by S. A. Swann
A flaming chunk of wood sailed from the pyre. It arced to Günter's right, striking another crossbowman in the side of the head. The man vanished under a shower of sparks, and his crossbow fired, the wild bolt striking another soldier in the thigh, taking him to his knees.
The Prûsan crowd swelled. German shouts came from the fringes of the mass of people. At the edge of the crowd, away from the pyre, a line of soldiers tried to keep order. They were too far away to immediately realize what was happening at the pyre. All they knew was that the mass of Prûsans were trying to escape. They didn't yet know why the Prûsans were trying to run from the pyre.
Günter stared in horror as he saw torchlight glinting off a raised German sword at that end of the crowd.
He heard Brother Erhard screaming “No!” at the Germans, but his order was already lost in the screams as the soldiers began cutting down Prûsan men, women, and children.
***
Uldolf couldn't follow what was happening anymore. The fire was too close, the heat and smoke burning his eyes and making them water. He heard people yelling unintelligibly in German and Prûsan. He heard screams. But all he could think of now was the burning in his chest, and the heat on his skin, and the smell of burnt hair. He prayed that the smoke would asphyxiate him before the flames licked against his feet.
Then a nightmare image blocked his vision. A slavering muzzle appeared in front of his face, its breath even hotter than the air off the burning pyre. Its red fur was scorched, and the skin beneath cracked, blistered, and bloody. It looked at him with green eyes.
Lilly, if you kill me now, it would be a mercy.
The massive jaws opened and she bent down, burying her face in his chest. He felt teeth and saliva. He felt claws raking his chest. He felt the flex of her jaw muscles against his chest, and very briefly, the slither of her tongue against his stomach.
Then the ropes supporting his body gave way.
He fell forward, toward the fire, stopped only by a massive arm covered in scorched fur. She bent over him and her muzzle descended to meet his
face. He felt the thing's lips against his as its teeth bit through the leather holding the wooden gag in his mouth. When the wolfs face lifted from his own, he spat out the wood. “What—”
Her face descended again, and he felt a pain in his shoulder as she bit the large splinter and pulled it free from his flesh.
Then she hugged him to her chest, smothering his face in scorched fur, and jumped. He felt the heat of the flames as they passed through. He tried to scream at her not to leave his parents, but he could barely breathe.
She let him go and he fell back against a cold stone wall, facing the pyre. The flames now reached higher than the tops of the stakes. He looked into the flames, eyes watering, trying to see his parents.
“Uldolf!” his mother called to him.
Uldolf turned and saw her sitting against the wall. His father's head rested unmoving in her lap.
“Mother?” Uldolf shook his head. Too much had happened too fast. “Is he …”
“His wounds are bad, but he breathes.” She looked up past him, face pale.
Uldolf turned to see the wolf thing standing there. She was little more than a shadow against the pyre, half wolf and half human. He wondered where the soldiers were. He could hear swords clashing and men shouting, but it was all on the other side of the pyre from him.
“Why?” Uldolf whispered.
The monster spoke in Lilly's voice. “See to your parents.”
Then she leapt away, and he lost sight of her in the glare from the pyre.
Chapter 32
Something sailed out of the crowd and struck Günter in the side of the head. The impact rang against his helmet and knocked him to his knees, the fire towering up ten or fifteen paces in front of him. It took a few moments for his vision to clear, and in those moments, chaos had come to reign. The mob had become a living thing, a monster worse than the wolf— a mass of peasant rags and panicked faces, pulsing and swelling. The soldiers tried to raise their weapons against it, but it was like attacking the sea.
It had only been moments since the riot started, but that had been long enough for panic to turn to rage. The space in front of the towering pyre was a shrinking circle held by the Germans. Every armed man, aside from the bishop's personal guard, faced out, trying to keep the mass of humanity back.
As Günter watched, one of the soldiers took a misstep, and dozens of hands grabbed him, dragging him into the mass. He heard the man scream as he fell into the crowd. Seconds later, Günter saw a Prûsan man raise the soldier's sword above his head and scream, “Death to the Germans!”
Günter looked into the face of the screaming man. Günter knew him. A farmer with three children who Günter had never known to even raise his voice in an argument—but there he was, wild-eyed, face smeared with stripes of Christian blood, screaming like a saga warrior.
Günter looked around for the bishop and his entourage, and saw them backing through the entrance to the keep next to the towering pyre. It was the only escape route left. He heard Erhard call out, “To the keep.”
Günter scrambled to his feet and ran for the doors the bishop and his men had just gone through. By the time he reached them, he was pressing through with a half-dozen other men.
“Ready the doors!” Erhard called out. He stood with his fellow knights, slowly backing toward them. Günter saw sword-waving Prûsans converging toward the small knot of knights, but the men of the Order were more disciplined than their secular comrades. They didn't falter, or allow a man to fall out of their ranks. When a hand reached to strike them, it was met with a sword.
Then Günter realized that only five men backed toward him. On the ground, somewhere in the bailey beyond the line of Prûsans, the knights had lost one of their own.
And Günter saw that the mob was growing more disciplined as well. Instead of madly rushing the knights, the way the crowd had the other soldiers, the armed Prûsans formed a ragged line in front of the knights, meeting them step for step. They knew the Christians were backing into a place with no retreat.
As the last of the soldiers fell back into the keep behind the knights, the men inside—Günter included—began pushing the doors shut. The knights stood in front of the closing doors, only slipping through one by one when the gap was barely man size. Erhard was the last through the gap, and then it became a shoving match—Günter and two dozen Christians against the mass of Prûsans outside.
The Christians had the advantage briefly because they were already braced and in position to push the siege doors shut. The gap was closed before the Prûsans were in position. The men inside held the doors while the knights dropped the massive oak timbers to bar the entrance.
They were safe.
But they were also trapped.
***
For a few moments after Lilly disappeared, Uldolf was convinced that guards would converge on them. But the first armed men he saw were panicked soldiers running toward the doors of the keep, about ten paces away from him. They didn't spare Uldolf a second glance; they didn't even look in the direction of the pyre.
In their midst he saw Sergeant Günter, blood streaming down the side of his face.
What's happening?
Something inside the pyre collapsed, and a hot wind blew across Uldolf. There wasn't much room between the keep and the pyre, and it wasn't safe anymore. He turned to his mother and said, “We have to get him away from here.”
She nodded and helped him as he bent to pick up his father's limp body. He draped Gedim's dead weight across his shoulders. His mother tried to help him bear it, walking next to him and trying to support him, but she wasn't much better off than his father, so he didn't lean on her as much as he needed to.
A crowd had massed by the entrance to the keep. Uldolf headed in the other direction.
When they emerged from behind the towering pyre, he heard his mother gasp. It took him a few more seconds for his eyes to adjust so
he could see what had shocked her.
First he saw the mass of Prûsans shouting and running toward the entrance of the keep. Many of them seemed to be armed now, and for a moment he was confused about where the weapons came from. Then he noticed that the people were jumping over obstacles that littered the ground.
Bodies.
Bodies lay on the ground, Prûsan and German, in near equal measure as far as Uldolf could tell—so many that the earth had turned muddy with blood.
Uldolf saw a familiar face in the surging crowd and called out, “Lankut!” Lankut turned to see him, and Uldolf saw his eyes widen in shock.
“Over here!” Uldolf called, groaning under the weight.
Lankut stopped, causing another man in the crowd to slam into him broadside. Lankut dropped to one knee, and the other man kept running toward the keep.
Lankut got to his feet and held up a warning hand as he dodged through the press of his countrymen. Fortunately, the crowd was thinning and he made it over to them without any more collisions. “You're alive.”
“We need help,” Uldolf said. “I can't carry him myself.”
Lankut nodded and lifted Gedim off of Uldolf s shoulders. He hooked his arms under Gedim's shoulders and told Uldolf, “Take his feet—” Then he glanced at Uldolf s one arm and elaborated, “Each of you, take a foot.”
Once they did so they started making better time, moving Gedim away from the riot.
“What happened?” Uldolf asked. “What's happening?”
“The bastards started swinging their swords into the crowd,” Lankut said. “Once that happened—”
“They just attacked?”
“God only knows what they were thinking.” He shook his head. “No, I know exactly what they were thinking. They were looking for an insurrection. Well, they found it.”
***
Sir Johann backed away from the door, appalled at how quickly the situation had degenerated. He had seen the damned creature moving on the pyre, and in minutes he had been fighting for his life. The Prûsans had nearly overtaken him and, worse, he had seen his squire fall into their grasp. The boy was barely old enough to grip his sword, and had panicked before the sudden raging crowd, swinging his weapon wildly before Johann could command him otherwise.
He could still hear the boy's screams as he was pulled into the mob.
Then Johann had been fighting a retreat with the knights of the Order, pressed back into the keep. Only now that the door was barred and the immediate danger had passed did Johann feel the pain in his thigh. Whatever had stabbed him had pierced the mail enough to leave a hole that drained blood down his leg to pool in his boot. He could feel it slide between his toes every time he took a step.
However, aside from a slight limp, it was nothing important.
“There are more crossbows in the armory!” Erhard called out, and he pointed at Johann. “You. Take six men to the armory. I want every embrasure on the east side of the keep manned by archers. Fire on every Prûsan holding a weapon, and anyone who appears to be in command.”
“Yes, sir.”
Johann surveyed the soldiers in front of him. He saw twenty-three men.
Did we lose that many?
Four of the men were knights of the Order, and those were congregated about Erhard. They would remain in command here. Another four were Prûsans who had been part of the original garrison here. Johann was not about to take them. He ran down the line, pulling men out from the remaining fifteen.
Beyond them, he heard the mob pounding outside the door. Johann smiled. Unlike those few hundred farmers, he had participated in sieges before. He knew what it took to break one, and that rabble outside didn't have it. Without supplies, command, or a plan, the mob wouldn't be able to hold out an hour—especially when crossbow bolts began raining down on them. Seven men, taking care to aim, could take out thirty or forty men in five minutes.
He led his six men up the curving staircase, toward the armory. Once on that level, they moved through a stone corridor. Torches had been taken from their sconces, leaving most of the hall in darkness. The pyre, still burning outside, cast light through the arrow slits in the embrasures along the outside wall, the light making flickering yellow crosses against the ceiling.
Johann raised his hand, halting the advance.
Ahead of them, opposite another embrasure, the armory door hung open, the light from inside casting moving shadows on the opposite wall.
Did some of the Prûsans make it in here?
Or the creature?
He gestured for silence and drew his sword. The six other men followed suit. He led them down the corridor, and ahead he could hear the movement of men and the clatter of metal.
He edged along the inside wall, toward the armory door, his men following suit behind him. He reached the edge of the door and peeked around briefly—just long enough to see two men rummaging through the armory and note their positions.
He looked back at his men, pointed at three of them, and waved them forward. Then he rushed into the room.
“In the name of God,” he yelled at them in Prûsan, “lay down your arms and yield!”
The man nearest him made the mistake of turning on him with a sword raised. Johann blocked him and followed through with a blow to the neck. The blade glanced off the man's gorget, but hit with enough impact to knock him back.
The man stumbled back, coughing.
“No. Please!” the other man shouted in broken German, holding his hands spread. “We are the bishop's men.”
Johann lowered his sword and looked at the two men. They still wore the bishop's colors, gold and green. “Why in the name of all that's holy would you swing a blade at me?” he yelled at the other one in German, who still clutched his neck.
“You talk the pagan tongue,” the man said.
Wonderful The Italian bastard probably didn't even understand what I said.
“Get the crossbows,” he told the three who'd stormed the armory with him. The trio sheathed their swords and began gathering the weapons.
Johann looked at the bishop's men. “What do you think you're doing, raiding the armory?”
“We protect the bishop.”
Johann shook his head. “Your swords are not enough?”
“The ... creature ...”
“I've seen what that thing can do. If it was here, you would already be dead.”
“Sir Johann!” one of his men shouted.
Johann turned around to face the man. He had already grabbed three crossbows, but as Johann turned, the man dropped them and reached for his sword. The man's eyes were wide, his skin pale, and he faced the door to the armory.
Johann turned to face the doorway himself.
At first he didn't see anything but the light cast across the corridor by the lanterns in the armory. Then he glanced at the floor. In the hall, in front of the door, a slick of blood was slowly edging into the light.
Chapter 33
Lilly had been following the bishop's men up the stairway in the keep. She had paused when two men ahead broke off from the others to go into a room by themselves. She waited for the other men to disappear higher into the keep, leaving the two stragglers alone.
She did not want to leave two armed men behind her as she went after Hilde. She would have to deal with them. Just when she was about to charge the room, she heard more men ascending the curved stairs behind her.
Instead of ambushing the two men, she backed herself into an embrasure between the top of the stairs and the door. She flattened herself, fur against stone, in the alcove alongside the arrow slit, in the deepest shadow next to the light shining from the pyre outside.
She watched as a knight led six men down the corridor past her.
She recognized the man. He was the man Erhard had kept from beheading her. He held a silver weapon. She looked at the other six, and saw only two other silver swords. But the others might have silver daggers and she couldn't allow them the time to use them.
They
passed by her, oblivious.
She watched as four of the men rushed the room where the bishop's men had gone. The three men remaining in the hallway had swords drawn, all their attention focused on the open doorway.
She silently padded from the embrasure and behind the rearmost soldier. She grabbed his face, covering his mouth, and snapped his neck before he could even suck a breath in surprise. The man in the middle noticed something and turned toward Lilly as his comrade slid to the ground. She silenced him with her claws, gently lowering the bleeding corpse to the floor of the corridor.
The last man made the mistake of paying all his attention to what was happening inside the room. His body slid to her feet as she licked her muzzle. In a moment, her prey would realize something was wrong.
She waited in ambush, three bodies by her feet.
Lilly quietly panted, thinking, This is what I do. This is what I've been trained for.
Why does it feel wrong now?
From inside the room, she heard someone call out in German, “Sir Johann.” She heard people move, and something crash to the ground, and she could smell fear.
A shadow moved in front of the doorway, and from inside she heard a voice call out, “No, don't—”
A man stepped out of the doorway, bearing one of the silver swords in his hand. He faced Lilly, and she snarled.
Even stinking of fear, he brought the sword to bear for an attack, stepping toward Lilly. But he was too focused on her, and didn't watch his footing. His left foot came down on the hand of his fallen comrade, throwing his stance off and giving her an opening.
She leapt, taking him down by his left shoulder. The impact carried them down the corridor, past the doorway. Her jaws clamped down and she tasted metal, leather, and smoke. He tried to bring his sword back up to ward her off, but the flat bounced off her forearm.