger from the sheath on his belt. This was not the time or place to question his vocation.
Erhard placed the hilt in Brother Semyon's right hand. The blade shone dully, reflecting the small amount of sunlight that filtered in from the vent holes. The girl—Rose—became very still, only moving her eyes to follow the motion of the blade.
The chamber was so silent that Erhard was aware of the sound of his own breathing.
Brother Semyon deliberately slid the blade across the meat of Rose's palm. Even though he was almost expecting the casual brutality of the act, Erhard's breath caught as if it had been his own flesh that had been violated.
Rose shut her eyes and gasped, but she didn't cry out as the blade crossed her palm. Blood welled up and began to drip from between her fingers. When Brother Semyon was done, he lowered the dagger and turned her wounded palm toward Erhard.
Christ help me, Erhard thought. He couldn't help but think of the nail wounds on the hands of his Lord. “What exactly are you demonstrating?”
“Watch her, not me.”
Erhard looked back at Rose's hand, the obscene wound spilling blood on the floor. But the blood was thick now, almost black. No, the cut is too deep. Without pressure, it cannot begin clotting so soon.
From his experience on the battlefield, even minor wounds like this might bleed forever if not quickly bound. But the blood still turned dark and slowed its flow.
And then the impossible happened. The edges of the wound knit themselves together. Almost, it seemed, the flesh melted and flowed together, like two streams joining. Erhard watched as the wound shortened, the edges traveling down the girl's palm until it disappeared, leaving the girl's hand bloodstained, but intact.
When Brother Semyon let go of Rose's wrist, she half stumbled, half ran to the center of the cell and curled into a ball, facing away from them. Her head trembled and, for a moment, Erhard thought she might be weeping.
But she was licking the blood off her hand.
Semyon walked up next to her, saying in Prûsan, “Very good, Rose. Your master is pleased.” He reached down and replaced the silver manacle on her leg. He spoke to Erhard in German. “They may feel pain like men, but for them most injury is transitory. Fingers, limbs, organs, all regenerate without even a scar in most cases.”
Erhard stared at the creature in the cell. Part of him, the worldly part, still thought of Rose as a child. The spiritual part, the part of him that served God and the Order, saw her as something else, something alien and threatening.
“Are they immortal?” he asked as the guard lowered his spear and let Semyon out of Rose's cage.
“By no means. They may be the spawn of some pagan demon, but they're as mortal as you or I. They age, of course, and they can be killed.”
“How, if they heal like that?”
“Destroy or remove the brain or heart and they will not survive. Bound by silver they will not heal better than a man. Likewise, if they're wounded by an edge made of silver”—he gestured toward the spear that the guard was replacing on the rack—”they recover only slightly faster than a human being.”
Erhard felt his stomach tighten when he realized that Brother Semyon spoke from his own experience. How many of these “children” did he start with to gain this knowledge? How many brains and hearts did he remove to demonstrate their mortality? Erhard tried to steady his voice as he asked, “What are they? Where did they come from?”
“There are too many names for what they are. Their kind dwells within the darkest primeval wilderness, preying on man. Few who witness their true nature survive. Those who do only contribute to the legends.”
“But what are—”
“Come, you must see what you will be commanding in bringing this heathen land to God. I've arranged for Lilly to have a training session today.”
“Training?”
“Oh, yes.”
***
Brother Semyon returned Erhard's dagger. The blood on the edge was still bright red and liquid.
Brother Semyon brought him to a balcony that overlooked what had been the main courtyard of the monastery. Erhard could see that since the monastery had been reoccupied, all entrances into the courtyard had been
mounted with heavy iron-banded doors. The courtyard had been completely closed off. Inside, all ornament, all plant life, even stone walkways, had been removed, leaving a bare earthen floor and nothing else.
“What is this?” Erhard asked.
“You will see.”
Below them, one set of doors opened. A pair of mail-clad guardsmen escorted a naked girl into the courtyard. Her red hair was long, reaching down past her shoulders and hiding her down-turned face from view. The guards reached down and freed her legs from a set of silver shackles.
“Brother Semyon—”
“Please, watch. Questions later.”
The girl, whom Semyon had called Lilly, couldn't have been much more than seven or eight years old, the same age as the others. She stood at one end of the courtyard, motionless, as if she wasn't quite aware of where she was. The wind shifted, and Erhard thought he heard something.
Is she singing?
If she was, it was too quiet for Erhard to hear exactly what at this distance. All he made out was the barest hint of a tune, three or four notes in a young girl's voice.
Lilly's guards retreated out the doors they had entered, and once they had done so, doors at the other end of the courtyard, closest to Erhard and Brother Semyon, opened. Six men walked out—three guards, and three men in chains.
The men were obviously Prûsan prisoners. They still wore the rough leather skins that were their armor, and the largest one still had remnants of blue war paint striping his face. The guardsmen set a trio of swords on the ground before the pagans. Then, as two guardsmen leveled crossbows at them, the last guard released their chains.
The pagans still wore expressions of confusion as the guards retreated back beyond the door they had entered.
Four people were left in the courtyard—Lilly and the trio of Prûsan warriors.
“What in hell is this?” shouted one of the Prûsans in a dialect Erhard could barely decipher. He was a heavy brute with a full black beard and the face paint. “Are you Christ-kissing bastards playing games with us?”
Lilly finally looked up. Her face was blank, except for her eyes, which smoldered green with something that might be hatred.
“No games,” she said.
All three turned around to look at her. Next to the heavy one was a thin man with braided hair. He stared at Lilly. “What is happening here?”
“They want me to fight you,” Lilly said quietly.
The bearded man laughed. “This is a joke.” He turned around and looked at the balcony, directly at Erhard and Brother Semyon. “Is this how you German scum entertain yourselves? You wish us to slaughter a child for you?”
Lilly shook her head and spoke quietly. “No. They wish me to slaughter you.”
The third man was bald and smaller than the other two. He made a fist and stomped across the courtyard. “Child or not, the brat needs to learn some respect.”
When he reached Lilly, he backhanded her across the face. The force should have knocked the girl over, but she remained standing. The bald man turned around to face his two comrades. “Now what kind of ridic—”
His words were cut short by a liquid gasp. He stumbled forward, and Erhard saw Lilly clinging to his back, hands buried in the sides of t
he man's neck. Her limbs seemed to have grown and her face was strangely distorted.
The man fell to his knees, trying to reach behind him, to dislodge the girl on his back.
Only it wasn't a girl anymore. It was something else, long-limbed and red-furred, with a long canine muzzle whose snarl revealed long, nasty teeth. The man still struggled underneath it, until the thing pulled its forearms up and out, at which point the man stopped moving.
The surviving two men snapped out of their shock and grabbed for the swords before them.
The creature had barely stepped from the back of the corpse when the bearded man ran forward, bringing his sword down on the creature's neck. The thing that had been Lilly didn't flinch, and didn't duck. It turned its muzzle toward the blow, and caught the man's wrist in its slavering mouth. The man's eyes went wide and the sword tumbled out of his grip as the thing shook its head back and forth before letting go.
The man stumbled back, cradling his ruined arm and screaming Prûsan obscenities. The other man brought his weapon up and managed to run it through the creature's unprotected belly.
“There,” he said triumphantly, “it's done.”
The paws at the end of the creature's forearms still had enough of the aspect of human hands to grab the attacker's sword arm. The thing turned its face toward him and spoke. “No. It isn't.”
Hearing human language come from that inhuman throat was even more monstrous than seeing the girl transform. It was still a girl's voice, but bestial, and very angry.
The man belatedly tried to pull his arm free, but he only pulled the monster toward him. The creature continued pulling him forward, driving the sword deeper through its body, until the hilt was flush against its gut, and the man's throat was in reach.
Erhard had seen endless battles, and had seen countless men die, many at the end of his own sword, but he turned his eyes away as the man tried to scream.
This was no battle. This was little different from the pagan Romans throwing Christian martyrs to wild animals to be torn apart for the sport of it. The fact these men were armed made little difference.