by S. A. Swann
He felt his heart pulsing in his throat as he reached up and opened the iron shutter. Nothing emerged to menace him from the dark portal other than the smell of urine-soaked straw.
He raised the lantern to the opening and saw her.
She rested on her side on the floor, arms behind her. Leather straps wrapped her legs, and from her neck Erhard could still see a glint of silver that was not nearly as reassuring as it should have been. She made no threatening moves. All she did was blink up at the lantern.
He turned toward the other men and said, “Come here.” He pointed at a spot of the corridor a step beyond the grooves the door had worn in the floor. They lined up—three in front, two behind—silver blades glinting in the lantern light.
With his men in position, Erhard opened the latch and pulled the heavy door open. It moved slowly, screeching in protest. When Erhard had pushed it all the way against the corridor wall, he shone the lantern back into the room.
She hadn't moved. She didn't even look at him. Her eyes were closed and she had turned her head down, tucking her chin against her chest. He wished that she had been clothed when that boy Uldolf had bound her. She
was dressed in nothing but leather bindings. However, he had come prepared to protect his men's modesty, if not hers.
He walked into the room and pointed at two of the men in the hallway, waving them forward. One carried a bundle in addition to his sword.
“Cover her,” Erhard ordered. The man nodded and sheathed his weapon. The other man stood guard as the first unrolled a long burlap sheet. He draped the rough cloth over Lilly's nakedness. She offered no resistance as the man rolled her up in it. She still refused to look at them—head bent, eyes closed.
Erhard waved another man forward and handed him the lantern.
This was his sin, and he would be the one to bear it to the surface. He thanked God for the fact that Lilly remained silent as he bent and picked her up. Only her head was exposed, and as he cradled her in his arms, she curled into a tight ball, burying her face in the burlap covering her body.
She's trying to keep from facing God, he thought, and accompanying that thought was the painfully blasphemous question: My God, or hers?
He looked at the three men in the cell with him. “You stay ready for attack. Should I call out, or if she drops from my arms, dispatch her without concern for me.”
“Yes, sir,” the trio said in unison.
He walked to the doorway and looked at the men ahead of him. Two swordsmen stood just outside the swing of the cell door, and the two crossbowmen at the end of the corridor.
His men arranged themselves as he had told them earlier, the swordsmen surrounding him a pace out of arm's reach. One crossbow moved ahead of him twenty paces, the other to the rear at twenty paces.
They knew that if they had to shoot, they would have no time to reload. He had warned them before the descent. “Shoot only when you see her head, and put the bolt in the brain if you can, the throat if you must, and try for the heart only if you have no other choice.”
Not one showed a hint of a question in his face. He had picked each one of these men because they all had personal experience of what the girl in his arms was capable of, either from his decade of using her as a weapon for Christendom, or from knowing and working with the more recent victims of her bloodlust.
None of these men would be deceived by the image of a pathetic child wrapped in rough burlap. Each man was armed with a proper weapon against her. They would not panic if they were suddenly faced with fang or claw.
Should she somehow attack, escape the bonds of silver on her neck, she might take Erhard's life, but she would not live to take any more.
Fortunately, God was with them, and she made no hostile moves. In fact, she barely moved at all. As Erhard walked up out of the bowels of the keep, surrounded by guards bearing silver weapons, Lilly began to tremble.
However, when he carried her outside, Erhard swallowed a growing unease when he realized that she wasn't trembling.
Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Lilly was singing.
Chapter 30
They came for Uldolf before he was ready.
Then again, he never would be ready for this.
Even though he had been living on borrowed time since his arm had been torn from its socket, he didn't want it to end this way. When the men came for him, he rushed the guards. It was a hopeless attempt. It only took one of them striking his already swollen face to drop him to the ground.
However, it would have been worse to go with them meekly, without at least trying.
The men roughly bound his arm to his side and yanked him upright. He screamed something obscene and one of them shoved a block of wood in his mouth, binding it fast with a strap of leather. Two more of them half dragged, half carried him through the stone corridors, up the stairs, and out into the bailey in front of the keep.
The sun had set, and the courtyard was lit by ranks of torches carried by narrow-faced German soldiers. The Prûsan prisoners formed an audience behind the torch-bearing soldiers.
The focus of the audience was the pyre.
In the torchlight, the wood structure loomed even larger than Uldolf remembered. The space under the platform had been piled high with wood and tinder. The quartet of closely grouped stakes pointed at the sky, fingers of some giant sinking back into the earth.
Even with so many people, the air was deathly still and quiet. No one in the audience spoke above a whisper. The loudest sound was the combined crackle of the burning torches.
Uldolf stared at the pyre, and it finally sank in.
Four stakes ...
No. They can't be so brutal...
The soldiers dragged him up on the platform, throwing him up against the stake nearest the keep's entrance. He struggled as they pulled a rope around, binding his chest and upper body to the stake. As he thrashed against the bonds he saw past the guards.
He tried to scream “Mother,” but the wooden gag in his mouth prevented anything but a weak grunt.
Still, Burthe heard him and turned her head. Uldolf saw her eyes widen, and if it weren't for the ropes binding him, he would have fallen to his knees in shame.
Worse than seeing his mother bound and gagged, worse than seeing her face bruised and bloody, was seeing the loss of hope in her eyes and knowing it was his fault she would now see both her children die.
The men who had bound him left to drag her up to the platform. They pulled her out of sight to the stake directly behind him. He whipped around to try and see what they were doing, but he could only turn his head enough to see the stakes on either side of him, to the front and back of the platform.
Then they brought out his father. If he hadn't known it was Gedim, he might not have recognized him, the beating was so severe. Gedim's face was a swollen patchwork of red and purple. Blood caked his mouth, which apparently was too swollen and broken to fit a gag. His nose was a bloody mass of flesh, and there was a fist-sized lump where his left ear should be. The way the two soldiers carried him, he didn't appear conscious. His body flapped like a rag doll as they tied him to the stake to Uldolf s left, facing the wall of the keep.
Uldolf s hand balled into a fist. His heart raced. They were going to bring out Hilde and tie her to the stake facing the crowd. The sight would break him.
But pride of place wasn't going to go to his sister.
The entourage that emerged now from the keep was much larger than the one that had escorted Uldolf or his parents, and they moved as if they were in the midst of a military campaign. First came a man with a crossbow, who walked out past the pyre and took up a spot in front of the torch-wielding soldiers. He knelt and aimed back where he had come.
Next came two soldiers, swords drawn and glinting silver in the torchlight.
Following them walked a knight of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. He wore a white surcoat bearing the black cross of the Teutonic Order, and in his arms he carried a burlap-wrapp
ed body.
Lilly had curled into a ball, her face buried in the filthy bindings. Her hair hung free, and much of the black had sweated away, so that her hair glinted red in the torchlight.
The knight bore his burden to the foremost stake, to tie her facing the crowd. As he mounted the platform, Uldolf heard something. Singing. An old lullaby that Uldolf recognized.
“Fear not the road before you ...”
Uldolf swallowed, unprepared for the series of emotions slamming into his gut.
The first thought on seeing Lilly was that this was justice. She should burn in place of Hilde, payment for his first sister's death, the death of his whole first family.
But the singing ...
Mother will protect her child.
No matter what the darkness brings.
The girl he had known in the woods as a child; the woman he found in the same woods, the one who called him Ulfie; the one he had made love to, who had warned him not to remember.
Were they all that monster?
He wanted to see her burn.
But he didn't.
***
Lilly sang to calm herself.
It would have been so easy to snap, to reach up and taste the flesh of Erhard's throat, to punish her cold and unforgiving God. But what purpose would that serve? She knew she could take lives.
But could she save any?
Fear not the road before you,
The broken stones, the empty trees,
Mother will protect her child,
Wherever that road leads ...
She knew that her master was afraid. She felt it in the tenseness of the arms bearing her. She heard it in the way he breathed and in the thudding of the pulse in his chest. She smelled it in his sweat, even over the scent of mildew in the burlap that wrapped her. The rough cloth itched, but it also covered her, hiding the way she gradually moved her legs and arms apart, keeping the now-loose leather bindings taut.
They had been waiting for her. During their ascent from her cell, she had been aware of all of them; the two crossbowmen, the five men with silvered swords. They had expected her to fight. They had been waiting for it. One or two, she sensed, might have even been eager for it.
How often had she relied on the ignorance or stupidity of her adversary? Surprise was more deadly than the wolf, as her rapist had discovered. But she had no surprise in the keep.
If, somehow, she could shed her bonds and stay unmolested for the few seconds it took for the wolf to come, she trusted in the wolfs ability to take anyone. But that couldn't happen while Erhard carried her, surrounded by swordsmen. Five swords would have pierced her body before Erhard's body hit the ground.
Fear not the bear, the troll, the wolf,
Or other evil things ...
When they emerged into the night air, she saw the wooden structure of the pyre, she saw the soldiers carrying torches, and she saw the Prûsans who would be forced to watch.
It was a familiar scene—the Order demonstrating the wrath of their God.
I was that wrath ...
Mother will protect her child,
No matter what the darkness brings ...
She saw Uldolf, and Burthe, and Gedim, bound and held in place upon the pyre. Uldolf faced her. Bloody. Beaten. The sight ignited a coal of rage in her chest, and she could hear the muscles and bones in her body groan and creak—
Not. Yet.
Fear not the cloak of slumber,
When the sky has lost its sun …
Erhard carried her up to the last stake on the pyre, facing the crowd. She allowed three men to hold her up against the stake. She smelled the fear on all of them. They left the burlap in place around her body as they took a heavy rope and tied her to the stake. Through it all, she kept her head down, chin to her chest pressing against the tore, and she kept her limbs rigid against the pull of the rope.
The three men tightened the rope, but even though they knew what she was, and even though they expected her to try and escape, they still—as everyone did—underestimated the strength of her frail human body. As they pulled the rope tight against her, they didn't realize that her arms were behind, pushing against them, giving her space at least the width of her arm between the small of her back and the stake.
Mother will protect her child,
Should any nightmares come ...
***
Uldolf watched as Lilly's master carried her up to the pyre. He wanted to scream at him, at everyone. If Lilly was evil, she was an evil created by them. An evil created in service to their own cruel God. If she should burn, those in the Teutonic Order should roast in the same fire.
He strained his neck to look out over the crowd beyond the torches. All those people, many who knew him, knew his family. Would they just stand there, watching them put to fire?
Whenever he met someone's eyes, they turned away.
This is really going to happen.
He turned to look at Lilly, and even she seemed to have given up, face down, singing quietly.
Of course she's given up. She gave up when I attacked her ... She had been ready to die at his hand. Why would that change now?
He had only spared her out of the hope that he could exchange her for his family. That's what he told himself.
He kept telling himself that.
Even if the Order had commanded her actions, that didn't absolve her from what she had done to him. Even if it did, how could it excuse what she had done after, coming to him years later, taking advantage of his fragile memory ...
“It's bad to remember ...”
She had been ready to die at his hand.
Why?
He wanted to scream at her. She was a monster, and a monster doesn't show remorse.
Once Lilly was secured, the soldiers left the platform. The swordsmen who had accompanied Lilly out of the keep stepped back to take their places in the line of other soldiers with torches. The men with the crossbows remained in the front line, kneeling, loaded bows aimed up at Lilly.
Uldolf watched Brother Erhard take a position with the other knights of the Order. Of all the soldiers here, only six men stood bearing the black cross. None of the Teutonic Knights bore torches. That duty seemed reserved for the secular knights, their squires, and the few guardsmen remaining from the original garrison here.
The pyre now was the sole focus of a large semicircle of armored Christians. The ground around the pyre was clear for twenty paces in every direction, lest the righteous be singed by the flames. The Prûsans gathered behind the soldiers, staring at the pyre, their faces painted with the same disbelief that Uldolf felt.
They were Christians, weren't they? They had pledged their fealty to the Order and the Order's God. They were supposed to have the rights of any Christian—to speak their defense, to face a trial, to only face punishment ordained by law. Summary execution, being burned on a pyre without even the offer to recant; not even unrepentant heretics were treated this way.
A wedge of guards wearing checked colors of green and gold parted the crowd around the pyre. In their midst walked a large man wearing crimson robes trimmed with fur. Next to him was Sergeant Günter. Günter's face was blank, unreadable, a stark contrast to the man's enthusiasm when Uldolf had handed Lilly over.
Where are your epic stories of Prûsan prowess now?
Günter and the fat man emerged into the cleared area around the pyre. The fat one strode the ground as a man with no challenge to his authority. He surveyed the audience and shouted something in German.
When he was finished, Günter repeated in Prûsan, “Eight years ago, this village was saved from pagan damnation.”
The man spoke again in German.
Günter translated. “The sword of God struck down the wicked, and delivered the truly righteous to the bosom of Christ. All of you who have accepted Christ should rejoice in your hearts that you have escaped the eternal fate of your unrepentant countrymen—the lake of eternal fire that awaits the heretic, the infidel, and the
pagan.”
Günter did not match the animation of the fat man. When the large man spoke, it was with force, the guttural syllables hammering the listeners like physical blows, his arms waving, throwing his sleeves out like blood-soaked wings.
When Günter translated, it was emotionless and flat, as if he didn't understand the words.
“The fight against the Evil One, against damnation, is ever waging. It is fought not just with the swords of the Order, but within the soul of every man, woman, and child here. There are those who profess obedience to God, but speak falsely. There exist those who have not renounced their idolatry. There are those who worship Satan in his many guises. Satan himself can walk among us, taking into his service the false, the unwary, the wrathful, or the ignorant.”
The robed man spun and pointed at Lilly, words hammering from his mouth as if his speech alone could kill.
Günter translated. “This woman is an agent of the devil, responsible for the deaths of many Christians. She holds inside her a soulless beast that
exists only to feed on the blood of men. Those beside her are complicit in her crimes—harboring her, providing for her, and hiding her from the agents of God. As such, these idolaters will suffer her fate.”
Didn't you harbor her, provide for her? Does she only now serve the devil because she refused to serve you?
The man turned toward the audience and said something low and threatening.
“As will,” Günter continued, “any who are found to have raised their hands in opposition to God and the Church, or hinder those who wield the authority of the pope.”
The robed man allowed the words to sink in. He continued, less forcefully, and waved toward the cluster of guards who had brought him and Günter forward. The men parted to reveal a young child.
Hilde! Uldolf wanted to scream, but the gag still blocked his mouth, and the ropes were so tight that he could barely breathe.